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Hexbyte Glen Cove Powered flight in animals—that uses flapping wings to generate thrus—is a very energetically demanding mode of locomotion that requires many anatomical and physiological adaptations. In fact, the capability to develop it has only appeared four times in the evolutionary history of animals: On insects, pterosaurs, birds and bats. A research paper published in 2020 in the scientific journal Current Biology concluded that, apart from birds, the only living descendants of dinosaurs, powered flight would have originated independently in other three groups of dinosaurs. This is a conclusion that makes a great impact, as it increases the number of vertebrates that would have developed this costly mode of locomotion, which, among dinosaurs, would no longer be an exclusive capability of birds. The scientist of the Department of Ecology and Geology of the University of Malaga Francisco Serrano Alarcón has recently published an article in the same journal, questioning the idea that powered flight appeared multiple times among dinosaurs. The researcher of the UMA, member of the Dinosaur Institute (NHMLAC) of Los Angeles, refutes such conclusion in the absence of scientific evidence. As he remarks, the parameters used by the authors to determine flight capability do not allow differentiation between powered flight and passive flight, the latter being frequent in many more animal groups. This new study, which he conducted along with the paleontologist Luis M. Chiappe, Vice-President for Research and Collections of the NHMLAC, compares the parameters measured on present animals with powered flight capability, such as birds and bats, and gliding animals, for example, flying squirrels or flying reptiles, among others. Moreover, they added new data on the capability to generate energy from muscles in addition to the data considered in the original study. “Birds are a group of dinosaurs of which we have discovered 150-million-year-old fossils with fully developed wings. Among their closest non-avialan relatives, we have also found fossils with sufficiently developed wings that could provide them with some aerodynamic benefit, whether to glide between trees or get thrust to climb and jump over obstacles. But this does not mean that they could take off by flapping their wings or maintain a powered flight,” explains Francisco Serrano. In short, both authors conclude that although they cannot discount the possibility that powered flight appeared in other non-avialan dinosaurs, current evidence does not support the hypothesis suggested in the original paper by Pei et al (2020). Francisco J. Serrano et al, Independent origins of powered flight in paravian dinosaurs?, Current Biology (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.03.058 University of Malaga Researcher questions whether powered flight appeared on non-avialan dinosaurs (2021, April 26) retrieved 27 April 2021 This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only. Read More Hexbyte Glen Cove Educational Blog Repost With Backlinks —
Smithsonian Libraries' locations remain temporarily closed. To view the status of the Smithsonian’s other museums, research centers, and Zoo, visit si.edu/museums. Rise of the Machines Technology Comes to Life The revolution in industrial mechanization that began in the mid-1700's progressed at an astounding pace throughout the 19th century, spurred in part by technological improvements in machining tools, steam engines, and iron forging. "Self-acting" machines, powered by steam or electricity, appeared to move of their own volition, accomplishing tasks once done only by human hands. Artisans and skilled workers were displaced. The factory was here to stay. Clockwork automatons, entertaining novelties made to look and move like living creatures, had been around for centuries. But this new era of machines were mimicking life in ways only imagined before, and making their presence felt in the home and in the workplace, altering forever how we work and live. Literary fiction of the time reflected this strange new world, speculating on the future and inventing wonders like steam-powered mechanical men. If machines could work, what more could they accomplish? Where, in this rapidly mechanizing world, would machines take us? ...it was impossible not to invest the machine with some faculty of intellect; it seemed to have made the first step from brute matter to life and purpose, showing its progress by great power. – Dorothy Wordsworth, from her journal, on first seeing a steam-powered water pump, 1803 In the 1820s British mathematician and engineer Charles Babbage devised a mechanical calculator known as a difference engine to automatically calculate and print accurate mathematical tables. Essential to tasks like navigation, banking, and engineering, such tables had to be painstakingly verified and were prone to errors made by human “calculators” and typesetters - errors that could lead to significant loss. While not built in his lifetime, Babbage’s inventive design for mechanizing calculation was an important early step toward modern computing. Swedish inventor and printer Georg Scheutz, with his son Edvard, was inspired by Babbage's design and began designing a working difference engine of his own in 1834. Though it was mechanically temperamental, and a more modest scale than Babbage's version, their calculating engine successfully produced the first mathematical tables calculated and printed by machine. The mechanical imitation of life had other applications as well. Sir George Cayley, sometimes called the "English Leonardo" due to his wide-ranging achievements in engineering, was an important pioneer in aeronautics and aerial navigation in the early-to-mid 1800's. While best known for his contributions to flight, Cayley turned his engineering talents toward creating an artificial hand for the wounded son of a tenant farmer. He wished to make a more affordable and versatile model, both effective and within the means of victims of industrial and wartime injury. His innovative design mimicked the articulation and control of human movement, and contains features used in modern prostheses. These technological innovations also found their way into the home. This 1871 patent model is the basis for one of earliest crawling dolls manufactured in America. The clockwork arms and legs simulate crawling while the baby rolls forward on brass wheels. The lifelike automaton, once an elegant mechanical amusement for the upper class, was on its way to becoming a classic childhood toy. The limits of machine intelligence in the 19th century didn't stop enterprising efforts to dupe the public. Ajeeb, a mechanical chess-playing automaton, toured the world's entertainment parlors until the late 1800s. Many visitors believed that Ajeeb, and others like it, could be clever enough to outplay human competitors, and that they were witnessing a thinking machine in action. It wasn't so: a human chess-player was concealed inside. The word robot wouldn't appear until 1920, when Czech writer Karel Čapek coined the word in his play, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots). Derived from the Czech word robota, meaning “forced labor” or "drudgery," he used it to describe a manufactured humanoid workforce. Decades before Čapek, however, the possibilities of mechanization and steam power were already inspiring mechanical beings in fiction. Steam-powered mechanical men began appearing in inexpensively-produced adventure stories in the late 1860's. The popular tales featured the heroic exploits of an inventor and his fantastic creations. Another precursor to the robot was the copper-clad Tik Tok, the Machine Man, from L. Frank Baum's Oz books. Unlike the better known Tin Woodman of Oz, Tik Tok wasn't alive; he was a mechanical clockwork device. Baum even provided him with a manufacturer’s label and operating instructions: “Smith & Tinker's Patent Double-Action Extra-Responsive MECHANICAL MAN... Thinks, Speaks, Acts and Does Everything But Live.” Some of the greatest technological innovations were in the textile industry. Richard Roberts’ steam-powered “self-acting” spinning mule, nicknamed the Iron Man, replaced skilled workers and outperformed them tirelessly. Spinning, once a manual trade performed in homes, was now the job of automated factory machinery. Several machines could be overseen by a single minimally-trained worker. Andrew Ure, a staunch supporter of technological progress in textile manufacture, praised the "Iron Man" as "a machine apparently instinct with the thought, feeling, and tact of the experienced workman." It is the Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense of that word; the age which, with its whole undivided might, forwards, teaches and practises the great art of adapting means to ends. Nothing is now done directly, or by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance. —Thomas Carlyle, "Signs of the Times," The Edinburgh Review, 1829 What an army of servants do the machines thus employ! Are there not probably more men engaged in tending machinery than in tending men? Do not machines eat as it were by mannery? Are we not ourselves creating our successors in the supremacy of the earth? daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their organisation, daily giving them greater skill and supplying more and more of that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be better than any intellect? —Samuel Butler, Erewhon, or: Over the Range, 1872
Similarities Between Line Graphs With Equations & Inequalities Hi, I'm Charlie Kasov, and this is "similarities between line graphs with equations and inequalities." Now, they're very much the same. For example, if we have y equals two X, y is less than two X, and y is less than or equal to two X. All of them are going to be graphed with, roughly, this line, going through. If this is the X axis, and this is the Y axis. However, it's only a solid line with the arrows going like this for y equals two X. If we wanted to graph it for y is less than two X, we would make it a dashed line, and there would be open points at the end of the line segment, for this one. If we wanted y is less than or equal to two X, we would do the dashed line again, but there would be closed points on the ends. However, everything else is the same, with the line. The line would follow exactly the same path.
What is Ethernet? Ethernet is the traditional technology for connecting devices in a wired local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN). It enables devices to communicate with each other via a protocol, which is a set of rules or common network language. Ethernet describes how network devices format and transmit data so other devices on the same LAN or campus network can recognize, receive and process the information. An Ethernet cable is the physical, encased wiring over which the data travels. Connected devices that use cables to access a geographically localized network -- instead of a wireless connection -- likely use Ethernet. From businesses to gamers, diverse end users rely on the benefits of Ethernet connectivity, which include reliability and security. Compared to wireless LAN (WLAN) technology, Ethernet is typically less vulnerable to disruptions. It can also offer a greater degree of network security and control than wireless technology because devices must connect using physical cabling. This makes it difficult for outsiders to access network data or hijack bandwidth for unsanctioned devices. Why is Ethernet used? Ethernet is used to connect devices in a network and is still a popular form of network connection. For local networks used by specific organizations -- such as company offices, school campuses and hospitals -- Ethernet is used for its high speed, security and reliability. Ethernet initially grew popular due to its inexpensive price tag when compared to the competing technology of the time, such as IBM's token ring. As network technology advanced, Ethernet ability to evolve and deliver higher levels of performance, ensured its sustained popularity. Throughout its evolution, Ethernet also maintained backward compatibility. Ethernet's original 10 megabits per second throughput increased tenfold to 100 Mbps in the mid-1990s. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) continues to deliver increased performance with successive updates. Current versions of Ethernet can support operations up to 400 gigabits per second (Gbps). Advantages and disadvantages of Ethernet Ethernet has many benefits for users, which is why it grew so popular. However, there are a few disadvantages as well. Advantages of Ethernet - relatively low cost; - backward compatibility; - generally resistant to noise; - good data transfer quality; - reliability; and - data security, as common firewalls can be used. Disadvantages of Ethernet - intended for smaller, shorter distance networks; - limited mobility; - use of longer cables can create crosstalk; - doesn't work well with real-time or interactive applications; - speeds decrease with increased traffic; - receivers don't acknowledge the reception of data packets; and - troubleshooting is hard when trying to trace which specific cable or node is causing the issue. Ethernet vs. Wi-Fi Wi-Fi is the most popular type of network connection. Unlike wired connection types, such as Ethernet, it does not require a physical cable to be connected. Instead, data is transmitted through wireless signals. Differences between Ethernet and Wi-Fi connections - transmits data over a cable; - limited mobility, as a physical cable is required; - more speed, reliability and security than Wi-Fi; - consistent speed; - data encryption is not required; - lower latency; and - more complex installation process. - transmits data through wireless signals rather than over a cable; - better mobility, as no cables are required; - not as fast, reliable or secure as Ethernet; - more convenient -- users can connect to the internet from anywhere; - inconsistent speed -- Wi-Fi is prone to signal interference; - requires data encryption; - higher latency than Ethernet; and - simpler installation process. How Ethernet works IEEE specifies in the family of standards called IEEE 802.3 that the Ethernet protocol touches both Layer 1 (physical layer) and Layer 2 (data link layer) on the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. Ethernet defines two units of transmission: packet and frame. The frame includes the payload of data being transmitted as well as the following: - the physical media access control (MAC) addresses of both the sender and receiver; - virtual LAN (VLAN) tagging and quality of service (QoS) information; and - error correction information to detect transmission problems. Each frame is wrapped in a packet that contains several bytes of information to establish the connection and mark where the frame starts. Engineers at Xerox first developed Ethernet in the 1970s. Ethernet initially ran over coaxial cables. Early Ethernet connected multiple devices into network segments through hubs -- Layer 1 devices responsible for transporting network data -- using either a daisy chain or star topology. Currently, a typical Ethernet LAN uses special grades of twisted-pair cables or fiber optic cabling. If two devices that share a hub try to transmit data at the same time, the packets can collide and create connectivity problems. To alleviate these digital traffic jams, IEEE developed the Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) protocol. This protocol enables devices to check whether a given line is in use before initiating new transmissions. Later, Ethernet hubs largely gave way to network switches. Because a hub cannot discriminate between points on a network segment, it can't send data directly from point A to point B. Instead, whenever a network device sends a transmission via an input port, the hub copies the data and distributes it to all available output ports. In contrast, a switch intelligently sends any given port only the traffic intended for its devices rather than copies of any and all the transmissions on the network segment, thus improving security and efficiency. Like with other network types, involved computers must include a network interface card (NIC) to connect to Ethernet. Types of Ethernet cables The IEEE 802.3 working group approved the first Ethernet standard in 1983. Since then, the technology has continued to evolve and embrace new media, higher transmission speeds and changes in frame content. Below are some of the changes: - 802.3ac was introduced to accommodate VLAN and priority tagging. - 802.3af defines Power over Ethernet (PoE), which is crucial to most Wi-Fi and Internet Protocol (IP) telephony deployments. - 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, 802.11ac and 802.11ax define the equivalent of Ethernet for WLANs. - 802.3u ushered in 100BASE-T -- also known as Fast Ethernet -- with data transmission speeds of up to 100 Mbps. The term BASE-T indicates the use of twisted-pair cabling. Gigabit Ethernet boasts speeds of 1,000 Mbps -- 1 gigabit or 1 billion bits per second (bps) -- 10 GbE, up to 10 Gbps, and so on. Over time, the typical speed of each connection tends to increase. Network engineers use 100BASE-T to do the following: - connect end-user computers, printers and other devices; - manage servers and storage; and - achieve higher speeds for network backbone segments. Ethernet cables connect network devices to the appropriate routers or modems. Different cables work with different standards and speeds. For example, Category 5 (Cat5) cables support traditional and 100BASE-T Ethernet. Category 5e (Cat5e) cables can handle GbE, while Category 6 (Cat6) works with 10 GbE. Ethernet crossover cables, which connect two devices of the same type, also exist. These cables enable two computers to be connected without a switch or router between them.
In philosophy, identity, from Latin: identitas ('sameness'), is the relation each thing bears only to itself. The notion of identity gives rise to many philosophical problems, including the identity of indiscernibles (if x and y share all their properties, are they one and the same thing?), and questions about change and personal identity over time (what has to be the case for a person x at one time and a person y at a later time to be one and the same person?). It is important to distinguish between qualitative identity and numerical identity. For example, consider two children with identical bicycles engaged in a race while their mother is watching. The two children have the same bicycle in one sense (qualitative identity) and the same mother in another sense (numerical identity). This article is mainly concerned with numerical identity, which is the stricter notion. The philosophical concept of identity is distinct from the better-known notion of identity in use in psychology and the social sciences. The philosophical concept concerns a relation, specifically, a relation that x and y stand in if, and only if they are one and the same thing, or identical to each other (i.e. if, and only if x = y). The sociological notion of identity, by contrast, has to do with a person's self-conception, social presentation, and more generally, the aspects of a person that make them unique, or qualitatively different from others (e.g. cultural identity, gender identity, national identity, online identity, and processes of identity formation). Lately, identity has been conceptualized considering humans’ position within the ecological web of life. Metaphysicians and philosophers of language and mind ask other questions: The law of identity originates from classical antiquity. The modern formulation of identity is that of Gottfried Leibniz, who held that x is the same as y if and only if every predicate true of x is true of y as well. Leibniz's ideas have taken root in the philosophy of mathematics, where they have influenced the development of the predicate calculus as Leibniz's law. Mathematicians sometimes distinguish identity from equality. More mundanely, an identity in mathematics may be an equation that holds true for all values of a variable. Hegel argued that things are inherently self-contradictory and that the notion of something being self-identical only made sense if it were not also not-identical or different from itself and did not also imply the latter. In Hegel's words, "Identity is the identity of identity and non-identity." More recent metaphysicians have discussed trans-world identity—the notion that there can be the same object in different possible worlds. An alternative to trans-world identity is the counterpart relation in Counterpart theory. It is a similarity relation that rejects trans-world individuals and instead defends an objects counterpart – the most similar object. Some philosophers have denied that there is such a relation as identity. Thus Ludwig Wittgenstein writes (Tractatus 5.5301): "That identity is not a relation between objects is obvious." At 5.5303 he elaborates: "Roughly speaking: to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing." Bertrand Russell had earlier voiced a worry that seems to be motivating Wittgenstein's point (The Principles of Mathematics §64): "[I]dentity, an objector may urge, cannot be anything at all: two terms plainly are not identical, and one term cannot be, for what is it identical with?" Even before Russell, Gottlob Frege, at the beginning of "On Sense and Reference," expressed a worry with regard to identity as a relation: "Equality gives rise to challenging questions which are not altogether easy to answer. Is it a relation?" More recently, C. J. F. Williams has suggested that identity should be viewed as a second-order relation, rather than a relation between objects, and Kai Wehmeier has argued that appealing to a binary relation that every object bears to itself, and to no others, is both logically unnecessary and metaphysically suspect. Kind-terms, or sortals give a criterion of identity and non-identity among items of their kind.
Confused with the difference between the economics and economy? Is the concave graph of PPC scaring you? We are then here to provide you with the study notes you need to ace your Class 11 economics. Here is everything you need to know about economics class 11 chapter on Introduction to Microeconomics. We have summarized the key pointers and sections you must know to understand what Microeconomics is all about. This Blog Includes: Economy and Economics To begin our class 11 Introduction to Microeconomics, we must first have our fundamentals clear about what is economics and economy and the difference between micro and macro economics. Have a look here: - The word ‘economy’ was taken from a french word, ‘economie’. It is a system in which people earn their livelihoods and live through production, consumption, investment and exchange to satisfy their wants and needs. - Similarly, the word economics was derived from the word ‘Oikonomos’. According to the chapter of class 11 Introduction to Microeconomics, economics is the study of those problems of choice that arise out of scarcity of resources and alternative uses. Also Read: Business Services Class 11 Notes Types/Branches of Economics According to the chapter of class 11 Introduction to Microeconomics, the study of Economics is divided into two branches namely: - Microeconomics: Microeconomics studies the behaviour of individual units of economics such as the demand of a consumer, supply of a producer, consumer equilibrium, factor pricing, product pricing etc. it is also known as price theory. - Macroeconomics: Macroeconomics studies the economy and its behaviour as a whole such as National Income, aggregate demand, aggregate supply, inflation etc. it is also called the theory of income and employment. Do you Know? Adam Smith is called as the Father of Microeconomics. Types of Economy After studying what is an economy, economics, and types of economics, let us now discover different types of the economy. As per the chapter of class 11 Introduction to Microeconomics, there are 3 different types of economy: - Capitalist economy or Market economy: It is a system of the economy where all the materials and means of production are owned and operated by private individuals. This concept of economy or type of economy has only one major aim or motive, which is to earn profits. - Socialist economy or Planned economy: On the contrary to the capitalist or market economy, the socialist economy is one where the government owns all the means and materials of production. The government is the centrally planned authority of any nation who takes all the important decisions regarding production, exchange, consumption, availability of goods and services, distribution of goods and services, etc. They have the main aim or motive to produce for social welfare. - Mixed economy: A mixed economy is that type of economy with traits and characteristics of both the above-mentioned economies- capitalist and socialist. Causes of Economic Problems According to the chapter of class 11 Introduction to Microeconomics, although the nature and scope of economics are great, the economic problem is the problem of choice. This problem of choice in the economy arises due to the use of limited means and resources, that have alternative use as well. As per the chapter of class 11 Introduction to Microeconomics, there are 3 different reasons or causes of the economic problem: - Unlimited human wants - Limited economic resources or scarcity of resources - Alternative uses of these limited resources Central Problems of an Economy The chapter of class 11 Introduction to Microeconomics has also described how important and crucial it is to allocate the resources which are scarce and limited in the economy. Scarce resources should be used in the best possible manner without any waste. The allocation of resources depends on three things or 3 questions: - What to produce and in what quantity: Deals with the selection of goods or resources. - How to produce: Deals with the selection of the right technique or technology to produce. - For whom to produce: Deals with the distribution of goods and income in the economy in the right manner. According to the chapter of class 11 Introduction to Microeconomics, the opportunity cost is the cost of the next best alternative foregone. In simple words, it is the cost or the amount of one commodity that is to be sacrificed to increase the production of another commodity. Let us understand it with the help of an example. Suppose, Harry right now is a Head Chef at Taj Hotel in Bombay. Apart from joining Taj as a Head Chef, he was having 2 alternatives or choices as well: - To be Assistant Chef at ITC Hotel in New Delhi. - To open his own restaurant. The opportunity cost which Harry has forgone in this scenario is to be an assistant chef at ITC Hotel in New Delhi. Also Read: How to Study in Class 11 Production Possibility Curve As per the chapter of class 11 Introduction to Microeconomics, Production Possibility Curve or PPC is a concave curve that shows all the possible combinations of the set of 2 goods produced in an economy. PPC is also known as PPF or Production Possibility Frontier. It tells about the goods that an economy can produce with the available limited resources and given technology, assuming that the resources are utilised fully and efficiently. Explore: CBSE Guide Archives Features of PPC/PPF Mentioned below are the various features of PPC/PPF. It is an important part of class 11 Introduction to Microeconomics. Have a look here: - PPC or PPF is a concave curve. It is concave to the origin because of increasing MOC or marginal opportunity cost. - PPC sloped downwards from left to right. It slopes downwards because if the production of one commodity is to be increased, the production of the second commodity has to be sacrificed as resources are limited and scarce. - PPC or PPF will be convex if MOC starts decreasing. - PPC or PPF will be a straight line when MOC will be constant. - The PPC or PPF will shift rightwards if there is an increase in the resources or any improvement or up-gradation in technology. Example: more skilled labour, new machinery etc. - The PPC or PPF will shift towards the left when the resources in the economy will decrease and/or degradation in technology in the economy. Must Read: Commerce Subjects in Class 11. So these were some important notes on the chapter of class 11 Introduction to Microeconomics. We hope that the blog can be of use for the students at the time of their final revision. For more such amazing content, study notes and career guidance, stay tuned with Leverage Edu. Sign up for a free session today!
Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. Specific applications of AI include expert systems, natural language processing, speech recognition and machine vision. How does AI work? As the hype around AI has accelerated, vendors have been scrambling to promote how their products and services use AI. Often what they refer to as AI is simply one component of AI, such as machine learning. AI requires a foundation of specialized hardware and software for writing and training machine learning algorithms. No one programming language is synonymous with AI, but a few, including Python, R and Java, are popular. In general, AI systems work by ingesting large amounts of labeled training data, analyzing the data for correlations and patterns, and using these patterns to make predictions about future states. In this way, a chatbot that is fed examples of text chats can learn to produce lifelike exchanges with people, or an image recognition tool can learn to identify and describe objects in images by reviewing millions of examples. AI programming focuses on three cognitive skills: learning, reasoning and self-correction. Learning processes. This aspect of AI programming focuses on acquiring data and creating rules for how to turn the data into actionable information. The rules, which are called algorithms, provide computing devices with step-by-step instructions for how to complete a specific task. Reasoning processes. This aspect of AI programming focuses on choosing the right algorithm to reach a desired outcome. Self-correction processes. This aspect of AI programming is designed to continually fine-tune algorithms and ensure they provide the most accurate results possible. Why is artificial intelligence important? AI is important because it can give enterprises insights into their operations that they may not have been aware of previously and because, in some cases, AI can perform tasks better than humans. Particularly when it comes to repetitive, detail-oriented tasks like analyzing large numbers of legal documents to ensure relevant fields are filled in properly, AI tools often complete jobs quickly and with relatively few errors. This has helped fuel an explosion in efficiency and opened the door to entirely new business opportunities for some larger enterprises. Prior to the current wave of AI, it would have been hard to imagine using computer software to connect riders to taxis, but today Uber has become one of the largest companies in the world by doing just that. It utilizes sophisticated machine learning algorithms to predict when people are likely to need rides in certain areas, which helps proactively get drivers on the road before they're needed. As another example, Google has become one of the largest players for a range of online services by using machine learning to understand how people use their services and then improving them. In 2017, the company's CEO, Sundar Pichai, pronounced that Google would operate as an "AI first" company. Today's largest and most successful enterprises have used AI to improve their operations and gain advantage on their competitors. What are the advantages and disadvantages of artificial intelligence? Artificial neural networks and deep learning artificial intelligence technologies are quickly evolving, primarily because AI processes large amounts of data much faster and makes predictions more accurately than humanly possible. While the huge volume of data being created on a daily basis would bury a human researcher, AI applications that use machine learning can take that data and quickly turn it into actionable information. As of this writing, the primary disadvantage of using AI is that it is expensive to process the large amounts of data that AI programming requires. - Good at detail-oriented jobs; - Reduced time for data-heavy tasks; - Delivers consistent results; and - AI-powered virtual agents are always available. - Requires deep technical expertise; - Limited supply of qualified workers to build AI tools; - Only knows what it's been shown; and - Lack of ability to generalize from one task to another. Strong AI vs. weak AI - Weak AI, also known as narrow AI, is an AI system that is designed and trained to complete a specific task. Industrial robots and virtual personal assistants, such as Apple's Siri, use weak AI. - Strong AI, also known as artificial general intelligence (AGI), describes programming that can replicate the cognitive abilities of the human brain. When presented with an unfamiliar task, a strong AI system can use fuzzy logic to apply knowledge from one domain to another and find a solution autonomously. In theory, a strong AI program should be able to pass both a Turing Test and the Chinese room test. What are the 4 types of artificial intelligence? Arend Hintze, an assistant professor of integrative biology and computer science and engineering at Michigan State University, explained in a 2016 article that AI can be categorized into four types, beginning with the task-specific intelligent systems in wide use today and progressing to sentient systems, which do not yet exist. The categories are as follows: - Type 1: Reactive machines. These AI systems have no memory and are task specific. An example is Deep Blue, the IBM chess program that beat Garry Kasparov in the 1990s. Deep Blue can identify pieces on the chessboard and make predictions, but because it has no memory, it cannot use past experiences to inform future ones. - Type 2: Limited memory. These AI systems have memory, so they can use past experiences to inform future decisions. Some of the decision-making functions in self-driving cars are designed this way. - Type 3: Theory of mind. Theory of mind is a psychology term. When applied to AI, it means that the system would have the social intelligence to understand emotions. This type of AI will be able to infer human intentions and predict behavior, a necessary skill for AI systems to become integral members of human teams. - Type 4: Self-awareness. In this category, AI systems have a sense of self, which gives them consciousness. Machines with self-awareness understand their own current state. This type of AI does not yet exist. What are examples of AI technology and how is it used today? AI is incorporated into a variety of different types of technology. Here are six examples: - Automation. When paired with AI technologies, automation tools can expand the volume and types of tasks performed. An example is robotic process automation (RPA), a type of software that automates repetitive, rules-based data processing tasks traditionally done by humans. When combined with machine learning and emerging AI tools, RPA can automate bigger portions of enterprise jobs, enabling RPA's tactical bots to pass along intelligence from AI and respond to process changes. - Machine learning. This is the science of getting a computer to act without programming. Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that, in very simple terms, can be thought of as the automation of predictive analytics. There are three types of machine learning algorithms: - Supervised learning. Data sets are labeled so that patterns can be detected and used to label new data sets. - Unsupervised learning. Data sets aren't labeled and are sorted according to similarities or differences. - Reinforcement learning. Data sets aren't labeled but, after performing an action or several actions, the AI system is given feedback. - Machine vision. This technology gives a machine the ability to see. Machine vision captures and analyzes visual information using a camera, analog-to-digital conversion and digital signal processing. It is often compared to human eyesight, but machine vision isn't bound by biology and can be programmed to see through walls, for example. It is used in a range of applications from signature identification to medical image analysis. Computer vision, which is focused on machine-based image processing, is often conflated with machine vision. - Natural language processing (NLP). This is the processing of human language by a computer program. One of the older and best-known examples of NLP is spam detection, which looks at the subject line and text of an email and decides if it's junk. Current approaches to NLP are based on machine learning. NLP tasks include text translation, sentiment analysis and speech recognition. - Robotics. This field of engineering focuses on the design and manufacturing of robots. Robots are often used to perform tasks that are difficult for humans to perform or perform consistently. For example, robots are used in assembly lines for car production or by NASA to move large objects in space. Researchers are also using machine learning to build robots that can interact in social settings. - Self-driving cars. Autonomous vehicles use a combination of computer vision, image recognition and deep learning to build automated skill at piloting a vehicle while staying in a given lane and avoiding unexpected obstructions, such as pedestrians. What are the applications of AI? Artificial intelligence has made its way into a wide variety of markets. Here are nine examples. AI in healthcare. The biggest bets are on improving patient outcomes and reducing costs. Companies are applying machine learning to make better and faster diagnoses than humans. One of the best-known healthcare technologies is IBM Watson. It understands natural language and can respond to questions asked of it. The system mines patient data and other available data sources to form a hypothesis, which it then presents with a confidence scoring schema. Other AI applications include using online virtual health assistants and chatbots to help patients and healthcare customers find medical information, schedule appointments, understand the billing process and complete other administrative processes. An array of AI technologies is also being used to predict, fight and understand pandemics such as COVID-19. AI in business. Machine learning algorithms are being integrated into analytics and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms to uncover information on how to better serve customers. Chatbots have been incorporated into websites to provide immediate service to customers. Automation of job positions has also become a talking point among academics and IT analysts. AI in education. AI can automate grading, giving educators more time. It can assess students and adapt to their needs, helping them work at their own pace. AI tutors can provide additional support to students, ensuring they stay on track. And it could change where and how students learn, perhaps even replacing some teachers. AI in finance. AI in personal finance applications, such as Intuit Mint or TurboTax, is disrupting financial institutions. Applications such as these collect personal data and provide financial advice. Other programs, such as IBM Watson, have been applied to the process of buying a home. Today, artificial intelligence software performs much of the trading on Wall Street. AI in law. The discovery process -- sifting through documents -- in law is often overwhelming for humans. Using AI to help automate the legal industry's labor-intensive processes is saving time and improving client service. Law firms are using machine learning to describe data and predict outcomes, computer vision to classify and extract information from documents and natural language processing to interpret requests for information. AI in manufacturing. Manufacturing has been at the forefront of incorporating robots into the workflow. For example, the industrial robots that were at one time programmed to perform single tasks and separated from human workers, increasingly function as cobots: Smaller, multitasking robots that collaborate with humans and take on responsibility for more parts of the job in warehouses, factory floors and other workspaces. AI in banking. Banks are successfully employing chatbots to make their customers aware of services and offerings and to handle transactions that don't require human intervention. AI virtual assistants are being used to improve and cut the costs of compliance with banking regulations. Banking organizations are also using AI to improve their decision-making for loans, and to set credit limits and identify investment opportunities. AI in transportation. In addition to AI's fundamental role in operating autonomous vehicles, AI technologies are used in transportation to manage traffic, predict flight delays, and make ocean shipping safer and more efficient. Security. AI and machine learning are at the top of the buzzword list security vendors use today to differentiate their offerings. Those terms also represent truly viable technologies. Organizations use machine learning in security information and event management (SIEM) software and related areas to detect anomalies and identify suspicious activities that indicate threats. By analyzing data and using logic to identify similarities to known malicious code, AI can provide alerts to new and emerging attacks much sooner than human employees and previous technology iterations. The maturing technology is playing a big role in helping organizations fight off cyber attacks. Augmented intelligence vs. artificial intelligence Some industry experts believe the term artificial intelligence is too closely linked to popular culture, and this has caused the general public to have improbable expectations about how AI will change the workplace and life in general. - Augmented intelligence. Some researchers and marketers hope the label augmented intelligence, which has a more neutral connotation, will help people understand that most implementations of AI will be weak and simply improve products and services. Examples include automatically surfacing important information in business intelligence reports or highlighting important information in legal filings. - Artificial intelligence. True AI, or artificial general intelligence, is closely associated with the concept of the technological singularity -- a future ruled by an artificial superintelligence that far surpasses the human brain's ability to understand it or how it is shaping our reality. This remains within the realm of science fiction, though some developers are working on the problem. Many believe that technologies such as quantum computing could play an important role in making AGI a reality and that we should reserve the use of the term AI for this kind of general intelligence. Ethical use of artificial intelligence While AI tools present a range of new functionality for businesses, the use of artificial intelligence also raises ethical questions because, for better or worse, an AI system will reinforce what it has already learned. This can be problematic because machine learning algorithms, which underpin many of the most advanced AI tools, are only as smart as the data they are given in training. Because a human being selects what data is used to train an AI program, the potential for machine learning bias is inherent and must be monitored closely. Anyone looking to use machine learning as part of real-world, in-production systems needs to factor ethics into their AI training processes and strive to avoid bias. This is especially true when using AI algorithms that are inherently unexplainable in deep learning and generative adversarial network (GAN) applications. Explainability is a potential stumbling block to using AI in industries that operate under strict regulatory compliance requirements. For example, financial institutions in the United States operate under regulations that require them to explain their credit-issuing decisions. When a decision to refuse credit is made by AI programming, however, it can be difficult to explain how the decision was arrived at because the AI tools used to make such decisions operate by teasing out subtle correlations between thousands of variables. When the decision-making process cannot be explained, the program may be referred to as black box AI. Despite potential risks, there are currently few regulations governing the use of AI tools, and where laws do exist, they typically pertain to AI indirectly. For example, as previously mentioned, United States Fair Lending regulations require financial institutions to explain credit decisions to potential customers. This limits the extent to which lenders can use deep learning algorithms, which by their nature are opaque and lack explainability. The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) puts strict limits on how enterprises can use consumer data, which impedes the training and functionality of many consumer-facing AI applications. In October 2016, the National Science and Technology Council issued a report examining the potential role governmental regulation might play in AI development, but it did not recommend specific legislation be considered. Crafting laws to regulate AI will not be easy, in part because AI comprises a variety of technologies that companies use for different ends, and partly because regulations can come at the cost of AI progress and development. The rapid evolution of AI technologies is another obstacle to forming meaningful regulation of AI. Technology breakthroughs and novel applications can make existing laws instantly obsolete. For example, existing laws regulating the privacy of conversations and recorded conversations do not cover the challenge posed by voice assistants like Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri that gather but do not distribute conversation -- except to the companies' technology teams which use it to improve machine learning algorithms. And, of course, the laws that governments do manage to craft to regulate AI don't stop criminals from using the technology with malicious intent. Cognitive computing and AI The terms AI and cognitive computing are sometimes used interchangeably, but, generally speaking, the label AI is used in reference to machines that replace human intelligence by simulating how we sense, learn, process and react to information in the environment. The label cognitive computing is used in reference to products and services that mimic and augment human thought processes. What is the history of AI? The concept of inanimate objects endowed with intelligence has been around since ancient times. The Greek god Hephaestus was depicted in myths as forging robot-like servants out of gold. Engineers in ancient Egypt built statues of gods animated by priests. Throughout the centuries, thinkers from Aristotle to the 13th century Spanish theologian Ramon Llull to René Descartes and Thomas Bayes used the tools and logic of their times to describe human thought processes as symbols, laying the foundation for AI concepts such as general knowledge representation. The late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries brought forth the foundational work that would give rise to the modern computer. In 1836, Cambridge University mathematician Charles Babbage and Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace, invented the first design for a programmable machine. 1940s. Princeton mathematician John Von Neumann conceived the architecture for the stored-program computer -- the idea that a computer's program and the data it processes can be kept in the computer's memory. And Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts laid the foundation for neural networks. 1950s. With the advent of modern computers, scientists could test their ideas about machine intelligence. One method for determining whether a computer has intelligence was devised by the British mathematician and World War II code-breaker Alan Turing. The Turing Test focused on a computer's ability to fool interrogators into believing its responses to their questions were made by a human being. 1956. The modern field of artificial intelligence is widely cited as starting this year during a summer conference at Dartmouth College. Sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the conference was attended by 10 luminaries in the field, including AI pioneers Marvin Minsky, Oliver Selfridge and John McCarthy, who is credited with coining the term artificial intelligence. Also in attendance were Allen Newell, a computer scientist, and Herbert A. Simon, an economist, political scientist and cognitive psychologist, who presented their groundbreaking Logic Theorist, a computer program capable of proving certain mathematical theorems and referred to as the first AI program. 1950s and 1960s. In the wake of the Dartmouth College conference, leaders in the fledgling field of AI predicted that a man-made intelligence equivalent to the human brain was around the corner, attracting major government and industry support. Indeed, nearly 20 years of well-funded basic research generated significant advances in AI: For example, in the late 1950s, Newell and Simon published the General Problem Solver (GPS) algorithm, which fell short of solving complex problems but laid the foundations for developing more sophisticated cognitive architectures; McCarthy developed Lisp, a language for AI programming that is still used today. In the mid-1960s MIT Professor Joseph Weizenbaum developed ELIZA, an early natural language processing program that laid the foundation for today's chatbots. 1970s and 1980s. But the achievement of artificial general intelligence proved elusive, not imminent, hampered by limitations in computer processing and memory and by the complexity of the problem. Government and corporations backed away from their support of AI research, leading to a fallow period lasting from 1974 to 1980 and known as the first "AI Winter." In the 1980s, research on deep learning techniques and industry's adoption of Edward Feigenbaum's expert systems sparked a new wave of AI enthusiasm, only to be followed by another collapse of government funding and industry support. The second AI winter lasted until the mid-1990s. 1990s through today. Increases in computational power and an explosion of data sparked an AI renaissance in the late 1990s that has continued to present times. The latest focus on AI has given rise to breakthroughs in natural language processing, computer vision, robotics, machine learning, deep learning and more. Moreover, AI is becoming ever more tangible, powering cars, diagnosing disease and cementing its role in popular culture. In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue defeated Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, becoming the first computer program to beat a world chess champion. Fourteen years later, IBM's Watson captivated the public when it defeated two former champions on the game show Jeopardy!. More recently, the historic defeat of 18-time World Go champion Lee Sedol by Google DeepMind's AlphaGo stunned the Go community and marked a major milestone in the development of intelligent machines. AI as a service Because hardware, software and staffing costs for AI can be expensive, many vendors are including AI components in their standard offerings or providing access to artificial intelligence as a service (AIaaS) platforms. AIaaS allows individuals and companies to experiment with AI for various business purposes and sample multiple platforms before making a commitment. Popular AI cloud offerings include the following:
Stem cell for retina repair: scientists grow basic retina structures from blood stem cells. We take it for granted, but our sense of seeing is nothing less than phenomenal. In split seconds, light bounces off what we see and goes through a number of processes before it’s “seen” as an image by our brains. First, light has to reflect off an object, enter the eye, then pass through a thin veil of tears to the cornea, which focuses it. Focused light then passes through a clear, watery fluid — the aqueous humor — then through the pupil, a central circular opening in the iris, the eye’s colored part. There, the amount of light that enters deeper into the eye is increased or limited by the contracting or dilating of the iris. From the pupil, light then goes through the lens, which focuses it further by changing shape. This highly focused light, beamed through to the center of the eye, is then bathed in a clear jelly — the vitreous — that is surrounded by the retina, the back of the eye’s inner lining. The retina is like a movie screen, and the light is projected onto its flat, smooth surface. Light then reaches the bull’s-eye at the retina’s center called the macula — and it’s only now that it finally reaches its final destination: the photoreceptors. These are specialized nerve endings that are light sensitive and convert the light into electrochemical signals. Meanwhile, beneath the photoreceptors, a layer of dark tissue known as the retinal pigment epithelium or RPE absorbs excess light so that the photoreceptors can give a clearer signal. Signals sent from the photoreceptors travel along nerve fibers to the optic nerve — a nerve bundle that exits the back of the eye. The optic nerve sends the signals to the visual center in the back of the brain. It’s there in the brain that light is interpreted or “seen” as an image. It’s these light-sensitive photoreceptor cells in the retina, found along the eye’s back wall, that produce the impulses transmitted to the brain that are largely responsible for allowing you to see. It isn’t surprising then that vision loss is often related to damage to the retina. This is the case in retinal damage due to diabetes, age-related macular degeneration, retinal detachment or retinitis pigmentosa, a prominent cause of blindness in children and young adults, as well as other conditions. Now scientists from the University of Wisconsin have made a breakthrough in research that gives many people with eye damage hope that their vision could someday be repaired. For the first time, the UW researchers have created basic retina structures, containing proliferating neuroretinal progenitor cells — and have shown that these cells can mimic the human retina and form layers of cells that can allow them to communicate information, just like the retina does. The progenitor cells were made using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells derived from human blood cells. Specifically, at 72 days, the stem cells in the lab formed an early retina structure, with specialized cells resembling photoreceptors in the outer layer and ganglion cells in the inner layer. Starting from a routine blood sample from a patient, it’s possible to create the more complex retinal tissues from human retinal cells — that’s what the findings of two experiments done by the UW team suggests. The researchers were led by Dr. David Gamm, Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. In the first experiment, done in 2011, Dr. Gamm’s team at the UW Waisman Center used embryonic stem cells and stem cells derived from human skin to create structures comprising the most primitive stage of retinal development. The newly created structures then went on to generate the major types of retinal cells, including photoreceptors — but they lacked the organization found in more mature retina. For the new research, Dr. Gamm and postdoctoral researcher and lead author Dr. Joseph Phillips gathered blood with standard blood draw techniques and used their method to grow retina-like tissue from iPS cells derived from this blood. About 16 percent of the initial retinal structures went on to develop distinct layers that followed the precise arrangement of cells found in the back of the eye: the outermost layer contained photoreceptors, the middle developed intermediary retinal neurons, and the inner layers developed ganglion cells. Even better, work by Dr. Phillips showed that these retinal cells were capable of making the synapses needed to communicate with each another. Taken together, the two experiments comprise a breakthrough, with lab-built human retinal tissues having a number of important applications: • These new tissues can be used to test medications and to study degenerative diseases of the retina • If developed well enough in future experiments, the tissues may be used to replace multiple layers of the retina to help patients with more widespread retinal damage “We don’t know how far this technology will take us,” says Dr. Gamm, a pediatric ophthalmologist and senior author of the study. “But the fact is that we are able to grow a rudimentary retina structure from a patient’s blood cells is encouraging — not only because it confirms our earlier work using human skin cells, but also because blood as a starting source is convenient to obtain.” “This is a solid step forward,” Dr. Gamm says. His team’s findings are published in the March 12 online issue of Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, the journal of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. The iPS cells used in the study were generated through a collaboration with Cellular Dynamics International (CDI), Madison, Wisconsin-based biotech company that pioneered the technique to convert blood cells into iPS cells. The company was founded by UW stem cell pioneer Dr. James Thomson. “We were fortunate that CDI shared an interest in our work. Combining our lab’s expertise with that of CDI was critical to the success of this study,” says Dr. Gamm. The CDI scientists extracted a type of blood cell called a T-lymphocyte from donor blood samples, and reprogrammed the cells into iPS cells. The (iPS) cells or iPSCs were made by treating the human blood cells with reprogramming factors to revert them to an embryonic-like state. Like the stem cells in human embryos, iPS cells are can form any tissue in the body— including retinal cells—and on top of that, their use for experiments isn’t as controversial. Other members of the research team include: • Kyle Wallace, Amelia Verhoeven, Jessica Martin, Lynda Wright, Wei Shen, Elizabeth Capowski and Enio Perez, of the Waisman Center • Sarah Dickerson and Michael Miller of CDI • E. Ferda Percen of the Faculty of Medicine, Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey • Xiufeng Zhong and Maria Canto-Soler, of the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins Univerity The National Institutes of Health, the Foundation Fighting Blindness, the Retina Research Foundation, the UW Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, the UW Eye Research Institute and the E. Matilda Ziegler Foundation for the Blind, Inc. all funded the research. Stem Cell Surgery Restores Katie Piper Eyesight Stem Cell Cure for Blind Patients in China – in Health Care Zone (a sister site) Is Stem Cell Treatment for Macular Degeneration Safe? – in Health Care Zone
An effective literacy program is one that addresses phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding skills, vocabulary, comprehension strategies, and writing. We begin with a series of assessments to determine the strengths and challenges of the reader, and the areas that require intervention. To get the most out of the reading instruction, two sessions per week are recommended. The curriculum is created and structured based on your child’s needs and reading levels. We take into account your child’s interests, hobbies and create a program that is individualized. We can incorporate reading and writing assignments from other classes so that we are not adding additional work but rather we are integrating reading and writing skills using your child’s current curriculum. Specific areas that can be addressed The awareness of sound structures in words. These skills include being able to count the number of syllables in a words, and identifying rhyming words. The ability to detect and manipulate individual sounds in words, such as being able to identify the beginning or ending sound of a word, or change the sounds from one letter to another Decoding is the process of translating the printed word into sound, or saying the word to oneself. Vocabulary development is an important to understanding what we read. It is best taught in the context of what students are reading in the classroom, rather than giving them a list of vocabulary words to learn each week. Word consciousness is a skill that we teach students so that they learn to identify unfamiliar words and look them up in the dictionary. Fluency is the ability to read out loud effortlessly, without pausing, and using appropriate expression. When we read fluently, we can then focus on enjoying the material, and it allows us to understand what we are reading much easier. All of the previous skills do not mean anything if we cannot understand what we are reading. We teach a variety of strategies to help readers understand what they are reading. Comprehension strategies can be taught in the context of three stages; before, during, and after we read. At each stage, we can use specific strategies to help us make sure that we are understanding what we are reading. Reading and writing go hand in hand and have a reciprocal relationship. Reading can help strengthen writing skills and practicing writing skills can help improve reading. We can work on grammar, the use of language, and the mechanics of writing, it is also important that students explore their creativity and self-expression through the written word.
