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In my experience, students cannot multiply fluently without knowing their facts. Let's take a look at some resources. To help students conceptualize multiplication, use Multiplication Concepts PowerPoint Presentation by Two Boys and a Dad Productions and follow up with Multiplication Flip Booklets by Teaching My 3. Jan Lindley has created a 180-page Math Facts Practice Bundle to help students practice multiplication facts from two through twelve. Zoom Zoom Classroom offers Multiplication Facts Function Tables, a learning center approach to practicing facts. If your students like secret messages, check out Crypto Riddles by The Puzzle Den. An activity and board game that correlate to the book, Amanda Bean's Amazing Dream, are available at the Teachers pay Teachers store of MJcreations. As practice continues, this colorful Multiplication Chart by Page Protector Printables and More will ensure their success. Soon students are ready to multiply two- and three-digit numbers by a one-digit number. To make learning fun, try Math with Riddles by Misty Miller and Pumpkin Patch Multiplication Task Cards - Story Problems by Amy Alvis. Teaching kids how to multiply two digits by two digits can be really difficult. This PowerPoint presentation and related worksheets by Lindy du Plessis support student learning with a rainbow analogy. I'd to share three great free resources for practice of double-digit by double-digit multiplication. Kadeen Whitby has created a Color by Multiplication Fun Freebie, MissKinBK shares Multiplication Task Cards, and Terry's Teaching Tidbits offers Spider Multiplication Task Cards Freebie. I'll be using all of these in my class during October! Do you need activities for multiplying by one- and two-digit numbers? You can purchase eight sets of multiplication task cards in this bundle or pick and choose sets by visiting the Teachers pay Teachers store of ChiliMath. Jessicca Nielsen has put together an amazing 89-page Multiplication Resource Package. Check it out! Now, especially for fifth grade teachers, we'll take a peek at a few resources for multiplying decimals. Terry's Teaching Tidbits has tackled the difficult task of conceptualization of this skill in Multiplying Decimals Using Visual Models. To extend this conceptual model and practice multiplying decimals, try Multiplying and Dividing Decimals Task Cards for Fifth Grade by MissKinBK. For some fun practice, Misty Miller has created Math with Riddles Decimal Bundle. I'd like to thank my friends at Teachers pay Teachers for sharing all of these great multiplication resources with us! As I said before, multiplication is a big deal for middle graders - - - but engaging resources such as these can make teaching and learning so much more fun.
To explore the role of gravity in falling. During the elementary years, force may be treated as the originator of motion. An explanation of force itself can be postponed until middle school, and even high school. It is important, however, to help students broaden their understanding of the fundamental forces of nature, with a particular emphasis on gravitational and electromagnetic forces. This lesson introduces students to gravity as a force, focusing on the concept of falling. Elementary-school students typically do not understand gravity as a force. They see the phenomenon of a falling body as "natural" with no need for further explanation or they ascribe to it an internal effort of the object that is falling (Ogborn, 1985). If students do view weight as a force, they usually think it is the air that exerts this force (Ruggiero et al., 1985). Misconceptions about the causes of gravity persist after traditional high-school physics instruction (Brown & Clement, 1992) but can be overcome by specially designed instruction (Brown & Clement, 1992; Minstrell et al., 1992). (Benchmarks for Science Literacy, p.340) Students of all ages may hold misconceptions about the magnitude of the earth's gravitational force. Even after a physics course, many high-school students believe that gravity increases with height above the earth's surface (Gunstone & White, 1981) or are not sure whether the force of gravity would be greater on a lead ball than on a wooden ball of the same size (Brown & Clement, 1992). (Benchmarks for Science Literacy, p.340) The class should begin by discussing the motions of objects that they know about. Ask students to describe how these common objects move: - Balls that have been thrown - Sliding or rolling down ramps - Pedaled bicycles - Moving cars, boats, and planes - Orbiting satellites Students should describe the path that the motion would take as well as what might begin or stop the motion. The common characteristic of all the motions that students have experienced directly is that one or more forces are acting on the moving body. All are being acted upon by the pull of the Earth's gravity. Most also are being acted upon by other forces (pushes and pulls) as well, for example, friction, motors, and human pushes or pulls. All of these pushes and pulls combined give each object its characteristic motion: the arc of the flight of a basketball or the path of a toy car down a ramp and across a level surface. Students hold various meanings for the word "force." Typically, students think force is something that makes things happen or creates change. Their descriptions of force often include related words such as energy, momentum, pressure, power, and strength. Younger students associate the word "force" with living things (Watts, 1983b). In addition, students tend to think of force as a property of an object ("an object has force," or "force is within an object") rather than as a relation between objects (Dykstra, Boyle, & Monarch, 1992; Jung et al., 1981; Osborne, 1985). Students also tend to distinguish between active objects and objects that support or block or otherwise act passively. Students tend to call the active actions "force" but do not consider passive actions as "forces" (Gunstone & Watts, 1985). (Benchmarks for Science Literacy, p.340) The laws governing forces and motion are among the most fundamental concepts in natural science. Students can understand these concepts better when they explore them in the context of familiar, everyday life. If an object is pushed off a table or held in one's hand and then released, it moves toward the center of the Earth. It is being pulled (as all other material objects are being pulled) by the force of gravity, the attraction between the masses of the two bodies, the object and the Earth. The movement of the object toward the Earth is called "falling." To demonstrate to students that falling and gravity can be very useful, explore with students how "falling" is involved when they use: - Playground slides In their science journals, students should write an explanation for how falling is involved in each of the above. Say to students, "Common sense suggests that heavy objects are pulled toward the Earth with greater force than lighter objects. That is why they feel "heavier"; they are pulling harder against our hands as they try to fall to Earth. Does this mean that a heavy object will fall faster than a light object?" Students should discuss this and make a prediction based on their personal experiences. Note: The term gravity may interfere with students' understanding because it often is used as an empty label for the common (and ancient) notion of "natural motion" toward the earth. The important point is that the earth pulls on objects. (Benchmarks for Science Literacy, p. 94) Provide your students with the activity sheet called Falling for Gravity and ask them to try the suggested activities. They should use these experiences to revise their predictions about whether or not a heavy object will fall faster than a light one. Discuss with students how their predictions changed based on these experiences. Now students should use their Falling student esheet to go to WaterWorks from the Oregon Museum of Science. This page describes a water fountain students can make. Students should read the page, decide if it would work, and describe the role that gravity plays in making the fountain work. You can follow up the activity by having students actually make the fountain. However, the point is to see if students can explain why it works based on their understanding of gravity. Students should use their esheet to go to and read Gravity in Orbit from the How Things Fly exhibit on the National Air and Space Museum website. Then they should write a paragraph explaining the animation that is shown on the page. It depicts what is described in the text—a person throwing baseballs at different speeds. Students should also explain how the analogy of the baseballs relates to a spacecraft orbiting around the earth.
UC Cooperative Extension \| Agricultural Experiment Station Utilizing school gardens is one of the most positive hands-on opportunities for youth to experience gardening while learning healthy eating habits. Children who are hungry or poorly nourished do less well in school, both academically and behaviorally. Our current crisis in the rising rates of obesity and related diseases among children is now well known. The proliferation of unhealthy fast foods and the limited intake by children of fresh fruits and vegetables all contribute to this situation. As concern rises, policy makers and teachers in the classroom are searching for ways to improve the health and well being of their students. Moreover, because eating habits and preferences are established early, and although home influences are strong, school is a valuable venue for teaching good nutrition, balanced diets and proper serving amounts. The most effective way to increase children's intake of fruits and vegetables and encourage lifelong healthful eating habits is to teach them about healthy choices and nutrition concepts in the elementary years (Kirby, 1995). Studies show that if established before 6th grade, positive habits are more likely to persist into adulthood.
It’s been 32 years since the discovery of Charon, one of Pluto’s moons. Today, we know that Pluto is a dwarf planet—an object orbiting the sun, large enough to resemble a planet but too small to pick up objects along its orbit. But, that doesn’t mean Pluto is sans-lunar. Pluto has not just one but three moons: Charon, Nix and Hydra.Closer to Earth, IKAROS, a solar spaceship, is en route to Venus on the other side of the sun. Using a 66-foot wide aluminum sail, IKAROS is being pushed through space by solar wind—electromagnetic discharge from the sun—and is guided by a solar-powered navigation system. Plus, how to determine a star’s temperature based on its color. Here’s a hint: “red-hot” might be a misnomer out in space. More Like This
The United States presidential election of 1952 took place in an era when Cold War tension between the United States and the Soviet Union was escalating rapidly. In the United States Senate, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin had become a national figure after chairing congressional investigations into the issue of Communist spies within the U.S. government. McCarthy's so-called "witch hunt", combined with national tension and weariness after two years of bloody stalemate in the Korean War and the early 1950s recession, set the stage for a hotly-fought presidential contest. Unpopular incumbent President Harry S. Truman decided not to run, so the Democratic Party instead nominated Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois; Stevenson had gained a reputation in Illinois as an intellectual and eloquent orator. The Republican Party countered with popular war hero General Dwight D. Eisenhower and won in a landslide, ending 20 consecutive years of Democratic control of the White House.
Be sure that you have an application to open this file type before downloading and/or purchasing. 94 KB\|2 pages Use this to practice kindergarten sight words or familiarize first grade sight words. Start by showing them the words on flash cards, read them aloud and then write the words. Students will also identify the words in sentences.
UN World Mental Health Day 2015 theme is "Dignity in Mental Health" Mental, behavioral and neurological disorders are common in all countries around the world, causing immense agony and staggering economic and social costs. People with any disorder are mostly subjected to an isolated social life, poor life quality and higher death rates. Mental health is increasingly endorsed as a significant aspect in terms of the overall well-being of the individual. In 1999 World Mental Health Day, which falls on October 10, had been dedicated to “Mental Health in Primary Care: Enhancing Treatment and Promoting Mental Health”. Mental health issues are a global priority and it is imperative to address issues pertaining to it at the earliest and in an effective and efficacious manner. This day encourages more transparent discussion of illnesses, and investments in prevention and treatment services. WHO’s calculations for 2002 states that 154 million people across the world suffer from depression. The World Health Organization has identified following 7 reasons for including mental health into the primitive care structure: Inclusion of mental health within the primitive care system can yield more fruitful results in following manners: Meanwhile it is imperative to ensure that there are clearly defined principles and steps regarding the line of treatment that should be offered to the general practitioners and primary care workers. Following the initial treatment by primary workers further referrals for complex mental health issues can be sent to psychiatrists and psychologists with specialization. Thus, policies are required to be structured and implemented by the government. This would mean that involvement of government is required and these problems need to be included into the health regulations of general nature which should be included with medical, physical, psychological and mental health concerns. Hence advocacy is required and it acts as an important aspect of mental health. We would need to sensitize the leadership, health institutions, organizations and primary care workers about the necessity of integration of these two aspects of health. This can be summarized as follows as has also been recommended by the WHO as guidelines for including mental health in primary care: Simple and less expensive interventions should be provided with primary importance. Some of the interventions that need to be incorporated include: The identification of need for inclusion of services is specifically required within the context of a big and voluminous country where dearth of professionals leads to millions of people without treatment that they urgently require. A step in the direction of incorporation would be beneficial to all – patients, their families, mental health experts, medical experts, non medical and non-governmental bodies working in the sector for the advocacy of the overall health and prosperity of the individual and hence the human race at large.
- Shopping Bag ( 0 items ) Children's LiteratureHow very exciting! Here is a book that is part of the series "How Economics Works" and actually explains budgeting in a very reader-friendly way. There are five chapters covered in only 35 pages and all the chapters are filled with photographs, drawings, and easy-to-follow text. The author starts out by explaining why a person should care about economics and then takes the reader through the process of understanding how economics works, how it helps countries to prevent depressions, and how it can help all individuals. Trivia facts can also be found throughout the book. Did you know that Adam Smith, a Scottish philosopher and economist, is known for being the founder of modern economics? The reader will also learn that "Alan Greenspan has been one of the most important people in the world, because what he says about the economy influenced economic decisions around the globe." The information is written in a way that children can see how economics is actually already a part of their lives. For example, children are often skilled at the art of bartering which is a very old economic system. Readers will learn about supply and demand and how competition affects prices. Once children start receiving an allowance for their completed chores or receiving money for birthdays and holidays, this book should become a part of their lives. Not only does the information provide an excellent lesson in responsibility, but it also provides a way of handling money that can follow them into adulthood. At the end of the book, the reader will find a glossary, bibliography, websites, a list of places to visit, and activities. I highly recommend this book. 2006, Lerner Publications, Ages 9 to 12. —Kathie M. Josephs
Long before the movie, The Social Network, scientists have been investigating social networks – first in humans and, more recently, in wild animals. A social network is a group of individuals interconnected by social ties between them; these interactions may be sexual, cooperative, learning, disease transmission, or others (Krause et al. 2015). Understanding the social network structure provides insights that the study of simpler, two-individual interactions cannot provide. Recently, a press release highlighted the social network of the Sand Tiger Shark Carcharias taurus (Carchariniformes; Odontaspididae). \|Sand Tiger Shark among a shoal of fish\| The Sand Tiger Shark is one of the best-studied sharks, and, therefore, a good fish to begin to examine social networks. Populations are concentrated along the mid Atlantic coast and uncertainty over population declines prompted NOAA to continue to list the Sand Tiger Sharks as a species of concern. Their low net reproductive rate means the populations will be slow to recover after prohibition of harvest by commercial and recreational fisheries in 2006. One look at the mouth of a Sand Tiger Sharks will tell you this fish is a specialized piscivore. Consequently they are frequently captured by recreational anglers as well as longline and gill net fisheries. Pioneer shark-watcher, Russell J. Cole, observed schools of Sand Tiger Sharks surrounding and herding schooling prey in order to feed on them. The systematic and coordinated movement of hundreds of Sand Tiger Sharks has the hallmarks of cooperative feeding behavior, a phenomenon more associated with dolphins and birds. \|Close up of teeth of Sand Tiger Shark\| While most sharks provide buoyancy with a large liver, the Sand Tiger Sharks also gulp air at the surface and store it in their stomach to provide buoyancy. These sharks generally mate in the fall after a courtship that involves the male aggressively nipping his potential mate. Females give birth to only one or two large pups every two years and gestation lasts for nine months. Pups hatch and develop in the female. By the time they reach 17 cm, they already possess prominent teeth and feed on new eggs and embryos produced by the female, a form of nutrition called ovophagy and embryophagy. It’s hard to say how many eggs are eaten before the pups are born at a size of almost one meter. Demian Chapman and colleagues did genetic tests on embryos in the uterus of a number of Sand Tiger Sharks. As expected, the females mated with multiple males, but 60% of the females were carrying only babies from the same father. Perhaps females have multiple mates in order to feed the offspring from the first father. For the Sand Tiger Shark, the uterus is a safe place from predation from other sharks, however, it is not a safe place from being cannibalized by your sibling womb-mates. \|Small and embryos from same uterus of Sand Tiger Shark. Photo by D.L Ambercrombie\| Social networks are of interest to scientists studying social animals; social animals have a variety of strategies that individual animals use in groups. How can scientists understand how cooperation, aggression, information flow or dominance at the individual level translates to group phenomenon? Animals are not robots whose behavior is programmed by genes; rather they are individuals and their behavior is influenced by genetics, the environment, and social interactions. Animals learn and they remember. The group, or the network, is also important since information flows between some members in the group. Social network analysis is needed to understand processes such as pathogen transport, feeding, movements, mating opportunities, and teaching survival skills. Importantly, certain individuals play a larger role in the well-being of the group (Dugatkin and Hasenjager 2015). The social network methods originated largely from psychologists and anthropologists. For a brief history, click here. Scientists today study groups of individuals and monitor the many types of individual interactions in order to provide a network of social structure. For example, which individuals are more likely to be affiliated in space or time and which individuals are avoided, or pursued as mates? Although there are many applications, the analysis of social networks permits scientists to investigate the role of individual variation in social behavior on population structure. Sophisticated methods for analyzing social networks are emerging. These novel methods allow for the study of networks of genetic, affiliative, agonistic, cooperative, dominant, and other relationships that form the social system (Wey et al. 2008; Farine and Whitehead 2015) Social networks are most studied in social mammals, such as dolphin (Lusseau and Newman 2004), bats, and other mammals, such as Zebras. Social networks have also be applied to explore how the information-sharing networks contribute to fishing success in the Northumberland lobster fishery (Turner et al. 2014). Why should we study social networks? The new investigation of the Sand Tiger Shark tells us that there is much more to learn about fish in social networks. Social networks matter in contributing to the well-being of the group. We need to consider the possibilities and open our minds to study possibilities of these hidden networks. Chapman, D.D., S.P. Wintner, D.L. Abercrombie, J. Ashe, A.M. Bernard, M.S. Shivji, and K.A. Feldheim. 2013. The behavioral and genetic mating system of the sand tiger shark, Carcharias taurus, an intrauterine cannibal. Biology Letters. Dugatkin, L.A., and M. Hasenjager. 2015. The networked animal. Scientific American 312:50-55. Farine, D.R., and H. Whitehead. 2015. Constructing, conducting and interpreting animal social network analysis. Journal of Animal Ecology 84:1144-1163. Lusseau, D., and M.E.J. Newman. 2004. Identifying the role that animals play in their social networks. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B (Supplement) 271:S477-S481. DOI 10.1098/rsbl.2004.0225 Krause, J., R. James, D.W. Franks, and D.P. Croft, editors. 2015. Animal social networks. Oxford University Press. Oxford, United Kingdom. 288 pp. Turner, R.A., N.V.C. Polunin, and S.M. Stead. 2014. Social networks and fishers’ behavior: exploring the links between information flow and fishing success in the Northumberland lobster fishery. Ecology and Society 19(2):38. Wey, T., D.T. Blumstein, W. Shen and F Jordan. 2008. Social network analysis of animal behaviour: a promising tool for the study of sociality. Animal Behaviour 75:333-344.
Designed to follow on from the Jolly Phonics Pupil Books 1, 2 and 3, the Grammar Pupil Books build on the skills taught in Jolly Phonics, and introduce grammar, spelling and punctuation rules to improve writing and reading comprehension. The Grammar 3 Pupil Book (in Print Letters) follows on from Grammar 1 and Grammar 2 Pupil Books. Children are able to work through the Pupil Book and complete a variety of activities to consolidate their lessons and develop key spelling and grammar skills. Each page in the Pupil Book is linked to the lesson provided in the Grammar 3 Teacher’s Book, putting everything they need at the teacher’s fingertips. Grammar 3 Pupil Book (in Print Letters) contains 36 spelling and 36 grammar lessons covering the following areas: new spelling patterns; syllables; collective nouns; possessive pronouns; contractions; present participle; conjugating verbs; irregular plurals; prefixes and suffixes; nouns acting as adjectives; simple and continuous verb tenses; punctuation; dictionary work; writing in paragraphs and further sentence development.
Solar Intensity and Luminosity The Sun's radiation (sunlight) is closely approximated as blackbody radiation. Accordingly, the intensity or flux of solar radiation, F, which is a measure of how much power is being radiated from the Sun's surface per unit area, can be expressed in terms of the temperature, T, of the sun using the Stefan-Boltzmann law: where σ=5.67 × 10−8WK4 m2 is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant. The luminosity of the Sun is a measure of how much energy the Sun produces per unit time. It is obtained by multiplying the solar intensity by the Sun's surface area: L=4 π rs2F, where rs represents the radius of the Sun. To determine the flux passing through any other point in space where the Sun is visible, rs is replaced by d, which is the distance from the center of the Sun to the point in question. So, the formula now becomes: F=L4 π d2. In this formula, the flux is proportional to the inverse square of the distance. This means that if an object's distance from the Sun doubles, the amount of sunlight hitting a given area will drop by a factor of four. This property is an example of the inverse-square law, which affects conserved quantities propagating evenly in all directions through three-dimensional space. Consecutive wavefronts of decreasing intensity can be visualized in the following interactive diagram: As you can imagine, as the radiation moves farther from the Sun, the same amount of energy is spread out over a larger area (which is proportional to the square of the distance from the source), which makes the flux (power per unit area) correspondingly smaller. What is the radiant flux emitted into space by a light source with temperature of 1000 K? What is the luminosity of the solar radiation given by this surface if its radius is 5×108m? Adjust the sliders to change the radius and temperature of the surface providing solar radiation. Click the checkboxes to see the flux and luminosity calculations. Using the formulas introduced in the previous section, you can determine both the flux and the luminosity produced by the specified surface. To begin, calculate the flux: F=5.67 × 10−8WK4 m2 1000 K4 You can now use this result to determine the luminosity: L=4⋅π⋅5 ×108m2⋅56700 W/m2 L=1.781 × 1023 W. Therefore, a surface with a radius of 5 ×108m and a temperature of 1000 K has a radiant intensity of 56700 W/ m2 and a luminosity of 1.781 × 1023 W. Download Help Document What kind of issue would you like to report? (Optional)
Sustainable Local Food Systems: An Analogy Healthy, sustainable local food systems must function as a complex, dynamic, integrally-connected living ecosystems, like the diverse community of living organisms in and around a fruit tree. Community based food systems must functioning in harmony with the larger patterns of society and nature. Sustainable local, community based food systems are essential for creating sustainable national and global agri-food systems because only living organisms have the capacity to function within society and nature as healthy living systems – as healthy organisms within the socioecological systems of society and nature. The failures of the current agri-food system are inevitable consequences of the inherent conflicts or disharmony between the mechanistic systems of industrial farming and food production and the organismic social and ecological environment within which the agri-food system must function. The only way to solve this problem is to replace today’s mechanistic industrial agri-food system with an organismic sustainable agri-food system. As an analogy, a sustainable local food system might actually be thought of as the ecosystem of a healthy fruit tree. The tree leaves collect carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and other elements from the air and, through living process of photosynthesis, form carbohydrates and other basic building blocks for food. These basic nutrients provide food for other living organisms, mostly organisms in the soil that the tree depends on for its health and productivity. The tree’s limbs and trunk carry a portion of the carbohydrates to the soil to provide food for the various microorganisms in the soil. In return, the organisms in the soil make nitrogen, potash, phosphorus, calcium and other minerals and micro-nutrients that are in the soil available to the tree. Chemical elements from the soil as well as from the air are essential to sustain the health of the tree and to allow the tree to produce fruit. The tree’s blooms and fruit feed bees, birds, animals, and other living things that share the ecosystem of the orchard. A share of the tree’s fruit and leaves must fall to the ground to feed beetles, earthworms, nematodes, bacteria, fungi, and the other microorganisms in the soil. The seeds in fruit allow the tree to reproduce – to sustain orchards of new fruit trees, indefinitely. The fruit tree sustains and is sustained by its living, biological community. Now back to the local food system: Consumers of local foods are analogous to a specific class of living organisms in the soil: Let’s call them “bio-humes.” Farmers are a subgroup of bio-humes that nurtures the natural biological processes of the tree in ways that increase the creation of nutrients that are particular useful to other bio-humes – carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Sustainable farmers are like probiotics in that they enhance the effectiveness of the earth’s digestive system to create a surplus on nutrients. The increased production allows farmers to sustain themselves and a larger bio-hume community without diminishing the nutrients available to sustain the other biological organisms that must sustain the tree. Local butchers, millers, bakers, and distributors perform functions that make the nutrients produced by farmers more desirable to the bio-hume community. A healthy living ecosystem relies on a diversity of biological species each functioning in harmony with the pattern of sustainability – a resourceful, resilient, and regenerative living system. All analogies fall apart at some point. Unlike other species, we humans have almost unlimited mobility and we have the ability and responsibility of self-determination or self-will. Real local farmers, butchers, millers, and bakers are free to decide whether they want to give priority to nourishing their local community or instead maximize short-run self-interests by selling their products for higher prices elsewhere. They can also choose to buy their nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash from outside suppliers rather than depend on healthy, living soils. Real local community members can decide whether to support local farmers, butchers, miller, and bakers with their food purchases or instead minimize their costs by buying their food elsewhere. The industrial pattern of food production was created to maximize productivity and minimize costs by maximizing short-run economic efficiency. This has led farmers to abandon their priority for local markets in search of greater profits elsewhere. This has led local butchers, millers, and bakers to seek cheaper raw materials elsewhere rather that give priority to local sources of raw materials, including local farms. The resulting geographic specialization has led local consumers to buy wherever prices were lower rather than give priority to local suppliers, including local farmers. However, the ability of natural ecosystems to produce food ultimately depend on the health of localized agroecosystems, meaning local soils, farms, and farming communities. Agroecosystem health in dependent on mutually beneficial relationship among the living organisms that make up agri-food system as living organic wholes. Real fruit trees, grasses, vegetables, and other solar energy collectors can’t move about the landscape of continents to find nutrients that are not available in their local biological communities. If farmers in general fail to maintain the health of the soil on their farms, then agro-ecosystems in general will lose not only their ability to sustain their productivity but also their ability to produce healthy, nutritious food. If consumers in general fail to support their local farmers economically, farmers everywhere eventually lose their ability to sustain the health of their soils and agroecosystems. If local producers and consumers fail to nourish each other, the ecological/social/economic systems that must sustain humanity will lose their resilience, regenerative capacity, and resourcefulness. The global agro-food system will not be sustainable. Farmers need not rely solely on local markets or rely solely on soil health for productivity. However, sustainable farmers must give priority to the biological health of their soils and the socioeconomic health of their local communities. Consumers need not rely solely on local farmers, butchers, millers, and bakers for their food, but they must give priority to the health of their local food economy. Focusing on the industrial pattern of production to produce quick, convenient, and cheap food, has created a host of ecological, social, and economic problems that now threaten the sustainability of the entire agri-food system.
Neural network training is about finding weights that minimize prediction error. In general, we start our training with a set of randomly generated weights. Then, backpropagation is used to update the weights in an attempt to correctly map arbitrary inputs to outputs. Backpropagation, short for “backward propagation of errors”, is a mechanism used to update the weights using gradient descent. It calculates the gradient of the error function with respect to the neural network’s weights. The calculation proceeds backward through the network.
History of the Korean War 1950 - 1953 Map. CLEP Social Sciences and History: Study Guide & Test Prep Find more lesson plans like this:The Chinese Revolution and Creation of Taiwan: History & Timeline Clip makes it super easy to turn any public video into a formative assessment activity in your classroom. Add multiple choice quizzes, questions and browse hundreds of approved, video lesson ideas for Clip Make YouTube one of your teaching aids - Works perfectly with lesson micro-teaching plans 1. Students enter a simple code 2. You play the video 3. The students comment 4. You review and reflect * Whiteboard required for teacher-paced activities With four apps, each designed around existing classroom activities, Spiral gives you the power to do formative assessment with anything you teach. Carry out a quickfire formative assessment to see what the whole class is thinking Create interactive presentations to spark creativity in class Student teams can create and share collaborative presentations from linked devices Turn any public video into a live chat with questions and quizzes
Alzheimer’s disease is a neurological condition in which the death of brain cells causes memory loss and cognitive decline. Alzheimer’s disease is a condition that affects the brain. The symptoms are mild at first and become more severe over time. It is named after Dr. Alois Alzheimer, who first described the condition in 1906. One of the main features of the condition is the presence of plaques and tangles in the brain. Another feature is a loss of connection between the nerve cells, or neurons, in the brain. These features mean that information cannot pass easily between different areas of the brain or between the brain and the muscles or organs. The condition usually affects people aged 65 years and over, with only 10% of cases occurring in people younger than this. Common symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease include memory loss, language problems, and impulsive or unpredictable behavior. As the symptoms worsen, it becomes harder for people to remember recent events, to reason, and to recognize people they know. Eventually, a person with Alzheimer’s disease may need full-time assistance. Memory loss: A person may have difficulty taking in new information and remembering information. This can lead to: repeating questions or conversations forgetting about events or appointments wandering or getting lost Cognitive deficits: A person may experience difficulty with reasoning, complex tasks, and judgment. This can lead to: a reduced understanding of safety and risks difficulty with money or paying bills difficulty making decisions difficulty completing tasks that have several stages, such as getting dressed Personality or behavior changes: A person may experience changes in personality and behavior that include: becoming upset, angry, or worried more often than before a loss of interest in or motivation for activities they usually enjoy a loss of empathy compulsive, obsessive, or socially inappropriate behavior There is no single test for Alzheimer’s disease. If a doctor suspects the presence of the condition, they will ask the person — and sometimes their family or caregivers — about their symptoms, experiences, and medical history. While the diagnosis is clinical, brain imaging, electrophysiology, blood tests to rule out reversible causes or indeed contributing factors and a thorough pre-rehabilitation assessment including evaluation for co-morbidities (associated conditions) will be required in all instances. At Buddhi Clinic our assessment includes standard outcome indicators for activities of daily life, quality of life, neuro-disability and mental health. A number of assessment tools are available to assess cognitive function. cognitive and memory tests, to assess the person’s ability to think and remember neurological function tests, to test their balance, senses, and reflexes blood or urine tests a CT scan or MRI scan of the brain Treatments can, relieve its symptoms and improve quality of life for the person and their family and caregivers. The following are important elements of dementia care: effective management of any conditions occurring alongside Alzheimer’s activities and daycare programs involvement of support groups and services a CT scan or MRI scan of the brain Treatment of co-morbid conditions including depression Appointments at Buddhi Clinic We'll ask for some basic information to assess your care needs. At the heart of Buddhi Clinic is integration. We firmly believe that putting a multidisciplinary team together under one roof, to care for you, is merely the first step. To be effective and add life to years, the team has to perform in synchrony. It is here that our unique world class model, developed diligently through years of painstaking research, comes into being.
In the fourth century BCE, Aristotle took up the study of the public speaking practices of the ruling class in Athenian society. For two years he observed the rhetoric of the men who spoke in the assembly and the courts. In the end, he wrote Rhetoric to explain his theories about what he saw. Among his many conclusions, which have formed the basis of communication study for centuries, was the classification of persuasive appeals into ethos, logos, and pathos. Over the years, Aristotle’s original understanding and definition of these terms have been refined as more research has been done. has come to mean the influence of speaker credentials and character in a speech. Ethos is one of the more studied aspects of public speaking. During the speech, a speaker should seek to utilize their existing credibility, based on the favorable things an audience already knows or believes about the speaker, such as education, expertise, background, and good character. The speaker should also improve or enhance credibility through citing reliable, authoritative sources, strong arguments, showing awareness of the audience, and effective delivery. The word “ethos” looks very much like the word “ethics,” and there are many close parallels to the trust an audience has in a speaker and their honesty and ethical stance. In terms of ethics, it goes without saying that your speech will be truthful. Another matter to consider is your own personal involvement in the topic. Ideally you have chosen the topic because it means something to you personally. For example, perhaps your speech is designed to motivate audience members to take action against bullying in schools, and it is important to you because you work with the Boys and Girls Club organization and have seen how anti-bullying programs can have positive results. Sharing your own involvement and commitment is key to the credibility and emotional appeal (ethos and pathos) of the speech, added to the logos (evidence showing the success of the programs and the damage caused by bullying that goes unchecked). However, it would be wrong to manufacture stories of personal involvement that are untrue, even if the proposition is a socially valuable one. Aristotle’s original meaning for had philosophical meanings tied to the Greek worldview that the universe is a place ruled by logic and reason. Logos in a speech was related to standard forms of arguments that the audience would find acceptable. Today we think of logos as both logical and organized arguments and the credible evidence to support the arguments. In words like “empathy,” “sympathy,” and “compassion” we see the root word behind pathos. , to Aristotle, was using the emotions such as anger, joy, hate, desire for community, and love to persuade the audience of the rightness of a proposition. One example of emotional appeals is using strong visual aids and engaging stories to get the attention of the audience. Someone’s just asking you to donate money to help homeless pets may not have a strong effect, but seeing the ASPCA’s commercials that feature emaciated and mistreated animals is probably much more likely to persuade you to donate (add the music for full emotional effect). Emotions are also engaged by showing the audience that the proposition relates to their needs. However, we recognize that emotions are complex and that they also can be used to create a smokescreen to logic. Emotional appeals that use inflammatory language—name-calling—are often unethical or at least counterproductive. Some emotions are more appropriate for persuasive speeches than others. Anger and guilt, for example, do have effectiveness but they can backfire. Positive emotions such as pride, sympathy, and contentment are usually more productive. One negative emotion that is useful and that can be used ethically is fear. When you think about it, we do a number of things in life to avoid negative consequences, and thus, out of fear. Why don’t we drive 100 miles an hour on the interstate? Fear of getting a ticket, fear of paying more for insurance, fear of a crash, fear of hurting ourselves or others. Fear is not always applicable to a specific topic, but research shows that mild fear appeals, under certain circumstances, are very useful. When using fear appeals, the speaker must: - Prove the fear appeal is valid. - Prove that it applies to the audience - Prove that the solution can work - Prove the solution is available to the audience Without these “proofs,” the audience may dismiss the fear appeal as not being real or not applying to them (O’Keefe, 2002). Mild and reasonable are the keys here. Intense, over-the-top fear appeals, especially showing gory photos, are often dismissed by the audience. For example, a student gave a speech in one of our classes about flossing teeth. This may seem like an overdone subject, but in this case it wasn’t. He used dramatic and disturbing photos of dental and gum problems but also proved that these photos of gum disease really did come from lack of flossing. He also showed the link between lack of flossing and heart disease. The solution to avoid the gum disease and other effects was readily available, and the student proved through his evidence that the solution of flossing regularly did work to avoid the disease. Fear appeals can be overdone, but mild ones supported by evidence are very useful. Because we feel positive emotions when our needs are met and negative ones when our needs are not met, aligning your proposition with strong audience needs is part of pathos. One way to better understand human needs is by examining Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Students are often so familiar with it that they do not see its connection to real-life experiences. For example, safety and security needs, the second level on the hierarchy, is much broader than what many of us initially think. It includes: - supporting the military and homeland security; - buying insurance for oneself and one’s family; - having investments and a will; - personal protection such as taking self-defense classes; - policies on crime and criminal justice in our communities; - buying a security system for your car or home; seat belts and automotive safety; or even - having the right kind of tires on one’s car (which is actually a viable topic for a speech). The third level up in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, love and belongingness, deals with a whole range of human experiences, such as connection with others and friendship; involvement in communities, groups, and clubs; prioritizing family time; worship and connection to a faith community; being involved in children’s lives; patriotism; loyalty; and fulfilling personal commitments. In the speech outline at the end of the chapter about eliminating Facebook time, the speaker appeals to the three central levels of the hierarchy in her three points: safety and security from online threats, spending more time with family and friends in real time rather than online (love and belonging), and having more time to devote to schoolwork rather than on Facebook (esteem and achievement). Therefore, utilizing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs works as a guide for finding those key needs that relate to your proposition, and by doing so, allows you to incorporate emotional appeals based on needs. Up to this point in the chapter, we have looked at the goals of persuasion, why it is hard, and how to think about the traditional modes of persuasion based on Aristotle’s theories. In the last section of this chapter, we will look at generating an overall organizational approach to your speech based on your persuasive goals. the term Aristotle used to refer to what we now call credibility: the perception that the speaker is honest, knowledgeable, and rightly motivated logical and organized arguments and the credible evidence to support the arguments within a speech; arguments based on logic the use of emotions such as anger, joy, hate, desire for community, and love to persuade the audience of the rightness of a proposition; arguments based on emotion
Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) is a frequency hopping technique used in mobile communications and WLANs. In this technique, the useful signal is modulated onto a carrier frequency that changes by leaps and bounds. The frequency changes take place in a pseudo-random or predetermined bit sequence, the code of are available inEurope and the USA in the availableISM band between 2.4000 GHz and 2.4835 GHz. Thehop sequence is determined by a pseudo-random generator, whereby the minimum hop distance is at least 6 channels In addition, a minimum of 20 frequency hops per second is required for frequency hopping. In some European countries, only 35 (Spain) or 23 (France) frequency hopping frequencies are available in a smaller frequency bandFast Frequency Hopping (FFH), which uses frequency shift keying or multi-frequency shift keying (MFSK), one bit of data is divided among several frequency hops, making the detection of coherent signals problematic. Slow frequency hopping (SFH) is different, where transmission frequencies are changed periodically. The transmission time on a radio frequency is longer than the duration of several bits to be transmitted. In order for the signal to be detected by the receiver, the receiver and the receiver must know in advance the sequence of frequency changes. This is done by negotiating the frequency sequence between the transmitter and receiver. This technique is considered very secure, but the transmitter and receiver must be precisely synchronized. This requires a relatively complex electronic circuit and consequently high manufacturing costs. Frequency hopping is used in WLANs and is also conceptually provided for in mobile radio networks. Due to the constant frequency changes, frequency hopping avoids interference and prevents eavesdropping on the changing transmission frequencies.
