Split (1)

train · 64k rows

content stringlengths 275 370k
The focus of a theme-based course such as Medicine Through Time is (by definition) on the theme itself, so it needs to look at the world history backgrounds as efficiently as possible. This exercise is designed to do that. This simple matching exercise aims to give students an overall sense of which ancient civilization came where, in both time and place; and to do so in a brief space of time, so that the focus remains on the topic being studied. It concentrates on the civilizations of the ancient Middle East and Mediterranean World; it leaves out India, China and so on. This is only because many themed courses concentrate on the “Western Tradition” (i.e. Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Europe, the West). However, it can be expanded to include any or all civilizations. The exercise is designed to be used in association with such themes as Medicine through Time, Conflict, Crime and Punishment, Trade, Migration, Empires, Revolutions and so on, but there’s no reason why it can’t be used in other contexts. The students are divided into small groups. From the maps and information given in the TimeMap of World History, they place the following civilizations in chronological order (add in the approximate dates they began and ended): Next, match these civilization to the geographic region (or for some, regions) where these civilizations flourished: Now match the following historical personalities to the civilizations: Alexander the Great Match the cities to the civilizations (be careful – some endured during more than one civilization!): With a bit of research, match the following famous buildings to the civilization: The Great Pyramids The temples of the Valley of the Kings The Ziggurat of Ur The Palace of Knossos The Temple to Yahweh With the whole class, go through the above lists. Make sure that they are aware of the broad chronological sequence of the civilizations, and where they were located. At the end, discuss which civilizations would have influenced which, and how this might have happened (trade, conquest, migration?). Now move on to the theme under study. This short exercise should have given students a clear idea of the sequence and spread of civilizations in the Ancient West.
Endoscopy is a medical procedure that allows a doctor to observe the inside of the body without performing major surgery. An endoscope (fibrescope) is a long flexible tube with a lens at one end and a video camera at the other. The end with the lens is inserted into the patient. Light passes down the tube (via bundles of optical fibres) to illuminate the relevant area, and the video camera magnifies the area and projects it onto a television screen so the doctor can see what is there. Usually, an endoscope is inserted through one of the body’s natural openings, such as the mouth, urethra, or anus. Specially designed endoscopes are used to perform simple surgical procedures, such as: - Locating, sampling or removing tumours from the lungs and digestive tract. - Locating and removing foreign objects from the lungs and digestive tract. - Taking small samples of tissue for diagnostic purposes (biopsy). - Removing stones from the bile duct. - Placing tubes (stents) through blockages in the bile duct, oesophagus, duodenum, or colon. A range of endoscopes Endoscopes have been developed for many parts of the body. Each has its own name, depending on the part of the body it is intended to investigate, such as: - Bronchoscope – inserted down the trachea (windpipe) to examine the lung. - Colonoscope – inserted through the anus to examine the colon (bowel). - Gastroscope – inserted down the oesophagus to examine the stomach. - Duodenoscope – inserted through the stomach into the duodenum to inspect and perform procedures on the bile duct and /or pancreatic duct, called ERCP (Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangio-Pancreatogram). - Hysteroscope – inserted through the cervix to examine the uterus. - Cystoscope and ureteroscope - inserted via the urethra to inspect the urinary bladder and ureters. Medical issues to consider Depending on the condition under investigation, some endoscopies can be carried out in the doctor’s surgery. Others need a trip to hospital or day surgery facility, and may require a general anaesthetic. Endoscopies are generally painless, although they may still cause some discomfort. Compared with the stress experienced by the body in a full surgical procedure, an endoscopy is simple, low risk, and cost effective. Other advantages include: - No scar – as a natural body opening is used. - Quick recovery time. - Less time in hospital. Often, no time in hospital is required as the procedure is performed in the doctor’s rooms. Prior to the endoscopy, your doctor will talk to you about your medical history including allergies and current medications. These factors can have a bearing on the operation. The exact procedure used depends on the type of endoscopy and choice of anaesthesia. You may have sedation or a general anaesthetic. The endoscope is inserted through a natural opening. The doctor may simply make a diagnosis. They may also take a sample of tissue (biopsy) for later analysis in a laboratory. Alternatively, your doctor could perform minor surgery at the same time. For example, they may place a stent across an obstructing tumour or remove a stone from a bile duct. Once the endoscopy is complete, the endoscope is removed. Immediately after the endoscopy After the endoscopy, you can expect: - In most cases, you are kept under observation for just an hour or so. - If you have been given general anaesthetic, you are monitored for longer. - Some types of endoscopic procedures, such as ERCP, may require an overnight hospital stay to make sure all is well. - You are given pain relief, if necessary. - You need someone else to drive you home, or else catch a taxi, because of the effects of medication during surgery. Possible complications of endoscopy include: - Perforation of an organ - Excessive bleeding (haemorrhage) - Allergic reaction to the anaesthesia. - Inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis) after an ERCP. Taking care of yourself at home Self-care depends on the type of endoscopy you undergo. Be guided by your doctor, but general suggestions include: - Most patients are able to resume normal activities within 24 hours to a few days. - Contact your doctor or go to the hospital if you experience severe abdominal pain, vomiting, or pass blood or have black bowel actions. Recovery time following endoscopy is rapid, usually a few hours to one day or so. Alternatives to endoscopy The main alternatives to endoscopy are x-rays for diagnostic procedures or open surgery for treatment procedures. Diagnoses of the gut may be made by swallowing x-ray contrast (barium) or having it passed into the rectum. The disadvantages of x-ray procedures include: - An unpleasant taste or discomfort - No biopsies can be taken for tissue diagnosis - A therapeutic procedure such as removal of a polyp (tumour) cannot be performed at the same time. For treatment procedures, instead of accessing the body’s natural openings the abdominal cavity (for example) is opened using one large cut. The disadvantages of open surgery include: - Longer hospital stay - Increased risk of complications, including infection - Longer convalescence (recovery time) - Comparatively extensive scarring. Where to get help - Your doctor - The hospital or centre where the procedure was performed. Things to remember - Endoscopy is a medical procedure that allows a doctor to inspect and observe the inside of the body without performing major surgery. - An endoscope is a long, usually flexible tube with a lens at one end and a video camera at the other. - Usually, an endoscope is inserted through one of the body’s natural openings, such as the mouth, urethra or anus. This page has been produced in consultation with and approved by: General Surgeons Australia Page content currently being reviewed. Content on this website is provided for information purposes only. Information about a therapy, service, product or treatment does not in any way endorse or support such therapy, service, product or treatment and is not intended to replace advice from your doctor or other registered health professional. The information and materials contained on this website are not intended to constitute a comprehensive guide concerning all aspects of the therapy, product or treatment described on the website. All users are urged to always seek advice from a registered health care professional for diagnosis and answers to their medical questions and to ascertain whether the particular therapy, service, product or treatment described on the website is suitable in their circumstances. The State of Victoria and the Department of Health & Human Services shall not bear any liability for reliance by any user on the materials contained on this website.
Kids love visiting the zoo, seeing all the animals and watching them being fed. Our boys have loved having the opportunity to feed some unique animals, like dolphins. These Zoo animal activities for preschoolers encourage children to learn more about the animals they see at the zoo. There are zoo activities for toddlers as well as zoo theme preschool activities too. The more difficult zoo animal worksheets can be used with kindergarten and first grade students. Zoo Animal Activities In these zoo theme preschool lesson plans and printable activities pack you will find over over 80 pages of fun toddler activities, preschool activities and educational activities for kids. They will love learning alongside an elephant, a giraffe, a gorilla and a leopard. Please note that affiliate links are used in this post. Here are some items that pair well with these activities. You will use each of these items over and over during all my printable preschool activity packs. - Do a Dot Art Markers - Card stock(to print everything out on.) - A pocket chart(I have this one and this mini one too.) - Write and wipe Dry Erase Pockets - Laminator with pockets (If you want to make it reusable.) - Clothespins (for the clip cards) Zoo Activities For Preschoolers This massive printable pack comes in two versions: One is in color and the other is in black and white for those who have limited ink for their printers. The links for you to download them are at the end of this post. Included in this massive printable pack you will find a printable story book which can be printed out and stapled together. Children will love to learn to read the story themselves. They can also use this in conjunction with the printable puppets included. In this book, they will learn the names of some of the animals they would see at a zoo. They will also practice their letter formation and learn to spell the animal names while tracing them. There is an ‘At the Zoo’ page. This page can be printed out multiple times and bound or stapled into a book. Each page can be used for each animal they see at the zoo. If they are not visiting the zoo, they can research different animals they would find at a zoo and complete the activity using what they find. Activities on this page include: - Drawing a picture of the animal - Circling the correct answer – It is a vertebrate, reptile, mammal, marsupial, invertebrate, amphibian, bird, or fish. - Tick if this animal is a herbivore, carnivore or omnivore - Tick how the animal moves - Color in on the map where the animal lives - And write some interesting facts they have found out about the animal There are also many zoo animal games, math activities that work on counting and literacy activities that work on letter recognition, letter formation and spelling. I hope you enjoy the free preschool worksheets! The Do a Dot zoo coloring pages as well as the patterning and size sequencing cards are fun zoo animal activities for toddlers. If you want a black and white copy and the color copy of the activity, including these above zoo mats you can download it below: Zoo Animal Activities Pack DOWNLOAD THIS FREE ACTIVITY PACK HERE You can also find a lot of zoo crafts in my printable alphabet letter crafts bundle. Zoo animals in the craft include a zebra, llama and lion.
We may have spied our first ever interstellar object in the Solar System last month. Now, scientists think they might know where it came from. The object A/2017 U1 – now nicknamed Oumuamua, Hawaiian for “first messenger” – caused a huge amount of excitement when it was spotted in October. Its path around the Sun suggests it came from another planetary system, flung out by a planet, and not our own. And a paper on arXiv has suggested a possible origin. Three researchers believe it may have come from a nearby stellar cluster in the Carina and Columba Associations about 163 to 277 light-years away. It’s thought to have been flung out of a planetary system in this cluster about 40 million years ago, and more could be on the way. “Like a shower of shooting stars at night or bugs on the windshield of a moving automobiles, we should encounter more of them coming from the same direction,” Eric Gaidos from the University of Hawaii, the study's lead author, told IFLScience. They came to this conclusion after looking through data from ESA’s Gaia mission, which is attempting to track the motion of 1 billion stars in our galaxy. They then attempted to track candidates that could account for the motion of A/2017 U1. In our studies of the object so far, we’ve seen a lack of a coma and ice, suggesting it is an asteroid and not a comet. This suggests it formed relatively far inwards in its planetary system, inside the “ice line” where ice can form. In our Solar System, that is beyond the orbit of Mars. They are also able to constrain the size of the planet that flung this rock our way. It could have been anywhere from a super-Earth, a few times the size of our planet, to a gas giant 20 or 30 times the mass of Earth. As mentioned, this may not be the only visitor coming our way. Another paper on arXiv suggests there could be many more interstellar objects coming into our Solar System that we’ve missed before, but we might be able to spot them in future. This paper says that when a new telescope called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) in Chile begins an all-sky survey in 2022, we could see at least one interstellar object in our Solar System every year. It’s hoped this may help us work out how much material is ejected from planetary systems when they form. The figure is thought to be about 20 Earth masses of material, including our own Solar System. Finding more interstellar companions could tell us a lot more about this process. “The LSST discovery rate of ejectoids will help us constrain the frequency and properties of planetary system formation in our nearby galaxy,” the team wrote. But wait! That’s not all. There’s a third interesting paper on Oumuamua, this one looks at its rotation rate. Using the Discovery Channel Telescope in Arizona, researchers found it was rotating at a rate of at least 5 hours, suggesting it’s quite a regular object. “Comparison of these quantities with the properties of asteroids indigenous to our own Solar System suggests that A/2017 U1 is not unusual,” they wrote. “If not for its unique orbit, A/2017 U1 would likely be considered a mundane traveler on its sojourn past Earth.” This object is one of the biggest recent discoveries in space, so you can bet there will be plenty more studies about it to come. And maybe, just maybe, we can expect some more interstellar visitors like it in future.
Thermoelectricity also called the Peltier-Seebeck effect, is a two-way process that consists of the direct conversion of temperature differences to electric voltage and vice versa. For the past 60 years, scientists have unsuccessfully been researching materials that can efficiently convert heat to power. Now, new research out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), published in Science Advances, has introduced a material capable of significantly increasing thermoelectricity’s potential. The novel material is five times more efficient and could generate twice the amount of energy as today’s most promising thermoelectric materials. Wildest dreams come true “If everything works out to our wildest dreams, then suddenly, a lot of things that right now are too inefficient to do will become more efficient,” said, in a statement, lead author Brian Skinner, a postdoc in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics. “You might see in people’s cars little thermoelectric recoverers that take the waste heat your car engine is putting off, and use it to recharge the battery. Or these devices may be put around power plants so that heat that was formerly wasted by your nuclear reactor or coal power plant now gets recovered and put into the electric grid,” added Skinner. How a material produces energy depends on the way its electrons behave in response to temperature changes. Materials studied by researchers thus far have produced very limited thermoelectric power because it is particularly difficult to energize electrons through heat. To solve this issue, Skinner and his team turned to topological semimetals, new lab-created type of materials, that have a configuration that can enable heated electrons to easily jump to higher energy bands. These topological semimetals were indeed successful at having negatively charged electrons jump to higher energy bands but they, unfortunately, created particles of positive charge that counteracted the heat generated by the electrons. The researchers then decided to put to use Princeton University research in selenide which found that an increase in thermoelectric generation occurs under very elevated magnetic fields of 35 tesla. The team used data from that study to model the new material’s thermoelectric behavior under different temperatures and magnetic fields. High magnetic fields required “We eventually figured out that under a strong magnetic field, a funny thing happens, where you could make electrons and holes move in opposite directions,” Skinner said. “Electrons go toward the cold side, and holes toward the hot side. They work together and, in principle, you could get a bigger and bigger voltage out of the same material just by making the magnetic field stronger.” For the time being, these topological semimetals can only produce high thermoelectric properties under extremely high magnetic fields existing in few facilities in the world. The team is now looking to make this material “extremely clean” (as free of impurities as possible) to counteract those effects and see the material behave just as effectively in more realistic circumstances. They are also looking into other more suitable materials with similar properties. Via: MIT News
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 549,928 people experienced homelessness on a single night in 2016. This is an odd way to phrase how many people are homeless in America, but, according to HUD, it’s the best number they can provide. HUD relies on volunteers to count those living on the streets and other unsuitable places on a particular night in January every other year. The number is called a “snapshot” and used as a measure in determining a community’s competitiveness for homelessness assistance programs. Researchers say it’s imperfect but it does the best job of estimating the size of homelessness in America. Problems with the PIT count are famous. How can volunteers accurately count people living in places they shouldn’t be living, attempting to hide from the authorities and the elements in January? And how can HUD use that flawed census in determining funding programs? In fact, critics decry the absence of large populations of homeless people in the census who avoid the streets, such as families, women, and youth. But HUD is not the only federal agency that collects data on people experiencing homelessness. The U.S. Department of Education collects data on homeless students. The McKinney-Vento Act requires that school districts identify students experiencing homelessness. Under this law, states report data on the number of homeless students enrolled in public schools, as well as the characteristics of these students. Students are identified as homeless if they lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence. This definition of for homeless students is much broader than HUD’s definition of homelessness. For example, under the Department of Education’s definition, students experiencing homelessness may be temporarily sharing housing with other people due to loss of housing, economic hardship, living in hotels or motels, or living in transitional housing. HUD’s definition fails to recognize these situations as being homeless. For 2015-2016, 1.3 million students in U.S. public elementary and secondary schools were reported as homeless children or youth. These numbers include families and youth who have been identified by school personnel as meeting the education definition of homelessness. The wide disparity in how homelessness is defined and quantified among federal agencies is alarming. The Department of Education also tracks youth who are homeless and not in the physical custody of a parent or guardian including those living on their own or staying temporarily with someone who is not their legal guardian. This could mean friends, grandparents, others that have not assumed legal guardianship. According to the Department’s data, the vast majority of homeless youth and children are with their parent(s) or guardian. That means that even though HUD has an overly narrow definition of homelessness, a count of family homelessness could be estimated through the Department of Education’s data. The difference in definitions is crucial as communities understand the extent of the homeless problem. For example, in San Diego city, the HUD Point In Time count counted 5,619 people – an increase of 10 percent since last year. But that number rarely represents families, youth, and children. According to the San Diego Unified School District, 7,082 were reported homeless in 2015-2016, up from 6761 in 2014-2015. Assuming 1.5 children per family, more than 4,700 homeless families should be added to San Diego’s 2016 Point In Time count, an 83 percent increase in homelessness. Understanding the full scope of homeless data and populations in a community is crucial to understanding how to address the problem. Unfortunately, many communities fail to include all data on homeless families, youth, and children and, therefore, implement programs that exacerbate homelessness among those populations. Failing to understand the full scope also causes communities to limit approaches and services that help this important population overcome poverty and homelessness. One size does not fit all and it is important for the federal, state, and local governments – as well as philanthropy – to understand that.
Yale Chemists Use Seafood Waste to Remove Arsenic from Ground Water The Bulletin of the World Health Organization has called it “the largest mass poisoning of a population in history,” an environmental tragedy “beyond the accidents at Bhopal in 1984 and Chernobyl in 1986.” It’s also a case of the best of intentions gone awry. In the 1970s the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Bank and the government of Bangladesh began a major push to transform the delivery of water in that country. Rivers, ponds, mudholes and shallow pit wells, often rife with disease organisms, had been a major source of drinking, cooking and irrigation water in many parts of the nation. Children, especially, suffered high death rates from such maladies as chronic diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid and cholera. Hundreds of thousands of tube wells were drilled in ensuing decades, and a new era of clean water seemed to have arrived. Infant mortality rates indeed plunged by about half. But by the mid-1990s, health experts, puzzled by growing rates of arsenic poisoning in the region, began to connect the geological, chemical and medical dots. It turns out that arsenic is naturally abundant in ground water aquifers under large parts of the Ganges River delta, in both Bangladesh and the neighboring Indian state of West Bengal. In 2008 UNICEF reported that more than one-fourth of wells tested in Bangladesh had arsenic levels of more than 50 parts per billion, the nation’s drinking water standard. Even that is five times the level allowed in the United States and recommended by the World Health Organization. In some villages, more than 80 percent of wells were contaminated. In July the British medical journal The Lancet confirmed that as many as 77 million people in Bangladesh alone have been exposed to high levels of arsenic, with grave short- and long-term health consequences that range from severe skin lesions to organ cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Chemists at the Center for Green Chemistry & Green Engineering at Yale think they’re on the trail of a process that could cheaply, effectively and sustainably help address this problem. The approach relies on titanium dioxide, a nontoxic and commonly used industrial compound (it’s found in white paints and sunscreen) that’s already known as a useful agent in arsenic detoxification and removal. But the novel approach also relies on green engineering. Uniquely, it uses recycled wastes from the seafood industry to help make the treatment process in the field both less expensive and less technologically complex. And, in what would amount to a major breakthrough, it ultimately aims to turn the recovered arsenic itself into a marketable resource, safely secured away from water supplies. “We want to close that loop,” says Julie Zimmerman, assistant professor of green engineering at Yale and acting director of the center. Arsenic contamination of drinking water has also been a problem in the developed world, including parts of the United States, and an array of technologies to remove it in centralized water treatment plants is well-established. But according to Zimmerman, finding “appropriate technologies for the developing world” has proven challenging because of a host of “economic, social and environmental considerations.” Indian scientist Dipankar Chakraborti, who conducted pioneering studies on the arsenic problem in his country and Bangladesh, has reported that attempts at filtering contaminated well water with elaborate mechanical filtration systems often fail because they are difficult and expensive to maintain. “Given (the) huge contamination area,” he asked in a 2004 interview, “how many water treatment plants can you install every year? Can you take these to remote villages? Will your people remain alive that long?” In a new paper for the journal Water Research, Zimmerman and Sarah Miller, a Yale Ph.D. candidate in environmental engineering, propose a solution that amounts to an end run around some of the more technologically complex approaches to arsenic removal.
There’s a mathematical ratio commonly found in nature—the ratio of 1 to 1.618—that has many names. Most often we call it the Golden Section, Golden Ratio, or Golden Mean, but it’s also occasionally referred to as the Golden Number, Divine Proportion, Golden Proportion, Fibonacci Number, and Phi. You’ll usually find the golden ratio depicted as a single large rectangle formed by a square and another rectangle. What’s unique about this is that you can repeat the sequence infinitely and perfectly within each section. If you take away the big square on the left, what remains is yet another golden rectangle. . . and so on. The golden ratio in art and architecture The appearance of this ratio in music, in patterns of human behavior, even in the proportion of the human body, all point to its universality as a principle of good structure and design. Used in art, the golden ratio is the most mysterious of all compositional strategies. We know that by creating images based on this rectangle our art will be more likely to appeal to the human eye, but we don’t know why. Some scholars argue that the Egyptians applied the golden ratio when building the great pyramids, as far back as 3000 B.C. In 300 B.C. Euclid described the golden section in his writing of Euclid’s Elements, and before that, around 500 B.C., Pythagoras claimed that the golden ratio is the basis for the proportions of the human figure. The ancient Greeks also used the golden ratio when building the Parthenon. Artists throughout history, like Botticelli and Leonardo daVinci, have used the golden rectangle, or variations of it, as the basis for their compositions. Here’s da Vinci’s painting, The Last Supper, with golden sections highlighted. Golden rectangles are still the most visually pleasing rectangles known, and although they’re based on a mathematical ratio, you won’t need an iota of math to create one. How to make a rectangle based on the golden ratio If you want to use a golden rectangle in your own compositions, here’s how you can make that happen without any special tools or mathematical formulas. 1. Begin with a square, which will be the length of the short side of the rectangle. 2. Then draw a line that divides it in half (forming two rectangles). 3. Draw a line going from corner to opposing corner of one of those halves. 4. Rotate the top point of that diagonal line downward until it extends your square. 5. Finish off the rectangle using that diagonal length as a guide for the long side of your golden rectangle. It’s that simple. Visual points of interest inside a golden rectangle Any square or rectangle (but especially those based on the golden ratio) contain areas inside it that appeal to us visually as well. Here’s how you find those points: 1. Draw a straight from each bottom corner to its opposite top corner on either side. They will cross in the exact center of the format. 2. From the center to each corner, locate the midway point to each opposing corner. These points—represented by the green dots in the diagram above—are called the “eyes of the rectangle.” How to use the “eyes” of a golden rectangle One strategy often used by artists is to locate focal points or areas of emphasis around and within these eyes, creating a strong visual path in their compositions. Edward Hopper’s composition, below, sets the sailboat right on the lower right eye (with the tip of the sails extending nearly to the upper right eye). In this painting, Carolyn Anderson places her subject’s hands around that spot too. J.M.W. Turner uses the angle of his waves to create an arch that circles through the lower right and lower left eyes. Notice that the focus of the scene is then captured within all four eyes, too. How you use the golden ratio or these “eyes” to direct a viewers’ visual path is limited only by your imagination. Try using the eyes of the rectangle in your next painting and see what difference it can make in the strength of your composition.
Punishment And Reinforcement Worksheet Worksheet updated on March 30th, 2018 There are many reasons why rewarding systems and operant conditioning strategies can be beneficial for a client. Whether it is to learn new parenting skills, communication skills, or leadership skills, understanding the process of reinforcement and punishment styles can be instrumental in a client’s therapeutic process. While helpful skills to learn, understanding the difference between each type of reinforcement and punishment can be tough at times. About This Worksheet This is the Punishment And Reinforcement worksheet. This worksheet was designed to break down each type of operant conditioning: - Positive punishment - Negative punishment - Positive reinforcement - Negative reinforcement It is designed to be used as a guide, as it provides the definition of each type of operant conditioning, along with three examples of what type is like for a recipient. This worksheet is to be used as a reference sheet, as it does not provide space for the client to perform reflection work. The worksheet is great for those who are struggling with parenting issues, communication issues, family issues, and for professional development. It can be used in individual, family, and group counseling. It is important for a therapist to thoroughly explain the definition and process of each type of conditioning before having the client apply it to his or her personal life and relationships.
This article needs additional citations for verification. (October 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) A pink (French - pinque) is one of two different types of Sailing ship. In the Atlantic Ocean the word pink was used to describe any small ship with a narrow stern, having derived from the Dutch word pincke. They had a large cargo capacity, and were generally square rigged. Their flat bottoms (and resulting shallow draught) made them more useful in shallow waters than some similar classes of ship. They were most often used for short-range missions in protected channels, as both merchantmen and warships. A number saw service in the English Navy during the second half of the 17th Century. In the 1730s pinks were used in cross Atlantic voyages to bring Palatinate immigrants to America. This model of ship was often used in the Mediterranean because it could be sailed in shallow waters and through coral reefs. It could also be maneuvered up rivers and streams. Pinks were quite fast and flexible. \|This article about a type of ship or boat is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.\|
The advent of agriculture ushered in an unprecedented increase in the human population and their domesticated animals. Farming catalyzed the transformation of hunter-gatherers into urban dwellers. Today, over 800 million hectares is committed to agriculture, or about 38% of the total landmass of the Earth. Farming has re-arranged the landscape in favor of cultivated fields and herds of cattle, and has occurred at the expense of natural ecozones, reducing most of them to fragmented, semi-functional units, while completely eliminating others. Undeniably, a reliable food supply has allowed for a healthier life style for most of the civilized world, while the very act of farming has created new health hazards. For example, the transmission of numerous infectious disease agents - avian influenza, rabies, yellow fever, dengue fever, malaria, trypanosomiasis, hookworm, schistosomiasis - occur with relentlessly devastating regularity at the tropical and sub-tropical agricultural interface. Emerging infections, many of which are viral zoonoses (e.g., Ebola, Lassa fever), rapidly adapt to the human host following encroachment into natural environments. Exposure to toxic levels of some classes of agrochemicals (pesticides, fungicides) and trauma are two other significant health risks associated with traditional agricultural practices. Over the next 50 years, the human population is expected to rise to at least 8.6 billion, requiring an additional 109 hectares to feed them using current technologies. That quantity of farmland is no longer available. Thus, alternative strategies for obtaining an abundant and varied food supply without encroachment into the few remaining functional ecosystems must be seriously entertained. If traditional farming could be replaced by constructing urban food production centers - vertical farms - then a long-term benefit would be the gradual repair of many of the world’s damaged ecosystems through the systematic abandonment of farmland. In temperate and tropical zones, the re-growth of hardwood forests could play a significant role in carbon sequestration and may help reverse current trends in global climate change. Social benefits of vertical farming include the creation of a sustainable urban environment that encourages good health for all who choose to live there; new employment opportunities; fewer abandoned lots and buildings; cleaner air; and an abundant supply of safe drinking water. As of 2004, approximately 800 million hectares of land were in use for food production, allowing for the harvesting of an ample food supply for the majority of a human population approaching 6.3 billion. These land-use estimates include grazing lands (formerly grasslands) for cattle, and represents nearly 85% of all land that can support at least a minimum level of agricultural activity. In addition, farming produces a wide variety of feed grains for many millions of head of cattle and other species of domesticated farm animal. In 2003, nearly 33 million head of cattle were produced in the United States alone. In order to support this large a scale of agricultural activity, millions of hectares of hardwood forest (temperate and tropical), grasslands, wetlands, estuaries, and to a lesser extent coral reefs have been either eliminated or severely damaged with significant loss of biodiversity and wide-spread disruption of ecosystem functions. The advantages of farming are obvious enough from a human perspective, but even our earliest efforts caused irreversible damage to the land. For example, some 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, the fertile, silt-laden soils of the floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates River valleys were rapidly degraded below minimum food production limits due to erosion caused by intensive farming and mis-managed irrigation projects that were often interrupted by wars and out-of-season flooding events. Today, primitive farming practices continue to produce massive loss of topsoil, while excluding the possibility for long-term carbon sequestration in the form of trees and other permanent woods plants. Agrochemicals, particularly fertilizers, are used in almost every major farming system regardless of location, largely due to the demand, year in and year out, for cash crops that extract more nutrients from the substrate that it can provide. Mono-crops are extraordinarily vulnerable to a wide range of insect pests and microbial disease agents due to the very nature of farming (i.e., growing large numbers of a given plant species in a confined area). To mount a counter-offensive, we have invented pesticides and herbicides. Their use has become routine in many situations, particularly in factory farms. Agricultural runoff, which typically contains all of the above-mentioned classes of chemicals, and is also often laden with unhealthy levels of heavy metals, as well, is generally acknowledged as the most pervasive and destructive form of water pollution, degrading virtually every freshwater aquatic environment that borders on human habitation. Many of the Earth's most impacted regions (i.e., those with the highest population densities) are generally conceded to be unhealthy places to live (western Europe and North America excepted), with infant morbidity/mortality rates many times greater than those found in Europe and North America. These are the same places from which new kinds of emerging and known varieties of re-emerging infections are found. Many of them are zoonotic and their life cycles would not normally include humans were it not for encroachment, an activity driven by the need to expand farming into the natural landscape. Nonetheless, there is at present a wide variety of produce available, and in quantity, for those that can afford it. Ironically, many millions of people living predominantly throughout the tropics and sub-tropics are severely malnourished, while living within countries many of which export large amounts of agricultural products destined for the markets of the developed world. Farming is an occupation fraught with a wide variety of health risks. Numerous infectious disease agents (e.g., schistosomes, malaria, geohelminths) take advantage of a wide variety of traditional agricultural practices (irrigation, plowing, sowing, harvesting), facilitating their transmission. These diseases take a huge toll on human health, disabling large populations, thus removing them from the flow of commerce, even in the poorest of countries. Other health risks to farmers include acute exposure to toxic agrochemicals (e.g., pesticides and fungicides), bites from noxious wildlife, and trauma injuries. The latter two risk categories are particularly common among “slash and burn” subsistence farmers. It is reasonable to expect that as the human population continues to grow, so do these problems. Consensus among demographers regarding estimates of the rate at which the global human population will increase is difficult to achieve, but most agree that over the next 50 years, the number will increase to at least 8.6 billion. It is also conceded by some of the world's leading agronomists that they will require an additional amount of farmland eqivalent in area to the country of Brazil if they are to produce enough food by conventional methods to meet their needs. Since there is essentially no high quality land remaining for this purpose, it seems obvious that a major crisis of global proportion may well be looming on the very near horizon. Limited resources (food, water, and shelter) are some of the major causes for civil unrest and war throughout the world. All of this may sound too good to be true, but careful analysis will show that these are all realistic and achievable goals, given the full development of a few new technologies. High-rise food-producing buildings will succeed only if they function by mimicking ecological processes, namely by safely and efficiently recycling everything organic, and recycling water from human waste disposal plants, turning it back into drinking water. Most important, there must be strong, government-supported economic incentives to the private sector, as well as to universities and local government to develop the concept. Ideally, vertical farms must be: a. cheap to build; b. durable and safe to operate; and c. independent of economic subsides and outside support (i.e., show a profit at the end of the day). If these conditions can be realized through an on-going, comprehensive research program, urban agriculture could provide an abundant and varied food supply for the 60% of the people that will be living within cities by the year 2030. This migration is largely caused by the plight of the farmer. People move to the city for various reasons, but the most significant reason is economic—when a city's economy is prospering it attracts people. The promise of jobs and comfort, glamour and glitter, "pulls" people to cities. There are also "push" factors: droughts or exploitation of farmers can cause extreme rural poverty and that "pushes" people out of the country-side. What is meant by vertical farming? Farming indoors is not a new concept, per se, as greenhouse-based agriculture has been in existence for some time. Numerous commercially viable crops (e.g., strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, herbs, and spices) have seen their way to the world’s supermarkets in ever increasing amounts over the last 15 years. Most of these operations are small when compared to factory farms, but unlike their outdoor counterparts, these facilities can produce crops year-round. Japan, Scandinavia, New Zealand, the United States, and Canada have thriving greenhouse industries. As far as is known, none have been constructed as multi-story buildings. Other food items that have been commercialized by indoor farming include freshwater fishes (e.g., tilapia, trout, striped bass), and a wide variety of crustaceans and mollusks (e.g., shrimp, crayfish, mussels). What is proposed here that differs radically from what now exists is to scale up the concept of indoor farming, in which a wide variety of produce is harvested in quantity enough to sustain even the largest of cities without significantly relying on resources beyond the city limits. Cattle, horses, sheep, goats, and other large farm animals seem to fall well outside the paradigm of urban farming. However, raising a wide variety of fowl and pigs are well within the capabilities of indoor farming. It has been estimated that it will require approximately 300 square feet of intensively farmed indoor space to produce enough food to support a single individual living in an extraterrestrial environment (e.g., on a space station or a colony on the moon or Mars). Working within the framework of these calculations, one vertical farm with an architectural footprint of one square city block and rising up to 30 stories (approximately 3 million square feet) could provide enough nutrition (2,000 calories/day/person) to comfortably accommodate the needs of 50,000 people employing technologies currently available. Constructing the ideal vertical farm with a far greater yield per square foot will require additional research in many areas – hydrobiology, engineering, industrial microbiology, plant and animal genetics, architecture and design, public health, waste management, physics, and urban planning, to name but a few. The vertical farm is a theoretical construct whose time has arrived, for to fail to produce them in quantity for the world at-large in the near future will surely exacerbate the race for the limited amount of remaining natural resources of an already stressed out planet, creating an intolerable social climate. Expected benefits of vertical farming Year-round crop production in a protected, managed environment has advantages over traditional farming practices. Advantages of vertical farming - Year-round crop production. - Eliminates agricultural runoff. - Significantly reduces use of fossil fuels (farm machines and transport of crops). - Makes use of abandoned or unused properties. - No weather-related crop failures. - Offers the possibility of sustainability for urban centers. - Converts black and gray water to drinking water by collecting the water of transevaporation. - Adds energy back to the grid via methane generation using inedible parts of crop plants. - Creates new urban employment opportunities. - Reduces the risk of infection from agents transmitted at the agricultural interface. - Returns farmland to nature, helping to restore ecosystem functions and services. Currently, maximizing crop production takes place over an annual growth cycle that is wholly dependent upon what happens outside - climate and local weather conditions. Despite recent advances in predicting the occurrence