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MIT robot combines vision and touch to learn the game of Jenga
The Jenga-playing robot demonstrates something that’s been tricky to attain in previous systems: the ability to quickly learn the best way to carry out a task, not just from visual cues, as it is commonly studied today, but also from tactile, physical interactions.
In the basement of MIT’s Building 3, a robot is carefully contemplating its next move. It gently pokes at a tower of blocks, looking for the best block to extract without toppling the tower, in a solitary, slow-moving, yet surprisingly agile game of Jenga.
The robot, developed by MIT engineers, is equipped with a soft-pronged gripper, a force-sensing wrist cuff, and an external camera, all of which it uses to see and feel the tower and its individual blocks.
As the robot carefully pushes against a block, a computer takes in visual and tactile feedback from its camera and cuff, and compares these measurements to moves that the robot previously made. It also considers the outcomes of those moves — specifically, whether a block, in a certain configuration and pushed with a certain amount of force, was successfully extracted or not. In real-time, the robot then “learns” whether to keep pushing or move to a new block, in order to keep the tower from falling.
Details of the Jenga-playing robot are published today in the journal Science Robotics. Alberto Rodriguez, the Walter Henry Gale Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, says the robot demonstrates something that’s been tricky to attain in previous systems: the ability to quickly learn the best way to carry out a task, not just from visual cues, as it is commonly studied today, but also from tactile, physical interactions.
“Unlike in more purely cognitive tasks or games such as chess or Go, playing the game of Jenga also requires mastery of physical skills such as probing, pushing, pulling, placing, and aligning pieces. It requires interactive perception and manipulation, where you have to go and touch the tower to learn how and when to move blocks,” Rodriguez says. “This is very difficult to simulate, so the robot has to learn in the real world, by interacting with the real Jenga tower. The key challenge is to learn from a relatively small number of experiments by exploiting common sense about objects and physics.”
He says the tactile learning system the researchers have developed can be used in applications beyond Jenga, especially in tasks that need careful physical interaction, including separating recyclable objects from landfill trash and assembling consumer products.
“In a cellphone assembly line, in almost every single step, the feeling of a snap-fit, or a threaded screw, is coming from force and touch rather than vision,” Rodriguez says. “Learning models for those actions is prime real-estate for this kind of technology.”
The paper’s lead author is MIT graduate student Nima Fazeli. The team also includes Miquel Oller, Jiajun Wu, Zheng Wu, and Joshua Tenenbaum, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT.
Push and pull
In the game of Jenga — Swahili for “build” — 54 rectangular blocks are stacked in 18 layers of three blocks each, with the blocks in each layer oriented perpendicular to the blocks below. The aim of the game is to carefully extract a block and place it at the top of the tower, thus building a new level, without toppling the entire structure.
To program a robot to play Jenga, traditional machine-learning schemes might require capturing everything that could possibly happen between a block, the robot, and the tower — an expensive computational task requiring data from thousands if not tens of thousands of block-extraction attempts.
Instead, Rodriguez and his colleagues looked for a more data-efficient way for a robot to learn to play Jenga, inspired by human cognition and the way we ourselves might approach the game.
The team customized an industry-standard ABB IRB 120 robotic arm, then set up a Jenga tower within the robot’s reach, and began a training period in which the robot first chose a random block and a location on the block against which to push. It then exerted a small amount of force in an attempt to push the block out of the tower.
For each block attempt, a computer recorded the associated visual and force measurements, and labeled whether each attempt was a success.
Rather than carry out tens of thousands of such attempts (which would involve reconstructing the tower almost as many times), the robot trained on just about 300, with attempts of similar measurements and outcomes grouped in clusters representing certain block behaviors. For instance, one cluster of data might represent attempts on a block that was hard to move, versus one that was easier to move, or that toppled the tower when moved. For each data cluster, the robot developed a simple model to predict a block’s behavior given its current visual and tactile measurements.
Fazeli says this clustering technique dramatically increases the efficiency with which the robot can learn to play the game, and is inspired by the natural way in which humans cluster similar behavior: “The robot builds clusters and then learns models for each of these clusters, instead of learning a model that captures absolutely everything that could happen.”