- Small Changes - Talking To Your Child - Paper Chain Activity - Self-Care Ideas - Shelf Help Books - Health Uncovered Podcast - Low Mood & Depression It is difficult as a parent to see your child feeling down. There are things you can do that can help them manage their feelings and lift their mood; Spend time with others - When you feel down it can be tempting to hide away from family and friends. - Encourage your child to join in watch a film with each other, play games, or cook a meal together. - Being active is really good for mood - releasing hormones that make us feel better. - You might start by getting out for a family walk. - Finding a sport they enjoy will help them build activity into their lives and this is a good habit for mental and physical health. - Helping others is good for self esteem and lifts mood. - Are there older family members your child could ‘help’? - It could be helping someone round the house or baking them a cake. - Giving to others makes us feel better. - Learning mindfulness techniques can give your child some ‘tools’ to manage the harder days. - Focusing on what is going on in the present moment and not letting worries take over your thinking. - There is a breathing exercise here. - Writing down thoughts and feelings or drawing pictures can help us make sense of how we feel and think too. If you are worried your child is feeling down it can be hard to know how to help them open up and talk about it. Finding the right time when you both have the space to really talk and listen is important. It can help if you are doing something else together at the same time – drives in the car or cooking together can make it easier to talk about hard things. You could start the conversation by trying some of the phrases below; - It sounds like you are feeling sad/angry/worried. Tell me more… - You seem sad/upset. Let’s talk about it… - It is normal to feel sad sometimes. It often helps to talk about it.. Don’t feel you have to have all the answers for your child. Being listened to and knowing how they feel is important to you will help. Meditation is one way of being more aware of the present moment, including your thoughts and feelings, your body and the world around you. Over time, it can help to improve low mood. Watch the video for an example of quick meditation activities to do with your child. This paper chain activity can really help your child to see who is there for them. Ask your child to place themselves in the middle of the paper chain and draw those who are important to them on either side. Remind your child that they can always talk to their important people if they are ever upset or need help. 'I'll speak to daddy because kicking a ball helps me forget I am sad'. The paper chain can be as big or as small as your child would like it to be. It can include family, friends, teachers or anyone who your child thinks is important to them. Your child will be able to use the Paper Chain People to remind them who to talk to if needed and is a visual reminder of the support around them. Making Paper Chain People Set aside some time to be together for this activity. You will need: - Colouring pencils or pens - Print / draw your template. - Begin to fold your chain backwards and forwards. - Cut around your people being careful not to cut between their linked hands. - Ask your child to draw themselves in the middle of the paper chain. Ask your child who is important to them. Your child can draw these people onto his/her chain. - Remind your child that they can talk to these important people if they are feeling low or sad. When feeling low it is important to look after ourselves and this can be done by incorporating time in your day for self-care. These do not need to be complicated activities, just do something that you enjoy or makes you feel good. This could be; - Listening to music. - Do some arts and crafts. - Taking a bath. - Turn your phone off for an hour. - Pamper yourself. - Look at funny memes. - Take a walk. - Cuddle your pets. - Call a friend. - Read a book. - Most importantly be kind to yourself. Activities that work will be different for each child. Talk about this with your child and tailor it to what they enjoy. Why not make a poster as a reminder for them to do these activities. Reading Well for young people Books about mental health for 13 to 18 year olds, with advice and information about issues like anxiety, stress and OCD, bullying and exams. Health Uncovered is a series of podcasts that aims to get young people in-tune with their health and wellbeing. The series is hosted by BBC Radio One presenter Cel Spellman and features young people and health professionals from our Norfolk Healthy Child Programme. Life isn't always easy - and young people across the country have been helping us explore the issues that they’re facing today. From online bullying to sexual health, body image to mental health. They've been asking the questions you want to hear answered, joined by the health professionals that help young people, like school nurses and mental health specialists, to provide solutions, support and understanding. Our service and young people have been particularly involved with episode 3 “me and my emotions” and episode 4 “are you ready?” Listen now! The podcasts are free and you can listen via mobile devices, tablets and laptops. Just search “Health Uncovered” in your favourite podcast app, like iTunes. Your child or young people might find this video helpful to understand the difference between feeling down and low mood or depression. Who Can Help? If feeling low goes on for a long time (more than a couple of weeks) and gets in the way of your child managing day to day life it may be depression. It is important to get some advice to see how best to make things feel better again. You can call your GP, 111 or call Just One Number on 0300 300 0123 to discuss the best way to help them. You can contact the Healthy Child Programme by calling Just One Number on 0300 300 0123 or texting Parentline on 07520631590. Our opening hours are 8am-6pm Monday-Friday (excluding bank holidays) and 9am-1pm on Saturdays. If you are 11-19 you can text Chathealth on 07480635060 for confidential advice from one of our team. For 11–25 year olds Kooth is a free, confidential and safe way to receive online counselling, advice and emotional well-being support. Childline - Children and young people under 19 can call 0800 1111 for free support. Young Minds Parents Helpline - Call 0808 802 5544 for free Mon-Fri from 9.30am to 4pm. To speak to other Norfolk parents and carers, you can join our online community forum below.
We can classify data in two ways: based on its type and on its levels of measurement. If you want to figure out how to do it based on its type, that’s something we covered in this tutorial. Levels of Measurement: Qualitative and Quantitative Data Now, it’s time to move onto the other classification – levels of measurement. These can be split into two groups: qualitative and quantitative data. They are very intuitive, so don’t worry. Qualitative data can be further divided into nominal and ordinal. Nominal variables are categories like car brands – Mercedes, BMW or Audi, or like the four seasons – winter, spring, summer and autumn. They aren’t numbers and cannot be ordered. Ordinal data, on the other hand, consists of groups and categories which follow a strict order. Imagine you have been asked to rate your lunch and the options are: disgusting, unappetizing, neutral, tasty, and delicious. Although we have words and not numbers, it is obvious that these preferences are ordered from negative to positive, thus the level of measurement is qualitative, ordinal. So, what about quantitative variables? Well, as you may have guessed, they are also split into two groups: interval and ratio. Intervals and ratios are both represented by numbers but have one major difference. Ratios have a true zero and intervals don’t. Most things we observe in the real world are ratios. Their name comes from the fact that they can represent ratios of things. For instance, if I have 2 apples and you have 6 apples, you would have 3 times as many as I do. How did I find that out? Well, the ratio of 6 and 2 is 3. Other examples are a number of objects in general, distance and time. Intervals are not as common. Temperature is the most common example of an interval variable. Important: It cannot represent a ratio of things and doesn’t have a true 0. For instance, temperature is usually expressed in Celsius or Fahrenheit. They are both interval variables. Say today is 5 degrees Celsius, or 41 degrees Fahrenheit. And yesterday was 10 degrees Celsius, or 50 degrees Fahrenheit. In terms of Celsius, it seems today is twice colder, but in terms of Fahrenheit – not really. The issue comes from the fact that 0 degrees Celsius and 0 degrees Fahrenheit are not true 0s. These scales were, artificially created by humans for convenience. Now, there is another scale, called Kelvin, which has a true 0. 0 degrees Kelvin is the temperature at which atoms stop moving and nothing can be colder than 0 degrees Kelvin. This equals -273.15 degrees Celsius, or -459.67 degrees Fahrenheit. Variables shown in Kelvin’s are ratios, as we have a true 0, and we can make the claim that one temperature is 2 times more than another. Celsius and Fahrenheit have no true 0 and are intervals. Side note: Numbers like 2, 3, 10, 10.5, 3.14(Pi) can be both interval or ratio. However, you have to be careful with the context you are operating in. The Different Levels of Measurement To conclude, the levels of measurement can be either qualitative or quantitative. Qualitative data is split into two, as well. It can be nominal or ordinal, depending if there is any strict order or not. Quantitative data also consists of 2 groups – ratios and intervals. Here, the key difference is whether or not there is a true 0. So, now that you know all levels of measurement, you will be able to move onto deeper statistics subjects. Understanding how to visualize data seems like the perfect beginning to that journey. Interested in learning more? You can take your skills from good to great with our statistics tutorials! Next Tutorial: Visualizing Data with Bar, Pie and Pareto Charts
Iron is a very important and essential mineral in our diets because it keeps our body oxygenated. It is part of hemoglobin, the substance found in red blood cells that’s responsible for transporting oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body. It gives us our healthy skin color and is essential for a child’s healthy development. It is important to provide a diet rich in iron because it helps us maintain a healthy level of red blood cells. If the body doesn’t obtain enough iron, the most common type of anemia can appear. Babies that were born at term and with good weight have a reserve of iron that lasts the first six months of life. However, at the end of this period it is essential to get iron from other sources because the body no longer contains it. It is very important to consume iron because an anemia that’s not treated could lead to delays in growth and development. What are the symptoms of anemia? - Persistent irritability - Poor appetite How do I prevent anemia? To prevent anemia, it is important to ensure that your child receives adequate amounts of iron through food. Here’s how: - Offer your child a balanced diet with iron-rich foods such as: - Red meat - Egg yolk - Sweet potato - Iron-fortified cereals - Remember not to give cow’s milk to your baby until he is one year of age. - If your baby drinks formula, choose one that is fortified with iron. - Include solids rich in vitamin C in his diet because it helps the body absorb the consumed iron. Remember, if you suspect that your baby has anemia, don’t hesitate to contact your doctor. By means of a simple blood test, he/she can detect it and indicate the proper treatment.
This video explains how to find the area of irregular shapes. Draw the shape on a grid or graph paper. This will help you divide your shape into pieces. Draw dotted lines to divide the shape into squares, rectangles or triangles. For instance, if you have an "L" shape, you can divide the shape into two rectangles. Be sure your shapes do not overlap. Calculate the area of each individual shape. The graph paper will help you determine the length and width of each shape. Add the resulting areas together to get the final area for the irregular shape. Want to master Microsoft Excel and take your work-from-home job prospects to the next level? Jump-start your career with our Premium A-to-Z Microsoft Excel Training Bundle from the new Gadget Hacks Shop and get lifetime access to more than 40 hours of Basic to Advanced instruction on functions, formula, tools, and more.
Activity 1: Formative Assessment Printable Student View - How did living in the colonies change the way Americans thought about government? - There was little diversity in the colonies and everyone had similar ideas about government. - The colonist were generally left alone by England and they took part in running there own government. - The colonists knew they would always be protected by England and there was no need for their own government. - The colonists felt that the founding fathers were best able to run the government. - A social contract - Defines how people should interact with each other - Defines a relationship between a people and their government - Defines how a people with interact with foreign countries - Defines relationships between the state government and the federal government - What freedoms did American colonists begin to take for granted as they moved toward independence? Explain why this happened. - Based on the American experience, what do you think were the important principles that were followed by the founding fathers? May 1, 2018 11:42am
Make Edible Amber Fossils A favorite topic of study in elementary science classes is that of prehistoric life - dinosaurs, fossils, and creatures that have long since been extinct. year three students are primed for such a unit of study. Their natural curiosity now extends beyond the world they can immediately see around them to a world that existed many, many years ago. With a better understanding of time and basic science concepts, they’re ready to learn about how our world works, and what our world was like before they were in it! Fossils are clues that scientists use to gather knowledge about prehistoric life. One type of fossil comes from hardened tree sap. When creatures became trapped in the sap, they were well-preserved. Today, these fossils, called “amber,” provide scientists with an amazing look at creatures from long ago. Here’s an activity to help preserve your second grader’s excitement about science.
- Students will be able to plan for a personal narrative. - Students will be able to plan individual details of a narrative. - Display the photograph or picture so that all students can see it. - Invite the students to participate in finding as many details as possible in the picture. - Tell the students that they will be learning how to include details in a narrative essay that represents a real personal experience. Explicit Instruction/Teacher modeling(15 minutes) - Read the story Owl Moon or another trade book of choice. - Demonstrate the process of writing the sequence of events in the story (including the beginning, middle, and end) on a piece of chart paper. - Write down examples of important details in the plot on the piece of chart paper or oversized sticky notes. Guided Practice(20 minutes) - Tell the students that they will be working in groups to create part of a story, which will be used to create a class story. - Explain that the topic of the story is the events and experiences of the first day of school. - Divide students into groups and distribute white paper or oversized sticky notes to each group. - Assign each group a block of the day and ask the students to create both a visual and a sequence of events for that assigned block for the first day of school. - After all groups are finished, invite each group to share their part of the writing and post it on the board. - Invite classmates to give feedback on details that can be added to the story. Independent working time(15 minutes) - Tell the students that their task is to now plan a narrative about something that was once difficult for them. This could be something new that they learned (such as learning how to ski) or a challenging time in their life. - Distribute the worksheet Something Difficult and invite students to plan their writing on that graphic organizer. - Circulate around the room and prompt students as needed. - If students need extra practice adding details, give them practice thinking of what details might be relevant to certain feelings. Ask the students to complete the worksheet Elaborating on Feelings. - If students master the planning of a realistic story, teach them to use quotation marks to represent the speech of individuals in the story. - Use Toon Doo or other comic websites to have students illustrate the components of their personal narratives (either before or after writing). - Ask the students to plan a narrative about a time that they were surprised, writing their plan on the worksheet So Surprised! Review and closing(5 minutes) - Pair up students into partners and invite them to share their story ideas with one another, giving each other feedback. - Lead the class in a brief discussion on what makes a great personal narrative.
Next: 9.5 Homogeneous Coordinates in Space Up: 9 Coordinate Systems in Space Previous: 9.3 Spherical Coordinates in Space Consider a cartesian, a cylindrical, and a spherical coordinate system, related as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: Standard relations between cartesian, cylindrical, and spherical coordinate systems. The origin is the same for all three. The positive z-axes of the cartesian and cylindrical systems coincide with the positive polar axis of the spherical system. The initial rays of the cylindrical and spherical systems coincide with the positive x-axis of the cartesian system, and the rays =90° coincide with the positive y-axis. Then the cartesian coordinates (x,y,z), the cylindrical coordinates (r,,z), and the spherical coordinates (,,) of a point are related as follows: Wed Oct 4 16:41:25 PDT 1995 This document is excerpted from the 30th Edition of the CRC Standard Mathematical Tables and Formulas (CRC Press). Unauthorized duplication is forbidden.
Cheri Dohrmann \| Mel Hrencher \| Heather Smith Intro to Language and Literacy (Grade 9)required if teacher recommended English Language and Literature—Supplemental courses, designed to be taken in addition to or in coordination with other English language and literature courses, provide instruction to assist students in acquiring English language arts skills so that students attain necessary grade-level skills or reach a desired competency level. Language and Literacy 1 (Grade 9) English/Language Arts I courses build upon students’ prior knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, word usage, and the mechanics of writing and usually include the four aspects of language use: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Typically, these courses introduce and define various genres of literature, with writing exercises often linked to reading selections. Language and Literacy 2 (Grade 10) English/Language Arts II courses usually offer a balanced focus on composition and literature. Typically, students learn about the alternate aims and audiences of written compositions by writing persuasive, critical, and creative multi-paragraph essays and compositions. Through the study of various genres of literature, students can improve their reading rate and comprehension and develop the skills to determine the author’s intent and theme and to recognize the techniques used by the author to deliver his or her message. Students continue to read and study works of American Literature. English/Language Arts III courses continue to develop students’ writing skills, emphasizing clear, logical writing patterns, word choice, and usage, as students write essays and begin to learn the techniques of writing research papers. Students continue to read and study works of American Literature, which often forms the backbone of the writing assignments. Literary conventions and stylistic devices may receive greater emphasis than in previous courses. English/Language Arts IV courses blend composition and literature into a cohesive whole as students write critical and comparative analyses of selected literature, continuing to develop their language arts skills. Typically, students primarily write multi-paragraph essays, but their major writing assignment is their autobiography. Publication Production courses provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary to produce the school newspaper, yearbook, literary magazine, or other printed publication. Students may gain experience in several components (writing, editing, layout, production, and so on) or may focus on a single aspect while producing the publication. Following the College Board’s suggested curriculum designed to parallel college-level English courses, Composition courses enable students to develop critical standards for evaluating literature. Students study the language, character, action, and theme in works of recognized literary merit; enrich their understanding of connotation, metaphor, irony, syntax, and tone; and write compositions of their own (including literary analysis, exposition, argument, narrative, and creative writing). Jodi Lonker \| Dacy Woods \| Greenbush Pre-Algebra courses increase students’ foundational math skills and prepare them for Algebra I by covering a variety of topics, such as properties of rational numbers (i.e., number theory), ratio, proportion, estimation, exponents and radicals, the rectangular coordinate system, sets and logic, formulas, and solving first-degree equations and inequalities. Algebra I courses include the study of properties and operations of the real number system; evaluating rational algebraic expressions; solving and graphing first degree equations and inequalities; translating word problems into equations; operations with and factoring or polynomials; and solving simple quadratic equations. Business Math courses reinforce basic math skills (such as arithmetic using rational numbers, measurements, ratio and proportions, and basic statistics) and apply these skills to consumer problems and situations. Applications typically include budgeting, taxation, credit, banking services, insurance, home and car ownership and rental, managing personal income, and investments; as well as making business decisions related to personnel, inventory, and sales/marketing, and managing business finances. Geometry courses, emphasizing an abstract, formal approach to the study of geometry, typically include topics such as properties of plane and solid figures; deductive methods of reasoning and use of logic; geometry as an axiomatic system including the study of postulates, theorems, and formal proofs; concepts of congruence, similarity, parallelism, perpendicularity, and proportion; and rules of angle measurement in triangles. Algebra II course topics typically include field properties and theorems; set theory; operations with rational and irrational expressions; factoring of rational expressions; in-depth study of linear equations and inequalities; quadratic equations; solving systems of linear and quadratic equations; graphing of constant, linear, and quadratic equations; properties of higher degree equations; and operations with rational and irrational exponents. Pre-Calculus (Advanced Math) Pre-Calculus courses combine the study of Trigonometry, Elementary Functions, Analytical Geometry, and Math Analysis topics as preparation for calculus. Topics typically include the study of complex numbers; polynomial, logarithmic, exponential, rational, right trigonometric, and circular functions, and their relations, inverses and graphs; trigonometric identities and equations; solutions of right and oblique triangles; vectors; the polar coordinate system; conic sections; Boolean algebra and symbolic logic; mathematical induction; matrix algebra; sequences and series; and limits and continuity. College Algebra.5 high school credit hour/3 college credit hours \| ONLY ONLINE AT THIS TIME Course topics include (but are not limited to) operations with rational and irrational expressions, linear equations and inequalities, quadratic equations, solving systems of linear and quadratic equations, properties of higher degree equations, and operations with rational and irrational exponents. The course may introduce topics in discrete math, elementary probability and statistics; matrices and determinants; and sequences and series. Trigonometry.5 high school credit hour/3 college credit hours \| ONLY ONLINE AT THIS TIME Trigonometry courses prepare students for eventual work in calculus and typically include the following topics; trigonometric and circular functions; their inverses and graphs; relations among the parts of a triangle; trigonometric identities and equations; solutions of right and oblique triangles; and complex numbers. Calculus1 high school credit hour/5 college credit hours \| ONLY ONLINE AT THIS TIME Calculus courses include the study of derivatives, differentiation, integration, the definite and indefinite integral, and applications of calculus. Typically, students have previously attained knowledge of pre-calculus topics (some combination of trigonometry, elementary functions, analytic geometry, and math analysis). Jake Bjostad \| John Kirkbride Biology courses are designed to provide information regarding the fundamental concepts of life and life processes. These courses include (but are not restricted to) such topics as cell structure and function, general plant and animal physiology, genetics, and taxonomy. General ChemistryEither General Chemistry OR Chemistry is required Conceptual Chemistry courses are practical, non-quantitative chemistry courses designed for students who desire an understanding of chemical concepts and applications. ChemistryEither General Chemistry OR Chemistry is required Chemistry courses involve studying the composition, properties, and reactions of substances. These courses typically explore such concepts as the behaviors of solids, liquids, and gases; acid/base and oxidation/reduction reactions; and atomic structure. Chemical formulas and equations and nuclear reactions are also studied. Introduction to Physics and Engineering.5 credit \| required Conceptual Physics courses introduce students to the use of chemicals, characteristic properties of materials, and simple mechanics to better describe the world and nonliving matter. The courses emphasize precise measurements and descriptive analysis of experimental results. Topics covered may include energy and motion, electricity, magnetism, heat, the structure of matter, and how matter reacts to materials and forces. (FOR INFORMATIONAL USE ONLY, THIS COURSE WILL NOT BE OFFERED/REQUIRED UNTIL 2020-2021.) Earth and Space ScienceElective Earth Science courses offer insight into the environment on earth the earth’s environment in space. While presenting the concepts and principles essential to students’ understanding of the dynamics and history of the earth, these courses usually explore oceanography, geology, astronomy, meteorology, and geography. Earth and Space Science.5 credit \| Required Earth Science courses offer insight into the environment on earth the earth’s environment in space. While presenting the concepts and principles essential to students’ understanding of the dynamics and history of the earth, these courses usually explore oceanography, geology, astronomy, meteorology, and geography. (FOR INFORMATIONAL USE ONLY, THIS COURSE WILL NOT BE OFFERED/REQUIRED UNTIL 2020-2021.) Chemistry-Independent Study courses, often conducted with instructors as mentors, enable students to explore scientific topics of interest, using advanced methods of scientific inquiry and experimentation. These courses may be offered in conjunction with other rigorous science courses or may serve as an opportunity to explore a topic of special interest. Physics courses involve the study of the forces and laws of nature affecting matter, such as equilibrium, motion, momentum, and the relationships between matter and energy. The study of physics includes examination of sound, light, and magnetic and electric phenomena. Human Anatomy and Physiology Usually taken after a comprehensive initial study of biology, Anatomy and Physiology courses present the human body and biological systems in more detail. In order to understand the structure of the human body and its functions, students learn anatomical terminology, study cells and tissues, explore functional systems (skeletal, muscular, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, reproductive, nervous, and so on) and may dissect mammals. Students MUST complete a full year of regular Chemistry prior to enrolling in Anatomy. Phil Sill \| Josh Ybarra World History-Overview courses provide students with an overview of the history of human society from early civilization to the contemporary period, examining political, economic, social, religious, military, scientific, and cultural developments. World History-Overview courses may include geographical studies, but often these components are not as explicitly taught as geography. American HistoryRequired \| 3 college credit hours available (optional) Modern U.S. History courses examine the history of the United States from the Civil War or Reconstruction era through the present time. These courses typically include a historical review of political, military, scientific, and social developments. Contemporary U.S. Issues courses study the political, economic, and social issues facing the United States, with or without an emphasis on state and local issues. These courses may focus on current issues or may examine selected issues that span throughout the 20th century to the present. GovernmentRequired \| 3 college credit hours available (optional) U.S. Government-Comprehensive courses provide an overview of the structure and functions of the U.S. government and political institutions and examine constitutional principles, the concepts of rights and responsibilities, the role of political parties and interest groups, and the importance of civic participation in the democratic process. These courses may examine the structure and function of state and local governments and may cover certain economic and legal topics. World Geography courses provide students with an overview of world geography, but may vary widely in the topics they cover. Topics typically include the physical environment; the political landscape; the relationship between people and the land; economic production and development; and the movement of people, goods, and ideas. Focusing on the five themes of Geography as a base. BARBER COUNTY NORTH \| USD 254Central Office - 620.886.3370Junior Senior High School - 620.886.5667Grade School - 620.886.5608
Paper is an important part of the human ecosystem and paper products are still widely used all around the world in every country. Paper gets moisture from its environment and bad moisture affects the quality of the paper. During the production process of paper, it is crucial to know how much water is there in the product and for this purpose Moisture Meter is used by paper and wood pulp manufacturers. The paper industry uses the following three methods to measure the moisture content of the paper: Moisture Meter: Some Moisture Meters use electrical resistance and contact pins to measure the content of moisture in the paper pulp while others use special electrodes with rolling contact heads that allow the meter to get a reading of the moisture content of paper pulp during production. If the water content is high in paper pulp, the paper may fall apart and the high content of moisture can affect the efficiency of the instruments involved in the paper-making process. Oven Dry Method: This is the most accurate method to check the moisture of paper and wood pulp and serves as the reference for any instrumental measurements. A paper sample after weighing is exposed to 221 degrees Fahrenheit oven. When the samples are weighed again after cooling, the gravimetric difference is calculated as ‘percent moisture’. Moisture Saber: This is a common method of testing paper moisture in offset printing. The sword-like instrument is inserted into a stack of paper and it reads the paper’s RH to calculate moisture content. The degree of accuracy is acceptable for approximate measurements and paper mills often deploy this method to retain exact moisture data for the lots of paper they manufacture. Measures to manage paper moisture content • Always prefer buying paper with the right moisture content whether offset or digital. • Maintain stable moisture content through good paper handling within recommended guidelines. • Use appropriate technology to ensure proper moisture levels by deploying moisture meters suited for paper, paperboard, corrugated boxes and wood pulp. • Keep your current paper products at the optimum moisture content. • The paper should get enough time to acclimatize to the environment’s temperature. • The paper should not be stationed near a heating or cooling unit as these devices can interfere with the paper’s acclimatization process. • During paper production, the packaged paper should be kept wrapped until the time it has to be processed. • The use of vapor-proof wrappers is highly recommended during paper production as it helps the paper to remain fresh and tightly-knit, keeping the excess and unwanted moisture out of the final product. Precautions for papers for digital printing To ensure optimum performance for digital printing papers store paper in the original wrapper. Locate the press in a controlled temperature and humidity environment should be 65-75 degrees Fahrenheit. To eliminate temperature differences between the paper and the environment, acclimatize paper in its wrapper at print room conditions for 24 hours before printing.
Millipedes are a diverse and ancient group of poorly known terrestrial organisms. While recent advances in their taxonomy and distribution have occurred in some areas of the world, our knowledge about the distribution and ecology of many taxa in the Pacific Northwest is limited. We review the ecology of taxa we observed and present results from a field study relating millipede abundance and community composition to environmental conditions of geology, vegetation, and climate. Millipedes of southwest Washington State were surveyed in the spring and fall of 2005 and 2006 along twelve headwater streams in forested landscapes. Overall, we observed 10 families of millipedes, with confirmed identification of 15 species. Millipede community composition differed strongly between seasons and across sites. For each season, we report family-specific multiple regressions relating millipede abundance/presence to environmental conditions. Given the ecological importance of millipedes as detritivores, more information on taxonomy and environmental relationships is needed. This research provides insight into the patterns and distribution of riparian-associated millipedes in the Pacific Northwest.
Bayes’ Theorem is formula that converts human belief, based on evidence, into predictions. It was conceived by the Reverend Thomas Bayes, an 18th-century British statistician who sought to explain how humans make predictions based on their changing beliefs. To understand his theorem, we will start by learning its notation. Here’s how to read Bayesian notation: P(A) means “the probability that A is true.” P(A\|B) means “the probability that A is true given that B is true.” In this case, it’s easiest to think of B as the symptom and A as the disease; i.e. B is a skin rash that includes tiny white spots, and A is the probability of the measles. So we use phenomena or evidence that is easily visible to calculate the probability of phenomena that are hidden. What you can see enables you to predict what you can’t see. It turns out that the the probabilities of A and B are related to each other in the following manner: That is Bayes Theorem: that you can use the probability of one thing to predict the probability of another thing. But Bayes Theorem is not a static thing. It’s a machine that you crank to make better and better predictions as new evidence surfaces. \|An interesting exercise is to twiddle the variables by assigning different speculative values to P(B) or P(A) and consider their logical impact on P(A\|\|B).\| For example, if you increase the denominator P(B) on the right, then P(A\|B) goes down. Concrete example: A runny nose is a symptom of the measles, but runny noses are far more common than skin rashes with tiny white spots. That is, if you choose P(B) where B is a runny nose, then the frequency of runny noses in the general population decreases the chance that runny nose is a sign of measles. The probability of a measles diagnosis goes down with regard to symptoms that become increasingly common; those symptoms are not strong indicators. Likewise, as measles become more common and P(A) goes up in the numerator on the right, P(A\|B) goes up necessarily, because the measles are just generally more likely regardless of the symptom that you consider. It’s what they call a “hidden role” game, because roles are assigned to you and your fellow players, but nobody knows what anyone else is.2 You take a group of, say, 10 players and divide them into two roles – werewolves and villagers. Everyone draws slips of paper from a hat, closes their eyes, and then the werewolves are instructed to wake up to know who’s on the werewolf team. Since only the werewolves know that they are werewolves, everyone in the game claims to be a villager. As the game moves through artificial cycles of day and night, each night the werewolves wake up and kill one villager, and each day the villagers try to figure out who the werewolves are, and vote to lynch one player based on their suspicians. Good, clean fun! So a great way to learn Bayes Theorem, and in particular the implementation called Naive Bayes, is to think about how you track down a werewolf. So A is the variable you are trying to predict: It is a categorical variable that can be either A1 == werewolf or A2 == villager. Your job in this game is to act as a binomial classifier. B would be all the symptoms of werewolfiness, which in this case mean the symptoms of deception, since the werewolves only win by hiding their identity from the villagers as they slowly kill those poor people off. The moderator of the game tells you how many werewolves there are, that’s P(A1), but doesn’t tell you who. Over the course of your life, you’ve learned that people do certain things when they’re nervous, lying to you and afraid of getting caught. So you start looking for symptoms you might use to diagnose a werewolf: Are they shifting in their seat? p(B1=Shifting\|A1) Are they avoiding eye contact? p(B2=AvoidEyeContact\|A1) Are they touching their face or hair with their fingers? p(B3=ActiveFingers\|A1) That is, instead of using the symptoms to diagnose the disease P(Measles\|Rash), you’re flipping it around, using an assumed diagnosis to predict the probability of symptoms. This is the generative side of Bayes. What is the probability that you exhibit a combination of these symptoms if you are a werewolf? It’s P(B1, B2, B3 \| A1). And so your prediction that someone is a werewolf or a villager would be: Prediction = argmax_A[P(B1, B2, B3\| A) * P(A)] for all A. At the end of each round, when a person is lynched, you find out whether they were, in fact, a werewolf or a villager. (For our purposes, that means you can update what you know about P(A1), or the probability that one of the remaining players is a werewolf.) And that, in a microcosm, is the magic of Bayes, allowing you to incorporate new knowledge about the world into this machine that updates your beliefs. The only problem is that, as the number of features you analyze increases (i.e. B grows larger), P(B1, B2, B3, B4 \| A) gets very hard to compute without a large sample. You would have to see each, exact combination of features many times to calculate their probilities. That’s where the “naive” part of Naive Bayes comes in: Naive Bayes assumes all inputs are conditionally independent. Instead of trying to find the probability of B1, B2, B3 etc. occurring simultaneously for a certain label, you calculate the probability of each feature occurring individually given that label: P(B1, B2, B3, B4\| A1) = P(B1\|A1) * P(B2\|A1) * P(B3\|A1) * P(B4\|A1) We assume their combinations don’t matter. Each symptom has a relationship with the probability of werewolf, but combinations of those symptoms do not increase that probability. Why do we call that assumption “naive”? avoiding eye contact and usually friendly on their own might not tell you a lot about whether the person in question is a werewolf. P(B1\|A1) * P(B2\|A1) But if you know simultaneously that a person who is usually friendly has suddenly fallen quiet and is avoiding all eye contact, common sense dictates that your expectation of that person being a werewolf should increase. So Naive Bayes discards information in favor of computational efficiency, a tradeoff we’re forced to make with other algorithms like convolutional networks as well. Bayesian networks are graphical models that use Bayesian inference to compute probability. They model conditional dependence and causation. In a Baysian Network, each edge represents a conditional dependency, while each node is a unique variable (an event or condition). Bayesian networks were invented by Judea Pearl in 1985. They were a particularly popular approach to machine learning problems in the 1990s, and remain a powerful tool for thinking about causality. Bayesian Network can be used to model any number of causal relationships. Instead of tackling werewolves and the symptoms of deceipt, you could try to model all the possible causes of your front lawn being wet, which would include rain and sprinklers and leaky fire hydrants and kids with squirt guns (this scenario is, in fact, the hello world of Bayesian Networks). 2) It’s interesting to consider that medical doctors are forced to play a “hidden role” game with disease, which doesn’t announce itself by name but only indirectly by symptoms. And indeed, most of the most important things that happen in the world don’t happen when you’re there, but rather in your absence, distant in space and time, and you are left to diagnose them by their visible repercussions.
Cello, the best string instrument, creates beautiful music. But how does a cello create sound? Well, sound is produced by the vibrations of the string, and these sounds resonate inside the cello. Cello strings are fifths (five notes apart) and each string creates their own frequency when you place your finger down on different parts of the string. As you place your finger down the fingerboard to the bridge of the cello, it creates a higher frequency. As you place your fingers up the fingerboard, it creates a lower frequency. Each string has different frequencies because of the thickness/wavelength of the string. The more thick/smaller wavelength the string is, the lower frequency the cello creates. Additionally, cello's have harmonics on each of the four strings. Each at a difference frequency and when you play the harmonic, it produces a loud clear sound. When you play a harmonic, this creates a shorter wavelength which in turn produces a higher frequency sound.
To a molecular biologist, the word ‘evolution’ evokes images of fossils, dusty rocks, and phylogenetic trees covering eons. The fields of molecular biology and evolutionary biology diverged during the twentieth century, but new experimental technologies have lead to a fusion of the two disciplines. The result is that evolutionary biologists have the unprecedented ability to evaluate how genetic change produces novel phenotypes that allow adaptation. It’s a great time to start a new podcast on evolution! Molecular biology is an experimental approach that was born in 1953 with the discovery of the structure of DNA. Its goal is to understand how cells and organisms work at the level of biological molecules such as DNA, RNA, and proteins. Some of the experimental tools of molecular biology include recombinant DNA, nucleotide sequencing, mutagenesis, and DNA-mediated transformation. The experiments of molecular biology often involve simplified, or reductionist systems in which much of the complexity of nature is ignored. Variation in individuals, populations, and the environment are set aside. Data produced by the techniques of molecular biology can lead to decisive conclusions about cause and effect. Evolutionary biology embraces variation, and in fact attempts to explain it. The basis for variation in organisms is usually inferred by associating phenotypes, sequences, and alleles. The problem with this approach is that alternative explanations are often plausible, and conclusions are rarely as decisive as those achieved with molecular biology. We can turn to Darwin’s finches as a good illustration of the difference between fields. Darwin hypothesized that variation in the beaks of finches was a consequence of diet, but how such variation occurred was unknown. It was not until 2004 that it was shown that beak shape and size could be controlled by two different genes. The techniques of DNA sequencing, mutagenesis, and the ability to introduce altered DNA into cells and organisms have been the catalyst for the fusion of molecular biology and evolutionary biology into a new and far more powerful science, which Dean and Thornton call a ‘functional synthesis’. As a consequence, genotype can be definitively connected with phenotype, allowing resolution of fundamental questions in evolution that have been puzzles for many years. Microbes are perfect subjects for study by evolutionary biologists, as they are readily manipulable and rapidly reproduce. However no organism is now very far from the eye of this new science. Subjects as diverse as insecticide resistance, coat color in mice, evolution of color vision, and much more are all amenable to scrutiny by the ‘functional synthesis’. This Week in Evolution will cover all aspects of the functional synthesis, irrespective of organism. My co-host is Nels Elde, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Utah. Nels has appeared on This Week in Virology to discuss the evolution of virus-host conflict, and his lab’s story on the evolutionary battle for iron between mammalian transferrin and bacterial transferrin-binding protein was covered on This Week in Microbiology.