A dust storm approaches Stratford, Texas, 1935. George E. Marsh/NOAA When the southern Great Plains of the US were blighted with a series of droughts in the 1930s, it had an unparalled impact on the whole country. Combined with decades of ill-advised farming policy, the result was the Dust Bowl. Massive dust storms began in 1931 and devastated the country’s major cereal producing areas. US wheat and maize production crashed by 32% in 1933 and continued to fall for the rest of the decade as more droughts hit. By 1934, 14 million hectares of agricultural land was degraded beyond use, while a further 51 million hectares (roughly three-quarters the size of Texas) was rapidly shedding its topsoil. Millions of people lost their livelihoods. The desperate migration that followed was immortalised in John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. But what consequences would a disruption like the Dust Bowl have now, when the Great Plains of the US are not just the breadbasket of America, but a major producer of staple cereals that are exported around the world? As part of an international team of researchers, we ran a computer simulation to find out. More eggs in fewer baskets Today, the global food system is more connected than ever. Major disruptions to production in one region, like the Dust Bowl caused, could have a ripple effect on global food supply and prices. Food trade has been increasing rapidly since the mid 1900s, and 80% of the world population now lives in countries that import more food calories than they export. For roughly half of us, dependence on imported calories and protein has increased during the past three decades, while almost two thirds of people increasingly rely on imported fruits and vegetables for essential micronutrients. Many countries, ranging from relatively small nations like Finland to highly populous China and India, are increasing their reliance on imports while reducing the number of trade links, essentially putting more of their eggs in fewer baskets. At the same time, a few countries are becoming hubs of global food production, such as the US and Brazil who dominate exports of soybean, which is used primarily as animal feed. According to the recent simulation, a decline in US wheat production of the same magnitude as occurred during the Dust Bowl (about 30% over four consecutive years), would deplete nearly all wheat reserves in the US and reduce global stocks by 31%. Since the US is one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat and has many trade links, nearly all countries would be affected. Lower wheat reserves could cause a shortage of products like flour, pasta and bread, making them too expensive for many to buy, especially in poorer countries. Even if a country doesn’t trade wheat with the US directly, the cascading effects of the production shock could be felt through other trading partners. Countries seeking to meet their needs with limited supply from the US would need to increase imports from elsewhere and decrease their exports, passing on the disruption to other trade partners. As global food reserves shrink, it leaves the world even more exposed to future shocks. Without this buffer, wheat products are likely to be rationed, directly raising global food prices. The dust bowl simulation illustrates how trade can transmit the consequences of production shocks in one part of the world to countries far away. But global trade is a double-edged sword. It can help overcome temporary shortages in local supply and enable a rich and nutritious diet. Globalisation has moved food production to regions where it’s more efficient – whether in terms of economic cost or resources like land and water. This has helped save cropland and water and allowed populations to prosper even where local resources are scarce. The warming climate intensifies extreme weather such as droughts, floods and storms, and increases the risk of simultaneous crop failures around the world. At the start of 2020, unusually wet weather helped breed Kenya’s worst locust outbreak for more than 70 years, which has the potential to consume vast acres of crops. But even with so much uncertainty and risk, it’s hard to imagine people giving up the benefits of a global food system. Would any of us really want to go back to a time when we couldn’t enjoy food from distant places and different climates at any time of year? But perhaps we should question the desire for efficiency that has driven the current system and instead aim to build one that can withstand shocks. Small-scale farmers plant several different crops to ensure the failure of one isn’t a catastrophe. The same principle can be applied on a much larger scale to the global food system. Procuring a diverse range of staple foods and sources for growing them can help to ensure that the failure of one component – whether it’s one protein source or one trading partner growing it – can be compensated by another. The modern dust bowl simulation can help to illuminate some of the systemic risks in the global food system, but the COVID-19 pandemic is a better demonstration of how fragile our hyperconnected world is. Rather than try to revert to the way things were before the crisis, countries should seize the opportunity to transform this system to something more resilient, so that when the next major disruption hits, we’ll be prepared. About The Author Miina Porkka, Postdoctoral Researcher in Water and Food System Resilience, Stockholm University; Alison Heslin, Postdoctoral Researcher in Agriculture and Environmental Change, Columbia University, and Matti Kummu, Associate Professor in Global Water Issues, Aalto University Life After Carbon: The Next Global Transformation of Cities by Peter Plastrik , John Cleveland The future of our cities is not what it used to be. The modern-city model that took hold globally in the twentieth century has outlived its usefulness. It cannot solve the problems it helped to create—especially global warming. Fortunately, a new model for urban development is emerging in cities to aggressively tackle the realities of climate change. It transforms the way cities design and use physical space, generate economic wealth, consume and dispose of resources, exploit and sustain the natural ecosystems, and prepare for the future. Available On Amazon by Elizabeth Kolbert Over the last half-billion years, there have been Five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In prose that is at once frank, entertaining, and deeply informed, New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before. Interweaving research in half a dozen disciplines, descriptions of the fascinating species that have already been lost, and the history of extinction as a concept, Kolbert provides a moving and comprehensive account of the disappearances occurring before our very eyes. She shows that the sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human. Available On Amazon Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats by Gwynne Dyer Waves of climate refugees. Dozens of failed states. All-out war. From one of the world’s great geopolitical analysts comes a terrifying glimpse of the strategic realities of the near future, when climate change drives the world’s powers towards the cut-throat politics of survival. Prescient and unflinching, Climate Wars will be one of the most important books of the coming years. Read it and find out what we’re heading for. Available On Amazon From The Publisher: Purchases on Amazon go to defray the cost of bringing you InnerSelf.comelf.com, MightyNatural.com, and ClimateImpactNews.com at no cost and without advertisers that track your browsing habits. 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It’s not uncommon for stars to blink every now and then, but typically there is a pattern, and scientists put it down to passing planets. Over 87 days, two stars that are close to each other flickered 28 times, but scientists don’t know why. The stars are known as HD 139139, and they were spotted acting strangely by the Kepler space telescope. Kepler’s job is to find stars by searching for regular decreases in their light source. That is typically caused by a planet passing between the star and the telescope, which are called transits. Unlike Anything Ever Seen Although the transits would be a reasonable explanation, they come in fours and don’t happen all that often. The timings seemed completely random, and it’s thought that something strange is going on in space. It could be a planetary system, but it would be extremely complex and is highly unlikely. Another explanation is that it’s an asteroid releasing dust, but that is also doubtful. The last suggestion is that it could be some form of alien activity, but Andrew Vanderburg of the University of Texas says humans often blame aliens. Vanderburg says we often blamed things we don’t understand on aliens, only for it to be explained later that it’s something else. While it’s unlikely to be aliens, something strange is going on in space and scientists will be working hard to figure out the explanation for the mysterious blinking stars.
The oceans are one of Earth's most valuable natural resources. Their basins comprise a wide range of marine habitats that are of great environmental significance and socioeconomic concern, including conservation, scientific research, economic and recreational purposes. The ocean basins provide a wealth of underwater information about the two most important theories of geological science: plate tectonics and the sedimentary record of geologic history. The ocean floors also hold a vast wealth of economically important marine minerals and hydrocarbons (crude oil and natural gas). The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that acquired considerable strategic significance from the world's industrialized countries has a long coastline on the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf. Both Red Sea and Arabian Gulf basins are home to many important marine minerals resources. The Red Sea basin is one of the youngest oceans in the world. This ocean that is created by the tectonic plates of Africa and Arabia is home of heavy-metal deposits, locked up inside hot brines. The Arabian Gulf basin is the richest region of the World in terms of hydrocarbon resources as well.
Researchers at Penn State University have developed a chemical model that mimics a possible step in the formation of cellular life on Earth four-billion years ago. Using large "macromolecules" called polymers, the scientists created primitive cell-like structures that they infused with RNA -- the genetic coding material that is thought to precede the appearance of DNA on Earth -- and demonstrated how the molecules would react chemically under conditions that might have been present on the early Earth. The journal Nature Chemistry will post the research as an Advance Online Publication on 14 October 2012. In modern biology, all life, with the exception of some viruses, uses DNA as its genetic storage mechanism. According to the "RNA-world" hypothesis, RNA appeared on Earth first, serving as both the genetic-storage material and the functional molecules for catalyzing chemical reactions, then DNA and proteins evolved much later. Unlike DNA, RNA can adopt many different molecular conformations and so it is functionally interactive on the molecular level. In the soon-to-be-published research paper, two professors of chemistry, Christine Keating and Philip Bevilacqua, and two graduate students, Christopher Strulson and Rosalynn Molden, probe one of the nagging mysteries of the RNA-world hypothesis. "A missing piece of the RNA-world puzzle is compartmentalization," Bevilacqua said. "It's not enough to have the necessary molecules that make up RNA floating around; they need to be compartmentalized and they need to stay together without diffusing away. This packaging needs to happen in a small-enough space -- something analogous to a modern cell -- because a simple fact of chemistry is that molecules need to find each other for a chemical reaction to occur." To test how early cell-like structures could have formed and acted to compartmentalize RNA molecules even in the absence of lipid-like molecules that make up modern cellular membranes, Strulson and Molden generated simple, non-living model "cells" in the laboratory. "Our team prepared compartments using solutions of two polymers called polyethylene glycol (PEG) and dextran," Keating explained. "These solutions form distinct polymer-rich aqueous compartments, into which molecules like RNA can become locally concentrated." The team members found that, once the RNA was packed into the dextran-rich compartments, the molecules were able to associate physically, resulting in chemical reactions. "Interestingly, the more densely the RNA was packed, the more quickly the reactions occurred," Bevilacqua explained. "We noted an increase in the rate of chemical reactions of up to about 70-fold. Most importantly, we showed that for RNA to 'do something' -- to react chemically -- it has to be compartmentalized tightly into something like a cell. Our experiments with aqueous two-phase systems (ATPS) have shown that some compartmentalization mechanism may have provided catalysis in an early-Earth environment." Keating added that, although the team members do not suggest that PEG and dextran were the specific polymers present on the early Earth, they provide a clue to a plausible route to compartmentalization -- phase separation. "Phase separation occurs when different types of polymers are present in solution at relatively high concentrations. Instead of mixing, the sample separates to form two distinct liquids, similar to how oil and water separate." Keating explained. "The aqueous-phase compartments we manufactured using dextran and PEG can drive biochemical reactions by increasing local reactant concentrations. So, it's possible that some other sorts of polymers might have been the molecules that drove compartmentalization on the early Earth." Strulson added that, "In addition to the RNA-world hypothesis, these results may be relevant to RNA localization and function in non-membrane compartments in modern biology." The team members also found that the longer the string of RNA, the more densely it would be packed into the dextran compartment of the ATPS, while the shorter strings tended to be left out. "We hypothesize that this research result might indicate some kind of primitive sorting method," Bevilacqua said. "As RNA gets shorter, it tends to have less enzyme activity. So, in an early-Earth system similar to our dextran-PEG model system, the full-length, functional RNA would have been sorted and concentrated into one phase, while the shorter RNA that is not only less functional, but also threatens to inhibit important chemical reactions, would not have been included." The scientists hope to continue their investigations by testing their model-cell method with other polymers. Keating added, "We are interested in looking at compartmentalization in polymer systems that are more closely related to those that may have been present on the early Earth, and also those that may be present in contemporary biological cells, where RNA compartmentalization remains important for a wide range of cellular processes." EMBARGOED: Publication of information about the research described here is prohibited -- in any medium -- by the journal Nature Chemistry until its publication on the journal's Advance Online Publication website at 1:00 p.m., U.S. Eastern Time, on 14 October 2012. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation (grant CHE-0750196). [ Katrina Voss ] Philip Bevilacqua: 814-863-3812, [email protected] Christine Keating: 814-863-7832, [email protected] Barbara Kennedy (PIO): 814-863-4682, [email protected] A high-resolution image associated with this research is online at http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2012-news/Bevilacqua10-2012, which is where the text of this press release will be published after the embargo lifts. Shown are RNA strands (blue) and RNA enzymes (red) coming together within droplets of dextran. Scientists at Penn State have shown that this compartmentalization helps to catalyze chemical reactions. Credit C. A. Strulson
Featured Image: iStock.com/Gearstd The world will be celebrating Earth Day on April 22nd. During this day, several environmental activists and eco proponents will exhibit their support for environmental protection. Some of the most common issues might involve problematic trends that contribute to the earth’s sorry state. One of them is the amount of solid waste that is dumped in landfills. A landfill is structure that is built on top of or into the ground. The main purpose of this structure is to prevent waste from contaminating the area around it and its groundwater. Unfortunately, while a landfill might prevent a city’s groundwater from contamination, it doesn’t make the waste go away. This is because landfills are not meant to break trash down; they are only used to bury it. What are the consequences? Landfills contain little oxygen or moisture which are necessary for waste to decompose. As a result, any trash that is dumped in them is left to rot in the sun. The environmental repercussions speak for themselves. According to the EESI, landfills are the third largest source of anthropogenic methane which is the second most damaging greenhouse gas. You can’t close a landfill but you can reduce the amount of trash that turns up in it. In honor of Earth Day, let’s reduce the trash that ends up in our landfills this year. Here is how you can start – E-waste doesn’t only end up in a landfill in your city. It might also end up in a landfill across the world. You can blame global e-waste dumping for that. The US has a nasty habit of dumping most of its waste in developing countries like India and Ghana. As a result, tons of discarded computers, electronics, televisions and other forms of e-waste are often dismantled in unregulated trash heaps. The emissions from these heaps are harmful to the environment and human health. These practices are neither right nor safe. What can you do to reduce them? Keep your electronic waste in check. Reevaluate what you spend on. Do you really need to buy a new cellphone or television when your old models work fine? A discarded Smartphone will only join millions of other cellphones in a landfill somewhere and leach harmful amounts of lead. Landfills are not only filled with electronic waste; quite a lot of plastic ends up in them too. Most of this plastic comes from un-recycled plastic bottles and bags. The environmental effects of disposed plastic are nothing to scoff at. According to research, it will take a plastic bag or bottle a thousand years to decompose in a landfill. Until then, it is left to rot and leach toxins into the soil. You can reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in landfills. How? If you have any old plastic containers around, reuse them instead of throwing them away. Boycott plastic bottles and use reusable glass bottles instead. By reducing your reliance on plastic, you reduce how much of it ends up in landfills. We live in an age of consumerism; an age that tempts us to buy more than we actually need. It compels you to buy the latest gadgets and ask the bagger for extra plastic bags to store them. And the environment suffers for it. How? The more you buy, the more you waste. These items will outlive their usefulness. Once they do, they will end up in your trash, and from there in landfills. You will be doing Mother Nature a huge favor if you just cut back on your spending. How? Only buy items that you need. In this way, you can cut down the amount of trash that ends up in landfills. An old cellphone in a landfill is one too many. So are plastic bags and other discarded items that cannot be recycled. Make a resolution to be less wasteful this Earth Day by reducing the amount of electronic waste and plastic you throw away.
Behavioral medicine is a broad field that applies general knowledge of psychology, biology, and health science to behavior and to behavioral problems. There are many different disorders that affect behavior; some are purely psychological while others have an identifiable physiological component that can be isolated and treated. The field of behavioral medicine seeks to understand and treat any type of disorder that strongly affects behavior. This includes anything from eating disorders and depression to Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia. Just as the disorders of interest are incredibly varied, the possible treatments for them may range from biofeedback and hypnosis to medication and hospitalization. People from a wide range of health-related fields are active in the wide field of behavioral medicine. Psychologists, for instance, may contribute to the field on a clinical level by helping people with behavioral problems in a therapeutic context. They may also contribute to the field on an academic level by conducting research at a university or elsewhere and contributing to journals of behavioral medicine. Physicians and nurses with proper training in behavioral psychology are also common practitioners in the field. Some focus purely on a patient's psychology while others try to examine the problems from a more holistic viewpoint by taking all aspects of the patient's overall health into consideration. The field of behavioral medicine is largely defined by the body of techniques used in its application. Some involve the use of medication while others involve close interaction with a therapist on a short- or long-term basis. Biofeedback, hypnosis, and other therapy methods are very common in the treatment of behavioral problems and are commonly used in behavioral medicine. Sometimes the best way to handle a behavioral problem is to understand the thoughts and feelings that lead to the problem and, if applicable, the environmental factors or past traumas that caused the problem to exist in the first place. In some cases, it is not possible to treat behavioral problems through the intervention of a therapist alone. In these cases, it may become necessary to use various behavior-altering medications to treat problems in behavior. This is often true in the cases of major depression or schizophrenia in which regular meetings with a therapist are unable to control the behavioral symptoms of the disorder. Behavioral medicine also has academic, research-based aspects. There are several different journals that are devoted to publishing research in the field of behavioral medicine. Some are specific to a particular subdiscipline of the broad field while others publish research about almost any aspect of the field as a whole. Research can involve case studies of individuals with behavior problems, studies analyzing the effects of new drugs, or even sociological studies on the behavior of large groups of people in various situations.
Candida species are extremely common and in order Candidiasis. The truth is there are more than one hundred species of Candida which are present almost anywhere. The most clinically important one of the Candida fungi is Candida albicans. This fungus causes the majority of the disease among human beings. The Candida fungi are found in the skin of approximately 80 percent of all human beings. Did you know? About 30% to 50% young people in good health are believed to possess the fungi from the oropharynx, part of the pharynx between the soft palate and the epiglottis, while 3 out of 4 girls can have vaginal candidiasis. Infection on the skin is easily treated with antifungal cream or lotions. Most of these topical antifungal medications can be purchased over-the-counter. However, some need to experience oral medication that’s only available with the doctor’s prescription. People with recurrent Candidal infection are usually immunocompromised individuals. These individuals have weak immune system because of underlying disorders or critical health conditions. Immunodepressed people are also prone to acute infection; these folks use drugs to control immune reaction. In such individuals, the disease becomes systemic, meaning blood is already infected by the Candida fungus. It usually affects quite vital organs of the body like the heart, the lungs, the liver and the kidney. Symptoms of this include high fever, urinary tract infection, blood in the urine anemia, difficulty in breathing, blood in the sputum, allergies and septic shock. There are two kinds of systemic canidiasis: candidemia, the presence of the fungi in the blood and disseminated candidiasis, the fungal disease of the inner organs. Candidemia is deemed nosocomial infection, meaning it takes place when the patient is already admitted to a hospital. It happens within 72-hour period after the individual has been admitted. Before the entrance into the hospital, the patient undergoes fever which can’t be treated by any antifungal medication, skin lesions and intermittent septic shock;’d organ infections (due to other factors), had used prosthetic valves; also has been catheterized for a lengthy time period. Disseminated systemic candidiasis is associated with deep infections of many organs in the body. Although patients with disseminated candidiasis usually have poisonous germs in the bloodstream and encounter septic shock and fever not responsive to medication, doctors find it tough to detect disseminated candidiasis. This is because blood tests of 40% to 60% of these show there aren’t any Candida fungi in the blood. The sufferers are only presumed to have candidiasis based on their own history. Any kind of candidiasis becomes harmful to the individual’s life when it becomes invasive that is, the Candida fungi infect many organs and tissues within the body. Invasive Candidal infection can lead to multiple organ failure and even death. Patients with Candidemia and Dissimilated Candidiasis are often given with Fluconazole medication as treatment. This medication can be taken orally, can be administered intravenously or vaginally. Fluconazole drugs are easier to use and have more life. They also have lower nephrotoxicity speed (less than two percent). Nephrotoxicity is the poisonous effects of the medication to the kidney. However, this sort of drug is also thought to have high hepatotoxicity prices. Hepatotoxicity denotes the medication’s intoxicating effects to the liver.
Human tissues and organs are sophisticated constructions, however scientists are working exhausting to determine replicate them. Earlier this yr, we noticed theconstituted of human tissue. Now we are able to marvel at a 3D-printed lung-like air sac. Scientists are tackling the problem of constructing practical tissues that may tackle vitamins and oxygen after which get rid of waste merchandise. A analysis crew led by bioengineers on the College of Washington and Rice College developed an open-source method for bioprinting tissues “with exquisitely entangled vascular networks much like the physique’s pure passageways for blood, air, lymph and different important fluids.” A video reveals a 3D-printed scale mannequin of an air sac that mimics a lung. Air is pumped into the sac to imitate respiratory whereas blood flows by a community across the sac. The miniature system gives oxygen to purple blood cells. The researchers printed their work within the journal Science this week. Ã‚Â The 3D-printing method is known as projection stereolithography. It makes use of “projected mild and photoreactive resins to create strong objects.”Ã‚Â The analysis crew found in can use frequent meals components, particularly the dye yellow No. 5, to assist make the advanced construction that mimics a vascular system as seen within the video footage. The non-toxic meals dye is a greater choice for 3D-printing organ tissues than chemical compounds which may be carcinogenic.Ã‚Â The engineers hope this bioprinting method will speed up the event of substitute organs and tissues, getting us ever nearer to the sci-fi medical future we have been ready for.
Although we are still in the midst of the flu season, it is now known that the Coronavirus, otherwise known as Covid-19 has arrived in the United States. The Coronavirus and influenza have very similar symptoms. These can include low-grade fever, dry coughing, and shortness of breath. As with any respiratory virus, we recommend the following: - Avoid close contact with people who are sick. - Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands. - Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol based hand sanitizer. - Stay home when you are sick. - Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash. - Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces. A fact sheet on the Coronavirus is also attached for your reference.
Knowledge of proportions is one of the most important bases on which all fine art rests. That is why in this article we will tell about the basics of proportion in drawing. Good and correct proportions in the figure imply a complete resemblance to the depicted object. That is, the better you can find and convey the proportions on paper, the more realistic and convincing your drawing will look. Note that all objects, bodies, and parts of bodies should be measured and compared with each other in order to observe proportions as accurately as possible. To correctly determine the ratio of parts in the figure, the artist must possess not only knowledge of the proportions, but also a good eye. This skill can be very easily trained during lengthy drawing exercises. It should also be noted that the laws of proportions have been known since antiquity. Indeed, with the help of this knowledge, beautiful buildings were built in ancient Greece, and sculptures known to us were created, for example, Doryphoros or Venus de Milo. You can check the proportions using an ordinary pencil or brush, holding them on in an outstretched hand. For the convenience of determining the proportions using this method, you can close one eye and press your head against your shoulder. Using a pencil, you can also determine the sharpness of the corners, as we said in our article about perspective. So, stretching out your hand with a pencil and measure the part of the drawing you need using the distance from the tip of the pencil to the thumb. Then compare this part of the figure with the other parts, gradually revealing patterns in proportions. Thus, you need to identify which parts are proportional to each other and gradually transfer forms and parts to a sheet of paper. That is, for example, move the upper edge of the pencil to the upper edge of the subject and mark the lower edge of the object with the thumbnail. Further, without moving the body, also on an outstretched arm, turn the pencil so that it is in a strictly horizontal position. Thus measure how many times the height fits in width or vice versa. Note that the pencil must be held strictly parallel to the plane on which your eyes are. When we draw, we must carefully transfer all the proportions onto a piece of paper in the way that we see in front of us. Thus, to maintain the proportions in the figure means to achieve a ratio of the values of all parts of the subject to the whole within the selected sheet format.
Unit 3:Clouds, particles and climate Clouds are composed of liquid water (or ice crystals) and tiny particles inside or outside the droplets. But these particles are ubiquitous in the atmosphere, and not only in the clouds. We will see in this unit that they can affect the visibility. In the level "basics", interaction between clouds and climate were developed. Let's see here how particles are important players in climate too, for one part by modifying the clouds characteristics, but not only. We will also focus on the global radiation budget of our planet.
A child’s general level of health often dictates his or her oral health, and vice versa. Therefore, supplying children with a well-balanced diet is more likely to produce healthier teeth and gums. A good diet provides the child with the many different nutrients he or she needs to grow. These nutrients are necessary for gum tissue development, strong bones, and protection against certain illnesses. According to the food pyramid, children need vegetables, fruits, meat, grains, beans, and dairy products to grow properly. These different food groups should be eaten in balance for optimal results. How does my child’s diet affect his or her teeth? Almost every snack contains at least one type of sugar. Most often, parents are tempted to throw away candy and chocolate snacks – without realizing that many fruit snacks contain one (if not several) types of sugar or carbohydrate. When sugar-rich snacks are eaten, the sugar content attracts oral bacteria. The bacteria feast on food remnants left on or around the teeth. Eventually, feasting bacteria produce enamel-attacking acids. When tooth enamel is constantly exposed to acid, it begins to erode – the result is childhood tooth decay. If tooth decay is left untreated for prolonged periods, acids begin to attack the soft tissue (gums) and even the underlying jawbone. Eventually, the teeth become prematurely loose or fall out, causing problems for emerging adult teeth – a condition known as childhood periodontal disease. Regular checkups and cleanings at the pediatric dentist’s office are an important line of defense against tooth decay. However, implementing good dietary habits and minimizing sugary food and drink intake as part of the “home care routine” are equally important. How can I alter my child’s diet? The pediatric dentist is able to offer advice and dietary counseling for children and parents. Most often, parents are advised to opt for healthier snacks, for example, carrot sticks, reduced fat yoghurt, and cottage cheese. In addition, pediatric dentists may recommend a fluoride supplement to protect tooth enamel – especially if the child lives in an area where fluoride is not routinely added to community water. Parents should also ensure that children are not continuously snacking – even in a healthy manner. Lots of snacking means that sugars are constantly attaching themselves to teeth, and tooth enamel is constantly under attack. It is also impractical to try to clean the teeth after every snack, if “every snack” means every ten minutes! Finally, parents are advised to opt for faster snacks. Mints and hard candies remain in the mouth for a long period of time - meaning that sugar is coating the teeth for longer. If candy is necessary, opt for a sugar-free variety or a variety that can be eaten expediently. Should my child eat starch-rich foods? It is important for the child to eat a balanced diet, so some carbohydrates and starches are necessary. Starch-rich foods generally include pretzels, chips, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Since starches and carbohydrates break down to form sugar, it is best that they are eaten as part of a meal (when saliva production is higher), than as a standalone snack. Provide plenty of water at mealtimes (rather than soda) to help the child rinse sugary food particles off the teeth. As a final dietary note, avoid feeding your child sticky foods if possible. It is incredibly difficult to remove stickiness from the teeth - especially in younger children who tend not to be as patient during brushing. If you have questions or concerns about your child’s general or oral health, please contact our office.
New Zealand's Environment Reporting Series: The Ministry for the Environment and Statistics New Zealand Extreme wave indexes estimate the occurrence of extreme wave events in coastal and oceanic waters. Extreme wave indexes estimate the number of times a significant wave height exceeds one of three threshold values for at least 12 hours in 24 marine regions. The three wave-height thresholds are four metres, six metres, and eight metres. This indicator estimates the exceedances of wave-height thresholds for each year from 2008 to 2015 in oceanic areas around New Zealand. Significant wave height is a measure of the ‘typical’ wave height in a place over a time period. It is four times the standard deviation of the water surface if, for example, you were to measure water moving up and down a jetty piling for an hour. The largest individual wave will typically have a height around twice the significant wave height. We use three wave-height thresholds because of the regional variation in extreme wave events. In general, the north experiences less exposure to consistently strong winds, and the waves generated by them, than the south. Four-metre tall waves are considered extreme in the northern-most parts of New Zealand but are more common in the south. For the southern-most parts of New Zealand, eight-metre waves better represent extreme wave events. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand Attribution 3.0 New Zealand New Zealand oceanic regions, 2008–15 Ocean: Within New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone, subdivided into six sub-regions bounding box: LonMin = 160.610, LonMax=188.799, LatMin=-55.9493, LatMax=-25.8883
Investigating a 16th-century Welsh buckler Centuries of cleaning had left this small shield in a highly polished state. Could XRF provide clues to its original appearance? Results of analysis XRF analysis was used to examine many parts of the surface. The raised rings were shown to have originally been tinned, whilst the backing was found to be painted with a (red) lead based compound. The brass rivet heads, despite being of two different shapes, were all of low zinc brass, consistent with the date of the shield. Analysis helped show that the buckler’s original appearance would have been significantly different from what is seen today, with alternate bands of bright tin and deep red paint. This work not only enabled us to record a more accurate description of the object, but the results have also been used in a number of presentations as an example of everyday analytical investigations of objects in the Science Lab.
For a long time it was thought that Mars had no magnetosphere. NASA sent a spacecraft to Mars. Its name is the Mars Surveyor. It arrived on September 11, 1997. Four days after it arrived, the Surveyor made a discovery. An instrument on the Surveyor found out that Mars has a magnetic field. This means that Mars acts like it has a huge magnet in the middle of it. The Earth has a magnetic field too. It is a lot stronger than Mars' magnetic field.