The researchers tested their approach against other state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms, in a computer simulation of the game using the simulator MuJoCo. The lessons learned in the simulator informed the researchers of the way the robot would learn in the real world.
“We provide to these algorithms the same information our system gets, to see how they learn to play Jenga at a similar level,” Oller says. “Compared with our approach, these algorithms need to explore orders of magnitude more towers to learn the game.”
Curious as to how their machine-learning approach stacks up against actual human players, the team carried out a few informal trials with several volunteers.
“We saw how many blocks a human was able to extract before the tower fell, and the difference was not that much,” Oller says.
But there is still a way to go if the researchers want to competitively pit their robot against a human player. In addition to physical interactions, Jenga requires strategy, such as extracting just the right block that will make it difficult for an opponent to pull out the next block without toppling the tower.
For now, the team is less interested in developing a robotic Jenga champion, and more focused on applying the robot’s new skills to other application domains.
“There are many tasks that we do with our hands where the feeling of doing it ‘the right way’ comes in the language of forces and tactile cues,” Rodriguez says. “For tasks like these, a similar approach to ours could figure it out.”
This research was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation through the National Robotics Initiative. | <urn:uuid:20604bb2-2e33-4b78-88de-276493f6032c> | {
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(1931 - 1990)
Meir David Kahane was a Jewish religious & Israeli nationalist activist who founded the Jewish Defense League (JDL). His controversial nature is a testament to the fact that he has been referred to as both a "visionary hero
of the Jewish people" and as a "criminal racist" or
Kahane (born August 1, 1932; died November 5, 1990) was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Rabbi Charles Kahane, was involved in the Revisionist
Zionist movement, and was a close friend of Vladimir Jabotinsky. As a teenager, Meir became active in Betar, the militant revisionist
Kahane received a degree in International Law from
New York University, and ordination from the Mir Yeshiva in Brooklyn.
He edited the Jewish Press, and served as a pulpit rabbi and
teacher in New York until the mid-1960's. He also partnered with the
government in rallying Jewish support for the Vietnam War.
His life's work, however, really started in 1968, when he founded the Jewish
Defense League (JDL), whose activities were aimed at self-defense of the Jewish community in Brooklyn and harassment of Soviet activities in New York as a protest against the treatment of Jews in Russia. Kahane saw many of the poor and elderly Jews living
in the inner-city being targeted by criminals; as a result, he set out
to change the image of the Jew from "weak and vulnerable"
to one of a "mighty fighter, who strikes back fiercely against
tyrants." The JDL's controversial methods, which frequently included
the threat of, or actual violence, greatly exacerbated the Black-Jewish
tension already present in New York City. The JDL also focused on the
plight of Soviet Jewry, and coined the phrases "Never again,"
and "every Jew a .22" to emphasize that Jews would no longer
passively ignore the plight of their foreign brethren.
While some saw Kahane's goals as laudable, his actions were often criminal.
He spent time in jail after being convicted of conspiring to make bombs.
Kahane and his family moved to Israel in 1971, where he founded the
militantly anti-Arab Kach political party. The party's platform called for the
anexation of all conquered territories and the forcible removal of all
Palestinians. Under the auspices of Kach, Kahane continued to lobby
for his beliefs in violent ways, and was jailed on several occasions.
He was the first Jew in Israel to ever be accused of sedition.
Kahane ran for Knesset and lost in 1976 and 1980, but was finally elected in 1984. His movement
continued to grow until, prior to the 1988 Knesset elections, the Kach
party was banned from running by a Labor-Likud coalition. The ban was based on an amendment added to Israel's Basic
Law that disqualified any candidate whose platform included "incitment
Two years later, in 1990, Kahane was assassinated in New York
City. An Egyptian-born Arab was acquitted of the murder on technicalities but in 1995 was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment for his involvement in Muslim fundamentalist terror in New York in relation to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
During his life, Kahane attempted to spread his message
through a variety of forums. He wrote numerous books espousing his opinions;
his most famous work, They Must Go, is alternately called a "magnum
opus" by Kahane's followers, and compared to Mein Kampf by his detractors. He also founded a seminary in Jerusalem,
called the "Yeshiva of the Jewish Idea." The school, which
still exists today, attempts to combine a traditional Jewish education
with right-wing political activism.