At least one-third of all cancer cases are preventable. Prevention offers the most cost-effective long-term strategy for the control of cancer, says World Health Organization. Followings are various factors which are preventable. Tobacco use is the single greatest avoidable risk factor for cancer mortality worldwide, causing an estimated 22% of cancer deaths per year. In 2004, 1.6 million of the 7.4 million cancer deaths were due to tobacco use. Tobacco smoking causes many types of cancer, including cancers of the lung, oesophagus, larynx (voice box), mouth, throat, kidney, bladder, pancreas, stomach and cervix. About 70% of the lung cancer burden can be attributed to smoking alone. Second-hand smoke (SHS), also known as environmental tobacco smoke, has been proven to cause lung cancer in nonsmoking adults. Smokeless tobacco (also called oral tobacco, chewing tobacco or snuff) causes oral, oesophageal and pancreatic cancer. 2. Dietary factors, obesity and being overweight Dietary modification is another important approach to cancer control. There is a link between overweight and obesity to many types of cancer such as oesophagus, colorectum, breast, endometrium and kidney. Diets high in fruits and vegetables may have a protective effect against many cancers. Conversely, excess consumption of red and preserved meat may be associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer. In addition, healthy eating habits that prevent the development of diet-associated cancers will also lower the risk of cardiovascular disease. 3. Physical inactivity Regular physical activity and the maintenance of a healthy body weight, along with a healthy diet, will considerably reduce cancer risk. National policies and programmes should be implemented to raise awareness and reduce exposure to cancer risk factors, and to ensure that people are provided with the information and support they need to adopt healthy lifestyles. 4. Alcohol use Alcohol use is a risk factor for many cancer types including cancer of the oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, oesophagus, liver, colorectum and breast. Risk of cancer increases with the amount of alcohol consumed. The risk from heavy drinking for several cancer types (e.g. oral cavity, pharynx, larynx and oesophagus) substantially increases if the person is also a heavy smoker. Attributable fractions vary between men and women for certain types of alcohol-related cancer, mainly because of differences in average levels of consumption. For example, 22% of mouth and oropharynx cancers in men are attributable to alcohol whereas in women the attributable burden drops to 9%. A similar sex difference exists for oesophageal and liver cancers (Rehm et al., 2004). Infectious agents are responsible for almost 22% of cancer deaths in the developing world and 6% in industrialized countries. Viral hepatitis B and C cause cancer of the liver; human papilloma virus infection causes cervical cancer; the bacterium Helicobacter pylori increases the risk of stomach cancer. In some countries the parasitic infection schistosomiasis increases the risk of bladder cancer and in other countries the liver fluke increases the risk of cholangiocarcinoma of the bile ducts. Preventive measures include vaccination and prevention of infection and infestation. 6. Environmental pollution Environmental pollution of air, water and soil with carcinogenic chemicals accounts for 1–4% of all cancers (IARC/WHO, 2003). Exposure to carcinogenic chemicals in the environment can occur through drinking water or pollution of indoor and ambient air. In Bangladesh, 5–10% of all cancer deaths in an arsenic-contaminated region were attributable to arsenic exposure (Smith, Lingas & Rahman, 2000). Exposure to carcinogens also occurs via the contamination of food by chemicals, such as aflatoxins or dioxins. Indoor air pollution from coal fires doubles the risk of lung cancer, particularly among non-smoking women (Smith, Mehta & Feuz, 2004). Worldwide, indoor air pollution from domestic coal fires is responsible for approximately 1.5% of all lung cancer deaths. Coal use in households is particularly widespread in Asia. 7. Occupational carcinogens More than 40 agents, mixtures and exposure circumstances in the working environment are carcinogenic to humans and are classified as occupational carcinogens (Siemiatycki et al., 2004). That occupational carcinogens are causally related to cancer of the lung, bladder, larynx and skin, leukaemia and nasopharyngeal cancer is well documented. Mesothelioma (cancer of the outer lining of the lung or chest cavity) is to a large extent caused by work-related exposure to asbestos. Occupational cancers are concentrated among specific groups of the working population, for whom the risk of developing a particular form of cancer may be much higher than for the general population. About 20–30% of the male and 5–20% of the female working-age population (people aged 15–64 years) may have been exposed to lung carcinogens during their working lives, accounting for about 10% of lung cancers worldwide. About 2% of leukaemia cases worldwide are attributable to occupational exposures. Ionizing radiation is carcinogenic to humans. Knowledge on radiation risk has been mainly acquired from epidemiological studies of the Japanese A-bomb survivors as well as from studies of medical and occupational radiation exposure cohorts. Ionizing radiation can induce leukaemia and a number of solid tumours, with higher risks at young age at exposure. Residential exposure to radon gas from soil and building materials is estimated to cause between 3% and 14% of all lung cancers, making it the second cause of lung cancer after tobacco smoke. Radon levels in homes can be reduced by improving the ventilation and sealing floors and walls. Ionizing radiation is an essential diagnostic and therapeutic tool. To guarantee that benefits exceed potential radiation risks radiological medical procedures should be appropriately prescribed and properly performed, to reduce unnecessary radiation doses, particularly in children. Ultraviolet (UV) radiation, and in particular solar radiation, is carcinogenic to humans, causing all major types of skin cancer, such as basal cell carcinoma (BCC), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and melanoma. Globally in 2000, over 200 000 cases of melanoma were diagnosed and there were 65 000 melanoma-associated deaths. Avoiding excessive exposure, use of sunscreen and protective clothing are effective preventive measures. UV-emitting tanning devices are now also classified as carcinogenic to humans based on their association with skin and ocular melanoma cancers. - « India to provide all treatment facilities to cancer patients – Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh - Kerala Campaign Against Cancer » Dr. Anil SinghalCancer prevention – one-third of all cancer cases are preventable by Dr. Anil Singhal ( Author at Spirit India ) Posted on January 6th, 2014 at 10:20 pm. Find more from SpiritIndia on: Cancer
What Is Hydroponics Courtesy of American Hydroponics Hydroponics is the growing of plants without using soil. Plants are instead grown in an inert medium, and fed a nutrient solution which includes all the elements necessary for plant growth. Advantages of Hydroponics - Hydroponics makes it possible to grow plants in locations where it would not normally be possible, e.g. poor soil, rocky areas, even balconies. With the use of artificial lighting, it is even possible to successfully garden in a spare room or garage. - Less labor is required than growing in soil because no digging or weeding is required. - Nutrients and moisture are fully accessible in a hydroponic system; since plants do not need to compete for nutrients, more can be grown in a smaller area. - The increased control over growing conditions makes it easier to provide the best possible environment for plants, leading to better quality produce and higher yields. - Fast growing, healthy plants grown by hydroponic methods are more resistant to pests and diseases. You will also notice improved flavor and texture in hydroponically grown fruits and vegetables. Hydroponic growing requires some form of inert growing medium to support for plant and protect roots from sunlight. Many different media are used for hydroponic gardening, but all must provide the following: - Physical support for the plant. - Free passage of moisture (nutrient solution) to the root zone. - Proper drainage of surplus moisture. - Adequate air circulation to roots. Typical Materials Include: - Coarse sand, such as washed river sand-not beach sand. - Gravel, 1/8″-3/8″ (3-10mm) in diameter. - Perlite, screened grade - Vermiculite (can also be mixed with other media to increase water retention) - Expanded Clay Proper nutrient formulation is essential to hydroponics. There are thirteen mineral elements necessary for satisfactory plant growth, and all must be present in the proper proportions. Although the “minor” elements are required in much smaller quantities than the “major” elements, plant growth will suffer if even one of these nutrients is missing. Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) NFT was developed by Dr. Allen Cooper at the “Glasshouse Crops Research Institute” in Great Britain. In this method of hydroponic growing a thin film of nutrient-laden water spreads along the bottom of specially designed channels, flows down to a collector at the end of the channel, then drains to a reservoir tank. From the tank it is pumped back up to the top of the channel. Plants are placed at intervals along the channel, and grown with their root ends constantly moistened by the nutrient film. The nutrient film is shallow enough for most of the root mass to have direct access to oxygen from the surrounding air; splashing action when the nutrient solution returns to the reservoir tank also enhances oxygenation. Advantages of the NFT System - Low capital cost compared to other systems. - Rapid planting and turn-around of crops. - Precise control of nutrients. - Drying out between watering is avoided. - Easy control of temperature by warming solution to optimum root temperatures. - Soil sterilization is not necessary. - Excellent water conservation. Hints to Remember When Establishing a System - Check the water supply for quantity and quality, and have it analyzed if necessary. It is sometimes advisable to modify the nutrient formulation based on the mineral content of the water. (If you are on town water you may be able to get a copy of the water analysis from your local water district.) - It is important to use the correct type of channel, one which is wide enough so that normal root development will not dam the flow, and that allows the roots to breathe. Avoid round pipes–flat-bottomed channel is best. Also be wary of black plastics, as the temperature can rise excessively on a hot day. - Install the channels with a minimum gradient of 1 in 40. To avoid pooling, make sure the gradient is steady and straight, with no dips or depressions in the channel bottom. - Flow rate in channel is affected by the length and gradient of channel run, as well as the pressure and flow of the nutrient supply. - Polythene and PVC pipe are usually used for supply and drain lines, and must be sized for adequate capacity. As drain lines operate by gravity flow, they must also be installed with a drop, or gradient, along their length. Drain lines must also be considerably larger than supply lines, which are pressurized. - The reservoir tank should be sized so that one-half of its usable volume is sufficient to supply all channels; the tank remains half-full during operation. The tank should be constructed of non-toxic materials. - Install a submersible pump which is capable of maintaining a flow of 0.5 – 1.0 liter per minute per gully. Attach a simple float valve to the water supply to maintain a constant water level and avoid burning out the pump. It is best to choose a pump with a comfortable margin of excess capacity. For commercial applications we recommend the Sta-rite line of pumps. - All components exposed to the nutrient solution (piping, fittings, pumps, tanks, etc.) must be of non-toxic materials, i.e. stainless steel or virgin plastics. Testing Nutrient Solutions The secret to obtaining consistently good results from hydroponics is to provide the best possible nutrient solution. The two factors to monitor are nutrient strength, and how acid or alkaline the solution is. Fortunately, there is a simple test for each of these. One method of checking the strength of a nutrient solution is to measure how well it conducts electricity. Although absolutely pure water is not a conductor, the flow of electricity increases proportionally as salts are added. So measuring electrical conductivity (EC) is a direct indication of the nutrient level in a solution. A CF (Conductivity Factor) meter determines conductivity by measuring the amount of electricity that passes between two electrodes placed in the solution. CF meters designed for use with hydroponic systems usually have a scale of 0-100 CF units. Nutrient level is also often expressed in Parts Per Million (ppm), so it is helpful to know that 65 PPM is equivalent to one CF unit. (Just for the record, ten CF units are equal to 1 milliMho, also called milliSiemen.) Different crops have different nutrient needs and grow better at different CF values. Lettuce, for example, grows best between 6 and 12 CF units, while tomatoes are heavier feeders and are happiest at 22 to 28 CF units. Adding more nutrient (in the proper proportions, of course) will increase the CF level. To lower the CF reading of a solution, simply add more water. Plants generally grow best at levels of 7.5-20 CF, although readings of 20-30 CF are considered acceptable. Nutrient levels above 30 CF should be avoided, as there is the potential for soluble salt damage. In order to optimize the nutrient solution for a specific crop, commercial growers generally segregate different crops, growing each in a separate system. This is not usually necessary for the home gardener, as satisfactory results may be obtained by using a nutrient level that represents a compromise of the needs of the various plants. Most people are familiar with pH (“potential hydrogen”) as an indicator of how acid or alkaline a solution is. The pH scale ranges from 0 pH (very acidic) to 14 pH (highly alkaline). Pure water, at 7 pH, is neutral-neither acidic or alkaline. Maintaining proper pH is critical, whether growing in soil or hydroponically. Plants absorb each nutrient element only within a certain pH range, and because this range is different for different nutrients, there is only a relatively small pH range in which all nutrients are available. Plants can generally survive within a pH range of 5.0 – 7.5. Below 5.0 pH there is a danger of burning and destroying the sensitive root tissues, while at pH levels of 7.0 and above some nutrients may precipitate out of solution and become unavailable to the plants. The optimum level is about 6.3 or 6.5 pH, with anything in the range of 6.0 – 7.0 being acceptable. Unless an automated controller is being used, the pH level should be manually tested and corrected daily. The natural tendency in hydroponics systems is for the pH level to rise as plants use up nutrient. This must be corrected by use of an adjusting “pH down” (acidic) solution. There are also alkali, or “pH up” solutions available to correct a pH level that has become too low. An adjusting solution (either acid or alkali) should not be introduced into the system at full strength because this can lock up (precipitate) nutrients, in addition to being a shock to the system. Ideally, the adjuster should be diluted to about 0.001 strength (0.1% solution) before it is introduced into the system. For example, if you begin with “full strength” (75% solution) of phosphoric acid, you should dilute one part acid to about 750 parts of fresh water. Similarly, acid (or alkali) at 8% strength would ideally be diluted one part adjuster to 80 parts fresh water. More Operating Hints - Plants may be sprayed as required, but be careful about allowing spray runoff to drain into the nutrient solution, as toxic levels may accumulate. For example, excessive levels of copper spray in the nutrient can cause certain plants to lose fruit or even die. - Root tissues should not be allowed to get either too cold or too hot. Maintain the nutrient solution at a minimum temperature of 47-50°F (8°-10°C) at night, and a maximum of 65°-68°F (18°-20°C) during the day. It may be necessary to heat the nutrient in winter. Avoid excessively high temperatures. - When using an automatic controller, be sure to check the pH and nutrient level manually at least once a week. Clean and buffer the pH probe weekly. Check the conductivity cell and clean if any signs of deposit are visible on the measuring surface. - If plants begin to exhibit unusual signs (such as discoloration, wilting or dying leaves) you should change the nutrient as a precautionary measure. Flush the system with plain water for several hours, then refill the tank and introduce fresh nutrients. Be cautious about using very cold water on a hot day as the plants could suffer temperature shock. A great deal of satisfaction can be gained from growing healthy crops and producing quality fruits and vegetables, whether for your family table or for commercial sale in the local or export markets.
The Total column shows the total number of people in that county or town with this surname. For example, there were 279 people called BIARD in Hognaston at the time of the 1881 census. The Frequency column shows the percentage of people in this county or town with this surname. For example, a frequency of 2500.0000 in Hognaston means that 2500.0000% of the people in Hognaston on census day were called BIARD. The Index column shows the relative probability of finding someone called BIARD in this county or town, compared with the probability of finding them anywhere in Britain as a whole. An index of 1 means that if you pick someone at random from this county or town, you have exactly the same probability of picking someone called BIARD as if you picked at random from the whole of the UK. Where the index is higher than 1, then you are more likely to find someone called BIARD here than if you picked from the UK as a whole, and where it's lower then you are less likely. The actual figure shows the level of probability - for example, a figure of 2 would indicate that you are twice as likely to find someone called BIARD here than in the UK as a whole, and 10 would make it ten times as likely. The value of 0.28 in Hognaston means that you are 0.28 times as likely to find someone with the surname of BIARD in Hognaston than you would be in the whole of the UK.
Data compression is the process in which big files are turned into smaller files. For example a large Word document is compressed to a smaller archive file like Zip or 7Z. To some data compression looks like magic. Data compression is not magic but an algorithmic process in which the same data is represented in a more efficient way. Actually one way to look at data compression is as data redundancy. In other words instead of thinking that the compressed file is smaller than the original data file think of the compressed file as the original file and the bigger data file as a very in efficient representation of it. For example lets say that you have a text file with this content the letter A then a thousand spaces and the letter B. The file would consume 1002 characters. This is however a very inefficient representation it would be much shorter to have a file with a content that says something like A then thousand spaces then B. So why do computers store and use inefficient files at all? The reason is simple they are easier and faster to handle and process and when storage is not a problem there is no real disadvantage of storing bigger files. But when you need to backup file or for example send them over the Internet making them smaller is more efficient. Compressing files is done by using one out of many what are knows as compression or archiving utilities. There are many compression algorithms that were developed each with its advantages and disadvantages. For example some compress files faster while some compress file slower but achieve higher compression ratio. Some compression types can compress and pack multiple files while some can work only on one file at a time. Some are better for certain file types for example some compression algorithms are optimized for multimedia files while others for textual documents. Some consume more memory in order to compress the data while others are slim and can run on resource limited computers. Although there are many compression algorithms they all fall under two main categories. One is known as lossless compression and the other as lossy compression. The difference is in the ability to revert the compressed file into the original not compressed file and get the exact same data. Lossless compression means that if you compress a file into an archive and then decompress the archive you will get the exact same file. Lossy compression means that if you compress a file into an archive and then decompress the archive you will get a slightly different file. Why would you want lossy compression that does not revert to the same file? Because it can result in much higher compression ratio. For some type of files losing some data is not noticeable while the high compression ratio is a great advantage. An example for such files are pictures and videos. On the other hand lossless compression is a must when compression data files such as documents and spreadsheets. Danette Mckay explains more about many subjects on 7-zip
- Shopping Bag ( 0 items ) This book is based on the belief that decision making is perhaps the most critical of all teaching skills and that good assessments lie at the core of good decision making. To become better teachers then, teachers must learn to make informed decisions about both individual students (learning decisions) and about groups of students (teaching decisions). This book gives equal status to both types of decisions and shows how assessment is integral to both. The organization of the book is sequential, mirroring the way in which information should be used to make decisions. It begins with a conceptual framework linking information to decision making, then moves to the design of assessment instruments and the collection of assessment information, then to the interpretation of assessment information and, finally, to reporting the results of both the assessment and the decision-making process. There is an emphasis throughout on linking why teachers assess with what and how they assess. Other key features include: • Practical Framework — The book's framework corresponds to the framework that teachers use to grade their students: conduct (classroom behavior), effort (student motivation), and achievement (student learning). • Unique Chapters — There are separate chapters on interpreting assessment information prior to decision making and on reporting assessment information to parents, teachers, and administrators. • Flexibility — Because of its modest length and price, and its practical focus on the links between assessment and everyday teacher decision making, this text can be used either in full-length assessment courses for teachers or to teach the assessment units in educational psychology or integrated methods courses. Contents: Preface. Introduction to Classroom Assessment. The Why, What, and When of Assessment. Assessing Achievement Using Selection and Short-Answer Tasks. Assessing Student Achievement Using Extended Response and Performance Tasks. Assessing Student Classroom Behavior and Effort. Interpreting Assessment Results. Grading and Other Decisions. Communicating Assessment Results.
Heart failure, or congestive heart failure (CHF), is a very common disease, afflicting approximately 4.8 million Americans. While many other forms of heart disease have become less common in recent years, CHF has been increasing steadily. This may be because more people with other forms of heart disease survive longer but are left with damaged hearts, which leads to CHF. Also, as the elderly population increases, there are more people at high risk of developing CHF. Approximately 400,000 new CHF cases occur each year, and it is the most common diagnosis in hospital patients over 65. In this article, we will discuss congestive heart failure -- its causes, its warning signs and how it can be treated. The purpose of the heart is to pump blood, which contains oxygen and nutrients, to the rest of the body. CHF is simply the failure of the heart to perform this main function adequately. Of course, a lack of blood pumped to the body is only considered CHF if the heart actually receives a sufficient volume of blood from the incoming vessels in the first place (i.e., normal filling pressures). When there is not enough blood for the heart to pump out, the problem is not CHF. CHF occurs when the flow of blood from the heart (cardiac output) decreases, or fluid backs-up behind the failing ventricle, or both. Physicians have several different ways of describing heart failure: - Unilateral heart failure: Because the heart is basically two pumps (right side, left side) in one, either side can fail independently of the other. - Left-sided heart failure: When the left ventricle can't pump out enough blood, it gets backed-up in the lungs (behind the left ventricle), causing pulmonary edema, a build-up of fluid in the lungs. Among other things, this brings about shortness of breath. Left-sided heart failure often leads to right-sided heart failure. - Right-sided heart failure: The right ventricle cannot pump out enough blood, causing fluid to back up in the veins and then in capillaries of the body (behind the right ventricle). Because of the back-up, fluid leaks out of the capillaries and builds up in the tissues, a condition called systemic edema. Edema is especially noticeable in the legs because the lower half of the body drains into the right side of the heart . - Directional heart failure: - Backwards heart failure: The ventricle is not pumping out all the blood that comes into it. This increases the ventricular filling pressure and systemic or pulmonary edema. In fact, the heart can only meet the needs of the body if the ventricular filling pressure is high. - Forward heart failure: The heart is not pumping out enough blood to meet the needs of the body. Because less blood reaches the kidneys, they conserve salt and water, which contributes to excess fluid retention and edema. Forward failure also decreases the blood flow to various organs, causing weakness and fatigue. Time-dependent heart failure: - Acute heart failure: This describes heart failure that occurs suddenly. A heart attack can cause acute heart failure if a large enough part of the heart muscle dies. When this happens, the heart cannot pump out enough blood, causing heart failure and pulmonary edema. This makes breathing very difficult and can lead to death. Acute heart failure can also occur when a heart valve suddenly stops functioning or the chordae tendineae, the muscle and cord that helps the mitral valve function properly, suddenly ruptures. - Chronic heart failure: This describes heart failure that develops gradually. The symptoms are subtle at first but become more acute over time. - Phasic heart failure: The heart can fail in either of the two phases of the cardiac cycle -- contraction (systole) and rest (diastole). - Systolic heart failure: The heart has difficulty contracting and pumping out enough blood. This causes weakness, fatigue and decreased ability to exercise. - Diastolic heart failure: The heart is unable to fill properly during diastole, usually due to increased filling pressure. This causes systemic or pulmonary edema or both. - Output vs. demand heart failure: - High-output heart failure Cardiac output is normal or a little bit high, but demand for blood flow is abnormally high (hyperthyroidism, anemia, severe infections). The heart is unable to deliver the increased amount of blood and fails. - Low-output failure Cardiac output is low, but demand for blood flow is normal. The heart is unable to meet this demand and fails. Low-output failure is more common than high-output failure. Causes of CHF Blood Flow Through the Heart CHF is not a specific diagnosis, but is a result of another underlying condition. Finding the underlying condition is important because the treatment often depends on what that condition is. Many conditions can lead to CHF: - High blood pressure (hypertension) increases the work of the heart. The heart has to pump blood against higher resistance and must therefore generate more force. The added strain on the heart muscle can cause failure. This is one of the most common causes of CHF in the United States. - Coronary artery disease causes ischemia, inadequate oxygen supply to the heart muscle, which can damage or destroy heart muscle tissue, leading to failure. Coronary artery disease is the other most common cause of CHF in the United States. - Valvular heart disease causes improper blood flow through the heart, which increases the heart's workload. There are three main types of faulty heart valves: - Narrow (stenotic) valves restrict the flow of blood. To generate enough pressure to pump blood through a narrow valve, the heart has to work much harder. - Leaky (regurgitant) valves allow blood to flow back through after it has been pumped out. The heart must pump more blood with each heartbeat (the blood coming in normally plus blood leaking back), greatly increasing its workload. - Endocarditis is an infection of the heart valves that can damage them. - Abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias) interrupt the normal filling and pumping cycle. If the heart beats too slow (bradycardia), then not enough blood gets pumped out. If the heart beats too fast (tachycardia), then there is not enough time for the heart to fill with blood. In either case, cardiac output is reduced causing the heart to fail. - Overactive thyroid gland (hyperthyroidism) increases the overall rate of metabolism in the body. The heart must circulate blood more frequently so that the body's tissues get an adequate amount of oxygen. This increased work can cause the heart to fail. - A severe decrease in red blood cells (anemia) reduces the supply of oxygen in circulated blood (blood cells carry oxygen). To provide adequate amounts of oxygen to bodily tissues, the heart must circulate blood more frequently. This extra work can cause the heart to fail. - Diseases that affect the heart muscle itself (cardiomyopathy) result in inadequate contraction of the heart. This decreases the cardiac output, which leads to CHF. Technically, cardiomyopathy only means diseases that originate and primarily affect the myocardium. However, many physicians also use the term in "ischemic cardiomyopathy," a condition resulting from the scarring caused by coronary artery disease. Diseases that cause cardiomyopathy include: - Infections (viral, bacterial, AIDS, Lyme disease, rheumatic fever, etc.) - Toxins (alcohol, cocaine, radiation, chemotherapy, etc.) - Nutritional deficiencies (thiamine deficiency causing beri-beri) - Connective tissue disorders (lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, etc.) - Neuromuscular diseases (muscular dystrophy) - Infiltrative (amyloidosis, sarcoidosis, cancer) - Idiopathic (unknown) - Peripartum cardiomyopathy - Diseases that affect the pericardium (the sac surrounding the heart) restrict the ability of the heart to stretch when it fills. The filling is reduced, thereby diminishing cardiac output. A thickened or scarred sac (constrictive pericarditis) or fluid within the sac (pericardial tamponade) both reduce the ability of the heart to fill. - Birth defects in the formation of the heart (congenital heart disease) produce an additional workload on the heart eventually causing it to fail. These defects involve abnormal formation of the walls between different chambers of the heart (hole in the heart), abnormal formation of the heart valves, or abnormal positions of the blood vessels that bring blood to or from the heart. Precipitating FactorsMany other factors, called precipitating factors, place an extra burden on a failed heart. Identifying the precipitating factor, as well as the initial cause of CHF, is important for directing proper treatment. Precipitating factors include: - Stopping prescribed medications - Excessive intake of fluids or salt - Uncontrolled hypertension - Heart attack - Ischemia (lack of blood to heart muscle) - Cardiac arrhythmia (abnormal heart rhythm) - Pulmonary embolus (blood clot in lung) - Hyperthyroidism (overactive thyroid) - Hypoxia (low level of oxygen in blood usually due to lung disease) - New heart valve malfunction CHF often develops slowly over many years. As the heart fails, the body compensates to maintain the cardiac output and blood flow to the organs. Although these compensatory mechanisms are useful, they often cause further heart damage and worsen CHF. This compensation usually delays the development of CHF symptoms. Sympathetic Nervous System The sympathetic nervous system is part of the autonomic nervous system, which works at the subconscious level and controls the workings of many organs (e.g., heart, blood vessels, glands, intestines and bladder). Sympathetic nerves secrete a chemical called norepinephrine, which belongs to a class of chemicals called catecholamines or adrenergics. Norepinephrine binds to different receptors on various organs and can have a number of effects on those organs. These receptors are: When the heart begins to fail, the first thing the body does is activate the sympathetic nervous system. Sympathetic nerve stimulation increases the heart rate and the force of contraction and constricts the body's veins. These factors work together to increase cardiac output. However, sympathetic nerve stimulation also constricts arteries, which increases blood pressure. The increase in pressure forces the heart to work harder and use more oxygen, which is thought to cause further deterioration of the heart over time. The body then decreases the blood flow to the kidneys. This activates the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system. The decreased blood flow causes the kidney to release an enzyme called renin. Renin converts an inactive plasma protein, angiotensinogen, into an active hormone called angiotensin II. Angiotensin II is a powerful constrictor of both arteries and veins and stimulates the adrenal gland to secrete a hormone called aldosterone. Aldosterone causes the kidneys to retain salt and water which increases blood volume. The increased blood volume helps to maintain cardiac output by increasing the filling of the heart. However, the increased blood volume, along with the vasoconstriction, also increases blood pressure. This increased pressure causes edema and an increased workload, which may further weaken the heart. The body also increases the secretion of a hormone in the pituitary gland called anti-diuretic hormone (ADH). This causes the kidney to retain more fluid, which increases blood volume and helps cardiac output, but also increases blood pressure, which makes the weakened heart work even harder. There are also changes in the heart muscle itself. The thickness of the muscle layer increases (hypertrophy), enabling the heart to contract with greater force to maintain cardiac output. This increases the need for oxygen, however, and eventually leads to further deterioration. The heart can also enlarge by stretching and thinning its walls (dilation). Initially this may help increase output by increasing the amount of blood that the heart can hold, but the dilation eventually fails and leads to further worsening of the disease. Treatment of CHFThe goal of treatment in CHF is to control the symptoms and treat the underlying cause as well as the precipitating cause. Before prescribing medications, your physician may want you to lose weight and stop smoking. These measures may reduce the workload on the heart as well as control some of the causes of CHF (high blood pressure, coronary artery disease). In addition, reducing the intake of salt and water can improve symptoms and may reduce the need of some medications. Exercise may be helpful to improve overall fitness. However, when CHF is severe, bed rest may be required. - Diuretics (water pills) are medications used to increase the amount of sodium (Na+) and water excreted by the kidneys. This reduces the blood volume and the amount of blood that the heart has to pump, thereby reducing its workload. The goal is to maintain ideal weight by eliminating edema. Diuretics include: - metalazone (Zaroxolyn) - furosemide (Lasix) - bumetanide (Bumex) - Vasodilators are groups of medications that dilate or enlarge blood vessels. During CHF, the blood vessels are often constricted due to the activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system. When vasodilators are used, they decrease the resistance and blood pressure against which the heart must beat, thus increasing the cardiac output. Angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (ACE inhibitors) are very effective vasodilators. This is one of the few medications that have actually been shown to prolong life in CHF patients. ACE inhibitors reduce blood pressure and fluid retention by preventing the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system from working. ACE inhibitors include: - captopril (Capoten) - enalapril (Vasotec) - lisinopril (Zestril, Prinivil) - benazepril (Lotensin) - fosinopril (Monopril) - quinapril (Accupril) - Angiotensin receptor blockers block the effects of angiotensin instead of blocking its production. Angiotensin receptor blockers include: - losartan (Cozaar) - irbesartan (Avapro) - valsartan (Diovan) These medications do not cause the side effect of cough produced by ACE inhibitors. - Nitroglycerin dilates veins and can be taken under the tongue (Nitrostat), intravenously, by mouth (Isosordil, Sorbitrate, ISMO), or by skin patches (Nitro-Dur, Transderm-Nitro). - Calcium channel blockers dilate blood vessels and are sometimes used to treat CHF, especially when ischemia is present. These drugs also tend to decrease the force of the heart's contraction, however, and so can worsen CHF. Calcium channel blockers include: - nifedipine (Procardia XL, Adalat CC) - diltiazem (Cardizem) - verapamil (Calan, Isoptin) - amlodipine (Norvasc) - felodipine (Plendil) - nisoldipine (Sular) - Hydralazine is a vasodilator that acts on arteries. It is used less frequently since ACE inhibitors have been found to be more effective. - Alpha blockers block the alpha-adrenergic receptors of the sympathetic nervous system, thereby dilating blood vessels. Alpha blockers include prazocin (Minipress) and doxazosin (Cardura). Side effects include rapid heartbeat and low blood pressure. - Digitalis medications (digoxin, Lanoxin) increase the force of contraction of the heart muscle and also control abnormal heart rhythms, especially atrial fibrillation and atrial flutter. Therefore, digitalis is most useful when someone with atrial fibrillation or atrial flutter has CHF (a fairly common scenario). It improves heart function without increasing mortality. It has many side effects, including nausea, vomiting, many types of abnormal heart rhythms, confusion and negative interactions with other medications. - Beta blockers have been found to be useful for CHF. By blocking the beta-adrenergic receptors of the sympathetic nervous system, the heart rate and force of contraction are decreased. Of course, this must be done carefully because decreasing these two things can actually worsen CHF. Beta blockers include: - metoprolol (Lopressor, Toprol-XL) - atenolol (Tenormin) - carvedilol (Coreg) - Sympathomimetic medications act similarly to the sympathetic nervous system and are used when CHF is severe, such as in cardiogenic shock. They treat CHF by increasing the force of the heart's contraction. Sympathomimetic drugs include dopamine (Inotropin) and dobutamine (Dobutrex). Because they must be taken intravenously and are extremely strong, these medications are used mainly when CHF has become life threatening. They can cause abnormal heart rhythms and ischemia. Occasionally, there are circumstances when surgery can treat CHF. The most common surgical procedures are: - Heart valve replacement When a heart valve malfunctions, valve replacement can reverse the symptoms. In some cases, this can be a life-saving procedure. - Congenital heart defect correction Surgical repair of congenital heart defects is frequently used to restore normal functioning as much as possible. - Coronary artery bypass If Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the cause of CHF, then correcting the CAD with coronary artery bypass grafts can be useful. - Heart transplant When CHF persists and worsens despite maximum therapy, then a heart transplant can be an option. Patients considered for transplants usually suffer from severe symptoms (Class 4 on the New York Heart Association's scale), have ejection fractions of 15 to 20 percent and have one year survival rates of 50 percent. The improvement in anti-rejection drugs (especially cyclosporine) have increased survival from this procedure. There are also some devices that assist the severely failed heart, such as an intra-aortic balloon pump and a left ventricular assist device. These are used as bridges to keep a person alive until a donor heart can be found. - How Your Heart Works - How Heart Attacks and Angina Work - How the Diagnosis of Heart Disease Works - What is a heart bypass operation? - How Blood Works - Heart Drug Could Save Lives - How Exercise Works - What is blood pressure? - How Cholesterol Works - Heart Failure Online - HeartPoint Gallery- Good animations and discussions of various heart diseases - Postgraduate Medicine: Causes of Congestive Heart Failure About the Author Carl Bianco, M.D., is an emergency physician practicing at Dorchester General Hospital in Cambridge, MD, located on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Dr. Bianco attended Medical school at Georgetown University School of Medicine and received his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University majoring in nursing and pre-med. He Completed an internship and residency in Emergency Medicine at Akron City Hospital in Akron, Ohio. Physical Exam FindingsWhen a physician examines someone with CHF, he or she may find the following: - Enlargement of the heart (cardiomegaly) - A third heart sound (S3) -- Normally, the heart makes two sounds (S1 and S2) often described as "lub dub, lub dub." In CHF there is a third sound, which is also called an S3 gallop because the three sounds are reminiscent of a horse galloping. - Sound of fluid in the lungs during inspiration (Rales) - Enlargement of the jugular vein in the neck (jugular venous distention) -- This occurs because CHF causes an increase in the amount of blood and pressure in veins. - Enlargement of the liver (hepatomegaly) -- This is caused by a back-up of blood from the heart. - Hepatojugular reflex -- When the liver is depressed, more blood travels into the jugular veins, causing them to become even more enlarged. - Edema -- This is usually located in the legs, ankles, feet. The term "pitting edema" is often used because applying slight fingertip pressure produces a temporary pit which resolves quickly. - Fast heart rate (tachycardia) - Increased rate of breathing (tachypnea) - High blood pressure (hypertension) - Low blood pressure (hypotension) -- When the cardiac output is severely decreased, then low blood pressure occurs. This is obviously an ominous sign and may mean death is imminent. This is also called cardiogenic shock. - Fluid in the abdominal cavity (ascites) - Fluid in the space between the lungs and the ribs (pleural effusion)
Autism is not a disease, a mental illness, or a behavior problem. It is a complex disorder of the central nervous system that affects many different expressions of brain development, including social interactions and communications. Most people with autism have problems communicating, forming relationships, and interpreting and responding to the external world. Asperger syndrome is a condition similar to autism but without the problems in language development. Autism is classified by the American Psychiatric Association as one of a group of disorders known as pervasive development disorders, which includes, besides Asperger syndrome, the conditions childhood disintegrative disorder, Rett disorder, and general pervasive developmental disorder. Autism occurs at all intelligence levels. Although about 75% of autistic individuals have an intelligence quotient (IQ) below average, the other 25% have average or above average intelligence. About 10% have high intelligence in a specific area such as mathematics. Autism begins in early childhood. The signs and symptoms of autism may become apparent by the time the child reaches the age of 18 months, and they almost always become apparent by the time the child is 3 years old. The person with autism appears to have difficulty understanding what he or she is experiencing. In people who are not autistic, the brain integrates input from the various senses (sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touching sensations) to interpret experiences. Some experts theorize that the brain of a person with autism is unable to integrate the sensory inputs, thus making the person incapable of interpreting and responding to what is happening around him or her. The cause of autism is unknown, but research findings indicate a strong genetic component. The tendency to autism runs in families, and people with autism appear to have an inborn predisposition to developing the disorder. Most likely, environmental, immunologic, and metabolic factors also influence the development of the disorder. Autism is linked to certain medical conditions, including fragile X syndrome, untreated phenylketonuria (PKU), tuberous sclerosis, and congenital rubella syndrome. Fetal exposure to toxins, such as hazardous chemicals, may play a role in autism. Over time, many different theories have been proposed about what causes autism. Some believed that emotional trauma at an early age, especially "bad parenting", was to blame. This theory has been rejected. A reaction to routine childhood vaccines has been blamed for autism. Although some research on this subject has revealed no link between vaccines and autism, the debate is ongoing. Many still believe that vaccines could be a factor. The list of traits and behaviors associated with autism is long, and each affected person expresses his or her own combination of these behaviors. None of these behaviors is common to all people with autism, and many are occasionally exhibited by people who are not autistic. Some people with autism have more problems with communication, while others have more problems with social interactions. However, certain traits and behaviors are common to many people with autism, as follows: Studies from Europe indicate that there may be a link between the MMR (measles/mumps/rubella) vaccine and autism. [Sara Solovitch, "Do vaccines spur autism in kids?", San Jose Mercury News, May 25th, 1999]
Scripting started out as storing a sequence of commands as a text file, and then feeding the text file into an interpreter or shell. Early scripting-languages would just read, process, and execute one command at a time. There was no requirement to compile the script into a separate executable file. The source was the program. Most modern scripting languages feature "interpreters" that perform an internal compilation step, and execute an intermediate code; but this is done automatically, transparently to the developer and user. Most scripting languages support features such as: - dynamic typing - direct invocation of external commands - direct interaction with the file system - basic string processing - error control Scripting languages are traditionally used for common system administration tasks like backups, and software installation and configuration. Over time, the distinction between scripting languages and more "traditional" compiled languages has fuzzed. For example, interpreters for Python can actually cache its intermediate code, for faster startup times, much like programs written in traditional compiled languages. Conversely, traditional compiled languages are in some ways becoming more script-like, supporting dynamic data typing. The VAR type in the original Visual Basic is an example here, as is the dynamic variable type supported in C# 4.0.