Biological crystals: at the interface between physics, chemistry and biology Understand article Dominique Cornuéjols from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility introduces us to the world of crystallography. It’s not all shiny diamonds… ‘Crystal’ is not a word that immediately comes to mind when thinking about biology. Crystals are better known as magnificent representatives of the mineral world. Gemstones, the shining stars of the underground world, have fascinated us since time immemorial, and the most famous of them, the diamond, has become the symbol of both hardness and eternity. On the contrary, most biological tissues are soft, and everyone knows that life is not eternal. However, it is possible to isolate the molecules of life, such as proteins, and grow biological crystals from them in the lab. The study of such artificially grown biocrystals has driven – and is still driving – an entire discipline known as macromolecular crystallography. Crystals and structure The scientific study of mineral crystals (crystallography) started at the end of the 17th century. At first, it meant describing and measuring the faces and angles of different crystalline structures and classifying them according to their geometric characteristics. Soon, crystallographers proposed that the definite geometry observed at the macroscopic scale be explained by the regular arrangement of very small particles (in fact atoms, molecules or ions), invisible to the naked eye and even under a microscope. With the atomistic theory still in its infancy, this model was extensively debated in the 18th and 19th centuries, without a definitive conclusion. A series of crucial breakthroughs in physics revolutionised the way we look at matter today: - In 1895, W.C. Röntgen discovered X-rays. These rays have the extraordinary ability to penetrate objects and bodies, thus revealing their internal features. X-rays found an immediate application in medical imaging, but their nature (as electromagnetic waves) remained an enigma for the next 17 years. In 1912, Laue discovered X-ray diffraction, when he had the bright idea to put a crystal in an X-ray beam. In a crystal, atoms or molecules are arranged in an orderly, repeating pattern at distinct positions: it is a regular array of atoms. Since atoms act as X-ray scatterers, the regular arrangement of atoms in a crystal produces constructive interference of the scattered rays, which are therefore emitted in specific directions. These emitted rays are recorded on a detector as spots, and the resulting image is called the diffraction pattern. Laue’s experiment proved two things: that crystals consist of a very regular arrangement of atoms, and that X-rays have a short wavelength, in the order of a few tenths of a nanometre – the typical distance between atoms. - In 1913, the Braggs (father and son) established a relationship – known as Bragg’s law (see Hughes, 2007, for a further explanation of Bragg’s law) – between the wavelength (λ) of the X-rays, the distance (d) between two atomic planes in a crystal, and the angle of incidence (θ) of the X-rays: 2 d sin θ = n λ, where n is an integer. This important discovery marked the beginning of X-ray crystallography, i.e. the possibility of deciphering the structure of a crystal by exposing it to X-rays. The first atomic-resolution structure to be ‘solved’ (in 1914) was that of table salt, followed very closely by that of diamond. Boosted by these early successes, the very powerful technique of X-ray diffraction has provided scientists with the key to the understanding and clarification of the atomic and molecular structures of all sorts of crystals. “It was like discovering an alluvial gold field with nuggets lying around waiting to be picked up,” as the Braggs themselves acknowledged. At the same time, the first biological crystals were grown, making it possible to study biological molecules using X-rays. The first diffractive image of a protein, obtained as early as 1930, was of an enzyme called pepsin. Soon after that, scientists were able to isolate a virus, crystallise it and show that it did not lose its biological vigour as a result: the tobacco mosaic virus was still infectious for tobacco plants after crystallisation. Macromolecular crystallography was set to go! Interestingly, not a single biologist was involved in all this early research on complex molecular structures. It was entirely conducted by chemists, physicists and crystallographers, reflecting the fact that during the first half of the 20th century, many scientists from other disciplines took an interest in biology. This is best represented by the book What is Life?, written in 1944 by Erwin Schrödinger, a well-known physicist in the field of quantum mechanics. Molecular biology, which appeared in the 1940s as a merging of biochemistry and genetics, has been – from the very beginning – an interdisciplinary field. Obviously, this nascent discipline has had tremendous help from innovative tools invented by physicists. On a more conceptual level, the idea that life can be explained by simple chemico-physical mechanisms has been very controversial, and many thought that the complexity of the living world could not be reduced to the interactions between biomolecules. Today, structural molecular biology is recognised as a main branch of biology, and is still developing at a very fast pace. It relies heavily on macromolecular crystallography, taking advantage of the fact that each protein molecule has its own cloud of electrons, which diffracts the X-ray beam used in crystallography. The shape and size of the electron cloud determines the pattern in which the X-rays are diffractedw2 – that molecule’s signal. The many tiny signals obtained from the large number of protein molecules in a crystal add up to a measurable signal. The resulting diffraction image, taken from several angles of a rotating crystal, is transformed mathematically (this operation is called a Fourier transform) into an electron density map of the protein, which represents the electron cloud of the protein. With the help of computer modelling and refinement techniques, the sequence of amino acids of the protein can be fitted into this electron cloud to determine the three-dimensional arrangement of atoms in the protein, which is the final structure. But why is their three-dimensional structure so important for the study of proteins and other biological molecules? Structure and function Our hands and eyes, like other anatomical features of the plant and animal kingdoms, have been shaped through evolution to meet the needs of life. In a similar way, the microscopic structure of each subcellular organelle and biological macromolecule is intimately linked to its function. Molecules with the right shapes are responsible for turning genes on and off, catalysing the complex chemistry of life, defending against cellular invaders, and flipping the switches that initiate cell division and control development. The importance of molecular structure for an understanding of function is best exemplified, of course, by DNA. The simple and beautiful double-helical, base-paired structure of DNA immediately made genetics intelligible in chemical terms. Genes, the previously mysterious factors that controlled the inheritance of particular traits, were segments of the DNA molecules that could be spooled out of solution at the end of a rotating glass rod, like cotton candy on a stick (see Madden, 2006, for a simple DNA purification classroom protocol), thus producing a fibre that could be studied by X-ray diffraction. The determination of the remarkable but simple structure of DNA marked a milestone in structural biology. By contrast, the study of the structures of proteins has not yielded a simple and all-encompassing explanation of protein structure and hence function. To this day, and despite knowing the structures of about 45 000 different proteins, we are still unable to establish a set of general rules that would allow us to predict a protein’s three-dimensional structure from the amino-acid sequence of its polypeptide chain. Proteins fulfil a much wider range of biological functions than DNA does, and functional diversity has dictated structural diversity. A bottleneck in structural genomics: protein crystallisation In comparison with molecular genetics, progress in research on protein structure has been painfully slow, partly because of the simple technical problem of obtaining protein crystals which are large enough to use for crystallographic analyses and which diffract X-rays well enough to allow the structure to be determined with a high (atomic) resolution. Furthermore, although they look like crystals of small molecules, such as cooking salt crystals, protein crystals are much smaller and generally very fragile. Protein crystallisation has therefore always been a hit-and-miss business with no predictive theory. Some proteins crystallise readily, others stubbornly refuse to produce suitable crystals; some investigators seem to have ‘green fingers’, like good gardeners, and can grow crystals where others fail. As a result, protein crystallisation has sometimes been felt to be more of an art than a science. For each new protein, scientists must screen a large number of conditions to find the particular circumstances under which it will crystallise. Variables that can be changed in the conditions are, for example, protein concentration, temperature, pH, and the concentration of a wide range of precipitation agents that may be used in combination with various salts. To try out the best conditions for crystallising a protein in a classroom experiment, and have your results analysed by X-ray diffraction in a real crystallography lab, see Blattmann & Sticher (2009) in this issue. Because protein crystallisation has posed so many difficulties, until recently the most studied proteins have been those that crystallise easily, and which can be produced in large quantities, rather than the most interesting ones. However, much progress has been made in the last decade as can be seen in the figure showing the growth in protein structures solved by X-ray crystallography since 1983. This spectacular progress is due to improved techniques in three areas: crystal preparation, synchrotron X-ray crystallography and software development. Journey of a protein from lab to lab To illustrate how a protein’s structure is solved using today’s state-of-the-art instruments, we will look at how scientists identified the structure of one of the influenza virus’ proteins, the polymerase. A group of scientists from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL Grenoble outstationw3, France) and from the Unit of Virus Host-Cell Interactionw4 (UVHCI, Grenoble) have been studying this protein, which is involved in the mechanism that the virus uses to take over key processes in the human cells it infects (see Ainsworth, 2009, in this issue, for details of the study and its findings). For this project, the scientists made use of the Partnership for Structural Biologyw5 (PSB), a collaboration to decipher structures of biological molecules with high medical interest. Cloning and expression (at the UVHCI, EMBL and PSB) Once the protein had been selected for study, its corresponding gene was amplified, i.e. cloned into a special expression system. This allows large quantities of protein to be produced using a host system, usually bacteria. Purification (at the PSB) and quality assessment (at the IBS) The bacterial cells were then ‘harvested’ by centrifugation, and cell debris and possible contaminants such as nucleic acids were removed. The protein was then subjected to a lengthy but crucial multistep purification process, since at least 95% purity is desirable for crystallisation. Protein quality was assessed at the Institut de Biologie Structurale Jean-Pierre Ebelw6 (IBS) by mass spectrometry (for a short introduction to mass spectrometry, see Wilson & Haslam, 2009, in this issue), and a sequencer was used to check that the purified protein was the one that was wanted: the influenza virus’ polymerase. Crystallisation (at the PSB) Scientists started attempting to crystallise the protein by using multifactorial screens. In other words, they exposed different concentrations of the protein to different crystallisation agents, buffers, temperatures, and so forth. Known as the microbatch method (see image below), this is designed to obtain maximum information on the protein one wishes to crystallise while using a minimal amount of sample. X-ray diffraction on a synchrotron beamline and data collection (at the ESRF) Once they had obtained crystals of the polymerase, the scientists cryogenically preserved them in liquid nitrogen and transported them to a beamline at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF)w1. There, the crystal was fixed on a goniometer head – this is usually done by a robot – and exposed to synchrotron X-rays, which are extremely intense. A goniometer is an instrument that allows an object, such as a crystal, to be rotated to a precise angular position. The goniometer head is rotated in the X-ray beam, in order to produce a maximum number of reflections, or diffracted beams. This produced enormous quantities of data, as is typical of data collection at synchrotron sources, so the actual structure of the protein was then determined automatically, using a set of software packages specifically developed for the purpose. Model building, map fitting, refinement and validation (at the UVHCI and EMBL) Based on the collected and processed data, an atomic model of the polymerase was built and compared with the electron density map. The model was then iteratively refined to best fit the observed data, thanks to powerful software and interactive molecular graphics. After model validation, the structure was finally published and deposited in the publicly accessible Protein Data Bankw7. The ESRF: one of the most intense X-ray sources in the world The ESRF is a good example of a large facility operating day and night for the benefit of thousands of users from all over the world. A ‘user’ is a scientist, usually part of a larger team, who occasionally needs a powerful tool to obtain information on a sample of interest (a piece of material, a protein crystal, a fossil, or a catalytic reaction, for instance). Most users travel to Grenoble a couple of times a year to collect data at the ESRF. As a third-generation source, ESRF produces extremely intense X-rays, called synchrotron radiation. These X-ray beams are emitted by high-energy electrons (6 GeV) which circulate in a large ‘storage ring’ measuring 844 metres in circumference. The synchrotron X-rays are very collimated, somewhat like laser beams (the rays of collimated light are nearly parallel). The X-ray beams are directed towards the beamlines, which surround the storage ring in the experimental hall. Each of the 42 beamlines at the ESRF is specialised in a specific technique or type of research. For around 10 of them, this speciality is protein crystals. The beamlines at the ESRF are becoming ever more automated, making them easier to use and, recently, granting scientists remote access. This allows users to drive their synchrotron experiments without physically leaving their home laboratory. The crystals are shipped rather than personally taken to the ESRF, even if the scientists go there themselves, because current security restrictions make it difficult to travel with sensitive biological samples. Synchrotron radiation accounts for about 80% of the macromolecular crystal structures currently deposited in the Protein Data Bankw7 (in 1995, only 17% of these came from synchrotron data, see image above). ESRF produces some 20% of this total. - Ainsworth C (2009) Outmanoeuvering influenza’s tricks. Science in School 11: 25-29. - Blattmann B, Sticher P (2009) Growing crystals from protein. Science in School 11: 30-36. - Hughes D (2007) Taking the stress out of engineering. Science in School 5: 61-65. - Madden D (2006) Discovering DNA. Science in School 1: 34-36. - Schrödinger E (1944) What is Life? Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press - Wilson A, Haslam S (2009) Sugary insights into worm parasite infections. Science in School 11: 20-24. - w1 – For more information on the ESRF, see: www.esrf.eu - w2 – More information on the theory of protein crystallisation and X-ray diffraction can be found here: www-structmed.cimr.cam.ac.uk/Course - w3 – To find out more about the EMBL outstation in Grenoble, see: www.embl.fr - w4 – To learn more about the Unit for Virus Host Cell Interaction, see: www.uvhci.fr - w5 – The Partnership for Structural Biology (PSB) is a collaboration between EMBL, the Institut de Biologie Structurale, ESRF and the Institut Laue-Langevin – the world’s leading neutron source. The PSB provides an integrated structural biology environment with a portfolio of state-of-the-art techniques on one site: cloning and expression, crystal production, physico-chemical-biochemical characterisation, X-ray and neutron crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), electron microscopy and tomography, small angle X-ray and neutron scattering, mass spectroscopy and advanced light microscopy. See: www.psb-grenoble.eu - w6 – To find out more about the IBS, see: www.ibs.fr - w7 – For the website of the Protein Data Bank, see: www.rcsb.org/pdb - Abad-Zapatero C (2002) Crystals and Life: A Personal Journey. La Jolla, CA, USA: International University Line. ISBN: 9780972077408 - Blow D (2002) Outline of Crystallography for Biologists. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press - Branden C, Tooze J (1991) Introduction to Protein Structure. New York, NY, USA: Garland - Michette A, Pfauntsch S (1996) X-rays: the first hundred years. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons - Wood EA (1972) Crystals – A Handbook for School Teachers. Chester, UK: International Union of Crystallography - For a website with crystal growing experiments, see: www.sciencecompany.com/sci-exper - For the website of the International Union of Crystallography, see: www.iucr.org
Behind every drop of water from the tap is an entire forest ecosystem. And while it’s easy to take drinking water for granted, you might be surprised to learn that the nation’s largest single source of water is the National Forest System, the network of national forests stewarded by the USDA Forest Service. Many of these national forest lands overlay the source areas for important rivers and aquifer systems, and more than 60 million Americans rely on them for drinking water. Scientists from Forest Service Research and Development, or R&D, investigate the quality and quantity of water from forests and conduct research that informs water stewardship and reduces costs. For example, one R&D study showed that nearly 21 million people in the South receive their drinking water from national forest lands – roughly equivalent to the population of Florida! These study results can support efforts to conserve the forests that protect the area’s clean water supplies. Sustaining forests both on and off national forest lands is an efficient and cost-effective way to protect critical water infrastructure compared to investing in flood control, water purification, and other man-made infrastructure. In partnership with NASA on the SnowEx project, R&D is helping improve forecasting of the production of water from spring snowmelt. This research is significant because much of the western U.S.’s water supply is derived from mountain snow. Better information about this water supply can improve hazard forecasting, water availability predictions, and agricultural forecasting. Whether developing camp sites for visitors or restoring stream habitats, work on national forests sometimes involves disturbing the ground. In these, and similar projects, care must be taken to avoid sedimentation and other negative water quality impacts. In fact, R&D pioneered the first national program to monitor the implementation and effectiveness of Best Management Practices, or BMPs, which are techniques that help control and reduce water pollution and protect aquatic ecosystems. The resulting consistency and streamlined approaches of BMPs throughout the National Forest System promise to improve water quality and save millions of dollars. For instance, forest buffers are strips of vegetation along streams, lakes, and wetlands that stabilize banks and filter pesticides, animal waste, and sediment from agricultural runoff. A software tool produced by R&D helps land managers design buffers that are wider along banks where pollution inputs are higher. Such variable-width buffers can more effectively and cost-efficiently trap pollutants than standard, uniform-width buffers. By investigating how forested landscapes foster watershed health and contribute to water supplies, R&D continues to build a solid scientific foundation for informed forest management decisions, including those designed to protect U.S. water supplies. We must understand the forest’s role in supporting life on Earth so it can continue to sustain us.
Since 80% of what we learn is processed through our vision, good visual skills are critical to learning. Visual symbols on a page cannot be heard or touched so vision is the only sensory system we are able utilize for reading Human beings think in pictures or images. No matter what question we ask, if you know the answer it is because an image “pops into your head”. Where is your bicycle? Tell me about your Grandmother’s kitchen? Albert Einstein said “If I can’t picture it, I can’t understand it”. We also think whole-to-part. When looking at a chair we do not first look at the individual parts and then deduce it is a chair. Instead, we recognize the chair as a functional whole and then attend to its parts. Our brains use imagery and we think in meaningful conceptual wholes. Language on the other hand is sequentially structured as a string of parts. Teaching reading, writing and arithmetic is complex in part because of this structural difference between thought and language. Icon Curriculum Maps (“ICM”) is a system of reorganizing lesson content and delivery from traditional “part to whole” to “whole to part” methodology to better match human thinking. Lessons are organized in non-linear iconic arrays called image maps. Image maps represent the “whole” into which lesson details are linked. Contrast the structure of icon Curriculum Maps methodology with traditional school instructional methods which teach in text symbols (not images), part-to-whole, and in linear outlines. The ICM method of content organization stretches across all subjects and is ideally suited for fast and efficient visual learning.
Euler's disk is a fascinating toy. When you give it an initial spin on a smooth surface, it begins spinning and rolling in a manner similar to a coin spinning and rolling on a flat surface. The only difference is that it lasts much longer! Check out a video of euler's disk: The spinning and rolling that the disk undergoes is commonly called spolling, which is a combination of spinning and rolling. It is very interesting that the disk spolls faster and faster as time goes on. As the disk loses energy due to friction and rolling resistance losses, it also loses gravitational potential energy by an equal amount. This means that the disk must gradually drop in height, which causes it to make a smaller and smaller angle with the surface. This in turn causes the disk to spoll faster and faster. This process continues until the angle with the surface becomes so small that contact with the surface is inevitable and the disk is brought to a sudden stop. The physics of euler's disk is similar to the physics of a gyroscope. As the disk spolls, a gyroscopic force is created which holds the disk up. As the disk loses energy the gyroscopic force becomes weaker until the disk eventually comes to a complete stop on the surface. Euler's disk works best when friction and rolling resistance is minimized. This is achieved on hard, low friction surfaces, such as glass. To purchase euler's disk, click on the image link below. You will be taken to the Amazon website, where you can make your purchase. Return from Euler's Disk to Science Toys page Return from Euler's Disk to Real World Physics Problems home page
EMG is often ordered when you have muscle weakness, pain or abnormal sensation. It can evaluate the health of the nerves and the muscles in the body outside of the brain and spinal cord. What to expect from electromyography (EMG) There are usually two parts to an EMG study. - nerve conduction study Your doctor will test the length of your nerves by delivering small electrical impulses and record responses from your sensory and motor nerves. - The electromyography (EMG) Your doctor will insert a very thin needle through your skin into the muscle. The electrode on the needle records the electrical activity given off by your muscles. This electrical activity appears on a nearby monitor and is heard through a speaker. After the electrodes are placed in the muscle, you may be asked to contract the muscle. For example, you might be asked to bend your arm. The electrical activity seen on the monitor provides information about your muscle's ability to respond when the nerves to your muscles are stimulated. EMG can detect Muscle weakness, pain or abnormal sensation. It can evaluate the health of the nerves and the muscles in the body outside of the brain and spinal cord. Good to know about EMG You may feel some pain or discomfort during electrical stimulation or when the needles are inserted. Most people are able to complete the test without problems. After the test, the muscle may feel tender or bruised for a few hours to a few days. Reviewed by: Ellie Madison Last reviewed: 8/2/2018
Computer architecture concepts have been presented in an easy and lucid language. Important solved examples have been added for better examination preparations. Chapter 1, Digital Fundamentals covers the basic concepts which helps students to study Computer Architecture. Chapter 2, Register Transfer Language describes the basic hardware language. Chapter 3, CPU Organization deals with the basics of CPU. Chapter 4, Parallel Processing deals with the concept of Pipelining. Chapter 5, Computer Arithmetic describes hardware algorithms for basic operations. Chapter 6, Microprogrammed Control Unit deals with types of control units. Chapter 7, Memory Organisation deals with memory concepts and Chapter 8, Input-output Organisation focuses on Input Output Processor, DMA and IOP. 1. Digital Fundamentals 2. Register Transfer Language 3. CPU Organisation 4. Pipelining and Parallel Processing 5. Computer Arithmetic 6. Microprogrammed Control Unit 7. Memory Organisation 8. Input-Output Organisation
Written for us by an Early Years leader, this post outlines a suggested phonics session, the activities and routine will be appropriate for all mainstream settings, and with a little imagination to any SEN setting. The phonics session mirrors what I taught to my class. Keeping the same routine really helped my autistic learners and is the key takeaway from this post. I have outlined some of the research in the area of Autism and phonics in the section below. There are a number of Phonics schemes available I used Read Write Inc and some of the resources I used are available on the resources page. One of the best things for a teacher about a phonics session is that as it is taught so widely there are many resources available for free. An Example Phonics Lesson Routine for Early Years 1. Recap existing sounds. 2. Quick write of existing sounds. 3. Introduce a new sound of the day. 4. Picture to match sound i.e ow – cow (from Twinkl) 5. Introduce a new tricky word. 6. Three words with the sound you are learning, Your turn my turn to allow children to hear sounds in the words. 7. Segment by phonetically sound out key word c, ow. 8. Children blend the word back together. 9. Children stand up and stomp out the sounds in a word. 10. Children are taught to use their fingers to represent graphemes, phonemes to support their writing. 11. Teacher models write out “sound buttons” and talk about digraphs and trigraphs. 12. Children write words and add sound buttons. 13. Teacher writes and children read a sentence with a mixture of tricky words and words of the day. 14. Children are given a sheet of words to add sound buttons (Independent activity based on sounds from that day to finish off/assess) Suggested Phonics Activities. These are just a few examples of phonics linked activities small groups, individuals or indeed whole classes can do. - Stomp out the sounds - Play hide the cards - Letters and sounds website games - Phonics bingo - Phonics hangman - Phonics Dominoes More Activities and Ideas on our Pinterest Phonics Board Adapting Phonics Teaching for SEN Teaching literacy to some Autistic children depends on the ability of the child to shift from sight reading—in which words, like pictures, are recognized by their unique configurations—to an understanding that words are composed of letters representing sounds that, when blended in sequence, create a familiar spoken word (Miller & Hilliard, 2010). This shift from picture/words to phonics can be difficult for some children. While they may know the alphabet, they may not understand that it is the blending of sounds represented by letter sequences that allow them to pronounce words accurately and thus derive meaning from the otherwise unfamiliar printed form. To teach phonics, Initially, you must first teach letter-sound relationships by creating a link between the mouth movements needed to make particular sounds with the written letters (Mastrangelo 2016). It is particularly important for autistic children to link the lesson with the sensory-cognitive functions of reading and comprehension. This includes phonemic awareness, the ability to create mental imagery for sounds and letters within words, and the ability to create mental representations for the whole, such as dynamic imagery of actions etc (Lindamood 1997). Which is why there are specific actions and activities used in the lesson routine above. The routine nature of this lesson’s structure can be beneficial for all learners because some can enjoy the shared experience of texts being read and written by the teacher at a level above that which they can manage independently. Other learners will be able to engage with the repetitious aspect which can provide less confident children with positive and enjoyable experiences of reading and writing as part of the class community. Skilful questioning by the teacher can direct children’s attention to aspects of the text appropriate to their particular level, learning needs and interests. It has been shown in a number of studies that they are positive outcomes for teaching letter-sound correspondences to autistic students (O’Brien et al 2017) It has been found that letters and their sounds can initially be too abstract, Often Autistic children do not perceive letter as the building blocks of words. Often students know the sounds of letters in isolation, they are not necessarily able to combine them in a fluent manner. Many teachers have reported that their children are able to learn phonetic sounds but are unable to apply them to fluent decoding of words (Broun 2004). It has been suggested that sounds be taught once 25 words have been learnt by sight. A meta-analysis of phonics instruction to children with additional needs found that teaching phonics to children with SEN does have a positive impact on their ability to read (Sermier Dessemont et al 2019). Word or sentence level work in the example above often involves a multi-sensory approach to the teaching of phonics for reading and spelling to the class. The children see and hear how words are made up, blended and segmented. Again the repetition and routine of the lesson structure support those who require consolidation and reinforcement. Many of these activities can be done individually or at a small group level. An inclusive teacher will pay heed to the sensory sensitivities of the learners in their class – no clapping if the noise is aversive to any child for example. 10 Key points to ensure your phonics lessons are inclusive - Ensure all the children can see your face clearly, visual stimuli are essential. - Give letters a meaningful context i.e M is for Mummy to reduce the abstract nature of letter sounds. - Make sure your back is not to the window, avoid background noise such as heaters, projectors and buzzing lights. - Ensure the text is clear to all children – simple adaptations like increasing text size can help all children. - Minimise distractions – i.e closing door or blinds. - Write up new vocabulary as you introduce it (words like ‘phoneme’) and keep on a chart clearly visible to those who may rely on it. - Give the child time processing time. - Make sure everyone clear about the routine, use a visual schedule as you work through the activities. - Actively involve all children (SEN or otherwise) i.e finding a word card or letter around the room - Try and use visual/touch stimulus – games, songs, trays of objects, plastic letters, magnetic letters, word wheels, chopped up cards to piece together. Sonia Mastrangelo (2016) Focus on Inclusive Education: Literacy Instruction for a Child With Echolalia on the Autism Spectrum, Childhood Education, 92:6, 500-504, DOI:10.1080/00094056.2016.1251801 Sermier Dessemontet, Rachel & Martinet, Catherine & de Chambrier, Anne-Françoise & Martini-Willemin, Britt-Marie & Audrin, Catherine. (2019). A meta-analysis on the effectiveness of phonics instruction for teaching decoding skills to students with intellectual disability. Educational Research Review. 26. 10.1016/j.edurev.2019.01.001. Available to read here. O’Brien, M., Mc Tiernan, A., & Holloway, J. (2017). Teaching Phonics to Preschool Children with Autism Using Frequency-Building and Computer-Assisted Instruction. Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, 30(2), 215–237. doi:10.1007/s10882-017-9581-x Broun, L. T. (2004). Teaching Students with Autistic Spectrum Disorders to Read. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 36(4), 36–40. doi:10.1177/004005990403600405 Ann Berger and Jean Gross, Teaching the literacy hour in an inclusive classroom – Supporting Pupils with learning difficulties in a Mainstream Environment Lindamood, P., Bell, N., & Lindamood, P. (1997). Sensory-cognitive factors in the controversy over reading instruction. The Journal of Developmental and Learning Disorders, 1, 143-182. Miller, A., & Hilliard, C. (2010). A unique approach to the development of reading skills. Autism Spectrum Quarterly, 8-10.
Similar Figures Activity Lesson 2 of 9 Objective: Students will solve proportions to find lengths of sides and find angle measures in similar polygons. Students were given three_Similar_Figures problems for homework, intended to reinforce the learning of the day before and to set up this lesson. I quickly survey the class to see if there were any issues with any of these problems and I answer any questions. I then explain how the today’s lesson will work: Each student will reach into a small paper bag or basket in which I have placed a set of Similar Figures Cards. Once each student has a card, they will move about the room, taking an Answer Sheet with them, seeking the person who has the card that matches their own card. As soon as a match is found students will park at a pair of empty desks, where they are to copy both their diagrams onto their answer sheets, give the correct name for their polygons, and solve for the values of the unknown measurements (x, y, and z). Resource Note: My pack of Similar Figures Cards contains 14 pairs of similar triangles or 28 cards. Teachers with more than 28 students will need to create a few more pairs. Let the Game Begin! The students begin the exercise, each student drawing a card. The question I am most frequently asked is “Do I have to write down the equations?” and I always reply, “Yes!” This helps immensely when I grade these exercises, so that I can see where students are making their mistakes. I think it is also an important aspect of MP6. While the students are setting up and solving their equations, I circulate throughout the room, picking up the Similar Figures Cards and answering questions as they arise. By picking up the cards while students work, I am ready for the next round as soon as a round is completed. As the rounds progress, the students typically become quicker and more adept at solving the problems, so that the time between rounds decreases. I recommend completing at least four rounds. With some students, four rounds is typically sufficient. After four turns, I sense that everyone is comfortable with the concepts and ready to move on. With some students, more than four rounds is beneficial (MP8) In the case of an uneven number of students, one student will be without a partner. I give that student the matching card and he or she works alone for that round. I check in periodically to make sure it’s going okay for that student, and this has never presented a problem. I collect the students' Answer Sheets at the end of the activity. During the evening I correct the studemts work, and enter a grade for the activity. This helps to inform my teaching for the next day, cluing me into any problems they might be having as a group or as individuals. My experience has been, however, that it’s easy grading; very few mistakes are made and the students are ready to move on after this activity. With about ten minutes to go in the lesson, I give the students a worksheet containing algebraic problems, intended to reinforce the algebra skills learned in their previous course. I want my students to gain some practice on skills they will use throughout this unit. I also want to change the pace a little bit during the day’s lesson. The algebraic concepts on which the worksheet focuses include simplifying radicals, multiplying binomials, and factoring. These skills are then applied to solving proportions. At this point in time, I include only trinomials for which the coefficient of x2 is 1. Some students have difficulty with these concepts and require considerable help. At the same time, however, I have found that others fly through the work, enjoy working at their own pace, and seem to derive pleasure in their ability to recall and apply these concepts. It is helpful for me to observe who is performing at each level. Any work that is not completed during the class period is homework.
The tradition of cremation dates as far back as the ancient period. Archaeological discoveries have revealed several urn fields in some parts of Europe that were probably built more than a thousand and five hundred years Before Common Era. Ancient manuscripts hold records implying that cremation was possibly practiced in India during the early millennium. The ancient Greeks cremated their dead as a preventive method against the spread of plague the neighboring lands. In times of battle, the Greek warriors burned the fallen comrades to keep the enemies from desecrating their dead. Eventually, cremation practices rose in popularity among the common populace. By then, this funeral tradition has evolved into a symbolism of soul purification. In a similar tradition, the Romans also burned their dead along with the garments and earthly belongings of the deceased. Funeral pyres became so popular that the ancient Roman government banned the burning of corpses within the city to prevent the occurrence of fire accidents. In some Scandinavian countries, many elites practiced cremation during the first millennium with the belief that doing so will prevent the spirits of the dead from tormenting the living. Warriors were given a more dramatic burial by setting the body of the deceased on fire on a funeral boat while on sea. The Anglo-Saxon coined the word “bonfire” from the words “bone” and “fire” which pertain to the burning of corpses as a funeral rite. Even among the tribes of the Native Americans, cremation was practiced. They believed that burning will release the spirit into the after-life and will prevent the ghosts from haunting the living. The practice of burning the dead was also done to keep the corpses from being stolen by wild animals and witches. It was during the spread of Christianity that cremation started to lose its popularity. The Christian converts began to follow the Hebrew burial traditions and deemed cremation as a pagan act. Amazon Price: $250.00 $99.00 Buy Now (price as of Jun 25, 2015) After King Charlemagne proclaimed cremation as illegal and punishable by death in 789, the tradition of entombment and burying the dead became the accepted funeral norm which continued for many centuries. What became the major turning point for reconsidering cremation was the issue of public health caused by poor disposal of corpses by the masses, eventually contaminating the soil and water system of the cities. Realizing that incinerating the dead could have prevented the spread of diseases, modern crematoriums began to be established in the 1800's in Europe and toward the turn of the following century in the United States. Now, cremation is widely accepted in many cultures. A lot of families and individuals, especially those who are not bound by religious restrictions, opt for cremation services for practical reasons. Amazon Price: $28.95 Buy Now (price as of Jun 25, 2015)
On July 26th, engineer William English passed away at the age of 91. He leaves behind a legacy in the computer technology field for his achievements alongside his partner, Douglas Engelbart, for creating the first computer mouse that revolutionized workstations that we all know and use today. According to this article, William and Douglas began their partnership in the late 1950s at the Stanford Research Institute. Douglas initially came up with the idea of a device that could move a cursor across a computer, but William oversaw the design and the creation of what was later called “the mouse.” It’s not exactly clear how the mouse name has originated; however, some experts believe it referenced the cursor, which was at the time was called “cat,” that would chase the motions of the device. Others have said the name came from its physical appearance resembling a mouse tail attached to the device. The first version of the mouse was introduced at a 1968 convention with a wooden block that had wheels on the bottom. This convention was later known as “The Mother of All Demos” since there were multiple new demonstrations with significant impacts on the technological world such as the computer window, video call, and precursor to the hyperlink. A few years later, William English left Stanford to work at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center and polished the mouse design for personal use for both Microsoft and Apple.