of these natural processes by an extensive network of ground-based weather stations and remote sensing satellites, 2-dimensional farming remains a precarious way to make a living. Significant deviation (e.g., drought or flood) for more than several weeks from conditions necessary for insuring a good yield has predictable, negative effects on the lives of millions of people dependent upon those items for their yearly food supply. Climate change regimens will surely complicate an already complex picture with respect to predicting crop yields. In addition, other elements conspire to take away from the harvest for which we worked so hard to produce. Despite the best application of modern agricultural practices, an unavoidable portion of what is grown rots in the fields prior to harvest time, or in the world’s storage bins afterwards. Every year, depending upon geographic location and intensity of El Niño events, crops suffer from too little water and wither on the spot, or are lost to severe flooding, hailstorms, tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, cyclones, fires, and other destructive events of nature. Many of these phenomena are at best difficult to predict, and at worst are impossible to react to in time to prevent the losses associated with them. In Sub-Saharan Africa, locusts remain an ever-present threat, and can devastate vast areas of farmland in a matter of days. Even after a bumper crop is realized, problems associated with processing and storage lessen the actual tonnage that is available to the consumer. A large portion of the harvest, regardless of the kind of plant or grain, is despoiled or a portion consumed by a variety of opportunistic life forms (i.e., fungi, bacteria, insects, rodents) after being stored. While it is conceded that at present the abundance of cash crops is more than sufficient to meet the nutritional needs of the world’s human population, delivering them to world markets is driven largely by economics, not biological need. Thus, the poorest people – some 1.1 billion – are forced to live in a constant state of starvation, with many thousands of deaths per year attributable to this wholly preventable predicament. Locating vertical farms near these human “hot spots” would greatly alleviate this problem. Vertical farming promises to eliminate external natural processes as confounding elements in the production of food, since crops will be grown indoors under carefully selected and well-monitored conditions, insuring an optimal growth rate for each species of plant and animal year round. It is estimated that one acre of vertical farm could be equivalent to as many as ten to twenty traditional soil-based acres, depending upon which crop species is considered. Growing food close to home will lower significantly the amount of fossil fuels needed to deliver them to the consumer, and will eliminate forever the need for fossil fuels during the act of farming (i.e., plowing, applying fertilizer, seeding, weeding, harvesting). No-cost restoration of ecosystems: the principle of “benign neglect” The best reason to consider converting most food production to vertical farming is the promise of restoring ecosystem services and functions. There is good reason to believe that an almost full recovery of many of the world’s endangered terrestrial ecosystems will occur simply by abandoning a given area of encroachment and allowing the land to “cure” itself. This belief stems, in part, from numerous anecdotal observations as to the current biological state of some territories that were once severely damaged either by now-extinct civilizations or over-farming, and, in part, from data derived from National Science Foundation-sponsored Long-Term Ecological Research Program (LTER), begun in 1980, on a wide variety of fragmented ecosystems purposely set aside subsequent to an extended period of encroachment. The following case studies will serve to illustrate these points. Deforestation of vast tracts of tropical rainforest throughout Mesoamerica took place over several thousand years. It is estimated that there were as many as 50 million people living in this region, with some 17 million in Mexico, alone, when the conquistadores arrived in the 1500s. Reforestation of deserted regions previously inhabited by pre-Colombian civilizations (e.g., Mayans) began during the Spanish imperial venture and continued on after it failed. Regions that remained populated continued to suffer the ecological consequences of deforestation (ibid), but in the abandoned areas the re-growth of the rainforests in some parts of Central America was so complete that by 1950 nearly all of the major ancient cities and monuments lying between Panama and southern Mexico had been canopied under them. Today, archaeological expeditions routinely discover previously unknown settlements and the life and times of the peoples that lived there, but they are hard-won victories, accompanied by much difficulty in navigating the dense growth that protect these treasures of the past from open view. New finds are now often aided by sophisticated remote sensing technologies. Along the northern border of the Brazilian jungle live the Yanomami. These people have never been conquered by European colonialists. Left to evolve on their own without interference from the outside, they have formed a series of loosely knit tribes that have developed shifting agricultural methods to live off the land, mostly by hunting bush meat and subsistence farming, without causing permanent damage to the environment in which they must live. Their farming methods do not include fire as a forest clearing mechanism. Instead, they cut down the trees, creating large open circles. Then they burn the trees to get enough minerals to fertilize the cleared zone. They farm the nutrient-poor soils for several years, raising sweet potatoes, plantains, sugar cane, and tobacco, and then they move on. By the time the Yanomami return to the same farming locale, some years later, the area has re-grown to its former state. Without fire as a confounding factor, the Yanomami have achieved a rare a balance with the land in which crops are produced and forestland is repaired by a natural cycle that favors the survival of both sets of life forms. Many other cultures living close to the land were not as fortunate as the Yanomami to have conceived and implemented sustainable relationships with their surroundings and have paid the ultimate price, that of extinction. The “Dust Bowl” was created by farming in what was formerly short and tall grasslands prairie in the central Great Plains of the United States (portions of Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas). This represents one of the best-documented examples of how misuse of land not at all suited for traditional farming, coupled with a 100-year drought that affected nearly two-thirds of the country, resulted in the seemingly irreversible collapse of a diverse assemblage of plants and animals adapted to that semi-arid environment. Between 1889-1895, a total of 6 land rushes were sponsored by the government, at the insistence of the “Boomers”, to jump start settlement of the Oklahoma territories. They attracted thousands of hopeful immigrants from the eastern United States and Europe to that area of the west. Over the next 20 years, rainfall was above average and farming flourished. However, the 20-30 years that followed saw some of the worst droughts in recorded history for that region. The result was a systematic erosion of millions of tons of topsoil. The situation intensified from 1932-1938 with increasingly devastating results. During that short time, all farming ceased and thousands of families abandoned the land and headed further west, mostly to California, in search of a better life (re-John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath). The weather patterns had conspired to defeat these early settlers in their quest to re-shape the landscape into productive farmland. Lessons learned, no one returned to the dust bowl region for some 15 years. During the intervening period, nurturing precipitation regimens returned, and the assemblages of wildlife long absent re-populated the region. Tall and short grasses re-built the soil enough to attract back the kit fox, antelope, prairie dog, and a wide variety of endemic birds and other support plants, reclaiming their niches and restoring the region to a mixed grasslands prairie. Seeds of native plants that had lain dormant germinated and thrived when competition with cash crop species for limited resources ceased. Following World War II, the area once again suffered ecological loss from the impacts of farming. This time that activity was supported by groundwater pumped from the Ogallala aquifer for irrigation of wheat, which requires additional water to achieve maximum yield. However, this initiative, too, will apparently fail soon for the same reason that the first wave of farming on the Great Plains did, namely the lack of a reliable source of freshwater. In this case, too much groundwater has already been drawn off, lowering the water table and resulting in an economic conundrum, where the price of oil, a necessary ingredient to fuel the heavy-duty pumps needed to raise water from a greater depth than at present (currently fueled by cheaper natural gas-driven pumps), will not prove to be cost-effective with respect to the price of wheat. It is anticipated that when this generation of farmers abandons the land, the prairie will once again dominate the landscape. The de-militarized zone between North and South Korea represents a small strip of land some 1,528 km2 in area and off limits to people since the end of the Korean War in 1953. Farming communities once abundant there no longer till the soil. The result of abandonment has been striking, and in favor of ecological recovery. During the intervening years, remnant populations of wildlife have re-bounded into significant populations within that narrow region, including the Asiatic black bear, musk deer, and the red-crowned crane. An unexpected (and unwanted) example of “proof of concept”, vivax malaria has also retuned to the area next to the DMZ in South Korea, as the result of that country’s inability to carry out effective mosquito-control programs that would ordinarily include portions of the DMZ. A more recent example of how wildlife responds positively to the abandonment of once-occupied territory can be found within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (apporximately 3,000 square kilometers) created in 1986. The melt-down in reactor IV in the nuclear power plant located near the town of Pripyat, Ukraine forced the Russian government to evacuate all human inhabitants from surrounding areas most affected by this tragic accident. Today, just 20 years later, a wide variety of animal species, including wild boar, elk, and red fox, have re-established robust breeding populations there because the plant communities that supported them have grown back to near pre-settlement levels of abundance and diversity. Unfortunatley, this is about to change yet again as people have begun to move back into the zone, despite repeated warnings against doing so from public health officials in that still radioactively dangerous region. The above observations give hope for an almost complete recovery of abandoned land. But it is long-term ecological research projects (e.g., the National Science Foundation-Long Term Ecological Research programs (LTER) that have presented the scientific community with reliable data, allowing a far greater measure of insight into the process of recovery from encroachment. Twenty-seven countries are currently engaged in some form of long-term ecological research, while 19 LTER projects are conducted within the continental United States. One of the most intensively studied is Hubbard Brook in northern New Hampshire. The area is a mixed boreal forest watershed that has been harvested at least three times in modern times (1700s-1967). The Hubbard Brook LTER lists its research objectives as: vegetation structure and production; dynamics of detritus in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems; atmosphere-terrestrial-aquatic ecosystem linkages; heterotroph population dynamics; and effects of human activities on ecosystems. Originally under the directorship of Gene Likens, a portion of watershed was cut and the wood left in place. Weirs were installed to collect and monitor the quality of the water draining into Hubbard Brook from the tributary in the altered portion. The study revealed a remarkable resiliency of that watershed. It took only three years for the water draining the damaged area to return to its original high quality. This came about largely because of the seeds of species of pioneer shade-intolerant plants that lay dormant until exposed to direct sunlight. Growth was rapid, and they served as a temporary soil conservation element in that environment until the trees (shade-tolerant) once again grew to displace them. Ecologists from several collaborating institutions converge on the Hubbard Brook watershed each summer to monitor a wide variety of ecological processes. Other LTER sites within the U.S. study [[grasslands], estuaries, alpine forest, wetlands, semi-arid desert, lakes, rivers, and coastal savannas. All have a similar story to tell regarding the ability of the natural landscape to return to a functional state when allowed to re-establish ecological relationships fostering the uninterrupted flow of energy from one trophic level to the next. These data give credence to the hypothesis that if vertical farming could replace most of the world’s traditional food production schemes, then ecosystem services that reinforce a healthy life style (e.g., clean water, clean air) would be restored. Waste management and urban sustainability Today, we face the challenge of trying to understand enough about the process of ecological balance to incorporate it into our daily lives (i.e., do no harm). Our willingness to try to solve problems that we ourselves have created is a measure of our selflessness and altruistic behavior as a species. Thus, the second most important reason to consider converting to vertical farming relates to how we handle waste, and particularly that which comes from living in urban centers. Waste management throughout the world, regardless of location, is in most cases unacceptable, both from a public health and social perspective, and exposure to untreated effluent often carries with it serious health risks. However, even in the best of situations, most solid waste collections are simply compacted and relegated to landfills, or in a few instances, incinerated to generate energy. Liquid wastes are processed (digested, then de-sludged), then treated with a bactericidal agent (e.g., chlorine) and released into the nearest convenient body of water. More often in less developed countries, it is discarded without treatment, greatly increasing the health risks associated with infectious disease transmission due to fecal contamination. All solid waste can be recycled (returnable cans, bottles, cardboard packages, etc.) and/or used in energy-generating schemes with technologies that are currently in use. A major source of organic waste comes from the restaurant industry. Methane generation from this single resource could contribute significantly to energy generation, and may be able to supply enough to run vertical farms without the use of electricity from the grid. For example, in New York City there are more than 28,000 food service establishments, all of which produce significant quantities of organic waste, and they have to pay to have the city cart it off. Often the garbage sits out on the curb, sometimes for hours to days, prior to collection. This allows time for vermin (cockroaches, rats, mice) the privilege of dining out at some of the finest restaurants in the western hemisphere; albeit second-hand. Vertical farming may well result in a situation in which restaurants would be paid (according to the caloric content?) for this valuable commodity, allowing for a greater measure of income for an industry with a notoriously small (2-5%) profit margin. In New York City, on average 80-90 restaurants close down each year, the vast majority of which are precipitated by inspections conducted by the New York City Department of Health. A common finding by inspectors in these situations is vermin (mouse and rat droppings, cockroaches) and unsanitary conditions that encourage their life styles. Agricultural runoff despoils vast amounts of surface- and groundwater. Vertical farming offers the possibility of greatly reducing the quantity of this non-point source of water pollution. In addition, it will generate methane from municipal waste currently being funneled into water pollution control facilities. The concept of sustainability will be realized through the valuing of waste as a commodity so indispensable to the operation of the farm that to discard something – any thing - would be analogous to siphoning off a gallons’ worth of gasoline from the family car and setting it on fire. Natural systems function in a sustainable fashion by recycling all essential elements needed to produce the next generation of life. This way of doing business is being incorporated by NASA engineers into all future programs that focus on colonizing outer space. If we are to live in closed systems off the surface of the Earth, then the concept of waste becomes an outdated paradigm. Unfortunately, this goal has yet to be fully realized by NASA or by the ill-fated Biosphere 2 Project. If we are to live in a balanced extraterrestrial environment, we must somehow learn how to do it here first. Sludge, derived from wastewater treatment plants of many, but not all cities throughout the US, and treated with a patented process referred to as advanced alkaline stabilization with subsequent accelerated drying, is being turned into high grade topsoil and sold as such to the farming community at-large by N-Viro Corporation, Toledo, Ohio. The limiting factor in using municipal sludge for farming appears to be heavy metal contamination, mostly from copper, mercury, zinc, arsenic, and chromium. Vertical farms will be engineered to take in black or gray water, depending upon availability, and restore it to near drinking water quality using bioremediation and other technologies yet to be perfected. Fast growing inedible plant species (e.g., cattail, duckweed, sawgrass, Spartina spp.), often referred to collectively as a living machine will be used to help remediate contaminated water. They will be periodically harvested for methane generation employing state-of-the-art composting methods, yielding energy to help run the facility. By-products of burning methane – carbon dioxide, heat, and water – can be added back into the atmosphere of the vertical farm to aid in fostering optimal plant growth. The resulting purified water will be used to grow edible plant species. Ultimately, any water source that emerges from the vertical farm should be drinkable, thus completely recycling it back into the community that brought it to the farm to begin with. Harvesting water generated from evapotranspiration appears to have some virtue in this regard, since the entire farm will be enclosed. A cold brine pipe system could be engineered to aid in the condensation and harvesting of moisture released by plants. Nonetheless, several varieties of new technology will be needed before sewage can be handled in a routine, safe manner within the confines of the farm. Lessons learned from the nuclear power plant industry should be helpful in this regard. Predicted social benefits of vertical farming Eliminating a significant percentage of land dedicated to traditional farming has obvious health advantages regarding the restoration of ecosystem services, and for the immediate improvement of biodiversity by simultaneously restoring ecosystem functions, as well. The social benefits of urban agriculture promise an equally rewarding set of achievable goals. However, since the vertical farm is still a theoretical construct, it is difficult to predict all of the potential benefits that may arise from producing food in this manner. The first is the establishment of sustainability as an ethic for human behavior. At present, there are no examples of a totally sustained urban community anywhere in the world. The development of this keystone ecological concept has remained identified solely with the natural world, and specifically with reference to the functioning of ecosystems. Ecological observations and studies, beginning with those of Teal, show how life behaves with regards to the sharing of limited energy resources. Tight knit assemblages of plants and animals evolve into trophic relationships that allow for the seamless flow of energy transfer from one level to the next, regardless of the type of ecosystem in question. In fact, this is the defining characteristic of all ecosystems. In contrast, humans, although participants in all terrestrial ecosystems, have failed to incorporate this same behavior into their own lives. If vertical farming succeeds, it will establish the validity of sustainability, irrespective of location (urban versus rural). Vertical farms could become important learning centers for generations of city-dwellers, demonstrating our intimate connectedness to the rest of the world by mimicking the nutrient cycles that once again take place in the world that has re-emerged around them. Furthermore, the elimination of large, currently unmanageable amounts of waste will improve the attractiveness of the local environment and help to correct the imbalance in energy utilization by recycling organic waste through methane digestion systems. Rene Dubos wrote in So Human an Animal that people tend to support the institutions that they grow up with, regardless of whether or not they foster a nurturing environment in which to live. Dubos advocated that all humans deserve to live in places that encourage healthy, useful lives, but that to do so will require massive reconstruction of the urban landscape. By transforming cities into entities that nurture the best aspects of the human experience is the goal of every city planner, and with vertical farming serving as a center-piece, this may eventually become a reality. Providing all urban populations with a varied and plentiful harvest, tailored to the local cuisine eliminates food and water as resources that need to be won by conflict between competing populations. Starvation becomes a thing of the past, and the health of millions improves dramatically, largely due to proper nutrition and the lack of parasitic infections formerly acquired at the agricultural interface. Given the strength of resolve and insight at the political and social level, this concept has the potential to accomplish what has been viewed in the past as nearly impossible and highly impractical. It is further anticipated that large-scale urban agriculture will be more labor-intensive than is currently practiced on the traditional farm scene, since the deployment of large farm machinery will not be an option. Hence, employment opportunities abound at many levels. Finally, the vertical farm should be a thing of architectural beauty as well as be highly functional, bringing a sense of pride to the neighborhoods in which they are built. In fact, the goal of vertical farm construction is to make them so desirable in all aspects that every neighborhood will want one for their very own.
Creating groups of commands Once you have created commands to operate the mechanisms in your robot, they can be grouped together to get more complex operations. These groupings of commands are called CommandGroups and are easily defined as shown in this article. Creating a command to do a complex operation This is an example of a command group that places a soda can on a table. To accomplish this, (1) the robot elevator must move to the "TABLE_HEIGHT", then (2) set the wrist angle, then (3) open the claw. All of these tasks must run sequentially to make sure that the soda can isn't dropped. The addSequential() method takes a command (or a command group) as a parameter and will execute them one after another when this command is scheduled. Running commands in parallel To make the program more efficient, often it is desirable to run multiple commands at the same time. In this example, the robot is getting ready to grab a soda can. Since the robot isn't holding anything, all the joints can move at the same time without worrying about dropping anything. Here all the commands are run in parallel so all the motors are running at the same time and each completes whenever the isFinished() method is called. The commands may complete out of order. The steps are: (1) move the wrist to the pickup setpoint, then (2) move the elevator to the floor pickup position, and (3) open the claw. Mixing parallel and sequential commands Often there are some parts of a command group that must complete before other parts run. In this example, a soda can is grabbed, then the elevator and wrist can move to their stowed positions. In this case, the wrist and elevator have to wait until the can is grabbed, then they can operate independently. The first command (1) CloseClaw grabs the soda and nothing else runs until it is finished since it is sequential, then the (2) elevator and (3) wrist move at the same time.
Warp drives, or warp engines, are devices integrated into spacecraft, making them capable of a form of faster than light travel known as warp travel or warp jumping. The warp drive allows a ship to enter the warp, travelling its currents until reemerging into real space light years away from the starting point. The drives are huge and bulky devices needing large ships to carry. Ships fitted with warp drives are known as warp ships or warp-capable craft. Warp drives allow ships to enter the warp and bypass light years of real space in a relatively short time, although, as the warp is hostile and unpredictable in the extreme, the dangers associated with all warp travel are terrible indeed. The warp drive was invented by mankind c.M18. Prior to this, interstellar travel was limited to sub-light speeds. Travel between star systems was painfully slow, taking many generations of travel. The warp drive was one of the most revolutionary inventions in human history - what took many generations now took days. Consequently Mankind's colonisation of The Galaxy was vastly accelerated. In c.M22 further technological progress led to the creation of the human mutant warp-pilots known as Navigators. These mutants allowed warp-crafts to make longer, safer and more accurate warp jumps through the Warp, and further accelerated the galactic colonisation.
September–November; Mid-April–June 6 Grades 3–5 (90 minutes each) Pairs well with: - Tours—Naturally Sourced Explore three unique habitats in Minnetrista’s Nature Area: pond, woodland, and tallgrass prairie. By applying observation skills, using scientific tools, and having fun, your students will discover the importance of each of these habitats and how both plants and animals adapt to them. What will my students do? - Explore a prairie with bug nets - Look for aquatic life with dip nets - Search high and low for wildlife in the woodland using binoculars - Play a game about animal adaptations - Become part of the web of life What will my students learn? - How habitats are interconnected - Living organisms include plants and animals; animals range from small to large - Exploration is a fun, scientific process - All living organisms have various adaptations that help them survive and live better in their respective habitat - When environments are changed, living organisms in those environments are forced to adapt, move, or become extinct
The eye is an area of calm weather in the center of strong tropical cyclones. The cyclone's lowest barometric pressure occurs in the eye. It is usually circular and range between 30 and 65 km (20 to 40 mi) in diameter, though smaller and larger eyes can occur. The region surrounding the eye is the eyewall, where the worst weather is seen in a cyclone. These have strong winds, lots of rain and lots of cloud. There are also outer bands, which surround the cyclone, which forms the greatest part of the storm. These have winds so strong they can even form other tornadoes.
The biology and behaviour of these primates has fascinated scientists over the years. Charles Darwin suggested that, within the vertebrates, the loudest male would attract the most females by advertising his strength (2). However, there seems little evidence of this in howler monkeys and it is now thought that their calls announce a troop’s right to food trees in the forest. Unlike other howlers, this species does not give a dawn chorus and seems to reserve most of its howling for inter-group encounters (5). These loud calls therefore play a role in avoiding conflict between groups and thus in saving energy which can be better used for foraging and digestion (2) Brown howling monkeys feed mainly on leaves, flowers and fruit, though the composition of their diet varies according to the season and their location in the forest (6). During autumn and winter, individuals must also spend more time feeding due to the inferior quality of the food and the higher demands on energy in these colder months (6). Generally howlers spend over half of their waking hours resting to conserve energy for feeding. Though leaves, flowers and fruit are abundant in tropical forests, they are low in nutrients and high in cellulose and so do not provide much energy (2). Mammals lack the enzymes to digest cellulose, and while primates of the subfamily Colobinae have evolved specialised stomachs containing bacteria to digest the leaves, howlers have a simple, acid stomach similar to that of humans. However, howlers also have two enlarged sections where fermentative bacteria exist that are able to break down the material efficiently (2). In the process of fermentation, energy-rich gases (known as volatile fatty acids) are produced. Howlers absorb and use these gases as an energy source for their daily activities (2). Home ranges are small, up to around 31 hectares for a group of 15-20 individuals, as brown howling monkeys limit the distances they travel to feed (2). Males defend the home ranges by intimidation and fighting, which protects the group and allows females to invest more energy in reproduction and care of the young (2). Females usually have a single offspring, which are weaned before they are one year old (6).
Principles of Hydrostatic pressure UNIT PRESSURE, p. The unit pressure, meaning the intensity of pressure, at any point in a fluid is the amount of pressure per unit area. If the unit pressure is the same at every point on any area, A, on which the total pressure is P, p= P/ A if, however, the unit pressure is different is different points, the unit pressure at any point is equal to the total pressure on a small differential area surrounding the point divided by the differential area, or where there is no danger of ambiguity, the term pressure is often used as an abbreviated expression for unit pressure. The fundamental foot-pound-second unit for pressure is pounds per square inch is often used. Direction of Resultant Pressure. The resultant pressure on any plane. In a fluid at rest is normal to that plane. Assume that the resultant pressure P, on any plane AB, makes an angle other than 90 degrees with the plane. Resolving P into rectangular components P1 and P2, respectively parallel with and perpendicular to AB, gives a component P1 which can resisted only by a shearing stress. By the definition, a fluid at rest cannot resist a shearing stress. By the definition, a fluid at rest cannot resist a shearing stress, and therefore the pressure must be normal to the plane. This means that there can be no static friction in hydraulics.
- Formatting Text - Formatting Text for Emphasis - Changing Character Spacing - Selecting Text with Similar Formatting - Finding and Replacing Formatting - Finding and Replacing Custom Formatting - Changing Paragraph Alignment - Changing Line Spacing - Displaying Rulers - Setting Paragraph Tabs - Setting Paragraph Indents - Creating Bulleted and Numbered Lists - Applying Borders and Shading - Hiding Text Changing Character Spacing Kerning is the amount of space between each individual character that you type. Sometimes the space between two characters is larger than others, which makes the word look uneven. You can use the Font dialog box to change the kerning setting for selected characters. Kerning works only with OpenType/TrueType or Adobe Type Manager fonts. You can expand or condense character spacing to create a special effect for a title, or re-align the position of characters to the bottom edge of the text—this is helpful for positioning the copyright or trademark symbols. In addition, you can set text formatting for OpenType/TrueType fonts (New!) that include a range of ligature settings (where two or three letters combine into a single character), number spacing and forms, and stylistic sets (added font sets in a given font). Many of these options are based on specifications from font designers. Change Character Spacing - Select the text you want to format. - Click the Home tab. - Click the Font Dialog Box Launcher. - Click the Advanced tab. - Click the Spacing list arrow, click an option, and then specify a point size to expand or condense spacing by the amount specified. - Click the Position list arrow, click an option, and then specify a point size to raise or lower the text in relation to the baseline (bottom of the text). - Select the Kerning for fonts check box, and then specify a point size. - Check the results in the Preview box. - To make the new formatting options the default for all new Word documents, click Set As Default, and then click Yes. - Click OK.
Difference Between Empirical and Molecular Formula In chemistry, there are a number of different ways to express a chemical compound. You may use its common name, such as sodium chloride or benzene, or you may chose to express it in a chemical formula. A chemical formula contains more information on a chemical compound than its common name. A chemical formula tells you information about the specific atoms that make up a particular chemical compound. The two most commonly seen chemical formulas are the empirical formula and the molecular formula. Both formulas tell you what elements make up a specific chemical compound. For example, H2O (both a molecular and an empirical formula) has hydrogen (H) molecules and oxygen (O) molecules. By looking at CaCl (calcium chloride) you will know that it has calcium (Ca) and chlorine (Cl) atoms in it. Molecular and empirical formulas differ by the numbers in their subscript. The subscript is the ’2′ in H2O. For a molecular formula, the subscript describes the total number of atoms in a particular molecule. Hexane, a molecule with six atoms of carbon and fourteen atoms of hydrogen is expressed as C6H14 in a molecular formula. For an empirical formula, the subscript describes the ratio of atoms in a particular molecule. Again, hexane with its six carbon atoms and fourteen hydrogen atoms would now be expressed C3H7 because that is the ratio of 6:14. In high school chemistry textbooks, it is more common to see an empirical formula than a molecular formula. Empirical formulas also describe ionic compounds and macromolecules. Ionic compounds are molecules held together by the electrostatic force that is created when a negatively charged atom reacts with a positively charged one. Macromolecules are large molecules such as nucleic acids and proteins. The empirical formula is especially useful for expressing the formula of macromolecules cleanly. Without the empirical formula the numbers in the subscript have the potential to become enormous. The empirical formula can be used in physics as well as chemistry. In physics, the empirical formula acts as a mathematical equation. This equation is used to predict observable results in tests on the movements and interactions of atoms. 1. Empirical and molecular formulas are both chemical formulas. 2. The molecular formula lists all the atoms in a molecule while the empirical formula shows the ratio the number of the atoms in a molecule. 3. Empirical formulas are used to describe ionic compounds and macromolecules. 4. Empirical formulas are used as mathematical equations in physics. Search DifferenceBetween.net : Email This Post : If you like this article or our site. Please spread the word. Share it with your friends/family. Leave a Response
At the beginning of the 20th century, an epidemic of sleeping sickness (or encephalitis lethargica) swept through Europe. The disease broke out in 1916. In 1917, Constantin von Economo (Romanian aristocrat of Macedonian extraction, doctor of psychiatry in Vienna, and Austria's first military pilot) undertook study of the phenomenon after returning to his clinic in the wake of his brother's death in The War. In January of that year, von Economo began to delineate the common symptoms preceding the final descent into an often-fatal sleep: high temperature, hallucination, impaired vision, and excessive sleepiness. Approximately a third of patients reporting precursor symptoms fell asleep for extended periods, and were impossible to wake. The majority of these died while still asleep. Others manifested a complete inability to fall asleep, even with the administration of strong sedatives. All of these patients died of extreme fatigue and related side-effects. A small number of patients sank into a deep sleep from which they neither woke nor died, until neurophysiologst Oliver Sacks found them - years later - and woke them by administration of levodopa. (His book "The Awakenings" and the film of the same name chronicles the tribulations - and horrifying trials - of Dr. Sacks and his patients in this process.) The disease spread throughout the world and killed more than five million people over the course of 10 years. In 1927 the epidemic disappeared with the same mysterious abruptness in which it appeared. This form of encephalitis still provides scientists with a resilient mystery, as it can be caused by a variety of agents (virus, bacteria, or spirochete), and symptoms are often interpreted etiologically as sleep disorders rather than viral infection. While incidence of sleeping sickness has tapered down to a rarity, it is still found occasionally. There is no known cure. Source: The Enchanted World of Sleep, by Paretz Lavie
The first week of development, in the process of pregnancy, is conception, which is from ovulation to implantation. During this phase, there are many changes occurring in the female body. They are regulated mostly by the reproductive hormones. The beginning of the story lies in the menstrual cycle. Many primary follicles begin to grow during the ovarian cycle. Out of them, only one reaches full maturity and only one oocyte is produced at ovulation. During ovulation, some women feel slight pain and also experience a slight increase in their body temperature. This oocyte is pushed into the fallopian tube. It takes three to four days for an oocyte to reach the uterine lumen. The egg is ready for fertilization for 12 to 24 hours after the ovulation. If fertilization does not occur, the corpus luteum shrinks and degenerates. The uterine wall and the unfertilized egg along with some blood are shed out by the body as the menstrual discharge. If the sperm comes in contact with the egg, it penetrates and fertilizes the egg to form an embryo. This usually takes place in one of the fallopian tubes. In a few days, the embryo is found to be in the blastocyst stage, which marks the beginning of the implantation process. In this process, the embryo attaches itself to the wall or the lining of the uterus. Implantation bleeding, a brown discharge, is observed in some females. The placenta starts to develop and the human chorionic gonadotropic hormone is released. Increased levels of this hormone in the urine are used for the detection of pregnancy by the home pregnancy kit. Estrogen and progesterone are the two main hormones produce during ovulation. Estrogen thickens the uterine lining and increases the blood flow to the uterus and progesterone stimulates various secretions, which nourish the fertilized egg. The human body, with the help of hormones, tries its best to create a suitable environment for the development of the embryo so as to make the unborn baby’s journey a comfortable one.
The student understands the mechanisms involved in the short-term regulation of arterial pressure: - Identifies the sensory receptors, afferent pathways, central integrating centers, efferent pathways, and effector organs that participate in the arterial baroreceptor reflex. - States the location of the arterial baroreceptors and describes their operation. - Describes how changes in the afferent input from arterial baroreceptors influence the activity of the sympathetic and parasympathetic preganglionic fibers. - Describes how the sympathetic and parasympathetic outputs from the medullary cardiovascular centers change in response to changes in arterial pressure. - Diagrams the chain of events that are initiated by the arterial baroreceptor reflex to compensate for a change in arterial pressure. - Describes how inputs to the medullary cardiovascular center from cardiopulmonary baroreceptors, arterial and central chemoreceptors, receptors in skeletal muscle, the cerebral cortex, and the hypothalamus influence sympathetic activity, parasympathetic activity, and mean arterial pressure. - Describes and indicates the mechanisms involved in the Bezold–Jarisch reflex, the cerebral ischemic response, the Cushing reflex, the alerting reaction, blushing, vasovagal syncope, the dive reflex, and the cardiovascular responses to emotion and pain. The student comprehends the key elements of the commonly accepted “renal mean arterial pressure” theory of long-term arterial pressure regulation. - Describes baroreceptor adaptation. - Describes the influence of changes in body fluid volume on arterial pressure and diagrams the steps involved in this process. - Indicates the mechanisms whereby altered arterial pressure alters glomerular filtration rate and renal tubular function to influence urinary output. - Describes how mean arterial pressure is adjusted in the long term to that which causes fluid output rate to equal fluid intake rate. The student recognizes that our current understanding of all the factors that could be involved in the long-term regulation of arterial pressure is incomplete. - Describes the basic features of the “CNS-MAP set-point” theory of long-term arterial pressure regulation. Appropriate systemic arterial pressure is perhaps the single most important requirement for proper operation of the cardiovascular system. Without sufficient arterial pressure, the brain and the heart do not receive adequate blood flow, no matter what adjustments are made in their vascular resistance by local control mechanisms. In contrast, unnecessary demands are placed on the heart by excessive arterial pressure. The elaborate mechanisms that have evolved for regulating this critical cardiovascular variable are discussed in this chapter. Arterial pressure is continuously monitored by various sensors located within the body. Whenever arterial pressure varies from normal, multiple reflex responses are initiated, which cause the adjustments in cardiac output, and total peripheral resistance needed to return arterial pressure to its normal value. In the short term (seconds), these adjustments are brought about by changes in the activity of the autonomic nerves leading to the heart and peripheral vessels. In the long term (minutes to days), other mechanisms such as changes in cardiac output brought about by changes in blood volume play an increasingly important role in the control ...
Hey kids, you all must have learned basic grammar rules in school already, but how many of you have heard about the word called, ‘prefix’? Hope many of you are familiar with the word but how many of you know appropriate usage of it? Not many we guess. Why not then begin learning some basic usage of prefixes in English language here? The word prefix is itself made up with two different words, ‘pre’, which means ‘before’ and ‘fix’, means to ‘attach’. Both of these words have originally coined from Latin vocabulary. Prefix is a letter or a group of letters that are added to the beginning of a word in order to change the meaning, such as, ‘unhappy’, ‘illegal’, and many more. Read more
Thrips are very common insects that most of the times go unnoticed because they are very tiny (1 mm long or less). They are slender insects with fringed wings which feed on many different plants and animals by puncturing them and sucking up the contents. Although they have wings thrips are not very good flyers, however they can be carried long distances by the wind. The word thrips is used for both the singular and plural forms, so there may be many thrips or a single thrips. You might know this already from the words sheep, deer and moose. Many thrips are pests of crops due to the damage they cause by feeding on developing flowers or vegetables. Today's new species was found in India and named after its host plant Moringa. For the experts: The Holarctic genus Odontothrips of Megalurothrips genus-group was established by Amyot & Serville in 1843 with type species Thrips phaleratus Haliday (Mound & Palmer 1981, Mirab-balou & Chen 2011). This genus is known by 32 species from the Palearctic and Nearctic regions (ThripsWiki 2015), and these species are flower-living and mainly associated with flowers of family Fabaceae (Xie et al. 2010). The pest status of Odontothrips species is uncertain, but some species are reported to cause superficial damage to the flowers on which they feed. O. confusus Priesner is reported as a pest on lucerne in France and Czech Republic (Pitkin 1972), and also on legumes in Romania (Pustai et al. 2015). O. loti (Haliday) is reported as a major pest on Alfalfa in north China, where it feeds on tender leaves and causes leaf curling, whitening and withering (Kou et al. 2011).