Clinical Presentation of Epilepsy and Seizure - Epilepsy is a disorder that is best viewed as a symptom of disturbed electrical activity in the brain, which may be caused by a wide variety of etiologies. It is a collection of many different types of seizures that vary widely in severity, appearance, cause, consequence, and management. Seizures that are prolonged or repetitive can be life-threatening. Seizures occur because a group of cortical neurons discharge abnormally in synchrony. Anything that disrupts the normal homeostasis of neurons and their stability can trigger hyperexcitability and seizures. There are thousands of medical conditions that can cause epilepsy, from genetic mutations to traumatic brain injury. A genetic predisposition to seizures has been observed in many forms of primary generalized epilepsy. Patients with mental retardation, cerebral palsy, head injury, or strokes are at an increased risk for seizures and epilepsy. The more profound the degree of mental retardation as measured by the intelligence quotient (IQ), the greater is the incidence of epilepsy. In the elderly, seizures are primarily of partial onset associated with the focal neuronal injury induced by strokes, neuro- degenerative disorders (e.g., Alzheimer disease), and other conditions. In some cases, if an etiology of seizures can be found and corrected, the patient may not require chronic antiepileptic drug (AED) treatment. Patients can also present with unprovoked seizures that do not have an identifiable cause, and thus by definition have idiopathic or cryptogenic epilepsy. Idiopathic etiology is the term used for suspected primary generalized seizures, whereas cryptogenic etiology is used if no obvious cause is found for partial-onset seizures. The incidence of idiopathic epilepsy is higher in children. Many factors have been shown to precipitate seizures in susceptible individuals. Hyperventilation can precipitate absence seizures. Sleep, sleep deprivation, sensory stimuli, and emotional stress increase the frequency of seizures. Hormonal changes occurring around the time of menses, puberty, or pregnancy have also been associated with the onset of or an increased frequency of seizures. A careful history should be obtained from patients presenting with seizures because theophylline, alcohol, high-dose phenothiazines, antidepressants (especially maprotiline or bupropion), and street drug use have been associated with provoking seizures. Perinatal injuries and small gestational weight at birth are also risk factors for the development of partial-onset seizures. Immunizations have not been associated with an increased risk of epilepsy. The International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) has proposed two major schemes for the classification of seizures and epilepsies: the International Classification of Epileptic Seizures and the International Classification of the Epilepsies and Epilepsy Syndromes. The International Classification of Epileptic Seizures (Table bellow) combines the clinical description with certain electrophysiologic findings to classify epileptic seizures. Seizures are divided into two main pathophysiologic groups—partial seizures and generalized seizures— by EEG recordings and clinical symptomatology. Partial (focal) seizures begin in one hemisphere of the brain and— unless they become secondarily generalized—result in an asymmetric motor manifestation. Partial seizures manifest as alterations in motor functions, sensory or somatosensory symptoms, or automatisms. Partial seizures with no loss of consciousness are classified as simple partial (SP). In some cases, patients will describe somatosensory symptoms as a “warning” prior to the development of a GTC seizure. These warnings are in fact simple partial seizures and frequently are termed auras. Partial seizures with an alteration of consciousness are described as complex partial (CP). With CP seizures, the patient can have automatisms, periods of memory loss, or aberrations of behavior. Some patients with CP epilepsy have been mistakenly diagnosed as having psychotic episodes. CP seizures also can progress to GTC seizures. Patients with CP seizures typically are amnestic to these events. Generalized seizures have clinical manifestations that indicate involvement of both hemispheres. Motor manifestations are bilateral, and there is a loss of consciousness. Generalized seizures can be further subdivided by EEG and clinical manifestations. A partial seizure that becomes generalized is referred to as a secondarily generalized seizure. Generalized absence seizures are manifested by a sudden onset, interruption of ongoing activities, a blank stare, and possibly a brief upward rotation of the eyes. They generally occur in young children through adolescence. It is important to differentiate absence seizures from complex partial seizures. International Classification of Epileptic Seizures I. Partial seizures (seizures begin locally) A. Simple (without impairment of consciousness) 1. With motor symptoms 2. With special sensory or somatosensory symptoms 3. With psychic symptoms B. Complex (with impairment of consciousness) 1. Simple partial onset followed by impairment of consciousness with or without automatisms 2. Impaired consciousness at onset with or without automatisms C. Secondarily generalized (partial onset evolving to generalized tonic-clonic seizures) II. Generalized seizures (bilaterally symmetrical and without local onset) G. Infantile spasms III. Unclassified seizures IV. Status epilepticus GTC seizures are what many people think of as epilepsy. The seizure results in a sudden sharp tonic contraction of muscles followed by a period of rigidity and clonic movements. During the seizure, the patient may cry or moan, lose sphincter control, bite the tongue, or develop cyanosis. After the seizure, the patient may have altered consciousness, drowsiness, or confusion for a variable period of time (postictal period) and frequently goes into a deep sleep. Tonic and clonic seizures can occur separately. Brief shock-like muscular contractions of the face, trunk, and extremities are known as myoclonic jerks. They can be isolated events or rapidly repetitive. A sudden loss of muscle tone is known as an atonic seizure. This can be described as a head drop, the dropping of a limb, or a slumping to the ground. These patients often wear protective head ware to prevent trauma. The International Classification of Epilepsies and Epilepsy Syndromes adds components such as age of onset, intellectual development, findings on neurologic examination, and results of neuroimaging studies to define epilepsy syndromes more fully. Syndromes can include one or many different seizure types (e.g., Lennox-Gastaut syndrome). The syndromic approach includes seizure type(s) and possible etiologic classifications (e.g., idiopathic, symptomatic, or unknown). Idiopathic describes syndromes that are presumably genetic but also those in which no underlying etiology is documented or suspected. A family history of seizures is commonly present, and neurologic function is essentially normal except for the occurrence of seizures. Symptomatic cases involve evidence of brain damage or a known underlying cause. A cryptogenic syndrome is assumed to be symptomatic of an underlying condition that cannot be documented. Unknown or undetermined is used when no cause can be identified. This syndromic classification is more important for prognostic determinations than for a classification based simply on seizure type. The syndrome classification scheme requires more information and, in return, provides a more powerful tool for comprehensive clinical management. A patient’s epilepsy is classified based on seizure type (i.e., generalized versus partial) and syndromic type (i.e., idiopathic, symptomatic, or cryptogenic). Clinical Presentation of Epilepsy In most cases, the healthcare provider will not be in a position to witness a seizure. Many patients (particularly those with CP or GTC seizures) are amnestic to the actual seizure event. Obtaining an adequate history and description of the ictal event (including time course) from a third party (e.g., significant other, family member, or witness) is critically important. With treatment the typical clinical presentation of the seizure may change. Symptoms of a specific seizure will depend on seizure type. Although seizures can vary between patients, they tend to be stereotyped within an individual. - CP seizures can include somatosensory or focal motor features. - CP seizures are associated with altered consciousness. - Absence seizures can be almost nondetectable with only very brief (seconds) periods of altered consciousness. - GTC seizures are major convulsive episodes and are always associated with a loss of consciousness. Interictally (between seizure episodes), there are typically no objective or pathognomonic signs There are currently no diagnostic laboratory tests for epilepsy. In some cases, particularly following GTC (or perhaps CP) seizures, serum prolactin levels can be transiently elevated. Laboratory tests can be done to rule out treatable causes of seizures (e.g., hypoglycemia, altered electrolyte concentrations, infections, etc.) that do not represent epilepsy. Other Diagnostic Tests - EEG is very useful in the diagnosis of various seizure disorders. - An epileptiform EEG is found in only approximately 50% of the patients who have epilepsy. - A prolactin serum level obtained within 10 to 20 minutes of a tonic-clonic seizure can be useful in differentiating seizure activity from pseudoseizure activity but not from syncope. - Although magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is very useful (especially imaging of the temporal lobes), a computed tomography (CT) scan typically is not helpful except in the initial evaluation for a brain tumor or cerebral bleeding. Source: pharmacotherapy 7th
Insect Communication and Harmful Insects a. : Properties of objects and characteristics of organisms K (9) Living Organisms – Basic Needs a. : Identify basic needs of organisms b. : Give examples of how organisms depend on each other · Discuss insect communication · Discuss insects that may harm humans · Ant picnic · Make ants on a log · Make ant picnic basket necklace · The Ants go Marching · Read The World of Ants · Beehive Observation · Bee thumbprint activity · Bee Song · Collect insect Celery Peanut butter Raisins Ink pads Construction Paper Masking tape Assorted food to attract ants plastic soda bottle caps fabric scraps Runts candy small plastic ants pipe cleaners Book : The World of Ants by Melvin Berger The Honeybee and the Robber by Eric Carle Activity 1: Insect Communication Ask students to hypothesize how insects communicate. “Do they communicate like humans?” After responses have been given, explain to students that insects communicate by chemicals they excrete called pheromones and some use a special wiggle. Distribute a film canister to each student that contains a cotton ball with a specific scent on it. Make sure that there are of 2 of each scent in the class. The students will smell their own scent and then go around the room to locate a partner. Activity 2: Insects That May Harm Humans Activity 3: Ant Picnic Take children outside for this activity. Ask them to hypothesize (guess) what kind of food ants like. Tape a white sheet to the ground outside. Place several types of food on the sheet such as meat, fruits and vegetables, and sweets. These are to attract ants to the area. Throughout the day, go outside and check the “picnic” area. What kinds of foods do the ants like the best? What other kinds of insects are attracted to the picnic? Activity 4: Ants on a Log Now that we have seen the ants at a picnic, let’s have our own little snack of ants! Cut sticks of celery into three pieces and spread with peanut butter. Place 3 or 4 raisin “ants” on the log and enjoy! Activity 5: Ants on a Picnic Basket Necklace To make the basket, cover the inside of a bottle cap with glue. Cut a 2 in. square of fabric and tuck it into the basket, print side down. Glue three fruit-shaped candies in the basket. Squeeze glue over the tops of the candies and fold the edges of the fabric up and over the candies, tucking the edges between them so that they stick out from the fabric. Cut a 3 in. piece of pipe cleaner. Tuck the ends into each side of the basket to form a handle. Glue a small plastic ant to the handle and another to the basket. Cut a piece of yarn. Tie the yarn to the basket handle, then tie the two ends together to make a hanger for the necklace. Activity 6: The Ants Go Marching Hold up fingers to count along with children the number of ants as they go through the song. Activity 7: Read The World of Ants by Melvin Berger We have a wonderful book about ants to read together. But before we do that, let's talk about what we know about ants so far. We know that they can bite. What else do you know? Where do you think ants live? Where do people live? Do you think ants talk to each other? Let's read our book now. Maybe we will find out the answers to some of our questions about ants." During the book, guide observations about ant homes and communication. Activity 8: Beehive Observation · Instructor will transition from how bees recognize each other by smelling to where bees live. "Now that we know how bees recognize each other (by smelling), let's think about where they live. Have you ever seen a bee's home? Does anyone remember what the bees' home was called in The Honey Robber and the Bee? It's called a beehive. " · Show children an empty beehive with no bees in it. Let them feel how papery it is. · "This is what the outside of some beehives look like. What does it feel like?" (Feels papery) · "Would you like to see the inside of a beehive? Here in the Museum there is a very special beehive that we can look into without getting stung." · Show children a working beehive that they can observe, if one is available. If not, use a book showing bees and beehive activities or view a video, "The Magic School Bus: Buzzes a Hive" about bees. · Let children observe the bees for a few minutes to see what they discover on their own. The students will be able to see the bees doing the waggle dance and also be able to see the pollen sacs on the bees' legs. Then point out bees that are communicating with each other. · "Look at those bees! Do you see how this one is circling around, and how these other bees have circled all around and are watching him? That is another way that bees talk to each other. They use movements to act out a message. It's called a Waggle Dance. Can you say that? It's a funny word, isn't it?" Activity 9: Bee Thumbprints Give children a copy of the beehive handout, with a beehive printed on it. (Or give them a sheet of paper with Honeycomb cereal glued on it.) Children will press their index fingers on an inkpad, and then make several fingerprints across the beehive paper. With a crayon or felt-tipped marker, children can add wings, antennae, and legs to their fingerprint bees, and color their beehive. They can make one bee at the hive entrance (the guard bee), one bee larger than the rest (the queen bee), and as many worker bees. Activity 10: The Honey Bee Song The honeybee goes, buzz, buzz, buzz Buzz, Buzz, Buzz Buzz, Buzz, Buzz The honeybee goes buzz, buzz, buzz On a summer day… It's taking pollen to the hive, to the hive, to the hive, It's taking pollen to the hive, Not so far away… The bee makes honey that is sweet, that is sweet, that is sweet, The bee makes honey that is sweet, As sweet as sweet can be… The bee keeps honey in the hive, in the hive, in the hive The bee keeps honey in the hive, And shares a bit with me! Activity 11: Collect an Insect Allow the children to explore their surroundings outside. Encourage them to find a different insect today than they have before!
Q: What can we notice about the motion of the marble on the roller coaster tube? 1. Explain: Share the concept of forces and motion using a United Streaming video clip or using a nonfiction text. I like to use snippets from United Streaming to show a real roller coaster in motion. The kids get a "Wow" factor and an immediate hook.... 2. Label a diagram of a roller coaster to show: marble’s position (near the top, traveling down, etc…) force – push or pull (we use a push to start the marble, then gravity pulls it along) *motion – how the marble moves (up, down, forward, backward) This may seem "elementary" but many kids do not connect the science behind the "fun" until they draw it out on a diagram in their notebooks. This student, on the other hand, uses the correct terms of motion as well as push and pull for force. She included a key with blue to show force and red to show motion. This shows me she is connecting the science terms to the activity.
Rights are powers and privileges to which one has a just claim. The individual is the basic unit of society, and since the time of ancient republics individuals have been understood to have certain rights. Philosophers like John Locke theorized that natural rights come from nature or from God, and are not “granted” by government. Individual rights include life, liberty, and property. The Founders believed that individual natural rights include freedom of speech, religion, and press, as well as freedom from unreasonable searches. Individual rights also encompass political, economic and civil rights. These include the right to assemble freely, to petition government, to own and use property, and to vote. All compact theories are based on the idea that individuals willingly trade some of their natural freedom, including the absolute exercise of individual rights, in exchange for the protections provided by society and government.
More Lessons for Grade 6 Math Videos, worksheets, stories and songs to help Grade 6 students learn about simple probability with one event. How to determine the probability of simple events, flipping a coin, rolling a 6-sided die, or drawing a card? Simple Probability 1 This video introduces the very basics of Simple Probability, or the likelihood that a single event will occur. Worked-out examples include flipping a coin and rolling a 6-sided die. Simple Probability 2 This is the second video on Simple Probability, or the likelihood that a single event will occur. Worked-out examples include flipping a pair of coin and drawing a card out of a deck of 52 cards. How to determine the probability of simple events, such as a spinner landing on a space or a die roll showing a number greater than 3. Rotate to landscape screen format on a mobile phone or small tablet to use the Mathway widget, a free math problem solver that answers your questions with step-by-step explanations. You can use the free Mathway calculator and problem solver below to practice Algebra or other math topics. Try the given examples, or type in your own problem and check your answer with the step-by-step explanations.
Finding ginseng requires finding shady woodlands with rich soil. Once there, the ginseng hunter needs to be able to identify both the plant and its common companion species. Companion species are important because they are often more visible than the ginseng itself and mark places where ginseng is likely present. American ginseng, Panax quinquefolius, grows in the eastern half of North America from Quebec west to Minnesota and south as far as a line stretching from Georgia to Oklahoma. It is most common in the Appalachians and the Ozarks. It prefers moist, well-drained, shady slopes facing north or east with plenty of undergrowth and leaf litter. Plants that commonly grow in similar habitat include goldenseal, black cohosh, blue cohosh, American spikenard and Virginia snakeroot. Other companion species are pawpaw trees, bloodroot and wild ginger. Some of these plants can tolerate more sun than ginseng, so the best strategy is to look for the combination of proper habitat and companion plants. The presence of a lot of poison ivy suggests that ginseng is not present as poison ivy prefers more sunlight than ginseng. Ginseng has a green, non-woody stem that distinguishes it from look-alikes with brown woody stems, such as Virginia creeper and hickory seedlings. The plant's leaves, also called "prongs," radiate from a central peduncle that also supports a raceme that develops flowers and seed. Each prong consists of three to five tooth-edged leaflets. Mature ginseng plants usually have three or four prongs and produce brilliant red seeds in the fall. Plants with fewer than three prongs are immature and are protected by law in many states.
By Dr Ananya Mandal, MD The glycemic index or GI of a food is a measure of the effect that food has on glycemia – the concentration of glucose in the blood. Foods that can be broken down quickly after ingestion to release glucose into the bloodstream are considered to have a high GI, while foods that are broken down slowly and release glucose gradually into the bloodstream tend to have a low GI. For most people, especially those with diabetes, maintaining a diet made up of low GI foods has several important health benefits. The concept of glycemic index was first developed by Dr. David J. Jenkins and colleagues in 1980–1981 at the University of Toronto. They were working towards finding the optimal and most beneficial diet for people with diabetes. Compared with a high GI food, a low GI food takes longer to be digested and for glucose to be absorbed into the bloodstream meaning that the blood glucose level does not peak or “spike” immediately after that food is eaten. These spikes in blood glucose are seen when a high GI food is eaten and glucose is released into the blood immediately after a meal. The slow release of glucose that is seen with low GI foods enables the body to deal with a glucose load more easily as the immediate insulin demand is maintained relatively low which protects against the development of insulin resistance. The GI is calculated as the incremental area under the two hour blood glucose response curve (AUC) that is achieved after fasting for 12 hours and then eating a fixed amount of carbohydrate (usually 50 g). This area value is divided by the AUC of the standard defining food, which is pure glucose, and multiplied by 100. The average GI value for a particular food is based on the values obtained for 10 humans. Both the standard and test foods have to contain equal amounts of available carbohydrate. Reviewed by Sally Robertson, BSc Last Updated: Jul 20, 2014
Definition of minstrelsy in English: The practice of performing as a minstrel: a long tradition of minstrelsy More example sentences - In their dancing, in their minstrelsy and then in ragtime, black Americans were insisting on setting European-style music free by refusing to be restricted to a ground beat. - Such characters emerged in late eighteenth-century plays and sheet music, and became mainstays of nineteenth-century minstrelsy. - After emancipation in 1863, minstrelsy was taken over increasingly by black performers. Words that rhyme with minstrelsymagistracy • piracy Definition of minstrelsy in: - British & World English dictionary What do you find interesting about this word or phrase? Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed.
Activities and Lesson Plans Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine, You may print Amazing Amphibians children's pages from the Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine. We hope you'll consider a subscription to our magazine. Be sure to check out the Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine special offer for teachers. And please let us know your suggestions for future issues at: [email protected] Suggested Topics: adaptations, classifications, systems, habitat, environment Related 4th Grade TEKS: - Social Studies: - 4.9 A, B, C - Geography : Humans Adapt to and Modify their Environment 4.22 A, B - Social Studies Skills : Use Critical Thinking to Organize and Use Information from a Variety of Sources 4.23 B, D - Social Studies Skills : Communicates in Written, Oral and Visual Forms 4.24 B - Social Studies Skills : Problem Solving and Decision Making - 4.3 D - Number, Operations and Quantitative Reasoning : Addition and Subtraction 4.13 A - Probability and Statistics : Solve Problems by Collecting, Organizing, Displaying and Inerpreting Data 4.15 A, B - Underlying Processes and Mathematical Tools : Communicates about Math 4.16 A, B - Underlying Processes and Mathematical Tools : Uses Logical Reasoning - English /Language Arts: - 4.2 A - Reading/Vocabulary Development 4.11 A - Reading/Comprehension of Informational Text/Expository Text 4.13 A, B - Reading/Comprehension of Informational Text/Procedural Texts 4.15 B - Writing/Writing Process; compose text< 4.16 B - Writing/Literary Texts; compose text 4.18 A - Writing/Expository and Procedural Texts; compose text 4.23 A - Research/Research Plan 4.24 A, C - Research/Gathering Sources 4.26 - Research/Organizing and Presenting Ideas. 4.27 A - Listening and Speaking/Listening 4.29 - Listening and Speaking/Teamwork - 4.9 A, B - Organisms and environments; interactions and needs 4.10 A - Organisms and environments; adaptations and survival - Name at least three characteristics of an amphibian. What is similar and what is different between an amphibian and a reptile? - How is an amphibian like a transformer? - What threats are there for amphibians? - How can you help amphibians? - To think about: what role do amphibians play in an ecosystem? - Texas Nature Trackers: Amphibian Watch (info, links and monitoring activities) - Year of the Frog Classroom Presentation - A Guide to Common Frogs Across Texas (An audio CD of frog and toad calls in Texas is available from Texas Amphibian Watch for $5.00 by calling (512) 389-8062.) - Year of the Frog Adult Education - Wildlife Watch Project WILD activity suggestions - Aqua Words - (WILD Aquatic) Students brainstorm water words; make word trees with those words; and write poetic statements about water. Students describe a variety of ways and reasons why water is important to people and wildlife. Requires writing materials. - Are You Me? - (WILD Aquatic) Using picture cards students match pairs of juvenile and adult aquatic animals. Upon completion students recognize various adult and juvenile stages of aquatic animals; and define metamorphosis. Requires Are You Me cards and art supplies - Blue Ribbon Niche - (WILD Aquatic) Students create a variety of representations of wildlife that can be found in riparian areas. Upon completion students identify different riparian organisms; describe the ecological role of some riparian organisms; describe basic characteristics of riparian zones; and evaluate potential positive and negative effects from changes in riparian zones. - Dragonfly Pond - (WILD Aquatic) Students create a collage of human land use activities around an image of a pond. Upon completion students evaluate the effects of different kinds of land use on wetland habitats; and discuss and evaluate lifestyles changes to minimize damaging effects on wetlands. Requires for each team scissors; masking tape; paper; 2 sets of Land Use Patterns; one Dragonfly Pond map; and a large piece of paper. - How Many Bears Can Live in this Forest? - (How many Frogs Texas variation)Students become "bears" to look for one or more components of habitat during this physical activity. Upon completion students define major component of habitats; and identify limiting factors. Requires five colors of construction paper (2 or 3 sheets) or an equal amount of light poster board; one black felt pen; envelopes (one/student); pencils; one blindfold. Optional five sheets green of construction paper. - Improving Wildlife Habitat in the Community - Students design and accomplish a project to improve wildlife habitat in their community. Upon completion students apply their knowledge of wildlife by describing essential components of habitat in an arrangement appropriate for the wildlife they identify; and evaluate compatible and incompatible uses of an area by people and specified kinds of wildlife. Requires writing and drawing materials; poster or butcher paper; or model making materials like plaster of Paris, clay small replicas of animals, etc. - Litter We Know - Students collect and evaluate litter, making collages. Upon completion students identify and evaluate ways that litter pollution can endanger wildlife; and propose ways they can help eliminate these dangers. Requires large sheets of butcher paper for mounting collages; glue; different types of litter; work gloves; trash sacks. - Silt: A Dirty Word - (WILD Aquatic) Students create a model to simulate changes to a stream and its water flow when silt and/or sand are added to the system. Upon completion students describe how sand and/or silt affects water flow; and identify human activities that add sand and silt to surface water. Requires for each group a clear plastic 1 gallon container; gravel to cover bottom of container; water to fill the container 1" from the top; 1 cup coarse sand; 1 cup silt; and three straws per person. - What's in the Water? - (WILD Aquatic) Students analyze the pollutants found in a hypothetical river. They graph the quantities of pollutants and make recommendations about actions that could be taken to improve the habitat. Upon completion students identify major sources of aquatic pollution; and make inferences about the potential effects of a variety of aquatic pollutants on wildlife and wildlife habitats. Requires nine different colors of construction paper; writing or graph paper; scotch tape or glue; paper punch; Pollution Information sheets; ¼ teaspoon; 1 tablespoon. - Teacher Guides - National Geographic Young Explorer Teacher's Guide "Explore a Wetland" - National Geographic Explorer Teacher's Guide "Fantastic Frogs" - Tadpole transformation: http://teacher.scholastic.com/lessonrepro/lessonplans/profbooks/tadpole.pdf - British Ecological Society - Amphibian adaptations at http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/documents/education/adaptations_ponds.pdf - Videos on Frog Life Cycles - Species Guides - TPWD Texas Amphibian Watch guide to Frogs and Toads Found in Texas - eNature Field Guide
In this activity, you and your family members will learn more about the life cycle of a plant by growing plants from supermarket seeds. - 3 kinds of seeds from the supermarket, such as popcorn, birdseed, dill seeds, caraway seeds, dried peas, dried beans, poppy seeds, parrot food, whole (not roasted) peanuts - paper towels - small plastic container and lid - masking tape - pencil or pen - magnifying glass Follow this procedure for every kind of seed you collected: Fold a paper towel into quarters. Moisten the paper towel with water so that it is damp, not dripping wet. Place the paper towel in the plastic container. Put several seeds on the paper towel. Cover the seeds with another folded and moistened paper towel. Put the lid on the container. Use masking tape and a pencil or pen to label the container with the date and the type of seed. Check the seeds every day. Make sure the paper towels stay moist. Look carefully at the seeds as they sprout. Use a magnifying glass to get an even better look. What did you notice about the different seeds? Did they all sprout at the same time? Did they all look the same? Could you classify the plants into different groups based on the way the seeds sprouted? Why or why not? How would you classify them?
1st Grade Research and Inquiry Resources • Children will use the computer to do research and inquiry on telescopes. • Children will learn more about how things in outer space look through a telescope. • Children will complete a worksheet by drawing different objects as seen through a magnifying glass. • Have children look at the pictures on the Web site that were taken using a telescope. Give them different arts and crafts materials, such as pipe cleaners and yarn, and have them construct one of the planets, the sun, or the moon, now that they have seen some of these up close. • Have children gather the different objects shown on the worksheet. Pass magnifying glasses out to the children. Have them examine the different objects using the magnifying glasses. Ask them to compare what they see to their drawings of what they imagined they would see.
In 1913 Niels Bohr introduced his model of the hydrogen atom. One of the predictions was that the electrons occupied only certain energy levels. This was in agreement with the observed spectrum, but physicists were eager to find another experiment that would also show this result. In 1914 James Franck and Gustav Hertz (nephew of Heinrich) performed an experiment on a vacuum tube with a small amount of mercury enclosed. The tube was heated in an oven in order to vaporize the mercury, and then a series of voltages was applied to the tube. A small voltage was used to heat a filament for use as an electron source. Three more voltages were used to establish electric fields inside the tube. The first field is a small field, it used in order sweep the electrons away from the filament. It is observed that when filaments eject electrons they become slightly positive, and the region around the filament becomes slightly negative due to the cloud of electrons. If a small field isn't put in place to draw the electrons away from the filament, it becomes hard to draw out more electrons. The second field is an accelerating field, this is what gives the electrons the bulk of their kinetic energy. This is usually called the grid voltage because it is established by a grid that the electrons can penetrate. Once the electrons go through the grid there is a reverse field that acts to retard electrons from the counter. If there is only vacuum in the tube then the grid voltage will accelerate electrons to the counter, and if the retarding voltage is less than the grid voltage a current will be detected. Diagram of Franck-Hertz Tube In the Franck-Hertz experiment the low-pressure mercury vapor affects the detected current. At low grid voltages the electrons gain kinetic energy. They collide with mercury atoms, but these are elastic collisions, and since electrons have such a smaller mass than mercury the electrons retain most of their kinetic energy. As the voltage increases, so does the current. However, once the electrons gain kinetic energy equal to the excitation energy of mercury they can have inelastic collisions - the kinetic energy of the electron exciting the mercury atom. If an electron with exactly the excitation energy had an inelastic collision, it would have a final velocity of zero. This is why the experiment also features a retarding field. Only electrons with a kinetic energy that can overcome the retarding field get counted in the current. As the grid voltage is increased to the excitation voltage, the current will drop because many of the filament electrons have lost their kinetic energy to inelastic collisions and cannot overcome the retarding field. If the observed current is plotted against voltage, the there will be a series of peaks and valleys. The peak-to-peak (or valley-to-valley) spacing will correspond to the excitation energy of the vapor (the multiple valleys are due to multiple inelastic collisions). Current Measurements in the Franck-Hertz Experiment Students who want to get a preview of the experiment can visit an online Franck-Hertz simulation. We'll do today's experiment using three different elements, argon, neon and mercury. Each element has its own apparatus. Each group should take data for every element. The people presenting today's topic are responsible for setting up the mercury tube. Fit your data for each of the elements. One method of checking results is to visit the NIST site we've used in this class previously. Note that many people find the difference between each peak (or valley) and then average these numbers. Why is this a bad idea? Instead, students should plot peak number on the x-axis and voltage on the y-axis and find a slope as usual. Repeat for valleys. Front Panel of Argon Experiment On the top row of dials and switches, set the manual/auto switch to manual, the filament voltage dial to 3.5V and the current multiplier to 10-9. The second row of switches and dials controls the various voltages. Start with the switch positioned to the left. This first voltage (to sweep off electrons) should be roughly 1.5 volts. The middle position is for the retarding voltage, and should be set to 7.5 volts. Then move the switch to the right to control the grid (accelerating) voltage. Raise this voltage in two-volt increments and record the current. You will have to change the current multiplier during this experiment, and it is a good idea to measure in one-volt increments near peaks and valleys. Note that the system takes a while to settle after each change in voltage, so don't be too hasty in measurements. Plot the current as a function of voltage and determine the excitation energy of argon. Note that the current is given by the multiplied on the knob, ignore the mA label on the meter. If the current rises rapidly after about 60 volts, this may damage the tube. If you see this happening, do not attempt to collect data past the point of rapid current increase. When you are done taking data, remember to turn off your equipment. Since we are dealing with vacuum tubes, turn down the voltages slowly before shutting down. The wiring is fairly straightforward. There are five banana-plug connections from the instrument box to the tube, all color-coded. In addition, a BNC cable runs from the top of the tube to a connector on the upper-left-hand panel. The output in located on the upper-right-hand panel and needs to be connected to an oscilloscope. Take ground and X and measure them on channel one, and ground and Y and measure them on channel two. Some versions only have four banana-plug connections, these tubes still perform well. this Neon Franck-Hertz Equipment The oscilloscope needs to be put into XY mode. Normally an oscilloscope will display voltage on the Y axis while it sweeps time across the X axis. In XY mode the oscilloscope puts the voltage measured on channel one on the X axis and puts the voltage measured on channel two on the Y axis. To put your oscilloscope into XY mode, press the Display button and then the Format sidemenu button until it reads XY. There are five user-controlled inputs on your instrument panel. One of them is a switch. At the start of the experiment you should switch this to RAMP/60Hz. There are four dials. Reverse Bias should be set to roughly 4 volts and not adjusted. This is the retarding voltage. The filament voltage should be set to 8 volts. Look inside the tube, if you cannot see the filament glowing a dull orange, the voltage is too low. If it is bright, it is probably too high. You will most likely have to fine-tune your filament voltage setting during the experiment. After the filament has warmed up, set the accelerating voltage to 70 volts. The last knob, labelled amplitude, actually adjusts the gain on an amplifier. The current created by the filament is so small that it needs to be boosted to be seen on the oscilloscope. The filament voltage and amplitude knobs will have to be carefully balanced to see the proper waveform on your oscilloscope. Output on the Oscilloscope Screen (Note that the last peak has saturated the amplifier) Once you have the proper waveform, you will want to save your data to USB (you did remember to bring a USB memory device smaller than 1G to lab, right?). Normally to do this you would hint the Print button (first you might check the settings by using the Save/Recall button - make sure your oscilloscope is set to "save all"). However, saving data is an option that is not available in the XY display mode. We can overcome this problem by putting the oscilloscope back into the YT display mode and then saving. Note that you will have to see two waveforms (channels one and two) on your screen for both to be saved. You can then take Excel, combine the two data files via cut and paste, and then graph your results. Once you have saved your data, bring the accelerating voltage back down to zero and turn the switch to manual. Announce that you are going to turn off the room lights, and then do so. Slowly turn up the accelerating voltage. As you go through the first minimum in current, an orange blob will move down the tube. This is due to the fact that the transition has an energy spacing with a wavelength in the optical region. Once the electrons leave the filament they pick up energy from the accelerating voltage until they reach the speed where they have enough kinetic energy to interact with the neon atoms. As the accelerating voltage is increased, this kinetic energy is gained over a smaller distance, which is why the blob moves down the tube (towards the filament). Once the second minimum is reached, you should see two blobs. Electrons pick up enough kineitc energy to interact with the neon, and after travelling farther along the tube, again pick up enough energy to have a second interaction. This is one of the few visual confirmation you'll ever get of atomic theory, make sure that you see it. The First Three Neon Excitations (The second and third excitations are hard to distinguish in this photo) "It might interest you to know that when we made the experiments that we did not know Bohr's theory. We had neither read nor heard about it. We had not read it because we were negligent to read the literature well enough -- and you know how that happens. On the other hand, one would think that other people would have told us about it. For instance, we had a colloquium at that time in Berlin at which all the important papers were discussed. Nobody discussed Bohr's theory. Why not? The reasons is that fifty years ago, one was so convinced that nobody would, with the state of knowledge we had at that time, understand spectral line emission, so that if somebody published a paper about it, one assumed, "Probably it is not right." So we did not know it. But we made that experiment (and got the result that confirmed Bohr's theory) because we hoped that if we found out where the borderline between elastic and inelastic impact lies... only one line might appear. But we did not know whether that would be so, and we did not know whether at all an emission of an atom is of such a type that one line alone can be emitted and all the energy can be used for that purpose. The experiment gave it to us, and we were surprised about it. But we were not surprised after we read Bohr's paper later, after our publication." Possible Quiz Questions 1. What three gases will we use today? 2. Why does the mercury experiment need an oven? 3. What are the safety warnings for this experiment? 4. Why do you see multiple peaks and valleys in the Voltage-Current graph? 5. What are the three voltages in the experiment, and what do they do? 6. Explain the meaning of the orange blobs in the neon tube. 7. What did Franck and Hertz know about Bohr's theory when they did the experiment? 8. Draw and label a circuit diagram of the Franck-Hertz tube. 9. What does the distance between the peaks (or valleys) represent? 10. Some people take the average of the differences between valley voltages, what's a better method?
Building meaningful connections: self, other, the world at large Four 40-minute and one 90-minute classes per week. The Sixth Grade curriculum is organized into six mathematical content strands that cover a number of skills and concepts. Attention is paid to numeration and computation without neglecting geometry, data, and algebraic thinking. Along with the basic four operations on fractions, decimals and integers, students study persuasive statistics and data analysis, as well as exploring scientific notation and patterns and generalizations that lead to solving equations and inequalities, and help students begin to formally recognize mathematical properties. The study of geometry covers understanding of vocabulary and notation, plane—such as area and perimeter, spatial relations in two and three dimensions, and construction of angles, simple figures and congruent figures. Student also study length, mass and capacity in both the metric and customary systems of measurement. The Sixth Grade Math curriculum is guided by the University of Chicago Mathematics Project Everyday Mathematics text. Information is disseminated through teacher lecture, class discussion, mini discovery labs and peer mentoring. Information is further reinforced using arts integrated projects, cross-curricular projects, games and individual exploration reports and journaling. The curriculum is organized around five process strands: Problem solving, reasoning and proof, connections, representations and communication, which work to ensure deeper understanding of mathematical concepts. Furthermore, the program is set up to spiral, enabling lessons to build on and extend concepts and understandings so that children approach each new challenge from a firmly established foundation. This mathematics program is aligned with the NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) standards. - Exploration of a variety of written formats including (but not limited to) narrative, descriptive, argumentative, process analysis, and research writing as well as poems, plays, short stories and essays - Social Studies that look broadly at cultural diversity, geography, civics, politics and economics as the foundation for global citizenship - Intellectual and study skill development to support academic growth in interpreting, organizing and synthesizing knowledge and modeling the concept of lifelong learning - A multiple entry port curriculum that provides “hooks” for children to engage in differentiated learning - Socratic dialogue where all members of the class engage in active analysis of core issues Sixth Graders participate in co-curricular classes. They have French, art, music, science, computers, library, and P.E. In his book, "Teaching for Thoughtfulness – Classroom Strategies to Enhance Intellectual Development", John Barell discusses what it means to help children learn to how to think critically. Thinking, then, as I define it involves responding to problems and perplexities, some of which will be thrust upon us unexpectedly and others which we will consciously seek out for the fun or adventure of it. Either way, we begin to think when we recognize such an uncertainty and decide to do something about it. By challenging students to take on not only scientific problems but social issues too we help them to learn to take personal control of their own lives now and in the future. Learning to create their own pathways is inherently a self-directed experience, not one where a student follows blindly and/or willingly someone else’s direction. In a our science classroom students are challenged daily to figure out how to solve problems, work together and reflect on their work and its implications outside of the classroom. Our Middle School Science curriculum is built around the following throughlines: - What tools do scientists and artists use to make sense of their world? - How does reflecting on my actions help be further my understanding? - What does it mean to be a good steward? - How are all things connected? With the above ideals in mind, our Sixth Graders begin the year outdoors with an in-depth look at the local environment. Students study interactions between organisms and the abiotic features of the world outside their door. Food webs, the role of decomposers, energy transfer and how matter cycles through our environment are topics addressed. Students then become zoologists, botanists and environmental scientists traveling to virtual biomes applying what they have learned at a local level in order to gain a global perspective. As the weather turns the students spend more time indoors looking at the life cycle of cells incorporating genetics. Students round out the year with a closer look at matter, fossil dating, and the rock cycle. The arts are integrated into the curriculum by the classroom teachers, with enrichment projects through cooperative ventures with the art teacher, such as creating art from a given country from a social studies unit. Students meet twice a week with the art teacher. They are given the opportunity to become more proficient with the variety of media available. They work with clay, markers, tempera paint and watercolors, collage, printmaking (using linoleum blocks and water based inks, plus plastic engraving plates with oil based inks), colored pencils and constructions. Students begin looking at the Art History timeline, covering artwork from Prehistoric through Modern times. They create works of art using natural found materials, clay and construction materials. Students look at and interpret the work of artists from the Impressionist Period. They also draw self-portraits and learn perspective techniques. Sixth graders may elect to take the Design and Production class, which offers projects in vehicle, home and furniture design, as well as the opportunity to work on the sets for the drama production. MIADs available to them in the visual arts domain are drawing and painting, clay and studio art.
Learn something new every day More Info... by email Hendiadys is a literary device used to emphasize the meaning and drama of a sentence or phrase. When translated from the Greek, hendiadys literally means “one through two.” It involves joining two nouns together with the conjunction and instead of simply listing a noun and a descriptive adjective. From the time the Greeks coined this phrase, authors have used this device to underscore their works with a double-punch of meaning instead of just using modifiers. Not all nouns joined by conjunctions are examples of hendiadys. It is important, when studying literature, to be able to separate the examples of hendiadys from simple lists of words. For instance, when Shakespeare writes “sound and fury” in Macbeth, this phrase could be rewritten to become “furious sound.” One of the words in these phrases can always be turned into a modifier, and this is a simple way to identify them. “Vigor and verve” instead of “vigorous verve” and “nice and warm” instead of “nicely warm” are two well-known examples of this device. The phrase “cheese and crackers” is not an example of this device because neither 'cheese' nor 'crackers' can be turned into a modifier. One might say “cheesy crackers,” but this paints the picture of cheese-flavored crackers while “cheese and crackers” brings to mind a picture of crackers topped with slices of cheese. When using hendiadys, the conjoined phrase and the modifier phrase it could become mean the same thing. In the above example “sound and fury” and “furious sound” both help the reader picture some great explosion or violent storm. Authors who believe in concise writing may not be fans of hendiadys because it stretches out phrases that could otherwise be condensed. In modern, realistic writing, this literary device is not often used. When it is, it is often carefully placed around the climax of the work to heighten the drama of the moment. Separating a modifier phrase into two separate nouns seems to split the meaning of the phrase, giving it double the power. While authors in centuries past sometimes used this device with abandon, many modern authors eschew it unless the situation calls for something really dramatic. The Bible contains hundreds of cases of hendiadys, the majority of them pushing the prose forward and infusing it with semantic meaning. For instance, the verse “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,” actually creates a phrase with two possible modifiers. The sentence could become “Thy glorious and powerful kingdom” or “Thy gloriously powerful kingdom." This example of extended hendiadys is relatively rare, usually the phrase only includes two nouns. One of our editors will review your suggestion and make changes if warranted. Note that depending on the number of suggestions we receive, this can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Thank you for helping to improve wiseGEEK!
Students count the number of objects in each square. Then they trace the written number word, cut it out, and paste it under the objects. Next to the pasted number word, they write the word on their own. Students first cut, assemble and read The Twelve Days of Christmas Booklet that contains text and images from the traditional 12 Days of Christmas song. They then sketch and create their own version using the text only template.