Even after his death, Kahane has had a tremendous
influence on the Israeli political scene. In March 1994, the Kach party
and its offshoot, Kahane Chai ("Kahane Lives"), founded by
Kahane's son Binyamin Zev, were officially designated as terrorist
organizations by both the Israeli government and the U.S. State
Department. The immediate cause of this designation was the February
1994 attack on the al-Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, in which Kach member
Baruch Goldstein shot 34 Muslims. Kach supported Goldstein's actions,
and referred to him as a "hero." More recently, Binyamin Zev
Kahane made waves by condoning Yigal Amir's 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Binyamin Zev Kahane was murdered by Arab extremists
in 2001, as he traveled with his family in the West
Bank. Several attacks on Palestinians in the West
Bank during the "al-Aksa intifada" have been attributed
to settlers affiliated with Kach or Kahane Chai.
Authentic Jewish Idea; The Jewish Defense League; Friedman, Robert I., The
False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane: From FBI Informant to Knesset Member, London, 1990; Encyclopaedia
Judaica. © 2008 The Gale Group.
All Rights Reserved.
Photo: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Author: Raayon-hayehudi | <urn:uuid:0038022c-b499-421c-9a49-bf0c941e6b1e> | {
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Oak Ridge National Lab-led research provides knowledge to inform policy and action
This annual report highlights select accomplishments of the Climate Change Science Institute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for Fiscal Year 2012, which ended Sept. 30. Just a few weeks later, Superstorm Sandy crossed seven countries in nine days, killing more than 250 people in its path and causing US damages estimated in excess of $60 billion. In Sandy’s aftermath, some political and business leaders identified climate change as a reason for a “new normal” in which once-in-a-century extreme events such as hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, and wildfires occur much more frequently. In November, participants at the United Nations climate conference in Qatar criticized failing efforts to curb greenhouse gases, a point emphasized in December in a paper in Nature Climate Change. Notably with Tom Boden of the CCSI as a co-author, the paper reported that the planet’s temperature rise would likely exceed a previously set goal of 2 degrees Celsius (4 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. When all was said and done, 2012 went down as the hottest year in recorded history for the continental United States.
So begins the 2012 annual report of the CCSI at ORNL. The 28-page document, available at http://climatechangescience.ornl.gov/system/files/ccsi_fy12_annual_repor..., highlights Earth-system modeling on world-leading supercomputers to explore possible climate outcomes; managing climate data for the global community of scientists and stakeholders; conducting field projects of unprecedented scale in Alaska and elsewhere to understand the influence of rising carbon dioxide concentrations on land ecosystems; and exploring the risks of climate change to people, property, and ecosystems. “Today, we’re at a crossroads,” says CCSI Director James Hack. “World leaders have major decisions to make as greenhouse gas emissions slow in many developed nations including the United States but are more than offset by rises in developing nations. By providing knowledge to inform actions, CCSI may help turn jeopardy into opportunity to find solutions to one of the most pressing problems of our time.”—Dawn Levy, Feb. 27, 2013 | <urn:uuid:5ff5e050-bd8f-4b66-bd2a-cf72643b7c92> | {
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Change and Rumors of Change
In nearly every corner of the globe, HIV treatment advocates are working for people living with HIV/AIDS, helping them to get the care they need and the respect they deserve; helping them to get the most out of whatever medications are available; to understand what is happening with the virus in their bodies and to learn what they can do to maintain and improve their health. In the U.S. the job may involve getting a client who needs an unaffordable drug for their salvage regimen admitted to a patient assistance program. In one part of Kenya, it may be getting a client access to free tuberculosis treatment and drugs to prevent pneumonia in the hope that serious illness can be forestalled until antiretroviral (ARV) drugs finally become available. While in another part of Kenya, the challenge may be helping a patient who has failed her free first-line regimen get transportation to the U.S. financed PEPFAR clinic so she can start a second-line set of drugs. In Pakistan, the advocate's work may be counseling family members of a person diagnosed with HIV to relieve the stigma, thereby preserving the only source of care and support he has. In Argentina, the challenge may be to refill a prescription for free government-provided drugs when the nearest clinic is 1,000 miles away.