The Technical Stuff – How the internet works The internet is used by many people around the world which help to perform many everyday tasks. It’s used to distribute and retrieve information across to many people digital as it’s more efficient as doing this process physically in real life. The internet could be used for revision, reading news articles, listening to music and watching videos. There are many tasks that can be achieved when using the internet. Most internet users don’t know how internet works briefly in depth, but have sufficient knowledge on the surface knowing how to use the internet. Most internet users don’t need to know how the internet works except if they’re working for companies that maintain the functionality and access to the internet. This report will cover how verbally and visually how the internet works, describing the algorithms and components that make the internet work. How web servers have conflicts and the different issues that arise and how they can be fixed. Then an in-depth description that explains the role of web architecture in website communications. The internet is the different varied sized networks that are connected by using cables, phone lines, satellites and wireless connections to send and receive data. It provides a sufficient variety of information to retrieve and facilities of communication which we use to complete to tasks more efficiently. The internet has existed since 1969 when two scientists at UCLA connected two computers together and the workstations had the ability to communicate with each other. In 1983, ARPANET adapted the TCP/IP protocol to the internet to which manages the transmission of data, this would invent the modern version of the internet. In 1993, the Tim-Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web (WWW) which has increased the internet’s popularity. This is the aspect of the internet that we use the most through a web browser. A connection to the internet can be established by subscribing to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and you’ll receive a router or a modem that gives a computer system an IP Address to allow the computer system to connect the internet. There are three different types of connections to the internet. The Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line uses a frequency spectrum which receives internet through a phone line. A dial-up service which uses a modem to receive internet from telephone line connected to a bigger computer network. A cable connection which uses a router to receive internet from a coaxial cable, a router is used to receive access from a cable underground to get an internet connection. The router can be connected to a computer system by using an Ethernet cable or using the provided login details to allow wireless electronic devices to receive internet access. In exceptional cases. The Domain Name System/Server (DNS) is used translate alphabetical characters which make up to the domain name, which is primarily located in the middle of a Uniform Resource Locator. To convert it into the Internet Protocol Address to allow the user to establish a connection to access the website. Domain Name System/Server are primarily stored at an Internet Service Provider, as if a user didn’t have one they would always have to manually add new domains with their Internet Protocol Address. The process of the Domain Name System/Server. The user would send a request to the ISP to access www.google.com. Then the Internet Service Provider should have the Internet Protocol Address of the domain, then an established connection can be made to access the website. The domain name of Uniform Resource Locator is linked to an Internet Protocol Address (188.8.131.52). A Domain Name System/Server can be updated if nobody has requested to visit the website before, an Internet Service Provider (ISP) will go to Nominet, which every website has a domain registered to their web server to find the Internet Protocol address (IP) of the domain. Then the computer system stores the Internet Protocol address (IP) related to the domain in the DNS client of the computer system. Internet Service Provider An Internal Protocol address (IP) is a group of four integers separated by full stops (e.g. 184.108.40.206.). The minimum to maximum interval of the integer the Internet Protocol address (IP) is 0-225. This applies each of the four integers in the Internet Protocol Address, the result is that there are limited Internet Protocol addresses (IP) left. This produces the unique identifier of an individual computer system to allow to establish a connection with the internet. Internet Protocol Addresses (IP) are given to you by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) specifically in the router, the hardware given to you by the Internet Service Provider to connect to the internet. There are two different types of Internet Protocol addresses, external and internal. An external Internet Protocol address (IP) is the public variation of an Internet Protocol Address that every other user outside your local network can perceive while connected onto the internet. This uniquely identifies a network with one or more electronic devices that have an established internet connection. An internal Internet Protocol address in basic terms is an Internet Protocol address (IP) in an Internet Protocol Address (IP). This is used to identify the electronic devices connected to one router individually. An internal Protocol Address could be e.g. 192.168.0.1 of and a computer system and for a smart phone it could be 192.168.0.2. There are connected to the same router and in the same network. 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.2 are common formations because there are linked to the external Internet Protocol addresses (IP) which are unique identifiers, making the internal Internet Protocol addresses unique from an aspect. Without Internal Internet Protocol addresses, only one electronic device could connected to a router. Internal IP addresses External IP Address Internet Service Provider The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is basically a collection of different protocols. This branch of protocols is basically used to allow communication between different computers on the internet. The Transmission Mission Protocol (TCP) deals with the established connection between two workstations as the Internet Protocol (IP) deals with the distribution of packets. A web server is combination of physical hardware and software that processes website requests via Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) though the World Wide Web, the most popular section of the Internet used. Web servers are used to store website’s as they have a high storage capacity to store many different websites simultaneously. An news distribution service need a vast amount of web servers to accommodate new web pages with new products to sell as well as old web pages which are archived to be viewed again by the client. A web server’s hardware would need to have very powerful components to handle operations such as one’s I have listed above. The software should automatically have the ability to handle operations such as handling web requests. This prevents the web server administrator from doing this manually. Client issues when connecting to the server can range from a slow connection, old/slow equipment or old software. A slow connection from the client-side can increase the request-response cycle between and client and server. When requesting a web-page there are usually no problems, except that when loading it will take longer as packets as lost and the router has to keep sending more packets until the request is complete. However, once the request is complete and the web-page is loaded for the user. It may load a 400 error that relates to “NOT FOUND-CLIENT FAILURE” As some packets may be lost as they’ve haven’t destination in time. Old/slow equipment of a computer system has an impact on the performance when in the process of the request/response cycle between a client and a server. The components of the computer may be obsolete and incompatible with the processes used today. This is because the equipment that is old isn’t supported by the latest software related to the internet. As a result it takes a long time load the web-page or doesn’t load at all giving the user an error. If the equipment is slow then it will take longer to load a website because the equipment is limited to resources that perform a task, which is considered to be slow. Old software can have an impact on the performance when in the process of a request/response cycle. This occurrence is usually way as most software in the present has the ability to automatically update itself, display efficiency to the user as well as creating efficiency for the user. Old software doesn’t have the bug fixes and new features that allow for an efficient connection between a server and client. If software is outdated it will either load errors or outdated versions of websites, which have no new features. A server may have insufficient resources to complete request/response cycle efficiently. As a singular machine may be running multiple websites at once. One of the reasons that sit affects performance is because the server prolongs the duration as they’re trying to locate which website needs to loaded as well as the specific page (primarily the index) that has been requested. This makes the process of the cycle slower causing more complex errors that the average user doesn’t understand and know how to fix. A server may have network issues that prolongs the process of the request/response cycle due to t its slow performance because of this factor stated above. In the network of web servers, the hardware may be failing such as the Ethernet cables. The connections between the servers are a necessity for a big website to load a very-specific web page according to the user’s expectations. It would take longer for data to be retrieved and sent to user, because of hardware problems. As well as problems server crashes can occur if it doesn’t have the capacity to allocate the packets being sent and received. Web servers can be compromised by different threats can have an impact on the server’s performance as well as creating setbacks on the hardware on the server. These threats are Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS), Cross-side scripting (XSS), Website Poisoning (Drive by download), SQL Injection, Hacking, Data Theft and Brute/Force Dictionary Attack. These are the most common threats to web-servers on the internet. Distributed Denial of Service is an attack on a web-server to make it unavailable by overwhelming it with useless traffic from different workstations. It could be simple as sending multiple requests that the web-server doesn’t have the capacity to handle it and can crash and be down for a certain duration. It’s more difficult to prevent this attack as the traffic is coming from multiple workstations, which could be located in different locations around the world. There are different types of Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDOS): Bandwidth, Application and Traffic Attacks. Data Theft is an effect of Distributed Denial of Service attacks are they’re becoming more advanced. Cross-Side Scripting (XSS) attacks are injections of malicious scripts from the client’s side that are can be viewed on the website by other users. This can be prevented implementing a mechanism that preventing using form inserting client-side scripts, this could be as simple as blocking the permissions to use to the client-side web editor. Website poisoning or Drive-by-download is where malicious code is injected into the website and forces the client to download malicious files that infect their computer system. This is usually displayed as a popup that could state “Your PC has a virus, press this button to download an anti-virus.” Ironically, you would be downloading a virus to your computer. Presently, you can download an anti-virus which has internet security such as Norton to protect your from this blacklisted algorithm. The anti-virus will block access to the website once a threat like this has been detected or block the threat, so you can use the site smoothly. An SQL Injection is where malicious code is injected into poorly-scripted database that is purposefully used for exploitation of the information in the database. This is done by exploiting a vulnerability of an application to trick the database to running a backend command or query to retrieve vital information such as bank details, which is an example of data theft. A firewall can prevent an SQL Injection attack, as it can detect an external Internal Protocol Address and block the connection to the database for instance. Hacking is the blacklisted practices that are against the Data Protection Act of 1998 to mainly gaining access to unauthorised data. In a scenario of a web server, hacking could range from injecting a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) for backdoor access for to gain administrator permissions to corrupting files vital for the network to function. Hacking can be prevented by updating the server software such as Apache, mainly security updates that prevent hackers from finding new algorithms through bugs and errors for their own personal gain. Brute force is method that generates possible candidates of characters linked together that are possible matches to the encrypted statement (e.g password) in attempt to being retrieved, for purposes to unlock a system for beneficial purposes (e.g accessing somebody’s account). This can be prevented on when a hacker is attempting to gain internal permissions by logging in to an administrator’s account; the website should have an algorithm that gives the client 3 attempts to access the account. If they failed the account will be locked and can only be unlocked with another client with greater permissions. Careless users that have authority in accordance with a web-server should be encouraged to produce a strong password attached their account. Especially a password that appears to be an encrypted piece of data. This strong password should consist of upper case and lower case characters. As well as numbers and symbols. For authorities users there should be a length check validation method, which should be at the minimum of 16 and beyond. This is to protect data that is unauthorised for public view. A character check validation method would work effectively, as in the password there should be at least one of each data type consisted in the password (integer, upper and lower characters, symbols). The internet has a web architecture that is different fundamental processes that are linked together that allow us to access the internet as a whole and the World Wide Web (WWW) through an internet browser on the surface of the internet. There are two different methods that we can use to retrieve our results on the Internet. You can either use the search engine to enter what you want to retrieve, the general results that are linked to the keywords that you’ve entered into the search engine, through the Internet Browser. Or you can enter a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of a website into the search bar of most internet browsers to specifically retrieve a particular website and the web page too. These methods will be explained below including the mechanisms and algorithms that have embedded purposes that contribute to the purpose of the functionality of the internet. The internet has affected the physical attributes of business as most people find it more convenient to access the internet and use it for general purposes. Instead of visiting business’s in person. To use their services that they provide. When the web browser application is launched by the user on their operating system. The user can access the internet because they’re connected to broadband, which provides them with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) which allows access to the internet in some circumstances through and Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL). Most users would have a subscription plan that makes it compulsory to pay a fee monthly to use the broadband services .The preferred search engine is displayed on the user’s monitor, it uses the protocol Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) for a secure connection and to load the fundamental website code Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML) of the search engine. They have the option to either use the search bar or the Uniform Resource Locator bar (URL). Most users prefer to use the search bar to enter keywords that are specific to what websites their looking for. The user decides to use the search engine to enter the keywords ‘Spotify’. If the user wanted to access the site directly they have to enter the Uniform Resource Locator. The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is broken down into 4 parts. The protocol (https), host (.www), domain name (Spotify) and the extension (.com). This type of protocol is used to retrieve the data that make ups the website being access. The Host is the World Wide Web (WWW) that all website addresses use. The World Wide Web (WWW) is the surface of the internet we access on a daily-basis. It’s the information that contains web resources and web documents. Every website that can be accessed via the internet browser uses the host of the World Wide Web (WWW). The Domain name is the combination of characters and numbers that is another identifier that relates the Internet Protocol (IP) Address of a website. Without this we would have to access a website through its Internet Protocol (IP) Address directly. Finally, the extension is to identify where the domain was registered. The .com extension is a general extension that then automatically identifies where the domain name was registered, by changing it .co.uk. When the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is entered into the search bar. However, some websites use direct extensions that relate to where the domain was registered. Primarily, most websites made in a specific country want to register their domain in that country. The entity that allows this to happen is called a Domain Name Registrar. A Domain Name Registrar is a company that registers domain names, they can make reservations for taken domain names to prevent plagiarism and for other reasons specified. Domain Name Registrar can also register extensions too such as .com, co.uk and other extensions specified to certain countries such as .cz for the Czech Republic. This commercial entity can also register official domain extensions such as .gov for websites owned by the government. 1.Protocol 3.Domain Name 2. Host 4.Extension - 2. 3. 4. The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is the suite of all the protocols related to the internet. This Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) allows data transmission through packets that are distributed to the server as form of a request. The Internet Protocol (IP) is a protocol that has fundamental communications in the Internet protocol for using data to relay across different network boundaries. The Internet Protocol (IP) address is the unique identifier to establish a connection to the internet, a Personal Area Network (PAN) of devices would all share the same Public Internet Protocol (IP) Address which mostly IPV4. IPV4 addresses are the current Internet Protocol (IP) addresses we use today. They comprise of 4 integers separated by dots, ranging from the intervals randomly from 0-255. A user would use have Internet Protocol (IP) address that is assigned to their Internet Service Provider (ISP), for security purposes to monitor internet activity and the permissions to distinguished from other users, so different electronic devices and systems can connect. Packets are small units of data that are decalibrated when in the process of being sent through a packet-switched network that is sent from the source to the destination, then they’re calibrated form the file of data. Packets could simple as a request and response to a server. A favoured example would be downloading a file onto computer system. As packets are sent as request to the web-server to retrieve the external file from the web server by downloading it. The file that is in the process of downloading is decalibrated of packets. Then the fastest route is determined by the server to transfer the packets to another network (primarily a Personal Area Network). Then once the packets are received by the other network the process of calibration is the file being downloaded. Once all the packets have calibrated, technically the file would be downloaded. To receive a response of the results, which in terms for the user the website or webpage is launched for them to display .The HTTP/HTTPS protocol loads the fundamental HTML basis code of the webpage that has results related to the keywords ‘Spotify’. The Domain Name System/Server (DNS) is used to decode the domain of the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of that webpage to retrieve the Internet Protocol (IP) address by decoding to the domain to find the Internet Protocol Address (IP). Then the user can access the webpage overall as Internet Service Provider. Then the user would enter an input to click on the primary result which loads the Spotify Website. The user wants to download the Spotify desktop application onto their hard drive of their computer system to use for the entertainment purposes. When the user goes through all the processes that the ‘Spotify’ Website requires they have the rights to download the file. The protocol that is used to is File Transfer Protocol (FTP). This protocol is the standardised network protocol used to transfer files from either to servers to hosts. The units of data are in the form in packets are sent directly to the destination or to the user retrieving the file. The more sophisticated and secure version of File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is the Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). The Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) was introduced to the 1990s. However, instead of using text-based data that the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) uses, packet-based data is used for operations that the protocol offers. The SSH protocol is inherently secure and used in the Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). The Secure File Transfer Protocol uses the main connection for file transfers not opening a separate for file transfer to take place. On the website when downloading “Spotify” This can be done on the website instead of separate web page being to download the executable file. Secure File Transfer Protocol has more additional information attached to the website. Such as the permissions, date, time, size of the file. This is can accommodate for most files presently used to today, as all have these properties such as executable file with Spotify. File Transfer Protocol (FTP) doesn’t have these features. Overall, this protocol is faster, has more features and accommodates for variants of digital data that needs to be transfer. There is a chance that the Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) was used in the operations of download the executable “Spotify” file. Once this user download and installs Spotify, they may want to message their friend to make recommendations to the application. They may use electronic mail (e-mail). They may access an email distribution service Google Mail. Google Mail and other services use a protocol called Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is a protocol attributed to the TCP/IP protocol, which allows recipients on electronic mail (e-mail) distributing services to send and receive electronic mail (e-mail) over the internet. The protocols Post Office Protocol (POP3) and Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) are additionally used and contribute to delivering high-quality electronic mail (e-mail) services. Post Office Protocol (POP3) is used to allow electronic mail (e-mail) client downloads such as word document attachment to an e-mail. A user could attach a self-made notepad manual that is related to “Spotify” then send it along with a message to their friend. Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). It’s a protocol that saves distributed electronic mail from a recipient into an inbox of an electronic mail (e-mail) distributing service such as Google Mail. It requires more computer resources for functionality of this protocol to be sufficient. It mainly uses the port 143. To be used with a firewall. When a user sends a message to his friend who’s the recipient that message can be saved into their friend’s inbox, for them to review later. If this protocol wasn’t implemented. The electronic mail could be and received by the server as form of a useless request, so the electronic mail isn’t saved. The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is the suite of all the protocols related to the internet. The Transmission Control/Internet Protocol is mainly a combination of the Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). This Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) allows data transmission through packets that are distributed to the server as form of a request. However, the Internet Protocol (IP) is a protocol that has fundamental communications in the Internet protocol suite for relaying data across different boundaries of networks. The Internet Protocol (IP) controls the destination and how the packets are going to reach that destination. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) makes sure that there is an established connection, to allow networks to interconnect and make a connection. It makes the internet what it is. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) has the function to also make sure that packets can be resent as well as checking individual packets making sure that they don’t contain any errors. Previously, it didn’t provide connectivity but the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) allow this function to work. The Internet Protocol (IP) give’s an electronic device an Internet Protocol (IP) Address that is either ipv4 or ipv6. The Internet Protocol (IP) address is the unique identifier to establish a connection to the internet, a Personal Area Network (PAN) of devices would all share the same Public Internet Protocol (IP) Address which mostly IPV4. This is because IPV4 addresses are becoming obsoleted and outdated. IPV4 addresses are the current Internet Protocol (IP) addresses we use today. They comprise of 4 integers separated by dots, ranging from the intervals randomly from 0-255.However, they’re running out and current technology still uses them. In the future Internet Service Providers will transfer to using IPv6 addresses primarily. These mechanisms contribute to the functionality of the Internet Protocol (IP). Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) has a model which is related to the Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI). The Open Systems Interconnection model is a diagram that was designed by the Organisation for Standardization (OSI). The diagram describes the 7 different layers that create internet. As the first layer identifies the simple and physical structures. Then the 7th layer describes the applications that are used to access the internet. The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) model is a generalised diagram that groups the 7 layers of the Open Systems Interconnection models into different groups which are equivalent to 4 layers. That relate to the similar layers that have different embedded purposes that explain the general purpose of each of those 4 layers. These models are very similar are may be compared in manner that allows them to be relate to each other. Network Interface/Network Access of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) model – It consists of the 2 lower layers of the Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI). The Physical Layer and then the Data Link layer (layer 1 and 2 of OSI). The physical layer defines the characteristics of the hardware on the network. This it allow different hardware to be distinguished for different tasks and procedures that need to take out for a network to function correctly. The layer above which is the Data Link Layer, handles the transfer of data between the media of network. This allow users on a network to distribute data between each other, for example this could be simple as sending images between one people. In general, this is lowest level layer of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) model. This layer is responsible for attaching Internet Protocol addresses (IP) to Media Access Control addresses (MAC). To network individual computer systems to the same network. From physical hardware responsible and for encapsulation of Internet Protocol packets for data transmission, so they’re grouped together to prevent data from being missing. Then it uses protocols related to Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol for the distribution of physical data. The Network Interface layer allows you to connect to different interfaces of network such as Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Internet layer of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) model– The internet layer of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) model comprises of only layer 3 from the Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI), which the network layer. It’s responsible for managing data addressing and the delivery of data between networks. It’s responsible for forwarding packets by routing them to different routers. Routing is a process towards the selection of where traffic needs to be directed between pathways of routers from different networks, despite them being a Local Area Network (LAN), Wide Area Network (WAN) or a Personal Area Network (PAN). In general, the internet layer has a packet construct uses the Internet Protocol (IP) and the addressing mechanism to deliver packets from a source to a destination. The Internet Protocol address (IP), it mainly the IPV4 of the Internet Protocol address (IP) to forward packets to different devices. They use other protocols too, IPV6 which is the more advanced version of an Internet Protocol address (IP) just to address different systems that share the same IPV4 address. This layer uses the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), this is to send message errors to a user operating on a network. To allow users to see errors when sending and receiving requests to access different networks, servers or devices. Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) which is used to map IPV4 Internet Protocol addresses to Media Access Control addresses (MAC). This is to individually identify each electronic device physically, this is for individual identification of hardware. These are the protocols that are all used in the Internet layer. Transport layer of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) model – The transport layer of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) ensures that sufficient data transmission has been initiated. The transport layer receives data from the application layer and turns them into packets. However, if they’re any errors with packets they are sent in the form they’re in. Then the data sent be will corrupted but computer system will warn you if this takes place. The protocols associated with this layer are the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which ensure that there is reliable communication of data being delivered correctly. However, the User Datagram Protocol isn’t as dynamic as the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), it can complete operations that this layer requires to complete. It doesn’t carry them to a high standard. Only small devices use User Datagram Protocol (UDP) to transmit. The User Datagram Protocol doesn’t have the ability to establish or verify connections between distributing and receiving hosts. The User Datagram Protocol can sort out packets too but not as well as the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). These protocols that are included in the Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI) are linked together to contribute to the similar purpose of functionality that the Transport Layer of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol model (TCP/IP). Application layer of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) model – The application layer is responsible for providing networking services to applications that related to the use of internet or used to access the internet. The services that are there work with the transport layer to send and receive data. Different protocols exist to contribute to that .For example electronic mail (e-mail) distributing services such as Google Mail use the protocols File Transfer Protocol (FTP) this protocol is used to transfer files from either to servers to hosts, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) which allows recipients on electronic mail (e-mail) distributing services to send and receive electronic mail (e-mail) over the internet and Post Office Protocol (POP3) which allows an electronic mail (e-mail) distributing service to save electronic mail into inboxes. The Domain Name Server/System (DNS) works with this layer too .These protocols contribute to the functionality of this service works and how it offers service to users. As electronic mail (e-mail) takes advantage of the request and response to work in favour as the data being equivalent to messages that humans could interpret, that could acquire different features. However, there are 3 layers from the Open System Interconnection model (OSI). That relate to the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). The session layer which manages and terminates connections between systems, this is required to enable a network to be efficient. The presentation layer makes sure data can be interpreted by the user despite being in form of packets prior. On a website you may see English Characters but they’re representation of the assigned binary numbers. The application layer contains a variety of communication services and programs that every can use. An internet browser would relate to the OSI application very well as it’s a good example. - Techtargetcom. 2017. SearchExchange. [Online]. [5 November 2017]. Available from: http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/definition/SMTP - Southrivertechcom. 2017. Southrivertechcom. [Online]. [5 November 2017]. Available from: https://southrivertech.com/whats-difference-ftp-sftp-ftps/ - Techtargetcom. 2017. SearchExchange. [Online]. [5 November 2017]. 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by Brent Chancellor, PhD, P.Eng. Emperor penguins can survive Antarctica’s frigid climate because—much like efficient building envelopes—their bodies contain an air and moisture barrier, continuous insulation (ci), and thermal breaks preventing heat loss into the environment. Air and moisture barrier seals out weather The only animal to inhabit the open ice of Antarctica during the winter, emperor penguins withstand wind chills of up to –60 C (–76 F) and blizzards up to 200 km/h (124 mph). Scale-like feathers shield their bodies from harsh wind, ice, snow, and water, while their skin provides the final barrier to transmission of moisture and vapour. Similarly, modern building envelopes prevent the migration of moisture from the outside environment to the inside. Some envelopes employ a combined moisture/air barrier, while others utilize a rainscreen. Continuous insulation retains heat, conserves energy The emperor penguin’s thick layer of continuous blubber serves as its primary insulation against bitter temperatures. Additional insulation is provided by its feathers, which trap a layer of air against the skin. While the penguin’s ci is dictated by natural selection, the ci of commercial building envelopes is now being dictated by code requirements. Many provincial and local codes already require structural thermal breaks (STBs) when taking a prescriptive path, and others are not far behind in the adoption of more stringent standards. Thermal breaks prevent heat loss into the environment Emperor penguins prevent the escape of heat through their feet into the ice and water by means of thermal breaks in their legs: a vascular adaptation thermally separates their rounded, well-insulated bodies (low surface-area-to-volume ratio) from their flat, poorly insulated feet (high surface area-to-volume ratio). Similarly, the balconies of commercial buildings—cantilevered structural extensions of commercial building floor slabs—quickly equalize to cold exterior temperatures. As a result, balconies continuously transfer heat from the interior floor slab to the exterior environment, unless thermal breaks are installed where the balcony interrupts the ci of the building envelope. Traditional balcony construction wastes heat Conventional concrete and steel balconies are designed as cantilevered extensions of steel or concrete floor slabs because of loadbearing requirements. Thus, they not only create a thermal bridge in the ci of the building envelope, but also rapidly conduct heat from the interior slab through the cantilevered balcony and into the environment. Prior to 2010, wasted heat and cold interior floors were accepted as unavoidable outcomes in North American buildings with balconies. Problems of mould growth arose when builders began wrapping exteriors with airtight vapour barriers. Before airtight envelopes, most commercial buildings leaked air profusely, causing humidity levels inside buildings to equalize with low exterior humidity levels during winter months. Forced hot air (typically vented at or near balcony doors and windows) further ensured interior humidity remained too low at the cold balcony penetration to reach dewpoint, form condensation, or support mould growth. However, as mentioned, the advent of airtight vapour barriers to prevent leakage of heated air during the late 20th century had a major unintended consequence: increased mould growth. As a building becomes more airtight, it requires less heat and retains more moisture from evaporation and human off-gassing. This can increase interior humidity by 35 to 40 per cent—the target level for human comfort, which can also create a danger zone for condensation when the thermal conductivity of balconies drops the temperature to the dewpoint on the interior side of the envelope at the point of penetration. With nowhere to go, the moisture will condense if interior temperatures drop to the dewpoint, especially within cold wall cavities adjacent to uninsulated balconies and other envelope penetrations. The resulting condensation leads increasingly to mould growth on gypsum board, studs, and insulation on the inside of the building. Mould can grow and cause respiratory problems in building occupants years before it becomes visible on interior ceilings and walls. By then, remediation will, at minimum, require removal and replacement of gypsum board. However, mould is likely to recur since high interior humidity and cold envelope penetrations in existing structures are unlikely to be corrected due to difficulty and cost.
Making comparisons of likeness and difference is nearly impossible for the person with processing (also called perceptual) deficits, and for this reason processing deficits frequently impact not only performance in reading, but in maths as well. Mercer identified three basic problem areas in the perceptual field, namely, figure-ground differentiation, discrimination, and spatial orientation, which affect performance in mathematics. Figure-ground problems may cause difficulties in keeping individual problems separate from each other. The learner may lose his place on a worksheet, confuse problem numbers with digits in the problem itself, or not finish the problem, etc. Visual discrimination problems tend to cause inversions in number recognition, confusion among coins, confusion among operation symbols, confusion between the hands of the clock, and the like. Auditory discrimination problems cause confusion in oral counting and among endings of number words, such as /fourteen/, /forty/, etc. Spatial problems may cause reversals and affect the ability to write problems horizontally or vertically, to understand before-after concepts, to understand the importance of directionality which, in turn, could affect regrouping, and to align rows of numbers with varying digits. Additionally, the child may have problems putting decimals in the right place, using the number line, understanding positive and negative integers, etc. Also affected are the ability to tell time, to understand geometry and any other mathematical concepts which have to do with spatial and temporal orientations and relationships. Edublox clinics offer Mathblox classes, aimed at Grade 2 to 7 learners that set the foundation for grasping mathematics. We achieve this by teaching your child: * An in-depth understanding of the terminology used in maths. * Foundational maths skills such as focused, sustained and divided attention; visual and auditory processing; visual, sequential and working memory; deductive and inductive reasoning. * Application in the form of curriculum-based exercises — mental arithmetic, reading time, word sums, et cetera. Classes are offered in English and Afrikaans.
Building the skills for reading and writing takes time just like any other learning experience. Each child's learning process is different, changes over time, and is greatly affected by mood. Trying different strategies to guide your child through the process will keep it fresh and exciting for both of you. Make Time for Reading Integrate reading into your family’s daily routine. Turn off the TV and other distractions to set up a quiet and calm atmosphere. Focusing complete attention on the reading time will make it more productive and special for your kids. Plan Ahead for Reading Obstacles If you are tackling a new book, spend a few minutes looking through it to find a few long or confusing new vocabulary words. Help your child look up the meaning of a new word and understand the context in which it is used in the story. Also, notice words the child has learned in other books. Positive reinforcement is great for self-esteem! Take a break every now and then during your reading to ask your child what might happen next in the story. Are there specific sentences or ideas in the story that he or she really like? This encourages short-term memory skills and can help identify symptoms of learning difficulties. Add some Variety to Reading Using audio books or online streaming is a great tool for adding an occasional twist to your daily reading time. It gives the child a chance to hear new voices reading stories. Listen with your children and pause occasionally to ask questions about what you have just heard. You can find many free open source audio books online. Make reading a treat! Download a new book as a treat at the end of the week onto your e-reader or tablet to add to the excitement of reading time. Look through the title lists together and talk about what type of story your child would like to hear. Reading and learning opportunities are all around us! Be creative and find new ways to excite your children about reading and learning new vocabulary.
Amphibia = Gr. amphi - both or double; bios = life The Frog Life Cycle: The amphibians themselves are not completely adapted to land and are therefore referred to as quasiterrestrial, hovering between aquatic and land environments. This double life style is reflected by their class name, Amphibia. Structurally, they are similar to both fish and reptiles. Although they are adapted for terrestrial life, they rarely can stray from moist conditions. The 3900 spp. of amphibians are grouped into 3 orders: 1. salamanders (order Caudata or Urodela) 2. frogs and toads (order Anura or Salientia) 3. the secretive, earthworm-like tropical caecilians (order Gymnophiona or Apoda) - limbless amphibians I. Comparison and contrast of terrestrial and aquatic habitats Animals are mostly water; therefore, many structural and functional characteristics are necessary for survival on land. Amphibians have most of these characteristics that all land animals have which allow survival on land. 1. Difference in water content --aquatic environments always present (available). - terrestrial environments -- availability of water (humidity amount of water is extremely variable. Less water overall. 2. Greater Oxygen content of air. -aquatic animals spend more energy extracting oxygen from the water than do land animals from air. 3. Water is more dense -- provides buoyancy and allows for good support even though more difficult to move through than air. -survival on land requires (for large animals) a good, strong skeleton for support. 4. Constancy of water temperature - water has high heat capacity; does not change temperature much unless large amounts of heat are added or removed. Most aquatic animals, especially marine spp. do not have problems with the drastic temperature changes that occur on land. 5. Higher variety of habitats on land as opposed to aquatic environments. 6. Greater opportunities for breeding on land. Safe shelter for eggs is more readily available on land than in water. II. Origin and relationships of Amphibians Land animals must be able to support their own weight, resist drying, cope with rapid temperature changes, and extract oxygen from air . Requirements for Land Survival A. Lungs - absolutely necessary for respiration (self-supporting and internal) on land. - gills, with their fine filaments and gill lamellae require water to prevent collapse and desiccation B. along with lungs, a more efficient circulatory system is required; all fishes have a 2 -chambered heart which pumps blood through gills to get oxygen and from there to the remainder of the body before returning to the heart. This single circulation system is okay for aquatic animals whose bodies are surrounded by water from which oxygen can diffuse into some parts of the body. Also, aquatic animals are metabolically less active and therefore do not require a highly efficient circulatory system. On land, however, thick skins are important to prevent desiccation but restrict diffusion of oxygen form the air. Also, many terrestrial animals have a very high metabolic activity. Therefore, a very efficient circulatory system (in addition to the presence of lungs) is needed to meet the demands of terrestrial life. All land vertebrates have a double circulatory system which allows oxygenated blood to be returned directly back to the heart before being pumped to the rest of the body. Components of the double circulatory system: 1. Pulmonary circulation-supplies the lungs with oxygen and provides a short, quick and efficient way of getting blood from the heart to the lungs where it can "pick up oxygen", supply the lungs with oxygen as well, and then return to the heart so that oxygen can then be transported to the rest of the body. 2. Systemic circulation-supplies blood with oxygen to all of the body except the lungs. C. Limbs for travel on land. a) strong, bony endoskeleton for support. b) very well developed muscle system for movement. c) well-developed CNS for coordination of muscles used to move the skeletal elements and move the body. The fossil record indicates that amphibians appeared abruptly in the record as fully-developed amphibians with all of the characteristics aforementioned present and very well developed: a.) all have (had) lungs b.) all have (had) 3 chambered heart for double circulation c.) all have (had) very well-developed limbs d.) all have (had) very well-developed skeletal system e.) all have (had) very well-developed muscle system f.) all have (had) very well-developed CNS *** No transitional forms found in fossil record that would indicate any gradual appearance of these necessary, terrestrial vertebrate characteristics. Structure and Natural History members of an obscure order Gymnophiona (naked snake). 2. Salamanders, order Caudata (meaning tailed amphibian). Newts are also included in this order; they are a specific type of salamander; Least specialized of all amphibians; found in nearly all northern temperate and tropical regions; Most spp. are found in North America. Size: Most of them are small. The common North America salamanders are less than 15 cm long. Some species are aquatic and never produce true lungs: the gills are the major respiratory organ for the entire life cycle. these aquatic salamanders have all other amphibian characteristics. They can exist for short periods out of the water; some aquatic spp. are rather large (approx. 1 meter); The Japanese giant salamander reaches lengths > 1.5 meters. Salamanders have simple primitive limbs; most have 4 (tetrapod) but a few spp. have only 2 limbs. Most salamanders are carnivorous preying on worms, small arthropods, and small mollusks; most eat only things that are moving. Their food is rich in proteins; therefore, they produce lots of nitrogenous wastes, usually urea which is less toxic and requires less water for excretion. They use the carbon skeletons of the protein-derived amino acids for their catabolic (energy) and anabolic (biosynthetic needs); Therefore, they do not store much fat (lipid) or glycogen (storage form of glucose, similar to starch; * Basically, the animal form of starch, less branched, is mostly a straight chain of polymerized alpha-glucose). ***Salamanders are ectotherms - derive heat from surroundings(external heat sources). Therefore, they have a low metabolic rate. Terrestrial salamanders live in moist places under stones and rotten logs, usually not far from water. They do not show much diversity in regard to breeding habitats, due to the somewhat restricted habitats in which they are found. Fertilization of eggs is internal. The female picks up a packet of sperm Spermatophore) that has been previously deposited by the male on a leaf or stick. Aquatic species lay their fertilized eggs in small, group-like clusters under logs or in holes of soft dirt. Many spp. remain near eggs to guard them. The embryos of salamanders hatch from their eggs resembling their parents. The larvae do undergo metamorphosis during development, but not to the extent that tadpoles of frogs and toads do. American newts often have a terrestrial stage interposed between the aquatic larvae and the aquatic, breeding adults. All salamanders hatch with gills, but during development, they are lost in all except aquatic forms or in some spp. which do not undergo complete metamorphosis. Terrestrial salamanders have well-developed, fully functional lungs. Some salamanders have neither lungs nor gills and respire through their skin. The skin contains an extensive vascular network of capillaries which allow for gas exchange to take place just below the epidermis. This type of respiration through the skin is called Cutaneous respiration. Cutaneous respiration is facilitated by pumping air in and out of the mouth where further respiratory gas exchange can take place. The buccal (mouth) cavity has a highly vascularized membrane system that supplements cutaneous respiration in lungless, gill-less salamanders. Frogs and toads; very specialized order of amphibians; very popular for educational purposes, but are actually poor representatives of the vertebrate body plan; why? Classification, taxonomy, etc. Frogs and toads are divided into 21 families; the most well-known North American families are: Ranidae - most of our familiar frogs Hylidae - the tree frogs Bufonidae - toads; differ from frogs in that toads have: - shorter fore- and hindlimbs - stout, compact bodies - thicker skin - usually, skin is covered with prominent "warts" or "bumps (overall rough appearance and texture) The term toad is used rather loosely to refer to frogs and toads that tend to spend more of their life cycle in terrestrial habitats. The largest frog is the West African Gigantorana goliath. It is more than 30 cm in length from nose to anus, weighs 7.5 pounds - approx. size of a small baby; has been known to eat rats and even ducks The smallest frog recorded is approx. 1 cm long (smaller than a dime); found in Cuba. Largest American frog is the bullfrog (genus Rana) which reaches a body length of 20 cm. Habitats and distribution: Most abundant and successful of the frogs are of the genus Rana (Gr. for frog). Found all over the temperate and tropical regions of the world except New Zealand, many islands, and southern regions of South America. Usually found near water. Some, such as the wood frog spend most of their time in on damp forest floors and often some distance from water. It returns to water only to breed in early spring. Bullfrogs and green frogs are usually found in or near permanent water or swampy regions. The leopard frog R. pipiens found in a wide variety of habitats and with all its subspecies and different forms, is the most widespread of all North American frogs. Commonly used for lab studies. Has been found in nearly every American state and as far north as Canada to as far south as Panama. During winter, hibernates in soft mud of pond and stream bottoms.
A visualization of cosmic web stripping, which bleeds away matter from the fastest-moving dwarf galaxies in the local group. Credit: Alejandro Benitez-Llambay Some dwarf galaxies in the early universe travelled so fast that their gas was stripped from them, according to a new computer simulation. This cosmic vanishing act could help explain a long-standing mystery: astronomers observe fewer dwarf galaxies in the "Local Group" — the collection of galaxies near the Milky Way — than what models of the universe's formation predict. But if these galaxies are losing gas, that could explain why they don't appear as plentiful as they should. Because these dwarf galaxies were so small when they formed, they don't have large reserves of gas to begin with. Stripping any gas away would leave these galaxies so small and dim that they would be all but invisible from Earth. [Stunning Photos of Our Milky Way Galaxy] "This is something that came out of the simulations, and had not been anticipated, and had not been seen before. It was an interesting discovery," said Julio Navarro, a University of Victoria astronomer and co-author of a paper describing the discovery. The study, published in the Feb. 1 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, was led by graduate studentAlejandro Benitez-Llambay from the University of Cordoba in Argentina. You can also watch a SPACE.com video explaining the missing dwarf galaxies. Past supercomputer simulations show there should be a huge number of dwarf galaxies, together making up one one-thousandth of the Milky Way's mass, scattered around the local environment. But a 1999 study pointed out that the dwarf galaxies we see are not representative of the calculated mass. In the past, astronomers suggested that the energy from supernovas, as well as ultraviolet rays permeating the universe, might alter the dwarf galaxies as they form. There were weaknesses with these models, however. Observed supernova energy is too low to affect dwarf galaxy formation, and the ultraviolet rays only shrink the smallest of dwarf galaxies. To better examine the issue, the new study focused on how dwarf galaxies evolved in the early stages of the universe. Astronomers ran a simulation tracking dark matter halos that duplicate the positions of the three largest galaxies in the Local Group: the Milky Way, Andromeda (M31) and Triangulum (M33). Next, they re-ran the simulation to focus on one small area in much higher resolution. This allowed them to examine dwarf galaxy evolution in detail. "We constrained and controlled the numbers to resemble our local environment," Navarro said. The tool they used was called Constrained Local UniversE Simulations, or CLUES for short. The project, led by the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics, can simulate the positions and speeds of galaxies within 10 million light years of the Milky Way. Passing the cosmic speed limit CLUES revealed that the farthest dwarf galaxies in the Local Group are flying very quickly through the cosmic web of dark matter and ordinary matter that makes up our universe. When the galaxies pass a given speed, the ram pressure between the dwarf galaxies and this cosmic web strips the galaxies' gas away. It's similar to how the matter gets stripped away from a meteor as it rams through the Earth's atmosphere. "The galaxy moves at high speed, and the gas strips out and stays behind the galaxy," said Stefan Gottlöber, a Leibniz astronomer who leads CLUES. He was also a co-author on the new paper. While the gas is all but invisible, we might be able to see the effects gas stripping has had on the galaxies. The astronomers noted that dwarf galaxies are a diverse bunch, with some looking like gas clouds and others filled with stars. Gas stripping could explain why star formation stopped, the scientists suggested. Navarro, Gottloeber and their collaborators plan another run with CLUES to simulate a larger area to test whether the dwarf galaxy stripping in the Local Group is representative of the entire universe.