IT WAS farmers rather than horsemen who spread Indo-European languages around the world some 8000 to 9500 years ago. The conclusion, made by applying evolutionary biology techniques to the analysis of languages, should help settle a long-standing debate about where such languages originated. One theory is that the military conquest of Europe by the Kurgan horsemen of the Russian steppes about 6000 years ago started the expansion of Indo-European languages. But another says the languages spread with the advance of agriculture from a region called Anatolia, which now lies in modern-day Turkey. To help settle the debate, Russell Gray and Quentin Atkinson of the University of Auckland in New Zealand analysed more than 2000 sets of “cognate” words from 87 Indo-European languages, including English and Gujarati. Cognate words are believed to be historically related because they are similar in form and meaning. The researchers used the word sets to build
TALES OUT OF SCHOOL BUFFALO (BISON): AN INTRODUCTION Until the late 1800s, buffalo meant life itself for Plains Indian tribes. When buffalo virtually disappeared, so did the Indians' way of life. Their "buffalo culture" was dependent on these animals for meat and a myriad of other purposes, including: hides for making tipis, leggings, shirts, dresses, pipe bags, quivers, moccasin tops, dolls, and robes-the most prized buffalo robes were "winter robes," taken between October-December, when the animals' hair was at its thickest rawhide for moccasin soles, shields, ropes, quirts, belts and parfleches-cylindrical or envelope-shaped containers used for all-purpose storage hair collected and stuffed into buckskin pillows tails used as fly swatters and whips brains for tanning hides horns transformed into spoons, cups and ladles hooves boiled down and prepared into a glue muscles and tendons for bowstring and sinew (a kind of thread) bones for making awls, handles for quirts and war clubs, toys and flat dice excrement, called "chips," provided good fuel for fire (as early non-Indian settlers on the Plains soon learned) Estimates of how many buffalo existed at the start of the 19th century range from 30 million to as high as 200 million. Actually, "buffalo" is a misnomer-true buffalo belong to a different genus and live in Africa and Asia-but the name, applied long ago, endures. Their scientific name is Bos bison. Relatives of Bos taurus, ancestor of today's domestic cattle, bison entered North America by crossing the land bridge that united Alaska and Siberia during the last Ice Age. These early bison weighed as much as two-and-a-half tons, with horns measuring six feet or more from tip to tip. As time passed, they evolved into a smaller animal. But "smaller animal" is relative term, and at maturity-2-3 years after birth-the buffalo earns its status as the continent's largest land animal. Bulls can reach a height of five-and-a-half feet at the shoulder, perhaps a foot longer in length, and weigh as much as a ton. These are truly "wild" animals, capable of posing considerable danger in a 35-mile-per-hour charge. Under good conditions, they eat 2%-3% of their body weight each day. (That's 20-30 pounds of grass for every 1,000 pounds of buffalo.) Their life span generally runs 15-20 years, though some have survived as long as three decades. Buffalo mate between July and October. Bulls compete for cows by breaking off into pairs, standing 20 feet apart and charging one another. Eventually, one gives up and relinquishes breeding rights to the victor. Calves undergo an 8-9 month gestation period, almost identical to a human's, and are usually born singly in late spring and summer. They arrive in time for the Sun Dance-a ritual of world renewal celebrated by many Plains tribes--and signal the earth's reawakening after the long Plains winter. Calves' fur is usually a light tan or yellowish in color. Hence, the Plains Indian name "Yellow Calf" really means "Young Buffalo Calf." As they age, the animals' hair grows heavier and darker, with colors usually running from chocolate brown to nearly black. Other colors are seen occasionally, such as the famous albino, or "white," buffalo. The original buffalo range apparently ran north-to-south from Mexico to the territory around Canada's Great Slave Lake, and east-to-west from Pennsylvania and the Carolinas as far as the Rocky Mountains. Over time, the range compressed so that the animals are almost always associated with the history and lore of the Great Plains. There was never a single great buffalo herd, or the two implied by the frequently used terms "northern herd" and "southern herd." There were many herds-numbering from several hundred to a hundred thousand or more animals-moving in elliptical patterns covering routes of up to 400 miles. In late spring they moved north, then south in late fall. A typical arrangement of the herd saw the bulls arranged as an enveloping circle of protection outside the cow-calf core. Early on, Plains Indians hunted buffalo by stampeding herds over cliffs called "buffalo jumps." The horse's arrival after the mid-16th century provided them with a vehicle for pursuing buffalo more effectively. But the horse came in tandem with other changes wrought by Europeans, including guns, increased competition with for territory, and the hide hunters of the 1860s and 1870s so often credited with single-handedly pushing the buffalo to near extinction. Hide hunters certainly contributed to the buffaloes' population crash. But modern researchers see a more complex pattern than the single-cause explanation that found favor for so long. For example, prior to 1850 Plains Indians became active partners in the fur trade, swapping buffalo robes for such luxury goods as sugar, coffee, jewelry, and beads. Beginning in the 1830s, population pressures on the Plains-and increased competition for buffalo-built as the U.S. government forced tribes living east of the Mississippi River westward. As more hunters killed more buffalo cows for their tender meat and easily worked hides the herds' birthrate declined. There was also a biotic invasion: waves of white immigrants brought cattle, oxen, mules and sheep onto the Plains, thereby introducing brucellosis, tuberculosis, and new parasites into the buffaloes' habitat. Starting in the late 1840s, this habitat was further altered when twenty years of abnormally heavy rainfall were followed by drought. Thus, it was in response to a combination of causes that the number of buffalo on the Plains plummeted in a classic "population crash." By the 1880s fewer than 1,000 survived in North America, two-thirds living in Canada. Today, about 120,000 buffalo are found in America's national parks or other reserves, such as Yellowstone, and on privately owned ranches. Resources:Center for Bison Studies (www.montana.edu/~wwwcbs/index.html); National Bison Association (www.nbabison.org/); Bison (www.nps.gov/wica/bison.htm); Friends of the Prairie Learning Center (www.tallgrass.org/buffalo.html); Yellowstone National Park (www.nps.gov/yell/) Dary, David A. The Buffalo Book: The Full Saga of the American Animal (Ohio University Press, 1990); Haines, Francis. The Buffalo: The Story of American Bison and their Hunters from Prehistoric Times to the Present (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995); McHugh, Tom, The Time of the Buffalo (University of Nebraska Press, 1979)
Until recently, scientists classified all orangutans as one species, Pongo pygmaeus. But genetic analysis revealed enough difference between orangutans on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra to merit their being divided into two seperate species. The Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) is the more numerous of the two species—there are between 12,000 and 15,000 Bornean orangutans in the wild. Only 3,000 to 5,000 Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii) live in the wild. Both species are threatened by habitat loss due to logging and fire. Bornean orangutans are tree-dwelling primates. Only rarely do they descend to the ground. They sleep in the treetops on mats they build out of woven branches. Females give birth to their young in nests high in the canopy and they young orangutans cling to their mothers as it matures. Despite orangutans being protected by law, young orangutans are sometimes captured and sold illegally as pets. Bornean orangutans are rather solitary animals that form only loose communities. They sometimes gather in small groups when feeding. Young orangutans remain with their mothers until they are about 8 years old. Adolescent females sometimes travel in groups for a few days. - Mass: 30 to 90 kg (66 to 198 lbs) - Body Length: 1.50 m (average) (4.92 ft) - Diet: herbivores (figs, leaves, flowers, bark), occasionally eat insects - Breeding Season: Throughout the year - Age at Sexual Maturity: 7 years - Number of Offspring: 1-2 - Lifespan: 50 years (wild) Range and Habitat: Today, Borneo orangutans are restricted in range to the island of Borneo. Fossil evidence suggests that the species once inhabited a range that extended throughout much of Southeast Asia. Borneo orangutans inhabit forest habitats and spend most of their time in the forest canopy. - Burnie D, Wilson DE. 2001. Animal. London: Dorling Kindersley. 624 p. - Ciszek, D. and M. Schommer. 1999. Pongo pygmaeus. Animal Diversity Web. September 14, 2009.
Facilitated diffusion differs from simple diffusion in that it crosses a membrane with the aid of passive transport proteins embedded in the membrane. Both types of diffusion are the movement of particles in solution from areas of higher concentration to areas of lower concentration. This type of passive transport is used by cells to acquire or lose solutes that cannot penetrate their cell membranes.Continue Reading All cells require materials from their environments and gain excesses of materials inside them. Many of these substances, including glucose, sodium ions and chloride ions, cannot pass through the phospholipid bilayer that constitutes cell membranes. Other substances, most notably water, pass through the membrane fairly freely. The passage of water through the membrane is another form of diffusion, known as osmosis. Facilitated diffusion is a passive process, requiring no energy from the cell, unlike the otherwise similar process active transport. In both cases, the cell requires a protein structure, embedded in the cell membrane, to move solutes in and out of the cell. However, with active transport, the cell is moving solutes from areas of lower concentration to areas of higher concentration. This requires energy, whereas facilitated diffusion occurs without any energy input from the cell.Learn more about Atoms & Molecules
Today, majority of the urban activities rely on infrastructure such as power, telecom, roads, water supply, mass transportation, solid waste management and sanitation for their efficiency. It is evident that good infrastructure has become an important contributor in development and smooth running of any city. In modern cities infrastructure can be classified into Hard and Soft infrastructure. “Hard” infrastructure refers to the large physical networks necessary for the functioning of a modern industrial nation, whereas “soft” infrastructure refers to all the institutions which are required to maintain the economic, cultural, health and social standards of a country, such as the financial system, the education system, the health care system, the system of government and law enforcement, as well as emergency services. In emerging Indian cities providing basic services such as water supply, sanitation, waste management, public transportation particularly to the urban poor are central to promoting environmentally sustainable development and an improved quality of life in expanding cities. Currently, in India, the urban population has outgrown the capacity of urban local bodies to provide and maintain basic civic services including urban poor. This has thus resulted in poor quality of life, sanitation and increased environmental pollution. The infrastructure is the backbone of any city and the negative environmental and social impacts of poorly conceived infrastructure investment will place additional burden on the current and future generations. There by it is necessary to incorporate sustainable design to make improvements that do not deplete natural resources. This also broadly entails solid waste and sewerage recycling, sustainable water management strategies as well as alternative energy. Water has emerged as one of the primary environmental concerns for the 21st century. Many parts of the world are currently facing water shortages, while others must contend with severe water pollution. Demand for water is growing in most of the Indian cities as every urban citizen requires almost double the amount of water that a rural citizen requires. Not long ago, most of our cities were self sufficient in meeting their water needs from the existing water bodies to supply water to urban areas. Today these water bodies have completely disappeared due to encroachment and other hazards. The local governing bodies have been stretched to their limits to find water for the growing urban populations. Groundwater in all cities alike has been exploited to the maximum possible extent by the government as well as the private parties. With cities expanding further away from the water source it is predicted that water is going to be a very expensive commodity in the near future. The International Hydrological Programme, a UNESCO initiative, noted: ”It is recognized that water problems cannot be solved by quick technical solutions, solutions to water problems require the consideration of cultural, educational, communication and scientific aspects. Given the increasing political recognition of the importance of water, it is in the area of sustainable freshwater management that a major contribution to avoid/solve water-related problems, including future conflicts, can be found.”Emerging Cities are questioning the ecological and financial sustainability of big-pipe water, storm water, and sewer systems and are searching for “lighter footprint” more sustainable solutions. Pilot projects are being built that use, treat, store, and reuse water locally and that build distributed designs into restorative hydrology. Rainwater harvesting is being made mandatory in most of the cities but a more workable model with a wider acceptance needs to be developed to get the maximum advantage. Solid waste recycling Waste management over the ages has been treated as a very linear process which involves collection and disposal creating health and environmental hazard. With the ever increasing population India over the next decade is bound to face sever waste disposal problems. The Indian policies do not examine waste as part of a cycle of production-consumption-recovery. The new Municipal Solid Waste Management Rules 2000, which came into effect from January 2004, failed even to manage waste in a cyclical process. With a major chunk of rural population migrating into the cities the current and future scenario reveals that waste needs to be treated holistically. However the entire concept of waste management in India is misconceived there is an inadequate understanding of both the infrastructure requirements and the social dimensions. Waste can be wealth, which has tremendous potential not only for generating livelihoods for the urban poor but can also enrich the earth through composting and recycling rather than spreading pollution as has been the case. The waste from various sectors like domestic waste, industrial waste, agricultural waste, and others must be separated at source and must be sensibly sent to the right place for recycling. One of the major challenges that India will face in the coming decade will be to educate and ensure that Industries and the domestic households to dispose waste sensibly. The future calls in for integrated solid waste management. Any new ideas that emerge should include a cradle-to-grave approach with responsibility being shared by many stakeholders, including product manufacturers, consumers and communities, the recycling industry, trade, municipalities and the urban poor. It is observed in the tenth five year plan, that three fourths of India’s surface water is polluted and out of that 80% is due to sewage alone. India today has more than 20 cities which have recorded a population of more than 1 million which include the metropolitan cities in which the antiquated sewerage system just cannot handle the rapid expansion. The sewerage systems were built to support a population of about 3 million in these mega cities and cannot manage the present population close to 14 million. The Asia Water Watch 2015 has noted that India is most likely to achieve its MDG sanitation target in the rural and urban areas. In 1990 a mere 43% of the urban population had improved sanitation and this is expected to increase to 80% by 2015. And in the rural areas it was noted that only 1% received improved sanitation in 1990 and is expected to reach a target of 48% by 2015. Evidence indicates that only about 45% of the urban population in India has access to sanitation facilities and there is much to accomplish to reach the goal of 100% sanitation coverage for all. It has also been realized that there is a need to look beyond coverage, to the quality of services in terms of making use of new advances in technology, use of low cost technology, use of recycled and more economical forms of user friendly technologies that can be expanded beyond cities to reach small and medium towns in the country. In the coming years an integrated approach to sewerage disposal can lower the costs by connecting sewerage to waste water treatment. Where in user fees for capital plus operations and maintenance would be included in the project cost and approval process where the rich actually pay for these services. The options of on-site and off-site waste water treatment plans must be considered with respect to the population density and requirements. Reusing grey water for flushing, gardening or irrigation purposes must also be considered. India is facing a large demand-supply gap in Energy with average energy shortfall of 9% and peak demand shortfall of 14%. This could be a huge deterrence to economic growth. The per capita energy consumption in India is in the region of 400 KWH per annum which is way lower than developed world cities. This is going to change dramatically in the coming years and our consumption will increase with economic growth. It is crucial to ensure the judicious use of our copious renewable energy resources such as hydro energy, biomass energy, solar energy and wind energy. The Indian government’s stated target is for renewable energy to contribute 10% of total capacity and 4-5% of the electricity mix by 2012. However, India still doesn’t have national renewable energy policy which is an important agenda to set forward. Some states have incentives for renewable energy through the Renewable Portfolio which requires electricity suppliers to provide a percentage of their supply from renewable resources. This tool is similar to the Feed-in tariffs that accelerating the deployment of renewable energy in certain countries like Germany & China and needs to be used more widely.
London, July 18: Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research. A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the Sun is responsible for recent global climate changes. Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: “The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures. “The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently — in the last 100 to 150 years.” Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of “greenhouse gases”, such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth’s temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact. Average global temperatures have increased by about 0.2 degree Celsius over the past 20 years and are widely believed to be responsible for new extremes in weather patterns. After pressure from environmentalists, politicians agreed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, promising to limit greenhouse gas emissions between 2008 and 2012. Most scientists agree that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels have contributed to the warming of the planet in the past few decades but have questioned whether a brighter Sun is also responsible for rising temperatures. To determine the Sun’s role in global warming, Solanki’s team measured magnetic zones on the Sun’s surface known as sunspots, which are believed to intensify the Sun’s energy output. It studied sunspot data going back several hundred years. They found that a dearth of sunspots signalled a cold period — which could last up to 50 years — but that over the past century their numbers had increased as the Earth’s climate grew steadily warmer. The scientists also compared data from ice samples collected during an expedition to Greenland in 1991. Solanki says that the increased solar brightness over the past 20 years has not been enough to cause the observed climate changes but believes that the impact of more intense sunshine on the ozone layer and on cloud cover could be affecting the climate more than the sunlight itself. Gareth Jones, a climate researcher at the Met Office, said that Solanki’s findings were inconclusive because the study had not incorporated other potential climate change factors. The research adds weight to the views of David Bellamy, the conservationist. “Global warming — at least the modern nightmare version — is a myth,” he said. “I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world’s politicians and policy-makers are not. “Instead, they have an unshakeable faith in what has, unfortunately, become one of the central credos of the environmental movement: humans burn fossil fuels, which release increased levels of carbon dioxide — the principal so-called greenhouse gas — into the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to heat up. They say this is global warming: I say this is poppycock.”
The Lunar Environment is a harsh environment with extreme temperature differences. In the dark, the Moon's surface temperature falls to 70 Kelvins, while in the sun, the surface heats up to 230 Kelvins. Trace amounts of water vapor have been found, possibly from the water ice undergoing sublimation. Besides small amounts of various gases, the atmosphere of the moon is almost a vacuum; its entire atmosphere weighs approx. less than 10 metric tons. The soil of the Moon is sand - like; much of this "sand" is comprised of silicon dioxide. This compound is highly compacted on the Moon. After this layer of sediment, layers of bedrock can be found for several kilometers. A unique property of the Moon is that there is a pattern of 2 weeks of sunlight followed by 2 weeks of nighttime. It is imperative that a rover sent to the Moon must cope with this strange pattern. NASA's early exploration of the Moon began with the Mariner and the Ranger probes. While the Mariners were only observers (i.e. space probes that orbited around the Moon while sending back snapshots of the surface), the Rangers were sent to crash into the Lunar surface while taking the first close-up pictures of the surface. After the famed Apollo Missions of the late 1960's to early 1970's, there has been no new missions to the Moon. Fun fact: In the Apollo 14 mission, astronaut Alan Sheppard brought golf clubs with him to play a round of Moon golf. He later was reprimanded for golfing, as the ball may have damaged spacecrafts. On a closing note, one of the most commonly - known facts of the Moon is that its gravity is 1/6 of that of Earth's. This means that a lunar rover that weighs 100 lbs. on Earth is only 16 2/3 lbs. on the Moon. This is an important fact because a rover can carry more weight with the same motors.
If you have ever consoled your child after a rough spill off the monkey bars, you know that there is no better place than a playground to study the laws of physics. Gravity? Race a friend down the fire pole. Friction? Try making it down the slide in wet jeans. Centrifugal force? Take a spin on the tire swing. All of the fundamental concepts in physics are at play when your child is at play, and there are any number of ways to explore physical science with your child. Here is an example of a quick experiment you can conduct at the playground to introduce or reinforce the concept of Newton’s First Law, The Law of Inertia. Simply put, Newton’s First Law states, “A body in motion remains in motion, a body at rest remains at rest, unless acted upon by a force.” Everything in the universe wants to keep going (or stay still), unless something else makes it stop (or go). This tendency is called “inertia.” Two major forces that are always at work against inertia here on Earth are gravity and friction. Most fifth graders have had plenty of experience with these (Ever fallen off your bike?), but they are good to review. To reinforce these fundamental physic laws on the way to the park, discuss inertia, gravity and friction (without causing a car crash, which would be a fabulous, but dangerous demonstration of all three). Then, challenge her to experience inertia first-hand. Climb on the swing and start pumping. After a few good swings, have her try to jump off the swing and stand still. Can she do it? Most likely she will fall down or have to run. That is her inertia, or tendency to keep going, at work. Have her try again, swinging lower and slower each time, until she can jump off and stick her landing. Explore the playground together and identify where inertia and the forces of gravity and friction work against one another. No longer will a trip to the playground seem like a “walk in the park.” This is real learning! Jes Ellis has a BA in American Civilization from Brown University and a Masters in Elementary Education from Smith College. She has taught for over five years in Central America, Central Africa and Central New Hampshire. She currently teaches in Concord, NH where she lives with her husband and two young children.
German scientists have constructed a powerful new light system that can focus energy equivalent to the radiation of 10,000 suns onto a single spot. Eventually, they hope, this “artificial sun” could be used to produce environmentally-friendly fuels. The impressive light system is called Synlight, and it’s located in Juelich, about nine miles west of Cologne, Germany. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) scientists who developed the system assembled an array of 149 xenon short-arc lamps—the same kind used in large cinema projectors—to reproduce and focus as much energy as would be received from 10,000 suns like our own here on Earth. During today’s launch, the researchers focused the 350-kilowatt honeycomb-shaped array onto a single 8 x 8 inch (20 x 20cm) metal sheet. DLR Director Bernhard Hoffschmidt says the system is capable of creating temperatures as high as (3,000 degrees Celsius. The entire structure measures an impressive 14 metres high and 16 metres wide. So, why would anyone want to create such a hell-on-Earth scenario? The researchers are testing new ways of forcing elements to come into existence, namely hydrogen. Unlike many other fuels, hydrogen doesn’t produce carbon emissions when burned, so it doesn’t contribute to global warming. But hydrogen fuel doesn’t occur naturally on Earth, requiring stellar-like conditions to split water into its two components, hydrogen and water—but you undoubtedly remembered that from chemistry class. When the array is focused onto a single spot, it heats metal to 800 degrees Celsius, which is then sprayed with water vapour. The metal reacts with the oxygen in water, and hydrogen remains. With further heating, the oxygen is once again separated from the metal. Needless to say, no one can be inside the building when the lights are flipped on; a single second of exposure to the ambient radiation bouncing off the walls would fry a person. The other thing you may recall from chemistry class is that hydrogen is highly volatile. In its liquid state, hydrogen fuel is capable of combusting with just one-tenth the energy required to light-up gasoline. This fuel, once created, will have to be treated with extreme care. Eventually, however, hydrogen could be used to power cars and planes. Thankfully, measures can be taken to make hydrogen fuel safe, such as highly durable pressurised tanks that, if punctured, would instantly dissipate the stuff into the atmosphere. Alternately, carbon monoxide could be added to the mix, creating environmentally-friendly kerosene fuel that can be used in the aviation and rocket industry. A current limitation of Synlight is the amount of electricity it requires to operate. In just four hours, the system uses the same amount of electricity an average household consumes in an entire year. The researchers are obviously aware of this problem, and that a system requiring so much energy to produce clean fuel might not actually be all that environmentally friendly, but hope that a future version will run on solar power. In fact, the researchers say, an auxiliary goal of the Synlight system is creating more efficient solar panels that can actually produce enough energy to run that thing. The machine in still in the testing phase (the researchers expect “several years” of development), but once proof-of-concepts are achieved, the system could be ramped up to ten times its current size, making it suitable for industrial-scale tasks. A similar system is currently being tested by researchers from from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Their machine consists of 18 light sources arranged in a pair of concentric circles. The EPFL researchers are using it to study and develop new ways of converting and storing solar energy, testing solar power equipment, measuring heat transfer between materials, and analysing materials under stressful conditions. [Focus.de, Associated Press via ABC News]
3.4 Angles in a Triangle Objective â€“ Classify triangles by sides and angles. Find angle measures of triangles. What do we need to know about triangles? v ertex Triangle Classification by Sides • Scalene Triangle B • Isosceles Z Q • Equilateral P Triangle Classification by Angles • Acute • all angles are acute • Obtuse • one obtuse angle • Right • one right angle • Equiangular • all angles are the same Theorem โข The sum of the measures of the angles of a triangle is 180ยบ What is a corollary? â€˘ A statement that can be proved easily by applying a theorem. First Corollary • If two angles of one triangle are congruent to two angles of another triangle, then the third angles are congruent E • If m∠ A = m∠D and m∠B = m∠E, then what can we say? • m∠ C = m∠F Second Corollary • Each angle of an equiangular triangle has a measure of ___. • 180 ÷ 3 • 60º Third Corollary â€˘ In a triangle, there can be at most one right angle or obtuse angle. Fourth Corollary • The acute angles of a right triangle are ________. • Complementary • Why? Notebooks â€˘ The rest of your notes will have to be taken in your notebook! Remote Interior Angles Exterior Angle Theorem â€˘ The measure of an exterior angle of a triangle equals the sum of the two remote interior angles. Find the measure of angle A for each. 1) 80 40 120 Find x and y. x Find x and y. 50 Homework… • Page 97; 5-14
Self-presentation is the process by which individuals represent themselves to the social world. This process occurs at both conscious and nonconscious (automatic) levels and is usually motivated by a desire to please others and/or meet the needs of the self. Self-presentation can be used as a means to manage the impressions others form of oneself. Strategic or tactical self-presentation (impression management) occurs when individuals seek to create a desired image or invoke a desired response from others. The concept of self-presentation emerged from the symbolic interactionist (SI) tradition. The SI tradition is a uniquely sociological contribution to the field of social psychology that attends to the processes by which individuals create and negotiate the social world. SI proposes that it is through interaction and the development of shared meanings (symbolism) that individuals navigate the social world. The works of Erving Goffman, especially The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), exemplify the SI tradition and are seminal contributions to the study of impression management and self-presentation. Goffman employs a dramaturgical metaphor in which he maps elements of social interaction to the stage. Working at the microsociological level, Goffman focused on the process by which actors construct roles and portray them to an audience. The social actor works to create a front that is both believable and elicits the approval of others. Goffman’s work on impression management and self-presentation provides a roadmap for understanding human behavior and the tension between the individual and society. Subsequent to Goffman’s early articulations of ideas of self-presentation, experimental social psychologists such as Edward E. Jones and Barry R. Schlenker devised experimental methods for the study of self-presentation. This fruitful work provided empirical data about self-presentation that fueled the development of theoretical accounts of self-presentation (e.g., Schlenker 1975). Jones’s important text Ingratiation presented ingratiation as a form of impression management by which actors can elicit positive responses from others (Jones 1964). One taxonomy of self-presentation strategies includes ingratiation, intimidation, self-promotion, exemplification, and supplication (Jones and Pittman 1982). Self-presentation is an important part of social life and is largely a prosocial way that individuals negotiate social interactions. Yet, for the individual, the process of self-presentation may be fraught with tension. These tensions were presented in Goffman’s pioneering work, which provided a sensitive account of internal tensions that can arise in the trade-offs between the need for social approval and the desire for authenticity. Arlie Russell Hochschild’s The Managed Heart (1983) focuses on the emotional work involved in self-presentation. Other scholars (e.g., Erickson and Wharton 1997) have also addressed the conflicts that can arise in self-presentation. Not all individuals attempt or are willing to portray an inaccurate image to their audiences. For some people, psychological needs other than the need for social approval drive behavior. Self-presentation is complex: It is both an individual difference variable and a function of social situations. Self-presentation strategies differ across individuals but also are influenced by environmental factors. In addition to self-presentation differences observed according to age, gender, and culture, researchers have observed differences in self-presentation based on environmental factors. That is, individuals may elect to alter their self-presentations in response to cues from the social environment. As used here, cues refer to both environmental cues such as the social context (i.e., how public the setting is) and interpersonal cues such as the perceived responses of others. Individuals may also differ in the extent to which they engage in self-monitoring. Self-monitoring is the extent to which individuals monitor their behavior and self-presentation in response to real or perceived interactional cues. Self-presentation is both an individual experience and a social phenomenon and highlights the tensions inherent in human interaction.
Students will study the ideas, issues, and events from the framing of the Constitution up to World War I. After reviewing the development of America’s democratic institutions founded on the Judeo-Christian heritage and English parliamentary traditions, particularly the shaping of the Constitution, students trace the development of American politics, society, culture, and economy and relate them to the emergence of major regional differences. They learn about the challenges facing the new nation, with an emphasis on causes, course, and consequences of the Civil War. They make connections between the rise of industrialization and contemporary social and economic conditions. The eighth grade social studies program is designed to prepare students for high school. More specifically, this course will prepare those who wish to pursue AP History in high school. We will focus on building a strong foundation of research and writing skills, while expanding our scope and focus to include more complex, higher order thinking skills. Students will develop an understanding of conceptual and factual historical knowledge. In addition, we will also focus on developing reading comprehension, formal reasoning, note-taking, research, working in groups, oral presentations, technology-based projects, highlighting, outlining, concept mapping (graphic organizers), current events, debates, and simulations. History Alive: The United States Through Industrialism: Teachers’ Curriculum Institute, Palo Alto, CA, 2011. Sign in by going to http://www.learntci.com and entering your WSD computer log in and password. 8th grade Social Studies Syllabus
Sleep appears to be important for long-term potentiation, a strengthening of signals between neurons that is widely regarded as a mechanism of learning and memory. Certain memories acquired during the day appear to be reactivated and “replayed” in the brain during sleep, which may help make them longer lasting. In some instances the amount of improvement that occurs on memory tasks positively correlates with the length of time spent in certain stages of sleep. To date, most sleep and learning research has focused on recall, which is the capacity to remember information. However, new research by Stéphanie Mazza and colleagues at the University of Lyon, recently published in the journal Psychological Science,suggests another potential benefit of sleep: improved relearning. Relearning refers to the process of re-acquiring forgotten information. Because we cannot possibly remember all of the information that we encounter, it is often necessary to go back and learn that information again. That’s when relearning occurs—such as when preparing for an exam, taking a refresher course, or simply revisiting a topic after an extended period of time. According to this new research, sleep supercharges relearning: it can enable us to relearn twice as quickly and up to three times more effectively. Cecile G. Tamura We’ve all stayed up the night before an exam to do some late-night cramming, but we might have been going about it the wrong way. It turns out that only about 20% of the potential brain function is on the go between 10pm and midnight, explaining why it’s so hard to stay on track. However a 2010 study found that a quick nap can work wonders on our brain’s ability. The study, done by Harvard University, showed that students that slept and dreamt for 90 minutes before being given a puzzle scored much higher than their peers. Scientists believe that dreaming has a positive effect on memory recall and concentration, giving you a great reason to hit the sack early tonight. Read more at: https://www.stayathomemum.com.au/my-lifestyle/20-mind-blowing-facts-about-sleep/
Although Dr. King is recognized as the face and voice of the civil rights movement, there were a number of other civil rights leaders that were as dedicated and integral to the movement. Even though you probably cannot call up the sound of his voice or the image of his face, A. Phillip Randolph is considered to be one of the forefathers -- or perhaps the forefather -- of the modern civil rights movement. His work undoubtedly had great influence on Martin Luther King, Jr. In fact, the two often worked together on many direct-action protests, including the famous "March On Washington For Jobs And Freedom." The idea for the 1963 March On Washington originated with A. Phillip Randolph. Reminiscent of the first march he planned in 1941, Randolph proposed the march to various civil rights leaders in late 1962. At first, his idea was given little, if any, consideration. Randolph needed the cooperation and involvement of each of "The Big Six." The Big Six consisted of Randolph and the five leaders of the major civil rights organizations: - Roy Wilkins of the NAACP - Whitney Young, Jr. of the National Urban League - Martin Luther King, Jr. of the SCLC - James Farmer of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) - John Lewis of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Eventually, everyone signed on. With the help of Bayard Rustin, civil rights organizer and trusted advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr., the March On Washington became one of the most successful protests of the civil rights movement. For more information on the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and related topics, visit the links on the following page.
of a spacecraft orbit ing the Earth , there is only three direct ways: A magnetic torquer is nothing else than a standard coil or solenoid. When current is fed into this coil, a torque is created until the torquer's internal magnetic field is aligned with the Earth's own magnetic field. Following Lorentz force law (without the electric term), one can find that the torque produced is: T = âNIπr2 where the bold represents vector quantities, T being the torque, â being a unit vector along the axis of the torquer, N being the number of loops in the coil and r being its diameter, I being the current in the coil and B being the Earth's magnetic flux density. Using three perpendicular magnetic torquers in a spacecraft thus enables the control of its attitude on three axis of rotation. Magnetic torquers are a cheap and easily implemented way to control the orientation of a satellite; however, there are several downsides: - Since the Earth's magnetic field is rather tenuous, the torque produced by magnetic torquers is in general very low and as a consequence, quick adjustments of the attitude is impossible using torquers. - The torque produced is not constant with the angular position of the spacecraft, and moreover, the Earth's magnetic field is not even constant itself, the magnetosphere being swept away by solar wind. - Injecting current in a coil can create lots of EMIs, which is habitually bad for spacecraft applications.
Nickel - Ni Nickel is silvery-white. hard, malleable, and ductile metal. It is of the iron group and it takes on a high polish. It is a fairly good conductor of heat and electricity. In its familiar compounds nickel is bivalent, although it assumes other valences. It also forms a number of complex compounds. Most nickel compounds are blue or green. Nickel dissolves slowly in dilute acids but, like iron, becomes passive when treated with nitric acid. Finely divided nickel adsorbs hydrogen. The major use of nickel is in the preparation of alloys. Nickel alloys are characterized by strength, ductility, and resistance to corrosion and heat. About 65 % of the nickel consumed in the Western World is used to make stainless steel, whose composition can vary but is typically iron with around 18% chromium and 8% nickel. 12 % of all the nickel consumed goes into super alloys. The remaining 23% of consumption is divided between alloy steels, rechargeable batteries, catalysts and other chemicals, coinage, foundry products, and plating. Nickel in the environment Most nickel on Earth is inaccessible because it is locked away in the planet's iron-nickel molten core, which is 10 % nickel. The total amount of nickel dissolved in the sea has been calculated to be around 8 billion tons. Organic matter has a strong ability to absorb the metal which is why coal and oil contain considerable amounts. The nickel content in soil can be as low as 0.2 ppm or as high as 450 ppm in some clay and loamy soils. The average is around 20 ppm. Nickel occurs in some beans where it is an essential component of some enzymes. Another relatively rich source of nickel is tea which has 7.6 mg/kg of dried leaves. Nickel is a compound that occurs in the environment only at very low levels. Humans use nickel for many different applications. The most common application of nickel is the use as an ingredient of steal and other metal products. It can be found in common metal products such as jewelry. Foodstuffs naturally contain small amounts of nickel. Chocolate and fats are known to contain severely high quantities. Nickel uptake will boost when people eat large quantities of vegetables from polluted soils. Plants are known to accumulate nickel and as a result the nickel uptake from vegetables will be eminent. Smokers have a higher nickel uptake through their lungs. Finally, nickel can be found in detergents. Nickel fumes are respiratory irritants and may cause pneumonitis. Exposure to nickel and its compounds may result in the development of a dermatitis known as “nickel itch” in sensitized individuals. The first symptom is usually itching, which occurs up to 7 days before skin eruption occurs. The primary skin eruption is erythematous, or follicular, which may be followed by skin ulceration. Nickel sensitivity, once acquired, appears to persist indefinitely. Nickel is released into the air by power plants and trash incinerators. It will than settle to the ground or fall down after reactions with raindrops. It usually takes a long time for nickel to be removed from air. Nickel can also end up in surface water when it is a part of wastewater streams. Now check out our page on nickel and water Back to periodic chart
\|Artist's concept of Seasat Artist's concept of Seasat. Image Credit: NASA/JPL › Larger view One of the earliest Earth-observing satellites, Seasat was designed to test various oceanographic sensors and gain a better understanding of Earth's seas. Seasat operated in Earth orbit for 105 days, measuring sea-surface winds and temperatures, wave heights, atmospheric liquid water content, sea ice features and ocean topography, before a massive short circuit in the spacecraft's electrical system ended the mission on October 10, 1978. - Radar altimeter - Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) - SEASAT-A Satellite Scatterometer (SASS) - Visible and Infrared Radiometer (VIRR) - Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR)
Goldfish How to make Origami Step 1: Take a square sheet of paper, fold in half sideways to make a crease and unfold. Step 2: Fold the paper in half downward. Step 3: Fold the side corners to meet the center line. Step 5: Fold the upper layer of the bottom corner upward. Step 6: Fold the corners outward. Step 7: Fold the upper layer of the bottom part upward below the center line. Step 8: Fold the rest of the flap upward along the center line. Step 9: Make two incisions, leaving the center uncut, and fold the flap backward. Step 10: Expand the bottom part of the item and bring its bottom corners together, making a square. Step 11: Rotate the item and unfold the bottom part to make the tail. Step 12: Draw the eyes, and the goldfish is complete!
The 20 enjoyable, interactive classroom activities that are included will help your students understand the text in amusing ways. Fun Classroom Activities include group projects, games, critical thinking activities, brainstorming sessions, writing poems, drawing or sketching, and more that will allow your students to interact with each other, be creative, and ultimately grasp key concepts from the text by "doing" rather than simply studying. Play a game of Jeopardy using quotes and themes from "Eleven Short Stories". 2. Wheel of Fortune Play a game of Wheel of Fortune using quotes and themes from "Eleven Short Stories". 3. Dress Up Have each student come to class dressed as his or her favorite character from the book, and have them explain what led them to make their character selection. 4. Scene Rewrite Let each student select a scene or short story from "Eleven Short Stories" to rewrite in a different tone. 5. Show and... This section contains 580 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
A semiconductor is a material which has electrical conductivity between that of a metal and an insulator. Semiconductors have a number of unique properties. They can change the conductivity by the addition of impurities (doping) or by the application of electric fields or light. This ability makes semiconductors very useful for devices that amplify, switch or convert electrical energy. The study of semiconductors and their properties relies on quantum physics to explain the motion of electrons inside a lattice of atoms. Semiconductors are the foundation of modern solid state electronics. This includes radios, computers and telephones. Semiconductor-based electronic components include transistors, solar cells, light-emitting diodes and digital and analog integrated circuits. The increase in understanding of semiconductor materials has allowed the continuing increase in the complexity and speed of semiconductor devices. A pure semiconductor is a poor electrical conductor as a consequence of having just the right number of electrons to completely fill its valence bonds. Through different techniques, the semiconductor can be modified to have excess of electrons or a deficiency of electrons. In both cases the semiconductor will become more conductive. When the semiconductors are doped they join to metals, different semiconductors, and to the same semiconductor with different doping. The result of this junction often strips the electron excess or deficiency out from the semiconductor near the junction. The depletion region is rectifying and used to further shape electrical currents in semiconductor devices. Electrons can be excited across the energy band gap of a semiconductor by various methods. These electrons carry their excess energy over a distance before dissipating their energy into heat. This effect is essential to the operation of bipolar junction transistors. Electrons in semiconductors will absorb light and retain the energy from the light for a long enough time to be useful for producing electrical work instead of heat. This effect is used in the photovoltaic cell. Semiconductors can use thermoelectric generators to convert temperature differences into electrical power and vice versa. Peltier coolers use semiconductors for this reason.