Despite the wide range of resources and problems that treatment advocates deal with, they often face a common set of challenges. All too often the doctors their clients rely on are poorly trained, dismissive or simply unwilling to provide information or care that goes beyond handing out pills. Everywhere that antiretroviral drugs are available, and in many places where they are merely anticipated, the prime adherence message about taking the drugs consistently is being taught. In addition to such basic treatment literacy, people with HIV worldwide are learning about nutrition, side effects and the healing community that can form when people speak out about their illness and embrace life.
All over the globe, things are changing for people with HIV/AIDS. Mostly the changes are improvements; stigma is lessening; free ARVs are becoming available; resources from international donors are starting to flow; lives are being saved and hope is coming alive. In many regions, though, change is slow to come and oppressive conditions are lingering or getting worse. In several countries, conditions seem poised for change, but are stalled by corruption and the unwillingness or inability of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to follow through with promised grants.
Recently, 26 HIV advocates from around the world were asked what changes they had seen in the past 12 months; and what changes they hoped to see in the coming year.
Eid Muhammad Shamas, PakistanIt is a very tough situation for someone with HIV in Pakistan. There is a lot of stigma and discrimination -- not only in the general community but in doctors' attitudes. When a person goes to the hospital he faces discrimination. He fears to seek treatment because the doctors often ask embarrassing questions like "how many times have you had sex with females." Because sex is a taboo issue in Pakistan culture, people don't talk about sex openly. So when a person faces these kinds of questions, he feels fear, feels shame, and feels guilty. And he faces great difficulty maintaining his health because the doctors don't cooperate with him.
When people with HIV come to us, our doctor examines them and can get them to the government hospital for drugs and testing but not ARVs. People don't want to go to the hospital because they are afraid their status will be told to their family members and friends. But when they come to us we counsel them to reduce their guilt and shame and then we do counseling with his family so he won't be rejected. The majority of families will be accepting once they are counseled.
Elie Bertrand Gaston Kampoer, CameroonThe stigma about HIV among the medical personnel is less now in the cities but it is still bad in the rural areas. Anywhere the NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are not present, the discrimination is bad. If you have a choice, you get better care from private doctors, but it is too expensive. In the past year, the fight against AIDS is getting stronger and moving more into the rural zones. But they are still not working enough on treatment.
We are hoping that the Global Fund will bring a big change in how people are treated for both HIV and tuberculosis. But I'm afraid that what is written on paper is not always the case in reality.
Lydia Mungherera, UgandaIn the past year there has been an increase in the awareness of treatment. A few years ago we focused on having a healthy life and told people how to care for themselves and how to have safe sex. And now, we are gearing the NGOs and CBOs (community-based organizations) towards treatment, saying, "There are lifesaving drugs and everybody needs access to them." And that's a change.
At the moment, most of the funding for ARV is coming from the donors. But I hope that in one year's time the government will also put some effort towards treatment. Most of the money we have goes towards defense. If we could put more into the health facilities and human resources, we could do a lot.
Tesfalidet Debesay, EthiopiaAwareness about HIV/AIDS has improved in the last year. Awareness is good, actually. Some research studies say that 95 to 97 percent of the population are aware of HIV/AIDS. But what matters is the behavioral change, because we still see people doing risky behaviors. Awareness is good, but behavioral change progress is very slow. And I think that the prevalence of HIV is increasing and Ethiopia is a country hard hit by HIV as well as tuberculosis. We are a high burden country on both diseases.
The changes we need are not for the next year, but Ethiopia needs to work for the coming two or three decades to tackle these diseases. It is not a simple disease to tackle within five or six years because nearly 3 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia. It is one of the hardest hit countries next to South Africa and Nigeria. We need three or four decades to reverse the situation.
Precious Jackson, U.S.A.Not much has improved in the past year. I'd say they are getting worse. For example, I hear from women who go to the AHF (AIDS Healthcare Foundation) clinics that they are not being treated the way they are supposed to. The problem is, there are so many cases, the doctor doesn't have time to actually sit down and talk to the women and answer the necessary questions they have. A lot of the women are having side effects, and they tell their doctors, but sometimes the doctors ignore them until it's too late. Women call me and tell me this and sometimes I have to go with them because they don't feel like they are being heard. So we go in support to assure that her voice is heard.