Back \| Programme Area: Identities, Conflict and Cohesion (2000 - 2009) The Historical Construction of Race and Citizenship in the United States This paper reviews how race has been socially constructed in the United States since the founding of the republic, and how conceptions of racial difference and inequality have affected, and been affected by, prevailing views of citizenship and American national identity. The American Revolution appealed to universalistic conceptions of human rights deriving from the Enlightenment. But the Constitution of 1789 authorized exclusions from citizenship resulting from the enslavement of people of African descent and the consignment of conquered indigenous peoples to a dependent status. The Naturalization Law of 1790 made a colour bar explicit when it limited the right of naturalization to “free white person[s]”. In the 1820s and 1830s, suffrage was extended to all white males, but was taken away from some free blacks who had previously been granted the right to vote. As the controversy over slavery heated up in the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s, defenders of black servitude relied increasingly on pseudo-scientific racist ideologies. The Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857 declared all African-Americans—free or slave—ineligible for citizenship. Racism was a national phenomenon on the eve of the Civil War. “Free Negroes” in the Northern states were often segregated and denied legal and political rights; some states and territories even prohibited their entry. But the Civil War made emancipation and the use of black troops essential to preservation of the union and gave African-Americans a claim to equal citizenship that was realized with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1868. National citizenship was thus made available to anyone born in the United States, regardless of race, except Native Americans living in tribal communities. In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment outlawed denial of the right to vote on the grounds of “race, colour, or previous condition of servitude”. Henceforth, racial difference could not be the explicit basis for a denial of legal and political equality. Egalitarian constitutional reform did not, however, lead to substantive equality for African-Americans. True citizenship means more than pro forma legal equality. It also entails equality of respect and the willingness of an ethno-racial majority to acknowledge in word and deed that members of a minority belong to the nation. Blacks in the South during the Jim Crow era, beginning in the 1880s and lasting until the 1960s, were discriminated against, disenfranchised and terrorized. Ideological racism, aimed not only at blacks, but at anyone who was not definitively white, peaked in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Beginning in 1882, most Chinese immigration was prohibited. The fitness of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe was also questioned on racial grounds, and immigration laws passed in the 1920s established a quota system based in part on beliefs about the innate characteristics of various peoples. “Ascriptive Americanism” had seemingly triumphed over the universalistic liberalism that had inspired the abolitionist movement and the post-Civil War constitutional amendments. The extension and intensification of racism in the period between the 1880s and the 1920s resulted from an interaction between racial stereotypes already embedded in the culture, and from the tensions associated with class and status formation in a rapidly industrializing capitalist society. Working- or lower-class whites could conclude that racially different, lower-paid workers threatened their economic status; or, alternatively, they could be compensated for their own poverty and lack of opportunity by the “psychological wage” of racial or ethnic status. Established elites could inhibit class conflict by encouraging ethno-racial divisions among the disadvantaged, or they could buttress their status and authority as charter Americans by opposing the immigration of those deemed racially inferior. Between the 1930s and the 1970s, members of racial minorities and their sympathizers struggled to establish a broader and more enforceable conception of citizenship, one that would realize the egalitarian promise of the Declaration of Independence. The New Deal promulgated a new conception of social citizenship—“freedom from want” in Roosevelt’s idiom—but most blacks were initially denied coverage by the new social insurance policies. The massive migration of Southern blacks to the North, however, restored their right to vote and enhanced their political leverage. At the same time, scientific racism was coming under attack from social and natural scientists. But it was the Second World War and the revulsion against Nazi racism that provided much of the impetus for the racial reforms of the post-war era. The partially successful civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s also acquired legitimacy from the strategic need of the United States in the Cold War to compete with the Soviet Union for “the hearts and minds” of recently decolonized people of colour in Africa and Asia. The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, and the simultaneous elimination of racially justified immigration quotas, can be attributed to the activation of previously dormant egalitarian ideals at a time when altered circumstances made it appear that the application of those ideals would serve the national interest, as well as the interests of influential groups within the society. The Civil Rights Acts made the legal and political rights of citizenship more enforceable, but they did not establish the right to equal respect for those who were still regarded by a majority of white Americans as “other”. Furthermore, beginning in the 1980s, the social citizenship adumbrated by the New Deal began to be dismantled, with particularly detrimental effects on racialized minorities. Contemporary statistics showing that a substantially higher proportion of blacks than whites are likely to be imprisoned, unemployed, socially isolated or destitute, reveal that structural inequality associated with race remains a central problem of American society. Although no longer sanctioned by law, discrimination persists, not only against African-Americans, but also against poor Latinos, among other groups. The growth of ethnic consciousness among blacks and the desire of Latino and Asian immigrants to preserve aspects of their culture have made “multiculturalism”, rather than simple integrationism or assimilationism, the dominant anti-racist ideology in the United States today. In addition to surveying the history of race and citizenship in the United States, this paper attempts to place the US constructions of race and ethnicity in comparative perspective. What is special about the case of the United States is the coexistence of a universalistic human rights tradition existing together with a strong historical tendency toward exclusion on racial grounds. France also has a universalistic human rights tradition, but has not erected colour bars to nearly the same extent. Whereas colour-coded racism has predominated in the United States, French ethno-racial intolerance has more often been culture-coded. An even sharper contrast can be made between the US “civic nationalism” with a racial qualification, and the German tradition of straightforward ethnic nationalism that came to hideous fruition in the Nazi era. German identity involved a categorical rejection of Enlightenment conceptions of individual liberty and democratic government to which most white Americans professed adherence, but which did not prevent them from discriminating against those deemed biologically incapable of self- governance. But American racism has constantly been challenged, not only by its victims, but also by its purported beneficiaries, in the name of universal human rights. The affirmation in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” has sanctioned major anti-racist reforms in the past and offers hope for the future. George M. Fredrickson is the Edgar E. Robinson Professor of United States History, Emeritus, at Stanford University, California. - Publication and ordering details Pub. Date: 1 Oct 2003 Pub. Place: Geneva
Apache is the industry standard web server for Linux distributions. It is highly configurable and has a wide range of modules ready for different needs. What is a web server? A web server is software that listens for connections to your machine, and when a connection is receive, processes the request and responds with the appropriate information. Most web servers listen on port 80, which is reserved for the purpose, and use the HTTP protocol. For example, when you visit this wiki, you are sending a request over the internet to some machine that is probably located somewhere in EIT (the user seldom knows exactly where the machine is located). The web server receives your request, and it processes the data you sent. Finally, the server prepares a response (the web page), and sends it back to you. You define your settings for Apache using directives. Some of the directives you will likely encounter include: - DocumentRoot: The path to the directory where the top level web files are going to be stored. - IfModule: The following block would be included if specified module exists. - User: Which user apache2 will run as. - Group: Which group will have group access to default web files. - AccessFileName: The name of the access file (that specifies user names/passwords and other limitations to files/directories). - ErrorLog: Where any errors will be written. - Include: Include some other files. - LogFormat: How to write a log message. - ErrorDocument: Files to display for some HTTP errors (500, 404, 402 etc.). - Alias: Map a directory URL to some other location on your filesystem. Requires that the Alias module be loaded. You can also specify some Apache configurations without delving into the master configuration file. To do this, put a file named .htaccess in any directory that Apache is serving. All directives in it will be interpreted as if they were in a Directory directive in the master configuration file. VERY IMPORTANT: The directory containing .htaccess must not have the AllowOverride None directive in the master configuration file in order for .htaccess to be read. Use the Directory directive to assign other directives to a specific directory. For example: <Directory /var/www/> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None Order allow,deny allow from all RedirectMatch ^/$ /apache2-default/ </Directory> This sets options for the /var/www directory. - The Options directive says that: - If no index page is present in a directory, display a directory index page instead - Apache will follow symbolic links in the directory - AllowOverride None says that .htaccess files cannot alter the Apache options in this directory and all sub-directories - Order allow,deny and Allow from all specifies that anybody is allowed to access this server via HTTP. Note that this directory is actually the root directory of the web server. The UserDir Module If you want to change the name of the UserDir web server root from public_html to something else like .html, follow these instructions. (You do not need to do this for the purposes of CSE 330; this serves as a reference.) - Rename your public_html to .html - The "." in front of the directory name means that the directory is a hidden one. You will not see it with the normal "ls" command. Use "ls -a" to see hidden files as well. - Edit the UserDir configuration file. - In RHEL, edit the userDir configuration file at /etc/httpd/conf.d/userdir.conf - Find the line that reads UserDir public_htmland change it to - Restart Apache. Apache creates two log files: one for all access attempts to your server, and one for errors. The locations of these log files are: - Access Log: /var/log/httpd/access_log - Error Log: /var/log/httpd/error_log You might find it helpful to see access and errors appear "live" in your terminal window as they are created. To do this, you can use the tail -f command. Since the log files have strict permissions, you will need to also use sudo. Example: $ sudo tail -f /var/log/httpd/access_log Virtual Hosts are used to run multiple Apache web servers from the same machine. Virtual hosts can listen for connections on different ports and/or different hostnames, serving completely different web sites to each. For example: <VirtualHost cse330.dyndns.org> ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost ServerName cse330.dyndns.org DocumentRoot /home/www/cse330/ ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/error_log LogLevel warn CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access_log combined ServerSignature On </VirtualHost> This configuration enables any requests that use a host name of cse330.dyndns.org will use /home/www/cse330 as the root document directory. Make sure that the DocumentRoot directory exists and is readable by the httpd process. In RHEL, Apache runs as the apache user. It is good practice to put raw server configuration files in /etc/httpd/sites-available. To activate a site, create a symlink from the configuration in sites-available to a sibling directory called sites-enabled. Restarting Apache and Testing Whenever you make changes to the Apache configuration files, you will need to restart Apache for the changes to take effect. There are several different ways to restart Apache; they all functionally do (almost) the same thing, so choose your favorite: $ sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl restart $ sudo apachectl restart # if /usr/sbin is in your PATH (which it is not by default in RHEL) $ sudo /etc/init.d/httpd restart $ sudo /sbin/service httpd restart $ sudo service httpd restart If you're torn for which version is the "best" to use, the commands involving apachectl (think "Apache Control") are written by the Apache folks themselves. This has a couple advantages: - They show you errors in the startup process (if there are any) - They give you the option to perform a "soft" restart; that is, a restart that allows any pending connections to complete. To perform a soft restart, use graceful: sudo apachectl graceful In my anecdotal experience, the apachectl commands are also faster than the service or init.d commands. To make sure everything is working, create a test file in your home directory under public_html, and then point your browser to it: http://ec2-xxx-xx-xx-xxx.compute-1.amazonaws.com/~yourUserName/hello.txt
Mindfulness is the intentional, accepting and non-judgemental focus of one’s attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment, which can be trained by meditational practices that are described in detail in the Buddhist tradition. The term “mindfulness” is derived from the Pali-term sati, “mindfulness”, which is an essential element of Buddhist practice, including vipassana, satipaṭṭhāna and anapanasati. It has been popularized in the West by Jon Kabat-Zinn with his mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program. Mindfulness is also an attribute of consciousness long believed to promote well-being. Large population-based surveys have indicated that the construct of mindfulness is strongly correlated with well-being and perceived health. Studies have also shown that rumination and worry contribute to mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety, and mindfulness-based interventions are effective in the reduction of both rumination and worry. Clinical psychology and psychiatry since the 1970s have developed a number of therapeutic applications based on mindfulness for helping people who are experiencing a variety of psychological conditions. Mindfulness practice is being employed in psychology to alleviate a variety of mental and physical conditions, such as bringing about reductions in depression symptoms, reducing stress, anxiety, and in the treatment of drug addiction. It has gained worldwide popularity as a distinctive method to handle emotions. Clinical studies have documented the physical and mental health benefits of mindfulness in general, and MBSR in particular.Programs based on MBSR and similar models have been widely adapted in schools, prisons, hospitals, veterans centers, and other environments.
A Conversation on How We Make Decisions Foundational Principle for this Blog: To explore Applied Game Theory and how individuals and organizations can strategize to make Definition: Decision – A choice selected from a number of alternatives. STUDENT: How can Applied Game Theory be used to make effective LEWIS: Any decision requires that a choice be made from a number of alternatives and directed toward an organizational goal or sub-goal. This is basically what happens when an individual chooses a strategy in Applied Game Theory. STUDENT: What defines the superiority of one decision over another? LEWIS: The likelihood that one consequence will result rather than another. The correctness of decisions whether in a group or in a personal situation is measured by two major criteria: 1. adequacy of achieving the desired objective; and 2. the efficiency with which the result was obtained. Decisions can be complex admixtures of facts and values. In groups with a hierarchal structure of leaders and followers, information derived from observation or experimentation as well as proven facts, or facts derived from specialized experience, are more easily transmitted than are values. Many members of an organization may focus on adequacy, but the overall administrative management must pay particular attention to the efficiency with which the desired result was obtained to ensure that the benefits are worth the economic and social cost. STUDENT: How can one make wise decisions if one must make a personal decision without the benefit of the assessment tools available to a large organization? LEWIS: Through the assessment of fact-based and intuitive sourced STUDENT: Explain this in greater depth. LEWIS: Logical and apparently rational options have real and multiple consequences consisting of personal actions or non-actions influenced by environmental factors and values. In application, some of the various consequences may be unintended as well as intended; may be conscious or unconscious; and some of the means and ends may be imperfectly differentiated, incompletely related, or poorly detailed. STUDENT: Let’s say that the information required to make a rational or logical decision is available. LEWIS: In such a case a clear-thinking individual will select the alternative that results in the more desirable set of all the possible consequences. STUDENT: This seems like a complex task. LEWIS: It is; and yet to some it initially would seem pretty basic, requiring only three steps that can be done with a pad and pencil: 1. identify and list all of the alternatives; 2. determine all the consequences resulting from each of the 3. compare the accuracy and efficiency of each of these sets of STUDENT: So what makes it complex? Lewis: Any given individual or organization attempting to strategize applying this model in real life would soon discover that it is extremely difficult to comply with the three steps, since it is highly improbable that anyone can know all the alternatives, or all the consequences that follow each alternative, without a remarkable team including resources such as sophisticated computer models and an understanding of many influential theories, such as the Butterfly Effect and Black Swan. STUDENT: If these limitations exist what can one do to make the best LEWIS: Bringing into play the reality that there are insurmountable limits on rational decision making, one would need to find and apply other techniques or behavioral processes that a person or organization can bring to bear to achieve approximately the best result. STUDENT: Is there much research on how to do this? Yes. Much of the early research in this area was conducted by Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001), one of the most influential social scientists of the 20th century. Simon dedicated much of his life to exploring, both directly and indirectly, the behavioral and cognitive processes and factors of making rational human choices: that is, decisions. On this subject Simon wrote: “The human being striving for rationality and restricted within the limits of his knowledge has developed some working procedures that partially overcome these difficulties. These procedures consist in assuming that he can isolate from the rest of the world a closed system containing a limited number of variables and a limited range of STUDENT: Is Simon’s work still important today? LEWIS: Yes. Even today many social scientists refer to his most influential work, Administrative Behavior, in which he addresses a wide range of criteria for evaluation of accuracy and efficiency, such as cognitive abilities, human behaviors, management techniques, personnel policies, training goals and procedures, specialized roles, and all of the ramifications of communication processes. STUDENT: Speak more of Simon’s work. LEWIS: Simon explores many organizational factors but within the great scope of his writings two universal elements of human social behavior seem to stand out: 1. The Role of Authority 2. Loyalties and how an individual identifies with a specific group or These are important areas of exploration for a person looking to become skilled in the application of LHAGT since, when strategizing, one must take into consideration factors such as hierarchal and competitive behavior in oneself and others. STUDENT: Can you address decision-making in a large competitive and hierarchal LEWIS: In such an environment where one is dealing with operational administrative decision-making, a decision as mathematically accurate, efficient, and practical as possible is of greatest value. STUDENT: What does “practical” mean in this context? LEWIS: Easy to implement within a set of specific guidelines – what a mathematician would call “coordinated means.” STUDENT: So one must do this effectively in the midst of a hierarchal and competitive environment? LEWIS: Yes but this is not really an obstacle since hierarchies, competition, and the application of power, influence and authority are well studied, primary elements of organizational behavior. STUDENT: Speak further about hierarchies, competition, and the application of power, influence and authority in such a situation. LEWIS: From a LHAGT perspective it is pretty straightforward. In an organizational hierarchal game one individual has defined rights because of a higher rank to determine the decision of an individual of lower rank. There is both rigidity and flexibility within this process. On the one hand the attitudes, actions, and relationships of the dominant and subordinate individuals in the hierarchy constitute components of role behavior that can vary widely in content, form, and style, but on the other hand there is no variance in the expectation of obedience by the player of superior status, as well as the willingness of the player in a subordinate position to obey. STUDENT: How does all this work in a Japanese business model, or in a communal situation where everyone’s ideas are respected and considered? LEWIS: There is no conflict here. It is virtually impossible to have an organization, no matter how egalitarian, that does not have some minimal authority, even if that position changes, as for example it does in the UN Security Council, where a different nation’s representative serves as president on a revolving basis. No matter what the structure of a group might be, authority is highly influential on the formal structure of the group, including patterns and styles of communication, sanctions, and rewards, and the establishment within the group of goals, objectives, and values. STUDENT: How are personal decisions that an individual might make different than decisions the same individual might make within an organization? LEWIS: A decision that an individual might make as a member of an organization would be quite distinct from his/her personal decisions. In fact it is a personal decision for an individual to decide to join a particular organization. Over time this individual is likely to explore whether to remain as part of this group based on changes and the needs that arise in his or her extra–organizational private life. While in the organization this individual will need to make decisions not in relationship to personal needs and changes, but in an impersonal sense detached from personal need. Rather decisions will need to be made as part of the organizational intent, purpose, and STUDENT: How can one separate the personal from the organizational in terms of LEWIS: If the distinctions between the personal and organizational are not clear it can be difficult. Often individuals act unethically because they look to serve the group in ways that are inappropriate, and which ignore that distinction. “Whistleblowers” – individuals who report unethical behavior within organizations to which they belong – are extraordinary in having a clear distinction in this area. LEWIS: In the most effective organizations, ethically-based inducements, rewards, and sanctions are created to form, strengthen, and maintain an individual’s healthy identification with an organization. Simon’s contributions to research in the area of decision-making have become increasingly mainstreamed in the business community thanks to the growth of management To learn more about Decision Making, research Decision Analysis and explore the ideas of Harold Dwight Lasswell and Chester Barnard.
Hindi and Urdu are two Indo-Aryan languages that both developed from Sanskrit in Northern India beginning some 2700 years ago. While both Hindi and Urdu exists in many dialects, there were no distinction between them up until the 19th century. Before then, they were referred to as “Hindustani” which was a language derived from Sanskrit, but with Arabic, Persian, and to some extent, Turkic influences and loan-words. Hindi and Urdu are essentially the same languages. The main difference is that Urdu is written with the Arabic script whereas Hindi is written in the script originally used for Sanskrit, Devanagari. Urdu has a lot more Persian and Arabic loanwords than Hindi, but these are almost exclusively used in formal speech and the two languages remain completely mutually intelligible. Today, Urdu is the main language of Pakistan and is perceived as a language spoken by Muslims, while Hindi is spoken mainly in India, and is the language spoken by Hindus and non-Muslims. Hindi VS Urdu – What’s The Difference Between The Hindustani Languages? – AutoLingual Urdu and Hindi are two variants of the same language. Although they are relatively the same language, they have two distinct writing systems. Both Urdu and Hindi have the same language origins. They came from the Indo-European and Indo-Aryan language families. Both languages are derived from Sanskrit. Because of this they have the same Indic base and have similar phonology and grammar. They also share the same region (South Asia) where they are predominately spoken. The main difference between the two languages is their association. Hindi is a language used and spoken by Hindi people, the native and leading population of India. On the other hand, Urdu is associated with Pakistan and Muslims. Difference Between Urdu and Hindi Urdu vs Hindi Urdu and Hindi are two variants of the same language. Although they are relatively the same language, they have two distinct writing systems. Both Urdu and Hindi have the same language origins. They came from the Indo-European and Indo-Aryan...
Is the air in your home safe to breathe? According to recent research, indoor air pollution has been ranked among the top five risks to public health. Poor indoor air quality can affect your family's health in a number of ways. Some of the effects are immediate. Others accumulate over time. Indoor air quality testing can help you identify pollutants present in your home and take steps to reduce or eliminate them. Here's what you need to know about indoor air quality and how to measure and monitor it. Indoor Air Pollution: What It Is, Where It Comes From & Why It Matters It might surprise you to learn that a lot of indoor air pollution has much in common with the smog, smoke, and haze that you see hanging in the air outdoors. The Environmental Protection Agency refers to that type of pollution as "particulate matter" — "a complex mixture of extremely small particles and liquid droplets." It classifies the particulate matter by the size of the particles — particles smaller than 10 microns can pass through the nose and throat and make it to your lungs. Particles smaller than 2.5 microns — commonly referred to as PM2.5 — are especially harmful because they can get deep into the lungs and may even make it into the bloodstream. Sources of PM2.5 The primary sources of indoor air pollution include: - Fuel-burning combustion appliances, such as stoves - Tobacco products - Central heating and air conditioning systems - Excess moisture - Pollen and dust - Pet dander - Building materials and furnishings that may give off VOCs (volatile organic compounds) - Outdoor pollution sources - Cleaning products and/or products used for hobbies and personal care Indoor air pollution can be made worse by high humidity, poor ventilation, and high levels of outdoor pollution that infiltrate the building. Effects of PM2.5 on Health PM2.5 can have both short- and long-term effects on human health. The effects depend on a combination of factors, including the concentration of the particulates in the air, the type of pollutant, and existing health risk factors. In the short term, the effects may include: - Eye, nose, and throat irritation - Skin irritation Some effects may show up years after exposure or after repeated exposure to the pollutant. Those effects include: - Asthma and other respiratory diseases - Heart disease While respiratory diseases and related conditions are the most commonly known effects from exposure to PM2.5, there's a growing body of evidence that indoor air pollution may also contribute to the development of other health conditions, including type 2 diabetes. Indoor air quality testing is a vital step to help safeguard your family's health. How to Test Indoor Air Quality Identifying and monitoring indoor air quality is an important part of keeping your home safe. While some problems may be quickly apparent, other indoor air pollutants fly under the radar, so to speak, because they're not visible and don't cause immediate health consequences. These steps will help you identify indoor air quality problems so that you can take steps to address them. Buy and Install an Indoor Air Quality Monitor An air quality monitor allows you to continuously monitor the environmental conditions in your home. A good air quality monitor will include multiple sensors to measure factors that affect home air quality. At a minimum, you should look for a monitor that includes sensors for humidity, temperature, and particulate matter, such as the AcuRite Indoor air quality monitor. Combined with an AcuRite Access™ for My AcuRite™ Remote Monitoring, you can keep tabs on the conditions at home from anywhere, and take action to improve conditions when they fall outside ideal healthy air conditions. Test for Radon Radon is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and invisible gas that can have long-term effects on your health. It's an outdoor pollutant that can enter your home through cracks in the floor, foundation, and walls, and through areas around pumps and plumbing. You can purchase inexpensive radon test kits at most home improvement stores. Learn more about radon here. Tips to Improve and Maintain Indoor Air Quality Identifying indoor air pollutants and monitoring indoor air quality is a first step in improving the air quality in your home. These tips can help you improve your home environment and keep the air safe and healthy, so that you and your family can feel your best! - Keep the humidity between 30% and 60% to reduce the risk of mold and other allergens in the air. Use humidifiers and dehumidifiers as needed to maintain ideal humidity. - Regularly clean, check, and replace furnace and air conditioner filters. - Use HEPA filters on your vacuum cleaners to trap dust and allergens when you clean. - Weatherize your home. If your tests or monitoring show that outside air is bringing pollutants into your home, tighten up the cracks with weather stripping and other tools. Many utility companies have programs that will help you weatherize your home. - Eliminate sources of indoor pollution whenever possible. - Improve ventilation to increase air circulation. - Invest in an air cleaner to remove PM2.5 pollutants from the air. Get more tips on improving indoor air quality in our earlier blog post. Maintaining healthy indoor air is vital, both for your family's immediate comfort and their long-term health. An investment in air quality monitoring tools is literally an investment that could save their lives. And remember, what happens outdoors affects your indoor air quality. Stay up to date on current air quality conditions here: https://www.sparetheair.org/ How do you keep your indoor air quality at its best? Share your tips in the comments below!
SPARK Units are inquiry based learning experiences that place science and social studies content knowledge side by side with social justice topics. Students are encouraged to develop questions, theories, and strategies as they engage in interactive learning experiences. These units provide a framework for integrated learning, encompassing multiple subject areas and encouraging students to make connections in order to apply their knowledge. At Giddens School, we set out to intentionally weave social justice topics into our science and social studies instruction. We endeavor to promote the Giddens School mission, assuring that students are thinking critically while gaining relevant knowledge and skills in a social justice context. For each SPARK unit, we consider developmentally appropriate content in social justice, equity, and advocacy while relying on established standards for grade-band appropriate content. We look for units that complement standards from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the Common Core State Standards, the Next Generation Science Standards as well as the C3 Social Studies Framework. SPARK Units are thoughtfully designed to both increase academic knowledge that meets these high standards and increase student engagement with the complex world around them. The development of student engagement through exploration, questioning, and theorizing is also an essential element of SPARK Units. Students are prompted with complex ideas, phenomenon, or problems that form the context for their learning. For example, rather than a social studies unit on “Government and the Election,” our fifth graders are engaged in a “Elections and Voting Rights” SPARK Unit during which they experience the trials and tribulations of setting up a community based in democratic principles. Students actively engage with the tensions that arise in this process, developing empathy for the complexity of running a country and a critical eye toward how to improve communal decision making in their world. SPARK Units also engage community connections and seek to build bridges with the world beyond Giddens. Students venture on field trips and experiences designed to establish read world understanding of complex topics. Often, guest speakers and presenters come to the school or join us via Zoom to help our students think more deeply about the topics or to be interviewed as experts in their field. These opportunities help students gain awareness of the vast resources available to them as they pursue lifelong learning!
There's a science to how lake ice melts. It's not just as simple as warmer temps melts ice. The biggest single factor is the stronger sunlight as we head into March and April. The first step is melting the snow off the top of the ice. Snow cover reflects back most sunlight, keeping the ice beneath it sheltered. Once the snow melts, the ice becomes almost like a greenhouse. Sunlight penetrates the ice and warms the water and lake bottom beneath the ice, so now the ice is being attacked from above and below. Once the ice gets to about 4" to 12" thickness long vertical crystals develop and hollow out. This acts like a prism absorbing more sunlight. You can tell this by the color of the ice from above or in the distance. When the ice looks dark, that means it's absorbing light (since when it's reflecting we see white, or all the light being bounced back to our eyes). At this stage, melt water gets into the hollow areas accelerating the melt. The final big blow is when you get a very warm and particularly windy day. A few consecutive days in the 60s or 70s+ in early or mid April along with a strong wind breaks the ice apart, and the fragments melt quickly within the lake water. As you've seen with our ice-out coverage, there's a lot more to ice melting on lakes than just some sun. More from Sven Explains:
Art Education in the 1930s Advancement occurs through education. Western art was catapulted toward the New by European art exhibitions and teachers who emigrated from Europe during the rise of Fascism and the Nazi regime, including Josef and Anni Albers, faculty from The Bauhaus in Germany, and Hans Hofmann, an abstract painter and teacher in Munich who settled in New York. Their common purpose was to develop modernist art education to allow for a creative and intellectual culture to counter the suppression of free thought that terrorized the West. With them came a bedrock of modernist techniques and theories that would shape abstraction in America and beyond. The Schools that had the greatest influence in the 30s, 40s and into the 50s was the renowned Black Mountain College and Greenwich Village and Provincetown studios of Hans Hofmann. The Harlem Renaissance “The Harlem section of Manhattan, which covers just three square miles, drew nearly 175,000 African Americans, giving the neighborhood the largest concentration of black people in the world,” the National Museum of African American History and Culture explains. “Harlem became a destination for African Americans of all backgrounds. From unskilled laborers to an educated middle-class, they shared common experiences of slavery, emancipation, and racial oppression, as well as a determination to forge a new identity as free people.” In order to help achieve this shared objective, artistic African Americans from all over the country flocked to Harlem, where their creativity was fostered and their work was groundbreaking. Kelly Richman-Abdou, My Modern Met, July, 2020 Social + Political Context With the rise of nationalism around the world came a migration of individuals seeking asylum along with economic crises forced by countries facing climate shifts and market failures resulting in redefining moments including The Great Depression in America. "My father, who fled Nazi Germany as a 17 year old and lived in NYC, spoke frequently of this frightening event." Judi Hopfer Deglin Style Precursors + Influences From 1900-1940, a fervent period of experimentation occurred fostered by movements of the 19th century, and enabled by new techniques, media and styles preceding World War 2. The pace, scrutiny, traumas and freedoms of these first decades were liberating like few times prior. And openings that occurred, would define a century in Western art. "Spanish Republican forces sent Guernica on an international tour to create awareness of the war and raise funds for Spanish refugees. It traveled the world for 19 years and then was loaned for safekeeping to The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Picasso refused to allow it to return to Spain until the country “enjoyed public liberties and democratic institutions,” which finally occurred in 1981." Khan Academy "In December 1931, The Museum of Modern Art mounted a major exhibition of work by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera. It was only the second retrospective at the Museum, and it was wildly popular, breaking attendance records in its five-week run." MoMA
A boil is a tender red lump on your skin that is caused by an infection of a hair root or sweat pore. Large boils can form abscesses. - The most common places for boils to appear are on your face, neck, armpits, shoulders and buttocks (bottom). - Boils are not usually a serious problem. However, if the infection spreads, you must see your doctor (GP). - Small boils can be treated at home with warm compresses but larger boils and abscesses will usually need to be treated by your GP. - Boils can spread very easily so it is important to practice good hygiene. - If you keep getting boils, you need to reduce the source of bacteria causing the reinfection. What causes boils and abscesses? Boils are usually caused by a bacteria called Staphylococcus aureus, which often lives harmlessly on human skin. However, any break in your skin barrier leaves it vulnerable to infection and can lead to the development of a boil. Large boils can form abscesses, which is the build up of pus within an area. A cluster of boils that have multiple white pus heads is called a carbuncle. Who is at risk of getting boils? Anyone can develop a boil. Most people with boils are otherwise healthy. The following conditions can increase your risk of getting boils: - diabetes and other illnesses that weaken your immune system - broken skin such as cuts and grazes, which allow bacteria to enter your body - anaemia or iron deficiency - some medicines – if you think any medicines you are taking might be causing boils, ask your pharmacist. How are boils and abscesses treated? Small boils can be treated at home. Larger boils and abscesses will usually need to be treated by your GP. Small boils can be treated at home with warm compresses to encourage the boil to open and drain naturally. You can make a warm compress by wetting a facecloth with warm (not hot) water and putting it on the boil for several minutes. Do this a few times a day. Do this as soon as you notice a boil. The heat and moisture can help the boil to open and drain, which usually takes a few days. Always wash your hands before and after touching the boil. Practice good hygiene to stop the boil spreading Boils can spread very easily. If the boil opens on its own and drains, wipe away the pus or blood with a clean cotton ball soaked in antiseptic solution (such as Savlon or Dettol – follow the directions on the bottle for making the solution). Wash and dry the area well and then cover it with a plaster. This stops the boil from spreading. Wash your hands with soap and dry thoroughly before and after touching the boil. Also wash your body with warm soapy water or use an antiseptic solution such as Savlon or Dettol. To help keep the infection from spreading: - use your own towel and facecloth – don't share them - wash your towel and facecloth often in hot water along with any clothing worn close to your skin - don't squeeze, scratch, drain or open the boil – squeezing can push the infection deeper into your skin - don't pop the boil with a needle – this could make the infection worse. Larger boils and abscesses Larger boils and abscesses can be treated with incision (a cut) and drainage. This means that your GP will cut a small opening in the boil so that the pus can drain out. This is also called lancing the boil. Sometimes gauze is placed in the cut so that it stays open and keeps draining. If you have fever, cellulitis (an infection that affects the deeper layers of your skin) or other conditions such as diabetes, an oral antibiotic may also be prescribed. Referral to hospital for surgical drainage is more common for children or adults with complicated or large boils. When should I see my doctor for a boil? You should see your GP if: - you have a boil on your face, nose or spine – this can sometimes cause serious complications - the boil does not form a head or point or does not get better within a week - you have lots of pain or discomfort - you get a fever - the boil has red streaks coming from it - the boil is the size of a 10 cent coin or larger or the boil keeps getting bigger - you have several boils - your have diabetes or a weakened immune system. How are recurrent boils treated? Some people get boils repeatedly because they carry a strain of bacteria that easily causes infection of any broken skin (minor cuts and scrapes). In this case, you need to reduce any source of bacteria causing reinfection. - Use an antiseptic body wash for a week to get rid of bacteria on your skin. - Treat new boils or lesions straight away. - Keep boils covered with plaster to reduce spreading infection to other parts of your body or to other family members. - Sheets, towels and clothes should be washed in hot water to reduce reinfection. - Some people may be asked to apply an antibiotic cream to your nose (where the bacteria are often carried). - You may be asked to have dilute bleach baths twice a week. Read more about bleach baths. \|Dr Li-Wern Yim is a travel doctor with a background in general practice. She studied medicine at the University of Otago, and has a postgraduate diploma in travel medicine (Otago). She also studied tropical medicine in Uganda and Tanzania, and holds a diploma from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She currently works in clinical travel medicine in Auckland.
The Domain Name System, or DNS, can be thought of as the internet directory. It is a way of cataloguing every domain that exists on the web. It may not look as if there is much organisation in the internet’s twisted web, but in reality, DNS is the foundation for every page you visit. While it may sound complicated, the basic concept of DNS is quite easy to grasp once you understand the vocabulary involved. To help you fully understand your website, domain name, and the terminology used, this post will walk through what DNS is and how it works to provide you with the page you are reading now. Domain Names & IP Addresses Internet users use domain names to access websites like google.com or uk2.net. These domains typically correlate closely to the website’s brand or function. Domains are unique, and one domain cannot represent more than one website. Each domain name corresponds with an IP address. IP stands for Internet Protocol, and IP addresses are groups of numbers that are unique to that domain. Internet creators knew that we humble humans would struggle to remember 9 specific numbers to bring up a website. To save our numerically challenged brains, creators instead decided to link domain names and IP addresses as a more memorable alternative. IP addresses come in two forms: IPv4 or IPv6. IPv4 is the original method for IP addresses and contains up to 9 unique numbers. An example of an IP address is Google at 126.96.36.199 or Bing at 188.8.131.52. However, as the internet expanded, users needed more IP addresses for the growing number of web location. IPv6 was created in the late 90s to accommodate the expanding internet and instead used alphanumeric to combine letters and numbers for more IP locations. For example, the IPv6 address for Google is 2001:4860:4860::8888. How DNS works: DNS includes the process that each domain name follows to convert into an IP address. For example, you most likely call the place you live “home”, but it also has a corresponding street address. A website has a “home”, like Google or UK2, and a corresponding IP, or internet, address. When you type a domain name into a search bar, a succession of very fast connections are used to look up and establish a connection to that website. This sequence of events is referred to as DNS. The first stop along the way to a secure connection is through a nameserver. A nameserver handles queries or questions on the internet and retrieves the information you are searching for. For example, if you typed UK2.NET into your address bar, the nameserver would look through directories, find the corresponding website and direct your browser to it. This data transaction actually has four parts where your computer asks and the nameserver answers. Your computer then confirms, and the nameserver responds once more. Remember, this all happens at lightning speed as you wait for a page to load. Setting up your DNS While this process is fascinating, it only works because website owners register their domain name and IP address with a domain registrar. When you purchase a domain, you are required to provide specific information about your nameservers and domain. To learn more about this process, please visit our knowledgebase. The articles found in our knowledgebase walk you through the steps to establishing your domain in connection with a nameserver. Registering a Domain with UK2.NET To register your own domain name, simply visit UK2.NET and use our search tool to find the perfect domain for your next project. Once you have selected a domain, choose the time frame that you would like to as a registration and renewal period. Add the domain to your shopping cart. Click on the Checkout icon to begin the checkout process. During this process, you will need to enter an email address that you have access to in order to access your DNS and domain settings. Once your transaction is complete, you will receive and email with information on how to create a CHI account to view and edit domain options. Please note that if you already have a CHI account, you can navigate to the Domains tab to search and register new domains. Once you receive an email welcoming you to the CHI platform, you can create logins and log into your CHI account. To change DNS settings, select the Domains icon from the menu on the left-hand side of your screen. Next, click on the DNS tab at the top of your screen. Edit the DNS settings by entering the following into the form fields provided: When you are finished, click the Save Changes button. For a more detailed account of DNS advanced settings, please see our Knowledgebase. As always, our expert technical support staff is always available to help you through the domain registration and DNS process. Feel free to give us a call, open a chat or create a ticket within your CHI account.
Epidermolysis bullosa (EB) is a rare condition that causes the skin to blister. Even minor rubbing may cause painful blistering in people with this condition. EB is caused by mutations in genes involved in the formation of skin layers. Defective genes may be inherited from one or both parents, although sometimes it happens spontaneously. The disease also can be the result of the immune system mistakenly attacking its own skin proteins. It usually is diagnosed in babies and children, or even in an unborn child of parents who are known to carry a disease-causing genetic change. However, milder types can develop later in adulthood. Dermatologists may suspect EB just from the appearance of the skin, however, laboratory tests are used to confirm the diagnosis. These include a skin biopsy and genetic testing. A small sample of skin is taken to be examined. This technique can help identify which skin layer (or layers) is affected. Different microscopy techniques can be used to examine the skin sample taken by biopsy. One of them is immunofluorescent mapping, wherein scientists check if proteins needed for connecting tissues are missing or reduced in number. Another approach is electron microscopy, a technique that magnifies images to help identify detailed structural defects in the skin. Genetic testing is used to identify defective genes in people with EB and their family members. It uses a small sample of blood that is sent to specialists at a genetic laboratory. Families who are known to carry a defective gene associated with EB are at risk of having a baby who develops the condition. Prenatal testing can be conducted as early as 11 weeks into pregnancy. The procedure includes amniocentesis, where a small amount of amniotic fluid, which surrounds the fetus in the womb, is examined, or sampling the chorionic villi, which are projections of placenta that contain the same genetic material as the fetus. If prenatal testing confirms the unborn baby has EB, parents are offered counseling to help them understand the results and decide how they wish to continue with the pregnancy. Last updated: June 8, 2021 Epidermolysis Bullosa News is strictly a news and information website about the disease. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website.
Sarcopenia (from the Greek meaning “poverty of flesh”) is the degenerative loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength associated with aging (0.5-1% loss per year after the age of 25). Sarcopenia is a component of the frailty syndrome As of 2009 there is no generally accepted definition of sarcopenia in the medical literature. The European Working Group on Sarcopenia in Older People (EWGSOP) has developed a practical clinical definition and consensus diagnostic criteria for age-related sarcopenia. For the diagnosis of sarcopenia, the working group has proposed using the presence of both low muscle mass + low muscle function (strength or performance). Markers of sarcopenia Sarcopenia is characterized first by a decrease in the size of the muscle, which causes weakness and frailty. However, this loss of muscle mass may be caused by different cellular mechanisms than those that cause muscle atrophy. For example, during sarcopenia, there is a replacement of muscle fibres with fat and an increase in fibrosis. Benefit of exercise Exercise and increases in activity have been shown to be beneficial in settings of sarcopenia; exercise even in the very old can increase strength and muscle function. Lack of exercise is currently thought to be a significant risk factor, increasing the likelihood of sarcopenia. Not only muscle but the entire musculoskeletal system of muscle, neuromuscular responsiveness, endocrine function, vasocapillary access, tendon, joint, ligament, and bone, depends on regular and lifelong exercise to maintain integrity. The slow attenuation, atrophy, or loss of muscle tissue that medical professionals sometimes describe as sarcopenia (literally, “flesh loss’) is currently thought to be the result of cumulative loss of musculoskeletal strength and mass associated with chronic absence of exercise of sufficient intensity or volume. However, even highly trained athletes experience the effects of sarcopenia. It is interesting to note that athletic speed and strength records are generally set by individuals no older than 30 years of age, although some powerlifters and other strength athletes continue to set records into their 50s. Fiber-type changes in sarcopenia Simple circumference measurement does not provide enough data to determine whether or not an individual is suffering from severe sarcopenia. Sarcopenia is also marked by a decrease in the circumference of distinct types of muscle fibers. Skeletal muscle has different fiber-types, which are characterized by expression of distinct myosin variants. During sarcopenia, there is a decrease in “type 2” fiber circumference (Type II), with little to no decrease in “type I” fiber circumference (Type I). However, we lose both type I and type II muscle fibers (muscle cells) equally as we age (contrary to popular belief that we lose type II more rapidly). Loss of satellite cell function Satellite cells are small mononuclear cells that abut the muscle fiber. Satellite cells are normally activated upon injury or exercise. These cells then differentiate and fuse into the muscle fiber, helping to maintain its function. One theory is that sarcopenia, is in part caused by a failure in satellite cell activation. Therefore, the ability to repair damaged muscles or respond to nutritional signals is impaired. Loss of anabolic signals Extreme muscle loss is often a result of both diminishing anabolic signals, such as growth hormone and testosterone, and promotion of catabolic signals, such as pro-inflammatory cytokines. Sarcopenia as a public-health problem Due to the lessened physical activity and increased longevity of industrialized populations, sarcopenia is emerging as a major health concern. Sarcopenia may progress to the extent that an older person may lose his or her ability to live independently. Furthermore, sarcopenia is an important independent predictor of disability in population-based studies, linked to poor balance, gait speed, falls, and fractures. Sarcopenia can be thought of as a muscular analog of osteoporosis, which is loss of bone, also caused by inactivity and counteracted by exercise. The combination of osteoporosis and sarcopenia results in the significant frailty often seen in the elderly population. Strength losses with ageing for men and women are relatively similar. They are greater for lower than upper extremity muscles. Maximum attainable strength peaks in mid-twenties and declines thereafter. The decline is precipitous after 65 years of age, though few longitudinal studies exist on this topic. A direct assessment of the effects of sarcopenia, even in extremely physically fit individuals, can be seen in the age-related decline in Masters athletics (track and field) world records of muscle-intensive sports, such as weight lifting. Consensus on clinical diagnosis of sarcopenia has quickly developed over the last decade around the working definition proposed in 1998 by Baumgartner et al., which uses a measure of lean body mass as determined by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) compared to a normal reference population. His working definition uses a cut point of 2 standard deviations below the mean of lean mass for gender specific healthy young adults. This methodology is attractive for definitive diagnosis in clinical settings as well for several reasons. Primarily, emerging research shows it is predictive of negative outcomes and it is also a method familiar to most clinicians. This later point is especially true for those that treat the geriatric population, given its similarity to the 1996 World Health Organization (WHO) methodology for definitive diagnosis of osteoporosis, which also uses DEXA, but uses a measure of lean mass rather than bone mineral density (BMD). DEXA is widely used already in clinical settings in developed countries to identify and monitor severity of osteoporosis. And the degree of sarcopenia can be measured using DEXA in patients being evaluated for osteoporosis, at the same time with the same scan, with no added cost or radiation exposure to the patient. Since Baumgartner’s working definition first appeared, some consensus groups have refined the definition, including the recent joint effort of the European Society on Clinician Nutrition and Metabolism (ESPEN) Special Interest Groups (SIG) on geriatric nutrition and on cachexia-anorexia in chronic wasting diseases. Their consensus definition is: 1) A low muscle mass, >2 standard deviations below that mean measured in young adults (aged 18–39 years in the 3rd NHANES population) of the same sex and ethnic background, and 2) Low gait speed (e.g. a walking speed below 0.8 m/s in the 4-m walking test). However, it can be replaced by one of the well-established functional tests utilized locally as being part of the comprehensive geriatric assessment. There remains many opportunities for further refinement of reference populations by ethnic groups, and to further correlate of the degrees of severity of sarcopenia to overt declines in functional performance (preferably using verified functional tests), as well as incidence of hospitalization admissions, morbidity and mortality. Work toward this objective has already begun, and the body of research to date clearly points toward severe sarcopenia is predicative of negative outcomes, similar to what already been shown to exist with the Frailty syndrome, as defined by the criteria set forth in 2001 by Fried et al. Exercise has been considered of great interest in treatment of sarcopenia. There are several reports showing increased ability and capacity of skeletal muscle to synthesize proteins in response to short term resistance exercise. Also, it has been reported exercise can improve physical performance (strength and mobility) in elderly subjects. However, there is insufficient research demonstrating such findings in long term. Possible therapeutic strategies include use of testosterone or anabolic steroids, though long term use of these agents is controversial in men given concerns of prostate symptoms, and essentially contraindicated in women, given concerns of virilization. Recent experimental results have shown testosterone treatments may induce adverse cardiovascular events. Other approved medications have been shown to have little to no effect in this setting, including agents such DHEA and human growth hormone. New therapies in clinical development hold great promise in this area, including the selective androgen receptor modulators (SARMs), as evidenced by recent studies. Nonsteriodal SARMs are of particular interest, given they exhibit significant selectivity between the anabolic effects of testosterone on muscle, but apparently with little to no androgenic effects such as prostate stimulation in men or virilization in women. Diet and nutrition Nutritional evaluation may also be indicated if malnutrition is suspected, or current nutritional intake is insufficient to maintain adequate total body mass, although increased exercise also increases appetite. A 2012 study of 14 elderly women in Scotland had “compelling” results, suggesting the fatty acids EPA and DHA contribute to increased muscle strength. A further trial involving 60 people (males and females) received funding and was due to start afterwards.