The basis for the IS/LM model is that it presents the Keynesian system in a fashion such that economists trained in the thirties could understand the model. In the thirties economists did not study math and learned all economic arguments in the form of graphs. The reason I do not pursue graphs in this course is that this approach is obsolete. If you want pictures have your graphics package create them in color. If you look at the simple mathematical description of the IS/LM model you will note that it constitutes four equations in five unknowns. To reduce the model to four unknowns the price level p is taken as a known parameter, that is it is determined by economic forces not represented in the model. Since four equations can not be plotted on a two dimensional graph a device must be created to reduce the model to two equations. The device used to reduce the 4 equation IS/LM model to two equations is to collapse all the equations dealing with fiscal policy, that is government spending and taxes into one equation -- the IS equation or investment savings. This equation contains the real side of the economy. The other equation is the LM equation which stands for Liquidity Money. Thus from a mathematical perspective the graphical treatment of the IS/LM model is picture approach to solving four equations in four unknowns. Because the setup parallels the picture analysis of supply and demand you might be correct in assuming this approach is loved by most economists and will be inflicted upon you like a plague in intermediate courses. In your technical essay you might list the four equations in the IS/LM model. You do not need to memorize them as they are in the math section. List them in a neat package. Briefly explain each equation. List the IS equation which combines the three equations on the real side. This equation is listed in the math section. Explain what is going on -- that is a mathematical simplification for nonmath types. The IS/LM has now been reduced to: The symbols are explained in your Model II handout. The graphical solution, the one you will see in intermediate courses, is as follows: Thus the graph gives us the equilibrium and . If we wished to find the equilibrium we would substitute the equilibrium into the consumption function. What this model is used for is to assess the effects of monetary, that is the effect of a change in , and fiscal policy, the is a change in or . In the reduction of the model to two equations an important result was achieved. Changes in or affect only the IS equation and changes in Ms affect only LM equation. Thus for fiscal policy we have reduced everything to knowing whether the IS equation moves to the left or the right. Monetary policy is knowing whether the LM equation moves to the left or right. The model can also be used to study the effect of p, prices, on the equilibrium. Remember that this model does not determine prices. Prices are determined outside this model. To remember how the equations are affected by movements in , , , and we need to reduce the number of variables to two. To do this remember that and are opposites and and are opposites. That is they have opposite effects. For example increasing has the same effect as decreasing . Fiscal policy is thus reduced to one item: Increasing G shifts the IS curve to the right. Why has fiscal policy been reduced to one item? Well if you have a logical mind you will realize that decreasing shifts the IS curve to the left. Decreasing shifts the IS curve to the right and so on. Likewise monetary policy can be reduced to one item. Increasing Ms shifts the LM curve to the right. The other three cases involving and logically follow. These results can be displayed in pretty, that is pretty for a 1930's economist, pictures: We note the if increases increases but also increases. If we examined the consequences on investment we would see a decrease in investment. This is one form of crowding out, that is increased government purchases crowded out private investment. This shows why fiscal policy must be coordinated with monetary policy. To keep at the same level the FED could increase shifting the LM curve to the right. This is called accommodation as shown below: The fundamental problem with accommodation is that if this policy pushed beyond then only inflation can occur. For full credit you should be able to give some policy prescriptions for various situations.
Many teachers dislike preparing and grading exams and tests, and most students’ dread taking them. Yet tests are powerful educational tools that serve at least four important functions. Firstly, tests help evaluate students and assess whether they are learning what they are being expected to learn. Secondly, well-designed tests serve to motivate and help students structure their academic efforts. Crooks (1988), McKeachie (1986), and Wergin (1988) report that students study in ways that reflect how they think they will be tested. If they expect an exam focused on facts, they will memorize details; if they expect a test that will require problem solving or integrating knowledge, they will work toward understanding and applying information. Thirdly, tests can help teachers and parents understand how successfully the material is being presented. Finally, tests can reinforce and continue the learning process by providing students with indicators of what topics or skills they have not yet mastered and should concentrate on, and then by ensuring that when an answer is scored, each answer is qualified with an explanation as to why each answer is correct or incorrect. Despite these benefits, testing is also emotionally charged and can produce a level of anxiety that certainly influences the outcome of the test. The type of test that is most effective in motivating, measuring, and reinforcing learning is often the Multiple-Choice Quiz Multiple-choice quizzes and short-answer questions are appropriate for assessing students' mastery of details and specific knowledge. The Multiple-choice quiz can be used most effectively to measure both simple knowledge and complex concepts. Since multiple-choice questions can be answered quickly, they can assess a students' mastery of many topics in a short period of time. In addition, the items can be easily and reliably scored. Most importantly, the correctly structured Multiple-Choice Quiz that offers the greatest academic value will not simply indicate if the student’s answer is right or wrong, it will go further by clearly explaining the reasons why each answer was tight or wrong – thus ensuring the all-important continuation of the learning process. While Zane Education is being increasingly recognised in academic circles for the comprehensive nature of their fully subtitled educational video library, it is their extensive pool of 23,000 curriculum-based Multiple Choice questions that brings praise from teachers and parents alike. Each of the 260 curriculum-based topics is accompanied by it’s own reusable Multiple-Choice Quiz, and care has been taken in the preparation of those quizzes to ensure that students correct or incorrect answer is provided with a detailed explanation of why each student’s choice was right or wrong. Zane also provides Lesson Plans for each of the 260 topics and these Lesson Plans also provide further assessment options for the student including essay questions to assess comprehension, the ability to integrate and synthesize, and the ability to apply information to new situations. Footnote: It is surprising that the majority of providers of online educational video for the K-12 curriculum, seem to focus on simply providing the information to be studied, but do not support that information with online tests or quizzes. And the few that do, fail to understand the need to qualify the answers provided by the student, so as to ensure that each student understands why their answer is correct or incorrect – in which case you fall into the trap of testing simply for the sake of it.
The Polish September Campaign — known also as the "Polish-German War of 1939", in Poland sometimes as the "1939 Defensive War" (Wojna obronna 1939 roku), in Germany as the "Poland Campaign", and codenamed Fall Weiss ("Case White") by the German General Staff — was the World War II invasion of Poland by military forces of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and by a small German-allied Slovak contingent. The invasion of Poland marked the start of World War II in Europe as Poland's western allies, the United Kingdom and France, declared war on Germany on September 3. The campaign began on September 1, 1939, one week after the signing of the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and ended on October 6, 1939, with Germany and the Soviet Union occupying the entirety of Poland. None of the major participants — Germany, the Soviet Union, Poland or the Western Allies — expected that this German invasion of Poland would lead to a war surpassing World War I in scale and cost. Following a spurious, German-staged "Polish attack" on 1 September 1939, German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west. Spread thin defending their long borders, the Polish armies were soon forced to withdraw east. After the mid-September Polish defeat in the Battle of the Bzura, the Germans gained an undisputed advantage. Polish forces then began a withdrawal south-east, following a plan that called for a long defence in the Romanian bridgehead area where Polish forces were to await an expected Western Allies counterattack and relief. On September 17, 1939, the Soviet Red Army invaded the eastern regions of Poland in cooperation with Germany. The Soviets were carrying out their part of the secret appendix of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which divided Eastern Europe into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence. This invasion secured Hitler's right flank and allowed him to concentrate on attacking Poland. Because of this unexpected Soviet aggression, the Polish government decided that the defence of the Romanian bridgehead was no longer feasible and ordered the evacuation of all troops to neutral Romania. By 1 October, Germany and the Soviet Union had completely overrun Poland. The Polish government (which never surrendered) evacuated together with many of its remaining land and air forces to neighboring Romania and Hungary. Many of the exiles subsequently joined the recreated Polish Army in allied France, French-mandated Syria and the United Kingdom.
Menarche ( mi-NAR-kee; Greek: m?n "month" + ? arkh? "beginning") is the first menstrual cycle, or first menstrual bleeding, in female humans. From both social and medical perspectives, it is often considered the central event of female puberty, as it signals the possibility of fertility. Girls experience menarche at different ages. The timing of menarche is influenced by female biology, as well as genetic and environmental factors, especially nutritional factors. The mean age of menarche has declined over the last century, but the magnitude of the decline and the factors responsible remain subjects of contention. The worldwide average age of menarche is very difficult to estimate accurately, and it varies significantly by geographical region, race, ethnicity and other characteristics. Various estimates have placed it at 13. There is a later age of onset in Asian populations compared to the West. The average age of menarche is about 12.5 years in the United States, 12.7 in Canada, and 12.9 in the UK. A study of girls in Istanbul, Turkey, found the median age at menarche to be 12.7 years. No specific hormonal signal for menarche is known; menarche as a discrete event is thought to be the relatively chance result of the gradual thickening of the endometrium induced by rising but fluctuating pubertal estrogen. The menstruum, or flow, consists of a combination of fresh and clotted blood with endometrial tissue. The initial flow of menarche is usually brighter than mature menstrual flow. It is often scanty in amount and may be very brief, even a single instance of "spotting." Like other menses, menarche may be accompanied by abdominal cramping. In most girls, menarche does not mean that ovulation has occurred. In postmenarchal girls, about 80% of the cycles were anovulatory in the first year after menarche, 50% in the third and 10% in the sixth year. Regular ovulation is usually indicated by predictable and consistent intervals between menses, predictable and consistent durations of menses, and predictable and consistent patterns of flow (e.g., heaviness or cramping). Continuing ovulation typically requires a body fat content of at least 22%. An anthropological term for this state of potential fertility is nubility. On the other hand, not every girl follows the typical pattern, and some girls ovulate before the first menstruation. Although unlikely, it is possible for a girl who has engaged in sexual intercourse shortly before her menarche to conceive and become pregnant, which would delay her menarche until after the end of the pregnancy. This goes against the widely held assumption that a woman cannot become pregnant until after menarche. A young age at menarche is not correlated with a young age at first sexual intercourse. When menarche occurs, it confirms that the girl has had a gradual estrogen-induced growth of the uterus, especially the endometrium, and that the "outflow tract" from the uterus, through the cervix to the vagina, is open. In very rare instances, menarche may occur at an unusually early age, preceding thelarche and other signs of puberty. This is termed isolated premature menarche, but other causes of vaginal bleeding must be investigated and excluded. Growth is usually normal. Isolated premature menarche is rarely the first manifestation of precocious puberty. When menarche has failed to occur for more than 3 years after thelarche, or beyond 16 years of age, the delay is referred to as primary amenorrhea. Certain systemic or chronic illness can delay menarche, such as undiagnosed and untreated celiac disease (which often occurs without gastrointestinal symptoms), asthma, diabetes mellitus type 1, cystic fibrosis and inflammatory diseases, among others. In some cases, because biochemical tests are not always discriminatory, underlying pathologies are not identified and the girl is classified as constitutional growth delay. Short stature, delayed growth in height and weight, and/or delayed menarche may be the only clinical manifestations of celiac disease, in absence of any other symptoms. According to a review article, there may also be an association between early age at menarche and breast cancer risk. Studies have been conducted to observe the association of the timing of menarche with various conditions and diseases. Some studies have shown that there may be an association between early or late-age menarche and cardiovascular disease, although the mechanism of the association is not well understood. A systematic review has concluded that early age at menarche is also a risk factor for the insulin resistance condition. There is conflicting evidence regarding the association between obesity and timing of menarche; a meta-analysis and systematic review has determined that more studies must be conducted to make any definitive conclusions about this association. Some of the least understood environmental influences on timing of puberty are social and psychological. Nearly all of the research on these effects has concerned girls, partly because female puberty requires greater physiological resources and partly because menarche involves a clear threshold event that makes survey research into female puberty much simpler than male. In most of these studies menarche was specifically examined, assuming it to be a valid "proxy" for the more general process of puberty. In comparison with the effects of genetics, nutrition, and general health, social influences are small, shifting timing by a few months rather than years. The most important part of a child's psychosocial environment is the family. Some of the aspects of family structure and function reported to be independently associated with earlier menarche [antenatal and early childhood] Other research has focused on the effect of childhood stress on timing of puberty, especially female. Stress is a vague term and studies have examined conditions ranging from family tensions or conflict to wartime refugee status with threat to physical survival. The more dire social conditions have been found to be associated with delay of maturation, an effect that may be compounded by dietary inadequacy. There is more uncertainty and mixed evidence as to whether milder degrees of stress or early-life under-nutrition can accelerate puberty in girls as would be predicted by life history theory and demonstrated in many other mammals. The understanding of these environmental effects is incomplete and the following observations and cautions are relevant: This article appears to contradict the article Puberty. (Learn how and when to remove this template message) There were few systematic studies of timing of menarche before the later half of the 20th century. Most older estimates of average timing of menarche were based on observation of a small homogeneous population not necessarily representative of the larger population, or based on recall by adult women, which is also susceptible to various forms of error. Most sources agree that the average age of menarche in girls in modern societies has declined, though the reasons and the degree remain subjects of controversy. From the sixth to the fifteenth centuries in Europe, most women reached menarche on average at about 14, between the ages of 12 and 15. A large North American survey reported only a 2-3 month decline from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. A 2011 study found that each 1 kg/m2 increase in childhood body-mass index (BMI) can be expected to result in a 6.5% higher absolute risk of early menarche (before age 12 years). Fewer than 10% of U.S. girls start to menstruate before 11 years of age, and 90% of all US girls are menstruating by 13.8 years of age, with a median age of 12.4 years. This age at menarche is not much different (0.3 years earlier) than that reported for U.S. girls in 1973. Age at menarche for non-Hispanic black girls was significantly earlier than that of white girls at 10%, 25%, and 50% of those who had attained menarche, whereas Mexican American girls were only slightly earlier than the white girls at 25%. Menstruation is a cultural as well as scientific phenomenon as many societies have specific rituals and cultural norms associated with it. These rituals typically begin at menarche and some are enacted during each menstruation cycle. The rituals are important in determining a status change for girls. Upon menarche and completion of the ritual, they have become a woman as defined by their culture. For young women in many cultures, the first menstruation is a marker that signifies a change in status. Post-menarche, the young woman enters a stage called maidenhood, the stage between menarche and marriage. There are cultures that have in past centuries, and in present, practiced rites of passage for a girl experiencing menarche. In some cultures, a party, or celebration is thrown to show the girl's transition to womanhood. This party is similar to the quinceañera in Latin America, except that a specific age marks the transition rather than menarche. In Morocco, the girl is thrown a celebration. All of her family members are invited and the girl is showered with money and gifts. When a Japanese girl has her first period, the family sometimes celebrates by eating red-colored rice and beans (sekihan). The color of blood and the red of sekihan are not related. All the rice of ancient times of Japan was red. Since rice was precious in ancient Japan (usually, millet was eaten), it was eaten only during the celebration. Sekihan is the tradition of an ancient custom. The celebration is kept a secret from extended family until the rice is served. The Mescalero Apaches place high importance on their menarche ceremony and it is regarded as the most important ritual in their tribe. Each year there is an eight-day event celebrating all of the girls who have menstruated in the past year. The days are split between feasting and private ceremonies reflecting on their new womanly status. In Australia, the Aborigines[which?] treat a girl to "love magic". She is taught the ways of womanhood by the other women in her tribe. Her mother builds her a menstruation hut to which she confines herself for the remainder of her menses. The hut is burned and she is bathed in the river at the end of menstruation. When she returns to the village[clarification needed], she is paired with a man who will be her husband. In the United States, public schools have a sex education program that teaches girls about menstruation and what to expect at the onset of menarche (often this takes place during the 4th grade). Historically menstruation has been a social taboo and girls were taught about menarche and menstruation by their mothers or a female role model. Then, and to an extent now, menstruation was a private matter and a girl's menarche was not a community phenomenon. The Ulithi tribe of Micronesia call a girl's menarche kufar. She goes to a menstrual house, where the women bathe her and recite spells. She will have to return to the menstruation hut every time she menstruates. Her parents build her a private hut that she will live in until she is married. In Sri Lanka an astrologer is contacted to study the alignment of stars when the girl experiences menarche because it is believed that her future can be predicted. The women of the family then gather in her home and scrub her in a ritual bathing ceremony. Her family then throws a familial party at which the girl wears white and may receive gifts. In Ethiopia, Beta Jewish women were separated from male society and sent to menstruation huts during menarche and every menstruation following as the blood associated with menstruation in the Beta Jewish culture was believed to be impure. The Beta Jews built their villages surrounding and near bodies of water specifically for their women to have a place to clean themselves. The menstruation huts were built close to these bodies of water. The Navajo have a celebration called kinaalda (kinn-all-duh). Girls are expected to demonstrate their strength through footraces. The girls make a cornmeal pudding for the tribe to taste. The girls who experience menarche wear special clothes and style their hair like the Navajo goddess "Changing Woman". Perhaps the most notable movie scene involving menarche is that from the 1976 horror movie Carrie. Carrie White experiences her first period as she showers after the school gym class, and unaware of what is happening to her, she panics and pleads for help, but the other girls respond by bullying her. The movie is an adaptation of the novel with the same name by Stephen King. Carrie's first period unleashes her violent powers and is central to her dangerous and out of control transformation. This theme is common to horror movies, another notable example being the 2000 Canadian horror film Ginger Snaps, where the protagonist's first period is central to her gradual transformation into a werewolf. Girls experiencing their first period is part of many movies, though not central to their plot, including The Blue Lagoon, The Company of Wolves, My Girl, A Walk on the Moon.
Map inversion is the process of returning two-dimensional paper maps to the four-dimensional space of virtual globes. Alternative globes exist - notably NASA's open-source WorldWind application - but currently only Google Earth has the added power of Google's Keyhole Markup Language (KML). Using KML, scanned maps may be draped over the terrain as ground overlays, or broken into temporally sequenced layers. Structures may be incorporated as 3-D solid models using Google SketchUp and legends may be added as screen overlays. Most importantly, field data may be embedded in placemarks at the outcrop or even the microscopic scale. Self-contained KML archives (KMZ files) may be shared over the Internet and combined with data from disparate sources. In the process of map inversion, original mapping errors inevitably appear. There may be missing inliers and outliers and incompatible topographic relations. Technical errors also arise, including projection and contour mismatches. To be zoomable, maps must be scanned at a series of resolutions and saved as super-overlay tiles. The main challenge to virtual globe mapping in the immediate future is the incorporation of paleogeographic terrain models. Despite these hurdles, map inversion should be a research priority for the geological community. Improvements in access and analysis afforded by GES may yield major advances in understanding of regional and global geologic histories.
All About Michigan The Great Lakes and Glaciers Around a billion years ago, a fracture in the earth running from what is now Oklahoma to Lake Superior generated volcanic activity. It almost split North America. Over 20 million years, lava from the fracture flowed in this area. It created mountains covering the regions now known as northern Wisconsin and Minnesota and the Laurentian Mountains were formed in Eastern Canada. Occasional volcanic activity continued while these mountains eroded. Molten magma below the highlands of what is now Lake Superior spewed out to its sides causing the highlands to sink and form a huge rock basin that would one day hold Lake Superior. With time, the fracture stabilized and the rock tilted north to south. This region went from fire to ice with the arrival of the glaciers. In fact, if you were to go back in time and visit Michi-gan 14,000 years ago, you would have found the Great Lakes area covered in a sheet of ice, called a glacier. These sheets averaged over one mile thick. At rates of only a little over a half foot per day, the glacier slowly made its way across the Great Lakes basin. It carved out deep valleys and moved large amounts of soil. As the glacier melted and moved towards Canada, it left behind a series of large holes that filled with meltwater from the glacier. These formed the basic shape of the Great Lakes. It wasn’t until around 6,000 years ago that the lakes took their final shape we see today. Learn more about the history of the Great Lakes and Glaciers in today's All About Michigan! Click HERE to download this activity as a printable PDF.
Iguanodon Lived between 140 and 90 million years ago. They were the precursors of the Hadrosaurids being among the most common herbivorous dinosaurs of the late Jurassic and early middle Cretaceous period. They were evolved from Hypsolophodontids and Camptosaurids which were common during the late Jurassic. Iguanodon would have been about as long as a school bus and weighed as much as the heaviest elephant. It probably stood on all fours most of the time eating low lying vegetation but could also stand up on two legs and eat leaves off of low hanging branches. Iguanodon are known to have been widespread in Europe, and North America with relitives in Africa, and Australia as well. Lifestyle and appearance Iguanodon was most likely a gentle herbivore that moved in vast herds. It is believed that Iguanodon was primarily a quadruped but could also run on two legs for short intervals. They had a unique adaptation in their hands, four fingers and a large 6 inch spike in the place of a thumb. Many paleontologists believe this was a defensive weapon for use against predators. The thumb spike could have also been a display item among individuals to distinguish hierarchy within a herd. Iguanodon may have evens used the spike to skewer fruits. Discovery and Classification On the Isle of Wight it was once thought there were two basic species of Iguanodon; a larger type known as Iguanodon bernissartensis, and the smaller Iguanodon atherfieldensis. I. bernissartensis was named for the Belgian town where complete skeletons were discovered (Bernissart). I. atherfieldensis was found in Atherfield on the south west coast of the Isle of Wight. Recently palaeontologist Gregory S. Paul has moved the smaller species to a new genera, leaving only the one Iguanodon but a new genera of Iguanodontid, Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis (named for Gideon Mantell). It was hard to classify these animals from limited fossil information available during the Victorian era. As a result many species names have been removed from the fossil record. Iguanodontid dinosaurs are amongst the most common fossils to be found on the Island to date. They might have been accumulated by local fishermen who worked along the coastline. William Smith had found Iguanodon fossils at a quarry in Sussex in 1809. It is believed that Dean William Buckland had discovered Iguanodon remains on the Island before 1822. In the early 1800's Dr. Gideon Mantell, a naturalist had also come across some Iguanodon teeth from Cuckfield when him and his wife were out riding. Mrs. Mantell found the teeth and showed them to her husband who was stunned. William Conybeare advised Dr. Mantell on using the name 'Iguanodon' due to a resemblance they appear to have with modern Iguana teeth. Mantell published his findings in 1825. This made Iguanodon the second dinosaur that was named after the theropod, Megolasaurus. Mantell's original concept was of a large tree-climbing lizard with huge claws and a spike on the tip of it's nose.Naturalist Sir Richard Owen also described his idea of Iguanodon as a heavy ground dwelling lizard-like creature and his interpretation was presented in the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace during 1853-4. Sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins built two large Iguanodon statues amongst other dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures based on Owen's vision. The Crystal Palace still has them there today, and the Iguanodons still have thumb spikes on their noses. Iguanadon as featured on BBC's Walking With Dinosaurs - Iguanodon- Enchanted Learning Software Iguanodon, meaning "Iguana tooth", was a beaked, plant-eating iguanodontid dinosaur with conical thumb spikes; it lived in the early Cretaceous. - Iguanodon Dinosaur, Beak ceratopsian dinosaur horn life ornithopod past, Dinosaur name, Dino, Dinosa Iguanodon is an ornithopod dinosaur, approximately halfway between the early hypsilophodontids and their final culmination in the duck-billed dinosaurs. They lived between 120 to 140 million years ago, in the Barremian to Valanginian ages of the earl
Modern preschool and Kindergarten classrooms might look very different from what you remembered—the walls are packed with rules and lessons, activity stations are often filled with books as well as pretend play toys, and writing instruments are widely available. In this chapter, we’ll explore what learning is like in preschools and Kindergartens by exploring recommended books, how to pick additional books, what leveled books are, and finally a list of sight words and how to teach them. Depending on the type of school your child attends, their preschool or Kindergarten curriculum may be more play-based or academic focused. Either way, these actions at home can best prepare your child for academic success and greater confidence. Below are recommended books for reading aloud with your child. You’ll find many of these books in preschool and kindergarten classes and reading them at home will give your child a great head start. You can find these books for purchase online or at your local or school library. If you like these titles, be sure to search for more books by the author or illustrator. A useful tip to keep track of what you borrowed: take pictures of the covers of each book and make a digital “quilt” of all that you’ve read. This way you can ask your child to pick an old favorite as well as a new book when borrowing them from the library. Picking the Right Books After your child recognizes the letters of the alphabet as well as the sounds each letter makes, they can start reading on their own! Finding appropriate books for your child’s age is easy. Look for books that have: - Text to picture matching, preferably with color pictures - Repetitive sentence patterns - A limited selection of high frequency, or ‘sight’ words Text to picture matching is crucial for children to understand that the words on the page aren’t just scribbles, but directly describe what is happening in the story. Books for children up to Kindergarten have a high degree of text to picture matching, and you should encourage your child to look for ‘clues’ about unfamiliar words through the pictures. - If your child hasn’t learned the alphabet yet and is struggling with reading a word, ask them what they see in the picture, read out the words below while pointing at each, and ask what words they could match with the picture. - When your child recognizes letter sounds, ask what letters she could recognize, starting from the first letter, and what sound that letter makes. Repetitive, or predictable, text have many uses. - Repetitive text helps children anticipate the story, increasing engagement by giving readers an opportunity to participate in repeating words or phrases. - They also act as story markers, allowing early readers to better understand the sequence of events in a story. - Perhaps most importantly, predictable text gives your child a chance to read fluently, building up her confidence in her own voice and comprehension of the text, even if she is just repeating a memorized key phrase at first. While we’ll cover actual sight words and how to learn them in another section, an easy way for your child to grow confidence while reading on their own is if they know many sight words. We call them sight or snap words because readers should know them by ‘sight’ or in a ‘snap’--in other words, immediately. Most sight words are the basic building blocks of the English language, like ‘the’ or ‘and’, which is why they’re also called high-frequency words (they’re very common). Children should start learning sight words only after recognizing all the letters and sounds in the alphabet. Leveled Books Legend When looking for books your child can read by themselves, we highly recommend finding leveled books. Leveled books are organized by increasing difficulty from aa to Z. They’re available at most schools, libraries or online for download and purchase--just search “leveled books” and the level you want to find. If you choose to purchase leveled books, look out for bundles with multiple books of each level or used books. Sample Leveled Books We recommend reading a leveled book with your child on the first read. After they gain familiarity with the words and story, encourage your child to read favorites on their own. The following chart introduces recommended ages and characteristics for guided and independent reading. If your child is ages 0-3, reading to them is the best engagement--even if books have no pictures or repeating text and few sight words, just hearing new words is immensely beneficial for a child’s development. Once your child recognizes the names of letters, you can start teaching them sight words. Sight words are words that frequently appear in print and spoken language that students will eventually learn by ‘sight’. Developed in 1936, Edward William Dolch’s sight word list is the foundation for many sight word lists at preschools and kindergartens nationwide. We’ve updated this list with sight words that show up with more frequency today. To use this list, we recommend: - Start with List 1, Column 1 - Learn a new word each day and review them on a weekly basis To learn new words: - Say the word, spell each letter, then use it in a sentence. Have your child repeat - Then, write them on a piece of paper and stick them somewhere visible to your child - Point out sight words in printed materials--you can spell out speech as well, but our main goal is recognize that those specific letters make up that specific sight word - When reviewing sight words, mix up a batch of 7-10 Again, before you start teaching your child sight words, make sure she recognizes all letters of the alphabet by sight and by name. Typically, children start learning sight words at age 5 at the end of preschool. For parents of children 3 and under, you can use this list to see which words you should emphasize or review while reading with your child. Mastery of a sight word means a student is able to automatically recognize the word without tapping it out or using any other strategies. For parents of children 4 and older hoping to measure how many sight words your child knows, we recommend randomizing each column so your child do not memorize the order. If you choose to quiz your child, we recommend testing at most every month. That way you can ensure you’re testing long-term retention--crucial for these words that students should know in an instant. The total number of sight words your child knows is not as important as her enthusiasm to keep learning! This concludes our brief introduction to literacy at home! If you'd like to receive a pdf version of this ebook complete with flashcards and writing practice sheets, please send us an email at [email protected] titled "literacy ebook". Thank you for reading!
What is grief? This is a term that describes all the feelings, thoughts and behaviour that someone goes through after bereavement. What is bereavement? This is a term that can be used to describe any event that includes loss – so this could mean losing your job, or a similar event, as well as the death of someone you know. For the rest of this article, bereavement refers to the death of a person. There's no right way of coping with a death – people respond to a loss in their own individual way. The way a person responds is partly dependent on their relationship with the deceased, but it also depends on their own personality and upbringing. In particular, holidays and anniversaries serve as reminders of the loss, and many people experience a severe worsening of their grief at these times. Debate still continues as to what normal grief consists of and whether it's distinct from depression. It's common for people to have symptoms that are often used to diagnose depression after bereavement. It's less common for people to experience a depressive illness and require treatment for this. A psychological understanding of grief People need strong affectionate bonds with other people for their emotional wellbeing, and they try hard to maintain these ties. Loss through death permanently breaks this bond. Grief can be seen as a person's struggle to maintain the emotional bond, while simultaneously experiencing the reality of loss. 'Grief work' is the process that a mourner needs to complete before resuming daily life. It involves separating from the deceased, adjusting to a world without them and sometimes forming new relationships. People grieve not only for the deceased, but also for the unfulfilled dreams and plans for the future that they hoped to share with them. Phases of grief Grief usually passes through three stages, but these stages are not separate, nor do they necessarily follow in sequence. - An initial stage of shock or disbelief when it is difficult to believe that the death has occurred. This stage may last minutes or weeks. - A stage of acute anguish that usually lasts from weeks to months when feelings of depression occur. Planning the future may be difficult. - A phase of resolution after months, or even years. What is normal grief? This is a term used to describe the typical symptoms somebody experiences after bereavement. It can include: - disbelief, shock, numbness and feelings of unreality - feelings of guilt - sadness and tearfulness - preoccupation with the deceased - disturbed sleep and appetite and, occasionally, weight loss - seeing or hearing the voice of the deceased. The initial disturbance the above symptoms causes is gradually reduced and people begin to accept the loss and readjust. A grief reaction can last for up to 12 months, but can vary within different cultures. The average is probably around six months. A resurgence of symptoms can also occur briefly on anniversaries of the bereavement and on birthdays of the deceased. Depression and grief Grief and depression are different. It is possible to grieve without being depressed, but many of the feelings are similar. However, about 33 per cent of bereaved people also have a depressive illness one month after the loss, and 15 per cent are still depressed a year later. Symptoms that suggest a bereaved person is also depressed include: - intense feelings of guilt not related to the bereavement - thoughts of suicide or a preoccupation with dying - feelings of worthlessness - markedly slow speech and movements, lying in bed doing nothing all day - prolonged or severe inability to function (not able to work, socialise or enjoy any leisure activity) - prolonged hallucinations of the deceased, or hallucinations unrelated to the bereavement. Who is likely to get depression after a bereavement? It is difficult to judge who will or won't suffer depression after a bereavement. However, risk factors thought to increase the chance include the following: - a previous history of depression - intense grief or depressive symptoms early in the grief reaction - few social supports - little experience of death. Treatment for grief and depression The support of family and friends is invaluable to anyone – especially at difficult times. Sadness after bereavement is natural: it's normal to want to discuss the deceased and become upset while doing so. Expressing feeling does not make things worse. If depression is thought to be present then antidepressants are very likely to be used. Antidepressants will treat the depression, but they do not have any affect on the underlying grief. Untreated depression, however, makes it extremely difficult to grieve effectively. GPs, counsellors and psychiatrists are aware of the many different normal responses to loss and are reluctant to diagnose a person as mentally ill during bereavement. They will usually provide support to help the person grieve. A psychiatrist is only likely to be involved if the bereavement is complicated by a depressive illness. Grief counselling helps mourning by allowing someone to work through the stages of grief in a supported relationship. The goals of grief counselling include: - accepting the loss and talking about it - identifying and expressing feelings related to the loss (anger, guilt, anxiety, helplessness, sadness) - living without the deceased and making decisions alone - separating emotionally and forming new relationships - the provision of support - identifying ways of coping that suit the bereaved. Explaining the grieving process. Organisations such as Cruse Bereavement Care offer this type of counselling. Other people also read: Anxiety disorders: what types of anxiety disorders are there? Depression: symptoms of depression. Cognitive behaviour therapy: who developed it?
Centre for Topological Science and Engineering Our research utilises the principles of topology to explain increasingly complex phenomena and engineer new structures. Topological properties, like the number of holes or bridges in a sponge, play a role in the behaviour of certain materials, such as the way they conduct electricity or how light propagates through them. This has led to an explosion of research and development into new kinds of materials with unprecedented properties, designed using fundamental physical and mathematical principles which can be fabricated, and manufactured in the future. The Centre for Topological Sciences and Engineering unites researchers from all Schools in the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences and elsewhere at the University, to study how topology helps us to understand the behaviour of physical, biological and other systems, and to implement principles of topological design into engineering. Birmingham's history of topological research Research in Topological Science in Birmingham goes back to the 1970s, with the work of Professor Tony Skyrme, who proposed a model of fundamental particles based as topological wave packets now called topological solitons. These skyrmions are studied as models of nuclei. Skyrmions appear as particle-like excitations in materials like magnetic films, Bose-Einstein condensates and liquid crystals. Magnetic skyrmions might even be the basis of next-generation low-energy data storage for computers! David Thouless and Michael Kosterlitz, also working in the University in the 1970s, discovered a phase transition in two-dimensional systems where systems of pairs of vortices with opposite topological charges become unbound. For this appreciation of the role of topology in the physics of materials, Thouless and Kosterlitz were awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for Physics, shared with Duncan Haldane. Metamaterials are artificially engineered materials that exhibit electromagnetic properties unfound in natural materials. By utilizing the principle of topology, one can design metamaterials that supports one-way transport of electromagnetic waves immune from scattering. (Professor Shuang Zhang, Physics) Metal 3D printing Metal 3D printing was used to create sonic crystals, which are topologically designed structures that allow wave scattering due to the periodic arrangement in the structure. Sonic crystals can be used to control noise levels, and also as waveguides or collimators. The use of metal 3D printing enables the creation of a tailored structure that cannot be manufactured otherwise. Potential opportunities include the use of smart materials to build sonic crystals in order to create a tunable structure depending on an external stimulus (e.g. thermal, magnetic, structural, etc…). (Professor Moataz Attallah, Metallurgy and Materials) The framework of topological design takes us beyond our 3D physical world, as exotic effects are expected to emerge if a structure extends along four or even more spatial dimensions. We are working to make this an experimental reality by proposing how recently-demonstrated techniques, such as “synthetic dimensions”, can artificially mimic additional higher dimensions for cold atoms and photons. (Dr Hannah Price, Physics) Knotted optical vortices In a light beam, the flow of light through space is similar to water flowing in a river. Although it often flows in a straight line – out of a torch, laser pointer, etc – light can also flow in whirls and eddies, forming dark lines in space called optical vortices. Optical vortices are phase singularities, structuring the topology of light fields as places where all of the optical wavefronts merge. By controlling the topology of wavefronts with optical holograms, we can design 3D structured light fields with knotted optical vortices. (Professor Mark Dennis, Physics)
Imagine if playing music was as simple at looking at your laptop screen. Now it is thanks to Kenneth Camilleri and his team of researchers from the Department of Systems and Control Engineering and the Centre for Biomedical Cybernetics at the University of Malta, who have developed a music player that can be controlled by the human brain. Camilleri and his team have been studying brain responses for ten years. Now they have found one that is optimal for controlling a music player using eye movements. The system was originally developed to improve the quality of life of individuals with severely impaired motor abilities such as those with motor neuron disease or cerebral palsy. The technology works by reading two key features of the user’s nervous system: the nerves that trigger muscular movement in the eyes and the way that the brain processes vision. The user can control the music player simply by looking at a series of flickering boxes on a computer screen. Each of the lights flicker at a certain frequency and as the user looks at them their brain synchronizes at the same rate. This brain pattern reading system, developed by Rosanne Zerafa relies on a system involving Steady State Visually Evoked potentials (SSVEPs). Electrical signals sent by the brain are then picked up by a series of electrodes placed at specific locations on the user’s scalp. This process, known as electroencephalography (EEG), records the brain responses and converts the brain activity into a series of computer commands. As the user looks at the boxes on the screen, the computer program is able to figure out the commands, allowing the music player to be controlled without the need of any physical movement. In order to adjust the volume, or change the song, the user just has to look at the corresponding box. The command takes effect in just seconds. For people who have become paralyzed due to a spinal injury, the normal flow of brain signals through the spine and to muscles is disrupted. However, the cranial nerves are separate and link directly from the brain to certain areas of the body, bypassing the spine altogether. This particular brain-computer interface exploits one of these; the occulomotor nerve, which is responsible for the eye’s movements. This means that even an individual with complete body paralysis can still move their eyes over images on a screen. This cutting age brain-computer interface system could lead the way for the development of similar user interfaces for tablets and smart phones. The concept could also be designed to aid with assisted living applications, for example. The BCI system was presented at the 6th International IEEE/EMBS Neural Engineering Conference in San Diego, California by team member Dr. Owen Falzon.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/ASU/TAMU Staring up into the martian sky, the Opportunity rover captured an image at 11:02 AM local mean time nearly every 3rd sol, or martian day, for 1 martian year. Of course, the result is this martian analemma, a curve tracing the Sun’s motion through the sky in the course of a year (668 sols) on the Red Planet. Spanning Earth dates from July, 16, 2006 to June 2, 2008 the images are shown composited in this zenith-centered, fisheye projection. North is at the top surrounded by a panoramic sky and landscape made in late 2007 from inside Victoria crater. The tinted martian sky is blacked out around the analemma images to clearly show the Sun’s positions. Unlike Earth’s figure-8-shaped analemma, Mars’ analemma is pear-shaped, because of its similar axial tilt but more elliptical orbit. When Mars is farther from the Sun, the Sun progresses slowly in the martian sky creating the pointy top of the curve. When close to the Sun and moving quickly, the apparent solar motion is stretched into the rounded bottom. For several sols some of the frames are missing due to rover operations and dust storms. NASA APOD 16-May-14
The short answer is: speak to your children in the language you know best. Oral language is the precursor to all literacy skills: - What you can think, you can say; - what you say you can write; - what you can write you can read. When parents ask me what language they should use with their children I consistently tell them to use the language they know best. Most of the time the parents are non-English speakers wondering if they should speak with their children using the little English they know. “No,” I tell them. When children are offered rich language in extended discourse they develop amazing vocabularies and complex sentences. If their caregivers offer them limited vocabulary and limited discourse that is what the children will develop. Because literacy skills transfer, the extended discourse will transfer once the children have the necessary vocabulary in the new language… but they can’t transfer what they do not know. - Speak to your children often and listen to their answers. - Have them tell you stories and ask follow-up questions. - Ask open ended questions (questions that require more than yes or no). - Ask them to explain more or tell you what that means. - Give them new vocabulary as you ask them questions and respond to their stories: - Child: I used that thing to cut cheese. - Adult: Oh, you used the cheese slicer. - Child: Yes, I used the cheese slicer and I cut a lot of cheese. - When you read with your children ask them questions such as: - What do you think will happen next? - Would you have done that? - How would you solve the problem? - Tell me the story - Talk, talk, talk! There is much research about the importance of oral language. Give your child the gift of language through conversation and story telling. Literacy creates justice!