I think that doctors really need to take women seriously. They need to listen to them. If they say, "I have a pain in my leg and I know there's something wrong," don't ignore it or say, "Oh, it's probably just arthritis." Because arthritis is a valid complaint and something needs to be done about it. My thing is just to listen and to know what the person is saying is valid.
Julia Vinckler, EstoniaThere is stigma about HIV in the medical profession but it is becoming better. Two years ago they didn't know anything about it, but now a lot of information has been coming. In the prisons, when we came there, there was a separate block for the positive persons; now that doesn't exist. As the prisoners become more educated they also educate the staff. Outside the prisons, the city government decided to organize low threshold centers for drug users, which is a big step forward. There are also more needle exchange places. So, step-by-step, slowly we are moving forward.
The next steps will be to have more possibilities for the rehabilitation of the drug users. We have methadone treatment for free, but it is not enough; we need rehabilitation.
Mohammed Farouk Auwalu, NigeriaIn terms of HIV/AIDS, I think a lot has changed in the past year, because more people are getting on treatment now, and some people who are very sick are getting better now because they are taking medications. And PLWHAs who are activists are gradually coming out of their shells, you know, breaking the silence and trying to do advocacy and activism in terms of addressing specific issues that have relevance to the lives of infected and affected people in Nigeria.
The biggest change that has to happen, first and foremost, has to do with the issue of transparency and accountability. That's key. Because, I can tell you that in Nigeria, if you read the last report from Transparency International, Nigeria is the most corrupt country in the world. And I can tell you that HIV/AIDS is not excluded. We have seen a lot of people become AIDS millionaires overnight. So for me the key issue now is that activism has a lot to do in terms of transparency and accountability. We have to hold our leaders accountable for whatever they have said. And first and foremost we have to hold ourselves accountable, because you don't start attacking somebody if you can't look at yourself. If you're straight up, you can look at anybody and tell him he's not straight up.
Francisco Rosas, MexicoNot much has changed in the past year. People are dying in Mexico, especially children, young people and women. They have access to drugs but, in my opinion, they need access to quality care. It is not the same to have access to treatment and comprehensive care. It is not the same, to receive drugs each month and to receive quality of care.
We have to create new leaderships among HIV-positive people because the existing networks are so few and many of the leaders are dead now. Another big problem is that drug companies condition these leaders to do some kinds of work and not others. For example, the drug companies said to these leaders, "Don't talk about generic drugs and oppose the local production of generic drugs." But the drug companies bring their organization's money. I think one important problem in Mexico is corruption among leaders.
Lucy Chesire, KenyaTo be really honest, things have really changed. Five years ago when we started the clinic, you'd get someone coming into the clinic, she walks in and there's a big waiting room outside and she doesn't want to sit there. So she goes into a different room and says, "Lucy, when it's my turn to see the doctor, please come and call me." But nowadays, you get someone walking into the clinic and it's not an issue, because they already know it's an HIV clinic and they don't find it's an issue. You find them sitting there outside waiting and they want to know, "When is my time coming so I can get attended to and I go." It's not a big problem. So that's a big, big change and that is what has contributed to the big numbers that are actually coming into the clinic now. The stigma within the hospital does not exist. And people have understood that we are moving into a new building because the number of patients has become too large.
Still, free ARVs are not yet everywhere in the country. We are funded by PEPFAR and Global Fund and also Indiana University, which has really played a big role. But it is a big country.
Sunil Pant, NepalWe now have 25 people on ARVs who started this year; otherwise not that much has changed. The press has been very friendly this year on HIV/AIDS; they wrote a lot of articles. A few organizations also sponsored a few radio and TV programs. So that's good, but we do not have that commitment for education from the political leadership and Nepal's situation is very poor: the political situation; the security situation is bad. Because the security presence is so strong in Nepal now; in Kathmandu it is everywhere. Every street has a checkpoint and patrolling, so the metis (feminized males) and sex workers going in the night for sex or for earning money or something, they get checked and raped or blackmailed or cheated by security forces.