Originally Published: December 23, 1994 - Last Updated / Reviewed On: April 17, 2014 What is diabetes mellitus? You bring up an important question considering the prevalence of diabetes is growing rapidly across world. Diabetes is a disease marked by high blood glucose (sugar) levels as a result of the hormone insulin not functioning properly in the body. Insulin, normally secreted by the body's pancreas, stimulates cells to absorb glucose in bloodstream. When the production or functioning of insulin is disrupted, as in people who have diabetes, the result is low absorption of glucose by individual cells and the liver. As a result, the glucose builds up in the blood, the body's cells don't get the energy they need to function, and the liver is unable to store glucose as glycogen for future energy. There are three different types of diabetes: Type 1 diabetes(also called insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus or juvenile-onset diabetes) results when the body's immune system destroys pancreatic beta cells and therefore prevents the pancreas from producing insulin. Type 1 patients, accounting for 5 percent of all people with diabetes, need to receive daily injections of insulin to stay alive. Although diabetes can develop at any age, type 1 most commonly affects people in childhood or young adulthood in the United States. Type 2 diabetes(also called non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus and formerly known as adult-onset diabetes) accounts for more than 90 to 95 percent of diabetes cases in the U.S. and is nearing epidemic proportions. With type 2 diabetes, the body either produces an insufficient amount of insulin or is unable to use it properly. Type 2 diabetes is associated with obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, and a family history of diabetes. Eating a balanced diet, losing weight, and exercising regularly can help most people avoid developing type 2 diabetes and can help those already diagnosed with type 2 diabetes bring the condition under control without the need for supplemental insulin. Gestational diabetes, the third type of diabetes, can occur in women during late stages of pregnancy. The condition usually disappears after the baby is born, but women with gestational diabetes are at a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes later in life.. As of 2011, approximately 25.8 million Americans (or 8.3 percent of the population) were affected by this group of diseases. Diabetes, the 6thleading cause of death in the United States, is also associated with other health risks, including: - kidney failure - diabetic retinopathy (loss of vision and blindness) - heart disease and stroke - high blood pressure - diabetic neuropathy (loss of the sense of touch, possible nerve damage of the arms and legs, and problems with erections in men) - diabetic foot disease (changes in blood vessels in the leg, which may lead to the amputation of the foot and/or lower leg) Early detection and diagnosis can help someone avoid many of these complications by changing her/his lifestyle. If you think you might be at risk for developing type 2 diabetes, some symptoms to look out for include: - extreme thirst - frequent urination - high blood pressure - spontaneous weight loss - slow-healing sores - frequent infections - dry, itchy skin - tingling or numb feet - blurry vision Many of the strategies for preventing diabetes are also used in the treatment of diabetes, including a healthy, well-planned diet and regular physical activity. Check out some of the archived Nutrition & Physical Activity questions for more information about healthy lifestyle habits. Also, regardless of the type of diabetes a person has, it will be important to monitor the body's blood sugar levels. People with type 1 diabetes will need to have insulin delivered to their bodies by a pump or regular injections, whereas many people who develop type 2 diabetes can typically control the disease through lifestyle management and/or oral medications. The American Diabetes Association has even more information about the different types of diabetes and additional resources. Hope this info helps you better understand this significant disease.
The organelle that contains most of the hydrolytic enzymes in a cell is the lysosome. Lysosomes are relatively small, membrane-bound organelles that cells use for a variety of purposes including breaking down organic molecules, fighting organisms that cause disease, and repairing their cell membranes.Continue Reading Lysosomes are vital to digestion within the cell, and use their enzymes to break down food items into forms that the cell can use. If there is insufficient food in the environment, the lysosomes are also capable of breaking down other organelles for the necessary materials. When used for defense, the lysosomes can destroy pathogens attacking a cell or, in animals, can be deployed by specialized immune cells to destroy pathogens that endanger different cells. These cells engulf pathogens and release the hydrolytic enzymes within lysosomes onto them. The enzymes within lysosomes are dangerous to the cell that creates them. If the membrane of a lysosome were to leak, it could digest the cell itself. This membrane is made up of lipids, while the enzymes it contains are proteins. Lysosomes are generally found only in animal or animal-like cells. Plant cells generally do not have lysosomes, as their cell walls protect them from the dangers that lysosomes normally fight.Learn more about Organic Chemistry
A new look at the fused neck vertebrae of elephant sharks could help researchers better understand how neck development can go awry in humans. For a study in PLOS ONE, researchers investigated how the fused neck develops in elephant sharks, which is also known as the Australian ghostshark. In people with the disease known as Klippel-Feil syndrome, the vertebrae of the neck becomes fused, but in living sharks and rays, and in some fossil armored fish called placoderms, having a neck encased in bone is normal. “In some animal species, part of the animal’s body mimics what we see in a human disease. These species are known as ‘evolutionary mutants,’ and analyzing them provides unprecedented access to information in a healthy individual,” says lead researcher Catherine Boisvert of Monash University’s Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute. “We are gaining a better understanding on how these morphologies develop and what developmental pathways (genes and their networks) are involved in producing them. This knowledge may help us better understand the disease in humans.” The researchers grew elephant sharks collected from eggs laid in captivity on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. They stained them to study the fused neck, called the synarcual, and reveal cartilage and muscle development. They also analyzed the fossils of placoderms, which offered data about how this fusion occurred for comparison to living animals. Using microscopic imaging at the Australian Synchrotron, the researchers found that neck vertebrae in the elephant shark and placoderm developed normally, and only later became fused after emerging from their egg. Skates and rays appeared to show a similar pattern, suggesting this may be a normal condition for vertebrate animals in general. This contrasts the belief that a fused neck forms because individual vertebrae fail to form in early development. Boisvert says the next step is to look further into the genes that are responsible for this fusion in the shark species and apply them to diseases of the human spine. The way the synarcual develops in placoderms and sharks is most similar to human disease fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, which slowly turns soft tissues to bone—patients are born with a normal skeleton, with fusion occurring subsequently. “Sharks don’t have true bone—instead they have a hard kind of cartilage called prismatic calcified cartilage—and we don’t fully understand yet if the vertebra fusion is due to overdevelopment of cartilage, or if the soft tissue between the vertebrae becomes transformed into cartilage, resulting in fusion,” says Boisvert. “These sorts of ‘metaplastic’ transformations of the spine have been observed in farmed salmon, and exciting new research is beginning to unravel the genes involved in these transformations. Our goal is to do the same for elephant sharks, rays, and skates. “All in all, we are coming closer to understanding how a fused neck develops normally or under stressful conditions (as is the case for farmed salmon) in a range of vertebrates at the base of our ancestry.” Source: Monash University
Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, came a step closer to understanding how cells close gaps not only during embryonic development but also during wound healing. Their study, published in the journal Cell, uncovers a fundamental misconception in the previous explanation for a developmental process called dorsal closure. Scientists study dorsal closure, which occurs during the development of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, to gain insights into wound healing in humans, as both processes involve closing a gap in the skin by stretching the surrounding epithelial cells over it. Dorsal closure involves three entities: the cells that fill the gap, called amnioserosa cells, a cable of the protein actin which runs around the gap, and the epithelial cells that eventually stretch over and seal the gap.Until now, scientists believed dorsal closure started when some unknown signal made the amnioserosa cells and the actin cable contract. The actin cable would then act like the drawstring on a purse together with the gradually contracting amnioserosa cells, it would pull the epithelial cells together until the gap was closed. By taking more pictures per minute researchers in Damian Brunner's group at EMBL improved the time resolution of the movies generally used to study this process, and made an important observation. They found that amnioserosa cells pulse throughout their life, constantly contracting and relaxing their surfaces.With each contraction they transiently pull on the surrounding epithelial cells, and then relax, letting them go. By combining their movies with computer simulations, Aynur Kaya and Jerome Solon in Brunner's group discovered that the actin cable doesn't act as a drawstring, but rather as a ratchet. With every force pulse of the amnioserosa cells, the actin cable contracts and stops the epithelial cells from moving back away from the gap when the amnioserosa cells relax. This ratchetlike action means epithelial cells can move in only one direction: over the gap, bringing about dorsal closure. “Essentially, you have a field of cells that creates the driving force,” Damian summarises, “and then you need to translate this force into movement by adding ratchets that lock the cells into the state where they should move”. The researchers believe this mechanism could apply not only to dorsal closure and wound healing, but also to many developing tissues, since moving tissue around is central to development. Cite This Page:
How to find a file on a computer To run the Windows find, click Start and then click Find or Search (varies depending on version of Windows). Finally, click the option to Find Files or Folders. This should open a folder similar to the below illustrated example. Note: In Windows 8, start typing the name of a file on the Start screen to search for the file on the computer. Note: In Windows 10, type the name of a file in the Windows Search Box on the taskbar to search for the file on the computer. The "named" or "Search for files or folders named" field is where you would type the name of the file you are looking for on the computer. This field allows the user to use any numbers or letters on the keyboard and also support wild characters such as * or %. The "containing text" field enables you to search for files that contains text you are trying to find. For example, you may be looking for a file that contains the phrase "computer help", typing computer help in this field will find any file that contains these words. Keep in mind that some files (e.g. Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel files) encrypt data when saved and therefore cannot be found using plain text searches. The "Look in" field allows you to specify where you want to look on the hard drive for the files. If you do not know where the file is located, point look in to search the whole drive instead of just a folder. For example, specify the C:\ drive. Once all the required text has been entered you can click the Find Now button to start the search. Tip: For additional search options, you can click on the Advanced tab or click on Search Options (depending on your version of Windows) and get more specific searches. For example, you can search by date, type, size, etc. Below are a few examples and tips of how users can find files on their computer. Find all GIF picture files on the computer In the Named field, type .gif and specify the C:\ drive in the Look in field. The .gif indicates any file that ends with a file extension of .gif. The .gif can be replaced with any file extension. Below are a few examples of the common extensions you may use. .doc = Microsoft Word documents. .xls = Microsoft Excel documents .mov = Apple Quicktime Movie files .jpg = Another image extension. (JPEG pictures) .htm and .html = HTML web pages. See the file extension page for a complete listing of extensions. Find any files that contain help in the name In the Named field, type help.* and specify the C:\ drive in the Look in field. The help indicates anything containing name and the .* indicates that the file can end with any extension. Additional information, examples, and help with wildcards as seen in both of the above examples can also be found on our wildcard definition page.
How to Use Reading 1: The Civil War in the Pensacola Area When Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election of 1860, fear swept through the South. Although Lincoln had never called for abolishing slavery altogether, stating only that it should not spread to the territories, few Southerners believed him. They were certain Lincoln did plan to free the slaves, and Southern radicals called for the South to secede from the Union. South Carolina announced its secession in December 1860, even before Lincoln took office. Within six weeks Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas voted to leave the Union. These states justified their secession on the basis of states’ rights. That doctrine held that if the states had voluntarily joined the Union, they also could leave it whenever they chose. Pensacola Bay with its safe harbor and adjoining navy yard complete with docking, supply, and shipbuilding facilities would be a valuable prize for either side if war broke out between the Union and the emerging Confederate States of America. The four brick forts which had been built with slave labor to protect the bay’s entrance from possible foreign attack would be part of the prize: Fort Pickens on the western end of Santa Rosa Island, Fort McRee to the west across the ship channel, and Fort Barrancas and its Advanced Redoubt on the mainland. Stationed at Fort Barrancas, U.S. Army Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer realized that if war proved inevitable and Southern forces attacked, his small force of 51 men could not possibly defend all four forts. On January 10, 1861, the same day Florida seceded from the Union, he concentrated all his troops in Fort Pickens, which he believed was the key to the defense of Pensacola’s harbor. Two days later, Slemmer’s men watched as Southern soldiers moved into the other forts across the channel, removing the U.S. flags. Then, on January 15, soldiers from Florida and Alabama demanded the surrender of Fort Pickens. Lieutenant Slemmer refused. On January 28, 1861, a truce was reached that stated that the South would not attack and Fort Pickens would not be reinforced. By the time Lincoln took office in March, both Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, and Fort Pickens, needed supplies. In his inaugural address Lincoln had pledged to continue to occupy federal property in the seceded states. If he withdrew the garrisons at those forts it would mean he officially recognized the Confederacy and its right to occupy those posts; if, on the other hand, he supplied the forts, he risked war. The Union did send ships filled with supplies and reinforcements from Fort Monroe, Virginia, to Fort Pickens, but under terms of the truce they dared not land. For 10 weeks, the Union’s ships with blue coated soldiers aboard lay at anchor near Fort Pickens, while inside the fort, fearful of a surprise assault on the island, Lieutenant Slemmer kept his command on full alert. The Confederates had in fact planned such a surprise attack, but bad weather delayed them until the 12th of April. Then, before they could get under way, they learned that South Carolina forces had opened fire on Fort Sumter. The civil war so many had feared for so long became a reality. Soon more Union ships with supplies and troops arrived off Fort Pickens. By the summer of 1861, the fort was still firmly under Union control, and the Union navy blockaded Pensacola’s harbor. Colonel Harvey Brown, now in command of Fort Pickens, and his thousand or more soldiers strengthened the island’s defenses by building gun emplacements, mounting guns, drilling, and moving supplies from ships to the fort. The Confederate forces under the command of Gen. Braxton Bragg, now several thousand strong, kept equally busy. Though they were fresh troops, they made up for their lack of training by their great enthusiasm. The Confederate lines stretched for four miles, from Fort McRee on the west, eastward to Fort Barrancas and the navy yard. It was at the navy yard that the first fighting took place between the two armies. On September 13, 1861, a force of 100 Union sailors and marines crossed the bay and set fire to the Confederate ship, Judah. Before dawn, on October 9, more than 1,000 Confederates landed four miles east of Fort Pickens and advanced against the Union lines. Darkness provided surprise but some soldiers lost their way among the sand dunes and scrub vegetation. One Union camp was taken and burned, but the approaching dawn and fear of Union gunboat attacks on their transport boats led the Confederates to withdraw eastward toward their landing place. In the meantime, Union troops from Fort Pickens counterattacked and the battle became a running skirmish down the island. Finally, the Confederates reached their boats and rapidly crossed the bay to safety. Known as the Battle of Santa Rosa Island, this confrontation was one of the first significant land battles of the Civil War fought in Florida. Colonel Brown termed the attack a "gross insult to the flag" and was determined to punish the Confederates through a massive display of Union firepower from both Fort Pickens and ships in the gulf. At 10 a.m. Saturday morning, November 22, 1861, an all-day bombardment began. The Confederates did not wait long to respond. The next day both sides continued their bombardments. During those two days, 5,000 Union and 1,000 Confederate projectiles were fired from the big guns. The noise staggered the imagination. So enormous were the reverberations from the firepower that thousands of dead fish floated to the surface of Pensacola Bay, and windows shattered seven miles away in the town of Pensacola. When the bombardment ended late on November 23, little had been gained or lost by either side. At Fort Pickens, one man had been killed by enemy fire and two guns had been disabled (one had burst from too much use). The Confederates did not suffer many casualties or loss of equipment either, despite the fierce bombardment. Fort McRee was heavily damaged, however. The Union army obtained control of Pensacola’s harbor in May 1862--not as a consequence of the battle, but through the Confederates’ decision to abandon the harbor and remove more than 10,000 of their soldiers from the region beginning in February. The Union forces took control of the deserted navy yard and the nearby forts, and they held Pensacola for the remainder of the Civil War. All the forts defending Pensacola’s harbor once again flew the U.S. flag, and their defenders saw limited fighting during the rest of the Civil War. Instead, the forts acted as an important base of operations for raids into Florida and Alabama and as a prison for military and political prisoners. Questions for Reading 1 1. Why was Pensacola Bay considered an important prize in the Civil War? 2. Why did the Union forces believe it was vital to hold control of Fort Pickens? 3. How did the role of Fort Pickens during the war differ from its original purpose? 4. How were events in the Pensacola area just before the outbreak of the Civil War similar to those at Fort Sumter? How were they different? (Use a U.S. history textbook for background information on Ft. Sumter.) 5. How did the Union army finally gain full control of Pensacola Harbor? Reading 1 is compiled from Edwin C. Bearss, "Historic Structure Report, Fort Pickens, Historical Data Section, 1821-1895, Gulf Islands National Seashore, Florida-Mississippi," U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1983; Randy F. Nimnicht, "Fort Pickens" (Escambia County, Florida) National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1971; and Anne Castellena-Dudley, "Fort Barrancas Historic District" (Escambia County, Florida) National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1978.
MD5 stands for 'Message Digest algorithm 5'. MD5 algorithm is used as a cryptographic hash function or a file fingerprint. Often used to encrypt password in databse, MD5 can also generate a fingerprint file to ensure that a file is the same after a transfer for example. A MD5 hash is composed of 32 hexadecimal characters. Enter a word in the MD5 encrypter form above to know the corresponding MD5 hash.
To view our printable materials, you must download the latest version of the free Adobe Acrobat software. Our lesson plans are written and reviewed by educators using current research and the best instructional practices and are aligned to state and national standards. Choose from hundreds of topics and strategies. ReadWriteThink has a variety of resources for out-of-school use. Visit our Parent & Afterschool Resources section to learn more. \|ABOUT THIS PRINTOUT\| Connection Stems give students the language (and a reminder) to support their understanding by tying new learning to what they know about themselves and their world. This printout has been reproduced from the following book: McLaughlin, M. (2010). Guided comprehension in the primary grades. Newark, DE: International Reading Asssociation. TEACHING WITH THIS PRINTOUT Making connections—to background knowledge, past experiences, earlier moments in a text—is a significant way that readers make sense of and find enjoyment in text. Younger students need to see, hear, and construct those relationships explicitly to gain control of the process. - Begin by including connections in a read-aloud with a story that students will have plenty of access to, either from similar life experiences or from content they’ve studied in class. - As you model connections, use language from the printout to help students see how connections support engagement and understanding. - Invite students to begin making connections with the whole class or in pairs. MORE IDEAS TO TRY - As students gain confidence with making connections and using the Connection Stems printout to record them, explain that there are a variety of connections readers make—text to text, text to world, and text to self. Help readers understand that Connection Stems allow them relate to something that occurred in another book or story, an experience they’ve heard or know about, or an experience they’ve had themselves. - Use completed Connection Stems to make a visible record of active comprehension throughout the classroom. After students write a connection, ask them to draw the moment in the text that triggered the connection as well as the event or experience they’re connecting it to. Post their work throughout the room. - When students are ready to engage in student-directed book groups, use the Connection Stems to help define the role of Connector for one student in the group. - During an author or concept study that asks students to read multiple related texts, ask students to use the Connection Stems to relate each new text to the learning from the ones before. Grades 3 – 8 \| Printout \| Graphic Organizer Using this printout, students make personal associations to a text by finding and describing text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world connections.
The central intelligence of ants – the way ant colonies organize themselves without a leader and get things done – continues to amaze scientists and science writers alike. Back in 2003, Deborah Gordon, a Stanford biologist, gave a whole TED Talk called “How Do Ants Know What to Do?,” which sheds light on how ants can form stunningly complex, leaderless systems. Then, several years later, RadioLab continued to mull over Gordon’s fascinating research in one of its very first episodes. Now we get this great bit of video. It comes to us via researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and it shows how ants, when placed in water, can form a completely watertight raft in under two minutes. “They’ll gather up all the eggs in the colony and will make their way up through the underground network of tunnels, and when the flood waters rise above the ground, they’ll link up together in these massive rafts,” says Nathan J. Mlot, an engineering student involved in the project. Amazingly, even the ants at the bottom of the raft never get submerged. They all survive, which raises the question: Can this research lead to new floatation devices for the rest of us to use?
Celebrate your kindergarten grad's new âbig kidâ status by signing off on her first library card and making a library card pocket holder to stash it in. Here's an adorable kindergarten refrigerator magnet that celebrates the glories of the letter "B" and benefits your early reader. Does your child need help reading common words? Make this family board game. It's so fun, she won't even realize she's learning! Once your child has mastered the letters of the alphabet it's time to start building words! Try out this activity that encourages simple word recognition. Here's a challenging treasure hunt for kindergarteners learning about letter sounds. String letters together to make words and find the path to the treasure. Does your child love pretend and need practice with letters and the sounds they make? Get cooking! This activity is fun and builds key reading skills, too. Help your kindergartener make and play a "Hop On Pop"-inspired card game--a fun way to learn word families! Here's a fun activity to get your kindergarten child to listen to beginning alphabet sounds and match them with their letter symbols. This cute game that lets your child practice making words, while acting like a Mexican jumping bean! Great for emerging readers. Boost your child's early literacy skills and create alphabet tiles she can play and practice with - great reinforcement for ABC's, phonics and writing! Your child will begin to recognize written color names as she looks at the different patterns and matches them up with the correct colors.
In 2009 and 2011 the Emily Dickinson Museum hosted a National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshop for Schoolteachers. Below are links to curriculum projects developed by participants. photo by Steve Fratoni Teachers transcribe a Dickinson poem DICKINSON TEXTS: All lesson plans refer to specific texts by Emily Dickinson. In most cases, for copyright reasons, the full texts of poems are not included with the lesson plans. Each teacher provides a list of resources with the lesson plan. TO VIEW PROJECTS: Curriculum projets are saved as PDFs. Click here to download the latest version of Adobe Reader. COPYRIGHT: These educators have kindly made these lesson plans available for the use of all teachers, but all publication and distribution rights are reserved. Inquires to individual teachers can be directed to [email protected]. Please include "question for educator" in the subject line. FEEDBACK: We would be delighted to hear about your experiences with these lesson plans, or about your own ideas! Please e-mail us. Bonnie Raines, Santa Rosa Charter School for the Arts, Santa Rosa, California (NEH 2011) This is a six-week unit focused on the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson. Students memorize some poems, write about and discuss others, learn about her life, create visual art, and finally perform in an alphabetical performance piece including three poems put to music that I composed on the piano. For complete lesson plan, click Emily Endures (PDF 1 file, 15 pages, 1 MB) Emily Dickinson’s Poetry: The Senses Create a Vision Diane Moller, Library Media Specialist, Lewisboro Elementary School, South Salem, NY (NEH 2009) Emily Dickinson’s poetry was integral to her environment. While her themes are universal, readers can get a unique understanding of her poetry by understanding where and how she lived. Her poetry appeals to the senses with her use of precise language. Hearing her poetry helps to illuminate her words and deepen our understanding of her work. At the end of this unit, students will be able to explain how Emily Dickinson’s life influenced the themes in her poetry. They will also be able to create a digital representation of one of Emily Dickinson’s poems using the program Photostory3 with appropriate images and music. Students will be able to mark a poem for words that evoke the senses. For complete lesson plan, click Emily Dickinson’s Poetry: The Senses Create a Vision (PDF 5 files, 18 pages total, 336 KB) To view three student samples, click here. Emily Dickinson and the Meaning of Friendship Lynette Miller Gottlieb, Ashbrook Independent School, Corvallis OR (NEH 2011) This series of lessons explores the nature of friendship as seen through the words and descriptions of Emily Dickinson in her letters and poetry. Students will not only develop their understanding of what friendship meant to the poet, but also develop their own personal ideas about what friendship means to them in their adolescence. In celebration of their learning and the beauty of friendship, students will create a friendship token and bestow it on someone special to them. For complete lesson plan, click Emily Dickinson and the Meaning of Friendship (PDF 1 file, 12 pages, 675 KB) What Inspired Emily? What Inspired You? Cherise Lopez, Hinsdale Central High School, Hinsdale, Illinois (NEH 2011) After an introduction to Dickinson’s life and work, my students had to choose one poem to analyze. The analysis included a poster creation wherein the students identified the poetic devices in the piece and discussed how these devices achieved the writer’s purpose and message. On this same poster, students also reflected on what they believed inspired Dickinson to write it based on the background knowledge they received regarding her life. In addition to this reflection, students had to identify a source of inspiration for themselves and create their own piece of poetry or art. For complete lesson plan, click What Inspired Emily? What Inspires You? (PDF 1 file, 4 pages, 301 KB) Editing Emily's Way: An Exercise in Diction and Its Implications Grades 9-12, literature classes, writing classes, creative writing classes Cynthia Storrs, The Classical Academy, Colorado Spring, CO (NEH 2009) In this series of lessons, students will examine the poetry of Emily Dickinson and explore the diction of poetry: how words change not only meaning, but tone and style. They will experience the differences made by word choice, and propose reasons for editorial choices made in Dickinson’s work. In classrooms where students compose their own poetry, students can also repeat the experimentation with their poetry, and dialogue with fellow writers about what would be the best word choices for their poetry, and why. For complete lesson plan, click Editing Emily's Way: An Exercise in Diction and Its Implications (PDF 1 file, 4 pages, 66 KB) "No Prisoner Be": Exploring Freedom and Limitation in the Work of Emily Dickinson Grade 11 Honors American literature Rosemary Loomis, Lexington High School, Lexington MA (NEH 2009) This 7-day unit gives students the opportunity to study and understand Dickinson and her work from a variety of perspectives. Students will reflect on the topic of Freedom and Limitation, learn something of Dickinson's relationship to that topic, discover poems of Dickinson on that topic, interpret and analyze those poems, and produce original poems that “echo” some of Dickinson's style. While the lesson can be adapted, it is preferable that both teacher and students have access to computers and the Internet for maximum impact. For complete lesson plan, click "No Prisoner Be": Exploring Freedom and Limitation in the Work of Emily Dickinson (PDF 3 files, 11 pages total, 136 KB) Dickinson’s “Loaded” Words: A Critical Essay Assignment Elizabeth Sokolov, The Madeira School, MacLean, VA (NEH 2009) This assignment is a critical essay where students will craft an argument that traces Dickinson’s intellectual, spiritual, or emotional journey using a recurrent and meaningful word across three of her poems. For complete lesson plan, click Dickinson’s “Loaded” Words: A Critical Essay Assignment (PDF, 1 file, 5 pages, 45 KB) Emily Dickinson: Luminous Letters Courtney Rein and Jonathan Howland, The Urban School, San Francisco, CA (NEH 2009) Dickinson’s letters comprise form of self-publication, even as her poems constitute a form of private inquiry, a conversation with the self. The learning goal is to help students construct an understanding of these overlapping dimensions of Dickinson’s poetry and persona. Students will read selected letters and poems of Emily Dickinson and construct their own understanding of the ideas and questions at play therein. For complete lesson plan, click Emily Dickinson: Luminous Letters (PDF, 1 file, 6 pages, 465 KB)
lesson begins with a personalized version of the somewhat familiar "Surfer and Spotter" problem (Bennett, 2002, p. 82) and extends to regular polygons with an even number of sides. Group students in pairs. Display the Triangular Island overhead on the projector. Then, tell the following story: Suppose that you and a friend have become stranded on a desert island, which is in the shape of a regular triangle. Gilligan is a lazy, incessant bore, so you’d like to build a hut far away from him. In addition, you need to place your hut on the island so that the sum of the distances to each of the three shores will be as small as possible. Students may wonder why each person would want the sum of the distances to be as small as possible. You can explain that minimizing the sum of the distances makes getting to each side of the island as easy as possible. For realism, state that the island is covered with lots of vegetation; if the sum of the distances is minimized, you will have to clear less vegetation. In addition, you might also want to tell students that Gilligan is very selfish. Without discussion, he plans to place his hut at the exact center of the island, which means that students will have to place their huts elsewhere. (This is not completely necessary if students work in pairs, as suggested. But if you would prefer that students work individually, this will ensure that not all students place their huts at the center. Later in the lesson, students can compare their locations to Gilligan's location at the center to find out that the sum of the distances is the same.) Divide the class into pairs, and give each pair a copy of the Triangular Island activity sheet. Tell students they each are to decide where to locate a hut and find the distances to each side. (Eventually, you will want to give each student his or her own copy of the activity sheet. For the moment, however, require students to work together on the same sheet. This will ensure that they choose different locations for their huts, which will make it more likely that they notice that the location does not affect the sum of the three distances.) Note that students may need guidance about how to measure distance to each side. That is, inform them that they should measure the perpendicular distance. Select several student papers that show different locations for the two huts, and have these students share their ideas with the entire class. Ask, "Which locations seem to be best for the huts? Why?" [Students should notice that the sum of the distances for every location will be the same.] Follow up by asking, "Is this sum related to any particular characteristic of the triangle?" [This question is difficult and students may just randomly suggest various characteristics—side length, perimeter, area, or height.] Record the possibilities for future reference. This part of the lesson is to initiate thought about the problem and possible characteristics of the triangle. This is not a time to press for exact answers; that will come later. For now, have students put aside their paper-and-pencil work, but they might return to it when they reconsider the list of possibilities. Hand out the Beyond Triangular Island activity sheet. With the Triangle Island applet, students can explore the distance to the sides for equilateral triangles and squares. With the Hexagon Island applet, students can explore hexagons. To explore octagons, students will have to draw the figures themselves and find the measurements using a ruler or other measuring device; or, geometry software such as Geometer's SketchPad® can be used. You may need to provide directions to students about how to locate the applets and how to use them. Project the URL of the applets on the overhead projector, write them on the chalkboard, or tell students to do the following: - Go to the home page of the Illuminations web site (http://illuminations.nctm.org). - Go to the Activities section. - Click on "View All Activities," or press the Search button. - From the list of activities, scroll to the link for Triangle Island, Hexagon Island, or Octagon Island. Once the applets have been found, students can click on the plus sign in front of Instructions to learn how to use the applet. The applets may be used in a whole-group setting or by pairs of small groups of students in a lab setting, depending on the availability of As students gather the first set of measures for a triangle, verify that they are able to correctly manipulate the applet. The applet allows students to explore triangles of different sizes, something that would be difficult if students continued to use only paper triangles. (Note that students were never told how big the island was, so exploring multiple sizes is important.) To complete Question 1 on the activity sheet, allow students to gather data for triangles of In whole-group discussion, students should formulate conjectures based on the measures they accumulated. Ask, "What conjecture can you make about the sum of the distances to each side of the triangle for any location of the hut?" [For different locations of the interior point, the sum of the distances to each side of the triangle is constant.] Then ask, "Is this sum related to any particular characteristic of the triangle? Explain your reasoning." [The sum appears to be equal to the height of the triangle. Students may reason through this observation by considering what happens when the hut is at a vertex of the triangle. Dragging the interior point to each of the vertices of the triangle, students may note that the distances to two of the sides become zero while the distance to the third side becomes the height of the triangle.] Return to the paper triangles. Ask, "How do your results from the applet match your earlier results with the paper triangles?" [Students may note that the two sets of results are similar, so long as their measurements for the paper triangle were accurate.] Point out to students that the island could have other shapes. It could be square, or it could have more that four sides. Ask students to consider a few different cases. In order to have a class set of data from which students can generalize a relationship for all regular polygons with an even number of sides, assign one of the remaining three polygons (square, hexagon, octagon) to each pair of students. Each pair starts with its assigned polygon and then moves through the other two polygons, time permitting. For each polygon, the pair must complete the table and respond to the questions on the activity sheet. [For the square, the sum of the distances appears to equal twice the height of the square; for the hexagon, the sum appears to equal three times the height of the hexagon; and for the octagon, the sum appears to equal four times the height of the octagon.] After students have had an opportunity to consider at least one of the square, hexagon, or octagon, and depending on time, the students return to a whole-group setting. A student from a pair originally assigned to each polygon shares the pair’s results. Other students are responsible for questioning the pair about their reasoning. When the results for all of the polygons are public, pose the following question: "How might you generalize your results to islands of other shapes?" If this question is too general, students’ thinking may be supported by asking them to think about a concrete case involving a regular polygon with a large even number of sides. For example, what would be the relationship between the sum of the distances to the sides of a 50‑gon and the height of the 50‑gon? [The sum will be equal to 25 times the height of the 50‑gon.] In general, how can this observation be stated, that is, in terms of an n‑gon? [The sum will be equal to n/2 times the height of the n‑gon. Students should see that this generalization applies only to n‑gons with an even number of sides. Different relationships exist for polygons with an odd number of sides.]
Definition of density 1 : the quality or state of being dense measures of traffic density the density of the cake felt that the candidate's density on the subject of equality was alarming the density of her prose 2 mathematics : the quantity per unit volume (see 1volume 3), unit area (see area 1), or unit length: such asa chemistry : the mass (see 2mass 1c) of a substance per unit volumeb chemistry : the distribution of a quantity (as mass, electricity, or energy) per unit usually of space (as length, area, or volume)c : the average number of individuals or units per space unit a population density of 500 per square mile a housing density of 10 houses per acre Examples of density in a sentence We were surprised by the fog's density. the density of her writing style These instruments are used for measuring the density of the atmosphere. Origin and Etymology of density First Known Use: 1598 DENSITY Defined for Kids Definition of density for Students 1 : the condition of having parts that are close together the jungle's density 2 : the amount of something in a specified volume or area high population density Medical Definition of density 1: the quantity per unit volume, unit area, or unit length: asa: the mass of a substance per unit volumeb: the distribution of a quantity (as mass, electricity, or energy) per unit usually of spacec: the average number of individuals or units per space unit a population density of 500 per square mile 2a: the degree of opacity of a translucent mediumb: absorbance Seen and Heard What made you want to look up density? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible).