The Parent’s Guide To Down Syndrome & Other Common Trisomies With March being Trisomy Awareness Month I can’t think of a better time than now to talk about trisomy, what it is, how it is diagnosed and what its potential implications are for expectant parents. So what is trisomy? Well, to answer that questions we have to take a quick trip back to high school genetics. All humans have 46 chromosomes arranged in 23 pairs. We get 23 chromosomes from mom and 23 from dad. The word trisomy refers to a condition in which there is a third copy (tri-) of a specific chromosome (-somy). There are many different trisomies and the particular syndrome that results depends upon which particular chromosome the affected individual has three copies of. The most commonly known trisomy is trisomy 21 (three copies of the 21st chromosome), much more commonly known as Down Syndrome. So why are we talking about trisomy? 1 in 100 (1% of) pregnancies will be affected by a trisomy, so the condition is not nearly as uncommon as people might think. Many trisomies result in early pregnancy loss (miscarriage) but a significant minority do result in live births. Can trisomy be prevented? In most cases, the short answer is no. Trisomy is a condition that occurs before conception (either the sperm or the egg has an extra chromosome) and there are no current therapies that can reverse or treat the condition once fertilization has occurred. The great majority of pregnancies affected by a trisomy will result in early (usually first trimester) miscarriage but many affected pregnancies do continue to term resulting in a live birth. The only way to prevent trisomy is IVF (in vitro fertilization), but even this does not “prevent” trisomy. Instead, it allows for only genetically healthy fetuses to be implanted due to pre-implantation genetic testing. Can trisomy be diagnosed during pregnancy?: Yes, there are a variety of tests and procedures that can be used to diagnose trisomy beginning early in a pregnancy. These tests include: - Cell free DNA testing: This is a relatively new and exciting technology because unlike other more invasive testing, cell free DNA testing only requires a maternal blood sample. Testing can be performed as early as the 10th week of pregnancy and it has the added benefit of being able to tell expectant parents the gender of their baby long before it could be determined by ultrasound. One drawback to cell free DNA testing is that it does not test for all trisomies, however, it does test for trisomy 13, 18 and 21 (and X and Y chromosome abnormalities), which are among the most common trisomies in live births. - First and second trimester screening: These screenings are also performed using maternal blood samples and they are performed between 10-12 weeks gestation (for the first trimester screen) and 15-18 weeks (for the second trimester screen). Both tests do have higher false positive’s (having an abnormal test result despite a normal fetus) than does Cell Free DNA testing but these tests are much less expensive and generally better covered by insurance companies. These tests can also detect neural tube defects (i.e. spina bifida) which cell free DNA technology cannot. First trimester screening is usually combined with a special ultrasound to evaluate the fetal neck and nasal bone (both of which can be abnormal in certain trisomy’s) and a full anatomical ultrasound is usually performed soon after the second trimester screen. - CVS (Chorionic Villus Sampling): This is an invasive technique that uses a needle placed through the abdomen or vagina to extract placental tissue that carries fetal DNA. CVS has the benefit of being very accurate but of all the testing techniques it has the highest complication rate with up to 2% of pregnancies being lost after testing. CVS testing can be done at 10 weeks of pregnancy, which is earlier than amniocentesis. - Amniocentesis: This is another invasive procedure that uses a needle to draw amniotic fluid through the mother’s abdomen. Because the fetus is “swimming” in the amniotic fluid, his or her cells slough off and can be extracted from the fluid. While invasive, amniocentesis is less risky than CVS, however, it can only be performed later in the pregnancy (as early as 15 weeks but more commonly at or after 18 weeks).
The April 5, 1909 edition of the Arizona Gazette featured an article entitled “Explorations in Grand Canyon: Remarkable finds indicate ancient people migrated from Orient.” According to the article, the expedition was financed by the Smithsonian Institute and discovered artifacts that would, if verified, stand conventional history on its ear. Inside a cavern “hewn in solid rock by human hands” were found tablets bearing hieroglyphics, copper weapons, statues of Egyptian deities and mummies. Although highly intriguing, the truth of this story is in doubt simply because the site has never been re-found. The Smithsonian disavows all knowledge of the discovery, and several expeditions searching for the cavern have come up empty-handed. Was the article just a hoax? “While it cannot be discounted that the entire story is an elaborate newspaper hoax,” writes researcher/explorer David Hatcher Childress, “the fact that it was on the front page, named the prestigious Smithsonian Institution, and gave a highly detailed story that went on for several pages, lends a great deal to its credibility. It is hard to believe such a story could have come out of thin air.” Age of the Pyramids and Sphinx Most Egyptologists believe the Great Sphinx on the Giza plateau is about 4,500 years old. But that number is just that – a belief, a theory, not a fact. As Robert Bauval says in “The Age of the Sphinx,” “there was no inscriptions – not a single one – either carved on a wall or a stela or written on the throngs of papyri” that associates the Sphinx with this time period. So when was it built? John Anthony West challenged the accepted age of the monument when he noted the vertical weathering on its base, which could only have been caused by long exposure to water in the form of heavy rains. In the middle of the desert? Where did the water come from? It so happens that this area of the world experienced such rains – about 10,500 years ago! This would make the Sphinx more than twice its currently accepted age. Bauval and Graham Hancock have calculated that the Great Pyramid likewise dates back to about 10,500 B.C. – predating the Egyptian civilization. This raises the questions: Who built them and why?
Misdiagnosis could potentially result in an inaccurate understanding of the prevalence of chikungunya, as well as chikungunya-dengue co-infection, with potential consequences for diagnosis, treatment and disease control. To address this problem and to investigate the current understanding of chikungunya-dengue co-distribution, the study created global maps that represent the geographical spread of both viruses, identifying their current geographical limits, as well as countries at risk of future infection. Chikungunya has very similar symptoms to the acute phase of dengue, which is a widespread viral infection in tropical and sub-tropical regions, and this often makes the diseases indistinguishable. These symptoms include fever, rash, muscle and joint pain. As there is no specific antiviral drug treatment or vaccine, treatment is directed primarily at alleviating symptoms. Misdiagnosis could have an effect on how the symptoms of each disease are relieved – potentially with serious consequences. More about the study The symptoms of dengue and chikungunya infections are similar and diagnoses are typically only symptom-based. The study is the first systematic review of dengue-chikungunya co-infection, which means that all of the available evidence from the peer-reviewed literature was gathered together. Laith Yakob, Lecturer in Disease Vector Biology and lead author of the study, said: “The symptoms of dengue and chikungunya infections are similar and diagnoses are typically only symptom-based. During dengue outbreaks, or in countries that historically suffer dengue epidemics, clinicians tend not to confirm their diagnosis in the laboratory; dengue infection is assumed. Co-infection is typically only detected during recognized chikungunya outbreaks and this reflects a widespread bias in how these diseases are reported.” More than half of the world’s population inhabits areas at risk of dengue infection. The researchers identified a total of 154 countries that reported dengue and 99 countries that reported chikungunya. Out of 98 countries which reported both diseases, 13 recorded co-infections. The distribution of disease vectors The researchers also investigated the distribution of disease vectors. The mosquito Aedes aegypti spreads both dengue and chikungunya and it is endemic to 174 countries. The species is highly anthropophilic – it prefers human blood to animal blood. Aedes albopictus, which also spreads both viruses, is adaptable to less extreme climates than Aedes aegypti. It has previously been shown to be susceptible to co-infection. The vector species that spread these pathogens – and also the Zika virus – are the same, yet the number of countries that have reported dengue cases is considerably higher than countries that have reported chikungunya. Laith Yakob said: “The vector species that spread these pathogens – and also the Zika virus – are the same, yet the number of countries that have reported dengue cases is considerably higher than countries that have reported chikungunya. Our study highlights that this may be an aberration caused by continuing and pervasive misdiagnosis of chikungunya as dengue.” Improved diagnostic tests are needed The researchers say that due to the similarity of symptoms between dengue and chikungunya, improved and inexpensive diagnostic tests are desperately needed. Additionally, clear protocols are needed for realistic and effective control procedures. Making the disease nationally notifiable would require outbreaks to be reported to authorities in countries at risk of transmission, as is already the case for dengue but not chikungunya in some countries, like Australia. As has previously been undertaken for dengue, developing early warning systems for chikungunya and dengue-chikungunya co-infection could further understanding of both diseases. Further study is needed to determine if infection with one virus makes a host more or less susceptible to infection with the other, or if co-infection exacerbates disease symptoms, which could not be confirmed in this study.
Philosophy of Mind came into its most compelling forms during the age of modern philosophy beginning with René Descartes. Perhaps infamously, Descartes claimed that mind and body are two distinct substances – philosophical jargon for what exists without the aid of any other thing. For Descartes, the world was clearly and distinctly physical in one sense and entirely mental in another. This seems perplexing, and Descartes did concede that the mind and body were closely intertwined and appeared to act with respect to one another, but his arguments clearly press that they are not causally connected in any way. These notions of dualism seem nearly preposterous with the advent of modern science, but were nonetheless important in developing our thought about the mind in the modern era. Dualism gave rise to other interesting, yet now strongly refuted movements. One of these was idealism, or the doctrine argued famously by George Berkeley that states that all that exists are either ‘ideas’ or minds that perceive them. In this sense, an idea is defined as that which is perceived, inclusive of information imprinted on the senses, passions and operations of the mind, and conceptions formed by imagination and memory. Importantly, Berkeley argues that these ideas exist ‘in the mind’ exclusively: that is, they are purely mental and all things are simply combinations and aggregations of ideas. These immaterial ‘ideas’ then, are the only objects of human knowledge under idealism, and this theory denies the existence of physical objects entirely! The notion seems preposterous, but there is a very interesting argument found within idealism that can throw our conception of perception for quite the proverbial loop. More
After much practice with identifying and analyzing types of questions, students are introduced to the next step: creating their own interpretive questions. See links of previous lessons: There are many ways to revise questions in order to make them interpretive. Even interpretive questions can be strengthened and clarified. Once students have converted their notes into questions, I encourage them to look it over and follow guidelines to edit and revise prior to beginning shard inquiry. First, most students are very comfortable asking factual questions. I show them how to turn their factual questions into interpretive just by a little tweaking. For example, one student wrote: "Does the fisherman's wife always want more stuff ?". This was a factual question that can be answered "yes". However, if we changed it to: "Why does the fisherman's wife always want more stuff ?", it becomes an interpretive question. I explain to students that interpretive questions have more than one answer. So, we tested it out. One student answered, "because she doesn't like the hut since she said it is too small for both of them." Another student added, "I think it is because she is bossy, so she likes to order her husband around. She just wants him out of the house, so she keeps sending him away." Both students answered this question differently and yet both answers can be supported by text. This meets our criteria for interpretive question. At this point, I ask students to convert their factual questions from their notes and tweak it to form interpretive questions. At the end of this activity, we share our conversions as we gather together to share our ideas. Some students have difficulty differentiating between interpretive and evaluative questions. Both are inferential questions, with different nuances. Evaluative questions require answers that requires both judgment based on personal experiences, values, or perceptions; and supports from text. Text-based evidence strengthens students' abilities to comprehend text and deepens comprehension. Common Core explicitly creates avenues for students to connect deeply with texts, even as they bring in outside information. Interpretive questions require text based evidence. For example, one student wrote: "What would you wish for if you were the fisherman ?" can be changed to: "Why didn't the fisherman make a wish when he first met the fish?" Although evaluative questions are excellent ways to engage students in shared inquiry discussions, it should only be used after students gain experience using interpretive questions. Otherwise, students need to understand the text first through interpretive questions prior to making connections with their own life experiences through evaluative questions. It is sequential. At this point, we explore their post it questions and Reading journal entries to tweak evaluative questions and revise them into interpretive questions. This is the final stage of revision. We review all our questions derived from our post it notes to check for vague questions. For example, one student wrote: " Why is the fisherman's wife so mean?" The word mean has many connotations. This question can be clarified by tying it to the character's motives. Also, students can cite incidents in the story to describe the word "mean". For example, "Why does the fisherman's wife send him back three times to the fish against his will ?" I encourage students to use words directly from the text. When students use their own words and not refer back to the text, they risk changing the meaning of the story and confusing their discussion group members. Students begin to look back into the text and clarify questions that are unclear or confusing. Once they are satisfied with their questions, we compile them together. I ask students to select two of their favorite questions and write it down on index cards. I select and write three student generated questions on sentence strips and place them in our pocket chart (See Source). One of the three questions will be selected for our Shared Inquiry discussion at our next lesson. We table our discussion for the following lesson.
Vomiting, also called “emesis”, is the act of expelling contents from the stomach through the mouth. There are multiple causes of vomiting. An occasional, infrequent isolated episode of vomiting is usually normal. Vomiting is a symptom that can be caused by disorders of the gastrointestinal system (stomach and/or intestines) or it can be secondary to a disease from a different system (such as from cancer, kidney failure, diabetes, or infectious diseases). This can make the diagnosis of the cause of the vomiting a challenge. Vomiting can be defined as acute (sudden onset) or chronic (longer duration of one to two weeks). It is important to consider the duration and frequency of the vomiting when evaluating the severity of the condition and diagnostic plan. The severity or concurrence of other signs will determine the recommendation for specific diagnostic tests to determine the underlying cause of the vomiting. Diagnosis and Treatment Notes: - The cause of vomiting may be diagnosed by a thorough history, physical examination, bloodwork, fecal examination for parasites, a parvo test, abdominal x-rays and/or abdominal ultrasound. In some situations, contrast x-rays (Barium series) or exploratory surgery may be required to diagnose the underlying cause of the vomiting. - Treatment depends on the severity of the disease, the underlying cause of the vomiting, your individual pet, and your veterinarian. Pets with vomiting may be treated by withholding food and water, fluids, antibiotics, and medications to reduce vomiting. For some diseases, endoscopy or surgery may be indicated. Discuss treatment details when your pet is diagnosed with this condition. What to Watch for*: - Blood in vomit - Weight loss - Ineffective vomiting - Abdominal pain Please notify us if you notice any of the above signs or if you have any questions!
The African elephant weighs between 4 and 6.5 tons. The smaller Asian elephant weighs between 3 and 4.59 tons. Male elephants are a bit larger than females elephants. The Asian elephant, which is found from India to Borneo, has much smaller ears than the African elephant. Only males have tusks, and in some Sri Lankan populations both males and females lack tusks. Asian elephant trunks have one finger-like projection, while African elephant trunks have two. Both Asian and African elephant herds are made up of females with their calves. Male elephants are ejected from the herd when they reach puberty.
The birds of the Galápagos 2009 was the bicentennial of the birth of Charles Darwin (1809–1882), most famous for his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859). Many of his ideas came from his voyage on HMS Beagle (1831–1836), and in particular his month-long stay in 1835 on the intriguing Archipiélago de Colón, better known as the Galápagos Islands, 972 km (604 miles) west of Ecuador. The strange variety of creatures on these islands fascinated Darwin, including the giant tortoises from which they derive their name (Spanish galápago, “saddle”—after the shells of saddlebacked Galápagos tortoises). But the creatures that allegedly provided inspiration for Darwin’s evolutionary ideas, and alleged disproof of creation, were the varieties of birds. The birds on the Galápagos Islands show an amazing adaptation to their environment, and provide excellent examples of the ability of animals to adapt to changing conditions. The flightless cormorant’s wings no longer function for flight, but it is able to swim and dive for prey better than its cousins who are still able to fly. The blue-footed, red-footed, and masked boobies show the variety of behaviours and appearances that can develop within the same kind. The 13 species of Galápagos finch show various beak sizes to be able to consume different foods, and even exhibit new behaviours.1 But are any of these variations examples of evolution? And how does the biblical creation model explain them? The flightless cormorant is the only variety of cormorant that lives on the Galápagos Islands, and is the only variety of cormorant that cannot fly. It has even been classified as a different genus; it is in the genus Nannopterum while all other cormorants belong to the genus Phalacrocorax. The changes that the flightless cormorant underwent are similar to that of other flightless birds; the keel on the breast bone which supports the muscles used for flight is much smaller, and its legs are much stronger than those of other cormorants. Not needing to use its wings for flight, its wings have deteriorated in ways that would have been eliminated in flying birds. For example, its feathers are softer and more hair-like, much like the feathers of other flightless birds.2 Since the flightless cormorants could not have swum from the mainland to the islands (it never ventures more than 100 m (330 ft) from shore while fishing), how did it arise? Darwin proposed that it developed from cormorants that had flown to the island, but whose descendants had lost this ability. Now we realize that this loss occurred through a mutation, or genetic copying mistake. Such a mutation would normally be harmful for a bird species, but may have been beneficial to the cormorants on that particular island.3 This would be similar to the case of flightless beetles on windy islands that are more likely to survive, while the beetles that can fly are more likely to be swept away.4 Or else it may simply have been a case of reduced selection pressure—with none of the mainland predators and plentiful food in the sea, loss of flight would be a less serious disadvantage, much like cave creatures that lose their sight over generations.5 However, this would not be an example of evolution; the mutation that caused the flightless cormorant to lose the ability to fly is an example of a loss of genetic information. Goo-to-you evolution would require changes that result in new genetic information. The name “booby” is likely a corruption of the Spanish bobo (clown or dunce), since it has an unusual dance and also their naïve landing on boats meant they could be captured easily.6 Boobies have forward-pointing eyes that give them stereoscopic vision (depth perception), and catch fish by spectacular plunge-diving from high in the air, hitting the water at 100 km/h (60 mph). It is easy to tell males and females apart by their sounds: males make a hoarse whistle while females croak.7 They incubate their eggs by warming them with their feet, which have an increased blood supply, and the chicks keep warm by standing on their parents’ feet for the first month. There are three varieties on the Galápagos: the blue-footed, red-footed, and masked boobies. They are all members of the same family, and are not only different in appearance but also in behaviours. The blue-footed and red-footed boobies mate throughout the year, while the masked boobies have an annual mating cycle that differs from island to island. All catch fish in a similar manner, but in different areas—the blue-footed booby does its fishing close to shore, while the masked booby goes slightly farther out, and the red-footed booby fishes at the farthest distances from shore. They also have different nesting environments. The blue-footed booby nests on the rocks close to shore, the masked booby nests on high cliffs, and the red-footed booby nests in trees. Because of their different nesting and fishing sites, there is very little competition between the three species.6,7 The bright foot colours are caused by both pigment (yellow carotenoids, like those that cause the orange of carrots) and structure (collagen fibres just beneath the skin). The different appearances are nothing more than varieties originally within a kind. They likely act as mate recognition signals, to attract mates of similar behaviours. Also, male foot brightness changes quickly with the state of his health, a helpful indicator to females seeking a mate.8 The Galápagos finches are more famous than the other two families of birds, and are commonly cited as a prime example of evolution; indeed, the example that allegedly inspired Darwin’s theory. Darwin postulated that all the varieties of finches, with varying beaks suited for their different food sources, were all descended from the same sort of finch and the different varieties of finch arose over time.9 This was actually reasonable. Suppose some finches with the genetic information for a wide variety of beaks came to the islands in a storm, and that some were on an island where the main food source was hard seeds. Birds with genes for thick and strong beaks could cope with them better, so would be better fed, and thus more likely to leave offspring. But birds on an island with few seeds but lots of grubs would do better with longer and thinner beaks, so they could poke deeper into the ground and pull out their prey. This is indeed an example of adaptation and natural selection. But note that it actually removes genes from the populations—on seed-rich islands with few grubs, information for long, slender beaks would likely be lost; while the information for thick, strong beaks would be lost on grub-rich (seed-poor) islands (see diagram right). So this change is in the opposite direction from goo-to-you evolution, which requires new genes with new information.10 It can hardly be over-emphasized: natural selection is not evolution;11 indeed, natural selection was discovered by creationists before Darwin,12 and is now an important part of the biblical creation model. Darwin beats compromised creation, loses to biblical creation An evolutionary propagandist book from the US National Academy of Sciences is typical: “Darwin could not see how these observations could be explained by the prevailing view of his time: that each species had been independently created, with the species that were best suited to each location on the earth being created at each particular site.”13 However, this was not the biblical view; rather, it is a view akin to the progressive creationist view of the likes of Hugh Ross.14 This was the result of a prior capitulation to millions of years, which was due to an a priori rejection of the biblical Flood.15According to the biblical model, the Flood destroyed the whole earth, which was repopulated from animals dispersing from the Ark in the mountains of Ararat. So biblical creationists would expect animals on the Galápagos Islands to have arrived from mainland South America, and expect island creatures to be varieties of the mainland creatures. Biblical creationists would also predict rapid formation of new varieties and even species. This is derived from the fact that many modern varieties of land vertebrates must have come from comparatively few animals that disembarked from the Ark only 4,500 years ago. In contrast, Darwin thought that such a process would take a very long time. But an 18-year study by zoologist Peter Grant indicated that variation was rapid enough for a new species to arise in only 200 years,16 which is inadvertent support for the biblical creation model.17,18 And sometimes variation seems to be cyclic—while a drought resulted in a slight increase in beak size, the change was reversed when the rains returned. So it fits with built-in adaptability to various climatic conditions rather than Darwinian evolution. Thus compromise with millions of years was not only an appeasement that allowed Darwin to make further inroads into biblical authority, it also hindered the development of coherent models.19 - The birds of the Galápagos show remarkable variety. - Some of the variety is due to information loss through mutation and natural selection. - Churchian compromise with millions of years led to an easy target for Darwin, and hindered the development of a credible creation model. References and notes - For example, there’s even a ‘vampire’ finch—it has taken to using its sharp beak to prick the skin of boobies and lap up the blood. Catchpoole, D., Vampire finches of the Galápagos, Creation 29(3):52–55, 2007; <creation.com/vampirefinch>. Return to text. - Flightless cormorant, <people.rit.edu/rhrsbi/GalapagosPages/Cormorant.html>, 21 October 2008. Return to text. - Wieland, C., Darwin’s Eden, Creation 27(3):10–15, 2005; <creation.com/darwin_eden>. Return to text. - Wieland, C., Beetle bloopers: even a defect can be an advantage sometimes, Creation 19(3):30, 1997; <creation.com/beetle>. Return to text. - Wieland, C., Let the blind see breeding blind fish with blind fish restores sight, Creation 30(4): 54–55, 2008; Sarfati, J., Christopher Hitchens blind to salamander reality, <creation.com/hitchens>, 26 July 2008. Return to text. - Blue-footed boobies, <www.geo.cornell.edu/geology/GalapagosWWW/BlueFoot.html>, Cornell University, 21 October 2008. Return to text. - Boobies, <people.rit.edu/rhrsbi/GalapagosPages/Boobies.html>, 21 October 2008. Return to text. - At least in the blue-footed booby—see Velando, A., Beamonte-Barrientos, R. and Torres, R., Pigment-based skin colour in the blue-footed booby: an honest signal of current condition used by females to adjust reproductive investment, Oecologia 149(3):535–542, 2006. Return to text. - Cromie, W., How Darwin’s finches got their beaks, Harvard Gazette, <www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/08.24/31-finches.html>, 24 August 2006. Return to text. - Wieland, C., The evolution train’s a-comin (Sorry, a-goin in the wrong direction), Creation 24(2):16–19, 2002; <creation.com/train>. Return to text. - Wieland, C., Muddy waters: clarifying the confusion about natural selection, Creation 23(3):26–29, 2001; <creation.com/muddy>. Return to text. - Grigg, R., Darwin’s illegitimate brainchild, Creation 26(2):39–41, 2004; <creation.com/brainchild>. Return to text. - Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science, National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC, USA, 1998. Return to text. - See Sarfati, J., Refuting Compromise: A biblical and scientific refutation of progressive creationism (billions of years) as popularized by astronomer Hugh Ross, Master Books, Arkansas, USA, 2004. Return to text. - See Mortenson, T., The Great Turning Point: The Church’s catastrophic mistake on geology—before Darwin, Master Books, Arkansas, USA, 2004. Return to text. - Grant, P.R., Natural selection and Darwin’s finches, Scientific American 265(4):60–65, October 1991. Return to text. - Wieland, C., Darwin’s finches: Evidence supporting rapid post-Flood adaptation, Creation 14(3):22–23, 1992; <creation.com/finches>. Return to text. - Wieland, C., Review of J. Weiner’s Book: The Beak of the Finch: Evolution in Real Time, Journal of Creation 9(1):21–24, 1995; <creation.com/beak_finch>. Return to text. - Sarfati, J., Chamberlain and the Church, Creation 30(4):42–44, 2008; <creation.com/chamberlain>. Return to text.
05 - Cities, Economy, and Class unit vocab Terms in this set (15) the system of organizing society in which people are divided into sets based on social or economic status the activity of buying and selling of goods and services cost of living the amount of money needed to sustain a certain level of living including basic expenses like housing, food, taxes, and health care. shared understanding of behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that are passed along generationally through imitation or communication. data breaking down the characteristics of the populations of particular groups within society. the system of producing and trading goods and services a social group that shares common national or cultural traditions range of characteristics including body, identity, and sexual expression that make up an individual's concept of themselves the basic facilities and structures that help a society operate. This could include roads, buildings, power supplies, ports, etc. the mathematical average value of numbers in a particular set the middle number in an particular set that has been arranged in an ascending or descending order biological characteristics differentiating between male and female the ability to change in social class for individuals or groups the arrangement or classification of something into different groups. a percentage that is used to compare the earnings of 2 different groups of people. This is calculated by dividing the median annual earnings for one group by the median annual earnings of another. OTHER SETS BY THIS CREATOR Months, days, seasons, etc. - JC 07 - History of Women and Feminism Vocab Body parts Spanish / español - JC Complex Economic Indicators unit vocab THIS SET IS OFTEN IN FOLDERS WITH... 01 - Geography terms - Foundations South America basic geography - JC Asia basic geography - JC Africa Geography Study Map - jc
Although comparing the GDP of different countries is naturally problematic due to various cultural differences, there are two main difficulties that arise; there is no common legal tender, necessitating currency conversion, and the GDP is only a rough reflection of a population’s true measure of how well or how poorly a person or group of people live in terms of having their needs and wants met (“Standard of living dictionary definition,” n.d.), (“OpenStax CNX,” n.d.). A society’s standard of living combined with quality of life supports the human development index, which Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq created in 1990 (Bennett, 2016). The human development index emphasizes that people and their capabilities should be the final criteria for assessing the development of a country, not economic growth alone (“Other resources,” n.d.). Variations include differences in the distribution of income, currency conversion and difficulty assessing the true value of public goods like defense and transport infrastructure as well as merit goods, such as healthcare and education (Online et al., 1971). For a comparison of gross domestic product of different countries, issues of currency and the human development index must be addressed. Measuring GDP means counting up the production of millions of different goods and services resulting in a total dollar value. These products include everything from cell phones to cars. When GDP is expressed in common currency, comparisons can be made with each country’s GDP per capita by dividing GDP by population. Purchasing power parity conversion factor is the number of units of a country’s currency required to buy the same amount of goods and services in the domestic market as a U.S. dollar would buy in the United States. The price level ratio of PPP conversion factor (GDP) to market exchange rate of various countries can be found in the Data table of the World Bank (“Data,” 2016). Large GDPs associated with large populations can be misleading (“OpenStax CNX,” n.d.). Many goods are under the radar of governmental control, such as services rendered in the so-called ‘hidden economy’; to avoid tax, transactions may go unrecorded and excluded from official statistics (Online et al., 1971). Raw GDP data does not reflect things like leisure, and the values different societies place on products. GDP statistics can be re-calculated in terms of purchasing power, referring to the quantity of the currency needed to purchase a given unit of a good or common basket of goods and services. Purchasing power is determined by the relative cost of living and inflation rates in different countries (Online et al., 1971). Countries have differences in the hours worked to reach a certain level of income, variation in international prices as well as difficulty of assessing true values of public goods. A more realistic measure of gross domestic production involves the human-development-index, which takes into account a summary measure of average accomplishment in key dimensions of human growth: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and having an adequate standard of living. The HDI is the geometric mean of normalized indices for each dimension. Raw data does not take into account the human element of economic growth. The HDI uses the logarithm of income, to show the diminishing importance of income with increasing gross national income. The scores for the three HDI dimension indices are then aggregated into a composite index using geometric mean (“Other resources,” n.d.). Human development plays an important part in the growth of any economy; availability of basic human needs, such as food and shelter, support the well-being of a society, and thus a growing gross domestic product. As can be seen, comparing the GDP of different countries has difficulties related to differences in currencies, requiring conversions according to the World Bank database, as well as living standards. Gross domestic production growth is dependent upon more than simple statistics; the intention of the human-development-index is to emphasize that people and their capabilities should be the final criteria for assessing the development of a country. Comparisons of the economic growth of a country are to be measured in more than just raw numbers. Disclaimer: This essay has been submitted by a student. This is not an example of the work written by our professional essay writers. You can order our professional work here. Sorry, copying is not allowed on our website. If you’d like this or any other sample, we’ll happily email it to you. Your essay sample has been sent. Want us to write one just for you? We can custom edit this essay into an original, 100% plagiarism free essay.Order now
The peso is the official currency of Chile. It has circulated in two incarnations since 1817. This decimal currency can be subdivided into 100 centavos. However, denominations under one peso are no longer circulated. All currency in Chile is regulated by the Central Bank of Chile, an autonomous institution created under the Chilean constitution that is the sole authority in all of the country’s monetary matters. The first Chilean peso was introduced in 1817 with a value on par with the Spanish 8-real. Until 1835, the peso was divisible into eighths, and a higher currency worth 2 pesos called the escudo was common. In 1835, centavos were introduced but reales and escudos continued to be used until 1851. In that same year, the Chilean peso was put on the silver standard and valued at 1 peso: 5 French francs, which equalled 22.5 grams of pure silver. Chile also circulated gold coins in the late 19th century, but they were on a parallel gold standard whereby 1 peso equalled 1.37 grams of gold. By contrast, 5 French francs were valued at 1.45 grams gold. This dual-metal standard was abandoned in 1885 in favour of a peg to the British pound sterling, which was on the gold standard at the time. The Central Bank of Chile was established in 1925 with the goal of bringing the economy of Chile into the modern economic world. The mind behind the establishment of the bank was that of Edwin Kemmerer, a professor of economics at Princeton University. In addition to creating the bank, Kemmerer also helped write and pass modern monetary, banking and budgeting legislation for Chile. The Central Bank began with only 150 million pesos in capital. In 1960, Chile’s Foreign Exchange Commission merged into the Central Bank, expanding the bank’s power and duties. In the same year, the peso was replaced as the official currency of Chile, with the new currency, the escudo, valued at 1000 pesos. The escudo remained Chile’s national currency for 15 years, but rapid devaluation called for the introduction of a new currency. The new Chilean peso was introduced in 1975 at a value of 1 new peso: 1000 escudos. The value of the Chilean peso was in a slow but steady decline from 1975 to 1994. It then stabilized for three years before continuing to devalue. In 2002, the value of the Chilean peso began a steady increase in value.
THREE TRILLION TREES ON EARTH (P1) There are just over three trillion trees on Earth, according to a new study. (P2) The figure is eight times as big as the previous best ESTIMATE, which counted perhaps 400 billion at most. (P3) It has been produced by Thomas Crowther from Yale University and his colleagues, who combined a MASS of ground survey data with satellite pictures. (P4) The team tells the journal Nature that the new total represents UPWARDS of 420 trees for every person on the planet. (P5) Dr Crowther CAUTIONED that the higher number did not of itself change anything: “It’s not like we’ve discovered new trees. (P6) “So, it’s not good news for the world or bad news that we’ve produced this new number. (P7) “We’re simply describing the state of the global forest system in numbers that people can understand and that scientists can use, and that environmental PRACTITIONERS or POLICY-makers can understand and use.” (P10) This then ENABLED Dr Crowther and his group to build a model that better characterised what they were seeing in satellite pictures, which are very good at showing forest EXTENT but are not so good at REVEALING just how many individual trees there are. (P11) Of their approximately 3,040,000,000,000 trees, the scientists put most (1.39 trillion) in the tropics and sub-tropics, 0.61 trillion in TEMPERATE regions, and 0.74 trillion in the BOREAL FORESTS – that great band of CONIFERS that circles the globe just below the Arctic. (P12) Indeed, it is in the boreal forests that they say the greatest densities are seen. (P13) What is ABUNDANTLY clear from the study is the influence humans now have on the number of trees on Earth. The team estimates we are removing about 15 billion a year, with perhaps only five billion being planted back. (P14) “The net loss is about a third of a percent of the current number of trees globally,” said co-author Dr Henry Glick. (P17) And as if to emphasise this point, a comparison with estimates of ANCIENT forest cover suggests that humanity could have already removed almost three trillion trees since the last ice age, some 11,000 years ago. (P18) “Europe used to be almost covered by one giant forest and now it’s almost entirely fields and grasslands. Humans are absolutely controlling tree densities,” Dr Crowther told BBC News. If you found the passage difficult to read or had problems understanding specific words or idiomatic expressions, please discuss them with your tutor. The following discussion questions should be answered in your own words and with your own arguments. - Briefly summarize the content of the article in your own words. - Parks with trees are important features of most cities. Why are trees important to people’s health? - What is your favorite type of tree? - Have you ever lived on a property with trees? - Do you enjoy going to the forest to hike and camp? EXPRESSIONS TO PRACTICE: What do the following expressions mean? Practice using each expression in a sentence; extra points if you can use it in conversation. - Peer review - Land use
D. Goulson, W.O.H. Hughes Volume 191, November 2015, Pages 10–19 The Editors of Biological Conservation have selected this article as their must-read choice for November. The article is free to download until 1 January 2016. Richard Primack elaborates on this selection with: “As the authors describe in this article, the spread of parasites from domestic bees used to pollinate crops to wild bees, often with devastating consequences, could be reduced by stricter controls on the transportation of bees and better hygiene practices.” Bees naturally suffer from a broad range of parasites, including mites, protozoans, bacteria, fungi and viruses. Some appear to be host-specific, but most appear able to infect multiple bee species, and some are found in insects outside of the Hymenoptera. The host range, natural geographic range and virulence in different hosts are poorly understood for most bee parasites. It is of considerable concern that the anthropogenic movement of bees species for crop pollination purposes has led to the accidental introduction of bee parasites to countries and continents where they do not naturally occur, exposing native bees to parasites against which they may have little resistance. In at least one instance, that of the South American bumble bee Bombus dahlbomii, this has led to a catastrophic population collapse. The main bees that are moved by man are the western honeybee, Apis mellifera, and two species of bumble bee, the EuropeanBombus terrestris and the North American Bombus impatiens. We propose a range of mitigation strategies that could greatly reduce the risk of further impacts of the commercial bee trade on global bee health, including stricter controls on international movement of bees and improved hygiene and parasite screening of colonies before and after shipping. Photo Credit: John Kimbler.