We continue to review some of the most important materials in heat treatment and metallurgy. Boron (Chemical symbol: B) Although not identified as an element until 1808 by French chemists Joseph L. Gay-Lussac and L.J. Thénard, and independently by Sir Humphry Davy in London, boron compounds such as borax (sodium tetraborate) had been known and used by ancient cultures for thousands of years. Borax’s name comes from the Arabic word buraq, meaning “white.” It was not until 1909 that American chemist Ezekiel Weintraub produced 99% pure boron by reducing boron halides with hydrogen. The previous efforts had yielded only 60%-pure samples. Pure boron (Fig. 1) is very rarely found in nature. It is more commonly found in the compounds borax, boric acid, colemanite, kernite, ulexite and borates. Boron is considered a semi-metallic element, with its place on the periodic table between the metal beryllium and carbon, a nonmetal. It is a very hard element, second only to carbon in the form of diamond. Boron is, however, more temperature-resistant than diamond. Boron is an important alloying element of high-strength steel. It significantly increases the hardenability of steel without loss of ductility. Boron steel has a yield strength four times that of other high-strength steels. Originally used in high-performance European sports cars, it is now used by nearly every automotive manufacturer for certain strengthening bars, gussets and pillars (Fig. 2). Boron alloys with steel under high temperatures by forming a molecular bond with the metal. Its effectiveness is most evident at lower carbon levels, and it is used in amounts ranging from 5-15 parts per million. Steel and other metals can be surface hardened with boron, a process called boriding or boronizing. In this process, boron atoms are diffused into the surface of the metal. The resulting surface contains metal borides, such as iron borides, nickel borides and cobalt borides. These borides have extremely high hardness and wear resistance, even at small concentrations. Boronized metal parts are extremely wear-resistant and will often last two to five times longer than components treated with conventional heat treatments such as hardening, carburizing, nitriding, nitrocarburizing or induction hardening. Agricultural parts are prime candidates for boronizing. Boron is also used in NIB (neodymium/iron/boron) magnets. NIB magnets (Fig. 3) are the most powerful of the rare-earth magnets and were invented in 1982 by General Motors and Sumitomo Special Metals. They are used in computers, cell phones, medical equipment, toys, motors and wind turbines, among others. Boron is a superb neutron absorber, and it is used in control rods for nuclear reactors when alloyed with steel or reacted with carbon, titanium or zirconium. Here are a few important facts about boron. - Atomic Number: 5 - Atomic Weight: 10.81 - Density (g/cc): 2.34 - Melting Point: 2075°C - Specific Heat (@20°C J/g mole): 1.025 - Fusion Heat (kJ/mole): 23.60 - ResQmed (www.resqmed.com) - Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) - Nisus Corporation (www.nisuscorp.com)
What do Songs Mean to ESL Students? Children love music and they love songs in the classroom. Using English songs in the classroom can be effective to teach your learners. Children can benefit from having a lively and cheerful classroom full of music. So how can we be productive using songs in the classroom? And how can we motivate children to learn new English words and improve their pronunciation by using songs? This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Edgar R. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Songs can help learn vocabulary and improve pronunciation. Children learn with songs by listening to whole sentences and absorbing vocabulary and phrases the same as adults. When we listen to music we try to mimic the signer we are learning and that is the same way that kids can benefit from listening to songs in the classroom. From personal experience, using songs in the classroom has helped me reinforce the target vocabulary of a unit. Children try to mimic the songs and memorize the lyrics. Students can reuse the language later during the lesson, which is very effective. One way that can be effective is by matching a song with the unit. For example, if you are teaching about body parts you can look for a song that uses body parts language. A popular song could be “Head, shoulder, knees and toes” song. Children are happy to hear the song many times and it will help their listening skills too. Also Read: Games in the Classroom: What are EFL games? How to choose songs correctly? You need to make sure that when you select a song for our classroom it is appropriate for your children’s level. If you choose music that is too fast or difficult you will become demoralized by their failure to follow the song. There are different resources online that you can use to download music or music videos. Some of my favorite and useful youtube channels are: - The Singing Walrus - English Singsing - Dream English Kids - Simple Nursery Choice of materials There are course books that use music in their curriculum to help reinforce their units. National Geographic OUR WORLD using a song for the unit to bring their lessons to life. Each song per unit is appropriate for each level to make it easy for a young learner to sing it. Also Read: How long are TEFL contracts? Accompanying with other activities When using songs in the classroom and teaching young learners you can also make up actions throughout the song or use TPR (total physical response) to make it more effective. One example is to make a special action for a particular vocabulary word. If the song has the word apple in it then pretending to bite into an apple or making a circle with your hands could be an action for that word. There could be actions or verbs in the song that you can act out. Actions cause the children to want to dance and use their imagination. Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course today! As a facilitator of the classroom, you must guide the children to a fun and dynamic environment. By using songs in the classroom, you will create an environment that is welcoming to your learners not just to learn but to have fun. Learning will be natural and their brains will absorb all the knowledge you bring to them. Be persistent and proactive and you will see results in your class. - The 5 Best Ways To Build Rapport With Your TEFL Students - The Benefits of Having Good Rapport with Students - The 10 Best Destinations for Teaching English Abroad in 2018 - 5 Great Places to Teach English Abroad Without a Degree - The Top 5 TEFL Destinations For Adrenaline Junkies and Adventure Seekers - Online or In-Class - Which TEFL Course Should You Take?
Mark-making is a term used to describe pre-writing activities which encourage children to take notice of the marks they are making and start to experiment with a range of different marks and materials. These activities could be done using pens and crayons on paper, using art materials such as paints and pastels or even screen-based, for example using iPad apps. It is always easiest to start with large-scale mark-making before trying to work on small shapes, as smaller movements require more fine motor skill and control. The series of progression for the types of marks made could look like this: - Random marks, but the child is noticing the effects of their movements and actions - Experimenting with directional marks (horizontal and vertical lines, circles) - Writing patterns (zig-zag, wavy lines, dots etc) - Pre-letter shapes (horizontal, vertical and diagonal straight lines, x,+, triangle and square shapes) - Tracing letters - Copying letters - Writing letters If your child is still not able to make all of the pre-letter shapes confidently, it is useful to try lots of fun activities to practice these basic shapes rather than focusing on letters and numbers. For many of our students, their difficulty with fine motor skills will prevent them from being confident in writing letters and they may find it easier to use typing as their main form of writing. Practising letter matching games can help to develop the skills needed for typing later on. Here Anna describes some of the fun and sensory ways in which we encourage mark-making in school using music and movement: Here are some ideas for other mark-making activities that can be done at home: Mark-making with paint and toy car wheels. Roll the cars through the paint and then make a range of lines and marks with the wheels as you drive them across the paper! You can also try stamping toy people and animal feet to see the shapes they make. Scatter lovely smelling spices on the table or in a tray and have fun making shapes and lines in them with fingers or brushes. Fine Motor Skills As well as providing lots of opportunities for exploring mark-making, fine motor activities are an important part of developing independence and accuracy in a range of everyday tasks. Fine motor activities will help to strengthen and refine finger movements and allow your child to be more accurate with holding writing tools and making different marks. Disco dough is a fun way of practicing fine motor skills; here Blanca shows you how to complete this activity at home: Here are some ideas for other fine motor activities that are easy to do using things around the home: Cooking is lots of fun and is a great way to practice fine motor skills. Use child-safe knives, a grater and a peeler to make a range of different dishes. Your child will develop their grip, strength and accuracy. Threading is a good way of practising control and developing a pincer grip. Dried pasta shapes are an interesting way of practising threading, either on to spaghetti sticks or a ribbon or string. Cutting and sticking are simple fine motor activities for children who are more confident with tools. For earlier stages, you can use a pincer grip to tear strips of the paper to stick on to a collage, like these lovely jungle leaf pictures! Here are some useful resources:
Students will enter "life expectancy" data into lists and set up scatter plots and trace the scatter plot to select two points. Secondly, they will use the points to calculate slope and write a linear equation. Finally, they will use the Transformation Graphing App to fit the data using a linear equation in slope-intercept form and analyze the meaning of the slope and the intercept in relationship to birth year and life expectancy. Before the Activity Provide each student with a copy of the attached .pdf document. During the Activity Follow the directions on the attached document. After the Activity Review student answers As a class, discuss questions that appeared to be more challenging Re-teach concepts as necessary
A Swahili Counting Book Author: Marie Holt Grade Level: Early Elementary 1- The students will give oral examples of similarities and differences between another culture and their own. 2- The students will create a Swahili counting book using pictures from their own culture. 3- The students will identify Swahili as a language spoken in Africa. Content Information: Click here for background information. * Book - Moja Means One by Muriel Feelings * Paper - 10 pieces per student, can be cut into half sheets. * Crayons or markers 1- Anticipatory Set: The teacher will ask the students if they know what Swahili means or if they know any words in Swahili. Then explain to them that they do if they have seen the movie, "The Lion King." The word "simba" means "lion", "rafiki" means "friend", and "Hakuna Matata" means "no troubles" or "no problems" in Swahili. 2- The teacher will read the book Moja Means One to the students. 3- The teacher will show that each page counts to ten in Swahili and talks about some aspects of the East African culture while counting (e.g., 2 villagers playing, 7 fish in the Nile river, and 9 instruments being played.) 4- The teacher will ask the students questions concerning things are similar and different between an African culture and their own. * What do you see from the book that is the same with you and your neighborhood? * What do you see that is unique to Africa? 5- Talk about ten different things from their own community that could be made into a classroom Swahili counting book. Starting with number one in the Swahili language, the teacher will write down what the children say to describe their own community. The community can be as broad as the whole United States or as closely related to them as their neighborhood, school, or classroom. 6- The teacher will write down the items for each number up to ten. Then the teacher will type the students' words onto ten pieces of paper and staple them together to make a book. Make sure the numbers are spelled out in the Swahili language along with the numeral (e.g., mbili computers in the classroom, tano kids riding on bikes, or tisa cars in the parking lot.) 7- The teacher will make enough copies for every student. The students will then illustrate their own book and draw the number of items on each page according to the words and numbers written on the page. 8- The teacher will rotate among the students asking what language is being used and asking where it comes from. 9- Have the students share their books with other students or family members. They will now have their own Swahili counting book to read. 1- The teacher will observe students' comments regarding the similarity and difference questions. 2- The teacher will assess the books that have been made by each child. 3- The teacher will evaluate students responses to #8 in the procedures section of the lesson plan. Source: Feelings, Muriel. Moja Means One. 1971. The Dial Press, New York. Return to Africa Table of Contents
Can Water Bears Survive Outer space? Water bears (tardigrades) are the only known animals to survive the vacuum of space. Water bears are extremophiles, meaning that they can survive extreme conditions (like high temperatures, and high pressure). Water bears are good at surviving extreme conditions due to their genetic makeup which allows them to dehydrate and then rehydrate years later when conditions improve. You can see this for yourself by soaking moss (where water bears like to live) in water (as show in the videos below). SciShow giving an overview of the water bear. FACT: Given their ability to survive space, some people speculate that water bears may actually come from another planet. What Are Water Bears? Tardigrades (also known as water bears or moss piglets) are water-dwelling, eight-legged, segmented micro-animals. There are more than 1,150 species of tardigrades. All adults of the same species of water bears have the same number of cells, but each species can differ in the makeup of organs, cells, and size. Why Are They Called Water Bears? Water bears get their name from the way they walk, which resembles a little bear. They also get their name from the fact that they can often be found on barnacles or by soaking moss in water. FACT(ISH): Water bears also enjoy long walks on the beach. Any walk is long for a water bear as they have four pairs of stubby little legs and range from 0.3 to 1.2 mm (0.012 to 0.047 in) in length. Learn how to find your own water bears on moss. They make good pets, probably. How Can Water Bears Survive In Outer Space? The reason water bears can survive outer space is that they can withstand extreme conditions of all sorts. Their resilience makes them perfect for the inhospitable conditions of outer-space. The extremophile water bears can: - Withstand temperature ranges from −458 °F (−272.222 °C) to 300 °F (149 °C) - Survive dehydration for years. When exposed to extremely low temperatures, their body composition goes from 85% water to only 3%. This dehydration ensures they don’t get torn apart by water expanding as it freezes in extreme temperatures. - Withstand pressure ranges up to six times greater than is found in the deepest ocean trenches. - Survive ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than the lethal dose for a human. - Probably survive other extreme conditions like environmental toxins. Why Can Water Bears Survive In Extreme Conditions? Water bears use techniques like dehydration and rehydration to survive in extreme conditions, but how did they get these abilities? It’s likely water bears have acquired the DNA to survive extreme conditions from other organisms throughout their evolution. A stunning 17.5 percent of water bear DNA is made up of foreign DNA. That means 17.5% of a water bear’s DNA is “borrowed” from another organism. When water bears dehydrate their DNA becomes brittle, and it can easily break apart and assimilate DNA from other organisms (like bacteria). It is thought that the assimilated foreign DNA is part of what allows them to survive extreme conditions. It’s also possible that their genetic reassembling ability has allowed for beneficial genetic mutations of their DNA. So if something can survive space, does that mean something might have come from space? We like to think so. Vice asks that question. FACT: Water bears are not the only animal to have evolved by assimilating beneficial DNA from other organisms. That is how we think plants and animals on earth evolved. Did Water Bears Come From Space? In a broad sense, we are all from space (i.e. we are made of bits of stardust originating during the big bang, according to basic evolutionary theories). But if we ask a more specific question, “since water bears can survive in space, and they have foreign DNA, did they originate as an organism somewhere else and then travel here through space?” We don’t know the answer. It’s possible that the water bear has at some point been an interplanetary traveler (possibly carried to earth by a meteor or other celestial impact event). It’s also possible that some other organisms, specifically non-animal organisms like bacteria and archaea, could have come from space this way as well.
Your cart is empty. By mid-June the 2013 fire season in Utah had burned nearly 2000 acres with over 200 wildfires recorded from around the state. A “typical” wildfire year in the West has become increasingly difficult to define. Each year an increasing number of acres are consumed by wildfire in the western U.S. with trends suggesting larger fires are part of our future. Fire science suggests that three factors, including changing climate, a century of fire suppression, and invasive species, are contributing to the increasing occurrence and severity of western wildfires. Curator of the Garrett Herbarium, Mitchell Power, has spent the last 15 years exploring the history of wildfire in the western United States. Join him for a discussion of the causes, benefits, and consequences of wildfire in the west, insights from the historical fire record, and the legacy of twentieth-century fire suppression policies. Power will also explore the dynamic relationship between humans and fire and discuss the challenges of understanding this relationship through time.
An engaging, interactive, and easy-to-read look at how to deliver quality early education and care for all children. This comprehensive text gives pre-service early childhood educators a balanced, accessible introduction to early childhood education that also covers the content areas. It shows readers how to teach and care for children by identifying and focusing on five essential elements: understanding child development, play, guidance, working with families, and diversity. Each essential element is addressed in its own separate chapter and then explored at a deeper level in a featured section in ever chapter. Included is a rigorous overview of the planning, preparation, and delivery of a curriculum for young children built around six specific curriculum areas, each explored in its own chapter. The author stresses the importance of play and the need to nurture each child’s natural affinity for learning through experimentation and exploration. Separate chapters cover the importance of the outdoor environment and the effect of technology on early childhood education, giving future teachers a well-rounded look at delivering quality early education. Short vignettes help students better understand young children; numerous practical examples of developmentally appropriate strategies provide tools for actual classroom teaching; and supplemental resources assist instructors in presenting the course. Invigorate learning with the Enhanced Pearson eText The Enhanced Pearson eText provides a rich, interactive learning environment designed to improve student mastery of content with the following multimedia features: NEW! Check Your Understanding quizzes at the end of each major chapter section allow students to test their understanding of the information presented.
New insights into a useful killer protein The cells that make up all complex life have evolved a variety of ways to undergo programmed cell death when necessary. There are many instances when one cell dying can benefit the entire organism – for example, a cell infected with a virus can sacrifice itself to hamper the spread of the virus to other healthy cells. One programmed cell death pathway, known as necroptosis, is the focus of AINSE PGRA scholar Katherine Davies’ research. A virally infected cell that undergoes necroptosis will cause inflammation that, in turn, alerts the body’s immune system to the infection threat. Necroptosis is mediated by a protein called MLKL (or Mixed Lineage Kinase domain-Like). When the inert MLKL protein is activated within a cell, multiple copies of the MLKL protein bind together, travel to the cell membrane and permeabilise this vital barrier. This results in the death of the cell. The exact process by which MLKL changes from an inert protein to a ‘killer protein’, however, is not yet well understood. This has important consequences for the development of new drugs that may target MLKL therapeutically. Usually, mice are used as the animal model of choice during the development of new medicines; however, multiple lines of evidence suggest that the mouse and human MLKL proteins differ slightly in their structure and activation mechanisms, meaning that the mouse system may not be a representative model of human necroptosis. In order to gain further insight, Katherine – alongside her collaborators from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research and the University of Melbourne – studied the structure of the MLKL proteins of rats and horses. The structure of these proteins was determined by X-ray crystallography, at the MX2 beamline of ANSTO’s Australian Synchrotron. This technique uses X-rays to interrogate protein crystals, in order to generate a diffraction pattern from which the structure of the protein can be determined. The Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) beamline was also used to investigate the protein structures in solution, to understand how multiple copies of the protein can bind together. The investigation showed that rat MLKL protein’s structure, and behaviour in solution was more similar to human MLKL than the mouse protein, suggesting that rats may be a better model organism for further research into medicines that target MLKL for treating human disease. To read more about the technical details of Katherine’s research, please see page 27 of the 2019 AINSE Annual Report. Next Student Research Spotlight: James Hooper (Going back in time to understand the South American climate) Previous Student Research Spotlight: Karthik Gopi (A new method for determining seafood provenance)
\|MadSci Network: Zoology\| There are three different types of insects that lack wings. Immature insects never have wings because they have not developed yet. Most of these need only to feed and grow so the eggs are usually laid by the parent insect in an area where the growing larvae will have food. Wings either develop slowly as the immature insect grows (as in grasshoppers and other insects with incomplete development) or develop during a pupal stage (as in butterflies). The adult then has functioning wings, which allow it to disperse, mate and lay eggs in a new area. Some primitive insects never had wings. These include such flightless insects as silverfish. None of the ancestors of these insects seem to have had wings. Finally there are those insects that have secondarily lost wings or have reduced wing size to the point where that cannot fly. These include some grasshoppers, many parasitic insects (like lice and fleas), a number of beetles and even some moths (the bagworm for example). The ancestors of these insects had wings, but their ultimate life style did not require flight. Selection pressure then probably eliminated the ability to fly. In the case of parasitic insects at least, wings may even have been a major difficulty and were probably eliminated rather quickly. Wings would probably catch on the host's hairs or feathers and make it difficult to hide. Borror, D. J., C. A. Triplehorn, and N. F. Johnson. 1989. An Introduction to the Study of Insects. Saunders College Publishing, Philadelphia. A summary of the answer is that some insects don't have wings because 1. They are immature and do not need them yet. 2. Their ancestors never had wings. 3. They lost their wings because of the way in which they live (for example parasites). Try the links in the MadSci Library for more information on Zoology.
Friday 6-6-09 for B day Monday 6-9-09 for A day Most of the 60 question multiple choice exam will focus on macromolecules, cells, DNA, and evolution. There will be also be some questions about the scientific method, variables and reading charts and graphs. Anything we’ve covered in class may be on the final. Review chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, and 13 in our AGS biology book. If you took notes on the chapters, as assigned, you will have a much easier time. Review your notes on the readings and notes from class. QUIZ YOURSELF or work with a partner to quiz each other to see if you know what the terms mean in your own words. I may make the final open notes so bring your complete notes just incase. Topics you must make sure you can demonstrate your knowledge about: Experiments: for example, independent and dependent variables Macromoleules: for example, lipids, proteins, carbohydrates, nucleic acids Atomic structure: for example, electrons, protons, neutrons Homeostasis: for example, osmosis, hypertonic and hypotonic solutions Cells: for example, organelles such as nucleus, mitochondria, membranes and chloroplasts, as well as photosynthesis and ATP, DNA: for example, cytosine, guanine, thiamine, adenine, deoxyribose backbone, codons, mutations, replication, base pairing, double helix Genes: for example, genetic engineering, genotype, transgenic species, mutations Human Genome: for example, percent of shared DNA with other species Mitosis: for example, interphase, prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase, cytokinesis cell division, cancer Meiosis: for example, production of gametes Evolution: for example, natural selection, common descent, common ancestors, Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, Lamarck, evidence, homologous structures, biogeography HOMEWORK: Write at least 15 test questions with an answers including at least one Q and A for each of the above topics. This is due the day of the final as a review.
Coughing is a reflex reaction of the upper respiratory system characterized by the rapid expulsion of air from the lungs through the mouth. It’s the body’s natural way to clear the throat and breathing passage of foreign particles, irritants, fluids and mucus. Healthy people cough on occasion, which is perfectly normal. However, coughs that persist for several weeks may signify a medical problem that requires treatment. Types of Coughs Coughs can be broadly categorized into two types: dry and wet. As the name implies, a wet cough (sometimes called chesty cough) produces fluid secretions in the form of sputum (phlegm). The sputum in a wet cough can appear yellowish or greenish, which indicates the presence of a bacterial infection. A dry cough on the other hand will not produce any sputum. It can be irritating to the lungs and throat and may be a sign of a viral infection. Different sub-types of dry coughs can be further broken down into the following groups: - Stress Cough This type of cough is simply a reflexive spasm of the airways induced by an irritant. A stress cough produces no sputum and is not related to any infections. - Croup or Dry Barking Cough Croup is a dry cough that causes a distinct barking sound. The barking sound occurs due to swelling or a viral infection just below the voice box in the larynx. Other symptoms may include pain in the throat and difficulty with breathing. - Dry Hacking Cough The dry hacking cough mainly develops when there’s a viral infection in the upper respiratory tract (nose and throat). A hallmark symptom for this type of cough is the feeling that something is stuck in the throat. - Whooping Cough A vaccine for whooping cough exists and although cases of infection are rare, this disease mostly affects children. Whooping cough is caused by a bacterial infection. Patients with this illness experience severer fits of fast coughing followed by a deep breath that produces a “whooping” sound. These bouts of deep, rapid coughing cause temporary shortness of oxygen and hence a child can turn blue during severe attacks. What Causes Coughs? When the nerve endings in your airways become irritated, the body’s natural reaction is to cough out the irritant. Substances that irritate these nerve endings could be anything from pollen and smoke, to food particles and germs. With the exception of chocking, coughing could signify the presence of an upper respiratory infection or other medical conditions. So, coughing in essence is not an illness in itself but rather a symptom. On the other hand, a disease-related cough can be either acute or chronic and how long it will last depends on the underlying cause of infection. Acute Cough Causes An acute cough typically lasts 3 weeks or less, and both infections and irritants can contribute to a short-term cough. Here is an outline of common causes for acute coughs: - Upper respiratory infections (e.g. the common cold, flu, laryngitis and whooping cough) - Infections in the lower respiratory tract such as pneumonia and bronchitis - Irritants like dust and smoke - Allergic reactions such as hay fever and rhinitis If a short-term cough is not treated early, it could become sub-acute. A sub-acute cough lasts for 3 to 8 weeks and it can remain even after a cold or other respiratory infection clears away. Chronic Cough Causes Chronic coughs are those that persist for more than 8 weeks. Persistent coughs mostly result from chronic illnesses such as: Coughing in asthmatic patients may be accompanied with wheezing or difficulty in breathing. Symptoms tend to worsen after being exposed to pollen, cold air, smoke, perfumes, or other irritants. - Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) GERD is a disease in the digestive tract often caused by a weak muscle between the stomach and esophagus. This weakness allows stomach acid to splash back (reflux) into the esophagus. These stomach juices sometimes reach the back of the throat and leave behind a bitter aftertaste. Since stomach acid is corrosive, it also irritates the throat thus causing a chronic cough. In more severe cases of acid reflux, stomach juices can enter the airways and damage lung tissues. - Sinus infection Sinusitis is a condition caused by extra mucus that trickles down the throat. Postnasal drip irritates the throat and often triggers wet coughs. - Bronchitis and Pneumonia These lower respiratory tract infections cause both acute and chronic coughs. Viruses, bacteria, and fungi can cause pneumonia or bronchitis. Treatment is therefore based on the particular pathogen that’s causing the infection. Smoking and allergic reactions are other causes of chronic coughs. You can also suffer from a persistent cough if you’re using certain medications, especially ACE inhibitors used for high blood pressure treatment. Best Home Remedies to Get Rid of Coughs Naturally Whether it’s acute or chronic, coughing is a symptom that greatly reduces a patient’s quality of life. If it is persistent, you may have trouble sleeping, socializing, or concentrating on your work. Prolonged coughing can also lead to side effects such as chest pain, exhaustion, loss of bladder control, and dizziness. Fortunately, you can treat coughs with over-the-counter medicines. But if you prefer to avoid chemicals and pharmaceutical drugs, here are some of the best home remedies to get rid of cough naturally: - Increase Fluid Intake Drinking more fluids will help you feel better when nursing a cough. Staying hydrated is particularly important if you’re losing fluids through sputum or sweat because of a fever. Warm drinks will also be helpful since they thin mucus secretions and keep your throat from feeling irritated. Once mucus secretions brake up, they’re much easier to cough up. For the best results, avoid carbonated drinks and citrus juices that can irritate a sore throat. Instead, drink hot tea with lemon, boiled water with honey or warm broth to loosen congestion and reduce coughing. - Gargle Salty Water Gargling salt water is a time-honored way to soothe sore throats that lead to coughs. This is also perhaps the most inexpensive remedy for irritating coughs. To use this method, all you need to do is: - Mix 1/2 a teaspoon of salt and 8 ounces of warm distilled water. - Sip the salty water and gargle for about 60 seconds. Do not swallow the gargle but spit it out when you’re done. Salt has natural antiseptic properties while warm water moisturizes a dry throat. Combine these two therapeutic effects and you have a natural remedy that will help you cure a cough. Honey is a natural demulcent. In other words, it relieves irritation in the mucous membranes by forming a protective film. This can greatly suppress coughs and soothe an irritated throat. Some studies have even found the cough suppressing properties of honey to be as effective as over-the-counter medicines that contain dextromethorphan. You can eat a spoonful of honey or add it to warm drinks when treating coughs. It’s also perfectly safe to give honey to children over the age of two. Just remember that honey shouldn’t be given to infants who are under 12 months since it can cause a serious type of food poisoning known as infant botulism. - Thyme Tea When battling a dry, irritating cough, thyme can be an effective remedy. It’s rich in flavonoids that relax the throat muscles involved in coughing. These compounds reduce inflammation in the respiratory tract as well, leading to less coughing and increased comfort. Thyme oil is toxic to consume, but you can use fresh or dried leaves from the plant to make tea. To brew thyme tea: - Add 2 teaspoons of crushed thyme leaves or 3 fresh sprigs to 1 cup (or 8-fluid ounces) of water - Cover the cup and steep for 10 minutes to extract the thyme flavor - Strain your thyme tea and drink while hot. Add a tablespoon of honey to soothe an irritated throat. Peppermint is an excellent natural expectorant for soothing dry coughs. It contains menthol, which is an ingredient that opens up airways by breaking up mucus. Peppermint oil is available at pharmacies and health shops. You can also use it in steam baths to decongest blocked airways or encourage mucus secretions. Just add 3 to 4 drops of the oil in hot water and inhale the peppermint vapors with a towel draped over your head. Another option is to make peppermint tea with lemon juice and raw honey. You have to drink the mixture while it is still hot for the best results. Eucalyptus is one of the common ingredients in many medications such as lozenges, cough syrups, and ointments. It has great healing power, especially for cold related symptoms like coughs. If your respiratory tract is congested, rubbing some eucalyptus oil on the chest and nose can help to clear mucus secretions. The oil has a distinct essence that unblocks nasal congestion and you can use it in baths as well to soothe an irritated respiratory tract. Eucalyptus also contains cineole, an active ingredient that relieves coughs just as an expectorant drug would. It’s not safe to ingest the oil, but the dried leaves may be used to make tea. Keep in mind though that eucalyptus should not be used by patients with asthma, low blood pressure, kidney disease, or liver issues. Lemons are a rich source of vitamin C that helps to fight off infection. Therefore, adding this fruit to your diet will do you a lot of good when recovering from a cough. To prepare your own homemade cough syrup, simply combine 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice with an equal amount of honey. Alternatively, drinking lemon juice mixed with honey can relieve a sore throat and suppress the urge to cough. The ginger herb has a therapeutic effect on coughs, particularly dry coughs. It acts as a natural expectorant and hence assists in the break down and expulsion of mucus from the lungs. Chewing on fresh raw ginger stops the irritating trickle of postnasal drip that causes coughs in the first place. You can also choose to grate or chop a small piece of ginger and add it to boiled water or tea to extract the flavor. Drinking this herbal solution 3 to 4 times daily can provide relief from persistent coughing, a sore throat, and congestion. Give your immune system a boost by consuming raw garlic or use it in your cooking to prepare warm broths. Garlic possesses antimicrobial and antibacterial properties that help in the treatment of coughs. Here’s a simple garlic remedy to alleviate cough symptoms: - Add 3 to 4 cloves of garlic in 16oz of water and bring to a boil. - When the water cools down to room temperature, add a table spoon of honey and drink the mixture. - Eat More Pineapple Pineapple is a nutrient rich fruit packed with Vitamin C. And while it will give your immune system a boost, you also get added cough fighting power from this fruit. Pineapple contains Bromelain, an enzyme that suppresses coughs and thins mucus. Some studies also suggest that this compound helps to relieve allergy-based sinus irritations that give rise to coughs. You can buy Bromelain supplements at pharmacies without a doctor’s prescription. However, these drugs are not ideal for patients who take blood thinners. To avoid side effects, speak to your doctor about taking Bromelain supplements, especially if you’re using any other medication. Drinking 1 cup of chamomile before bedtime is highly recommended if coughing keeps you awake at night. Chamomile induces sleep, which is important during cough treatment. When combined with a natural cough suppressant, chamomile can help you sleep better. Turmeric treats dry coughs in a simple and natural way. A few suggestions to include turmeric in your cough treatment regimen include: - Mixing 1 teaspoon of turmeric with 1 tablespoon of honey. Use this remedy 2 to 3 times a day to get relief from a dry cough. - You can also mix 1 teaspoon each of turmeric powder and black pepper in a cup of boiled water. Add cinnamon sticks and stir in a tablespoon of honey. Drink 1 cup of this concoction daily until your cough symptoms start to improve. - Alternatively, prepare herbal tea by adding 1 teaspoon each of turmeric powder and carom seeds to boiling water. Mix 1/2 a cup of milk with the water and add some honey to taste. Drink this herbal solution 2 to 3 times a day to relieve a persistent cough. Probiotics are beneficial microorganisms introduced in the body to promote a healthy microbial balance. They don’t cure coughs directly, but rather support immune function, helping you fight off infections. You can find Probiotics in many foods, but yogurts with live and active cultures are the best sources of these good bacteria. As a word of caution, dairy products like yogurt tend to thicken phlegm. Since thick sputum is hard to cough up, make sure to limit your yogurt intake. There are Probiotics supplements as well that can offer an alternative to yogurt. Marshmallows have been used for centuries to treat sore throats and soothe dry coughs. It comes from a perennial plant called Althaea officinalis. This plant produces mucilage, a thick gluey substance that coats the throat to stop dry, irritating coughs. Marshmallow is particularly helpful when treating a chronic cough caused by prolonged use of ACE inhibitors. You can buy herbal tea that contains marshmallow root at natural food stores. Another option is to brew marshmallow tea using the plant’s dried leaves or roots. In addition, there are also capsules that contain this herb for those who prefer a supplement. Bear in mind, however, that marshmallow is not recommended as a cough remedy for children. - White horehound White horehound is a herbal extract known for its ability to induce mucus secretions. It’s a natural expectorant that promotes a wet, productive cough. As such, you can use it to clear up a congested trachea, bronchi, or lungs. This herb often comes in powder form or as a juice supplement. Use in tea and drink 3-times daily to soothe a dry cough. You may want to add some honey since white horehound has a distinct bitter taste. Alternatively, go for pharmaceutical lozenges that have been formulated using this herb. - Cayenne or Black Pepper Cayenne and black pepper are mostly used in cooking. However, these spices are not just limited to the culinary world. Many people don’t know that pepper is a great remedy for chesty coughs. It helps to stimulate mucus flow and circulation, allowing you to expel all that extra sputum that’s congesting your lungs. There are several ways to use cayenne or black pepper in cough remedies. Some examples include: - 1 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper mixed with 1 tablespoon of honey and 8oz of water. Honey not only makes this solution drinkable but also adds its antibacterial properties. - Create a homemade cough syrup by mixing a 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper with 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger, 1 tablespoon of honey, 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar and 2 tablespoons of water. Drink the syrup 2 to 3 times daily until symptoms improve. Much like lemons and pineapples, grapes also contain vitamin C that will give your body’s defenses a boost when fighting off viral and bacterial related infections. The special expectorant properties that grapes possess make them good for coughs. To use grapes when treating coughs, simply eat the fruits or blend them to make fresh juice. - Licorice Root Tea Licorice root works as both a demulcent and expectorant. In addition to thinning mucus, it helps to relieve the respiratory tract. Much of the therapeutic power of Licorice root can be attributed to its main active ingredient, glycyrrhizin. This enzyme helps to sooth inflammation that may be irritating your throat or blocking nasal passages. Dried Licorice root can be bought as herb for preparing tea. Just add 2 tablespoons of the powder to 8 ounces of fresh water and brew a nice hot cup of Licorice Root tea. Drink 2 cups daily to promote faster recovery from a cough related infection. It’s important to note that steroid users or people with kidney problems do not react well to Licorice Root. - Use a Humidifier Dry air can aggravate coughing or make it more persistent. When there’s no moisture in the air, mucus tends to harden. Dried secretions don’t move easily and can therefore make breathing difficult when secretions get stuck in the lungs or throat. Needless to say, coughing up semi-dried snot can be uncomfortable. Creating a moist environment will thus help to soothe a cough. You can use a humidifier for this, but make sure to clean it regularly. The moisture in humidifiers creates a breeding ground for mold or mildew. These disease causing pathogens could become airborne if your humidifier is not kept clean. - Rid the Air of Irritants Keeping your environment free of allergens is important if you tend to experience coughs when exposed to irritants. Perfumes, air fresheners, and even scented soaps can seem harmless when using them in your home. But these substances might lead to sinus irritation, which is a precursor for chronic coughs. If you’re asthmatic or have very sensitive airways, find out what allergens trigger coughing and sneezing flare-ups and make an effort to avoid them. - Take Warm Baths and Showers The steam from a hot bath or shower moisturizes your airways, making it easier to cough up phlegm. Hot baths can be soothing when you have a cold related cough since they also help improve a stuffy or runny nose. The great thing about hot baths is that you can make them even more therapeutic. All you have to do is mix your bathing water with a few drops of essential oils such as eucalyptus or tea tree oil, which help to fight off bacteria and viruses. - Get Plenty of Rest Getting enough sleep not only aids in the fast recovery from a cough infection, but also helps to prevent disease in the first place. When you fall asleep, your body breathes a sigh of relief. This is the only time it gets to build new cells, reinforce the immune system, and prepare itself for another day. If coughing spells keep you awake all night, try sleeping with your head elevated. A few extra pillows will keep you from feeling as though you’re choking on phlegm and thus improve your quality of sleep. Cough Treatment Options/Medications Over-the-counter medications can provide symptomatic relief for coughs. There are different types of cough medications you can use. The drugs you should use largely depend on the underlying condition that’s causing the cough. Common medications used to treat coughs include: These drugs won’t work on viral infections. Antibiotics are only effective if your cough is due to a bacterial infection of the respiratory tract. Chronic coughs caused by acid reflux can be prevented with antacids. This option, however, should only be considered if lifestyle changes have failed to improve GERD conditions. In more severe cases, chronic acid reflux patients may require surgery to resolve the problem. - Cough Suppressants If you tend to have coughing fits at night, a cough suppressant can help you sleep better. These medications are especially beneficial when suffering from a persistent dry cough. It should be noted that coughing out sputum is productive since this relieves congested lungs. - Antihistamines and Asthma Medications Antihistamines keep irritants at bay. They’re also helpful medications for patients who experience coughs due to allergic reactions. Asthma medications, on the other hand, widen airways and prevent inflammation to help treat asthma related coughs. - Expectorants and Decongestants These medications help to clear upper and lower airways of excess secretions. There are many decongestants in the market that come in the form of lozenges, ointments, and balms. The most common include phenylpropanolamine and pseudoephedrine. For expectorants, an effective ingredient to lookout for is Guaifenesin. When to See a Doctor Mild coughs are never a cause for alarm and mostly go away within 3 weeks without the need for medical assistance. However, make sure to see a doctor if you have: - Nursed a cough for more than 3 weeks without any improvement - Severer coughing symptoms that keep getting worse - Chest pain or cough up sputum with blood - Cough spells that cause difficulty in breathing or shortness of breath - Significantly swollen glands in your neck - Lost weight suddenly after developing a cough related illness Your general practitioner can order chest X-rays as well as allergy and breathing tests to determine whether the cause of chronic coughing is due to an underlying disease. Analysis of phlegm will also help to find out whether a cough infection is viral or bacterial related so that the right medication can be prescribed.
At AboutMechanics, we're committed to delivering accurate, trustworthy information. Our expert-authored content is rigorously fact-checked and sourced from credible authorities. Discover how we uphold the highest standards in providing you with reliable knowledge. Equipment decontamination is a process which is designed to clean equipment after it has been contaminated or after it has been used in a situation in which contamination may have occurred. Some types of equipment are specifically designed to be easily decontaminated, such as hospital equipment, while for others, special protocols may need to be used. Equipment decontamination can be used to clean equipment after exposure to chemical, biological, or radiological contaminants, and also for the purpose of maintaining a “clean room” free of dust and other contaminants which could interfere with an industrial process. Equipment used in environments where cleanliness is vitally necessary and contamination can occur on a regular basis has been designed for decontamination. It is made from materials which can easily be wiped down, for example, and the equipment will not be damaged by exposure to decontamination measures such as ultraviolet radiation, irradiation, soap and water, heat, and so forth. The equipment is usually designed to be decontaminated in a particular way. Some examples of this type of equipment include hospital equipment, equipment used in the manufacture of electronics components, equipment in chemical companies, and equipment used in food production. Other equipment may not be designed with contamination in mind, which can make it more challenging to clean when unexpected contamination occurs. In the wake of a release of radioactive material, for example, equipment decontamination can be used to clean equipment which was exposed to the material so that it can be salvaged and reused, rather than being abandoned. In these cases, it may be necessary to develop a custom decontamination method for the specific situation. Decontamination procedures usually start with isolating the contaminated equipment so that it cannot spread contamination. Then, the equipment can be cleaned with the methods most appropriate to the equipment, and tested to see if contamination is still present. Some equipment decontamination is entirely automated; surgical tools, for example, are decontaminated in an autoclave. In other cases, people must perform the decontamination by hand, as when an ambulance is decontaminated after a patient with a blood-borne disease bled substantially during transport. In facilities where contamination is a risk, there are usually equipment decontamination protocols which people can follow when contamination occurs. In addition to decontaminating equipment, it is often necessary to decontaminate people who were also exposed. In many regions, emergency services have practiced large-scale responses to contamination incidents, such as a response which might be needed if a chemical or biological agent was released in a city.
Content Area: Math Grade Level: Fourth Grade - Elementary School: Tower Street School, Westerly Authors: Amy Grattan, Paul V. Sherlock Center, Rhode Island College, Anne Dogon, Special Education, Westerly, Nancy McGonagle, Grade 4, Westerly Description: This introductory unit on fractions consists of four lessons: Lesson 1: Students will recognize and identify that fractions are used in daily activities. They will "tell what they know" (facts, math terms) about fractions, as well as follow a simple recipe by pouring ingredients into measuring cups. They will figure out how to create a measurement amount without have the exact measuring cup. Lesson 2: Students will demonstrate conceptual understanding of basic fractions, using manipulatives to understand the equivalent relationships between these fractions. They are asked to reason, plan and use evidence at a high level of thinking. They are asked to make observations and draw conclusions. Lesson 3: Students will develop understanding of fractions as parts of unit wholes, using models, benchmarks, and equivalent forms to judge the size of fractions. They will find fractional parts of a group, and will write, read, and apply fraction notation. Students will interpret the relationship between a real world situation and fractions, and will use their knowledge of set model to create their own sets using a more abstract model. Lesson 4: Students will identify common characteristics of a whole, and will identify a set of objects has a subset making up a fractional part. They will identify what fractional notation represents the subset. Students are asked to reason, plan and use evidence at a high level of thinking, make observations, draw conclusions, and justify their responses.