Surveys have shown that 17 percent of all bicycle collisions are car/bike collisions. The rate decreases when a rider is experienced and educated on the rules of the road. What mistakes do children make when bicycling? The No. 1 area where children have the most bicycling collisions is in their neighborhood. They feel safe there and feel everyone is looking out for them. Children often fail to yield right of way, and they often don't stop at intersections. Children have poor judgment of traffic speed and distance. Children are not as visible as adults. This causes difficulty to be seen and they assume drivers see them. Children a lot of times ride all over the street and in groups, not single file. They ride on the wrong side of the road. They don't look behind them for traffic and make sudden turns or swerves. What does a child deal with when bicycling? Children do not have well-developed peripheral vision. Children see only part of a situation. They are not able to comprehend how close a car is. Children have a short attention span and are impulsive. They don't know the traffic laws and often don't know how dangerous a situation is. What can adults do to help young cyclists? Be a good role model. When bicycling, wear a properly fitted helmet. Ride predictably, on the right and in the same direction as vehicles even when on the sidewalk. Always use hand signals. This lets other riders and drivers know what you are doing. Always make eye contact with drivers when at intersections and teach children to do this. Vehicles making a right turn at intersections, including driveways usually only look left for traffic. If one is cycling against traffic the vehicle driver won't see the rider. This can lead to a dangerous situation. Don't ride right next to parked cars, known as the door zone. Even if it looks like no one is in the car, a door could open and the bicyclist could be "doored." Collision rates decrease when a rider has experience and is educated on the rules of the road. Teach your children the rules of the road. Enroll them in a bicycle safety education program like PEDAL Forward. As drivers of vehicles, we need to be aware of our surroundings. Always look twice to make sure it is safe to turn and also look right for cyclist/pedestrians when turning. Be watchful of young cyclists riding. Make eye contact with them at intersections. When bicycling on multi-use paths, always be aware of your surroundings. Be courteous when approaching others by letting them know you are coming up on them by saying, "On your left," so they aren't startled when you pass. Ride predictably, in a straight line and on the right side. Yield when entering paths and crossroads. Look left, right and left again before you cross. Be visible, wear brightly colored clothing. Always be in control of your bicycle. Have your hands resting on the brakes to be prepared for unexpected situations. Let's all make Loveland a safer place for our younger generation. Robin Hildenbrand is a member of BPEC and the PEDAL Club and is a League of American Bicyclists instructor. Find BPEC online at bpeclarimer.org
Infant and young child feeding - Every infant and child has the right to good nutrition according to the "Convention on the Rights of the Child". - Undernutrition is associated with 45% of child deaths. - Globally in 2016, 155 million children under 5 were estimated to be stunted (too short for age), 52 million were estimated to be wasted (too thin for height), and 41 million were overweight or obese. - About 40% of infants 0–6 months old are exclusively breastfed. - Few children receive nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods; in many countries less than a fourth of infants 6–23 months of age meet the criteria of dietary diversity and feeding frequency that are appropriate for their age. - Over 820 000 children's lives could be saved every year among children under 5 years, if all children 0–23 months were optimally breastfed. Breastfeeding improves IQ, school attendance, and is associated with higher income in adult life. (1) - Improving child development and reducing health costs through breastfeeding results in economic gains for individual families as well as at the national level. Undernutrition is estimated to be associated with 2.7 million child deaths annually or 45% of all child deaths. Infant and young child feeding is a key area to improve child survival and promote healthy growth and development. The first 2 years of a child’s life are particularly important, as optimal nutrition during this period lowers morbidity and mortality, reduces the risk of chronic disease, and fosters better development overall. Optimal breastfeeding is so critical that it could save the lives of over 820 000 children under the age of 5 years each year. WHO and UNICEF recommend: - early initiation of breastfeeding within 1 hour of birth; - exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of life; and - introduction of nutritionally-adequate and safe complementary (solid) foods at 6 months together with continued breastfeeding up to 2 years of age or beyond. However, many infants and children do not receive optimal feeding. For example, only about 36% of infants aged 0–6 months worldwide were exclusively breastfed over the period of 2007-2014. Recommendations have been refined to also address the needs for infants born to HIV-infected mothers. Antiretroviral drugs now allow these children to exclusively breastfeed until they are 6 months old and continue breastfeeding until at least 12 months of age with a significantly reduced risk of HIV transmission. Exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months has many benefits for the infant and mother. Chief among these is protection against gastrointestinal infections which is observed not only in developing but also industrialized countries. Early initiation of breastfeeding, within 1 hour of birth, protects the newborn from acquiring infections and reduces newborn mortality. The risk of mortality due to diarrhoea and other infections can increase in infants who are either partially breastfed or not breastfed at all. Breast-milk is also an important source of energy and nutrients in children aged 6–23 months. It can provide half or more of a child’s energy needs between the ages of 6 and 12 months, and one third of energy needs between 12 and 24 months. Breast-milk is also a critical source of energy and nutrients during illness, and reduces mortality among children who are malnourished. Children and adolescents who were breastfed as babies are less likely to be overweight or obese. Additionally, they perform better on intelligence tests and have higher school attendance. Breastfeeding is associated with higher income in adult life. Improving child development and reducing health costs results in economic gains for individual families as well as at the national level.(1) Longer durations of breastfeeding also contribute to the health and well-being of mothers: it reduces the risk of ovarian and breast cancer and helps space pregnancies–exclusive breastfeeding of babies under 6 months has a hormonal effect which often induces a lack of menstruation. This is a natural (though not fail-safe) method of birth control known as the Lactation Amenorrhoea Method. Mothers and families need to be supported for their children to be optimally breastfed. Actions that help protect, promote and support breastfeeding include: - adoption of policies such as the International Labour Organization’s "Maternity Protection Convention 183" and "Recommendation No. 191", which complements "Convention No. 183" by suggesting a longer duration of leave and higher benefits; - adoption of the "International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes" and subsequent relevant World Health Assembly resolutions; - implementation of the "Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding" specified in the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative, including: - skin-to-skin contact between mother and baby immediately after birth and initiation of breastfeeding within the first hour of life; - breastfeeding on demand (that is, as often as the child wants, day and night); - rooming-in (allowing mothers and infants to remain together 24 hours a day); - not giving babies additional food or drink, even water, unless medically necessary; - provision of supportive health services with infant and young child feeding counselling during all contacts with caregivers and young children, such as during antenatal and postnatal care, well-child and sick child visits, and immunization; and - community support, including mother support groups and community-based health promotion and education activities. Breastfeeding practices are highly responsive to supportive interventions, and the prevalence of exclusive and continued breastfeeding can be improved over the course of a few years. Around the age of 6 months, an infant’s need for energy and nutrients starts to exceed what is provided by breast milk, and complementary foods are necessary to meet those needs. An infant of this age is also developmentally ready for other foods. If complementary foods are not introduced around the age of 6 months, or if they are given inappropriately, an infant’s growth may falter. Guiding principles for appropriate complementary feeding are: - continue frequent, on-demand breastfeeding until 2 years of age or beyond; - practise responsive feeding (for example, feed infants directly and assist older children. Feed slowly and patiently, encourage them to eat but do not force them, talk to the child and maintain eye contact); - practise good hygiene and proper food handling; - start at 6 months with small amounts of food and increase gradually as the child gets older; - gradually increase food consistency and variety; - increase the number of times that the child is fed: 2–3 meals per day for infants 6–8 months of age and 3–4 meals per day for infants 9–23 months of age, with 1–2 additional snacks as required; - use fortified complementary foods or vitamin-mineral supplements as needed; and - during illness, increase fluid intake including more breastfeeding, and offer soft, favourite foods. Feeding in exceptionally difficult circumstances Families and children in difficult circumstances require special attention and practical support. Wherever possible, mothers and babies should remain together and get the support they need to exercise the most appropriate feeding option available. Breastfeeding remains the preferred mode of infant feeding in almost all difficult situations, for instance: - low-birth-weight or premature infants; - mothers living with HIV in settings where mortality due to diarrhoea, pneumonia and malnutrition remain prevalent; - adolescent mothers; - infants and young children who are malnourished; and - families suffering the consequences of complex emergencies. HIV and infant feeding Breastfeeding, and especially early and exclusive breastfeeding, is one of the most significant ways to improve infant survival rates. While HIV can pass from a mother to her child during pregnancy, labour or delivery, and also through breast-milk, the evidence on HIV and infant feeding shows that giving antiretroviral treatment (ART) to mothers living with HIV significantly reduces the risk of transmission through breastfeeding and also improves her health. WHO now recommends that all people living with HIV, including pregnant women and lactating mothers living with HIV, take ART for life from when they first learn their infection status. Mothers living in settings where morbidity and mortality due to diarrhoea, pneumonia and malnutrition are prevalent and national health authorities endorse breastfeeding should exclusively breastfeed their babies for 6 months, then introduce appropriate complementary foods and continue breastfeeding up to at least the child’s first birthday. WHO is committed to supporting countries with implementation and monitoring of the "Comprehensive implementation plan on maternal, infant and young child nutrition", endorsed by Member States in May 2012. The plan includes 6 targets, one of which is to increase, by 2025, the rate of exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months up to at least 50%. Activities that will help to achieve this include those outlined in the "Global strategy for infant and young child feeding", which aims to protect, promote and support appropriate infant and young child feeding. UNICEF and WHO created the Global Breastfeeding Collective to rally political, legal, financial, and public support for breastfeeding. The Collective brings together implementers and donors from governments, philanthropies, international organizations, and civil society. The Collective’s vision is a world in which all mothers have the technical, financial, emotional, and public support they need to breastfeed. WHO has formed the Network for Global Monitoring and Support for Implementation of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and Subsequent Relevant World Health Assembly Resolutions, also known as NetCode. The goal of NetCode is to protect and promote breastfeeding by ensuring that breastmilk substitutes are not marketed inappropriately. Specifically, NetCode is building the capacity of Member States and civil society to strengthen national Code legislation, continuously monitor adherence to the Code, and take action to stop all violations. In addition, WHO and UNICEF have developed courses for training health workers to provide skilled support to breastfeeding mothers, help them overcome problems, and monitor the growth of children, so they can identify early the risk of undernutrition or overweight/obesity. WHO provides simple, coherent and feasible guidance to countries for promoting and supporting improved infant feeding by HIV-infected mothers to prevent mother-to-child transmission, good nutrition of the baby, and protect the health of the mother. The Lancet Breastfeeding Series papers Breastfeeding in the 21st century: epidemiology, mechanisms, and lifelong effect. Victora, Cesar G et al. The Lancet , Volume 387 , Issue 10017 , 475 – 490. Why invest, and what it will take to improve breastfeeding practices? Rollins, Nigel C et al. The Lancet , Volume 387 , Issue 10017 , 491 – 504 For more information contact: WHO Media centre Telephone: +41 22 791 2222
Forest fires can emit a lot of carbon into the atmosphere — but there may be little that can be done about it, thanks to Smokey Bear.Wildfires in the West and Southeast can compete with human fossil-fuel burning as a source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for the states in which they’re burning, according to a paper published this week online in the journal Carbon Balance and Management. Christine Wiedinmyer of Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Jason Neff of the University of Colorado found that fires in the 48 contiguous states and Alaska release about 290 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year – an amount equivalent to four to six percent of total U.S. CO2 emissions. Carbon dioxide is the gas most responsible for the current global atmospheric warming trend. The current CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is about 383 parts per million, which is about 38 percent above the pre-industrial levels of 284 ppm as measured in ice cores. Smokey Bear has been telling us for years to prevent forest fires. This fire suppression policy has resulted in more forested areas. These trees take carbon from the atmosphere and store it, helping to reduce the overall contribution of CO2 into the atmosphere. The Catch-22 in this scenario is that now there is heightened fire danger from the increased fuel load. And when those trees burn, they release much of that carbon they have been so conveniently storing. The recent California fires, the authors report, released 7.9 million metric tons of CO2 in only a week – roughly the equivalent of all the fossil fuel burned in California in a week from cars, power plants and other sources. “Enormous fires like this pump a large amount of carbon dioxide quickly into the atmosphere,” Wiedinmyer says. “This can complicate efforts to understand our carbon budget and ultimately fight global warming.” Fires contribute a higher proportion of the potent greenhouse gas in several western and southeastern states, especially Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Washington, Arkansas, Mississippi and Arizona. Particularly large fires can release enormous pulses of carbon dioxide rapidly into the atmosphere. “A striking implication of very large wildfires is that a severe fire season lasting only one or two months can release as much carbon as the annual emissions from the entire transportation or energy sector of an individual state,” the authors write.
New England is likely to experience significantly greater warming over the next decade, and beyond, than the rest of the planet, according to new findings by climate scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The region’s temperatures are projected to rise by an average of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels by 2025, according to the study, published this week in PLOS One, a journal published by the Public Library of Science. The scientists found that the Northeast is warming more rapidly than any other part of the country except Alaska — and that the 3.6 degree Fahrenheit rise in the region is likely to come two decades before the rest of the world gets to that point. “I tell my students that they’re going to be able to tell their children, ‘I remember when it used to snow in Boston,’ ” said Ray Bradley, an author of the study and director of the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts. “We’ll have occasional snow, but we won’t have weeks and weeks of snow on the ground.” The authors’ findings, based on 32 different computer models for how climate change will unfold, also show that the Northeast is likely to experience increasingly wet winters and more flooding, while the Great Plains and the Northwest will see drier summers and more prolonged droughts. Scientists have called on policy makers around the world to reduce carbon emissions in hopes of limiting global warming to 3.6 degrees, or 2 degrees Celsius, a threshold considered critical to avoiding a catastrophic rise in sea levels and other major damage attributed to climate change. That disparity will rapidly accelerate in the coming years for a combination of reasons, including the region’s relatively high latitude, its position relative to the prevailing winds that blow west across the United States, and the drastic rise in temperatures in the Gulf of Maine, which has warmed faster than nearly any other body of water on the planet, the authors concluded. How quickly the region warms will depend on how fast carbon emissions are reduced, they said. More drastic action to reduce the use of coal, oil, and other fossil fuels, as called for by the 2015 climate accord signed in Paris, could slow the pace. In the study, the authors noted that the 2-degree Celsius threshold is an arbitrary means of assessing risk. “There is no real scientific basis to why global warming of 2 degrees C should be considered ‘safe,’ ” they wrote, noting that “it emerged as ‘the least unattractive course of action’ and has been used as an easily understood, politically useful marker to communicate the urgency of the climate change problem.” In the negotiations leading up to the Paris agreement — which was signed by the United States and some 190 other countries — small island nations that are especially vulnerable to rising seas had proposed that the agreement should limit temperature increases to 1.5 degrees. “We hope policy makers understand that temperature increases are going to vary across the globe, and that some places, like the Northeast, will rise more quickly than elsewhere,” said Ambarish Karmalkar, the lead author of the study and a researcher at the university’s Northeast Climate Science Center. The study follows a similarly dire report released last year that suggested the impact of climate change on Boston could be far worse than previously expected. That report, also written by University of Massachusetts researchers, found that sea levels around the city could, in the worst-case scenario, rise more than 10 feet by the end of the century — nearly twice what was previously predicted. That would plunge about 30 percent of Boston under water. The previous report also found that temperatures in 2070 could exceed 90 degrees for 90 days a year, compared with an average of 11 days now. Changes in precipitation could mean a 50 percent decline in annual snowfall, punctuated by more frequent heavy storms such as nor’easters. The updated projections for Boston reflect other recent research that suggests the accelerating melt of the ice sheets covering Antarctica will have a disproportionate impact on cities along the East Coast. The Northeast could see sea levels rise about 25 percent higher than other parts of the planet — perhaps by as much as 10.5 feet by 2100, and 37 feet by 2200, according to some projections. The dire outlook has led climate scientists to urge policy makers to move on from the debate about whether climate change is happening to how to deal with it. An overwhelming consensus of scientists say climate change is a fact. It has also led them to worry about statements from President-elect Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” that was “created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing noncompetitive.” Anji Seth, a climate scientist at the University of Connecticut who reviewed the latest study, said she hoped it served as a wake-up call to policy makers that the harm from climate change could be coming sooner than expected. “I am very concerned about what I’m hearing from the new administration,” she said. “We need to be on guard, and make clear what the truth is.”
New Planet Found Orbiting a Dead Star (Inside Science) -- For the first time, an intact world may have been discovered around a white dwarf, suggesting that even after typical stars die, they may still host planets, a new study finds. White dwarfs are the cooling Earth-size cores of dead stars left behind after average-size stars have exhausted their fuel and shed their outer layers. Our sun will eventually fade into a white dwarf after first bloating to become a red giant. The same fate awaits more than 90% of the stars in our galaxy. Previous research has found the remains of worlds that disintegrated when the progenitor stars of white dwarfs engulfed nearby planets during their red giant phase. This raised the question of whether any worlds might avoid this destruction and end up orbiting the resulting white dwarfs. In the new study, astronomers investigated a white dwarf in the constellation Draco about 81.5 light-years from Earth. Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and other telescopes, they discovered the dead star was orbited by a roughly planet-size body dubbed WD 1586 b, which has a mass at most 14 times that of Jupiter and a diameter about 10 times that of the white dwarf. The researchers suggest that in order to avoid obliteration when the progenitor star evolved into a red giant, WD 1586 b must have originally orbited its star farther away than the distance between Earth and the sun. Later, gravitational interactions with other worlds in the remnant planetary system flung WD 1586 b into a closer orbit. It is now nearly 20 times closer to the white dwarf than Mercury is to the sun, completing an orbit every 34 hours. "If a giant planet survived the journey close to a white dwarf, then it means that smaller planets could as well," said study lead author Andrew Vanderburg, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Although white dwarfs no longer burn fuel, they can still remain hot for billions of years. Vanderburg noted that "if a rocky planet made a similar journey to the planet we discovered, it could end up in the habitable zone of the white dwarf," the area around a star temperate enough to host water, and potentially life as we know it. All in all, these findings "could offer a way for a white dwarf to give rise to a second generation of life in a planetary system, long after the star ran out of hydrogen fuel and died," Vanderburg said. The scientists detailed their findings in the Sept. 17 issue of the journal Nature.
PHYSICAL BASED RENDERING TEXTURES PBR Texture or physical based rendering Textures used life-like lighting or shading models along with computed surface values to precisely depict the real-world materials. Or it can also define as the combination of physically accurate shading, lighting, and properly measured art content. Subsequently, we have discussed the fundamental principles behind how physical-based rendering (PBR) computed the shading and lighting. Diffuse and reflected Diffuse and reflected lights are the terms that demonstrate the interaction between the material and the light. The reflected light is the light that strikes the surface and bounces off. On a smooth surface, the light will be reflected in the same direction and create a mirror-like appearance. Diffuse light is the light that penetrates the inside of the object. There it gets absorbed or scattered in the material and re-emerged. Unlike the reflected light, the diffused light is uniform in direction. The light which is not absorbed provides the material its color. Diffused color is also known as Albedo or base color. The total light hitting the material is equal to the sum of the reflected light and diffusive light. If the material is highly reflective then it will show less diffusive color. In contrast, If the material has a rich diffusive color, it can not reflect enough. Metals & Non-metals It is essential to know the nature of the material. whether the material is a conductor (metal) or an insulator (non-metal). Because it determines how the material behaves with the light. Metals are usually reflective whereas non-metals are not. Therefore, metals reflect the color as diffusive whereas non-metals on reflection appear white. Due to these differences, a PBR workflow has the property of metalness which makes things easier by defining either the material is metal or non-metal. Fresnel is a term defined as the different angles show the different extent of reflectivity. The light that hits near the edges shows more reflection than the light that falls at 0 angles. The detail of the microsurface is a very significant characteristic for any material. Because it explains how smooth or rough a surface is. Some PBR systems use Glossiness and some use roughness, They both are the same thing. Glossiness is the inverse of roughness and vise versa.
Before playing each of the memory card games (skunk, snake, bear, penguins, unicorn, zebra) print off the corresponding worksheet and show your child the 30 words listed. Check off any words that your child recognizes in the "Pre" column. After completing all card sets of the memory card game, show your child the list again, and check off the words recognized in the "Post" Column. Flashcards Test-Sentence Class Recording Sheet: After playing card sets 1 & 2 of each of the memory card games (skunk, snake, bear, penguins, unicorn, zebra) see if the student can read the short test sentences comprising the ten words they have learned through game play on the corresponding flashcard. Repeat this process after completing memory card sets 3 & 4 and again after sets 5 & 6 for each of the six decks. This step helps the child transition from reading stand-alone words to reading a whole sentence, ensuring success when they eventually get to the corresponding storybook. This class recording sheet will help keep track of each of your students' progress through the test-sentence flashcards. The Reading Game is a supplemental resource that complements most standard curriculums for Language and Literacy Arts in four skill sets: Foundational Skills, Language, Speaking and Listening, cand Reading. The staged learning format of The Reading Game first introduces individual words through game play in a fast-action memory common card game. Each memory card game contains thirty words, taught in manageable five word segments. When used in classrooms, parent volunteers or older "reading buddies" can work with the student or in small groups to play the matching card game. Frequent exposure through play hard-wires these words into long-term memory. After learning ten words through game play, the student is shown a captioned picture flashcard. This flashcards turns the ten words just learned into short descriptive phrases and sentences, which reinforces the words learned through game play, transitions the student from stand alone words to a sentence format, and introduces the use of capitalization and punctuation. After completing stage six of the first game, the student has a reading vocabulary of thirty words. The first story is told using just those thirty words. It tells of a skunk without a stripe who is rejected for being different but finds acceptance among a group of cats and becomes their defender. Each subsequent game in the series adds a further thirty words for a reading vocabulary of 180 words by the time the complete series is finished. Of the twenty-five most commonly used English words, twenty-two are on that list; of the forty most commonly used English words –thirty. The multi-sensory teaching approach – through the card game play, flashcards, and the storybooks - works well for retention and student enjoyment. How it works in the Classroom: I am so excited to tell you all about this new guided reading game we have been using in class. I absolutely LOVE it. It is so simple to use and my students are crazy about it. The Schroeder Page BlogSpot By the time students come to the end of the Zebra story, 180 words are hard-wired into memory. Phonics can then be incorporated into the game by using the cards to develop links to similar words and sounds (see notes on Phonics in the Rules and Teachers Guide ). The brain is now perfectly capable of going it alone; new words as they are encountered will go into long-term memory because that part of the brain is now primed for such a task. Millions of neurons are geared up to go to work. All you have to do is feed the student books. The Reading Game is intensely rewarding; you are giving the gift of literacy. Collecting and reporting data on how students are progressing is increasingly important. Many school districts nationwide have adopted or will be adopting evidence-based learning practice .Using the pre-game sight word assessment worksheets to establish the student’s individual sight word knowledge before they start the series and the post-game sight word worksheet after the student finishes each card game/book for each of the six in the series will allow you to make an evidence based summative assessment and show measurable results for each student in your care and your classroom as a whole. • Dolch Word List of “service words” (pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and verbs) that cannot be learned through the use of pictures. 60% of the words in “The Reading Game” are on the Dolch Word List for pre-k and k and makes up 54% of dolch words for Pre-K, K and 1st Grade. • Of the first 100 most commonly used English words (source The Reading Teachers Book of Lists, Third Edition by Fry, et al) “The Reading Game” incorporates 88% of the most common twenty-five words and 63% of the first 100. The first book in The Reading Game learn-to-read series tells the story of a skunk without a stripe who is rejected by the other skunks but finds acceptance among some cats and becomes their defender. It’s told in rhyme, is beautifully illustrated, and is 32 pages long. It will be the first book the student reads, and there are five more to follow in this groundbreaking learn to read program. Each of The Reading Game's six stories is told using just thirty new words. These are broken down into six sets of five words. The student learns to read each set of five words by playing a simple word matching game. Frequent exposure through play hardwires these words into long-term memory. Rote learning is transformed into a fast-paced game with a winner every few seconds. The Reading Game, The Reading Game includes six beautifully illustrated story books six decks of matching playing cards, & a Teacher and Parent's Guide
This guide presents a variety of artworks, from the 17th century to the present, that highlight the presence and experiences of Black communities across the Atlantic world. Use the collections in the virtual gallery below to engage your students in conversation about the many narratives of everyday life, enslavement, and resistance that have been told through art. Lesson plans are provided to extend these conversations and help students consider the many and continuing legacies of the transatlantic slave trade. This Teacher’s Guide offers a collection of lessons and resources for K-12 social studies, literature, and arts classrooms that center around the experiences, achievements, and perspectives of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders across U.S. history. Archival visits, whether in person or online, are great additions to any curriculum in the humanities. Primary sources can be the cornerstone of lessons or activities involving any aspect of history, ancient or modern. This Teachers Guide is designed to help educators plan, execute, and follow up on an encounter with sources housed in a variety of institutions, from libraries and museums to historical societies and state archives to make learning come to life and teach students the value of preservation and conservation in the humanities. This Teacher's Guide compiles EDSITEment resources that support the NEH's "A More Perfect Union" initiative, which celebrates the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. Topics include literature, history, civics, art, and culture. Our Teacher's Guide offers a collection of lessons and resources for K-12 social studies, literature, and arts classrooms that center around the achievements, perspectives, and experiences of African Americans across U.S. history. This Teacher's Guide will introduce you to the cultures and explore the histories of some groups within the over 5 million people who identify as American Indian in the United States, with resources designed for integration across humanities curricula and classrooms throughout the school year. Since 1988, the U.S. Government has set aside the period from September 15 to October 15 as National Hispanic Heritage Month to honor the many contributions Hispanic Americans have made and continue to make to the United States of America. Our Teacher's Guide brings together resources created during NEH Summer Seminars and Institutes, lesson plans for K-12 classrooms, and think pieces on events and experiences across Hispanic history and heritage.
Liquid water may exist beneath Mars’ south polar ice cap Bright reflections detected in 2018 by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) radar instrument on the European Space Agency‘s (ESA) Mars Express orbiter could indicate the presence of liquid water lakes around 0.93 miles (1.5 kilometers) beneath Mars south polar ice cap, according to a study published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. A team of researchers based at Roma Tre University in Italy studied the reflections of radio waves bounced back from Mars’ south polar surface to the instrument’s 130-foot antenna and determined the signals were too strong and bright to be generated by ice and rock. The latter produce only weak signals when radio waves are bounced off them. The strength of the signal matched that produced by liquid water close to the surface. Liquid water can exist in temperatures far below water’s freezing point within salty brines or clay, as occurs beneath Earth’s poles. To support their conclusion, the researchers conducted laboratory simulations and reviewed existing data. They also consulted David Stillman of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), a geophysicist who specializes in studying substances in extremely cold temperatures. “Lakes of liquid water actually exist beneath glaciers in Arctic and Antarctic regions, so we have Earth analogs for finding liquid water below ice,” Stillman said. “The exotic salts that we know exist on Mars have amazing ‘antifreeze’ properties allowing brines to remain liquid down to minus 103 degrees Fahrenheit. We studied these salts in our lab to understand how they would respond to radar.” Ancient Mars did have liquid water on its surface, and subsurface water could be its remnants. Because temperatures beneath Mars’ south polar cap are much colder than that at which water freezes, some scientists question the research team’s conclusion and attribute the bright radar signals to other substances, such as hydrated brines and clay. In a separate paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Nathaniel Putzig of the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) said, “It is not necessary to invoke liquid water at the base of the polar cap to explain the results of the MARSIS observations. Alternatives include clays, some metallic minerals, and salty ice.” To support the researchers, Stillman turned to a laboratory experiment in which he studied perchlorate brines similar to those known to exist beneath Mars’ south pole under a simulated Mars environment. “My Italian colleagues reached out to see if my laboratory experiment data would support the presence of liquid water beneath the Martian ice cap,” Stillman said. “The research showed that we don’t have to have lakes of perchlorate and chloride brines, but that these brines could exist between the grains of ice or sediments and are enough to exhibit a strong, dielectric (insulating) response. This is similar to how seawater saturates grains of sand at the shoreline or how flavoring permeates a slushie but at minus 103 degrees Fahrenheit near the south pole of Mars.” Even if liquid water is present beneath Mars’ south pole, the extremely cold temperatures make this region uninhabitable for life. Laurel Kornfeld is an amateur astronomer and freelance writer from Highland Park, NJ, who enjoys writing about astronomy and planetary science. She studied journalism at Douglass College, Rutgers University, and earned a Graduate Certificate of Science from Swinburne University’s Astronomy Online program. Her writings have been published online in The Atlantic, Astronomy magazine’s guest blog section, the UK Space Conference, the 2009 IAU General Assembly newspaper, The Space Reporter, and newsletters of various astronomy clubs. She is a member of the Cranford, NJ-based Amateur Astronomers, Inc. Especially interested in the outer solar system, Laurel gave a brief presentation at the 2008 Great Planet Debate held at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, MD.
Ontario Elementary Grade 4 Language Curriculum Grade 4 expectations in the language curriculum are organized into four strands. Overall expectations under each strand is listed below - 1. listen in order to understand and respond appropriately in a variety of situations for a variety of purposes; 2. use speaking skills and strategies appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes; 3. reflect on and identify their strengths as listeners and speakers, areas for improvement, and the strategies they found most helpful in oral communication situations. 1. read and demonstrate an understanding of a variety of literary, graphic, and informational texts, using a range of strategies to construct meaning; 2. recognize a variety of text forms, text features, and stylistic elements and demonstrate understanding of how they help communicate meaning; 3. use knowledge of words and cueing systems to read fluently; 4. reflect on and identify their strengths as readers, areas for improvement, and the strategies they found most helpful before, during, and after reading. 1. generate, gather, and organize ideas and information to write for an intended purpose and audience; 2. draft and revise their writing, using a variety of informational, literary, and graphic forms and stylistic elements appropriate for the purpose and audience; 3. use editing, proofreading, and publishing skills and strategies, and knowledge of language conventions, to correct errors, refine expression, and present their work effectively; 4. reflect on and identify their strengths as writers, areas for improvement, and the strategies they found most helpful at different stages in the writing process. 1. demonstrate an understanding of a variety of media texts; 2. identify some media forms and explain how the conventions and techniques associated with them are used to create meaning; 3. create a variety of media texts for different purposes and audiences, using appropriate forms, conventions, and techniques; 4. reflect on and identify their strengths as media interpreters and creators, areas for improvement, and the strategies they found most helpful in understanding and creating media texts. This is an excerpt from the original document. Intention is to quickly help you look at the curriculum and find related worksheets. For complete details and to download original document, please visit - http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/grades.html
Guide to the classical languages of India We all need a medium to communicate our feelings and experiences. The medium through which we can do this is language. Our ancestors had used gestures or sign language to convey their messages to each other. With the evolution of the human species, their way of communication is also evolved. Now, they can use a variety of languages to communicate. The evolution of the Indian language is not just for communication but to represent the different cultures and ethics of the people of India. In India, different languages are used by the people of other communities. This depicts the linguistic diversity in Indian Culture. Indian languages are evolved from different groups of languages. These groups are Sino-Tibetan, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, Austric, Negroid, and others. The main groups of languages whose impact on the Indian Languages is excellent are the Aryan and the Dravidian. There is also an influence of the Indo-Aryan Languages on Indian languages. In India, you can’t see a single language spoken everywhere. Despite all the spoken languages of India, the classical languages have greater importance in the Indian culture and constitution. If you want to know about the classical languages of India, then you are in the right place. This article is all about the classical language of India, its types, importance in Indian culture, and so on. So, just read it and learn everything about the classical languages of India. Let’s get dive into the classical languages of India. What is a Classical Language? Although classical languages are not as common and used by people, they are dead or ancient languages. This language doesn’t have native speakers, but some people know it and use it as diglossia. It has a large ancient body of oral and written literature. Classical language has its literacy traditions, which are unique and different from other speech. In modern times, the languages used in India are far more diverse than classical languages. Role of classical languages in the Indian culture Classical languages play a wide range of roles in preserving Indian culture. A classical language is used for communication purposes, but it represents the whole culture and traditions of that community to which it belongs or is related. India is a multilingual country where millions speak different languages and dialects. Today, there are a lot of countries in the world, which love our Indian culture and traditions. Only the Indian culture reaches up to different countries worldwide through the classical languages. Due to this, our culture is also recognized by different countries. And all of this happens because of classical languages and their literature work. Therefore, the classical languages of India have great importance in Indian culture. Six Classical Languages of India In India, there are only six languages that fulfil the criteria of classical language. The government of India sets some requirements for the classical languages. Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Odia. Let’s look at how these languages get the title of classical Language. 1. Tamil Language The Tamil language is the first language that got the status of classical language by the government of India in 2004. The people speak this language in Tamil Nadu, the Southern state of India. The Tamil language belongs to the Dravidian language family. It is mainly spoken in the Indian states. There are approximately 60 million people in India who speak the Tamil language. The government of India included it in classical Language because it fulfils the three criteria, which are as follow; - It has an ancient origin. - It has an independent tradition. - It has ancient literary texts. With time so much change has been taken place in the writing style of the Tamil language. The writing style of this language has opted from the Brahmi script. The most common style of writing used in it is “Round Script” or Vatteluttu. Not only has the writing style changed, but the phonology of words in this language has also changed with time. After so much evolution in this language, Modern Tamil is presently spoken in South Asia. Although it is a classical language, it is an official language of some states or UT of India and other countries. Tamil Nadu and Puducherry have the Tamil language as their official language. Country, where Tamil is used as their official language in Sri Lanka and Singapore. According to the British Historian John Alexander Guy, the Tamil language was used as a bridge language to trade in India at early maritime. Hence, this language has a wide range of popularity. 2. Sanskrit Language Second, in this list of classical languages of India, is the Sanskrit language, which is considered the mother of all languages of India. The Sanskrit language is the most ancient language used in Hindu scriptures, textbooks, or Vedas. The first-ever book of the world, Rigveda, was also written in the Sanskrit language. The Sanskrit used at the time of Vedas is much different from modern-day Sanskrit. Hence the earlier one is known as Vedic Sanskrit. The other form of Sanskrit language is Classical Sanskrit which is used nowadays. All the grammar used in Classical Sanskrit is taken from the book ‘Astadhyayi’ written by Panini. After Panini, Bhartrhari came with another Sanskrit literature book called Vakyapadiya that explains the words and sentences. The writing style used in this language is the Devanagari script. This work of Bhartrhari became a pinnacle in the world of Sanskrit literature. If we say only Hindus know this Language, then we are wrong. Some other religions like Jainism and Buddhism where their scholars use the Sanskrit language. Due to its glorious ancient history, the government included it in the classical language in 2005. However, it has a special status under article 351. 3. Telugu Language This language got the status of the classical Language of India in 2008 by the Government. But it is not relatively easy to reach for it. After going through so many challenges, it gained the title of classical language. It belongs to the family of the Dravidian Language. This Language is mostly spoken by the Telugu population, which resides in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. In these two states of India, Telugu is used as an official language. Hence, it is an official language of India along with a classical language status. The ancient literature of Telugu is the version of the Hindu epic story Mahabharata. This is also known as Andhramu. The interesting thing to know about this Language is that this Language has gained popularity in the USA. This Language comes at third position in the list of most spoken languages of India. The other two languages are Hindi and Bengali. Telugu is also one of the official languages of West Bengal. The Telugu script won second position in the best script in the world contest in 2012 after the Korean language script. It is considered the sweetest Indian Language by the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. 4. Kannada Language Another language that belongs to the family of the Dravidian Language is the Kannada language. This Language is included in the 22 official languages of India, and also it is one of the classical languages in India. It is spoken by the people of Karnataka, the Southern state of India, because it is their official Language. Like Tamil and Sanskrit languages, it is also the oldest Language. Most of the Kannada scripts were in Bramhilipi and developed from the Kadamba script in the 5th century. This Language was also used by various dynasties of India, Chalukyas, Kadambas, and the Vijayanagara empire. In 2008, the Kannada language received the status of classical Language. The literature of this Language won the highest number of Jnanapith awards. Languages that influenced the Kannada language are Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Pali. 5. Malayalam Language Malayalam is the fourth Language in the list of classical languages of India. The government of India gave the status of classical Language to the Malayalam language in 2013. Like Tamil and Telugu languages, Malayalam is also a member of the Dravidian Language. Kerala is the southern state of India, where Malayalam is used as spoken and an official language. It is also spoken in the Gulf Countries. The people also speak it in Lakshadweep and Puducherry. One of the interesting facts is that the word Malayalam is a palindrome in English. It evolved from the Proto Tamil- Malayalam and the Tamil language. The first book of this Language was not in India but Rome. The Malayalam script was influenced by Grantha script and some Sanskrit words. The first literature work done in this Language is in the late 12th century. That literature work is Ramacharitam, written in old Malayalam. With time so many changes have occurred in this Language, and it is also influenced by other languages such as Tamil, Hindi, and English. Not only do Indians have an interest in learning this language, but many foreign people are also are interested in learning the Malayalam language. People’s rising interest in this Language puts it at 27th position in the list of most spoken languages globally. 6. Odia Language Odia or Oriya language is the last and sixth Language included in the list of classical languages of India. This Language got classical Language status in 2014 by the Union Cabinet. Odia is mainly spoken in Odissa as their official Language. Despite being part of the classical languages of India, it is already included in the eighth schedule under Article 344 as a scheduled language of India. Becoming a classical language was not an easy journey for this Language. It started its journey in 2004 when the state government of Orissa demanded to give it the status of classical Language. Like the other classical languages, Tamil, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Telugu, and Kannada, it is also the oldest Language, which is a criterion for a language to become a classical language of India. This is the only classical language that belongs to the Indo-Aryan language. Out of so many dialects, the Mughalabadi is the standard dialect. Odia language is evolved from the Ardhamagadhi Prakrit. Languages observed in the Odia language are the Dravidian Language, Arabic, Persian, and English. Odia language borrowed some words from the Sanskrit language. This Language is also included in most of Jainism and Buddhism literature texts. The literature work done by the poet Sarala Das in the 14th century are Sarala Mahabharata,Vilanka Ramayana, and Chandi Purana. The first long poem in this language written by Arjuna Dasa is Rama-Bibaha. How did they become the classical languages of India? The status of classical Language is not that easy to gain. There are some eligibility criteria selected by the government of India, under which the Union Cabinet declares any language as classical Language. Criteria for a language to become a classical language: Here are the essential eligibility criteria that define a language as a classical language given by the Ministry of Culture. The Government of India decided these in June 2004. - Language has original literary traditions. That means it has not borrowed literary traditions from other speeches. - Language has a body of ancient texts or literature. - The ancient text or literature of the Language is old or has a history of over a period of 1500-2000 years. - The Language and its literature have so much evolution that there is a difference in the old and modern forms of that Language. When any language fulfills all the requirements mentioned above, it would be declared as a classical language of India. Presently, India has only six languages as the classical Language, and these languages are also part of the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. Benefits of being as a classical language: The Ministry of Human Resource and Development benefits the Language, which becomes a classical language. These benefits are as follow; - Scholars of classical Indian Language get two major annual international awards. - A Centre of Excellence is established for the study of classical Language. - UGC creates a certain number of Professional Chairs for classical languages. Well, these benefits are declared by the Human Resource and Development Ministry to promote the classical languages among the people of Indian culture and society. Other Languages included in the Indian Constitution: India is a culturally rich country. It has a wide range of spoken languages that belongs to various language families, including Indo-Aryan language, Dravidian Language, and so on. With the high number of languages, India ranked fourth in the list of countries with the highest number of languages. In Indian Constitution, the languages of India are classified as official languages and schedule languages. Official Languages of India The official language of India is mentioned in Article 343 of the Indian Constitution. According to this article, there are two official languages of India. These are such as Hindi and English. Hindi as an official language of India According to Article 343, the Devanagari script of the Hindi language is used in all the official and administrative work of the Union. Hindi is not only the official language of India but the native language of India. In 1950, the Hindi language was declared as the official language by the Indian constitution. English as an official language of India English is the most important Language, which still is an official language of India. It was mainly used in the time of British India. To avoid the problem of non – Hindi speakers, the Union permits the use of the English Language in the country through The Official Languages Act, 1963. Scheduled Languages of India According to the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, there are twenty-two languages listed as scheduled languages and referred to as official languages of Indian states. All though these languages are not included altogether in the Indian Constitution. They are added with the amendment in the Constitution of India. List of 22 Schedule languages The most prominent languages of India The prominent languages are that language which is spoken mainly by every people. In India, Hindi, English, Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, and Gujarati are the most prominent languages. I hope you will learn a lot through this article about the classical languages of India. In the comment section, let us know your views on this article. Want exclusive deals and discounts? We have just the list for you, from web hosting deals to your next Zara purchase. Get how-to guides to shopping online, starting essentials to launch your business and general life hacks. 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This article sits nicely at the boundary between chemistry and. Aug 29, Trees clean the air pollution. And Trees absorb odors and pollutant gases (nitrogen oxides, ammonia, sulfur dioxide and ozone) and filter particulates out of the air by trapping them on their leaves and bark. Trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and reduce the greenhouse gas effect, all while providing us with clean air to breathe. Jun 04, Trees act as the earth’s purification system by absorbing airborne chemicals and releasing oxygen. To tackle global air pollution, we need to halt deforestation and plant billions of trees. What causes air pollution? In this tree-planting update, see how the forest is coming back in Indonesia, and how your trees are doing in Haiti and in Mali. Industrial human activities, such as the burning of greenhouse gases, release toxic chemicals and particles into the air. May 04, While trees are generally effective at reducing air pollution, it isn’t as simple as the more trees you have in an urban space, the better the air will be. Some trees are markedly more effective at Images. Trees are able to clean the air and absorb harmful airborne particles and gaseous pollutants. Toxins such as nitrogen oxides, ammonia and sulphur dioxide through their leaves, bark and roots. This improves the air quality in the microclimate around the trees and contributes to a healthier and cleaner environment overall. Increase the number of healthy trees (increases pollution removal). Sustain existing tree cover (maintains pollution removal levels). Maximize use of low VOC emitting trees (reduces ozone and carbon monoxide formation). Sustain large, healthy trees (large trees have greatest per tree effects).