Cellular respiration is the process by which cells convert nutrients into the energy that is used to power a variety of functions like transportation, locomotion, and the synthesization of macromolecules. The job of cellular respiration is to form adenosine triphosphate, a molecule used for energy. How does this transition between nutrients and adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, take place? What are the steps of cellular respiration? When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. – Marcus Aurelius The Balanced Chemical Equation (Formula) For Cellular Respiration The balanced equation (formula) that represents cellular respiration is: C6H12O6 + 6O2 → 6CO2 + 6H2O + 38 ATP This formula could also be read as: Glucose + oxygen –> water + carbon dioxide + energy Essentially, this means that in cellular respiration glucose and oxygen are transformed to make water, carbon dioxide, and energy. Your body is utilizing the oxygen you breathe in as well as the food you eat to produce energy. \|4 Stages Of Cellular Respiration\| \|Glycolysis (The breakdown of glucose)\| \|Electron transport chain, or ETC\| The oxygen you breathe in breaks down the sugars from your food and produces heat energy, similar to burning wood to release energy. In cellular respiration, the oxygen is used to break down the sugar, the energy of the sugar is released, and as a byproduct carbon dioxide is produced. The released energy is stored in your cells for later use. Some of the ATP used by cells comes directly from the reactions that caused the transformation of glucose. However, a large amount of ATP is produced later on during a phase of cellular respiration called oxidative phosphorylation. The process of aerobic respiration (aerobic meaning that it uses oxygen) is divided into four separate steps. Oxidative phosphorylation can be thought of as the final step of the cellular respiration process. \|Cellular Respiration Reactants\|\|Cellular Respiration Products\| \|Oxygen (6O2)\|\|Water (6H2O)\| \|Glucose (C6H12O6)\|\|Carbon Dioxide (6CO2)\| \|Energy (38 ATP)\| The Stages of Cellular Respiration The four stages of cellular respiration are glycolysis, pyruvate oxidation, the citric acid cycle, and oxidative phosphorylation. Glycolysis is the step where glucose is converted into other molecules through a number of chemical transformations. It takes place in the cytosol of cells, and it can actually function with or without oxygen. Glucose is a sugar with six carbons, and in aerobic respiration, glucose is converted into two pyruvate molecules. When the molecules of pyruvate are oxidized they produce two NADH, which helps carry electrons to other reactions, as well as two molecules of ATP. Pyruvate oxidation happens when the pyruvate enters the mitochondrial matrix, which is the innermost part of the mitochondria (the structure of cells that produces energy). In the mitochondrial matrix, the pyruvate is bonded with Coenzyme A, and transformed into a two-carbon molecule. This new structure is known as “acetyl CoA”. This process generates NADH and releases carbon dioxide. The citric acid cycle (also known as the Krebs cycle or the tricarboxylic acid cycle) is where the acetyl CoA that was produced in the last step is combined with a molecule of oxaloacetic acid. This forms a molecule of citric acid, which undergoes a complex cycle of reactions. The final step in this cycle creates a molecule of oxaloacetic acid so the cycle can start again. During the cycle, carbon dioxide is released and NADH, FADH2, and ATP are produced. The electrons in NADH and FADH2 are sent to the electron transport chain. During the oxidative phosphorylation step, the molecules of NADH and FADH2 that were created during the other steps drop their electrons in the electron transport chain. This means that they are no longer loaded with electrons, reducing down to their simpler forms, NAD+, and FAD. The electrons then move across the transport chain, which releases energy. This process pushes protons out of the mitochondrial matrix, which forms a gradient. The protons return to the matrix via an enzyme called ATP synthase, which as it sounds, makes ATP. Finally, the electron transport chain ends when oxygen accepts the electrons and bonds with protons, forming water. How Much ATP Is Made? How much ATP is generated by this process overall? Most ATP is actually generated through the proton gradient that is created in the inner mitochondrial matrix. Oxidative phosphorylation could generate around 26-28 units of ATP, and substrate phosphorylation could generate around 4 to 6 more. However, preparation for glycolysis also consumes a bit of ATP, meaning that in actuality the total yield for the process is likely to be around 30 units of ATP. Anaerobic Respiration and Fermentation All of the above processes assume that enough oxygen is available for the process of aerobic respiration. If oxygen is not available, what will happen instead is “anaerobic respiration”, a form of which is fermentation? Aerobic respiration is vastly more efficient than anaerobic respiration, producing around 18 times the amount of energy than fermentation does. By contrast, the process of fermentation will only produce a little ATP (2 units) and sometimes lactic acid. During fermentation, the ATP is only extracted via the glycolysis pathway. The pyruvate that is created in glycolysis does not continue to go through the rest of the process, skipping oxidation and the citric acid cycle. It also doesn’t go through the electron transport chain. Due to the fact that the electron transport chain isn’t functioning, NADH cannot drop its electrons there and reduce to NAD+. There are instead a couple extra reactions in fermentation which exist to create NAD+ from the NADH that was produced via glycolysis. This is accomplished by letting NADH use an organic molecule like pyruvate to drop the electrons it is carrying, and the ensured supply of NAD+ means that glycolysis can keep functioning. Certain cells can do what is known as “lactic acid fermentation”. This process has NADH transfer any electrons it has to pyruvate molecules, meaning that lactate is generated as a byproduct. The kinds of bacteria that create yogurt carry out this process of lactic acid fermentation, but so do cells in your body. Your red blood cells and muscle cells can do lactic acid fermentation. In the case of your red blood cells, it is necessary for them to be able to do lactic acid fermentation because they don’t have mitochondria and thus cannot perform aerobic cellular respiration. Your muscle cells will only do lactic acid fermentation when under strain after they have been used to exercise very hard and the oxygen that was present has already been used up. The lactic acid that is created by the muscle cells is then carried to the liver by the bloodstream. In the liver, it is converted back in pyruvate to be handled normally by cellular respiration. The ability of cells to respirate and create energy is what allows them to carry out complex tasks. Thanks to this ability cells can form the wide variety of organisms we see in the world.
The Internet of Things is taking the world by storm – but what is it exactly? In this blog article, we explain the Internet of Things in depth, explore the numerous devices, architectures, and applications in this exciting emerging area. What is IoT? The Internet of things is defined as a paradigm in which objects equipped with sensors, actuators, and processors communicate with each other to serve a meaningful purpose. IoT could also be looked at as simply an interaction between the physical and digital world. Once stand-alone devices and applications now have the potential to be connected to a network through sensors, actuators, processors, and transceivers. Actuators and sensors are devices that enable interaction with the physical world. For example, Moti is an actuator. Moti creates smart motors and apps for robots. Attach the smart motor to anything, add power, and Moti gives you the ability to control the item from your desktop browser. Actuators are devices that are used to manipulate the physical environment, such as the temperature control valves used in smart homes. Actuators take electrical input and transforms the input into tangible action. These technologies collect a high amount of data, which can be very valuable and useful to an enterprise once it has been stored, organized, and processed. Simply put, IoT isn’t just one technology – but a combination of various deeply connected technologies. Many challenges come with the data collection, handling, communication, and processing of the data. These IoT devices collect a high amount of information, and it is up to the end user to decide which data is relevant for their situation, which places to process or store it, and the desired communication level. Storage, pre-processing, and processing of data can be done on a remote server or on the edge of the network itself. Sensors, actuators, compute servers, and the communication network forms the core infrastructure of an IoT Framework. At times, other pieces of technology are needed such as middleware. Middleware is software that acts as a bridge between an operating system or database and applications, especially on a network. Middleware can be used to connect and manage all autonomous IoT components. The Three-Layer Architecture of an IoT-System Layer one consists of wireless sensors and actuators. Layer two includes the addition of sensor data aggregation systems and analog-to-digital data conversion. In layer 3, the data is fed to or used to improve an application. Layer 1: Physical Sensors collect data from the environment or object under measurement and turn it into useful data. This stage of the IoT is expanding rapidly, with robotic camera systems, water level detectors, home voice controllers, air quality sensor, smart baby monitoring devices, etc. All of these devices will collect user data, including sign-on times, level and hours of usage, location statistics, etc. As these devices produce an avalanche of data, it will be important to your organization to choose which data is useful to you and which can be ignored. Enterprises can expect a surge in data velocity, and with that surge, organizations will benefit from moving their data into the cloud. Some data should be processed immediately, i.e., time-sensitive data – threat detection, immediate crash statistics, abrupt shutdowns, etc. Otherwise, data that will undergo deep processing and analyzation should be pushed directly to the cloud, to avoid network clutter. Layer 2: Network Data collected from the sensors or actuators is very raw. This data has to be aggregated and converted into digital streams for further data processing. To carry out this data processing, it is imperative to use a data acquisition system (DAS or DAQ). Data acquisition is the process of sampling signals that measure real world physical conditions and converting the resulting samples into digital numeric values that can be manipulated by a computer. Data acquisition systems typically convert analog waveforms into digital values for processing. The DAS connects to the sensor network, aggregates outputs, and performs the analog-to-digital conversion. The Internet gateway receives the aggregated and digitized data and routes it over Wi-Fi, wired LANs, or the Internet, to Stage 3 systems for further processing. Layer 3: Application This layer is responsible for delivering application specific services to the user. Once data has been aggregated, cleaned, and surveyed, the information can be fed to the server to be analyzed and applied to new products and services.
Strabismus is the medical term for any eye misalignment. Pseudostrabismus refers to a false appearance of strabismus caused by an optical illusion. [See figure 1]. Fig. 1: Most often in pseudostrabismus, the eye(s) have the false appearance of turning inward. Why do some children's eyes look crossed? The skin folds at the inner corner of the eyelids are called epicanthal folds and can be broad in some babies. This is often associated with a broad flat nasal bridge. These features contribute to a crossed eye appearance since there is less sclera (white surface of the eye) exposed nasally compared to the temporal side. This is especially noticeable in pictures and when the child looks to the side. When the child looks to either side it creates the optical illusion that the eye turning inward appears to be much further into the nose than it should be. How does a doctor determine if a child has true strabismus or pseudostrabismus? The Eye MD has several tests to determine if a real strabismus is present. A simple test is to shine a light onto both eyes and determine where the light reflects on the surface of the eyes. The light should fall on the center of each pupil at the same time. If a true strabismus is present the light reflexes do not fall on the same position of each eye. A more detailed test that is more sensitive to tiny deviations is called a cover test. The eyes are alternately covered while the fixation of each eye is monitored. If either eye has to move to fixate a strabismus is present. A complete eye exam should also be performed to rule out potential causes of true strabismus such as unequal vision (amblyopia) or high refractive error (hyperopia/far-sightedness). Positive Angle Kappa Another form of pseudostrabismus is known as a Positive Angle Kappa. This occurs when the light reflection is not centered over the pupil when the eye is looking at the light. Instead the light reflection is nasal to the center. This gives the appearance that the eye is deviated outwards. There is no movement with the cover test. This is another example of pseudostrabismus. Why is it important to differentiate pseudostrabismus from true strabismus? True strabismus in a child can lead to permanent vision loss and is best treated early. If a child is suspected of having strabismus, an Eye MD evaluation is important. It may be difficult for a pediatrician to differentiate between true strabismus and pseudostrabismus. What is the treatment of pseudostrabismus? Pseudostrabismus does not require treatment and the appearance tends to improve with time as facial features mature. Asian children may retain a broad nasal bridge into adulthood. It is important to remember that a baby with pseudostrabismus might develop a real strabismus later in life.
MIRADOR BASIN, GUATEMALA – New findings show that the Mayans engineered a series of superhighways that rivaled Roman roads. The network of roads dates back to 600 BC, almost five hundred years before any engineer in ancient Italy first paved the roads that led to Rome. The roads trace through 150 miles of Guatemalan jungle, right in the heart of the cradle of Mayan civilization: the Mirador Basin. El Mirador, or the Kan Kingdom, was the largest and most powerful pre-Colombian settlement in Central America. It covered a staggering 833 square miles – the size of New York City and Los Angeles combined – and was home to over a million people. The Mirador Basin is the largest stretch of virgin tropical forest still left in Central America. In 1967, British archaeologists and Mayanist Ian Graham published a map of the basin, tracing these ancient causeways. This year, archaeologists working with the Mirador Basin Project, led by archaeologist and anthropologist Richard D. Hansen with University of Utah, have used new technology to scan the forest floor and provide detailed, 3-D scans of the roads. This technology is called LiDAR. It’s a radar technology that allows archaeologists to now slice through the thick jungle canopy and see what’s beneath without ever felling a tree. “[The technology] uses laser pulses that bounce from the Earth’s surface through leaves and back to a computer mounted in a plane,” Arlen Chase, archaeologist at the University of Nevada, explained. “While most people felt the technology would not be successful based on past experiments in Central America, we became convinced by 2006 that it could be used to determine what was on the ground in terms of Maya sites under the jungle canopy. The results were beyond our wildest expectations.” Arlan Chase is one of the researchers working with the Mirador Basin Project. Ancient SuperhighwaysDr. Richard D. Hansen described what they found: “These causeways are 130 feet wide, up to 20 feet high and in some cases they extend as far as 25 miles.” In short: extremely intricate, cleverly engineered superhighways that crisscrossed the Mayan jungle. The architectural feat is alone astounding, but according to Dr. Hansen, these causeways have a much deeper meaning for archaeologists and historians. “The creation of these causeways allowed unification of what appears to be the first state-level society in the Western Hemisphere.” – Dr. Richard D. Hansen. There’s another bit of architecture that the new radar system picked up that has archaeologists sitting back in awe: a complex of corrals, pastures, stables, and slaughterhouses. Researchers with the Mirador Basin Project now believe that the Mayans were processing meat at an industrial level, not unlike we do today. They would have used their massive superhighways to transport meat, cattle, and other various asundry goods between different areas of El Mirador. “The causeways allowed transport of food, materials, tribute, rulers, armies and all the trappings of political, economic and social complexity. The system is similar to the autobahn system in Germany, or the freeway system in the U.S., and allows unification, homogeneity of society and permits the administration of centralized government,” Dr. Hansen said. It’s an incredible discovery – the roads and the near-industrial meat production facilities alike. As the team of researchers investigate further over the course of this next year, they’re hoping that their finds will help them figure out why the Mirador Basin eventually declined. Over 34 universities and institutions worldwide are attempting to decipher what happened to the Mirador Basin after 150 A.D., when the civilization suddenly fell into ruin. It’s a mystery that still lies beneath the jungle floor, but a mystery that we’re one step closer to unraveling.
Practical life exercises are the basis of the Montessori environment. Not only do they promote concentration, but they help children grow in independence and develop a spirit of friendliness and helpfulness. Life Exercises include many familiar objects – buttons, brushes, dishes, pitchers, water, and a variety of other things that the child recognizes from his home environment. Although these activities may seem simple and commonplace, they actually form an integral part of the Montessori program. Each task helps students to perfect coordination, enabling him to incorporate more intricate academic materials as he progresses. - Manipulative Skills: pouring, carrying, and sorting containers/books - Self-Development Skills: social graces, courtesy, and personal care - Caring for the Environment: sweeping, washing, dusting, and polishing Sensorial Materials teach children to recognize what they see. Equipment is designed to refine the senses, helping children learn to compare, contrast, and distinguish between objects. Each of the sensorial materials isolates a defining quality, such as color, weight, shape, texture, size, sound, smell, etc. At Alpine Montessori in Sparta and Oak Ridge, we use the Open Court phonics system along with the Montessori Method. We use the Lippincott Shapebook and Letterbook series. The reading skills that children acquire will make future days in school a rich, productive, and enjoyable experience. To be able to write, a child must develop a two-fold skill. They must commit to memory the shape of the letters and their corresponding sounds, and develop the muscular skills necessary for using a pencil with control. In our classrooms, we also use sandpaper letters and a movable alphabet to assist in learning letters and sounds. Metal Insets are also used in the classroom to develop pencil control. These two skills are combined together to aid in learning to write. A child must commit to memory the shape of the letters and their corresponding sounds and develop the muscular skill necessary for using a pencil with control. Word-building exercises are used; e.g., matching words and pictures. As part of our daily program, we include activities that introduce students to several foreign languages, such as Spanish, Italian, Japanese and American Sign Language. Oak Ridge: Spanish, Italian Sparta: Spanish, Japanese, ASL Children build up their concept of numbers and their ability to concentrate through the manipulation of concrete materials. Dr. Montessori designed these concrete materials to represent all types of quantities after she observed that children who becomes interested in counting likes to touch or move the items as they enumerate them. In a Montessori environment, children not only sees the symbol for 1, 1000 or ½, they can also hold each of the corresponding quantities in their hands. Later, by combining this equipment, separating it, sharing it, counting it, and comparing it, they can demonstrate the basic operations of math. Puzzle maps help children to visualize their world. Children are encouraged to become aware of their own culture, as well as to be accepting of others. Through these maps, children learn geographical skills such as the names of countries and information about them. From botany and zoology puzzles to card games and booklets, our wide range of science activities will broaden children’s awareness of the world around them. Students will carry out various science experiments in the classroom, helping each child to become more observant of environmental concerns and characteristics. An art easel is provided in the classroom and available each day for children’s individual use. Numerous art projects are incorporated into our program throughout the year.
Equivalent fractions represent the same ratio, even though they may look different. As with many concepts in math, a good way to practice identifying equivalent fractions is by playing games. Lots of games exist that you can use to develop this skill and fortunately, you can adapt them for different skill levels. You can play matching games on the computer or by using index cards. Give students a set of three pairs of fractions and ask them to identify the pair that is equivalent. The fractions could be represented visually, as partially shaded circles, or in number form. The student either clicks on the matching pair or selects the two matching index cards to move on to the next set. Play equivalent fraction bingo as a class: Select a student to write a fraction on the board -- either a number or a shaded circle, depending on how well the class grasps the concept. Students then search their boards to find and cover the equivalent fraction. Once they've covered an entire row of equivalent fractions, they draw a bingo. Alternatively, students could play this game in small groups or individually on the computer. Number Line Games Have students draw index cards with fractions displayed visually as shaded circles and instruct them to plot those fractions in order on a number line. Equivalent fractions will land on the same place between 0 and 1. Another way to incorporate number lines is to give students number lines with fractions already placed on them, and provide them with a separate set of fractions, equivalent to those on the number line. Students then match the equivalent fractions so they are all on the number line. Odd Fraction Out Using index cards or the computer, show students four fractions, three of which are equivalent. Students have to select the fraction that is not equivalent, either by clicking on it or removing it from the group of four. Each round that they complete correctly leads them toward some kind of prize, like candy or extra credit points. Like the others, this game can be made easier by representing the fractions as shaded circles instead of numbers. - Kari Marie/Demand Media
What is Myopia? Myopia, also called nearsightedness or shortsightedness, develops when the eye elongates which causes light to focus in front of the retina than directly on it. For those with nearsightedness, distant objects appear blurred while nearby objects remain clear. This condition develops during childhood, when eyeballs are experiencing rapid growth, and tends to progress gradually or rapidly through young adulthood. Myopia is more than an inconvenience; when left untreated it increases the risk of irreversible vision loss later in life. Myopic progression has been linked to sight-threatening conditions such as: - retinal detachment - myopic maculopathy How to Slow Down Myopia Optometrists use a series of treatments to slow the progression of myopia in children. Our myopia management treatments can induce changes in the structure of the eye by reducing stress and fatigue linked to myopia. Several studies have indicated that these treatments successfully slow down the progression of nearsightedness in children and teens. We currently offer several different customized treatment options to slow the progression of myopia. Our doctors work closely with each family and customize treatment programs for every child based on their unique needs. The treatments offered include: - Multifocal soft contact lenses - MiSight® 1 day soft contact lenses - Orthokeratology (“ortho-k”) or corneal refractive therapy (CRT) Patients are carefully monitored by our doctors and reviewed every 6-12 months to determine progress.
by Sapna Sehgal Have you ever wondered how you can make vocabulary learning more fun for ESL students? Whether you’re teaching kids or adults, you may find students get frustrated when they can’t remember vocabulary words or can’t get the message they want to across. Sometimes, adults and teens feel incompetent if they struggle to grasp the vocab they need for a conversation. When it’s for school or work, learning to speak is even more frustrating and students panic under pressure. Today’s post is here to help! We’ll provide you with 5 teaching ideas to make vocabulary learning easier for your students, no matter what age they are. 1. Vocabulary Games If you’ve read any of my blog posts over on The Teaching Cove before, you know I love teaching with games! Vocabulary Games are especially useful. (If you use any of these ideas, please drop a comment at the end of the post and let us know how it went!) Here are three of my favourites: Game 1 Phrasal Verbs and Story Games If you’ve taught intermediate or advanced ESL before, you know the look of dread and panic on your students’ faces when you mention these two words: The looks of bewilderment are impressive, right? Phrasal verbs like “come up” or “give up” are often difficult for students to grasp as they can have multiple meanings. While teaching a university class one year I came up with an easy to prepare phrasal verbs game that students love. It helped them for their exams, too! Here’s how to play: - Get students into groups of 3 or 4 depending on class size - Have a deck of small, blank game cards, each with one phrasal verb written on it - Put the cards in a bag and have each group draw out 10 phrasal verbs - Students should then create a coherent story from the 10 phrasal verbs, using a definition of their choice when there are multiple definitions. - You’ll be surprised at how creative they get! Memorable stories make phrasal verbs easier to remember. - Creating game cards for this one is easy. (To save time, head to the printables library and print off a sample deck there) - *Challenge for advanced classes – give each group a deck of 60 cards and challenge them to make a coherent story using as many phrasal verbs as possible. Stories from other resources such as BBC English Phrasal Verbs are also useful to help students gain context when they learn phrasal verbs. Game 2 Memory Style Games Another game with cards that’s a surprise hit is Memory. I’m not just referring to kids, either! Beginner adults often benefit from matching photos of items, and intermediate students benefit from matching words with definitions. Be sure to teach game-playing vocabulary to beginner students before beginning, too. For example: “your turn”, “flip the card”, “it’s a match!”, etc. are often necessary. There are two ways to play: - A traditional memory game where you lay out a deck of memory cards and students must pick up two cards. If they match, they keep the pair. If not, they try to remember where the cards are and find a matching pair on their next turn. Tip: Have students describe the picture before moving on to increase the speaking time - Prepare cards to match a word with its definition, instead. Not only do the players have to remember where cards area, but they need to know the definitions of the words! Game 3 Treasure Chest Recently, I’ve started using a fun, new vocabulary treasure chest for kids I teach. What’s that, you say? It’s simply a small box where kids can collect “treasure” (small pieces of paper with new vocabulary words), and show them off to their friends. Every time you do an activity when a private tutoring student doesn’t know a word, have them write it on little cards and store it in their “treasure chest”. After a few weeks, you’ll have a pile of personally relevant words to make a quiz or play a game with. Teaching in an ESL classroom instead? Simply have students work on the treasure chest as an at-home, or individual work project. Then, have one or two English classes per month when students can play games with their partner’s unknown words or quiz their partner on what they’ve learned. They’ll have a blast! If you’d like more game ideas, check out 3 more fun ways to teach vocab. 2. Short Stories As an English teacher who loves literature, I’m a bit biased on this one. However, I truly believe that exposing ESL students to short stories in their target language is beneficial to both vocabulary development and cultural awareness. One main advantage of short stories is – well, they’re short! Remember, short does not always mean easy! Working with the level of your students, choose a couple stories for them to choose from. Yes, that may be a bit more work when doing activities or marking exercises –but knowing students like the story is so important. You can even take the opportunity to introduce your ESL students to literary terms. If you’re looking for 5 short stories to start you off, check out this post. Novel Studies are one of my favourite ways to introduce students to culture and literature of the language they’re studying. Creating your own novel study packs with worksheets can be a great way to use authentic materials. Here are a few key tips to ensure successful vocabulary learning from novels: - Let students choose the novel, as much as possible - Create crossword puzzles and other fun vocabulary games throughout the novel study process - Keep note of any cultural differences, such as foods eaten in the UK or North America that ESL students are not familiar with. This is a great way to introduce both vocabulary and foreign language culture to your students. Of course, you can’t master vocabulary without using it! Don’t forget to take the time to develop speaking prompts that use the vocabulary you have covered, and speaking activities your students will love. Sometimes, a prompt on its own can be daunting! If you are working in a classroom, have students form pairs or groups, and set a goal for their conversation. For example, the goal could be to use three idioms you’ve just learned, or use at least 5 vocabulary words from the last unit you covered. You’ll be surprised how much fun students have when they have a target to focus on! Sometimes, they start to forget their initial shyness and begin to have fun. 5. Film Studies Now, we can’t forget about film studies! Private tutoring students often marvel at the fact that we’ll be using a film in class. You may think documentaries are the only films it’s fair to use in an English class, but think again! Some teachers shy away from using feature films because parents complain about the length of video in class. Other teachers have told me they feel guilty “using up” class time with a film. However, watching short films (or even parts of feature films) with your students can be beneficial. Of course, films can be given for homework. However, having students write down any vocabulary they don’t understand, or viewing confusing scenes with them again is always a good idea. Be sure to pick a film with content your students are interested in. Documentaries can often serve a double purpose. Not only do students learn English, but they learn about a particular topic or global problem, which is often completely new to them. It’s a great way to learn to speak about new topics with novel vocabulary! If you haven’t visited The Teaching Cove before, it’s full of free resources you can use to help you plan lessons. There will be more novel study and film studies available for purchase in the future, too. How do you teach vocabulary in your classroom or private tutoring sessions? If you’re based in Barcelona, are there any particular difficulties you have with students who have Spanish or Catalan as a native language? I’d love to hear from you! Drop me a line at sapna [at] teachingcove.com or head to Twitter or Pinterest to get in touch! Sapna Sehgal is a blogger, English teacher and linguist who runs The Teaching Cove, an educational blog with free English teaching, motivational and organizational resources. She has been teaching English and ESL classes and tutoring privately for over 15 years. Originally from Canada, Sapna now lives in Barcelona, Spain. Sapna released her first e-book for English teachers containing 25 TED Talk Lesson Plans last year, and plans to release more educational resources for teachers soon.
Several factors can increase your risk of developing trench mouth by allowing harmful bacteria to grow out of control, including: - Poor oral hygiene. Failing to brush and floss regularly can lead to a buildup of plaque and debris that help harmful bacteria thrive. - Poor nutrition. Not getting enough nutrients can make it difficult for your body to fight infection. Malnourished children in developing countries are particularly at risk of trench mouth. - Smoking or chewing tobacco. These can harm the blood vessels of your gums, making it easier for bacteria to thrive. - Throat, tooth or mouth infections. If you already have an active infection, such as gingivitis, and don't treat it effectively, the infection can progress into trench mouth. - Emotional stress. Emotional stress can weaken your immune system, making it difficult for your body's natural defenses to keep harmful bacteria in check. - Compromised immune system. People with illnesses that weaken the immune system or who are undergoing treatment that can suppress the immune system are at higher risk because their bodies may not be able to fight infections well. These may include people with HIV/AIDS, cancer or mononucleosis. Trench mouth can occur at any age, although it's rare today in developed nations, especially with the availability of antibiotics. In developing countries where malnutrition is common and sanitation and good oral hygiene are lacking, trench mouth is more prevalent. April 09, 2013 - Murrell GL. Trench mouth. Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery. 2010;143:599. - Wilder RS, et al. Gingivitis and periodontitis in adults: Classification and dental treatment. http://www.uptodate.com/home. Accessed March 4, 2013. - Gingivitis. The Merck Manuals: The Merck Manual for Healthcare Professionals. http://www.merck.com/mmpe/sec08/ch095/ch095c.html?qt=trench%20mouth&alt=sh. Accessed March 4, 2013. - Baumgartner A, et al. The phylum Synergistetes in gingivitis and necrotizing ulcerative gingivitis. Journal of Medical Microbiology. 2012;61:1600. - Tips for coping with stress. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pub/coping_with_stress_tips.html. Accessed March 4, 2013. - Li AW, et al. The effects of yoga on anxiety and stress. Alternative Medicine Review. 2012;17:21. - Sheridan PJ (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. March 8, 2013. - Koka S (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. March 21, 2013.
Canada’s research reactors are generally smaller than its power reactors, and their designs vary greatly, because they are specialized to a variety of academic, scientific, and industrial needs. First opened in the 1940s, the Chalk River Laboratories is owned and operated by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL). Chalk River is one of Canada’s more complex nuclear sites, including two operating research reactors, fuel-fabrication facilities, hot cells, isotope production, Class II facilities and waste-management facilities. Until it was permanently shut on March 31, 2018, the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor at Chalk River played a major role in Canadian nuclear research. The NRU produced a large amount of the world’s medical isotopes, which are used for diagnostic purposes. The NRU was also Canada’s only major materials and fuel testing reactor used to support and advance the CANDU reactor design. Finally, the NRU produced neutrons used by the National Research Council’s Neutron Beam Centre to investigate and study industrial and biological materials. Also located at Chalk River is the ZED-2 research reactor. Launched in 1960, the ZED-2 is a very low-power (200 watt) reactor that has provided CNL with the capability to develop and test fuel-bundle designs and fuel arrangements, and to simulate incident scenarios. The reactor is still used for experiments in support of CANDU reactors and for the development of next-generation reactor concepts. The McMaster Nuclear Reactor (MNR) is a pool-type reactor, with a core of enriched uranium fuel moderated and cooled by light water. The reactor can operate at powers of up to 5 MW. The MNR is the only Canadian medium-flux reactor in a university environment. It supports McMaster University’s nuclear engineering program and other research programs. MNR’s neutrons are used in nuclear physics, biology, chemistry, earth sciences, medicine, neutron radiography, and nuclear medicine. Typical applications of neutron radiography at MNR include the testing of turbine blades for aircraft engines and corrosion of aircraft components. SLOWPOKE (Safe Low-Power Critical (K) Experiment) reactors are low-energy, pool-type nuclear research reactors designed by CNL in the late 1960s. The design was intended to provide a source of neutrons for research and teaching institutions. The reactor is installed below ground, in a concrete pool filled with water, at atmospheric pressure. The core of a SLOWPOKE reactor sits in a pool of light water, which provides cooling and shielding. The reactor core is located at the bottom of a sealed aluminum container vessel, approximately 60 cm in diameter. Research reactors operating at powers less than 100 kW are generally considered very low-risk facilities; a SLOWPOKE reactor operates at 20 kW, and SLOWPOKEs have been in operation for over 30 years and have demonstrated a record of safe operation. There are four operating SLOWPOKE reactors in Canada: Canada has several research reactors that have undergone decommissioning over the years, including the NRX, ZEEP, PTR reactors at Chalk River, several SLOWPOKE reactors, and the WR-1 Organic Cooled Reactor at Whiteshell Laboratories in Pinawa, Manitoba. Three research reactors have also been partially decommissioned: MAPLE-1 and MAPLE-2 at Chalk River and a SLOWPOKE at Whiteshell. Canada also has three partially decommissioned prototype power reactors: Gentilly-1, Nuclear Power Demonstration (NPD) and Douglas Point. Decommissioning of reactors usually involves a period of safe storage: after decades of use and hundreds of thousands of hours of operation in a typical reactor life-cycle, many of the reactor components themselves have become radioactive; the radiation levels must be allowed to drop before they can be disposed of safely.