North Cascades Ecoregion Description & Physiography In the United States, the North Cascades Ecoregion features the high, rugged mountains of the Pacific Ranges. Highly dissected, glaciated mountain terrain up to 7,000 ft., punctuated by large, composite volcanoes rising to over 10,000 ft alternates with glacially-carved, U-shaped valley bottoms and cirques that extend down to only 500 ft. The Washington portion of the ecoregion contains the greatest concentration of active glaciers in the 48 conterminous United States. The maritime climate of the Pacific Northwest, coupled with the large vertical relief of the mountains and volcanoes, produces frequent snowstorms and heavy snowfalls. The Cascades and Coast Mountains record some of the deepest snowfalls in the world. It is not uncommon for some places in the Cascades to have over 200 inches of snow accumulation. High elevations in the mountains are covered with snow for many months. Middle elevations have significant snowpacks that fluctuate over the course of the winter with rain-on-snow events. Lower elevations within the ecoregion accumulate little snow or have transient snowpacks. The annual averages of nearly 700 inches at some Cascades locations are some of the largest recorded at any measuring stations in the world. Inland precipitation decreases on the east side of the coastal ranges where less than 20 inches of precipitation accumulates per year. Where the ecoregion borders the Strait of Georgia, the climate is characterized by generally mild temperatures that average 36-50º F throughout the year with summer means reaching 56º F in the Pacific Ranges. Rainfall is heavy, 30-150 in. per year, with a maximum in winter. Plants & Animals Climate is the major influence on vegetation types in the ecoregion. Vegetation is stratified by both elevation and precipitation. The windward slopes of the Coast Mountains and Cascades Range are covered in temperate rainforests. Conifers predominate and can grow to enormous size, especially on the moister, western slopes. The extreme variability of soils and geology, combined with extensive effects of glaciation and topography, have led to large localized differences in climate, species, natural communities and ecological systems. At least 18 species of birds, mammals, butterflies and molluscs that occur within the ecoregion are federally, state, or provincially listed as threatened or endangered. In British Columbia, these species include the marbled murrelet, northern goshawk, peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus), northern spotted owl, Townsend’s mole (Scapanus townsendii), Pacific water shrew (Sorex bendirii), mountain beaver (Aplodontia rufa rainiei and Aplodontia rufa rufa), fisher, Johnson’s hairstreak (Callophrys johnsoni), blue-gray tail dropper slug(Prophysaon coeruleum), dromedary jumping slug (Hemphillia dromedaries), evening field slug (Deroceras hesperium), Oregon forest snail (Allogona townsendiana), and Puget Oregonian (Cryptomastix devia). Listed species in Washington include the marbled murrelet, bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), northern spotted owl, gray wolf, grizzly bear, fisher, and lynx. The Puget Oregonian, a snail that was native to British Columbia, Washington and Oregon, was last noted in British Columbia in the early 1900s and is now considered extirpated from Canada as a result of the loss of low elevation older forests. The grizzly bear, gray wolf and fisher appear to be extirpated in Washington. Many more species are listed as species of concern in the U.S. or Washington, are blue-listed in British Columbia, or are listed as species of special concern in Canada. Humans & History Because their greater inaccessibility made it more difficult to cut and transport the timber, the Coast Mountains and Cascades Range were some of the last areas to be logged in the Pacific Northwest. Other than logging and a large ski resort at Whistler, most of the land in the ecoregion is relatively undeveloped; however, this situation is rapidly changing as the corridor between Vancouver and Pemberton undergoes development in preparation for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The fishing industry also plays a major role in the economy of the BC portion of the ecoregion, and historically, the Coast Mountains and Cascades were important areas for gold mining. Sand and gravel extraction operations are important economic contributors in the ecoregion. Less than 1% of the ecoregion is under Aboriginal/tribal landownership. In Washington, much of the ecoregion occurs within the ceded lands and usual and accustomed fishing areas of tribes. Usual and accustomed areas are judicially defined areas where tribal members have fishing rights based on their tribe’s historical use patterns. Tribes in Washington manage tribally-owned lands on reservations and are actively involved in monitoring, research and management activities on ceded lands. Tribes are also active participants in discussions about natural resources management and conservation activities within their usual and accustomed areas. In British Columbia, the North Cascades ecoregion is covered by 11 First Nations Statement of Intent areas. Statement of Intent areas are the delineations of traditional territory boundaries for those Nations involved in treaty negotiations with the provincial government. As of 1991, less than 2% of Washington’s portion of this ecoregion had been converted to urban and agricultural development. Although most of the area of these counties is located within the ecoregion, most of the population base is located outside, closer to the coast and urban areas such as Bellingham, Mount Vernon, Kent, and Seattle. Total population of the four counties within the ecoregion is less than 8,000. Most of the population lives along river/highway corridors that reach into the ecoregion or run from one side to another through mountain passes. Recreation and second homes have a significant influence on these developing corridors. More than 96% of the Washington portion of the ecoregion is uninhabited and uncultivated, and has the lowest human impact of any of the state's terrestrial ecoregions. Protected areas account for about 47% of this portion of the ecoregion. Large areas are protected in North Cascades National Park and Ross Lake National Recreation Area, and in several wilderness areas. Logging has occurred widely at lower elevations in the ecoregion. Recreational activities that occur in this portion of the ecoregion include hunting, fishing, hiking and snowmobiling.
Structure of atmosphere: The atmosphere is a thin layer of gases which surrounded the earth that is held in place by the gravity. It protect us from ectromagnetic radiation gives by earth. The density of atmosphere decreases outward because the gravitational attraction of the planet, which pulls the gases and aerosol (microscopic suspended particle of dust, H2O, smokes, chemicals) inwards. Atmosphere of earth has been able to contain water in each of its three phases (solid, liquid, gas) that has been essential for the development of life. The atmosphere of earth is the mixture of Nitrogen (78.08%), oxygen (20.95%), argan (0.93%) with carbon dioxide (0.04%) water (H2O), inert gases such as Helium, Neon, krypton and other constituent such as nitrogen oxides, compounds of sulphur and compounds of ozone are found in lesser amount. Structure of Atmosphere The Structure of Atmosphere can be divided into layers, these layers are :- 1. Troposphere (0 to 12 KM) 2. Stratosphere (12 to 50 KM) 3. Mesosphere (50 to 80 KM) 4. Thermosphere (80 to 700 KM) 5. Exosphere (700 to 10,000 KM) Troposphere is the lowest part of atmosphere, the part in which we live in. Troposphere contains weather, clouds, rain and snow etc. The troposphere contain about 75% of all air in the atmosphere and almost water vapour cloud and rain. Troposphere extends to an average height of about 12 km from the earth surface of a sphere is bounded above by the tropopause , boundary marked in most places by a temperature inversion. It is compressed by the orerlying layers so that most of its weight in the troposphere lies in its lower region. There exist a thin buffer zone between the troposphere and next layer known as tropopause. The troposphere is also called boundary layer. In the structure of atmosphere, the second layer of atmosphere is called stratosphere. The stratosphere extend from the top of the troposphere to about 50 km above the ground. Ozone Layer is founded within the atmosphere that contains relatively high concentration of the gas. In the stratosphere, the temperature rises with increase in altitude. The rise of temperature is caused by the absorption of ultraviolet radiation (UV), radiation from the sun. Stratosphere varies in thickness and the air flow is majorly horizontal. It is thinner above the equator and deep above the poles. In this layer temperature drops with increase altitude. It is the coldest place on the earth and have average temperature about – 85°C. The air in the mesosphere is far too thin to breadth because air pressure at the bottom of the layer is below 1% of the pressure at sea level, and the pressure continuously dropping as go higher. It is also called upper troposphere due to the absence of ultraviolet. In the mesosphere noctitucent cloud or the ice cloud formed by the deposition of the very small amount of water vapour on nickle containing dust. Nickle cloud is silver-white and light blue in colour. The fourt layer for the ‘structure of atmosphere‘ is thermosphere. It extends from the mesopause (separate from mesosphere) at an altitude of about 80 km to and altitude range of about 700 km. The height of thermosphere varies due to the change in solar activity. In this layer the temperature increases with height. The temperature of thermosphere layer can close the session as high as 1500°C. The air is so rarefied in this layer that and molecule of Oxygen or nitrogen travel of about 1 km between collisions with other molecules. This layer has not cloud and free from water vapour, nonhydrometrological phenomena such as Aurora Australis and Aurora Borealis seen in the thermosphere occasionally. Thermosphere contains electrically charged particle known as ion and hence it is called inosphere. Radio waves transmitted is reflected back to the earth by this layer and because of this radio broadcasting has become possible. This is the top layer as well as last structure of atmosphere. The exosphere is the most distant region from the earth’s surface an upward travelling molecules can escape to space in the exosphere. This layer is the transitional zone between earth’s atmosphere and interplanetary space. Gases are very sparse in this layer due to the lack of gravitational forces therefore the density of air is very less. Hydrogen is present in the exosphere with some Helium, Carbon Dioxide and Atomic Oxygen near it’s base. Exosphere may be considered as the part of interplanetary or outer space because it is hard to define the boundary between the exosphere and the outer space.
Share this article: Throughout history, animals have played a key role in human life. People have come to depend on animals for food, clothing, and transportation. At many times throughout history, and in many cultures around the world, animals were also the focus of religious worship. Although animals still maintain many of those traditional uses around the world, the role of animals in society has also changed. In the last several hundred years, there has been a massive increase in the number of animals kept purely for companionship and pleasure. Here's some fascinating information on the way relationships between people and animals have developed over time. In prehistoric times, the relationship between primitive man and animals was that of hunter and prey. People viewed animals primarily as a source of food and skins for clothing. The first animal to make the transition from the wild to the domesticated state was the wolf, the common ancestor of all modern-day dogs. This occurred at least 12,000–14,000 years ago when people discovered that young wolf cubs that remained subordinate to humans as adults could be trained. From the earliest days of domestication, dogs would have had practical uses. They were kept because they could perform tasks such as hunting, guarding, and herding. Although domesticated dogs were probably treated with respect in primitive societies, there is evidence that at least some were also considered companions as early as 12,000 years ago. The finding of a Paleolithic tomb in Northern Israel, in which a human was buried with a dog or wolf puppy, illustrates this point. The dead person's hand had been arranged so that it rested on the animal's shoulder, as if to emphasize a deep bond of affection during life. A gradual change in human living from nomadic hunter to settled farmer began approximately 8,000 years ago in the so-called Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. Working dogs would have been increasingly valued in this setting, but at about this time the cat also became loosely associated with humans. Houses, barns, and grain stores provided a new environmental niche that was rapidly exploited by mice and other small mammals, the favored prey of small wild felids. Cats that followed these rodents into human settlements would have been tolerated—and possibly encouraged—because of their usefulness in getting rid of these troublesome pests. In some ancient civilizations, dogs may also have had cultural significance, usually in regard to death practices. In some cases, the deceased were deliberately put out for dogs to consume, as it was thought necessary for the dead person's soul to pass through a dog to reach the afterlife. These early associations between dogs and death gradually evolved into beliefs that dogs could ward off or prevent death. In ancient Greece, dogs were kept as co-therapists in healing temples for their perceived ability to cure illness. This can be seen as the precursor of our modern practice of using therapy dogs to help people with a wide range of conditions. Pet ownership by the ruling or noble classes has a long history, dating back at least as far as ancient Egyptian times. Murals from this era depict pharaohs keeping companion animals. Many generations of Chinese emperors kept dogs that, as puppies, were often suckled by human wet nurses, and as adults were tended to by their own servants. Greek and Roman nobility were also avid pet keepers. As civilizations developed, human-animal relationships became more symbolic and less central to human life, and with this change came the view that humans had dominion over all animals. Although animals lost much of their religious and cultural importance, some animals remained closely associated with humans, but subtly, in the role of companions. The Middle Ages In medieval Europe, from the 13th–15th centuries AD, pet keeping was popular among the aristocracy and some senior clergy. Lap dogs were fashionable among the noble ladies, whereas male nobility were more inclined to lavish their attention on more "useful" animals, such as hunting hounds and falcons. During this period, hunting, or "venery," was of great importance to the aristocracy as a symbol of power and status. Dog breeds spread throughout Europe as different types of hound were developed for chasing different quarry. Nevertheless, the Christian church frowned on pet keeping. Church leaders suggested that the food used for these animals should be given to the poor. However, the Church was probably more afraid that close associations with animals were strongly linked to pagan worship. The prejudice against pets reached its height during the Inquisition, where evidence against heretics often included references to close associations with animals. Throughout the barbaric witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries, a large number of innocent people were accused of witchcraft and condemned to death. Possession of an "animal familiar," considered to be a symbol of Satan, was used as evidence of their guilt. The accused were most often elderly and socially isolated women who probably kept animals for companionship. As interest in witchcraft declined, however, companion animals returned to favor and even came to symbolize good fortune. The most likely reason for negative attitudes to companion animals throughout history is that affectionate relationships towards animals were considered immoral and against the natural order of life. Until relatively recently, there was a commonly held view in the Western world that animals lacked feelings and were created in order to serve humanity. The rise of pet keeping Pet keeping wasn't generally accepted in Europe until the end of the 17th century, and it wasn't common among the middle classes until the late 18th century. Pet keeping in its present form is probably a 19th century Victorian invention. At this time, it was perceived as a link with the natural world, which itself was no longer seen as threatening. It also allowed a visible demonstration of man's domination over nature. Britain had been a center for dog breeding since Roman times, and one of the first formal competitive dog shows was held in Newcastle in 1859 for the Pointer and Setter breeds. Still, little was known about the inheritance of various characteristics until Charles Darwin published The Origin of the Species in 1859. Since that time, dog breeding has become more formalized with the establishment of strict breed standards. The practice of pet keeping in Victorian times also reflected other social attitudes of the time. Pet keeping was not considered appropriate for the "lower classes," as it was thought to encourage the neglect of other social duties. Pet keeping in modern society In present-day societies, dogs have a number of functional roles, from ornamental to status symbol, as helpers, and as companions. Dogs can also act as a channel for personal expression because people express their personality in the breed they own. For example, rare breeds are often used as indicators of status. Guide dogs for blind people and hearing dogs for deaf people are examples of pets who are kept as helpers. But the most common reason for owning pets in Western societies is companionship. In recent years, there's been a growing awareness of the very positive effects this relationship can have on human health and psychological well-being, and a recognition of the therapeutic value of companion animals. Share this article:
When some of the galaxy’s large stars, about 25 times the size of the sun or greater, reach an advanced age they begin losing mass at a very high rate. These are known as Wolf-Rayet stars. Astronomers know of about 220 of these massive stars in our galaxy. Now, using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have captured one of the best photographs ever taken of a Wolf-Rayet star, WR 25: NASA, ESA, and J. Maíz Apellániz Here’s some information about the image from the astronomers who captured it: WR 25 is the brightest, situated near the centre of the image. The neighbouring Tr16-244 is the third brightest, just to the upper left of WR 25. The second brightest, to the left of WR 25, is a low mass star located much closer to the Earth than the Carina Nebula. Stars like WR 25 and Tr16-244 are relatively rare compared to other, cooler types. They interest astronomers because they are associated with star-forming nebulae, and influence the structure and evolution of galaxies. WR 25 is likely to be the most massive and interesting of the two. Its true nature was revealed two years ago when an international group of astronomers led by Roberto Gamen, then at the Universidad de La Serena in Chile, discovered that it is composed of at least two stars. The more massive is a Wolf-Rayet star and may weigh more than 50 times the mass of our Sun. It is losing mass rapidly through powerful stellar winds that have expelled the majority of its outermost hydrogen-rich layers, while its more mundane binary companion is probably about half as massive as the Wolf-Rayet star, and orbits around it once every 208 days. Related: The Big Picture does the international space station. Amazing images, as always.
Category: Deciduous Trees Facts about American Hazelnut Tree, "Scientific name for American Hazelnut is Corylus americana". American Hazelnut Tree is a variety of tree that hails from eastern North America. The American Hazelnut Tree belongs to the Corylus category. It is an average to big plant that under some circumstances can take the shape of a small tree. It is habitually a multi-stemmed plant with elongated, external growing branches that form a thick, scattering or round shape. The American Hazelnut tree grows as a sturdy multi-stemmed plant, with safe-to-eat nuts that develop from September to October. It is sown by flora and fauna enthusiasts to magnetize and keep game in a region. The American Hazelnut Tree prefers complete sun for the greatest development and growth. Though it can cultivate and continue in partial shade, plant thickness and fruit fabrication are reduced to a great extent. It is an average to fast budding variety that suckers reasonably, finally producing a multi-stemmed, and bunch look. Features of American Hazelnut Tree The American Hazelnut tree is capable of growing to height, ranging from 8 feet to 12 feet (2.43 to 3.65 meters) and with a top spread, ranging from 10 feet to 15 feet (3.04 to 4.57 meters). The American Hazelnut Tree acclimatizes well to a variety of soil pH and kinds, but performs on well-drained loams. The leaves of the tree are dark green in color and are simple, alternate, with the length, ranging from two and a half inches to six inches (6.3 to 15.2 cm). The female flower of the tree is red in color, whereas the male flowers assume the yellowish brown color. The American Hazelnut Tree is a fast-growing tree and produces extremely tasty nuts that are a mast of deer, squirrels, turkey, pheasants, woodpeckers and other creatures. The male catkins are a foodstuff staple of ruffed complaint all through the winter. Trees grown from the seed of the American Hazelnut tree will start to produce nuts following eight years. Due to the small size, the American Hazelnut tree adjusts well to establishing and other non-formal regions. It bears yearly, copious crops of small, sugary flavoring nuts. The nuts of the tree are trouble-free to break and drop free of the shell when grown-up. American Hazelnut Tree leaves are made up of many colored pigments, green chlorophyll hides the colors during the growing season of spring and summer. As days get shorter and cooler temperatures come in the fall, it cause the chlorophyll to break down and than the other color pigments can be seen. American Hazelnut Tree growth is referred to as Meristem (The undifferentiated embryonic plant tissue from which new cells are created, as that at the tip of a root or stem). This tissue can be found at the tips of shoots and leaves. Inside the stem growth in thickness occurs at the vascular cambium. American Hazelnut Trees make their own food from sunlight, carbon dioxide, water, and nutrients from the soil. Uses of American Hazelnut Tree The nuts of the American Hazelnut tree are safe to eat, even though smaller than the more generally refined filberts. The delicious nuts of the tree are highly valued by wildlife and people. Filbert hedges of the tree can be employed as visual screens, windbreaks, and to magnetize wildlife. You can tell a American Hazelnut Trees age by the number of growth rings. Growth rings size shows what kind of conditions accrued that year, the temperature and if it was a dry or wet year. Bark of the American Hazelnut Tree protects it from the elements and is made up of dead cells. American Hazelnut Tree roots usually grow two to three times the width of the tree branches. The ideal time to fertilize your American Hazelnut Tree is in late fall or early spring. If you want to transplant a American Hazelnut Tree do it in fall, this is ideal for most trees. The average lifespan of the American Hazelnut tree ranges from 15 years to 20 years.
School is out for summer, but learning never stops. Here are 14 activities to teach kids about Ag: - Count worms. Earthworms thrive in healthy soil. Kids can count how many worms are present in 1 square foot of soil to determine soil health. Measure and mark 1 square foot of ground in your back yard. Dig 1 foot deep. Moving displaced soil onto newspaper. Count the number of worms in the pile. More than 10 worms suggest soil is healthy, less than 10 worms may mean soil lacks organic matter. - Plant popcorn and pop it for movie night. Growing popcorn is easy. There are several varieties well-suited for the home garden; Strawberry popcorn and smoke signals are colorful varieties that wow kids. Plant popcorn in May to harvest in fall. Dry ears completely before popping the kernels. - Save watermelon seeds. Kids love to spit watermelon seeds. They’ll love growing watermelon as much! After eating watermelon, collect seeds in a cup. Rinse seeds well, and spread them on a paper plate to dry for several days. Store seed in a labeled envelope and place the envelope in an airtight container until it’s time to plant. Plant watermelon in May to harvest in late summer. - Sample apple varieties. More than 100 apple varieties are grown commercially in the United States. Purchase several varieties from the local orchard or grocery store and sample each variety, noting their unique colors, textures and flavors. - Plant a tree. Agroforestry combines trees, crops and/or livestock on a plot of land. Benefits include shade for animals, clean air, windbreaks, improved biodiversity and soil and water protection. Plant a tree and discuss how trees help farmers and the environment. - Picnic with pollinators. Bees, butterflies, insects and birds are valuable crop pollinators. Thirty-five food crops depend on pollinators to reproduce. Serve kids’ favorite foods that require pollinators — melons, strawberries, carrots, cucumbers — at an outdoor picnic. Talk about pollinators’ role in food production and watch for pollinator guests. - Eat an Ohio Ag breakfast. Wheat, eggs, hogs and dairy products are among Ohio’s top ten agricultural products. Kids can help prepare a pancake breakfast with sides of scrambled eggs and bacon. Enjoy an Ohio Ag breakfast and conversation about where food comes from. - Test soil texture. Soil texture is important to farmers because it affects tilth, and the ground’s ability to maintain moisture and nutrients. Teach kids about the three basic soil types. Place ½ cup of soil in a mason jar with a lid. Add water to the top of the jar and shake vigorously. Set the jar aside and allow the soil to settle for several hours. Soil particles will separate into layers. Sand is the largest, heaviest particle. It will sink to the bottom of the jar. Silt will form a middle layer. Clay has the smallest particles and absorbs the most water, it will collect at the top. - Grow a container garden. Give kids a garden all their own! Growing food in containers teaches kids about food production and basic plant care. Small and mini vegetable varieties like mini zucchini, cherry tomatoes and bush pea plants grow well in containers. - Go to the fair. The county fair is a one stop shop to teach kids about Ag. Watch a tractor pull, walk through the livestock barns, and check out the colorful produce on display from local farmers and backyard growers. Find your fair on The Ohio Department of Agriculture website or check out the Farm and Dairy’s 2017 Fair Schedule. - Potato phototropism. Phototropism is plant growth in response to light. Use a potato to teach kids how plants seek sunlight. Allow a potato to sprout. Cut a one-inch hole in the end of a shoebox. Put the potato at the other end of the box. Place a tight fitting lid on the box so that light does not shine through. Set the box on a windowsill with the hole facing the light. Remove the lid after one to two weeks. The potato sprouts will have grown towards the light. - Visit a U-Pick berry operation and make shortcake for dessert. Find a berry U-Pick near you at PickYourOwn.org. Kids can make strawberry shortcake for the family, assembling store-bought or homemade shortcakes with fresh berries and whipped cream. Savor the flavor and the memory of a fun field trip to a local farm. - Seed germination. Germination is the sprouting of a seed. Seeds require the right temperature, moisture, air, and light conditions in order to germinate. Purchase a packet of radish or broccoli seeds. Place a damp paper towel on a plate, spread seeds on towel and top with a second damp paper towel. Keep the paper towels moist for 5 to 7 days. Check seeds daily for sprouts. - Plant pumpkins to carve for Halloween. Kids get a kick out of planting pumpkins, watching them grow and carving homegrown jack ‘o’ lanterns for Halloween. Plant pumpkins in May so they are ready to harvest by October. STAY INFORMED. SIGN UP! Up-to-date agriculture news in your inbox!
Sentences: Understanding and Combining Sentences PowerPoint. 21 slide presentation on sentences and sentence structure. Includes: definition of a sentence, sentence construction, recognizing fragments, improving writing by combining sentences, recognizing clauses, compound, complex and compound-complex sentence structures. Practice questions on fragments, clauses and sentence structure. Supports common core state standards. You may also like: Sentences: Writing Correct Sentences PowerPoint Sentences: Identifying Sentence Structure PowerPoint Sentence Structure: 4 Kinds PowerPoint Sentence Structure PowerPoint for a FlipBook Sentence Structure - Beat the Clock This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.7.1a Explain the function of phrases and clauses in general and their function in specific sentences. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.7.1b Choose among simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences to signal differing relationships among ideas. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.7.1c Place phrases and clauses within a sentence, recognizing and correcting misplaced and dangling modifiers.*
The only difference between writing a normal electron configuration and writing the electron configuration for an ion is that when writing an electron configuration for an ion, you have to remember to add or subtract electrons from your total. Remember if an ion has a positive (+) charge (cation) you must subtract electrons from your total. And, if the element is an anion (negative charge), you must add electrons to your total. Look at the example below: Aluminum will lose three electrons when it forms an ion. So although a neutral atom of aluminum has 13 electrons, the ion of aluminum, Al3+ , has lost three electrons and only has 10. Thus, you should write the electron configuration for 10 electrons. Answer: Al3+ : 1s22s22p6 Given : S2- Sulfur will gain two electrons when it forms an ion. So although a neutral atom of sulfur has 16 electrons, the ion of sulfur, S2- , has gained two electrons. Therefore, you should write the electron configuration for 18 electrons. Answer : S2- : 1s22s22p63s23p6
To teach tone and mood in literature, utilize word activities based on the type of literature or write prompts that allow students to create their own tone and mood examples. Use song selections, poetry, short stories or novels as examples.Continue Reading When using songs or poetry, identify tone by determining the author's purpose, ideas, feelings or technique. Identify mood by describing what emotional response the piece evokes. On a chalkboard, use a line to divide the board in half with "tone" and "mood" written on the top of each half. The students listen to the poem or song and give suggestions of words that describe the tone of the piece, such as playful, angst-ridden or boisterous. Next, the students suggest what mood the piece evokes, such as happy, sad or upset. For a writing prompt, have students write a sentence or short paragraph that communicates feeling and causes readers to feel a particular emotion. Have students create a light image drawn on top of a copy of the literary work that conveys the emotion of the piece. Students are given a specific passage of the work, and they take an image derived from the work and add words that inspire the image, such as one wide-open eye with words that evoke paranoia or suspicion for a passage from the novel "1984."Learn more about K-12
California researchers have gained fresh new insight into the factors that influence our internal clocks and say their findings could lead to new treatments for metabolic disorders such as obesity and diabetes. “Our group has been fascinated with circadian rhythms for over 10 years now, as they represent a marvelous example of robust control at the molecular scale in nature,” said Frank Doyle, chair of University of California, Santa Barbara’s Department of Chemical Engineering and the principal investigator for the UCSB team. “We are constantly amazed by the mechanisms that nature uses to control these clocks, and we seek to unravel their principles for engineering applications as well as shed light on the underlying cellular mechanisms for medical purposes.” All living creatures have their own built-in biological clock which produces oscillations in a roughly 24-hour cycle that regulate various physiological and behavioral tasks. In humans, this complex body clock helps time and control many of our bodily functions such as eating, sleeping, body temperature, blood pressure and the production of certain hormones that regulate various internal organs. Our blood pressure for example, doesn’t remain constant; it rises and falls depending on the time of day or night. Our senses, such as sight, smell and taste, are also controlled by our circadian rhythm. Our physical lives in essence are run by the beat of our internal clock. “These oscillations are caused by genetic circuits. So you’ll have a gene that’s produced, and when it’s in its finished form, it will turn itself off,” said Peter St. John, lead author of the study and a researcher in UCSB’s Department of Chemical Engineering. He added that the proteins and genes that produce the daily oscillations clear out when they’ve done their jobs, allowing the body to restart the process of producing these materials once again. All of this takes place within a cycle that takes roughly 24 hours to complete. A person’s genetics do play a part in these rhythms, according to the researchers. For example, if your parents were night people, there’s a good chance that you will be too. But other factors, such as environment, daily habits and lifestyle, also affect our internal clock. “It’s not just this free-running oscillator,” said St. John. “It gets these inputs from light. For instance, if you get light early in the morning, it’ll speed up something so your phase is adjusted to the time of day.” St. John also pointed out other influences that can adjust a person’s circadian rhythm are those such as the time they eat, the kind of drugs they take, whether they have a work schedule that involves varied shift times, or if they take trips that often take them across time zones. The researchers found that our bodies can get into trouble whenever our internal clock is thrown off-kilter due to these factors. This is also known as having a low-amplitude rhythm. This low-amplitude rhythm can have an impact on necessary cellular activity that is supposed to take place at certain times of the day or night. The researchers said these disruptions to our internal clock could lead to ailments like diabetes, heart disease and obesity. Looking at some very basic research, it has also been found that these low-amplitude rhythms have also been linked with diseases such as Alzheimer’s as well as certain liver conditions. The research team looked at proteins called Period (PER) and Cryptochrome (CRY) that help regulate and control our circadian clocks and developed models that demonstrated how two small-molecule drugs, Longdaysin and KL0001, impacted these proteins. They felt the insight into the mechanisms behind the metabolic aspects of circadian rhythms that they gained could lead to therapies to decrease the risk of diseases that are associated with disrupted rhythms.
Bumble bees are flying insects that are social and form colonies with a single queen and different jobs or “castes.” Bees are incredibly important to the ecosystem because they pollinate hundreds of wild flowers and allows these flowers to sexually reproduce. The bees forage using color and spatial relationships of flowers when choosing a site to feed. The bumble bees go after the nectar provided by the flowers and use a specialized tongue adapted to lap up the nectar. When a bee lands on the flower, the frequency at which the bee vibrates its wings causes the pollen to “jump” on to the bumblebee. Pollen is also transferred to the bee when it comes in to contact with the anthers of the flower. Upon contact, the bee receives a dusting of pollen that sticks to its hairs. The female bumblebees will return to the colony when full of nectar and pollen to distribute these in to brood cells or wax cells for storage. The mated queens will diapause, (a state of physiologically enforced dormancy), overwinter and emerge in the spring. Unlike honeybees, which hibernate in their hive, bumblebees typically die in the fall. The Toledo Zoo is turning empty lots around the Zoo and the region into native prairies to benefit many species of wildlife, including pollinators. Bees and other pollinators are unable to pollinate invasive plants that are commonly found in suburban and urban area gardens and therefore, are in decline. Another issue facing pollinators is the existence of mowed lawns where wild flowers are not allowed to grow and mature. Planting native flowers around Toledo will attract native bumblebees. Toledo Zoo bee research Biologists and volunteers survey the prairies for bumblebees to determine what species are utilizing these prairie habitats and their abundance. One way of surveying, is to establish transects through the prairies and walk the transect or paths with a net and capture bees in the area to determine the species of the bee. Biologists also gather data on the number of species observed during a specific time period. As the prairies mature, we expect to see a higher abundance of bees and more species of bumble bees utilizing the prairie habitat. Volunteers also are instrumental at assisting biologists in field surveys and studying these habitats. Bee’s eye view Get a first person view of what it is like to be a native bumble bee foraging out on the Toledo Zoo’s native prairies. These habitats provide tons of food and habitat for these bees and act to prevent bee populations from declining in Northwest Ohio. Did you know? One in three bites of the food you eat everyday is the result of bumble bees. These pollinators are extremely important to our ecosystem and our livelihood. Help by planting native flowers in your garden, reducing the use of pesticides and visiting the Toledo Zoo to learn more about our native bees!
Presentation on theme: "Project Overview Learning Areas Levels Objectives"— Presentation transcript: 1 Project Overview Learning Areas Levels Objectives Classroom, Outside Area, Art AreaLevels10-12Pupils will be able to:Create their own Islamic patterns taking into account the following criterion: shape, symmetry, pattern and colour.ObjectivesDescriptionMathematics lesson linked to RME Topic of IslamMicrosoft Powerpoint/Word, Active Primary 2SoftwareThis Virtual Classroom Tour template has been provided so you can develop your own Virtual Classroom Tours. Use the template to record a special learning project that you have found particularly successful in your classroom. Then share the project with other teachers in your school, district or beyond.Here’s how:Follow the prompts on each slide and in the embedded Word documents, in this PowerPoint document, to insert your project information. When you have finished inputting all of the project information that is requested, delete the prompts. Select each one and press the Delete key.Note: To enter the title of your Virtual Classroom Tour you must select View, Master, Slide Master, and enter it on the slide master. Then click Close Slide Master. This will cause the title to appear on each of the slides.From the File menu choose Save As… and save the document as a PowerPoint Show. (Use the File type: drop-down list to choose PowerPoint Show). You can then distribute the Virtual Classroom Tour.AuthorsScott Haxton, P6/7 Class Teacher, Borrowfield Primary School, MontroseDocuments 2 Teaching Resources Project Overview: I wanted the pupils to see the connections between Islamic patterns and areas within Maths.We started by exploring the mathematical history of Islamic patterns in mosques, prayer mats; this also involved a lesson with the art specialist. For example we discovered that mathematicians as early as the 14th Century helped to shape the Islamic Patterns we know today.As an introduction we identified and examined a range of different examples of Islamic patterns. The criteria we decided for our investigations were shape, pattern, symmetry and colour.The results the initial activity enabled us to look at each criterion in more depth. For example shape: different types of triangle, symmetry: identifying lines of.. Rotational symmetry, pattern: tiling, tessellations.On this slide, embed the student handouts and the resources created for this project. Some examples are a student project overview, Internet and other resources, directions for art projects, or instructions to students for peer editing of projects. To embed the resources, follow these steps:Have the resource document available.From the Insert menu choose Object.Select Create from File… and click Browse….Find the file you want to include and click OK.Select Display as icon and click Change Icon… and add a suitable caption.Click OK to add the caption and click OK to embed the file.Position the document icon at the bottom of the slide. You can go to View, Grid and Guides, and click Display Grid on Screen for a grid on which to line up your icons.Documents 3 Teacher and School Information Class Teacher: Scott HaxtonHead Teacher: Evelyn NobleBorrowfield Primary, Newhame Road, Montrose, AngusUse these resources for assistance in working with and learning more about Microsoft Office applications.
Previous Chapter: The American Caribbean “The unfortunate soldiers were in want of everything; they had neither coats, nor hats, nor shirts, nor shoes; their feet and their legs froze till they grew black and it was often necessary to amputate them…. The army frequently passed whole days without food.” ~ Marquis de Lafayette upon observing Washington’s army the first time Excerpt from Douglas Oswald’s “Annotated History of the American Revolution”, University of Michigan Press, 1932. The twin victories at Brandywine and Hartford provided the Americans with more than just a simple morale boost. When news of the victories reached Europe, the rumor mills in royal courts from Madrid to Munich began to spin. It was no secret that several powers on the continent desired to knock the British down a peg or two. After all, the British Empire had grown from backwater to global power due to victories in the War of the Spanish Succession, War of the Jenkins Ear and then the French and Indian War. A loss by the colonial Americans would surely result in the solidification of London’s power over North America from the Caribbean to the Arctic Circle for generations. Considering that France’s overseas empire had been hobbled by its loss in the previous war, and that Spain had been fighting to regain prior imperial glory since 1714, both empires were keen to curtail British power and perhaps recapture lost possessions. Initially there was much hesitation among royal courts to intervene on behalf of the rebels. The idea was that any intervention would legitimize independence movements in their own colonies and give Britain and the other European powers precedent for supporting those movements. Sticking it to the British was important but far more important was the retention of imperial power in all states across Europe. The formal declaration of independence by the Americans gave the European states the loophole necessary to justify intervention. The fact that the United States had brilliant diplomatic relations, headed by Benjamin Franklin’s exploits in Paris, only furthered their cause. However, courts in Paris and Madrid were weary to spend already depleted treasuries on a cause with no hope. Relentless British counterattacks throughout 1777 gave the Europeans pause as it seemed the continental armies were one devastating loss away from failure across the board. Commodore Briggs’ victory in the Caribbean was most impressive but it would be nothing more than a meaningless delay tactic if his land based counterparts couldn’t hold up their end of the bargain. Besides, no one expected multiple victories by the ragtag American fleet against the Royal Navy. Even the great powers of Europe struggled to consistently top the Admiralty. The American cause seemed likely to fizzle out in 1778, or perhaps 1779 at the latest. That was until the revolutionaries scored much-needed victories at the Brandywine and in Hartford. Throughout the winter of 1777 discussion between kings, officials and ambassadors ramped up on the American issue. Rumors swirled that there was an imminent peace revolt about to occur in Parliament. The American victories were not devastating to the British but they ensured the war would drag out at least another year, perhaps several more. Admiral Rodney’s inability to quickly recapture the Caribbean meant that many powerful British families were suddenly bankrupt by the loss of several years of sugar profits. The prospect of permanently losing those properties, or even losing five years of revenue, was too much for many powerful men. Already the blows to many portfolios was creating political chaos across British society. For many it was now better to take a humiliating reconciliation with the Americans than permanently lose the immense revenues and strategic value of North America and the Caribbean. More than anything, the potential for reconciliation finally began turning the gears on the continent towards direct intervention. To their credit the fears of reconciliation were justified. After word of the loss of Hartford returned to London, Parliament accepted all of the original colonial peace terms including the repeal of the tax of tea and the agreement that no taxes would be imposed on the colonies without their consent. A formal commission was created to negotiate directly with the Continental Congress and given wide latitude regarding the agreements they could make to suspend hostilities. There was even vague rumor of secret negotiations to create a quasi-independent Commonwealth of America with its own parliament and affiliation with the Crown but these grandiose plans remained nothing more than rumor. Since the start of the war, the European powers had been indirectly aiding the rebels with weapons and munitions. Countless European officers spurred on by promises of glory and land journeyed across the Atlantic to volunteer among the inexperienced revolutionaries. For example, dozens of experienced Polish nobles, uprooted by the partitions of their homeland, traveled to the United States to aid the colonials and make a new home. It was in January of 1778 that Paris made the first move and began working with American diplomats to create a formal alliance treaty. This treaty allowed for open invitations for other nations to join, largely directed at Spain but also the other European states, and was concluded in February. The terms were formally relayed to the British in March who then immediately recalled their ambassador and declared war on France on March 10, 1778. Spain, sensing an immediate opportunity to take British Central American outposts and the Floridas, joined the fray with their own set of treaties in July of 1778. Naturally the Spanish crown wanted to wait until the annual treasure fleet had arrived safely back from South America before beginning hostilities . Throughout the winter and spring of 1778, the Continental Congress weighed its options but it quickly became clear that full independence was the prevailing goal of all parties. British reconciliation policies were rejected and alliances with France and Spain fully accepted. A series of diplomatic blunders between the British and Dutch in 1780 eventually led to a formal alliance between Philadelphia and Amsterdam thanks to John Adams. The rejection of British peace overtures infuriated King George who vowed an indefinite scorched Earth campaign against the colonies. Yet, even he understood that a massive reorganization of imperial military priorities was in order. Throughout the summer of 1778, British forces in North America shuffled about to prepare for the new world war. Howe abandoned Philadelphia in favor of New York, a controversial decision based on the need to maintain New York’s port under British control in order to maintain the links to Quebec and into the North American interior. Ceding the continental’s capital and all of the hard fought territory in Pennsylvania and New Jersey was deeply unpopular with British troops. A letter from General Howe, holed up in New York, to General Campbell, holed up in Montreal, sheds some light on the demoralizing situation: “You must force a confrontation with the traitor [Carleton] and defeat him with the utmost urgency! There is no military sense at all in sacrificing Philadelphia while the colonials are on the run to place ourselves back in the situation of two years prior. While I say no military sense, I suspect there is some sense to the wishes of London. Rumors abound amongst the soldiers that Hudson’s [Bay Company] will not pay a dividend this year and, combined with the shut down of the sugar trade, that has Parliament in a panic. Typically I needn’t bother you with the idle gossip of the rank and file but I have recently received word that [William] Mayne has gone bankrupt. If the Patriarch of Mayne and Barn cannot hold the center then who knows what else is happening in England? If Parliament is allowing their profits to dictate war policy then we have a crisis at hand. I suspect my orders have little to do with winning the war and everything to do with securing the Champlain corridor. If I am correct, the only way we can regain the initiative and sooth the angst in London is a victory that secures Canada. ” Howe’s speculation was closer to the truth than he knew. From the Windward Passage until the end of the war, MPs routinely allowed their finances to dictate war plans. Interestingly, the break with the Americans due to the war quickly gave politicians with more Asiatic portfolios the financial advantage which explains the subsequent shift in British foreign policy to emphasize trade with India and the East Indies. Of course the devastation to so many prominent family’s finances took a generation to recover from which impacted British involvement in the Napoleonic Wars. Eventually, thanks to the noveau rich of the industrial revolution and the Asiatic maneuvers of de deifstal, Britain managed to recover economically from the American Revolution even if political meddling cost them a better peace, or the war itself, in 1779. To the south, the imminent invasion of North Carolina was called off to dig in in South Carolina and Georgia while positioning for potential Spanish incursions into the Floridas. Plans were drawn up to withdraw British forces from the interior and Quebec down to New York in the event French forces reinforced American positions along the St. Lawrence and made holding Canada untenable. Naval forces were pulled away from blockade duties and focused on European and Indian waters as well as the reconquest of the Caribbean. Meanwhile, the continentals took the initiative for the first time since the war began. Emboldened by British reorganization, Carleton pushed south from Trois-Rivières and engaged General Campbell at the April 8, 1778 Battle of Bethierville. While unable to surround Campbell’s force, Carleton did force the primarily Scottish and Brunswicker army into a tactical retreat back to Montreal. In May, Carleton encircled the city and prepared for a long siege. Ironically, Howe’s letter to Campbell that was cited above was amongst the last mail deliveries made from New York to Montreal before Carleton encircled the city. To the south, the recapture of Philadelphia was an event with considerable fanfare on May 19 but the Continental Army did not linger long to watch the Congress return from its exile in Frederick. It immediately pursued retreating British forces across New Jersey, raiding and harrying them along the way until Washington occupied Newark while the British, protected by the big guns of the Royal Navy, dug in on Manhattan. To the east, Arnold’s force of New Englanders, already lodged at White Plains, completed their encirclement of the British. A bold nighttime crossing of Long Island Sound placed a small, but stubborn, continental force on Long Island, forcing the thin British garrisons to defend Brooklyn with their back to the East River. Stuck in Manhattan, General Howe was further dismayed to see ten ships from his Royal Navy contingent sail south towards the Caribbean on June 28. His dismay turned into despair on July 11 when a French fleet under Admiral Charles Hector d’Estaing appeared on the horizon and engaged the remaining Royal ships. The Battle of Sandy Hook proved to be as pivotal a naval battle as the earlier Battle of the Windward Passage. The French victory scattered or sunk the Royal Navy guardians and left Howe stranded. With Arnold to the north, Washington to the west and d’Estaing bearing his guns down on the city, Howe surrender New York without a fight on July 13, 1778. The news was devastating to the royal cause. Three months into the siege of Montreal, once General Campbell learned that his primary source of resupply had fallen, he presented his sword to Carleton. The loss of everything north of the Carolinas proved a scandal in London. In November 1778, Lord Frederick North’s government collapsed and a peace party of Whigs under the Marquess of Rockingham swept into power. Yet, while the average Briton found themselves prepared to live with an independent United States, they were not yet willing to throw in the towel on the global war that had just begun. : The War of the Spanish Succession was fought from 1702-1715 with France and Spain fighting a coalition of European nations seeking to prevent the unification of the two thrones. Britain succeeded in maintaining its colonial possessions against the previously stronger Spanish and French empires while also gaining strategic footholds in the Mediterranean Sea, including Gibraltar which it retains today in our timeline. The War of Jenkins Ear was fought from 1739 to 1748 and melded into the larger War of the Austrian Succession. It was fought between Spain and Britain, mainly over Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico colonial possessions. The war began, and got its name from, the separation of an ear from Capt. Robert Jenkins, a British merchant, following the boarding of his vessel by Spanish coast guards. The results of that war were negligible in terms of land swapped but it cemented both empires in their respective spheres while also helping to establish an “American” identity among colonial troops that saw their first action outside of the colonies. Lastly, the French and Indian War was part of the larger Seven Years War between Britain, Prussia and Portugal against France, Spain, Russia and the Holy Roman Empire which resulted in the loss of much of New France to Britain (Canada) and Spain (Louisiana), much island swapping in the Caribbean, and the establishment of Britain as the dominant power in India. : This is actually a recurring theme in Spanish diplomacy and war in our timeline. Madrid consistently found itself constrained on timing its diplomatic affairs because to so many Spanish decision makers, the only thing that mattered was the successful Atlantic crossing and that Spanish ports be open to receive the annual fleet. : William Mayne was an MP from Canterbury and a prominent merchant who made his fortune running a family shipping business known as Mayne and Barn out of Lisbon. While I can only speculate about the intricacies of 18th century British MP’s financial investments, he seems as good as any person to be subject to financial ruin and rumor due to the wider scope of the revolution in this timeline. This timeline assumes that the American Revolution causes the stoppage of the triangle trade which made so many merchants ridiculous profits, including many British politicians. Next Chapter: The Lion is Humbled
For many of us it was a painstaking experience with many questions and maybe even a few tears of frustration. But once it was completed, undoubtedly the printed words were read with pride and maybe disbelief that the paper was actually done! Then came the grade – possibly less than expected and left us wondering what we had done wrong. If this was not your experience and you received a good grade, you undoubtedly possessed good formative skills in extrapolation of factual information from reading and writing development.reader Guiding children to reflect on a written passage or book does not happen overnight. It’s a learned process that takes practice. When should you start with your own children? Now! Tips to help your children become proficient readers. Elementary Age Students Whether you are reading to your child or the child is reading to you, stop after small sections and ask questions about the text. This will help to check comprehension and to determine facts that will be important to remember. reader As the child begins to read books for book reports and literacy projects, show the child how to document the significant facts from each chapter by creating a “notes packet”. This packet can be in a notebook or simply some loose leaf paper stapled together. After a specific chapter or number of pages the child can write down bullet points of information from that sections. The packet can then be used to help with the summary for the report or project. Middle and High School Students Outlined Reading for Novels If the student is reading a novel, fiction or non-fiction, it’s important to create a notes packet before getting started. This is similar to the elementary version. During or after each reading (chapters or sections of the book) the child can record information, quotes, new terms or any other pertinent facts. This documentation should be more elaborate than the elementary notes packet and also include page number references for citing references. reader Outlined Reading for Textbooks Many students struggle with gathering information from a textbook. When reading a textbook, the first step is to skim the material and create an outline. After making an outline, the student can go back to each section and record the facts. Outlines make good study tools for quizzes and exams. Help your children begin learn how to pull important information from the books they are reading. The more practice children have in gathering information, recognizing important facts, and documenting vital data the easier school experiences will be for them. Becoming a competent reader is a good life skill too! For wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you. By Megan Stone, M.Ed. Wife to Rick Mom of two 1 Corinthians 13 Parenting Team Member Founder of Stone Foundations of Learning, Inc. Author of Own Your Education: A Student’s Guide to Greater Success in School (And Life) Megan’s book, Own Your Education: A Student’s Guide to Greater Success in (And Life)
One of the compulsory subjects your child will be taking in Secondary Three is Social Studies. Ms Azlinda Samsudin, Assistant Director of the Social Studies (Secondary) Unit at the Ministry of Education shares more about the subject and suggests ways parents can help their child to prepare. To advise your Secondary 2 child on the selection of Humanities subjects, take time to find out more – Literature, History and Geography. What is Social Studies? Social Studies, at primary and secondary level, helps students to understand the interconnectedness of Singapore and the world they live in, and appreciate the complexities of the human experience. Students explore the complex tensions that characterise issues happening around the world and in Singapore. Their learning starts at primary level and is explored in greater depth at the secondary level. Upper Secondary Social Studies focuses on the explicit teaching of thinking skills to assess and manage real-life information in meaningful ways. It also aims to build a deep sense of rootedness to the nation. The subject is interdisciplinary in nature, combining subjects such as Geography, History, Sociology, Political Science and Economics. What is the value of learning Social Studies? - Understanding and appreciating real-world issues and Singapore society Social Studies ignites a curiosity about real-world issues. It helps students to understand developments that are taking place in society and the world as well as their roles in shaping the future of the nation. Students will explore contemporary and global issues related to governance, their roles as citizens, living in a diverse society and globalisation. These are issues that affect the lives of our children as young citizens, and this prepares them for the responsibilities they need to exercise judiciously as adults in future. Social Studies encourages students to engage in policy issues instead of just relying on the government to achieve desired outcomes. - Develops critical thinking skills Social Studies requires students to analyse multiple perspectives of a particular issue before reaching their own well-reasoned conclusion. Through inquiry and authentic learning experiences, students explore societal and global issues by constructing explanations, evaluating and interpreting information through making inferences, analysing evidence, comparing and contrasting perspectives, and drawing well-reasoned and substantiated conclusion. They will also be equipped to identify and suggest insightful approaches to societal issues so that they can take ownership of their impact on societal outcomes as constructive citizens of Singapore. In this digital age of widespread both real and fake news, the skills they learn in Social Studies enable them to discern the credibility of the information they receive. The thinking skills are highly relevant in a workplace and will help them to tackle challenges posed by an uncertain future. How can I support my child in his or her study of Social Studies? Albert Einstein, in his letter to Thomas Edison, once said, “The value of an education…is not the learning of many facts, but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learnt from textbooks.” Social Studies encourages children to be cognisant and interested about the world we live in. Here are some tips on how parents can support children: - Encourage them to read widely, especially on current affairs, as well as listen to/watch news and documentaries Increase their exposure to current issues that take place both in Singapore and around the world. These habits will heighten their awareness and interest in the events and developments taking place in Singapore and around the world. - Reflect on issues they read, listen or watch Encourage children to think through what they have read, listened to or watched. As they try to make sense of these issues, they will be more aware of their own beliefs and assumptions. They can reflect and construct their understanding of the world they live in. - Allow children to share their perspectives Have conversations about current issues in Singapore and around the world. Ask your children for their initial perspectives before discussing other possible perspectives. Help them to understand the various situations that led to the perspectives being presented as such. Encourage them to develop their own opinion, and explain their reasons, after understanding and analysing these perspectives. This process empowers to discern and provide well-reasoned conclusions on issues that arise. Enjoy having these conversations with your child! Find out more about Social Studies at the Primary level, as well as some of the social studies programmes in school ,such as the ‘archaeological site’ at Elias Park Primary School.