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of psychotherapeutic treatment, proposed and developed by psychiatrist Aaron Beck, which explores the influence of cognitive constructions (the way we conceptualize reality) on the emotional and behavioral patterns of each of us. One of the basic principles of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is that situations don't determine people's emotions and behaviors, but people's cognitions (THOUGHTS) and interpretations about the situations in question. Therefore, according to the theoretical basis of CBT, depending on the way we interpret aspects of our reality, there are different emotional reactions that can be activated, which, in turn, will induce us to take different actions. CBT helps a person identify automatic thoughts, evaluate those thoughts and respond to them in a more functional, healthier way. The issue with the distinction between thoughts and emotions Thoughts are ideas: “I can't do anything well”, “Nothing will ever get better” Emotions and feelings are described in just one word: sad, upset, anxious, worried, envious, guilty, ashamed (there are 6 basic emotions - happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, disgust and anger) and countless feelings that result from passing emotions through the scrutiny of cognition). Throughout our life history, structures of meaning (called schemes) are formed, and those “shape” the way we deal with the experience of everyday life. These schemes manifest themselves in the form of dysfunctional thoughts about ourselves and the world around us (for example: “I am worthless”, “No one will ever be able to really like me”) causing psychological, emotional and behavioral instability while contributing both to the absence of mental health and to the emergence of psychopathology. Cognitive-behavioral therapy seeks to reformulate the patient's dysfunctional belief system and schema through the therapeutic process. To achieve these objectives, various techniques are used (for example: Socratic dialogue, systematic exposure, cognitive restructuring). CBT allows the patient to obtain tools to distinguish between thoughts, feelings and reality itself. This distinction facilitates the perception of negative automatic processes that contribute to maintaining the state of psychopathology. The patient is "invited" to analyze his experiences, becoming aware of the influence of negative automatic thoughts on his emotional regulation. Then, he or she is encouraged to challenge these negative thoughts, questioning them, and looking for alternative explanations based on real and concrete facts. Furthermore, the success of the cognitive-behavioral intervention, and of any other psychotherapeutic aspect, is based on the establishment of a therapeutic relationship based on trust and empathy. There is a lot of scientific evidence in favor of the effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in: Anxious Disorders: Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, Specific Phobias Exemplification of a CBT technique Example of dysfunctional thinking: “They will laugh at me during the presentation” Alternative thought: “I have no evidence that this will happen, on other occasions when I made presentations, only one person laughed during my presentation. Continuing to think like that only causes me anxiety and makes presentation difficult. I usually have good results and the teacher usually likes my presentation." The ultimate goal of CBT is for the patient to become his own therapist, leaving therapy with a set of tools to learn how to deal with the most varied situations possible, learning to deal with his dysfunctional thoughts and behaviors. The Mental Health Clinic Isabel Henriques wishes you an excellent weekend ;)
Bronchitis refers to chronic non-specific inflammation of the trachea, bronchial mucosa and surrounding tissues. The main cause of bronchitis is chronic non-specific inflammation of the bronchus caused by repeated infections of viruses and bacteria. When the temperature drops, the respiratory tract small blood vessel spasm ischemia, and the defense function declines, it is conducive to disease; smoke, dust, air pollution and other chronic irritation can also occur; smoking can cause bronchospasm, mucosal variation, reduced cilia movement, and increased mucus secretion, which is beneficial to infection; allergies Factors also have a certain relationship. 1. Acute bronchitis In the early stage of acute bronchitis, symptoms of upper respiratory tract infection are often manifested. Patients usually have clinical manifestations such as nasal congestion, runny nose, sore throat, and hoarseness. The systemic symptoms are relatively mild, but there may be low-grade fever, chills, general fatigue, consciously itchy throat, irritating cough and pain behind the breastbone. The amount of sputum is not much in the early stage, but the sputum is not easy to cough up. After 2 to 3 days, the sputum may turn from mucous to mucopurulent. The patient’s exposure to cold, inhalation of cold air or irritating gas can aggravate or induce coughing. Patients often cough more prominently when they wake up in the morning or at night. Cough can also be paroxysmal and sometimes persistent. Severe coughing is often accompanied by nausea, vomiting and chest and abdominal muscle pain. If accompanied by bronchospasm, there may be wheezing and shortness of breath. Generally speaking, the course of acute bronchitis is self-limiting, and systemic symptoms can subside within 4 to 5 days, but the cough can sometimes be prolonged for several weeks. Physical examination can sometimes find dry rales, which disappear after coughing; occasionally, wet rales can be heard at the bottom of the lungs, and wheezing can be heard when accompanied by bronchospasm. Usually the white blood cell count is normal, and there are no abnormal findings on chest X-rays. 2. Chronic bronchitis Chronic bronchitis refers to patients who have chronic cough and sputum for more than three months every year after excluding various other causes of chronic cough, and continue for two years. It is not necessarily accompanied by persistent airflow restriction. (1) Repeated cough and gradually worsening cough is a prominent manifestation of this disease. Mild cases only get onset in winter and spring, especially before and after getting up in the morning, and cough less during the day. In summer and autumn, the cough lessens or disappears. Severe patients have a cough all the year round, worse in winter and spring, and cough day and night, especially in the morning and evening. (2) expectoration of sputum Generally, sputum is white mucus and foamy, and it is more frequent in the morning, and it is often difficult to spit out because of its stickiness. Symptoms worsen rapidly after infection or cold, the amount of sputum increases, the viscosity increases, or it appears yellow purulent sputum or accompanied by wheezing. Occasionally there is blood in the sputum due to severe cough. (3) Asthma When combined with respiratory tract infection, the symptoms of asthma (wheezing) can occur due to congestion and edema of the bronchiolar mucosa, obstruction of sputum, and narrowing of the bronchial lumen. The patient had a wheezing sound when breathing in the throat, and a wheezing sound on auscultation of the lungs. (4) Repeated infections Repeated respiratory infections are prone to occur during cold seasons or sudden temperature changes. At this time, the patient’s asthma worsened, the amount of sputum was significantly increased and purulent, accompanied by general fatigue, chills, fever, etc. Wet sounds appear in the lungs, and the blood white blood cell count increases. Recurrent respiratory infections are especially likely to worsen the condition of elderly patients and must be given full attention. There are no special signs in the early stage of the disease, and a little wet or dry rales can be heard at the bottom of the lungs of most patients. Sometimes it disappears temporarily after coughing or expectorating sputum. Signs of emphysema can be found in long-term cases. The relationship between chronic bronchitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), emphysema, and bronchial asthma: chronic bronchitis is closely related to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema. Clinically, patients have symptoms such as cough and sputum. At that time, COPD cannot be diagnosed immediately. If the patient has only the clinical manifestations of “chronic bronchitis” and/or “emphysema” without persistent airflow limitation, the diagnosis of COPD cannot be made, and the patient can only be diagnosed as “chronic bronchitis” and/or “Emphysema”. However, if the patient’s lung function suggests persistent airflow limitation, the diagnosis is COPD. Some patients may also suffer from chronic bronchitis and emphysema while suffering from bronchial asthma. For example, patients with bronchial asthma are often exposed to irritating substances, such as smoking, cough and sputum will also occur, and cough and sputum are an important feature of chronic bronchitis. Such patients can be diagnosed as “wheezing bronchitis.” For more information, pls check the boxym.
Mrs A Savage Biology is the study of living things from the molecular level to how organisms interact with each other. It helps us to answer the questions 'Why?' and 'How?' Each topic is chosen to broaden a students’ knowledge of the surroundings and to encourage them to want to find out more. Each year students will be introduced to specialised scientific terms and units, and will learn how to measure accurately, use laboratory equipment safely, interpret graphs and draw scientific diagrams. Teaching is enriched with practical work and interactive lessons that allow students to apply their knowledge to the world around us. In Biology we aim to promote an enjoyment of the subject, increase the students’ knowledge and understanding of the living world, and develop their respect for the diversity of organisms, the environment and the human body. At each level of study we provide a suitable preparation for the next stage, building upon the skills necessary to take them through onto University and the world of work. Key Stage 3: - Plants and animal cells - Tissues, organs, and organ systems - Reproduction in plants and mammals - Pregnancy and birth - Food chains and webs - Predator prey relationships - Investigating ecosystems - Structure of a leaf - Protection against disease - Food groups - Digestive system - Respiratory system - Circulatory system - Using the products of digestion - Investigating fitness - Selective breeding - Natural selection - Darwin and Lamarck - Extinction and preserving biodiversity Key Stage 4: AQA GCSE Biology (8461) Students start their three year GCSE journey in year 9. Each student has access to an online text book via Kerboodle to help them with their studies. How is Biology GCSE assessed? At the end of year 11 there will be two externally examined written papers for Biology, each containing 100 marks and contributing 50% towards the final GCSE grade. Each paper is 1hour 45minutes long and consists of multiple choice, structured, closed short answer and open response questions. The topics in each paper include: - Cell biology - Infection and response - Homeostasis and response - Inheritance, variation and evolution Students should have a basic understanding of the following biological principles and be able to apply them in either paper: - The structure and functioning of cells and how they divide by mitosis and meiosis. Topic 1, Cell Biology. - That variation occurs when gametes fuse at fertilisation. Topic 6, Inheritance, Variation and Evolution. - The two essential reactions for life on Earth: photosynthesis and respiration. Topic 4, Bioenergetics. - Metabolism is the sum of all the reactions happening in a cell or organism, in which molecules are made or broken down. Topic 4, Bioenergetics. - All molecules are recycled between the living world and the environment to sustain life. Topic 7, Ecology. This specification encourages the development of knowledge and understanding in science through opportunities for working scientifically. Working scientifically is the sum of all the activities that scientists do. Students will also develop their practical skills and analysis techniques through a series of required practicals. These practicals will help them to put in to practice the knowledge they have gained over the whole GCSE course as well as preparing them for their examinations. Key Stage 5: AQA Biology AS (7401) and A-Level (7402) The A level course is designed to provide a suitable preparation for degree courses, while the AS course would be appropriate for any student with an interest in Biological Sciences but who does not intend to pursue a science related career. As well as developing biological knowledge and understanding the course emphasises the way biologists work and the contributions they make to modern society. The course builds on concepts and skills that will have been developed in the new GCSE science specifications. It presents biology as exciting, relevant and challenging. How is Biology A-Level assessed? At the end of year 13 there will be three externally examined written papers for Biology. Content from AS topics 1-4 to include: - Biological molecules - Organisms exchange substances with their environment - Genetic information, variation and relationships between organisms The assessment is a two hour paper worth 91 marks making up 35% of the A-level grade. 76 marks are a mixture of short and long answer questions, 15 marks are extended response questions. Content from A2 topics 5-8 to include: - Energy transfer in and between organisms - Organisms respond to changes in their environment - Genetics, populations, evolution and ecosystems - The control of gene expression The assessment is a two hour paper worth 91 marks making up 35% of the A-level grade. 76 marks are a mixture of short and long answer questions, 15 marks are comprehension questions. Content from topics 1-8 including practical skills. The assessment is a two hour paper worth 78 marks making up 30% of the A-level grade. 38 marks are structured questions including practical techniques, 15 marks are critical analysis of given experimental data and 25 marks are for one essay from a choice of two titles. Practical assessments have been divided into those that can be assessed in written exams and those that can only be directly assessed whilst students are carrying out experiments. A-level grades will be based only on marks from written exams. A separate endorsement of practical skills will be taken alongside the A-level. This will be assessed by teachers and will be based on direct observation of students’ competency in a range of skills that are not assessable in written exams. All students have opportunities to use various apparatus and develop and demonstrate techniques necessary to pass their endorsement. The apparatus and practical techniques are common to all A-level Biology specifications not just AQA. Carrying out the 12 required practicals means that students will have experienced use of each of all the apparatus and practical techniques required. At least 15% of the overall assessment of A-level Biology will assess knowledge, skills and understanding in relation to practical work. In order to be able to develop skills, knowledge and understanding, at least 10% of the marks will require the use of mathematical skills. These skills will be applied in the context of biology and will be at least the standard of higher tier GCSE mathematics. Progression to Career/ University Courses: Biology careers can lead you to study living organisms to help develop biological knowledge and understanding of living processes for a number of different purposes, including treatment of disease and sustaining the natural environment. Biological sciences, Research scientist, Botany, Biomedical Science, Zoology, Microbiology, Genetics, Molecular Biology, Forensic science, Marine Biology, Biochemistry, Neuroscience, Ecology, Environmental Sciences, Government agency role, Teacher, Science writer, Medicine, Veterinary Sciences and Sport Sciences, Dentistry, Pharmacology, Optometry. Science support club every Thursday lunch time.
Did the moon landing bring evolutionary insights? Published: 21 July 2009 (GMT+10) 21 July marks the 40-year anniversary of the first landing on the moon. In 1969, Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon, a major achievement of space exploration. Apollo 11 was followed by five other moon landings which led to a better understanding of the composition and geology of the moon. However, in this Darwin Bicentennial year, Professor Martin Ward, who is head of Physics at Durham University, made this statement (emphasis added): “Apart from the sheer wonder of seeing on live TV grainy images of man on the moon, many people might ask ‘what has the moon ever done for us?’ There are superficial justifications for visiting our nearest neighbour, one being that space technology saw the advent of non-stick frying pans. However, the Apollo programme also pushed forward computer technology and the miniaturisation of electronics which benefit our lives today. The deepest justification for visiting the moon, though, is that many astronomers now believe it may have played a crucial role in the evolution of life on Earth. Information gained from moon rock samples, and experiments set up on the lunar surface, have given us new insights into the make-up and evolution of the moon and hence our own origins.” Ward does not explain in what way the understanding of the makeup of the moon has affected evolutionary theory and the evolutionist explanation for human origins, though it is possible to guess at what he meant. But as CMI has shown before, the moon is in reality a huge problem for evolution and instead makes sense within a biblical framework. Evolutionary Theories of the Moon’s Origin Evolutionists have had several theories for the moon’s origin, but all of them have serious flaws. Currently, the theory that is accepted by most evolutionary astronomers, and also by the compromising progressive creationist astronomer Hugh Ross, is the Impact Theory. This is the idea that the moon was formed from a collision between the Earth and another object. This theory also has its problems; in order to blast enough debris to form the moon, the colliding object would have had to be at least twice as large as Mars or the debris would fall back to Earth. There is also the problem of losing angular momentum. The Function of the Moon Genesis 1:17-18 says that the sun and moon were created to “give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness.” So one of the important functions of the moon is to light the world at night. Many of the world’s cultures, including the ancient Jews, used a lunar calendar that used the phases of the moon to mark the passage of time, so there was also an important time-keeping function. We now know that the moon also plays a crucial role to life on Earth; the pull of its gravity causes the tides in Earth’s oceans, which cleanse the shorelines and keep the ocean’s currents circulating. Without this force, eventually the oceans would stagnate. The Moon’s Recession Friction caused by the tides is gradually slowing the earth’s rotation and lengthening the days (by 0.002 seconds per century). The momentum lost by the earth is gained by the moon, causing it to recede from the earth by about 4 centimeters per year, and it would have receded at a faster rate in the past. We know that the moon could not have been closer than 18,400 km from the earth to begin with, or Earth’s tidal forces would have shattered it. This gives us a maximum possible age for the moon of 1.37 billion years, far less than what evolution would require. Of course, this does not mean that the moon is that old, because the moon did not necessarily start out as close as possible to the earth. Another argument for design involves the angular size of the sun and moon. The moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, but it is also 400 times closer to Earth. This makes them look the same size from Earth; they both take up approximately ½ degree in the sky. If this were not the case, complete solar eclipses would not be possible. Without solar eclipses, it would be difficult to gain information about the chromosphere, a part of the sun’s atmosphere which is outshined by the photosphere, except briefly at the beginning and end of a complete solar eclipse, as well as other solar phenomena. Contrary to Ward’s assertion, the moon gives us several pieces of evidence for the recent creation and intelligent design of the universe, and only raises questions for the evolutionist astronomers who have yet to propose a plausible account for its origin by naturalistic means. Was the Apollo 11 moon landing a hoax? According to a recent Telegraph article, one-fourth of British people surveyed believed that the Apollo 11 moon landing never actually happened. Various conspiracy theorists give reasons why they believe the moon landings were faked. They accuse NASA of staging the landing, and cite what looks like wind moving the flag and the absence of stars in the photos as evidence for their theory. Experts counter that what looks like wind is the result of the astronauts handling the flexible aluminum flag pole, which continued to vibrate after they let go of the flag giving the appearance of wind. The stars were not visible due to the rapid exposure time of the cameras, necessary to produce sufficient detail in the photographs. They also argue that the moon rocks are identical to those found in Antarctica, but geologists counter that moon rocks found on earth are scorched by their entry into Earth’s atmosphere, while the rocks brought by the Apollo 11 crew lack this scorching, meaning that they must have been brought back to Earth by humans. The main claims are debunked on our Don’t Use page, the 7th most accessed page on the CMI site. It is popular to accuse the government of hiding the truth, but to go forty years without one leak from inside about the true nature of the landing would be an incredible achievement, one that deserves the public’s skepticism, for the simple reason that no government is intelligent enough to pull off such an elaborate cover-up! It is interesting that often self-proclaimed ‘skeptics’ are the most susceptible to these conspiracy theories. But there is no reason to doubt the ‘official story’ of the Apollo 11 landing, especially as a creationist, James Irwin, landed on the moon in a later Apollo mission, and new photos of the moon taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter definitively put these theories to rest. The photos show the landing sites for five of the six Apollo landings, with the remaining Apollo 12 landing site remaining to be photographed.
It is called twilight at the interval before sunrise or after sunset, during which the sky is still somewhat illuminated. Twilight occurs because sunlight illuminates the upper layers of the atmosphere. The light is diffused in all directions by the molecules of the air, reaches the observer and still illuminates the environment. The map shows the parts where they are during the day and where they are at night. If you want to know exactly the time that dawns or dusk in a specific place, in the meteorological data we have that information. Why do we use UTC? Universal coordinated time or UTC is the main standard of time by which the world regulates clocks and time. He is one of the several successors closely related to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). For most common purposes, UTC is synonymous with GMT, but GMT is no longer the most precisely defined standard for the scientific community.
What is capacitation of sperm? Sperm capacitation is a process where the sperm cells undergo physiological changes to become able to penetrate and fertilize the egg. One of the things sperm cells “learn” during sperm capacitation is the ability to move in straight lines, which is an important step in making it to the egg. Another thing that changes during sperm capacitation is the sperm cell’s membrane. During the process the membrane becomes able to fuse with the ovum and fulfil the acrosome reaction. Sperm capacitation is an important factor in relation to sperm quality. If you are interested in learning more about sperm motility and quality and how it affects donor sperm for fertility treatment, follow the link to our page on the subject.
How loud would stars be if space was full of air? Stars are pretty much like bells. Our Sun, if it could be heard through the vacuum of space, vibrates with a song of many frequencies similar to the ringing of cathedral bells that are each hitting at different notes. If you have been near a cathedral you may notice that as the bells get louder, they chime at certain pitches when they are simultaneously rung. The Sun is similar in that it belts out rhythmic bass thumps over its background hum when certain frequencies overlap with one another. If space were replaced with air and we could hear the Sun, it would be incredibly noisy – the output of the Sun is equivalent to 10 million keys, or notes, of a piano. In fact, you would struggle to hear little else! Throwing out the energy of 383 yottawatts per second, we get a translation of 290 decibels which makes for a very, very loud Sun indeed. However, at a distance of 92,957,130 miles from the Sun, things start to change and the monstrous sound of our star doesn’t seem that loud at all. Sound intensity decreases with distance, which means that the Sun would deliver a much smaller 125 decibels to the surface of our planet. In comparison, 120 decibels is a train horn about one metre away whereas 130 decibels is physical pain. In general, the lower the pitch, the bigger the star. Additionally, the sound they make depends on their age as well as their chemical composition. In short, the distance from a star will vary depending on these factors. For more science and technology articles, pick up the latest copy of How It Works from all good retailers or from our website now. If you have a tablet or smartphone, you can also download the digital version onto your iOS or Android device. To make sure you never miss an issue of How It Works magazine, subscribe today!
"The clear explanations and examples make the book easy to read and understand so strategies can be immediately implemented in the classroom. This text will be an excellent addition to any teacher's professional library." —Carol Gallegos, Literacy Coach Hanford Elementary School District, CA Give your elementary school students the tools to become thoughtful, high-achieving readers! Strong reading skills are critical for students as they progress through the grade levels and face the reading challenges of the 21st century. Using research-based, differentiated strategies, Richard W. Strong, Harvey F. Silver, and Matthew J. Perini show how you can teach average or low-performing readers to become A+ readers who can comprehend, analyze, and summarize different kinds of texts. Starting with a concise overview of recent research on successful readers, the authors explore seven key areas and corresponding strategies to help all readers achieve at high levels: identifying the main idea, reading fluency, vocabulary, inferential reading, questioning techniques, informal writing, and reading styles. Complementing the best-selling Reading for Academic Success for grades 7–12, this hands-on guide features: - Practical applications that can be used across content areas and to support individual learning styles - The five common characteristics of A+ readers and special tips for nurturing those abilities in all students - Recommendations and tools for helping English Language Learners and students with special needs - Examples of student work and reproducible graphic organizers Expressly designed for elementary school teachers, Reading for Academic Success, Grades 2–6, offers proven methods that can produce significant gains for all students and far-reaching results for your school!
Using data from the Kepler spacecraft, astronomers have discovered a compact system of five transiting planets with sizes between those of Mercury and Venus. They validate this system as a true five-planet system orbiting the target star and provide a detailed characterization of its planetary and orbital parameters based on an analysis of the transit photometry. Scientists have located an ancient solar system, dating back to the dawn of the galaxy, which appears to be a miniature version of the inner planets in our own solar system. An international research group, including Yale University professors of astronomy Sarbani Basu and Debra Fischer, announced the discovery January 27 in The Astrophysical Journal. The findings are the result of observations made by the NASA Kepler spacecraft over a period of four years. The old, Sun-like star, named Kepler-444, has five orbiting planets with sizes between those of Mercury and Venus. Kepler-444 formed 11.2 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 20% of its current age. This makes Kepler-444 the oldest known system of terrestrial-sized planets. The Kepler-444 system was already older than our own solar system is today when our Sun and planets were born. “This system shows that planet formation could take place under very different conditions from the ones in which our solar system was formed and has implications for estimating the total number of planets in our galaxy, and other galaxies,” Basu said. The five planets in the Kepler-444 system have orbits that are equivalent to less than one-tenth of Earth’s distance from the Sun. The Kepler-444 planets are rocky and Earth-like, but their exact compositions are uncertain. The scientists carried out their research using asteroseismology — listening to the host star’s natural resonances, which are caused by sound trapped within it. These oscillations lead to miniscule changes or pulses in the star’s brightness, allowing researchers to measure the star’s diameter, mass, and age. The planets were then detected from the dimming that occurs when the planets transited, or passed across, the stellar disc. This fractional fading in the intensity of starlight enabled scientists to measure accurately the sizes of the planets relative to the size of the star. “There are far-reaching implications for this discovery,” said lead author Tiago Campante of the University of Birmingham (U.K.). “We now know that Earth-sized planets have formed throughout most of the universe’s 13.8-billion-year history, which could provide scope for the existence of ancient life in the galaxy.” The research collaboration involved nearly two-dozen institutions in the United States, England, Denmark, Portugal, Australia, Germany, and Italy. Publication: Accepted for publication in ApJ PDF Copy of the Study: An ancient extrasolar system with five sub-Earth-size planets Image: Peter Devine and Tiago Campante/University of Birmingham
Coming across a growling dog is a frightening experience, as any mail carrier can tell you. The sound of a growl heralds the menacing possibility of sudden attack. Our first instinct – to leave the dog alone – is a good one. But there are different qualities of growls used in different situations. Growling is one of the few forms of “verbal” communication dogs possess. Most forms of growling serve one purpose – to get someone or something to back off. Before explaining what the various tones and pitches may mean, it’s helpful to understand why dogs growl in the first place. One theory is that most creatures (including humans) instinctively associate pitch and tone to convey the message they want. A larger animal is more intimidating than a smaller one – and a lower tone is associated with a larger animal. So a growl – a low, throaty noise – makes an animal appear more menacing. People react the same way. If you hear a deep, gravely voice, you probably assume that the speaker is more massive. In reality, he may be a 150-pound weakling. (People are often surprised when they meet disc jockeys after hearing them on the radio – they rarely match up to their voices.) The reverse is true, by the way. A high-pitch voice is associated with a smaller frame. Among dogs, that high-pitch is usually a whine, which is sometimes paired with submissive signals. The Bottom Line Growling is usually meant to intimidate someone or something to leave property or valued resources (food, toys) alone, or to indicate that the dog is scared and may bite. In other words, growling is meant to repel. - A high-pitched throaty growl usually means the dog just wants to be left alone. It doesn’t normally indicate that an attack is imminent – it’s a warning. - A medium-pitched, growl resonating from the chest indicates the dog is prepared to do battle. If pushed, the dog may attack. - A low-pitched, “belly growl” or growl-bark indicates that the dog is about to bite. Why a dog growls depends on the dog and the situation, but it is usually associated with aggression. There are different types of aggression. A dog may growl when he is scared (e.g. fear-aggression) or because he is asserting his status as the alpha dog (dominance aggression). On his own property, he may growl to protect his turf from encroachment (territorial aggression) or to guard some valued resource (food or toys). He may also growl or bark when chasing or cornering some small varmint as part of a predatory sequence (in which the object is not to intimidate, but to obtain food). The dogs may also growl at people who approach them or touch them when they are in pain (pain-induced aggression). Bitches may show maternal aggression, involving growling to warn off people or other dogs after delivering their puppies or if experiencing a false pregnancy. Dogs sometimes growl during play, such as during a rousing game of tug-of-war. A growl in this playful context is not generally meant as a threat. However, if the play gets too rough and the dog is growling, it may be better to stop playing and let everyone calm down.
It’s been awhile between blog posts-a newborn and toddler will do that to you, but here I am!! Sight words-let’s start with what they are…Basically they are the words that make up the majority of words found in reading and writing. They are also the hardest to learn because they often use different sounds to the sounds the letter would traditionally make. For example, the word ‘said’ when sounded out should be spelt ‘sed’, so in order to learn these words need to be visually memorized. So….How can we teach our child the sight words? GAMES! Make it fun and interesting. Here are some ideas to help you along: - Chalk words: We played this outside just to mix it up. I wrote the sight words on the ground using chalk and Carter had the cards. He then read the card and matched it to the sight word on the ground-a quick game to set up and an easy one too! If you don’t have sight words cards, use post it notes. - Memory: Using a set of sight words cards, the child must read the word when they turn it over and then try to find its partner-this is also a great activity for short term memory. - Word hunt: have the words stuck up around the house and give a list of the words to the child and send them on their hunt! - Make them: you can use magnetic letters, write them in the sand, use shaving cream-anything and everything! - Book match: write the words on post it notes and when reading your story ask your child to match the sight word to the one in the text. Remember: Repetition is the key! The more they see the words, the quicker they will learn them. Being able to recognize these words will hold them in good stead when learning to read at school.
How to create the perfect poster A poster presentation is the perfect opportunity for you to highlight the importance of your research for people attending the conference. Posters are like billboards advertising a movie—they present in a nutshell the essence of a much larger venture. A poster presentation makes use of various communication tools: it combines verbal messages with imagery and color cues to communicate science. Since posters are usually displayed in a dedicated area, along with many other posters, it’s important that your poster catches the attention of passersby from across the room. The first step in poster creation is to determine the one essential concept that you want your audience to understand about your research. Begin by asking yourself the question: What’s the key message of this poster? Once you have clarity on this, think about what you want a passerby to do on seeing your poster: Discuss? Assimilate? Question? Now, begin planning your poster! For example, let’s say your key message is that the culture of country A is being eroded by the recent zeal for urbanization, and you want your audience to engage in discussion. Frame your key message as a question: Is urbanization in country A leading to cultural erosion? This question can be printed in large font, placed centrally, for all to see. The rest of the poster can then present the main findings of your study, in much smaller and less attractive font, while you use audience time to expound on the subject and get into an animated discussion. Next, you need to get the right look for your poster in terms of organization and design. When a passerby looks at your poster, he or she should immediately know - what its theme is - whether it should be read from top to bottom, from left to right, or both - where to find the main points Here are 7 easy tips to achieving an attractive and effective poster design: 1. Order your contents in a logical visual sequence, like in the example below: Title at the top, spread horizontally across the poster 3. Methods and results 5. Methods and results 4. Methods and results 2. Print your title in an attractive color and a font size that is readable from a distance of 15 to 20 feet. 3. Use visual tools: - Numbers and columns can help sequence your poster. - Signposts like arrows can direct the flow of information and show linkages between parts of the poster. - Images, graphs, and tables should be the main story elements; as far as possible, use text only to support the images. 4. Color is a powerful tool, but don’t overuse it—use 2 to 3 colors at the most. Pastel shades are ideal for a background color as they are easy to view and provide the best contrast. 5. Experts claim that your poster space should be divided such that text accounts for 20%–25% and illustrations for 40%–45%. About 30%–40% of the space should be left blank. 6. Once you have taken care of the more obvious graphical elements of the poster—like color, layout, and title font size—it’s essential to give the finer textual elements some attention. Here are some pointers: - Ensure that the main body of text is left-aligned. - Double space your text. - Avoid italics as they are difficult to read from a distance. - Use bullet points instead of paragraphs. 7. Finally, edit relentlessly: Edit your text; proofread it; run a spell check. Repeat this process. Now do it once more. Remember, you can never edit enough—you want as little text as possible on your poster, and you want it to be free of all embarrassing typos and errors. Once you’ve done this, get some trusted peers to give you feedback on your poster. Now edit, proofread, and run spell check again. Send your poster for printing only once you are absolutely sure it’s what you want. When you actually go for the poster presentation, remember to plan for emergencies. Have backups of all material you require for the presentation. Print an extra copy of your poster and ship it/transport it separately. Carry measure tape, glue, push pins, etc., so you have these ready if they are not available at the venue. Having a great-looking poster and being well prepared will give you the confidence you need to face your audience and get them into an engaging conversation about your research. You're looking to give wings to your academic career and publication journey. We like that! Why don't we give you complete access! Create a free account and get unlimited access to all resources & a vibrant researcher community.