Here are some ideas to help you guide your preschooler’s behaviour: Preschoolers have short memories and are easily distracted. You might need to remind them about things several times. (Test this. Try saying, ‘I will give you a piece of chocolate tomorrow morning’ and see if your preschooler remembers.) Consequences are used to enforce limits and reinforce rules when simple reminders about appropriate behaviour haven’t worked. When you’re focused on catching your children being good, and using the other strategies described in this write-up, you’ll need to use consequences less. But there are times when a negative consequence for difficult behaviour is needed. It really pays to put some thought into how and why you might use consequences. If you overuse negative consequences or use them badly or inconsistently, they can have surprising and unwanted effects. Below we explain three types of consequences that you could consider adding to your parenting. 1. Natural consequences Sometimes it’s best to let children experience the natural consequences of their own behaviour. When children experience the results of their behaviour, they can learn that their actions have consequences. They might learn to take responsibility for what they do. Here are some examples of using natural consequences: - If your child refuses to put on a coat, let him get cold. - If your child won’t eat, let him feel hungry. - If your child doesn’t complete his homework, let him fail the assignment. - If your child breaks a rule on the sporting field, he’ll have to take the penalty. These are important but hard lessons, and life is often a better and faster teacher than parents are. And you don’t have to be the unfair, bad guy. You can feel for them, but saying ‘I told you so’ puts you back in their bad books. Sometimes you do need to step in to protect children from the natural consequences of behaviour. The consequence of dangerous behaviour could be serious injury, and the consequence of persistently avoiding schoolwork can be educational failure. Sometimes natural consequences can actually reward antisocial behaviour – for example, aggressive behaviour can be rewarded when a victim gives into a bully. 2. Related consequences A ‘related consequence’ (sometimes called a ‘logical consequence’) is when parents impose a consequence that is related to the behaviour they wish to discourage. For example: - If a child is mucking around and spills his drink, he must wipe it up. - If a bike is left in the driveway, it gets put away for the rest of the afternoon. - If children are fighting over a toy, the toy is put away for 10 minutes. The advantage of related consequences is they get the child to think about the issue, they feel fairer, and they tend to work better than consequences that seen irrelevant. But it’s not always easy or possible to find a related consequence. 3. Losing a privilege With this type of consequence, the child loses access to a favourite object or activity because of unacceptable behaviour. The ‘privilege’ is not necessarily related to the misbehavior. For example: - A child who is not cooperating with his mother might lose the privilege of a lift to footy training: Footy skills training sessions consist of catch and pass, footwork, kicking, tackle technique and many other footy drills to develop you game. - A child who misconduct with his father might lose fun time. Time-out is another type of consequence. It involves having your child go to a place – a corner, chair or room – that is apart from interesting activities, and other people, for a short period of time. It can be used for particularly difficult behaviour, or occasions when you both are feeling very angry and you need to take a break from each other to calm down. Tips for using consequences: It is important to remember that if children clearly understand what is expected of them and you regularly encourage them for doing it, they are less likely to do things that require consequences. There are some important factors to consider when implementing any form of consequence: - Use consequences consistently: Related consequences, loss of privileges or time-out as a last resort might be used when the child ignores reminders and breaks rules, but you should apply them in the same way and for the same kinds of behaviour every time. It’s very confusing for children if something they do earns a negative consequence today but did not do so yesterday. - Apply negative consequences to all children Apply negative consequences to all children in the family. Children will be upset if they see other children not being treated in the same way as them. - Keep consequences short: They don’t have to be harsh, mean or long to be effective. The advantage of keeping a consequence short is that you quickly give your child an opportunity to try again. For example, if the computer is turned off for 10 minutes because children are fighting over it, they will quickly have another opportunity to solve the problem in a different way. If it is turned off for the rest of the day, there are no more opportunities in the day for them to learn to manage the situation differently. Also, a long consequence can be worse for parents than children – a child deprived of his bike for a week is likely to get bored and cranky! - It pays to implement consequences calmly and in a neutral tone. Try not to make it personal – instead of talking about a ‘bad child’, talk about the rule and the child’s behaviour. Getting very angry or frustrated makes the child more likely to think about how mad you are (which can be rather entertaining, scary or exciting) rather than about learning from the situation. - Reserve consequences for children over three: Children younger than this won’t really understand consequences, particularly if they don’t understand the connection between their actions and the outcomes of those actions. Consequences will just feel unfair to them. - Wherever possible, explain consequences to the children ahead of time so they don’t come as a surprise. If you talk to the children about possible consequences, they’re less likely to be resentful and angry when they are implemented. Negotiating consequences ahead of time makes them more effective and easier to implement if they are ever needed. - In most situations, warn your children before you implement the consequence. For example, ‘Guys, this yelling is just too loud for me! If you can’t work out what to do without screaming at each other, I will make you sit separately. Beware of the trap of repeated warnings or not following through. The exception to giving a warning before a consequence is where you have a well-established family rule. There might be important rules where a consequence will immediately follow the breaking of the rule. - Timeliness is important. Consequences work better when they occur as soon as possible after the behaviour. - On the other hand, it’s best not to impose a consequence immediately if you are feeling very angry. There is a danger that you might overreact and be too harsh. Instead, say something like, ‘I am feeling very angry at the moment. We will talk about this again in a couple of minutes when I am feeling calmer’. Try these tips to encourage the behaviour you want in your child. - Show your child how you feel: Tell him honestly how his behaviour affects you. This will help him see her own feelings in yours, like a mirror. This is called empathy. By the age of three, children can show real empathy. So you might say, ‘I’m getting upset because there is so much noise I can’t talk on the phone’. When you start the sentence with ‘I’, it gives your child the chance to see things from your perspective. - Catch her being ‘good’: This simply means that when your child is behaving in a way you like, you can give her some positive feedback. For example, ‘Wow, you are playing so nicely. I really like the way you are keeping all the blocks on the table’. This works well than waiting for the blocks to come crashing to the floor before you take notice and react, ‘Hey, stop that’. This positive feedback is sometimes called ‘descriptive praise’. Try to say six positive comments (praise and encouragement) for every negative comment (criticisms and reprimands).The 6-1 ratio keeps things in balance. Remember that if children have a choice only between no attention or negative attention, they will seek out negative attention. - Get down to your child’s level: Kneeling or squatting down next to children is a very powerful tool for communicating positively with them. Getting close allows you to tune in to what they might be feeling or thinking. It also helps them focus on what you are saying or asking for. If you are close to your child and have his attention, there is no need to make him look at you. - ‘I hear you:’ Active listening is another tool for helping young children cope with their emotions. They tend to get frustrated a lot, especially if they can’t express themselves well enough verbally. When you repeat back to them what you think they might be feeling, it helps to relieve some of their tension. It also makes them feel respected and comforted. It can diffuse many potential temper tantrums. Temper tantrums are common emotional and physical outbursts of screaming, kicking and crying in toddlers. - Keep promises: Stick to agreements. When you follow through on your promises, good or bad, your child learns to trust and respect you. So when you promise to go for a walk after she picks up her toys, make sure you have your walking shoes handy. When you say you will leave the library if she doesn’t stop running around, be prepared to leave straight away. No need to make a fuss about it – the more matter of fact, the better. This helps your child feel more secure, because it creates a consistent and predictable environment. - Choose your battles: Before you get involved in anything your child is doing – especially to say ‘no’ or ‘stop’ – ask yourself if it really matters. By keeping instructions, requests and negative feedback to a minimum, you create less opportunity for conflict and bad feelings. Rules are important, but use them only when it’s really important. - Whining: be strong: Kids don’t want to be annoying. By giving in when they’re whining for something, we train them to do it more – even if we don’t mean to. ‘No’ means ‘no’, not maybe, so don’t say it unless you mean it. If you say ‘no’ and then give in, children will be whining even more the next time, hoping to get lucky again. - Keep it simple and positive: If you can give clear instructions in simple terms, your child will know what is expected of him. (‘Please hold my hand when we cross the road.’) Stating things in a positive way gets their heads thinking in the right direction. For example, ‘Please shut the gate’ is better than ‘Don’t leave the gate open’. - Responsibility and consequences: As children get older, you can give them more responsibility for their own behaviour. You can also give them the chance to experience the natural consequences of that behaviour. You don’t have to be the bad guy all the time. For example, if your child forgot to put her lunch box in her bag, she will go hungry at lunch time. It is her hunger and her consequence. It won’t hurt her to go hungry just that one time. Sometimes, with the best intentions, we do so much for our children that we don’t allow them to learn for themselves. At other times you need to provide consequences for unacceptable or dangerous behaviour. For these times, it is best to ensure that you have explained the consequences and that your children have agreed to them in advance. - Say it once and move on: It is surprising how much your child is listening even though he might not have the social maturity to tell you. Nagging and criticising is boring for you and doesn’t work. Your child will just end up tuning you out and wonder why you get more upset. If you want to give him one last chance to cooperate, remind him of the consequences for not cooperating. Then start counting to three. - Make your child feel important: Children love it when they can contribute to the family. Start introducing some simple chores or things that she can do to play her own important part in helping the household. This will make her feel important and she’ll take pride in helping out. If you can give your child lots of practice doing a chore, she will get better at it and will keep trying harder. Safe chores help children feel responsible, build their self-esteem and help you out too. - Prepare for challenging situations: There are times when looking after your child and doing things you need to do will be tricky. If you think about these challenging situations in advance, you can plan around your child’s needs. Give him a five-minute warning before you need him to change activities. Talk to him about why you need his cooperation. Then he is prepared for what you expect. - Maintain a sense of humour: Another way of diffusing tension and possible conflict is to use humour and fun. You can pretend to become the menacing tickle monster or make animal noises. But humour at your child’s expense won’t help. Young children are easily hurt by parental ‘teasing’. Humour that has you both laughing is great. - ‘I hear you:’ - Children do as you do: Your child watches you to get clues on how to behave in the world. You’re his role model, so use your own behaviour to guide him. What you do is often much more important than what you say. If you want your child to say ‘please’, say it yourself. If you don’t want your child to raise her voice, speak quietly and gently yourself. If you want your child to say salam, as he enters home, you say it yourself. If you want him to read Quran regularly, you read it regularly. If you want him to become a practicing Muslim, you should become one. - Show your child how you feel:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) routinely analyze disease outbreaks to find commonalities and determine appropriate prevention strategies. This information serves as a valuable resource to sanitarians all over the world as it helps us to pinpoint sources of contamination. It has also helped to determine the 5 most common risk factors for foodborne illness, which are detailed below. - Purchasing food from unsafe sources Always purchase food from approved suppliers where inspections control the safety of the foods you eat. One exception is raw produce, which can be purchased from any supplier. Be sure to thoroughly rinse and scrub produce prior to consumption in order to remove dirt and pathogens. - Failing to cook food thoroughly Always use a calibrated instant-read thermometer (dial reads 0-220°F) to ensure food safety. When in doubt, cook foods to an internal cooking temperature of 165°F in the thickest part of the food for a minimum of 15 seconds. Remember the oven temperature does not ensure the interior cooking temperature of the thick foods. Always probe the food to ensure it is completely cooked throughout. - Improper holding temperatures of food Always keep hot food HOT (135°F or higher) and cold foods COLD (41°F or lower) to stop the growth of disease-forming microorganisms (pathogens). - Poor personal hygiene Always clean hands thoroughly using warm, soapy water. Rinse hands and then dry them with a paper towel. Never wipe dirty hands on aprons or soiled rags as you could re-contaminate them. Either bathe or shower daily and keep hair clean and restrained to prevent food contamination. - Unsanitary equipment or surfaces Always wash, rinse and sanitize equipment, utensils and surfaces where food will be prepared or stored to eliminate pathogens. Only use chemicals approved for use by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for food contact. Either dilute them to the correct concentrations using a test kit or buy pre-mixed solutions. Effectively managing the risk factors associated with foodborne illness is a priority for all of us. Understanding these five risk factors can help you to build a solid foundation for your food safety program.
When reading a blueprint, it is essential that you know which elements to look for, and what those elements mean. Manufacturing blueprints are images designed to help the reader understand how to build a particular component or device, and how it works. A draftsperson or designer creates blueprints by hand or using specialized software. They draw blueprints to a particular scale, meaning that the drawings are at a much smaller or much larger size than the actual completed product. Lay the manufacturing blueprint on a flat surface under a reading light. Many blueprints have very fine lines and are hard to read in low light. Keep a pen and paper close by in case you want to make notes. Make note of the tolerance allowed for the blueprint. Tolerance refers to the amount of difference that may exist between the scale of the blueprint and the actual manufactured part. Locate and read the information blocks. These blocks include the title and revision blocks that contain the majority of the identification information for the blueprint. These blocks may be on the front page of the blueprint or could be on the blueprint itself. The information blocks contain all identifiers for the blueprint including the name of the component, its surface texture, its intended use, the blueprint number or part number associated with the component, and the company or engineer that designed the component. They also include the revision number for the blueprint as well as the reference and zone numbers to identify where the part will be used after it is manufactured. Scale may also be included in a scale block beside the other information blocks. Read the materials list. This list should be located on the front page of the manufacturing blueprint. The materials list details every piece of equipment and every component that will be needed to successfully manufacture the component detailed on the blueprint. Locate the key. Like the legend on a map, you can find the key to a manufacturing blueprint near the edge of the document. The key will tell you to what scale the blueprints were drawn and will give you any other information pertaining to how the blueprint should be read, including measurements and explanation of any symbols used. It also lists what abbreviations are used in the blueprint along with their meaning. In some cases, the key will be located on the front page of the blueprint with additional information about the drawing. Look at the blueprints as a whole diagram. Understanding the detail in the blueprints requires knowledge of the component being drawn and constructed. Analyze the larger parts of the diagram first and try to understand how they work together. Scrutinize the detailed parts of the blueprint. Pay special attention to the smaller and more intricate details of the drawing after you have familiarized yourself with the larger segments of the blueprint. These details will be an integral part of the manufacturing process of the component. Read the lines. Blueprints are composed primarily of drawn lines. Each kind of line has a meaning. For example, a heavy solid line refers to a visible edge of the completed component. A dotted line refers to an interior edge not visible on the exterior of the completed component. Lines ending in arrows are used to show a particular distance, while thin lines that repeat long and short dashes are used to indicate where the center of parts of the component.
About the Apps In middle school earth and space science, several of the apps that are educationally beneficial are tools that can be utilized as an integrated part of the classroom activities. While there are still educational apps for these topics that are good, many of the best apps are used in ways that are different from many of the learning apps in the elementary grades. Thus, some of the apps in this collection are resources or tools to be used in conjunction with the curriculum. As the Next Generation Science Standards are undergoing final revision, the framework for those standards addresses the key concepts for student understanding of earth and space sciences. Topics for developing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) skills are also included in these apps. That among other reasons we explain are we these are the five best apps in the category. • One of those concepts is "Earth's place in the universe." The apps Solar Walk and Go Skywatch Planetarium provide information and experiences for students to gain that understanding. While the universe seems abstract and unreal to young students, these apps can help to develop that understanding and make it more tangible. • The second concept addressed in this framework is that students should have an understanding of "Earth's systems." Part of those systems is weather. The two weather apps, Extreme Weather and Weather HD – Live Weather Forecast with 3D NOAA Radar, can help foster and grow that understanding of the Earth's systems. The Google Earth app also relates to this concept, but it is so open-ended that it can fit in many areas of study. • Finally, the third concept addressed is understanding of the relationship of "Earth and human activity." While none of these apps address this directly, Extreme Weather does contain information on extreme heat and cold and the causes of those conditions. This can be tied to environmental sustainability and the changing conditions of our warming planet, which is impacted by humans. Earth and space science continue to hold mystery and wonder for children and adults alike. Using the great apps that are available in this content area is engaging for both children and adults. Comments & Suggestions Have a suggestion for an educational app for this category you think we should feature? Let us know. How are apps scored? Apps are scored using a proprietary evaluation rubric to judge Educational Content, Kid Appeal, Assessment, Features and Design, Value, and Safety and Privacy.
The polar bear (Ursus maritimus), also known as the white bear, northern bear, or sea bear, is a large bear native to the Arctic. It is the largest land carnivore species and the apex predator within its range. It is well-adapted to its habitat: its thick blubber and fur insulate it against the cold, its white colour camouflages it from its prey, and it hunts well both on land and in the water. Polar Bear at the waters edge The polar bear is a circumpolar species found in and around the Arctic Ocean whose southern range limits are determined by pack ice (their southernmost point is James Bay in Canada). While their numbers thin north of 88 degrees, there is evidence of polar bears all the way across the Arctic. Population estimates are generally just over 20,000. Their main population centers are: Their range is limited by the availability of sea ice that they use as a platform to hunt seal, the mainstay of their diet. The destruction of its habitat on the Arctic ice, which may be caused by global warming, threatens the bear's survival as a species; it may become extinct within the century. Signs of this have already been observed at the southern edges of its range. Size and weight It is the largest extant species of land carnivore, twice the weight of a Siberian tiger. Most adult males weigh from 400 to 600 kg (880 to 1300 lb) and exceptionally, up to 800 kg (1750 lb). The Kodiak sub-species of the brown bear, an omnivore, is sometimes as large. The largest polar bear on record was shot at Kotzebue Sound, Alaska in 1960. This male was estimated to weigh about 880 kg (1960 lb). Mounted, it was 3.38 m (11 ft 11 in) tall. Females are about half the size of males and normally weigh 200 to 300 kg (450 to 650 lb). Adult males measure 2.4 to 2.6 m (95 to 102 in); females, 1.9 to 2.1 m (75 to 83 in). At birth, cubs weigh 600 to 700 g. A 2004 National Geographic study showed that polar bears that year weighed, on average, fifteen per cent less than they had in the 1970s. It is generally believed that there are no living polar bear subspecies. In fact, because "polar bears bred with brown bears have produced fertile hybrids", it can be argued that polar bears are a subspecies of Brown Bear. The number of distinct populations depends on who is counting. The IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group ("PBSG"), the preeminent international scientific body for research and management relating to polar bears, currently recognizes twenty populations, or stocks, worldwide. Other scientists recognize six distinct populations, but no (living) subspecies: Other sources list these subspecies: A Polar Bear resting Fur and skin A polar bear's nose and skin are black and the fur is translucent despite its apparent white hue. The fur is good camouflage as well as insulation. Stiff hairs grow on the soles of its paws; these insulate and provide traction on ice. Unlike other arctic mammals, polar bears never shed their coat for a darker shade in the summer. The fur absorbs ultraviolet light. The hair does not have fiber-optic properties nor does it transmit light or heat to the skin (an urban legend). The thick undercoat does however insulate the bears to the point where they overheat at temperatures above 10 °C (50 °F) and are nearly invisible in the infrared; only their breath and muzzles can be seen. Growing through the undercoat is a relatively sparse covering of hollow guard hairs about 6 inches long. These guard hairs are stiff, shiny and erect, and stop the undercoat from matting when wet. The water is then easily shaken off before it can freeze. The bear also rolls in snow to blot up moisture in the coat. In July 2005, several polar bears in the Brookfield Zoo turned green as a result of algae growing in their hollow guard hair tubes. Chicago experienced an extremely hot, humid and dry summer that year. However, the zoo took no action since it has been shown the algae does not negatively affect the bears in any way. The staff believed that exposing the bears to chlorine or bleach would be more harmful than letting the algae run its course. Previously, in February 2004, two polar bears in the Singapore Zoo turned green due to algae growth. A zoo spokesman said that the algae had formed as a result of Singapore's hot and humid conditions. The bears were washed in a peroxide blonde solution to restore their expected colour. A similar algae grew in the hair of three polar bears at San Diego Zoo in the summer of 1980. They were cured by washing the algae away in a salt solution. Polar Bear at Cape Churchill (Wapusk-Nationalpark, Manitoba, Canada) Hunting, diet and feeding It is the most carnivorous member of the bear family, and the one that is most likely to prey on humans as food. It feeds mainly on seals, especially ringed seals that poke holes in the ice to breathe, but will eat anything it can kill: birds, rodents, shellfish, crabs, beluga whales, walruses, occasionally musk oxen, and very occasionally other polar bears. Polar bears are excellent swimmers and can often be seen in open waters miles from land. This may be a sign that they have begun aquatic adaptations to better catch their prey, although recent evidence indicates that they may be drowning in the open sea because global warming is melting the ice shelves that previously made up their homes. They also hunt very efficiently on land due to their prodigious speed; they are more than capable of outrunning a human. Still, caribou and musk oxen easily outrun a polar bear, and polar bears overheat quickly; thus the polar bear subsists almost totally on seals and on walrus calves or adult carcasses. As a carnivore feeding largely upon fish-eating carnivores, the Polar Bear ingests large amounts of Vitamin A, which is stored in its liver; in the past, humans have been poisoned by eating polar bear liver. Although largely carnivorous, they will also feed on carrion (e.g. beached whales) and also eat some vegetable matter, mainly berries and roots in the late summer, as well as kelp. Polar bears are aggressive, curious, and extremely dangerous to humans. A polar bear should never be approached and if one is spotted, it is best to retreat slowly on foot, preferably to indoors, or move away in a vehicle. Regrettably, like other species of bear, they have developed a liking for garbage; the dump in Churchill, Manitoba is frequently scavenged by polar bears. Polar bears mate in the spring; pairing is temporary, only lasting for the mating with no permanent bond between males and females. The gestation period is 240 days (8 months), with the cubs born in early winter in a cave dug in October by the mother in deep snow. Usually, two cubs are born, less often one or three; litters of four cubs have been recorded. As with other Ursus bears, the cubs are very small at birth, typically 30 cm long and weighing 700 g. The cubs are born nearly helpless and blind, opening their eyes at about one month old, able to walk at 1.5 months, and start eating solid food at 4-5 months. They remain with their mother, learning how to hunt and protect themselves against adult males (which have been known to cannibalize cubs), until 10 months old. Females nurse their young for up to two and a half years on milk that contains approximately 33% fat, higher than that of any other species of bear and comparable to that of marine mammals.Sexual maturity is reached at 3-4 years. Adult polar bears are known to live to over 30 years. Polar bears do not hibernate, though the lactating females will not emerge from their cave while the cubs are very young. The mother will not have eaten for nine months, thus relying on stored body fat also known as blubber for both her own nutrition and that of the cubs. The 2004 National Geographic study found no cases of cubs being born as triplets, a common event in the 1970s, and that only one in twenty cubs were weaned at eighteen months, as opposed to half of cubs three decades earlier. Plastic pollution has reached the Arctic and Antarctic regions, killing the wildlife upon which larger predators like the polar bear rely on for food. We are working on a vehicle that could help clean Arctic waters, by sweeping the 5 main ocean gyres of the majority of garbage. You can make a difference immediately, by disposing of your plastic waste responsibly, and by contributing to organisations that will help fund our not for profit research. Polar bears live in one of the planet's coldest environments and depend on a thick coat of insulated fur, which covers a warming layer of fat. Fur even grows on the bottom of their paws. The bear's stark white coat provides camouflage in surrounding snow and ice. But under their fur, polar bears have black skin—the better to soak in the sun's warming rays. Polar bears are powerful predators that do not normally fear humans, which can make them dangerous. Near human settlements, they often acquire a taste for garbage, bringing bears and humans dangerously close, and putting the bears at risk from toxic waste. Over 80% of marine pollution comes from land-based activities. From plastic bags to pesticides - most of the waste we produce on land eventually reaches the oceans, either through deliberate dumping or from run-off through drains and rivers. Plastic garbage, which decomposes very slowly, is often mistaken for food by marine animals. High concentrations of plastic material, particularly plastic bags, have been found blocking the breathing passages and stomachs of many marine species, including whales, dolphins, seals, puffins, and turtles. Plastic six-pack rings for drink bottles can also choke marine animals. This garbage can also come back to shore, where it pollutes beaches and other coastal habitats. The Raccoon and bear families are believed to have diverged about 30 million years ago and around 13 million years ago the Spectacled Bear split from the other bears. The 6 distinct ursine species originated some 6 million years ago. The Brown Bear and Polar Bear diverged from a common ancestor around 2 million years ago and crosses between the two species produce fertile hybrids. They only lost their Brown Bear molars between 10 and 20 thousand years ago. Canada 2 dollar coin Entertainment and commerce Polar Bears have been made both controversial and famous for their distinctive white fur and their habitat. Companies like Coca-Cola, Nelvana, Bundaberg Rum and Good Humor-Breyers have used images of this bear in logos. The Canadian 2-dollar coin (right) features the image of a polar bear. Also, polar bears have appeared on the island featured in the TV drama Lost. The panserbjørne of the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials are sentient polar bears. REFERENCE and LINKS: Polar Bear cubs A heartwarming adventure: From Arctic waters to the Coral Sea Pirate whalers and Conservationists fight for a Humpback Whale with a $billion dollars riding on the outcome. Please use the Index below to navigate the Animal Kingdom:- A taste for adventure capitalists Solar Cola - a healthier alternative This website is Copyright © 1999 & 2015 Max Energy Limited an educational charity working hard for world peace. The bird logos and names Solar Navigator, Blueplanet Ecostar and Utopia Tristar are trademarks. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are hereby acknowledged.
Tropical Forests Cleaning the Air? Students debate the effects of photosynthesis on global warming. For this global warming lesson, students measure changes in the a mount of carbon dioxide in a bottle with spinach leaves. 4th - 9th Science 5 Views 44 Downloads Plankton to Penguins: Antarctic Food Web A well-written lesson plan, second in a series of four, gets high schoolers exploring how the Antarctic food web is impacted by climate change and the associated melting of polar ice sheets. It begins with a PowerPoint presentation about... 9th - 12th Science CCSS: Adaptable Climate Change as a Scientific Theory A selection of videos is shown to get your class thinking about scientific theory, guided by a handout. Emerging earth scientists also read articles and take notes about glaciers and sea ice. To conclude, they write an evaluation of the... 8th - 12th Science CCSS: Designed Why the Arctic Is Climate Change's Canary in the Coal Mine What happens in the Arctic doesn't always stay in the Arctic. Follow along with this short video as it investigates how small changes in the temperature of Arctic regions can have dramatic effects on the global climate through a series... 4 mins 7th - 12th Science CCSS: Adaptable
A tourist from Georgia just came down with a suspected case of plague in Yosemite, the second park visitor to be diagnosed with the rare disease this month, the California Department of Public Health said in a statement. You can become infected with plague from a flea bite, or by having contact with infected tissues or fluids from an animal that is sick with or died from the disease, such as a squirrel, chipmunk, or other rodent. You can also get it from inhaling droplets in the breath of infected cats or humans. Although it's extremely unlikely you'll get this horrendous disease (which became treatable with the advent of modern antibiotics), experts offered this handy advice for lowering your risk: - Never feed squirrels, chipmunks or other rodents and never touch sick or dead rodents. - Don't walk or camp near rodent burrows. - Wear long pants tucked into socks or boot tops to prevent flea bites. - Use insect repellent (containing the chemical DEET) on skin and clothing, especially socks and pant cuffs. - Keep wild rodents out of homes, trailers, and outbuildings, and away from pets. Once known as the Black Death, plague still exists in parts of the US southwest, but is pretty rare (only about 7 Americans get the disease per year). The second Yosemite case is the fourth one in the US in recent months. A child is recovering from the disease after contracting it on a visit to Crane Flat National Campground in Yosemite. Earlier this month, a woman died of plague in a rural part of Colorado's Pueblo County, and a Colorado teen died of the disease in June.
This view of Titan's south pole reveals the intriguing dark feature named Ontario Lacus and a host of smaller features dotting the south polar region. The true nature of this feature, seen here at left of center, is not yet known with absolute certainty. However, the feature's darkness, the shore-like smoothness of its perimeter and its presence in an area where frequent convective storm clouds have been observed by Cassini and Earth-based astronomers made it the best candidate for an open body of liquid on Titan when this image was taken in June 2005. This interpretation has been strengthened by the sighting of features having similar morphologies in Titan's northern polar region during the flyby of Titan that occurred in late February (see PIA08365). The possibility that these northern features, the sizes of small seas, are either completely or partially filled with liquid hydrocarbons is significantly strengthened by Cassini radar data that overlap portions of the ISS-observed northern bodies (see PIA09182). Previously, scientists had speculated that Ontario Lacus might simply be a broad depression filled by dark, solid hydrocarbons falling from the atmosphere onto Titan's surface. In this case, the smoothed outline might be the result of a process unrelated to rainfall, such as a sinkhole or a volcanic caldera. However, the strong likelihood that the northern polar features are lakes and seas has made imaging scientists more confident that Ontario Lacus, and the smaller dark features dotting the southern polar region of Titan, also hold liquid. If correct, this new revelation would mean that each pole on Titan is a large wetlands area. The feature is named for Lake Ontario because the two are similar in absolute surface area. A red cross below center in the scene marks the pole. The brightest features seen here are methane clouds. A movie sequence showing the evolution of bright clouds in the region during the same flyby is also available (see PIA06241). This view is a composite of three narrow angle camera images, taken over several minutes during Cassini's distant June 6, 2005 flyby. The images were combined to produce a sharper view of Titan's surface. The images were taken using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized infrared light. The images were acquired from approximately 450,000 kilometers (279,000 miles) from Titan. Resolution in the scene is approximately 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel. The view has been contrast enhanced to improve the overall visibility of surface features. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The imaging team consists of scientists from the US, England, France, and Germany. The imaging operations center and team lead (Dr. C. Porco) are based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
The essential functions of Digestive Glands are:- In man there are three pairs of salivary glands (sub maxillary, sublingual, and parotid) which secrete saliva. Saliva contains an enzyme called salivary amylase which breaks down starch (complex substance) of the food into maltose (a simpler sugar). Thus, in the mouth cavity saliva moistens the masticated food and starts digestion of carbohydrate. The gastric glands secrete hydrochloric acid and gastric juice which help in digestion of food. The enzyme pepsin present in the gastric juice acts on the proteins of the food and breaks them into smaller units called peptones and proteoses. The food then passes into the small intestine. It is the largest gland of the body. It weighs 1.5 kg in man. Liver performs many functions. As far as digestion is concerned, it secretes a fluid called bile. Bile juice produced by the liver is stored in the gall bladder. Gall stones which are found in the gall bladder of about 8% of the people are chiefly the concretions (depositions) of cholesterol, bile pigments and calcium salts. Bile is yellowish greenish, alkaline fluid. Bile emulsifies fats which help in breaking them into small globules. In this way, fat globules are easily exposed to the action of fat-hydrolyzing, enzymes. The acidic food coming from the stomach becomes alkaline, when it is mixed with the bile. It is an extremely important step which ensures further digestion of the food. The digestive enzymes that are brought in the duodenum and ileum can catalyse the breakdown of food only in alkaline medium. It is the second largest gland of the body. It lies in the fold of duodenum. It is yellowish. It secretes pancreatic juice. Pancreatic duct pours pancreatic juice into the duodenum. Pancreatic juice contains a number of digestive enzymes. These include trypsin and chymotrypsin for the breakdown of proteins; amylase for the splitting of polysaccharides; lipase for the breakdown of fats and nuclease for the breakdown of nucleic acids. These enzymes catalyse the breakdown of different constituents of food but not sufficiently enough to break all of them into their units. The final step of digestion takes place in the ileum. There are numerous smaller glands occupying the walls of the small intestinal tract. These glands secrete what is termed intestinal juice or succus entericus. The intestinal glands are in the form of sunken pits or crypts which are interspersed among the finger-like villi. The digestive enzymes in the intestinal juice include carboxypeptidase and aminopeptidase which break small peptides into amino acids; sucrose, maltase and lactase which brak disaccharides into respective monosaccharides; lipase which breaks lipids into fatty acid and glycerol; and nuclease which breaks nucleic acids into nucleotides. Absorption of Digested Food Absorption of completely digested food taken place in the ileum. There are absorptive cells lining the finger-like projections, the villi, of the ileum. These absorptive cells of the villi absorb the units of food by a process involving the expenditure of energy. This process is known as the active transport. The absorbed food is then brought into the blood vessel. The products of lipid digestion are brought into the lymphatic vessel. From here the digested food materials are transported to different parts of the body through circulation. Assimilation of Digested Food The process whereby digested food is absorbed and utilized is termed assimilation. One of the ways by which digested food can be utilized is to obtain energy from it by the process of respiration. The excess of amonosaccharides is joined to form glycogen by the enzymes of liver and stored as such. The amino acids may be used in the synthesis of a variety of structural and functional proteins. Ammonia is produced by the removal of amino group of amino acids which gets converted into less toxic urea (nitrogenous waste) in the liver. Urea is removed from the blood through the kidneys. The glycerol and fatty acids either provide energy or get reconverted into fats. These fats are accumulated in different organs below the skin layer. The absorbed food is also utilized for the formation of new cells and tissues, leading to growth and development of the body. Metabolism and Release of Energy The sum of all biochemical reactions occurring within the living organisms is called metabolism. They are of two general types: Catabolism involved the breakdown of complex molecules into simpler ones. This reaction release energy mainly in the form of heat and is known as exergonic reaction. The examples are the processes of respiration, digestion, etc. This involves the biochemical reactions which lead to the formation or synthesis of complex molecules from simpler ones. In this constructive process, energy is required and, therefore, the process is called endergonic reaction. Photosynthesis, protein synthesis are anabolic processes. Living organism grow if anabolic rate is higher than the catabolic rate. As an organism approaches old age, the catabolic becomes higher than the anabolic rate. Two stages are involves in the liberation of energy from food. The first stage involves the breaking down of complex molecules into simpler forms. In the second stage oxygen is required for oxidation of simpler molecules. Along with the liberation of energy CO2 and water are required. For expulsion of CO2 and intake of oxygen animals breath or respire. The chemical reaction taking places I this process remain the same in every organism, whether it is a frog, a bacterium, a bird or a man. This suggests a common ancestry of all organisms.
Scientists used data from NASA’s Galileo mission and found that Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, has clay-like minerals, the space agency announced on Wednesday, adding that the extraterrestrial minerals were likely delivered by a spectacular collision between the moon and an asteroid or comet. According to scientists, although this is the first time such minerals have been identified on Europa's surface, space rocks that deliver such minerals typically also carry organic matter. “Organic materials, which are important building blocks for life, are often found in comets and primitive asteroids,” Jim Shirley, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. “Finding the rocky residues of this comet crash on Europa's surface may open up a new chapter in the story of the search for life on Europa.” Many scientists believe Europa is the best location in the solar system to find life outside Earth as it has a set of life-supporting conditions, such as a subsurface ocean in contact with rock, an icy surface that mixes with the ocean below, and salts on the surface that create an energy gradient. In addition, Europa also has a source of heat, which is the flexing that occurs as it gets stretched and squeezed by Jupiter's gravity. According to scientists, all these conditions were likely in place shortly after Europa first came into being in the solar system. Shirley and his colleagues were able to detect the clay-like minerals, called phyllosilicates, in near-infrared images from Galileo that were taken in 1998. Scientists said that they had used a new technique to pull out as much information as they could from the low-resolution images. According to the scientists, the phyllosilicates appear in a broken ring about 25 miles wide and lie about 75 miles away from the center of a central, 20-mile-wide crater site. Scientists said that when a comet or asteroid hits the surface vertically at an angle of 45 degrees, the collision would allow some of the space rock's original material to fall back to the surface. A more head-on collision would likely vaporize it or drive that space rock's materials below the surface. However, it is hard to see how phyllosilicates from Europa’s interior could make it to the surface. According to scientists, if the body that hit Europa was an asteroid, it was likely about 3,600 feet in diameter, and if it was a comet, it was likely about 5,600 feet in diameter. It would have been nearly the same size as the comet ISON before it passed around the sun a few weeks ago, scientists said.
Silver water is a general term for silver particles within water, although there are numerous types. The most basic solution consists of visible pieces of silver in tap water, whereas “ionic silver” is a more sophisticated type and involves the process of electrolysis to produce positive silver ions suspended in a colloidal solution. The safest and most biologically active silver solutions contain the smallest particles and the purest water. The benefits of silver were known by the earliest civilizations. Ancient civilizations, such as the Phoenicians and Greeks, knew that storing water and oils within silver containers preserved the freshness of the liquids for long periods of time. Some also realized that drinking from a silver cup was healthier than drinking from a copper or lead cup. Hippocrates, considered an originator of medical practices, ground up pieces of silver into powder and consumed it with water for assumed health benefits. During ancient times, microbial causes of disease and spoilage were not understood, but years of practice yielded noticeable benefits that were recorded. In fact, many people, right up until the widespread use of refrigeration and homogenization, used silver spoons and coins in milk to preserve it. As it became better understood how micro-organisms such as bacteria, viruses and molds caused disease and spoilage, more emphasis was put on discovering and using substances that killed them. Before 1938, when penicillin was discovered, silver solutions were used as disinfectants, especially for surgical instruments and laboratory equipment. Silver nitrate ointment was used to disinfect newborns' eyes for many decades beyond penicillin’s discovery. According to the National Academies, ionic silver solutions are used to disinfect the potable water on the International Space Station and the Russian “Mir” orbiting station. The World Health Organization, through its sponsored manual, “Water Disinfection,” states that silver colloids are effective water disinfectants for potable water in Third World countries. Although evidence supporting silver’s ability to purify water and disinfect inanimate objects is plentiful, its ability to kill pathogenic organisms in the human body is considered controversial and not well-studied. However, a South Korean study published in a 2008 edition of “Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology” found that ionic silver solutions are effective at killing bacteria and Candida albicans fungus in Petri dishes. University of North Texas researcher Dr. Mark Farinha found that solutions of colloidal silver had an antimicrobial effect on in-situ populations of Staphylococcus, Candida and Pseudomonas. An interesting property of silver solutions seems to be the inability of pathogenic organisms to become resistant to them, which is why human studies are so important to undertake. - "History of Medicine"; F.H. Garrison; 1966 - "Spacecraft Water Exposure Guidelines for Selected Contaminants: Volume 1"; National Academies Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology; 2004 - World Health Organization: Water Disinfection - "Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology"; Antifungal Activity and Mode of Action of Silver Nano-particles on Candida albicans; K. Kim et al.; August 2008 - SilverMedicine.org: University of North Texas Study
Satellites placed outside the natural geosynchronous orbits (called Keplerian orbits) without corrections applied by some outside force start to fall back toward the equator, deviating from their intended path. Making corrections with thrusters or other traditional means increases the size and limits the lifetime of a satellite because of the need to carry and consume fuel, making these displaced orbits impractical. As scientists launch more satellites, crowding of the Keplerian orbits became an increasing problem. Solar sails would use pressure from sunlight to provide the force needed to oppose gravity and keep the satellites in their planned orbits, removing the constraints of fuel-based corrections and making displaced orbits practical for the first time. Graduate student Shahid Baig and Professor Colin McInnes, Director of the Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory at Strathclyde, devised a class of orbits displaced between 10 and 50 kilometers north or south from the band containing the Keplerian orbits sustainable with solar sails. Each of these orbits completes one circle of the Earth in 24 hours just like a standard geosynchronous orbit, thus remaining in a fixed position relative to the planet. This fixed position is important for communications satellites (and others) so satellite dishes do not have to swivel to track a moving position. In the past, scientists argued that solar pressure was not sufficient to oppose the gravitational forces drawing satellites toward the equator. Baig and McInnes were able to formulate much more accurate computer models than available in the past to show that the solar sails would be sufficient to the task within a specific range of displaced orbits. Further, these orbits could be maintained indefinitely without the use of any thrusters or external power sources. While the Strathclyde research is essentially just a proof of concept, several other groups are already experimenting with solar sails. The unmanned Japanese spacecraft Ikaros, currently on its way to Venus, uses a hybrid solar sail for its primary power source. TFOT previously reported on other solar sail news including the launch of Ikarus earlier this year and NASA’s tests of its NanoSail-D solar sail this summer. TFOT has also examined one of the other causes of orbital crowding – space garbage.