Whites who live in areas of the South once dominated by the plantation economy and slavery are much more likely than other Southerners to express colder feelings toward African Americans, to oppose affirmative action, and to vote Republican. Those are among the findings of a groundbreaking new study titled "The Political Legacy of American Slavery" by a team of political scientists from the University of Rochester in New York. It was based on a county-by-county analysis of census data and opinion polls of more than 39,000 Southern whites. "Slavery does not explain all forms of current day racism," says Avidit Acharya, who conducted the study along with Matthew Blackwell and Maya Sen. "But the data clearly demonstrates that the legacy of the plantation economy and its reliance on the forced labor of African Americans continues to exacerbate racial bias in the Deep South." To explain their results, the authors theorize that Southern whites — faced with having their political and economic power undermined by emancipation — had incentive to propagate racist violence, institutions and norms in parts of the region like the so-called "Black Belt" or "Cotton Belt" that had high numbers of freed slaves in the decades after 1865. "We argue that these attitudes have, to some degree, been passed down locally from one generation to the next," they write. The researchers looked at data from 93 percent of the 1,344 Southern counties in the Black Belt where plantations dominated the economy from the late 1700s into the early 1900s. They found that a 20 percent increase in the percentage of slaves in a county's pre-Civil War population is associated today with a 3 percent decrease in whites who identify as Democrats and a 2.4 percent decrease in the number of whites who support affirmative action. What they call the "slavery effect" accounts for up to a 15 percentage point difference in party affiliation today. About 30 percent of whites in former slave plantation areas report being Democrats, compared to 40 to 45 percent of whites in counties where slaves made up less than 3 percent of the population. The researchers considered whether there could be alternative explanations for their findings. For example, they looked at whether whites who live around larger black populations have more negative racial attitudes — what's known as the "theory of racial threat." But they found that share of black population actually predicts warmer attitudes toward blacks among whites once slavery is accounted for. They also considered whether what they found was related to slavery being more prevalent in rural areas, which tend to be more conservative than urban areas, or whether it had something to do with Civil War destruction, or with whites holding particular racial attitudes migrating to areas with others of like mind. But again, those hypotheses did not hold up to scrutiny. The study also compared Southern counties with very few slaves in 1860 to non-Southern counties with no slaves in the same period. It found very little difference. "Thus, in the absence of localized slavery, it appears that the South would have had a distribution of present-day political beliefs indistinguishable from comparable parts of the North," the authors write. "This provides evidence that the effect that we see comes primarily from the local presence of many slaves, rather than state laws permitting the ownership of slaves." The researchers point to an emerging literature showing that the legacy of slavery can be observed today in other contexts internationally — from lower levels of household consumption and childhood growth in areas of Peru and Bolivia where people were subject to forced labor, to higher poverty, reduced school enrollment and lower vaccination rates in parts of Colombia where gold was mined by slaves. The authors will present their findings at the Politics of Race, Immigration, and Ethnicity Consortium at the University of California at Riverside on Sept. 27. "In political circles, the South's political conservatism is often credited to 'Southern exceptionalism,'" says Blackwell. "But the data shows that such modern-day political differences primarily rise from the historical presence of many slaves."
biology question #520 Jen, a 15 year old female from Orland Park asks on January 7, 2002,Q: If you find a bone in an archeological dig how can u tell what kind of animal it was? viewed 17448 times An animal's bones are usually distinctive because they have evolved to fit that animal to a behavioral lifeway. For example, the common ancestor of horses and cows had five digits. A differentiation of lifeways occurred many millions of years ago such that some animals (horses and their kin) became adapted to fast running while others (cattle and their kin) became adapted to a slower gait. As these animals evolved the numbers of digits declined to one for horses and two for cattle. Pigs still have four but the rear two don't touch the ground. These adaptations can be very specific such that one species' bones are clearly different from another. Sometimes, as in sheep and goats, it is difficult to tell leg bones apart but skulls are quite distinct. Human locomotion called bipedality (walking on two feet) is so specialized that almost any bone from our bodies, or even fragments, can be distinguished from any other animal. We can also use biochemistry and remnant DNA to differentiate bones from archaeological species. Usually, however, bone specialists employ comparative anatomy techniques to tell what kind of animal it came from. In other words, they take a lot of courses at university to understand the subtle differences between the bones of different animals.
Making Connections in Informational Text Lesson 4 of 7 Objective: SWBAT find relationships between main ideas in nonfiction text. I wanted to mix in some informational text with this nonfiction narrative, so I chose an interesting but quick article on Antarctica. My students were very curious about this continent and how Shackleton was able to survive its freezing temperatures and harsh environment. On a side note, this activity could be done with any text or a combination of different genres on a similar topic. My idea is to group students and have each group member read a different text on Antarctica. Once they are finished, they will teach their group members all they have learned about the topic. I wanted groups of 3, so I divided the text into 3 sections: Who are the natives of Antarctica?Who lives in Antarctica today? I lumped Tourism and "Sort of" Towns together so that all 3 pieces would be similar in length. I have found that groups of 3 are ideal for my students if we are doing small group work. When I group them in fours, the groups seem unfocused, and many times the students want to partner off anyway. I will first have my students create groups of three students. I want them to have a choice in this part of the activity, but later, groups will be assigned at random.( I find that students are much more cooperative if they have a choice in partners, however, they don't always choose wisely. This way, they will be working with a friend but also have the opportunity to work with someone new. I also like to have plenty of movement in my class to keep everyone active and busy. Changing up the group dynamics helps keep everyone on their toes.) Once they have found a group, I'll give each group member one of the 3 articles. If you happen to have a group or two of two students, just take out one of the articles. I'll either pre-label the articles with a 1, 2, or 3, or more likely, have the students label them once I pass them out. Now, I'll give students about 10 minutes to read quietly and highlight important information. I'll remind them that they are the only person in their group with this information, so it is really important that they read carefully and thoroughly. Since students are participating in a jigsaw, each group member will have read a different text. Once the students are finished reading, I will ask them to form a group of two or three that contains people who read the same article as they did. Since the papers were numbered, I asked that they show their number by holding up their fingers and mill around until they find a partner or two. These groups will sit together and discuss the articles. I'll ask them to decide on the 3 most important ideas in the text and write them down on the back of the article. This activity promotes speaking and listening as well as comprehension. I like to design lessons around the type of collaboration where students may have to support their opinions in order to make a point. Students will now return to their original groups. First, they'll share out their 3 important ideas. Next, they'll create a relationship map. Each person will take one box, and summarize the findings from their article in one sentence. In other words, they'll be one box for each of the article's main ideas. After that, the students will examine connecting boxes and look for connections, relationships, or similarities. I expect this to be a little tricky, so I plan on modeling a relationship map with some easy examples. I'll ask the students to give me a couple of topics, and together, we'll find connections. When students do this on their own, they'll write the connecting factors or relationships on the lines that join the boxes. Finally, each group will create a graphic/symbol/picture that represents all of their information and draw it in the center of the map. When all groups are finished, we'll have a gallery walk so that we can see other people's ideas and connections. I believe that finding connections between different topics really helps students understand the world around them. They are making sense of previously unknown concepts and linking their knowledge to new ideas.
a yoga & creative movement lesson for parents & teachers of children from preschool-5th grade Some Animals Migrate "Migrate" means to move somewhere warmer for the winter season, and then come back when it's spring. - Monarch Butterflies fly to Mexico and southern California to escape the cold winters of the north. For Butterfly Pose, sit on the floor with the bottoms of your feet touching, and knees bent. Hold on to your ankles or toes with your hands. Sit up tall and move your legs up and down like the flapping wings of a butterfly. - Snow Geese are large, white birds with black-tipped wings that take the Central Flyway route from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, passing over lots of rich farmland where they can stop and eat grain. For our Goose Pose (Low Lunge), let's stand on our knees and put one foot on the floor in front of you, leaning forward. Open your arms to the sides and flap them up and down, slowly and then faster and faster. Try putting your other foot forward, and flap your wings again. Can you take off into the sky from this shape? (If you have enough students and enough space, you can make a "V" shape and try to move together like a flock of geese.) - Reindeer (Caribou) travel the farthest of all migrating animals, up to 5,000 miles, looking for forests where they can search under the snow for food. They are fast runners and can also swim across lakes and rivers to get where they are going. Stand up with your feet wide, like Warrior 1 Pose. Bend your front knee (toes forward) but keep the back leg straight (toes turn to side). Attach your thumbs to the sides of your head above your ears, fingers spread out like antlers. Lift your head and look up to the sky. Then lean forward, lowering head in front of knee to look for food under the snow. Then repeat with the other foot forward. - Humans! Lots of people like to leave the cold weather and travel somewhere warm for part of the winter, or all of the winter. How do they get to a warm place far away? Let's try flying in Airplane Pose. Balance on one foot with your other leg lifted behind you like the tail of a jet. Tip forward and reach your arms out to the sides like sturdy airplane wings. Try changing legs. "Adapt" means to change how you look or how you act. Let's talk about some animals who change when the winter comes! - Squirrels gather and store extra food for the long winter, when they might not be able to find much to eat. Usually, they don't like when other squirrels come into their favorite hiding spots, but in the winter they share their homes, huddling together to keep warm. Stand up with your feet apart, as wide as your body. Bend your knees like you're about to sit in a chair--Chair Pose. Bring your elbows close to your sides, lifting cupped hands up in front of your chest like squirrel's hands. Wiggle your back side as though you have a tall bushy tail to wave. If you have a group of students, try these Squirrel Games: Pass the Acorn: Stand in a circle, everyone in Squirrel Pose. Pass an "acorn" (any small object about the size of an orange) from squirrel to squirrel, holding it only with the inside edges of your hands (no fingers). Make sure everyone keeps their knees bent until the acorn goes all the way around the circle. Scatter and Huddle: Squirrels roam around the room in whatever ways the children imagine squirrels might--darting, shuffling, pausing to twitch their noses, until the teacher rings a bell or calls out "Huddle!" Move into the middle of the room to keep each other warm, until the bell rings again or the teacher calls out "Scatter!" - Fish in some cold places spend their winters being very active and moving around a lot so their bodies don't freeze. Lay down on your belly and lift your legs and arms. Swish your feet like a tail and paddle your hands like fins, twisting your body from side to side. Move so you don't freeze! - Snowshoe Rabbits are a rusty brown color... until it snows! Then their fur turns white so they match the snow and they can't be seen by animals who might try to eat them. Also, their feet are large and hairy so they don't sink down into the snowdrifts. For Rabbit Pose, sit on your shins and tip forward slowly till your head touches the mat in front of your knees. Reach your arms alongside your shins toward your ankles and start to lift your seat off your legs, keeping your head on the floor. Imagine you are hiding in the snow! - Humans! People adapt to cold winter weather by wearing lots of warm clothes and eating hot food and drinking hot drinks. Hot Chocolate Breath: Take a seat and hold your hands around an imaginary mug. Breathe in and smell your cocoa. Do you like marshmallows in it? Or some whip cream and sprinkles? Breathe out slowly through your mouth, so your breath warms your hands. Repeat a few a few more times, breathing in through your nose and breathing out warm breath through your mouth. If you want to add a movement game for a larger group, this would be a great time to play a Bundle-Up Relay Race, with two piles of oversized sweaters, hats, scarves, mittens, etc, at one end of the room. In two lines, a student from each team runs to the clothes, puts them all on and runs back, where they tag the next person in line to return to the former pile with them. The first player takes all the items off and goes to the end of their line while the next player puts them on. Continue till one team's last player is dressed in the warm clothes. Some Animals Hibernate "Hibernate" means to take a long nap during winter. - Grizzly Bears sleep from 5-7 months of the year. They eat a lot before they hibernate, and then they don't eat or go to the bathroom until winter is over. Let's Bear Walk, on hands and feet, around the room, getting slower and slower and more tired until finally, we curl up and sleep. - Box Turtles get so quiet during hibernation that they don't even breathe! Their skin takes in oxygen while they rest. Turtle Pose: Sit with your legs in front of you and the bottoms of your feet touching, so your legs form a diamond shape. Slide your hands, palms down, under your ankles and round your back, letting your forehead rest on your feet (or above your feet). It's nice and dark and quiet in your turtle shell. - Humans! Of course we don't sleep for months, but many people in cold places are less active in the winter, staying inside and maybe curling up with a blanket next to a fire. Let's stack our legs in Firelog Pose, sitting on the floor and crossing one shin on top of the other. Rub your hands together until they feel warm, and then give yourself a big warm hug. Make a fire with the other leg on top. "Dormant" is a way of hibernating, when the animal's body goes "on pause" for the winter. Part of their body may even freeze, but they wake up again when it gets warmer. - Frogs can go dormant in the mud at the bottom of a pond, or by burrowing into old leaves on the ground. Their body temperature drops and they get almost as cold as the earth around them. Frog Pose, squatting low with your sticky, webbed hands gripping the floor in front of you. Try a few hops and then stop moving and show a frozen frog shape! - Snakes in some places burrow into little tunnels underground, where the temperature is cold but not freezing. They do not move or eat for months. Laying on your belly with legs and feet touching, reach your arms by your sides as though you don't have arms at all, in Snake Pose. Lift your head and shoulders away from the floor and look from one side to the other, hissing. Wiggle into an imaginary burrow and show what a dormant snake might look like. - Insects, such as the Ladybird Beetle (Ladybug) find a sheltered spot to sleep in a dormant state till it warms up. We can do Flipped Bug Pose (a nicer way to say Dead Bug pose) by laying on our backs with our knees bent toward our armpits, bottoms of feet up to the ceiling. Now hold on to your feet with your hands and rock side to side a few times. Then find a paused shape, like a sleepy ladybug. - Humans! Though we don't hibernate or go dormant like some animals do, deep rest is very important to our health. Let's practice the best yoga pose of all, Final Resting Pose, or Savasana, for a few minutes and let our muscles, bones, heart and brain be soft and calm. Make yourself comfortable on your mat and feel very heavy and quiet. Listen to your breath. (Teachers/Parents, you may want to dim the lights, turn on soft music or count slowly to ten so the children know how long they will be resting for. After sitting up and stretching and yawning, talk about how good it would feel to wake up after months of sleep. Where would you go? What would you eat?
Graphing Polar Equations Lesson 5 of 12 Objective: SWBAT convert from rectangular equations to polar equations. Yesterday we focused on converting one point from polar to rectangular form or vice versa. Today we are going to be converting entire graphs instead of a single point. To begin the lesson, I give students this worksheet and have them recap the conversions that we used to convert single points. After students fill these in we will share out and I will ask them where these equations came from just to drive home the point that we are merely using right triangle trigonometry. In the section titled "additional conversions," I will just remind students that our trigonometric ratios still hold true. For example, we know that sin(θ) = y/r and sec(θ) = r/x. Since this feels like a new context for many students, it is good to remind them that these ratios we know and love are still valuable to us. After this quick review, I have students get through as much of questions #2 and #3 from the worksheet as they can with their table groups. Usually 15 minutes is sufficient for them to get through most of the problems. Here are a few things I look for as they work: - Are students using the correct variables? Sometimes a student will think something is in rectangular form but it will still have an r in it. - If a student is stuck on a graph, it can be helpful for them to sketch it before finding the rectangular form. This is especially helpful for #2b). - Are students using correct algebraic steps to isolate r for #3? Some of these require some clever manipulation, so if a student gets stuck I will show a simpler analogous equation as a hint. Share and Summarize After students have had sufficient time to work, we will share out as a class. I noticed that #2c, #2d, and #3a from the worksheet were particularly interesting, so I choose to focus on these. Here are some notes on what I observe and how we approach it as a class. #2c - Students often have difficulty visualizing this as a line, even though they had no problems knowing #2b was a line. I start with a student who took the inverse tangent of 4 and found the angle measure of 76 degrees to know it was a line. Then we talk about how the slope must be 4 since it is y/x. I find a student who noticed that one of the conversions is tan(θ) = y/x, so we could substitute into the equation to get y/x = 4, and then rewrite to have y = 4x. #2d - This was another tough one to visualize. Students often cannot just look at the equation and know what the graph looks like. Again, they had to rely on the substitutions and know that they could replace csc(θ) with r/y. I have a student present their algebraic steps to show that this is equivalent to y = 3. #3a - This one was really interesting. Many students know that it was a circle with a radius of 4 so they think the polar equation should be r = 4. I discuss this problem in the video below. After these examples, I give students this homework assignment to give them some more practice with converting equations of graphs.
What did the first quasars look like? The nearest quasars are now known to be supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies . Gas and dust that falls toward a glows brightly, sometimes outglowing the entire home galaxy. The quasars that formed in the first billion years of the universe are more mysterious, though, with even the nature of the surrounding gas still unknown. Above , an artist's impression shows a primordial quasar as it might have been, surrounded by sheets of gas, dust, stars, and early star clusters.Exacting observations of three distant quasars now emission of very specific colors of the element . These Hubble Space Telescope observations, which bolster recent results , indicate that a whole complete cycle of stars was born, created this iron, and died within the first few hundred million years of the universe. Wolfram Freudling et al.
Imagine there are no people. Imagine a planet where the sea level is about five to 40 meters (16 to 131 feet) higher than normal. Imagine a planet that is hotter and wetter. Imagine, worldwide, it’s roughly 3 to 4 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than today. And the North and South poles are even warmer still – as much as 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than today. Welcome to the Pliocene. That was the Earth about three to five million years ago, very different to the Earth we inhabit now. But in at least one respect it was rather similar. This is the last time that carbon dioxide (CO2) levels were as high as they are today. On May 9, 2013, CO2 levels in the air reached the level of 400 parts per million (ppm). This is the first time in human history that this milestone has been passed. CO2 is the most important man-made greenhouse gas, which means (in a simple sense) that it acts like a blanket trapping heat near the surface of the Earth. It comes from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, as well as deforestation. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen from around 317 ppm in 1958 (when Charles David Keeling began making his historical measurements at Mauna Loa) to 400 ppm today. It’s projected to reach 450 ppm by the year 2040. To some, crossing the threshold of 400 ppm is a signal that we are now firmly seated in the “Anthropocene,” a human epoch where people are having major and lasting impacts on the planet. Because of the long lifetime of CO2, to others it means we are marching inexorably towards a “point of no return,” into territory that is unknown for the human race.
Many 2nd and 3rd grade students learn about clouds in their science classes. They learn about how clouds are formed in the atmosphere, what the different types are and what each type forecasts. If your students need to learn about clouds in your class, keep reading. In this blog post, I'll introduce you to The Cloud Book by Tomie dePaola and a twist on a traditional cloud craft. The Cloud Book by Tomie dePaola The Cloud Book by Tomie dePaola (affiliate link to Amazon) has been around for decades. Originally written in 1975, teachers around the world use this book with their science classes. Amazon describes The Cloud Book: "Tomie de Paola knows a lot about clouds. He also knows a lot about what people think of them. The Greeks, for example, believed that Hermes, the messenger of the gods, once stole the sun's cattle, which were clouds. In this unique approach to the sky, you can learn about the ten most common clouds. You can learn about the myths that have been inspired by their different shapes. You can learn that clouds tell us about coming changes in the weather. This book will tell you many things about clouds we bet you didn't know. We hope you enjoy it!" You can also watch The Cloud Book below. This video was made by Mrs. Clark's Reading Corner: Four Types of Clouds: Paper Craft Reach way back into your memory banks. Do you remember what the four basic cloud types are? They are cummulus, nimbus, cirrus, and stratus. - Cumulus clouds are large, puffy, and white. They indicate that the weather is changing. - Nimbus clouds are large and dark. They are storm clouds and can produce heavy rains, thunder and lightning. - Cirrus clouds are high in the sky and are thin and whispy. They indicate strong winds in the upper atmosphere. - Stratus clouds are low hanging and grey. They fill the whole sky like a wet blanket. Stratus clouds produce steady rains that last a long time. To make a model of these types of clouds, you will need the following: - blue construction paper or scrapbook paper (blue for the sky) - large amounts of make up remover pads (cotton balls can be used as well) - black paint - grey paint - paint brushes - white glue - To make cumulus clouds, take several make up remover pads and glue them into one corner of the construction paper. Arrange them in a way that makes them look large and puffy. - To make nimbus clouds, repeat the process for cumulus clouds. Once the glue is dry, paint the make up remover pads with black paint. - To make cirrus clouds, take one or two make up remover pads and pull them apart. Stretch them until they are long, thin, and stringy. Arrange and glue them in a way that makes them look light and airy. - To make stratus clouds, arrange and glue them in a way that makes them look like a thick, wet blanket. When they glue dries, paint them with grey paint. What other books about clouds would you recommend? Do you have a special activity you like to do with your students while studying clouds? Tell us about them in the comments below! (Next Article: Keko and the Lost Bananas)
During the American Revolution, the legal separation of the American colonies from Great Britain occurred on July 2, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution of independence that had been proposed in June by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia. After voting for independence, Congress turned its attention to the Declaration of Independence, a statement explaining this decision, which had been prepared by a Committee of Five, with Thomas Jefferson as its principal author. Congress debated and revised the Declaration, finally approving it on July 4. A day earlier, John Adams had written to his wife Abigail: \|“\|\|The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.\|\|”\| Adams’ prediction was off by two days. From the outset, Americans celebrated independence on July 4, the date shown on the much-publicized Declaration of Independence, rather than on July 2, the date the resolution of independence was approved in a closed session of Congress. One of the most enduring myths about Independence Day is that Congress signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The myth had become so firmly established that, decades after the event and nearing the end of their lives, even the elderly Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had come to believe that they and the other delegates had signed the Declaration on the fourth. Most delegates actually signed the Declaration on August 2, 1776. In a remarkable series of coincidences, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two founding fathers of the United States and the only two men who signed the Declaration of Independence to become president, died on the same day: July 4, 1826, which was the United States’ 50th anniversary. President James Monroe died exactly five years later, on July 4, 1831, but he was not a signatory to the Declaration of Independence. Have a happy and safe celebration. and please remember this nations most important holiday
By ashutoshshahi on Mar 12, 2006 To begin with I wanted to put a writeup on SSL. I gave a presentation based on this writeup to my team sometime back. What is SSL? SSL defines a mechanism by which two endpoints exchange data in an encrypted format, such that the data exchanged offers the following characteristics: Security: A third part, or an eavesdropper, cannot interpret the data being conveyed. Integrity: The data received by the recipient matches that sent by the sender. Identity: The server receiving the data is always positively identified; optionally an identity can be asserted for the client as well. SSL operates in a layered fashion in two components. At the topmost level is the handshake protocol, which operates atop a record protocol. Both of these ride the TCP transport. What does SSL provide? SSL is intended to provide an encrypted means of data exchange betweena client and a server; most typically, a web browser and a web server. As part of the handshake sequence, the server is required to identify itself via a server certificate. The inability of the server to offer such an identity causes the session setup to fail. During the handshake, protocol preferences are exchanged, and single secret session key is used via a symmetric key algorithm to encrypt and decrypt data sent across the wire. Session keys are discarded at the session's conclusion. Point to point security: SSL is declared to be a point to point protocol. This means that the security SSL provides is limited to the two immediate endpoints involved in the exchange of data; for example the web browser and the web server. The presence of security beyond the destination web server can not be asserted. There exists the potential for a security problem at any point downstream of the server, since the data it receives could be in clear text, and possibly could be re-transmitted to other servers that may or maynot have a public Internet presence. The ability to assert secure communication across the span of the entire application is termed “end-to-end” security, and SSL was never designed to provide this type of security gurantee. Why do we need SSL? The HTTP or Hypertext Transfer Protocol is the centerpiece of our current web technology. If data flows across the Internet to accomplish anything of interest, it finds its way through HTTP. This is a simple protocol capable of transmitting lots of data in a short time but with one slight drawback. Everything across HTTP is transmitted in plaintext. Data is open to Inspection Cleartext data flowing between browser and web server is ripe for third-party inspection for a variety of possible uses, not limited to the compromise of user-sensitive data. Other mechanisms available to a third-party eavesdropper on cleartext HTTP transmissions include the ability to make inferences about the structure of a site, and use that information as a basis on which to construct spoofing, redirections, or malformed URI attacks. SSL eliminates the possibility of third-party examination of cleartext data by using a single shared secret key, with a symmetric key algorithm to encrypt and decrypt data on both ends of the data transaction during a session. Inability to establish participant identities HTTP provides no mechanism to validate that the server for which the data is intended is actually the server to which the data is delivered. Redirection attacks cause the data or websites to be spoofed or simulated on other servers without the user's knowledge. SSL attempts to overcome this problem by mandating the use of server side certificates to assert a specific identity for a given server. The server certificate contains information about the common name of the server, which the browser can use to compare with the server requested in the client-supplied URL. If they don't match, the user can be warned and then be allowed to determine if the submission should proceed. No gurantee of data integrity HTTP does not pay much attention to the size, nature, stucture or type of data being transferred. As a result there is no way to validate that the data sent by one end made it to the other. SSL addresses this problem by incorporating Message Authetication Code (MAC) in each encrypted message. A MAC is constructed by performing a hash function on the source data. The MAC value is added to the message structure that holds the data, which is then encrypted and sent to its destination. Upon receipt and decryption by the reciepient, the message data and MAC are extracted, and the same hash function is performed on the data block. The result of the reciepient hash is compared against the MAC, and if the two values match, the reciepint may conclude that the message was undisturbed in transit. How does SSL work ? SSL is a basket of encryption and identification technologies bundled together in a single protocol. Public-key algorithms are used to establish a secure mechanism for validation and key exchange, while a symmetric algorithm encrypts data via a shared secret sesion key. Hashing functions provide a mechanism for message integrity. The exchange of this data is covered in two layers, known as the SSL handshake protocol and the SSL record protocol. Initial protocol parameters are established at the server connection time, during the handshake protocol. Handshake Protocol overview The cryptographic parameters of the session state are produced by the SSL handshake protocol, which operates on top of SSL record layer. When a SSL client and a serevr start communicating, they agee on a protocol version, select cryptographic algorithms, optionally authenticate each other, and use public key encryption techniques to generate shared secrets. These processes are performed in the handshake protocol which can be summarized as follows: From the client, a CLIENT HELLO message is sent. With this initial message, the client sends its preliminary information including the protocol version, randomly generated data(ClientHello.Random),a list of cipher suites supported in decreasing order of preference and compression methods that can be imlpemented. In response, the server sends s SERVER HELLO message. The values set by the server are the protocol parameters that are set for tuis session. The server sends: Session identifier – unique for a new communication session or reused from a previous session. Randomly generated data – ServerHello.Random Cipher suite selected by the server. The server sends its own cerificate for the client to verify. The server optionally sends a SERVER KEY EXCHANGE message. The server optionally sends a CERTIFICATE REQUEST message for client identification. The SEREVR HELLO DONE message is sent by the server to indicate the end of server hello and associated messages. After sending this message the server will wait for client response. Upon receipt of the server hello done message, the client should verify that the server provided a valid certificate if required and check that the hello parameters are acceptable. The client responds with a certificate if one was requested, or issues a NO CERTIFICATE alert if none is available. The client then sends a CLIENT KEY EXCHANGE message. The particular contents of this depends on the type of public key algorithm selected, but it basically contains a 48 byte PREMASTER SECRET encrpted using the public key of the server. If the client has sent a signing certificate, it will then send a CERTIFICATE VERIFY message to the server to perform certificate validation. The client now sends s CHANGE CIPHER SPEC message, indicating that the selected or pending cipher is ready to be used for subsequent communication. The client then sends FINISHED within the now current cipher algorithm, and indicates its completion of the handshake protocol. The server, in response sends its own corresponding CHANGE CIPHER SPEC and now encrypted FINISHED message to the client, concluding the handshake sequence. Secured commonucation commences. Master secret and key generation When RSA is used for server authentication and key exchange, a 48 byte pre_master_secret is generated by the client, encrypted under the server's public key, and sent to the server. The server uses its private key to decrypt the pre_master_secret. Both parties then convert the premaster secret into master secret as: master_secret = MD5(pre_master_secret + SHA('A' + premaster_secret + ClientHello.Random + ServerHello.Random)) + MD5(pre_master_secret + SHA('BB' + premaster_secret + ClientHello.Random + ServerHello.Random)) + MD5(pre_master_secret + SHA('CCC' + premaster_secret + ClientHello.Random + ServerHello.Random)) The master secret is hashed into a sequence of secure bytes, which are assigned to the MAC secrets and keys. Cipher specs different client write MAC secret, server write MAC secret, a client write key and a server write key. When generating the keys and MAC secrets, the master key is used as an entropy source, and the random values provide encrypted salt material. The SSL record protocol Once the SSL handshake protocol is completed, the record protocol steps in to mediate the flow of encrypted data across the connection. The protocol takes the session key established during the handshake, and begins encrypting the outbound data or decrypting the inbound data, as appropriate. The SSL record protocol establishes the framework under which handshake and data messages are exchanged between the participants in an SSL communication. Each SSL record consists of not more than 2\^14 bytes of data known as SSLPlaintext record. The SSLPLaintext record incorporates a structure defining the version of the protocol in use, the content of the data in the record, the length of the data, and the data itself. This record structure is then used throughout the communication merely by providing one of following four content types: CHANGE_CIPHER_SPEC – Changing the cipher used for communication ALERT – Indication of an error condition HANDSHAKE – Negotiation of an SSL session APPLICATION_DATA – Data in an existing SSL session The algorithms used/supported for identification and key exchange: Diffie-Hellman key exchange RSA is the most popular algorithm. The symmetric key algorithms used/supported: DES, Triple DES, RC4
Song Dynasty (960 CE-1279 CE) Sarah Firdaus and Gauri Girirajan pd-6 Religion, Culture and Social Life Inventions/Technology/Science & Architecture Printing, paper money, porcelain, restaurants, gunpowder, the compass, tea and much more! The number of things the Song dynasty gave to China is amazing! Many things we have today came from ancient China.The Song dynasty provided some of the most significant technology advances in Chinese history.The Song dynasty promoted the publication of texts. Printing technology in the form of movable type was invented by Bi Sheng in the 11th century. Movable type alongside woodblock painting increased literacy with the mass production of printed materials. Because printing was now invented the production of paper money also started. For centuries, the basic unit of currency in China was the bronze or copper coin with a hole in the center for stringing. Large business deals were calculated in terms of strings of coins, but given their weight these were difficult to carry long distances. As trade increased, demand for money grew. The government created more coins but now it was getting harder keeping the heavy coins. From the production of printing the paper money was finally made. Tea had also had been invented previously but it was really in the Song Dynasty that tea reached its cult status. It was drunk out of very beautiful, extraordinarily exquisite tea bowls made from porcelain, one of the glories of the Song Dynasty. The architecture of the Song dynasty was noted for its towering Buddhist Pagodas, enormous stone and wooden bridges, lavish tombs, and extravagant palaces. The highest structure in Kaifeng, Northern Song’s capital, was a pagoda. The temples in the dynasty were often the first thing a person saw when they first came. A Song Dynasty porcelain box with a flower design, now preserved at the Nanjing Museum in Jiangsu Province, The Liuhe Pagoda, or Six Harmonies Pagoda This is movable type created by the Song. Merchants, traders and artisans were occupations that grew and were important during the Song dynasty. Merchants engaged in overseas trade through investments in trading vessels and trade which reached ports as far away as East Africa. The Song dynasty traded with its northern neighbors was set up by the payments Song made to them. The Song dynasty contributed to trade by setting up supervised markets along the border to encourage this trade. Chinese goods that flowed north in large quantities included tea, silk, copper coins (widely used as a currency outside of China), paper and printed books, porcelain, lacquerware, jewelry, rice and other grains, ginger and other spices. The return flow included some of the silver that had originated with the Song and the horses that Song desperately needed for its armies, but also other animals such as camel and sheep, as well as goods that had traveled across the Silk Road, including fine Indian and Persian cotton cloth, precious gems, incense, and perfumes. Camels, loaded with goods, about to exit the city through the gate, Beijing scroll
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Sea surface temperatures have been rising steadily due, in part, to climate change. It was reported that 2023 bested 2016, the last year a global water temperature record was set. In early April, the average temperature of the ocean’s surface reached 69.98°/21.1°C. It beat the annual record of 69.8°/21° set in March 2016 and is half a degree above the global average in the 30-year period from 1982 to 2011. How are the temperatures measured? Satellites take these readings about one meter (3.28 feet) below the surface. The results are then confirmed by buoys and ships. This year’s peak was a cause for concern. The peak in early April got its start in previous years, including 2022, which was another hot year for sea-surface temperatures. How and why did this happen? Let’s start with the human factor. Some people don’t treat the oceans with respect. As some have seen in our Central Texas waterways, humans toss their trash — including beer cans, soda cans and plastic bottles — into the water without giving it a thought. But our warming climate has contributed to this rise because the oceans have taken on a significant amount of unusual heat caused by the rise in greenhouse-gas emissions, leading to the rise in the global sea-surface temperature and that 69.98° record. The oceans also influence the weather. We have just come out of a prolonged La Niña, one which, for Central Texas, has impacted the extreme to exceptional drought. That was especially apparent in 2022, leading to 68 days of triple-digit high temperatures. Looking at a global contrast, mean air temperatures trend cooler, allowing for more heat to accumulate deep in the oceans. Experts feel that the end of La Niña allowed that heat to rise to the surface, contributing to the record. There are, of course, other concerns. When the ocean temperatures are as warm as they are now, ice melting happens, leading to an increase in ocean levels given water expands as it heats. Storms are stronger during an El Niño, as a result. It’s not just the oceans heating up that are being affected. Warmer oceans take on less heat and a lower amount of carbon dioxide, leading to the warming of the climate. Warmer waters lead to more evaporation, along with stronger cyclones. Remember, that heat has to go somewhere. Part of what it does is causes an increase in global warming.

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