Otitis media is infection or inflammation located in the middle ear. About 75 percent of children have at least one episode of otitis media by the time they are three years of age. Otitis media can also affect adults, although it is primarily a disease that occurs most often in children. Inflammation usually begins when infections due to sore throats, colds, or other respiratory problems, spread to the middle ear. These infections cause fluid buildup behind the eardrum. The following are the most common symptoms of otitis media. However, individuals may experience symptoms differently. Common signs of otitis media in children include: The symptoms of otitis media may resemble other conditions or medical problems. Always consult your health care provider for a diagnosis. In addition to the symptoms of otitis media listed above, untreated otitis media can result in any or all of the following: Cold and allergy medications do not appear to prevent otitis media. And, currently, there is no vaccine that can prevent the disease. However, it is important to consult your health care provider and make sure your child's vaccinations are up-to-date. There are certain factors that seem to increase the chances of otitis media developing in some children. These include: In addition to a complete medical history and physical examination, the health care provider will inspect the outer ear(s) and eardrum(s) using an otoscope. The otoscope is a lighted instrument that allows the health care provider to see inside the ear. A pneumatic otoscope blows a puff of air into the ear to test eardrum movement. A tympanometry, a test that allows for air and sound to be directed into the middle ear, may also be performed. A hearing test may be performed for people who have frequent ear infections. Specific treatment for otitis media will be determined by your health care provider based on: Treatment may include: Click here to view the Online Resources of Otolaryngology
California Black Oak (Kelloggii) is generally described as a perennial tree or shrub. native to the U.S. (United States) has its most active growth period in the spring and summer . The greatest bloom is usually observed in the with fruit and seed production starting in the fall and continuing until not retained year to year. California Black Oak (Kelloggii) has a long life span relative to most other plant species and a slow growth rate. At maturity, the typical California Black Oak (Kelloggii) will reach up to 85 feet high, with a maximum height at 20 years of California Black Oak (Kelloggii) is usually not commercially available except under contract. It can be propagated by bare root, container, seed. It has a slow ability to spread through seed production and the seedlings have Note that cold stratification is not required for seed germination and the plant cannot survive exposure to temperatures below medium tolerance to drought and restricted water conditions. Uses of : Landscaping, Medicinal, Culinary, etc. Ethnobotanic: California black oak provided a fountain of resources to Native Americans of California and Oregon including food, medicine, dyes, utensils, games, toys, and construction materials. Large quantities of young, supple sprouts were utilized for myriad items. An abundance of acorns were gathered and formed a staple food throughout much of California--eaten in the form of a soup, mush, bread, or patties. Today, acorns are still gathered by people of many different tribes in California and southern Oregon and relished as food. The tree and its uses are important touchstones for maintaining tribal ethnicity. Wildlife: It is well known that bears (Ursus americanus), ground squirrels (Spermophilus scrofa), jays (Cyanocitta stelleri), band-tailed pigeons (Columba fasciata), acorn woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus), pocket gophers (Thomomys bottae), deer mice (Peromyscus spp.) and black-tailed deer (Odocileus hemionus), among many other animals, find acorns a favorite food source. Studies have shown that birds can harvest significant amounts of acorn from tree canopies within a short duration and bears will also sometimes harvest acorns before the crop has dropped. Building Materials: California black oak is currently utilized for high-grade lumber and pallets, industrial timbers, sawdust for mulching, and fuel wood. Its hardness and finishing characteristics make it suitable for industrial flooring and its grain characteristics make it desirable for paneling and furniture. General: Oak Family (Fagaceae). California black oak is a deciduous, hardwood tree with a broad rounded crown from 10-25 m. high. It is the largest mountain oak in the West and surpasses all other California oaks in volume, Required Growing Conditions For current distribution, please consult the Plant Profile page for this species on the PLANTS Web site. The tree ranges from Baja, California on the south up into southwestern Oregon. Mountain ranges where it is found include the San Bernardino, San Jacinto, Agua Tibia Mountains, and the Tehachapi Mountains in southern California, the Santa Cruz and Santa Lucia Mountains in central California, the Sierra Nevada, and the Klamath and Cascade Mountains of northern California and southern Oregon. It spans an elevation of 200 to 2400 m. and takes a shrubby form at higher elevations. It can be found in northern oak woodlands, mixed conifer forests and mixed evergreen forests. Cultivation and Care If possible, gather acorns from many different trees locally, to maintain genetic diversity of California black oak and to ensure that the plants are adapted to the site. The seeds of most oaks are short-lived and must be sown or refrigerated quickly, otherwise they lose their ability to germinate. They are best gathered directly from the tree or from the ground within a short time of their dropping, usually within several days. To test their ripeness--take an acorn that's still in its cap and twist it lightly. If it pops out of the cap, the acorn is ripe. Store the seeds without their caps in a grocery sack until ready to plant. The seeds can be sown in autumn outdoors, or if the seeds are started in pots in the greenhouse in the early spring, they should be stratified for two months between 33 and 40 degrees in a refrigerator. Fill a gallon Ziploc™! bag about half full with acorns, and then add about a cup of dry perlite and a little bit of vermiculite (3:1 mixture). Shake the bag up to distribute the perlite around the acorns, label the bag, and place in the refrigerator. Check the bag weekly and discard moldy acorns. Any acorns that have germinated need to be taken out of the bag and sown. The acorns can be placed in the refrigerator in October or November and taken out two to five months later. Then plant the seeds on their side directly in long, deep pots (2 in. in diameter by 10 inches long) with potting soil and a slow release fertilizer. Water the tubes and place them in diffused light in the nursery or outside, making sure to keep each tube suspended off the ground or bench so the large air holes at the bottom of the tube are exposed. When the tree roots hit the air, they'll stop growing. Water when the surface of the soil is dry to the touch, but don't over-water. Out-plant the seedlings the following winter in a sunny location, and water the transplants to ensure sufficient moisture and eliminate air pockets. Be careful to keep the soil from falling off the roots. Place the seedlings in the ground such that the top of the soil from the container is even with the ground line. Studies have shown that California black oak seedlings planted in the fall or winter grow and survive better than seedlings planted in the spring. Use a pick mattock for planting, which has a pick on one surface and a triangular wedge on the other surface. Protect the seedlings from weeds, drying winds, grasshoppers, and mammals that might feed on the roots, leaves, or trunks. Also water (deeply) the seedlings the first summer. A good seedling protector is essential and can be a simple wire window screen mesh and wooden stake. Bend the mesh into a cylinder that is about 6-8 inches in diameter and 3 feet tall. Attach the mesh cylinder onto the wooden stake with staples or carpet tacks. Place the tube over the seedling and pound the stake into the ground. Seedlings should be kept free of vegetation for 2 to 3 feet surrounding the seedling. Direct seeding: Pick acorns without insect exit holes or diseases. Store acorns for one month in a sealed plastic bag in the refrigerator. Dig a hole with the trowel, shovel, or hoe and be sure to break up the soil much deeper (one to two feet). Plant the acorns on their sides, one to two inches deep in the fall of the year and backfill with loosened soil to accommodate the growing of roots. Plant several acorns in each hole and thin multiple seedlings down to a single most vigorous plant. Water (deeply) the acorns the first summer. Weed several feet around each seedling for several years. Protect the seedlings from animals until well established. General Upkeep and Control Keep grasses and other plants that require a lot of moisture away from the oaks. California black oak should not be irrigated except in years of unusually low rainfall. If a drought year supplemental watering can take place in the spring to complement natural rainfall. Water the soil from halfway between the trunk and the drip line to 10-15 feet beyond, allowing water to penetrate the soil to a depth of 18 to 24 inches. It may be necessary to water for 4 to 6 hours to get water to this depth. Native plants that are drought tolerant and shade tolerant and require no summer water can be planted under the oaks, such as California brome (Bromus carinatus), deergrass (Muhlenbergia rigens), Calochortus spp., and Dichelostemma spp. among others. Light pruning can be done in the winter on mature oaks to remove weak, diseased, and dead branches but never top oaks. Once established, California black oak is quite fire-tolerant. Many tribes in California set frequent light-surface fires in areas of California black oak to ensure continual yields of high quality acorn. Major reasons for burning included: 1) facilitate acorn collection; 2) increase the quality and quantity of acorn production through decreasing diseases and decreasing acorn pests; 3) stimulate the production of straight shoots (epicormic) for the making of cultural items; 4) decrease the likelihood of major conflagrations that would destroy the oaks; 5) burning for mushrooms in the oak/ponderosa pine forests; and 6) increase edible grasses and other seed bearing herbaceous plants. Fires were typically set in the fall or early winter of the year, as families were leaving the higher elevations to over-winter below the snow line. Source: USDA, NRCS, PLANTS Database, plants.usda.gov. National Plant Data Center, Baton Rouge, LA 70874-4490 USA
What's in this article? What Are Cold sores? Cold sores are small, painful, fluid-filled blisters or sores that appear on the lips, mouth, or nose that are caused by a virus. The sores can be painful and usually last a few days. Unlike most viral infections, the cold sore virus is not completely eliminated by the body defenses. For this reason, cold sores often recur. Causes of Cold sores Cold sores are caused by the herpes simplex virus (HSV). There are two types of herpes simplex virus: HSV-1 and HSV-2. Both virus types can cause sores around the mouth (herpes labialis) and on the genitals (genital herpes). The herpes simplex virus usually enters the body through a break in the skin around or inside the mouth. It is usually spread when a person touches a cold sore or touches infected fluid-such as from sharing eating utensils or razors, kissing an infected person, or touching that person’s saliva. A parent who has a cold sore often spreads the infection to his or her child in this way. Cold sores can also be spread to other areas of the body. Symptoms of Cold sores A cold sore usually passes through several stages: - Tingling and itching. Many people feel an itching, burning or tingling sensation around their lips for a day or so before a small, hard, painful spot appears and blisters erupt. - Blisters. Small fluid-filled blisters typically break out along the border where the outside edge of the lips meets the skin of the face. Cold sores can also occur around the nose or on the cheeks. - Oozing and crusting. The small blisters may merge and then burst, leaving shallow open sores that will ooze fluid and then crust over. Signs and symptoms vary, depending on whether this is your first outbreak or a recurrence. They can last several days, and the blisters can take two to four weeks to heal completely. Recurrences typically appear at the same spot each time and tend to be less severe than the first outbreak. During first-time outbreaks, some people also experience: - Painful eroded gums - Sore throat - Muscle aches - Swollen lymph nodes Children under 5 years old may have cold sores inside their mouths and the lesions are commonly mistaken for canker sores. Canker sores involve only the mucous membrane and aren’t caused by the herpes simplex virus. What is Herpes? Herpes is a chronic (long-term) condition. However, many people never have symptoms even though they are carrying the virus. Many people with HSV have recurring genital herpes. When a person is first infected, the recurrences, if they do occur, tend to happen more frequently. Over time, the remission periods get longer and longer. Each occurrence tends to become less severe with time. There are two types of herpes simplex viruses: HSV-1 (Herpes Type 1) and HSV-2 (Herpes Type 2). Cases of genital herpes are typically caused by HSV-2, which is primarily transmitted through sexual contact. HSV-1, which most commonly causes oral herpes, can cause genital herpes through oral-genital contact.1 Causes of Herpes Two types of herpes simplex virus infections can cause genital herpes: - HSV-1. This is the type that usually causes cold sores or fever blisters around your mouth, though it can be spread to your genital area during oral sex. Recurrences are much less frequent than they are with HSV-2 infection. - HSV-2. This is the type that commonly causes genital herpes. The virus spreads through sexual contact and skin-to-skin contact. HSV-2 is very common and highly contagious, whether or not you have an open sore. Because the virus dies quickly outside of the body, it’s nearly impossible to get the infection through contact with toilets, towels or other objects used by an infected person. Symptoms of Herpes Some people get mouth ulcers when they first come into contact with HSV-1 virus. Others have no symptoms. Symptoms most often occur in kids between 1 and 5 years old. Symptoms may be mild or severe. They most often appear within 1 to 3 weeks after you come into contact with the virus. They may last up to 3 weeks. Warning symptoms include: - Itching of the lips or skin around the mouth - Burning near the lips or mouth area - Tingling near the lips or mouth area Before blisters appear, you may have: - Sore throat - Swollen glands - Painful swallowing Blisters or a rash may form on your: Many blisters are called an outbreak. You may have: - Red blisters that break open and leak - Small blisters filled with clear yellowish fluid - Several smaller blisters that may grow together into a large blister - Yellow and crusty blister as it heals, which eventually turns into pink skin Symptoms may be triggered by: - Menstruation or hormone changes - Being out in the sun If the symptoms return later, they are usually more mild in most cases. Difference Between Cold Sores and Herpes Cold Sores (Oral Herpes) Herpes (Genital Herpes)
To use all functions of this page, please activate cookies in your browser. With an accout for my.chemeurope.com you can always see everything at a glance – and you can configure your own website and individual newsletter. - My watch list - My saved searches - My saved topics - My newsletter An electron shell, also known as a main energy level, is a group of atomic orbitals with the same value of the principal quantum number n. Electron shells are made up of one or more electron subshells, or sublevels, which have two or more orbitals with the same angular momentum quantum number l. Electron shells make up the electron configuration of an atom. It can be shown that the number of electrons that can reside in a shell is equal to 2n2 . Additional recommended knowledge The existence of electron shells was first observed experimentally in Charles Barkla's and Henry Moseley's X-ray absorption studies. Barkla labelled them with the letters K, L, M, etc. (The origin of this terminology was alphabetic. K for hypothetical spectral lines that were never discovered.) These letters were later found to correspond to the n-values 1, 2, 3, etc. They are used in the spectroscopic Siegbahn notation. The name for electron shells originates from the Bohr model, in which groups of electrons were believed to orbit the nucleus at certain distances, so that their orbits formed "shells" around the nucleus. The valence shell is the outermost shell of an atom in its uncombined state, which contains the electrons most likely to account for the nature of any reactions involving the atom and of the bonding interactions it has with other atoms. The outermost shell of an ion is not commonly termed valence shell. Electrons in the valence shell are referred to as valence electrons. The physical chemist Gilbert Lewis was responsible for much of the early development of the theory of the participation of valence shell electrons in chemical bonding. Linus Pauling later generalized and extended the theory while applying insights from quantum mechanics. In a noble gas, an atom tends to have 8 electrons in its outer shell (except helium, which is only able to fill its shell with 2 electrons). This serves as the model for the octet rule which is mostly applicable to main group elements of the second and third periods. In terms of atomic orbitals, the electrons in the valence shell are distributed 2 in the single s orbital and 2 each in the three p orbitals. For coordination complexes containing transition metals, the valence shell consists of electrons in these s and p orbitals, as well as up to 10 additional electrons, distributed as 2 into each of 5 d orbitals, to make a total of 18 electrons in a complete valence shell for such a compound. This is referred to as the eighteen electron rule. Each shell can hold 2, 8, 18, or 32 electrons, or 2x2 electrons in each subshell. The notation 's', 'p', 'd', and 'f' originate from a now-discredited system of categorizing spectral lines as "sharp", "principal", "diffuse", or "fundamental", based on their observed fine structure. When the first four types of orbitals were described, they were associated with these spectral line types, but there were no other names. The designations 'g', 'h', and so on, were derived by following alphabetical order. \|This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Electron_shell". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.\|
Your body needs sodium to maintain blood pressure and for normal nerve and muscle function. Getting too much sodium might cause blood pressure problems that can lead to health problems. It's easy to get enough sodium from the foods you eat and, in fact, it's more likely that you're getting more sodium than you need. Sodium is an electrolyte, which means it has an electrical charge. Your body needs electrolytes to control blood pressure and blood volume. Your kidneys remove excess fluid from your blood by osmosis, which is a process by which fluid is drawn across cell walls. A specific level of sodium, along with another dietary mineral called potassium, is necessary so that excess fluid is drawn out of the bloodstream -- through the blood vessel walls and into collecting ducts in the kidneys. The extra fluid is removed as urine. Muscle and Nerve Function Sodium is essential for electrical impulses to travel along nerves and for muscle function. It's part of the sodium-potassium pump found in the membranes of cells. Sodium is pumped out of the cells, and potassium is pumped into the cells, creating an electrical charge that leads to the transmission of impulses along nerves. The sodium-potassium pump is also necessary for muscles to contract. Getting Enough Sodium You don't need a lot of sodium to perform these functions, and getting too much might put the electrolytes out of balance. The adequate intake for sodium is set at 1,500 milligrams per day for adults up to 50 years of age; 1,300 milligrams for adults from ages 51 to 70; and 1,200 milligrams per day after that. Sodium is found naturally in most of the foods you eat, at least in small amounts, with much larger amounts in soy sauce and processed foods. Processed foods are high in sodium if they contain salt for flavoring or sodium benzoate or sodium phosphate as preservatives. Too Much Sodium According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, getting too much sodium might cause elevated blood pressure in some people, and it might cause fluids to build up in the tissues of people with congestive heart failure, cirrhosis of the liver or kidney disease. High blood pressure can put a strain on your kidneys, arteries, heart and brain. The UMMC suggests healthy adults should limit intake to 2,300 milligrams per day, and people with high blood pressure should stay below 1,500 milligrams per day.
A symptom is a physical sign or condition that does not generally occur in a healthy person. They are always a sign of an underlying disease. A diagnosis is the definition of the disease that is causing the symptoms seen in a patient. For example, a body temperature of 100.4F is not a symptom (although it is a vital sign). A body temperature of 104F is a symptom, as is a body temperature of 97F. However, there are several conditions that can cause either symptom, in the case of a fever, anything from hyperthermia to any one of thousands of possible infections. Unfortunately, the body has a limited number of symptoms, and few symptoms are unique to any one disease. However, most diseases have multiple symptoms. For example, measles causes both a fever and a distinctive rash.
Radio waves emitted in the unique shape of a halo have been discovered by an astronomer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her colleagues. These researchers may have found the first ``Einstein ring.'' So-called because Albert Einstein speculated about the phenomenon in 1936, the ring is thought to be formed by radio waves emitted from a cosmic object, probably a galaxy. Researchers believe that the gravity of an unknown object between Earth and the galaxy bends the waves into an elliptical ring. This phenomenon is called gravitational lensing. More than 90 percent of the mass in the universe is unaccounted for. It may be in the form of dark, or invisible, matter, which could be responsible for the bending radio waves. The ring seems to correspond to a dim smudge of light when seen through an optical telescope, but takes shape when viewed with radio telescopes. Earlier cases of gravitational lensing have appeared as arcs. If the Einstein ring turns out to be caused by gravitational lensing, it will provide unique data. Jacqueline Hewitt of MIT, who first spotted the Einstein ring, says that the mass responsible for this lensing may be dark matter. If so, the closed, constrained shape of the newly-discovered image will tell researchers more about the distribution of that matter than could other ``open'' images, she says. It may also give scientists data for calculating the Hubble's constant - the rate at which the universe is expanding.
The Larynx, Basic Anatomy The larynx, or voicebox, is an organ in the neck that plays a crucial role in speech and breathing. The larynx is the point at which the aerodigestive tract splits into two separate pathways: the inspired air travels through the trachea, or windpipe, into the lungs, and swallowed food enters the esophagus and passes into the stomach. Because of its location, the larynx has three important functions - control of the airflow during breathing - protection of the airway - production of sound for speech The larynx consisted of a framework of cartilage with surrounding soft tissue. The most prominent piece of cartilage is a shield-shaped structure called the thyroid cartilage. The anterior portion of the thyroid cartilage can be easily felt in thin necks as the "Adam's apple". Superior to the larynx (sometimes considered part of the larynx itself) is a U-shaped bone called the hyoid. The hyoid bone supports the larynx from above and is itself attached to the mandible by muscles and tendons. These attachments are important in elevating the larynx during swallowing and speech. The lower part of the larynx consists of a circular piece of cartilage called the cricoid cartilage. This cartilage is shaped like a signet ring with the larger portion of the ring in the back. Below the cricoid are the rings of the trachea. In the center of the larynx lie the vocal folds (also known as the vocal cords). The vocal folds are one of the most important parts of the larynx, as they play a key role in all three functions mentioned above. The vocal folds are made of muscles covered by a thin layer called mucosa. There is a right and left fold, forming a "V" when viewed from above. At the rear portion of each vocal fold is a small structure made of cartilage called the arytenoid. Many small muscles, described below, are attached to the arytenoids. These muscles pull the arytenoids apart from each other during breathing, thereby opening the airway. During speech the arytenoids and therefore the vocal folds are brought close together. As the air passes by the vocal folds in this position, they open and close very quickly. The rapid pulsation of air passing through the vocal folds produces a sound that is then modified by the remainder of the vocal tract to produce speech. The diagram above on the left shows the folds in the open position. The folds should open like this during breathing. On the right, the folds are shown in the closed position as during speech. MUSCLES OF THE LARYNX Movement of the larynx is controlled by two groups of muscles. The muscles that move the vocal folds and other muscles within the larynx are called the intrinsic muscles. The position of the larynx in the neck is controlled by a second set call the extrinsic muscles. The intrinsic muscles are shown in the illustrations above. The vocal folds are opened primarily by a pair of muscles running from the back of the cricoid cartilage to the arytenoid cartilage. This muscle is called the posterior cricoarytenoid muscle (almost all the muscles in the neck are named by stating where the originate and where the end). Several muscles help to close and tense the vocal folds. The body of the vocal folds itself is made up of a muscle called the thyroarytenoid muscle. A muscle called the interarytenoid runs from on arytenoid to the other and brings together these two pieces of cartilage. The lateral cricoarytenoid muscle, like the posterior cricoarytenoid muscle, also runs from the arytenoid to the cricoid cartilage. However, as its name implies it attaches to the lateral portion of the cricoid cartilage and is felt to primarily close the larynx. The cricothyroid muscle runs from the cricoid cartilage to the thyroid cartilage. When it contracts, the thyroid cartilage tilts forward, putting tension on the vocal folds and thereby raising the pitch of the voice. The extrinsic muscles are also called the strap muscles (since they look like straps). They do not affect the movement of the vocal folds, but raise and lower the entire larynx. This movement is especially important for swallowing. Trained singers also develop fine control of these muscles to help improve the quality of their voices.
Thanks to TV shows like Sesame Street, many children enter preschool chanting or singing the number names from 1 to 20. Learning to count meaningfully requires both memorizing arbitrary terms or number names (rote counting) and rule-governed counting (rational counting). Rote recitation of the number words is not the same as having a good number sense for what 20, 25, or 100 means. © Erikson Institute’s Early Math Collaborative. Reprinted from Big Ideas of Early Mathematics: What Teachers of Young Children Need to Know (2014), Pearson Education.
For wildlife to thrive, they need a secure habitat. Canada, fortunately, still has many large and globally important wild areas where wildlife thrive in intact ecosystems. But these areas have not retained their wild character through good planning or political foresight. Instead, they are simply remote enough that industrial activities – such as logging, mining, dams, roads, and agriculture – have not reached them yet. At WCS Canada, we are working to build a case for farsighted conservation planning in these last big intact wild areas. We have carefully studied how species such as caribou and wolverine use these landscapes, where natural connections still exist -- including within waterways -- and how planning processes could be changed to better ensure the future survival of wide-ranging species in these areas. We are also supporting Indigenous communities in integrating scientific tools and traditional knowledge into monitoring programs to evaluate how their homelands are being impacted by climate change and industrial development. From the Arctic Ocean and the Northern Boreal Mountains of Yukon to the far north in Ontario, this might be our last chance to get conservation planning right before the cumulative impacts of development and climate change alter these landscapes forever. Our research is helping to create an understanding of the importance of these intact wild areas and the need for new approaches. Learn more about our work in key wild areas: Photo credits: Banner \| Garth Lenz ©, William Halliday © WCS Canada, Hilary Cooke © WCS Canada Thumbnails \| Boreal: Biz Agnew © WCS Canada, Ontario: Constance O'Connor © WCS Canada, Mountains: Hilary Cooke © WCS Canada, Arctic: WCS Canada ©
In Plettenberg Bay, as days grow shorter, the skies at sunset glow with the most spectacular hues, blooming with pinks, reds and oranges. Why are autumn and winter sunsets more vivid than any other time of the year? First, a lesson in the colours of the rainbow: Blue light has a short wavelength, so it gets scattered easiest by air molecules, such as nitrogen and oxygen. Longer wavelength lights — reds and oranges — are not scattered as much by air molecules. During sunrise and sunset, light from the sun must pass through much more of our atmosphere before reaching our eyes, so it comes into contact with even more molecules in the air. Much of the blue light gets scattered away, making the reds and oranges more pronounced. During this time of year, weather patterns allow for dry, clean air to sweep across the country, and more colours of the spectrum make it through to our eyes without getting scattered by particles in the air, producing brilliant sunsets and sunrises that can look red, orange, yellow or even pink and purple.
Principles of Macroeconomics 2e Introduction to Choice in a World of Scarcity Core-Econ: “The Capitalist Revolution” in The Economy Prof. Sheila Dow on Pluralism in Economics Episode 142: Specialization and Trade: A Re-introduction to Economics Gender and Economic Policy Management Intitiave Asia and the Pacific: Gender and Macroeconomics The First Update of the Maddison Project Re-Estimating Growth Before 1820 SERC "Think-Pair-Share" Pedagogy in Action Economic Foundations: Course Map & Recommended Resources The learning objectives below refer to the typical goals one would have for an introduction to macroeconomics. Most economists consider the discipline as “a way of thinking”. The key question we answer is “how we make choices under scarcity”. However, we encourage you to consider other alternative ways to conceptualize and teach economics or even introduce pluralistic ideas into your course. For example, the CORE Economics project describes economics as, “The study of how people interact with each other and with their natural surroundings in providing their livelihoods, and how this changes over time.” The “economy is part of society, which in turn is part of the biosphere.” (Chapter 1.11). More importantly, many of the factors and commodities that give us economic growth are socially (re)produced and uncompensated. Consider alternative conceptualizations of the macroeconomy such as the one proposed in UNDP (2012): Gender and Economic Policy Management Intitiave, page 30 outlined in the figure above. The supplemental content is an excellent place to find videos to enliven your classes. Listed alternative resources can be used to familiarize yourself with material that goes beyond the standard treatment. - Define economics (1) Distinguish between microeconomics and macroeconomics (2) Explain the key ideas of the economic way of thinking (1) Describe the role of economic models (1) Define scarcity and opportunity cost and their relationship to economics (1,2) NOTE: This Module meets Ohio TAG's 1, 2 for an Intro to Macroeconomics Course Recommended Textbook Resources Principles of Macroeconomics 2e: OpenStax CNX. Jun 4, 2018, Chapter 1, pages 9-26 All the learning objectives except for 5 above are covered in the first chapter. The above chapter also introduces students to FRED, a database maintained by the St Louis Fed that aggregates all publicly available data in an excellent and accessible platform. Most of the activities that we have designed in these modules require students (and instructors) to use FRED. Learning objective 5 is covered here: Introduction to Choice in a World of Scarcity Supplemental Content/Alternative Resources Rethinking Macroeconomics: an Introduction - Authored by: John F. McDonald (2016). Provided by: Routledge Publishing. Reintroducing Macroeconomics: A Critical Approach - Authored by: Steven Mark Cohn (2015). Provided by: Routledge Publishing. - Provided by: Goldsmiths Economics. - Describes why pluralism is important in economics. She distinguishes between “schools of thought” and “modes of thought”. The social world is not consistent and the way we explain what we see should be to acknowledge different strands of reasoning and approach to evidence. - Authored by: Arnold Kling. - Arnold Kling speaks to Libertarianism.org about his new book, Specialization and Trade. This is a better resource for instructors rather than students. - Provided by: UNDP (2012). - Created by: Irene van Staveren. This exercise asks students to digest data from Maddison’s economic history project. Students will come away with an understanding the historical evolution of standards of living over time. They will also see the European/North American world was not always the world’s economic center. Plot the information in Table 1 on page 11 of the following article: The First Update of the Maddison Project Re-Estimating Growth Before 1820. Discuss what you see. - Authored by: Jutta Bolt and Jan Juiten van Zanden (2013). Active Learning Exercise Place students in small groups and have them discuss the following questions at the end of the chapter. Consider using a Think-Pair Share teaching strategy. For more information see SERC "Think-Pair-Share" Pedagogy in Action. Read “How capitalism revolutionized the way we live, and how economics attempts to understand this and other economic systems.” in Core-Econ above. Place students in small groups and have them discuss the following questions at the end of the chapter. Suppose you can choose to be born in any time period in any of the countries in Figure 1.1a, 1.10 or 1.11, but you know that you would be among the poorest 10% in the population. In which country would you choose to be born? Now suppose, instead, you know you would initially be among the poorest 10% in the population, but you would have a fifty-fifty chance of moving to the top 10% of the population if you work hard. In which country would you now choose to be born? Now suppose that you can only decide on the country and time period of your birth. You cannot be sure if you would be born in the city or the countryside, would be male or female, rich or poor. In which time and country would you choose to be born? For the scenario in (3), in which time and country you would least want to be born? Use what you have learned from this unit to explain your choices.
Larus marinus () Larus marinus (Linnaeus, 1758) Systema Naturae ed.10 p.136 The Great Black-backed Gull (Larus marinus) is a very large gull which breeds on the European and North American coasts and islands of the North Atlantic. It is fairly sedentary, but some Great Black-backed Gulls move farther south or inland to large lakes or reservoirs. The Great Black-backed Gull was one of the many species originally described by Linnaeus in his 18th-century work, Systema Naturae, and it still bears its original name of Larus marinus. This is the largest gull, bigger than a Herring Gull. It is 71–79 cm (28–31 in) long with a 1.5–1.7 m (5–5.7 ft) wingspan and a body weight of 1.3–2.2 kg (2.9–4.8 lb), though large males regularly exceed this weight. It is bulky, and has a powerful bill. The adults have black wings and back, with conspicuous white "mirrors" at the wing tips. The legs are pinkish, and the bill yellow with a red spot. Young birds have scaly black-brown upperparts, and a neat wing pattern. They take at least four years to reach maturity, development in this species being somewhat slower than that of other large gulls. The call is a deep "laughing" cry. Great Black-backed Gulls are opportunistic and get most of their food from scavenging (refuse at times comprising more than half of their diet) and capturing fish. However, unlike most Larus gulls, they are highly predatory and frequently hunt and kill any prey smaller than themselves, behaving more like a raptor than a typical larid gull. Lacking the razor-sharp talons and curved, tearing beak of a raptor, the Great Black-backed Gull relies on aggression, physical strength and endurance when hunting, seizing the prey, muscling it into a position where it cannot escape and is unable to fight back effectively (e.g. pinning it to the ground, or holding it aloft) and allowing it to struggle to exhaustion. At this point, the gull will reposition its grip and attempt to break the prey's neck with a bite or vigorous shake, or dispatch it with hammer blows to the skull from the beak. The Great Black-backed Gull may also attempt to use the environment to its advantage, attempting to hold the prey animal's head under water so as to drown it, smashing the its skull against the ground, or a rock, or dropping it from a height onto a hard surface and following up with a diving strike from the beak. This behaviour can commonly be observed in urban areas and landfill sites where the gulls feed on Feral Pigeons, rats and mice. They frequently rob other seabirds of their catch and have been known to follow feeding Humpback Whales, Porbeagles and Northern Bluefin Tuna to catch fish driven to the surface by the larger animals. Great Black-backed Gulls are major predators at the nesting colonies of smaller seabirds, killing and eating eggs, chicks and adult birds. Atlantic Puffins, Common Murres, Herring Gulls, Common Terns, Roseate Terns, Manx Shearwaters, Horned Grebes and Laughing Gulls are regularly culled by the Great Black-backs. They generally target chicks since they are easily found, handled, and swallowed. They can swallow puffins, terns or small ducks whole. This species breeds singly or in small colonies, making a lined nest on the ground often on top of a rocky stack. A female lays one to three eggs. Young Great Black-backed Gulls leave the nest area at 50 days of age and may remain with their parents for months afterwards, though most fledglings choose to congregate with other immature gulls in the search for food. Chicks and eggs are preyed on by crows, cats, other gulls, storks, raccoons and rats. The Bald Eagle and White-tailed Eagle are the only birds that take healthy, fully grown Great Black-backed Gulls. Killer whales and sharks also prey upon adult birds. The maximum recorded age for a wild Great Black-backed Gull is 27.1 years. BirdLife International (2004). Larus marinus. 2006. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. www.iucnredlist.org. Retrieved on 12 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern Source: Wikipedia, Wikispecies: All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
This caterpillar is about to change into a chrysalis. The change will be so great — and so sudden— you'll think a new creature has appeared before your eyes. What to watch for: The caterpillar stops eating and climbs to a safe place. It hangs upside down in the shape of a "J." Within 24 hours the larva will pupate. It only takes a few minutes for a caterpillar to turn into a chrysalis. You can wait all day, walk away for a minute, and return to find a chrysalis already there. What to watch for: The front tentacles wilt about 30 minutes before the larva pupates. These images were taken within 7 minutes. What happens to the eyes, mouth, face, and legs of the larva? Watch for the gold necklace. You can already see parts of a butterfly when the chrysalis is only a few minutes old. "By the time the larva pupates, the major changes to the adult form have already begun," says Dr. Karen Oberhauser. View the metamorphosis from a different perspective. Watch to see where the skin splits. How does the chrysalis get the air it needs? Move mouse back and forth on photo. The holes on the side of the chrysalis are called "spiracles." "The air goes into these holes and through a whole series of tubes in the body called trachea. The trachea carry oxygen throughout the monarch's body," says Dr. Oberhauser. Did You Know? - The chrysalis is not a cocoon. A moth forms a cocoon. A butterfly forms a chrysalis. - The chrysalis is also called the pupa. The process of changing from larva to chrysalis is pupation. - The green coloring of the monarch pupa is the skin of the monarch during this life stage. - The final molt (shedding skin) of the monarch larva results in the chrysalis. "The chrysalis is not so much something the monarch makes as something it turns into," says Dr. Oberhauser.
Spanning nearly the entire circumference of the Pacific Ocean, a horseshoe shaped series of volcanic phenomena that make up the “Ring of Fire” are anchored at one end by New Zealand. Oceanic trenches and 452 volcanoes are dotted around the perimeter, where all but 3 of the world's 25 largest volcanic eruptions of the last 11,700 years have occurred. Volcanic activity in the zone started about 2 million years ago and continues today. Geologically speaking, the three volcanoes are comparatively young, being less than 500,000 years old. While its commonplace to refer to three volcanoes, both the indigenous Maori and geologists alike consider Mount Ngauruhoe to be a vent, built up as part of Mount Tongariro’s volcanic system. The history of Mount Ruapehu and Mount Tongariro began before the last ice age and eruptions of Mount Ngauruhoe are thought to have occurred around 2,500 years ago. Mount Ruapehu and Mount Ngauruhoe are two of the most active composite volcanoes in the world, with Mount Ruapehu last erupting in 1996 and Mount Ngauruhoe in 1975. In Maori legend, the high priest, Ngatoroirangi was caught in a blizzard while climbing Mount Ngauruhoe. He prayed to his sisters in Hawaiki to send him fire to save him from freezing. The flames they sent south emerged first at White Island, then Rotorua and Taupo before finally bursting at Ngatoroirangi's feet. Thus Ngatoroirangi is credited with bringing volcanic activity to Aotearoa New Zealand, not as a curse upon the land, but as a blessing.

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