Where Does Our Food Come From? Do you know where your food comes from? These are pictures of foods that you see everyday, but have you ever thought about how many different ingredients are in a piece of pizza and where those ingredients come from? What is the importance of asking yourself these questions? Think about what you had for breakfast or lunch today. Write a short essay on the importance of your food source and your buying choices. Some questions to consider: - What role does food play in your life? Why do you eat? - Your meal is made up of many different products. What do you think the raw ingredients were? - What type of farm do you think the ingredients came from? - How far did your food travel- were there any stops along the way? - How did the raw ingredients become the food on your plate? - How do you decide what foods you eat? Does it matter where your food comes from and how it was made? Now consider what your life would be like if all of the farms vanished one day. What would happen to your food supply? How would you eat your next meal? Many of us simply go to the stores, buy food products, and never think twice about how our food was produced and who produces it. In the assignment above, most of you probably named some type of dairy, meat, or grain product as part of your everyday meals. These products were produced on many different types of farms. How much did you know about your food in the assignment? Were there any questions you could not answer? In this website you can learn more about where your food comes from and how it became the final product. Just click on the milk, cereal, or meat icon and get ready for a food adventure!
Super shape shifter Students learn shapes and put them together to make other shapes. A lesson plan for grades K–1 Mathematics - learn different shapes. - use shapes to make other shapes. - take a design and fill it in with pattern blocks. - make a design several times and tell how many blocks it takes to make the design. - use attribute blocks to trace around and make a shape man. Time required for lesson - Pattern blocks of a circle, triangle, square, rectangle, octagon, hexagon, trapezoid, parallelogram - Pages with printed pattern designs. I took large objects I found in the classroom and at home and I traced the shape on the pages. - Pencils, paper, crayons, scissors, brads - Attribute blocks - Literature books: Computer hooked to TV or a projector with internet access. The students should have a background of understanding about different kinds of shapes. Teacher can stress to students that we have shapes all around us and many things we see daily are made up of shapes. Teacher will have the students identify objects in a picture and the different shapes that they see within these pictures. - Teacher will introduce the shapes by reading Take Off with Shapes. - Teacher will hold up individual shapes and discuss each shape. - Students will color a paper showing circle, triangle, square and rectangle. - Teacher will use the computer hooked to a presentation center (LCD projector) or TV to show different shapes found on Kidspiration. - Teacher reads Circles and students find things in the room that is the shape of a circle. - Students discuss the characteristics of a circle. - Teacher reads The World of Shapes: Circles and Spheres and discusses it with the students. - Students discuss characteristics of a sphere. - Teacher reads The World of Shapes: Squares and Cubes and discusses it with the students. - Students discuss the characteristics of cubes. - Teacher reads The World of Shapes: Triangles and Pyramids and discusses it with the students. - Students take attribute blocks and trace around them. - They will cut out the shapes and put them together with brads to make a shape man. First you have the triangle for the hat, a circle will make the head, eyes will be circles and the nose will be a triangle. You can use a crayon or oval to make the mouth. The neck will be made with a rectangle. The man’s body will be made of a square. He will have circles for the buttons. The arms will be made of long rectangles and the hands will be ovals. The legs will be made of long rectangles and the feet will be ovals. - Students take the pattern blocks and make a design with them. They will tell how many blocks it takes to make the designs. For example: If Sally made the face of a rabbit using one large circle for the head, two small circles for the eyes, two small triangles for the ears, and one small oval for the mouth how many large circles, small circles, triangles and ovals would she use if she made three of the rabbit faces? - Teacher will continue with this activity until students begin to show mastery when determining the number of each shape needed for each design. - Teacher will give students the activity sheets (Body Parts 1, Body Parts 2, Body Parts 3, Body Parts 4) on Build a Shape Man and let the students cut each shape out. Then students will put this shape man together using brads. They can color each one if they would like to do so. - Technology Integration - Students will use Kidspiration as a center activity to review shape and word. Students will click on Picture on the menu. They will write in Shapes in the First Idea oval. They will click on the middle triangle and find Math. Student clicks on the third triangle for the shapes. Students will click on the shape and put it on the screen. They will write the name of the shape under the picture (see Example). - Assessment Quiz - Shape Man Art Project: Shape activity pages are attached below (see body parts attachments 1,2,3, and 4) - Kidspiration Project on the computer There are various books that your media may have that you could use to carry out this lesson plan. Examples of student work items in the classroom that may have the shape. Our students enjoyed studying the shapes and finding different shapes in the classroom and school. They loved making the shape man and displaying them in the classroom. - Common Core State Standards - Mathematics (2010) - 1.G.1 Distinguish between defining attributes (e.g., triangles are closed and three-sided) versus non-defining attributes (e.g., color, orientation, overall size) ; build and draw shapes to possess defining attributes. - 1.G.2 Compose two-dimensional shapes (rectangles, squares, trapezoids, triangles, half-circles, and quarter-circles) or three-dimensional shapes (cubes, right rectangular prisms, right circular cones, and right circular cylinders) to create a composite shape,... - K.G.2Correctly name shapes regardless of their orientations or overall size. - K.G.4Analyze and compare two- and three-dimensional shapes, in different sizes and orientations, using informal language to describe their similarities, differences, parts (e.g., number of sides and vertices/“corners”) and other attributes (e.g., having... - Mathematics (2010) North Carolina curriculum alignment - Goal 3: Geometry - The learner will identify, describe, draw, and build basic geometric figures. - Objective 3.01: Identify, build, draw and name parallelograms, squares, trapezoids, and hexagons. - Objective 3.03: Compare and contrast geometric figures.
This microwave oven history lesson will give you some interesting facts about how the microwave oven came into being. Microwave ovens have been a feature of most of our kitchens since the early to mid 1990’s. Did you know however that the first microwave ovens were already commercially available way back in 1947? These early appliances known then as RadaRanges cost around $3000 US, weighed approximately 340kg and stood 1.6m tall! Like so many other household gadgets, the original idea for the microwave oven wasn’t borne out a desire to reduce the burden of domestic chores. The history of the microwave began in 1940 when John Randall and Harry Boot invented the cavity magnetron tube at Birmingham University in England. The magnetron tube quickly became hugely important during World War II as it was used by the Allied forces of Europe and America to emit microwave radar signals to detect distant, Nazi enemy aircraft and ships. In 1945, the American engineer, Percy Spencer was carrying out maintenance work on a live radar set. Whilst working within close proximity to the radar equipment, he felt a tingling sensation throughout his body and noticed that a chocolate bar in his pocket had completely melted. After some investigation he determined that it was the microwaves being emitted by the magnetron tube in the radar set which had caused the chocolate to get warm enough to melt. Percy Spencer experimented further by directing the magnetron tube at kernels of corn. Activating the gun resulted in just what he was hoping – the first microwave popcorn. Percy Spencer then went on to build a metal box with an opening on one side and the magnetron tube poking through into another side of it. He used this box to heat his lunches and a variety of other foods he was curious enough to try out. There’s a story of an occasion where he heated a whole egg in the device which unfortunately resulted in the egg exploding in his colleague’s face. This incident led to the addition of a door to close the box and prevent any further such incidents. In October 1945 Percy Spencer filed a patent (US 2495429 A) for a “Method of treating foodstuffs” which details the process of heating food using microwaves. In the patent description, Percy Spencer provides examples of where cooking an egg and a potato using his microwave device use a tiny fraction of the energy used with conventional cooking. You can download a scan of the original patent below. Early Microwave Ovens The first microwave ovens in history were giants compared with the ones we use today. They were first sold in 1947 by Raytheon, an American defence firm. The RadaRange as the machine was known sold for $5000, which would actually be $51,000 US in today’s money. These monsters stood almost 6 feet tall, weighed over a third of a tonne and pumped out a massive 3000 Watts of power. Of course, these first models were not suitable for domestic use and were sold for use in restaurants, ship’s galleys and large canteens. By 1967, Domestic kitchen counter-top versions of the microwave oven were eventually made available. Sold by the firm Amana, they were priced at US$495 ($3,408 in today’s dollars). A company called Litton who were popular in the restaurant business developed the short, wide shape of the microwave oven we are used to seeing today. Sales really took of in USA and Japan from the ten’s of thousands in 1970 to the millions by 1975. By the late 1970’s, technology improvements and cheaper electronic parts meant that microwave ovens became more practical and affordable. In 1986, 1 in 4 US households owned a microwave oven. By 1997, The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that a staggering 9 out of 10 American households owned a microwave oven. Today most microwaves continue to follow the same short, wide box format popularised in the 70’s. You can however buy from a wide range of differing microwave oven types. There are different sizes, colours, capacities and power outputs. Some sit on the kitchen work-top, some are built in to kitchen units and some are hung over the stove. Many microwave ovens today are able to not only microwave food, but can grill, use convection heat and even steam food. Whatever microwave oven you have, don’t just use it for reheating last nights pizza – it can do so much more. So, when you’ve finished eating a delicious plate of microwave slow cooked lamb, thank Percy Spencer and his melted chocolate bar for giving us the idea for the microwave oven all those years ago.
Muscle (from Latin musculus, diminutive of mus "mouse") is contractile tissue of the body and is derived from the mesodermal layer of embryonic germ cells. Muscle cells contain contractile filaments that move past each other and change the size of the cell. They are classified as skeletal, cardiac, or smooth muscles. Their function is to produce force and cause motion. Muscles can cause either locomotion of the organism itself or movement of internal organs. Cardiac and smooth muscle contraction occurs without conscious thought and is necessary for survival. Examples are the contraction of the heart and peristalsis which pushes food through the digestive system. Voluntary contraction of the skeletal muscles is used to move the body and can be finely controlled. Examples are movements of the eye, or gross movements like the quadriceps muscle of the thigh. There are two broad types of voluntary muscle fibers: slow twitch and fast twitch. Slow twitch fibers contract for long periods of time but with little force while fast twitch fibers contract quickly and powerfully but fatigue very rapidly. There are three types of muscle: - Skeletal muscle or "voluntary muscle" is anchored by tendons to bone and is used to affect skeletal movement such as locomotion and in maintaining posture. Though this postural control is generally maintained as a subconscious reflex, the muscles responsible react to conscious control like non-postural muscles. An average adult male is made up of 40–50% of skeletal muscle and an average adult female is made up of 30–40% (as a percentage of body mass). - Smooth muscle or "involuntary muscle" is found within the walls of organs and structures such as the esophagus, stomach, intestines, bronchi, uterus, urethra, bladder, blood vessels, and even the skin (in which it controls erection of body hair). Unlike skeletal muscle, smooth muscle is not under conscious control. - Cardiac muscle is also an "involuntary muscle" but is more akin in structure to skeletal muscle, and is found only in the heart. Cardiac and skeletal muscles are "striated" in that they contain sarcomeres and are packed into highly-regular arrangements of bundles; smooth muscle has neither. While skeletal muscles are arranged in regular, parallel bundles, cardiac muscle connects at branching, irregular angles (called intercalated discs). Striated muscle contracts and relaxes in short, intense bursts, whereas smooth muscle sustains longer or even near-permanent contractions. Skeletal muscle is further divided into several subtypes: - Type I, slow oxidative, slow twitch, or "red" muscle is dense with capillaries and is rich in mitochondria and myoglobin, giving the muscle tissue its characteristic red color. It can carry more oxygen and sustain aerobic activity. - Type II, fast twitch muscle, has three major kinds that are, in order of increasing contractile speed: - Type IIa, which, like slow muscle, is aerobic, rich in mitochondria and capillaries and appears red. - Type IIx (also known as type IId), which is less dense in mitochondria and myoglobin. This is the fastest muscle type in humans. It can contract more quickly and with a greater amount of force than oxidative muscle, but can sustain only short, anaerobic bursts of activity before muscle contraction becomes painful (often incorrectly attributed to a build-up of lactic acid). N.B. in some books and articles this muscle in humans was, confusingly, called type IIB. - Type IIb, which is anaerobic, glycolytic, "white" muscle that is even less dense in mitochondria and myoglobin. In small animals like rodents this is the major fast muscle type, explaining the pale color of their flesh. The gross anatomy of a muscle is the most important indicator of its role in the body. The action a muscle generates is determined by the origin and insertion locations. The cross-sectional area of a muscle (rather than volume or length) determines the amount of force it can generate by defining the number of sarcomeres which can operate in parallel. The amount of force applied to the external environment is determined by lever mechanics, specifically the ratio of in-lever to out-lever. For example, moving the insertion point of the biceps more distally on the radius (farther from the joint of rotation) would increase the force generated during flexion (and, as a result, the maximum weight lifted in this movement), but decrease the maximum speed of flexion. Moving the insertion point proximally (closer to the joint of rotation) would result in decreased force but increased velocity. This can be most easily seen by comparing the limb of a mole to a horse - in the former, the insertion point is positioned to maximize force (for digging), while in the latter, the insertion point is positioned to maximize speed (for running). One particularly important aspect of gross anatomy of muscles is pennation or lack thereof. In most muscles, all the fibers are oriented in the same direction, running in a line from the origin to the insertion. In pennate muscles, the individual fibers are oriented at an angle relative to the line of action, attaching to the origin and insertion tendons at each end. Because the contracting fibers are pulling at an angle to the overall action of the muscle, the change in length is smaller, but this same orientation allows for more fibers (thus more force) in a muscle of a given size. Pennate muscles are usually found where their length change is less important than maximum force, such as the rectus femoris. There are approximately 639 skeletal muscles in the human body. However, the exact number is difficult to define because different sources group muscles differently. Muscle is mainly composed of muscle cells. Within the cells are myofibrils; myofibrils contain sarcomeres, which are composed of actin and myosin. Individual muscle fibres are surrounded by endomysium. Muscle fibers are bound together by perimysium into bundles called fascicles; the bundles are then grouped together to form muscle, which is enclosed in a sheath of epimysium. Muscle spindles are distributed throughout the muscles and provide sensory feedback information to the central nervous system. Skeletal muscle is arranged in discrete muscles, an example of which is the biceps brachii. It is connected by tendons to processes of the skeleton. Cardiac muscle is similar to skeletal muscle in both composition and action, being comprised of myofibrils of sarcomeres, but anatomically different in that the muscle fibers are typically branched like a tree and connect to other cardiac muscle fibers through intercalcated discs, and form the appearance of a syncytium. The three (skeletal, cardiac and smooth) types of muscle have significant differences. However, all three use the movement of actin against myosin to create contraction. In skeletal muscle, contraction is stimulated by electrical impulses transmitted by the nerves, the motor nerves and motoneurons in particular. Cardiac and smooth muscle contractions are stimulated by internal pacemaker cells which regularly contract, and propagate contractions to other muscle cells they are in contact with. All skeletal muscle and many smooth muscle contractions are facilitated by the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Muscular activity accounts for much of the body's energy consumption. All muscle cells produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP) molecules which are used to power the movement of the myosin heads. Muscles conserve energy in the form of creatine phosphate which is generated from ATP and can regenerate ATP when needed with creatine kinase. Muscles also keep a storage form of glucose in the form of glycogen. Glycogen can be rapidly converted to glucose when energy is required for sustained, powerful contractions. Within the voluntary skeletal muscles, the glucose molecule can be metabolized anaerobically in a process called glycolysis which produces two ATP and two lactic acid molecules in the process (note that in aerobic conditions, lactate is not formed; instead pyruvate is formed and transmitted through the citric acid cycle). Muscle cells also contain globules of fat, which are used for energy during aerobic exercise. The aerobic energy systems take longer to produce the ATP and reach peak efficiency, and requires many more biochemical steps, but produces significantly more ATP than anaerobic glycolysis. Cardiac muscle on the other hand, can readily consume any of the three macronutrients (protein, glucose and fat) aerobically without a 'warm up' period and always extracts the maximum ATP yield from any molecule involved. The heart, liver and red blood cells will also consume lactic acid produced and excreted by skeletal muscles during exercise. Nervous control Edit Efferent leg Edit The efferent leg of the peripheral nervous system is responsible for conveying commands to the muscles and glands, and is ultimately responsible for voluntary movement. Nerves move muscles in response to voluntary and autonomic (involuntary) signals from the brain. Deep muscles, superficial muscles, muscles of the face and internal muscles all correspond with dedicated regions in the primary motor cortex of the brain, directly anterior to the central sulcus that divides the frontal and parietal lobes. In addition, muscles react to reflexive nerve stimuli that do not always send signals all the way to the brain. In this case, the signal from the afferent fiber does not reach the brain, but produces the reflexive movement by direct connections with the efferent nerves in the spine. However, the majority of muscle activity is volitional, and the result of complex interactions between various areas of the brain. Nerves that control skeletal muscles in mammals correspond with neuron groups along the primary motor cortex of the brain's cerebral cortex. Commands are routed though the basal ganglia and are modified by input from the cerebellum before being relayed through the pyramidal tract to the spinal cord and from there to the motor end plate at the muscles. Along the way, feedback, such as that of the extrapyramidal system contribute signals to influence muscle tone and response. Afferent leg Edit The afferent leg of the peripheral nervous system is responsible for conveying sensory information to the brain, primarily from the sense organs like the skin. In the muscles, the muscle spindles convey information about the degree of muscle length and stretch to the central nervous system to assist in maintaining posture and joint position. The sense of where our bodies are in space is called proprioception, the perception of body awareness. More easily demonstrated than explained, proprioception is the "unconscious" awareness of where the various regions of the body are located at any one time. This can be demonstrated by anyone closing their eyes and waving their hand around. Assuming proper proprioceptive function, at no time will the person lose awareness of where the hand actually is, even though it is not being detected by any of the other senses. Several areas in the brain coordinate movement and position with the feedback information gained from proprioception. The cerebellum and red nucleus in particular continuously sample position against movement and make minor corrections to assure smooth motion. Exercise is often recommended as a means of improving motor skills, fitness, muscle and bone strength, and joint function. Exercise has several effects upon muscles, connective tissue, bone, and the nerves that stimulate the muscles. Various exercises require a predominance of certain muscle fiber utilization over another. Aerobic exercise involves long, low levels of exertion in which the muscles are used at well below their maximal contraction strength for long periods of time (the most classic example being the marathon). Aerobic events, which rely primarily on the aerobic (with oxygen) system, use a higher percentage of Type I (or slow-twitch) muscle fibers, consume a mixture of fat, protein and carbohydrates for energy, consume large amounts of oxygen and produce little lactic acid. Anaerobic exercise involves short bursts of higher intensity contractions at a much greater percentage of their maximum contraction strength. Examples of anaerobic exercise include sprinting and weight lifting. The anaerobic energy delivery system uses predominantly Type II or fast-twitch muscle fibers, relies mainly on ATP or glucose for fuel, consumes relatively little oxygen, protein and fat, produces large amounts of lactic acid and can not be sustained for as long a period as aerobic exercise. The presence of lactic acid has an inhibitory effect on ATP generation within the muscle; though not producing fatigue, it can inhibit or even stop performance if the intracellular concentration becomes too high. However, long-term training causes neovascularization within the muscle, increasing the ability to move waste products out of the muscles and maintain contraction. Once moved out of muscles with high concentrations within the sarcomere, lactic acid can be used by other muscles or body tissues as a source of energy, or transported to the liver where it is converted back to pyruvate. The ability of the body to export lactic acid and use it as a source of energy depends on training level. Humans are genetically predisposed with a larger percentage of one type of muscle group over another. An individual born with a greater percentage of Type I muscle fibers would theoretically be more suited to endurance events, such as triathlons, distance running, and long cycling events, whereas a human born with a greater percentage of Type II muscle fibers would be more likely to excel at anaerobic events such as a 200 meter dash, or weightlifting. People with high overall musculation and balanced muscle type percentage engage in sports such as rugby or boxing and often engage in other sports to increase their performance in the former.[citations needed] Delayed onset muscle soreness is pain or discomfort that may be felt one to three days after exercising and subsides generally within two to three days later. Once thought to be caused by lactic acid buildup, a more recent theory is that it is caused by tiny tears in the muscle fibers caused by eccentric contraction, or unaccustomed training levels. Since lactic acid disperses fairly rapidly, it could not explain pain experienced days after exercise. Symptoms of muscle diseases may include weakness, spasticity, myoclonus and myalgia. Diagnostic procedures that may reveal muscular disorders include testing creatine kinase levels in the blood and electromyography (measuring electrical activity in muscles). In some cases, muscle biopsy may be done to identify a myopathy, as well as genetic testing to identify DNA abnormalities associated with specific myopathies and dystrophies. Neuromuscular diseases are those that affect the muscles and/or their nervous control. In general, problems with nervous control can cause spasticity or paralysis, depending on the location and nature of the problem. A large proportion of neurological disorders leads to problems with movement, ranging from cerebrovascular accident (stroke) and Parkinson's disease to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. A non-invasive elastography technique that measures muscle noise is undergoing experimentation to provide a way of monitoring neuromuscular disease. The sound produced by a muscle comes from the shortening of actomyosin filaments along the axis of the muscle. During contraction, the muscle shortens along its longitudinal axis and expands across the transverse axis, producing vibrations at the surface. There are many diseases and conditions which cause a decrease in muscle mass, known as muscle atrophy. Example include cancer and AIDS, which induce a body wasting syndrome called cachexia. Other syndromes or conditions which can induce skeletal muscle atrophy are congestive heart disease and some diseases of the liver. During aging, there is a gradual decrease in the ability to maintain skeletal muscle function and mass, known as sarcopenia. The exact cause of sarcopenia is unknown, but it may be due to a combination of the gradual failure in the "satellite cells" which help to regenerate skeletal muscle fibers, and a decrease in sensitivity to or the availability of critical secreted growth factors which are necessary to maintain muscle mass and satellite cell survival. Sarcopenia is a normal aspect of aging, and is not actually a disease state. Physical inactivity and atrophyEdit Inactivity and starvation in rodents and mammals lead to atrophy of skeletal muscle, accompanied by a smaller number and size of the muscle cells as well as lower protein content. In humans, prolonged periods of immobilization, as in the cases of bed rest or astronauts flying in space, are known to result in muscle weakening and atrophy. Such consequences are also noted in small hibernating mammals like the golden-mantled ground squirrels and brown bats. Representatives of the Ursid species make for an interesting exception to this expected norm. Bears are famous for their ability to survive unfavorable environmental conditions of low temperatures and limited nutrition availability during winter by means of hibernation. During that time Ursids go through a series of physiological, morphological and behavioral changes. Their ability to maintain skeletal muscle number and size at time of disuse is of a significant importance. During hibernation bears spend four to seven months of inactivity and anorexia without undergoing muscle atrophy and protein loss. There are a few known factors that contribute to the sustaining of muscle tissue. During the summer period, Ursids take advantage of the nutrition availability and accumulate muscle protein. The protein balance of bears at time of dormancy is also maintained by lower levels of protein breakdown during the winter time. At times of immobility, muscle wasting in Ursids is also suppressed by a proteolytic inhibitor that is released in circulation. Another factor that contributes to the sustaining of muscle strength in hibernating bears is the occurrence of periodic voluntary contractions and involuntary contractions from shivering during torpor. The three to four daily episodes of muscle activity are responsible for the maintenance of muscle strength and responsiveness in bears during hibernation. A display of "strength" (e.g lifting a weight) is a result of three factors that overlap: physiological strength (muscle size, cross sectional area, available crossbridging, responses to training), neurological strength (how strong or weak is the signal that tells the muscle to contract), and mechanical strength (muscle's force angle on the lever, moment arm length, joint capabilities). Contrary to popular belief, the number of muscle fibres cannot be increased through exercise; instead the muscle cells simply get bigger. Muscle fibres have a limited capacity for growth through hypertrophy and some believe they split through hyperplasia if subject to increased demand. The "strongest" human muscleEdit Since three factors affect muscular strength simultaneously and muscles never work individually, it is misleading to compare strength in individual muscles, and state that one is the "strongest". But below are several muscles whose strength is noteworthy for different reasons. - In ordinary parlance, muscular "strength" usually refers to the ability to exert a force on an external object—for example, lifting a weight. By this definition, the masseter or jaw muscle is the strongest. The 1992 Guinness Book of Records records the achievement of a bite strength of 4337 N (975 lbf) for 2 seconds. What distinguishes the masseter is not anything special about the muscle itself, but its advantage in working against a much shorter lever arm than other muscles. - If "strength" refers to the force exerted by the muscle itself, e.g., on the place where it inserts into a bone, then the strongest muscles are those with the largest cross-sectional area. This is because the tension exerted by an individual skeletal muscle fiber does not vary much. Each fiber can exert a force on the order of 0.3 micronewton. By this definition, the strongest muscle of the body is usually said to be the quadriceps femoris or the gluteus maximus. - A shorter muscle will be stronger "pound for pound" (i.e., by weight) than a longer muscle. The myometrial layer of the uterus may be the strongest muscle by weight in the human body. At the time when an infant is delivered, the entire human uterus weighs about 1.1 kg (40 oz). During childbirth, the uterus exerts 100 to 400 N (25 to 100 lbf) of downward force with each contraction. - The external muscles of the eye are conspicuously large and strong in relation to the small size and weight of the eyeball. It is frequently said that they are "the strongest muscles for the job they have to do" and are sometimes claimed to be "100 times stronger than they need to be." However, eye movements (particularly saccades used on facial scanning and reading) do require high speed movements, and eye muscles are exercised nightly during rapid eye movement sleep. - The statement that "the tongue is the strongest muscle in the body" appears frequently in lists of surprising facts, but it is difficult to find any definition of "strength" that would make this statement true. Note that the tongue consists of sixteen muscles, not one. - The heart has a claim to being the muscle that performs the largest quantity of physical work in the course of a lifetime. Estimates of the power output of the human heart range from 1 to 5 watts. This is much less than the maximum power output of other muscles; for example, the quadriceps can produce over 100 watts, but only for a few minutes. The heart does its work continuously over an entire lifetime without pause, and thus does "outwork" other muscles. An output of one watt continuously for eighty years yields a total work output of two and a half gigajoules. The efficiency of human muscle has been measured (in the context of rowing and cycling) at 14% to 27%. The efficiency is defined as the ratio of mechanical work output to the total metabolic cost. Density of muscle tissue compared to adipose tissue Edit The density of mammalian skeletal muscle tissue is about 1.06 kg/liter. This can be contrasted with the density of adipose tissue (fat), which is 0.9196 kg/liter. This makes muscle tissue approximately 15% denser than fat tissue. Muscle evolution Edit Evolutionarily, specialized forms of skeletal and cardiac muscles predated the divergence of the vertebrate/arthropod evolutionary line. This indicates that these types of muscle developed in a common ancestor sometime before 700 million years ago (mya). Vertebrate smooth muscle (smooth muscle found in humans) was found to have evolved independently from the skeletal and cardiac muscles. See also Edit - List of muscles of the human body - Myopathy (pathology of muscle cells) - Rapid plant movement - Muscle atrophy - Muscle tone (residual muscle tension) - Electroactive polymers (materials that behave like muscles, used in robotics research) - Muscle memory - Musculoskeletal system - Hand strength - ↑ Definition and origin of the word 'muscle' - ↑ Note: Access to full text requires subscription; abstract freely available - ↑ 'Muscle noise' could reveal diseases' progression 18 May 2007, NewScientist.com news service, Belle Dumé - ↑ 6.0 6.1 - ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 - ↑ 9.0 9.1 - ↑ Farvid M, Ng, T, Chan D, Barrett P, Watts G. "Association of adiponectin and resistin with adipose tissue compartments, insulin resistance and dyslipidaemia. []". - ↑ Evolution of muscle fibers - Costill, David L and Wilmore, Jack H. (2004). Physiology of Sport and Exercise. Champaign, Illinois: Human Kinetics. ISBN 0-7360-4489-2. - Phylogenetic Relationship of Muscle Tissues Deduced from Superimposition of Gene Trees, Satoshi OOta and Naruya Saitou, Mol. Biol. Evol. 16(6) 856–7, 1999 - Johnson George B. (2005) "Biology, Visualizing Life." Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. ISBN 0-03-016723-X - Muslumova, Irada (2003). Power of a Human Heart. The Physics Factbook. (Heart output 1.3 to 5 watts, lifetime output 2 to 3 ×109 joules) - University of Dundee article on performing neurological examinations (Quadriceps "strongest") - Muscle efficiency in rowing - Human Muscle Tutorial (clear pictures of main human muscles and their Latin names, good for orientation) - Microscopic stains of skeletal and cardiac muscular fibers to show striations. Note the differences in myofibrilar arrangements. - Building muscle mass with weight training Gaining weight and building muscle through proper weight training - GainWeightandMuscle.org Gaining weight Muscle For Ectomorphs and Hardgainers (skinny guys) - Principles Of Good Weight Training - Skinny Guy Build Muscle Muscle building for skinny guys af:Spier ar:عضلة bs:Mišić bg:Мускул ca:Múscul cs:Sval cy:Cyhyr da:Muskel de:Muskulatur es:Músculo eo:Muskolo eu:Gihar fa:ماهیچه fr:Muscle fy:Spier gl:Músculo ko:근육 hr:Ljudski mišići io:Muskulo id:Otot is:Vöðvi it:Muscolo he:שריר ka:კუნთი ku:Masîlik la:Musculus lv:Muskuļi lb:Muskel lt:Raumuo ln:Montungá hu:Izom mk:Мускул mr:स्नायू ms:Otot nl:Spier (anatomie) ja:筋肉 no:Muskel nn:Muskel pag:Laman pl:Mięsień pt:Músculo ro:Sistemul muscular qu:Sinchi aycha ru:Мышцы sq:Sistemi muskulor simple:Muscle sk:Svalové tkanivo sl:Mišica sr:Мишићно ткиво su:Otot fi:Lihaskudokset sv:Muskel tl:Masel te:కండరము th:กล้ามเนื้อ vi:Mô cơ tr:Kas uk:М'язова тканина fiu-vro:Muskli yi:מוסקל zh:肌肉
A wide variety of precipitation from snow and rain, to sleet and freezing rain occur in the winter months. Temperatures at the ground and up to about 5 thousand feet in the atmosphere determine precipitation type. Sharply varying temperatures over just a few miles, both aloft and near the ground, can produce quick changes in the type and amount of precipitation. In the diagram below, snow is produced when temperatures are uniformly cold both aloft and at the ground. The snow does not melt as it falls, and temperatures at or below 32 degrees near the ground allows it to accumulate. However, sleet is formed when temperatures at or slightly above freezing aloft produce rain that freezes to ice pellets, as it falls into a cold layer of air. Sleet usually bounces when hitting a surface and does not stick to objects. However, it can produce a “sandlike” accumulation like snow. Freezing rain forms when warm temperatures aloft, generally several degrees above freezing, produces rain that falls onto a surface with temperatures below 32 degrees. This causes the liquid rain to freeze on impact to objects such as trees, power lines, cars, and roads forming a coating or glaze of ice. Even a small amount of freezing rain on roads can create a significant travel hazard.
Charles’ Law is an experimental gas law that describes how gases tend to expand when heated. The law states that if a quantity of gas is held at a constant pressure, there is a direct relationship between its volume and the temperature, as measured in degrees Kelvin. Think of it this way. As the temperature increases, the molecules within any given gas begin to move around more quickly. As the molecules move faster, they collide with each other and the walls of their container more frequently and with more force. If the gas container is inflexible, these more frequent and forceful collisions will result in increased pressure. However, if the container is flexible, like a balloon, the pressure will remain the same, while allowing the volume of the gas to increase. Charles’ Law apparatus can be used to demonstrate this thermal expansion of gases. While a classroom experiment will prove the formal theory, there are numerous examples of the law in action in everyday life, which can help to embed students’ understanding. Make sense of the science by considering some of these real life applications of Charles’ Law. Watch what happens to a helium balloon on a cold day. Step outside with a helium balloon on a chilly day and chances are, the balloon will crumble. Once you get back into the warm, however, the balloon will return to its original shape. In accordance with Charles’ Law, this is because, a gas, in this case, helium, takes up more space when it is warm. How about a hot air balloon? A torch is used to heat the air molecules inside the balloon. The molecules move faster and disperse within the space. The gas inside the balloon takes up more space, becoming less dense than the air surrounding it. As such, the hot air inside the balloon rises because of its decreased density and causes the balloon to float. Try out a turkey timer. Pop-up turkey thermometers work by applying Charles’ Law. The thermometer is placed in the turkey. As the temperature rises and the turkey cooks, the air in the thermometer expands to pop the plunger. The thermometer is calibrated so that when the correct internal temperature is reached, the thermometer cap pops off, providing a clear indication that the turkey is done. Pump up your ping pong ball. If you play ping pong, chances are you’ve come across the occasionally dented ball. Restore its roundness by popping it in a pan of water. Warm the water gently while stirring and the air inside the ball will expand as it heats up. The expanding air will push out the dent and restore the ball’s roundness. Take a look at your tyre pressure. Take a tip from your manual and measure the pressure of your car’s tyres when they are cold. Driving heats up the tyres and consequently causes the air within them to expand. As such, if you measure the air when the tyres are warm, the pressure will be higher. You can double-check that you haven’t overfilled your tyres by checking them when they’ve cooled down.
We are learning to: - use non standard equipment to measure - compare two measurements - use measurement words to talk about our learning - Start in the correct place - Use the same equipment (size) to measure something - Put equipment close together, without spaces - Measure in a straight line - Use words like: measure, long, wide, narrow, longer than, shorter than, wider than, narrower than, the same as This is a photo of Katie ordering her gingerbread men from smallest to biggest. She then had to build a bridge for her gingerbread man to cross over so the fox would not eat it. This is a video of Katie proving which car has gone further and explaining how she knows.
It seems extraordinary to speak of picking up pieces of an asteroid on the surface of the Earth, but the meteorites known as eucrites are confidently identified with Vesta, the brightest asteroid in the sky (and the only one visible with the naked eye). With the Dawn mission on its way to both Ceres and Vesta, we’ll learn much more about the composition of both, but Vesta is coming into its own as a most unusual object that has contributed much to the surrounding system. For the 330-mile wide asteroid sports a huge gouge taken out of its south pole, apparently the result of a collision between protoplanetary objects. The hole, some eight miles deep, once contained a half million cubic miles of asteroid material that was subsequently blasted into interplanetary space, where interaction with Jupiter came into play. Gravitational tugging changes orbits, and some of these objects were put onto trajectories that brought them to Earth. Image: A 3-D computer model of the asteroid Vesta synthesized from Hubble topographic data. The crater’s 8-mile high central peak can clearly be seen near the pole. The surface texture on the model is artificial, and is not representative of the true brightness variations on the asteroid. Elevation features have not been exaggerated. Credit: Ben Zellner (Georgia Southern University), Peter Thomas (Cornell University) and NASA. Thus we can study at least part of Vesta — materials from its primordial surface — right here. Says Christopher Russell (UCLA): “Meteorites are hardy objects indeed. Eucrites are a specific type of meteorite that the science community is confident came from Vesta’s surface. We believe that when Vesta was forming, there was molten rock that flowed onto its surface that cooled rapidly. That rapid cooling created small crystals.” Indeed, the spectral signature of these meteorites is identical with that of Vesta. The isotopes in eucrites are unlike isotopes found in any other rocks on Earth, the Moon or other meteorites. “Simply put,” adds Russell, “we cannot find another place in the Solar System they could be from.” This JPL feature offers background. We follow Dawn with interest, but note that finding fragments is the best way to encounter an asteroid on Earth, a reminder that a darker alternative is the kind of impact that leads to planetary catastrophe. Our deepening understanding of asteroids should have us sorting out our options for missions to near-Earth objects in hopes of learning as much about their composition as we’re learning about Vesta, and deducing from that how we go about deflecting them.

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.