The situation for access to health care and treatment should be improving, but it is something pretty hopeless to think about in Nepal, because the Global Fund granted a second round proposal but they haven't been able to send any money, and the government is corrupt -- they don't really think about the community. And the Global Fund sort of says, "Oh, we have made the grant." But Global Fund needs to tell government, "Either you take it or not. If you are not able to do it, they we'll give it to the NGOs." They should start working with us and stop waiting, waiting for the government to get their act together, which never happens.
Fatima Koshokova, KyrgyzstanThe main route of transmission is injecting drug use. Our city is situated on the drug traffic that goes from Afghanistan and Pakistan to our CIS (Central Independent State) countries and then to Eastern Europe. And drugs are very cheap in my area, for example, for one package of heroin, it costs about 10 dollars. That's why it's one of the most used drugs in my area and most drug users are injecting drug users.
If you compare HIV/AIDS stigma and TB stigma, HIV/AIDS is stronger. At the moment, only one person in my country came out with his HIV-positive status. As for TB stigma, it depends on the community where the person lives. For example, injecting drug users are not afraid of TB stigma; if they have TB, it's not a big deal. But, for example, if a person works at the university, it will be a stigma. People don't want other people to know they have TB. They will avoid contact with the person, so they won't get TB.
Beverley Figaji, NamibiaThe CD4 count for eligibility to the government ARV program has been raised from 250 to 300 and more people are going on treatment. I think that's also due to our voluntary counseling and testing center. The positive clients coming out know that they can go to the ARV clinic because we're referring them straightaway. It's not people wandering around aimlessly not knowing where to go anymore.
I would like to see our center becoming a one-stop-shop. I would like to have everything there. If you come out positive, you could go straight onto treatment. No need to walk or take a bus. Our public transport service is not good; it's expensive for people. You can't just jump onto a train or a tram or a bus. You have to pay a taxi and it's expensive, or you walk. So it should be a one-stop shop. And other progress that's been made is that government has decided to go for rapid tests now. So if a person is positive, then we should be able to then give their CD4 count and give the treatment all in one place on the same day.
Matt Sharp, U.S.A.Despite the complexity of all the new medications that are coming out, in general I'm seeing people in better health; their overall health status has improved. It seems that, at the very least, people are more stable. I still see some deaths occurring, but they are all unrelated, there's no pattern to why they are happening. Maybe a suicide or things like that. I don't see that the deaths are related necessarily to HIV.
I'm a big proponent of educating people. I still see a big gap when talking to people about what's going on in their lives with treatments and with their doctors. There's a big misconception in the community that puts doctors on a pedestal and we're trying to break down that misconception and say, "You have to be able to speak to them on your level." I see that as a big area of work for me.
MacBain Mkandawire, MalawiWithin the catchment area where I am working, I wouldn't say there have been many changes in terms of care. One key problem is there was a tendency to say HIV is a medical problem. And for those of us who are not coming from the medical background, and are trying to change that notion, it has really been a hassle.
We want to see the community members themselves take action and care for the sick. The hospital should be the last resort. I mean the hospital should be for purely medical situations and not things that have got to do with nursing care. Like 70 percent of the bed space in the hospital, you could actually see that these are TB and HIV cases. So, what we are saying is, that if there was a better mechanism for care and support, and if we make progress against stigma, then people who are sick can get back to the community without being harassed or intimidated and we would be able to see a positive development among the people who are sick. But also taking into consideration that those who are sick have got children, and as they get stigmatized, we stigmatize the whole family and the children, and the growing up of those children becomes horrible.
In our area, there is no one receiving ARVs through a government program. But in other areas, there are. We have been told that it's going to start soon and that's why we want to do advocacy on the education and treatment programs so that they should be ready. We know when they start getting ARVs, the issue of nutrition will be very critical.
But in the meantime people continue to get sick and die and there is nothing we can do about that because it is a government program -- you know the bureaucracies of government -- and because about 50km from where we are there is a hospital that actually administers ARVs. But when we went there with some of our clients, we were told, "No, you are not in our catchment area, so we can not give them to you."
Elizabeth Anyango, KenyaWe've seen an improvement in acceptance in the past year. The peer educators who have accepted their condition have been influencing the others to seek medical care. People see that those who were very sick, now walk. Because some people are sick with TB and after the TB has been sorted out, they're able to work and they're able to walk. So, the other people feel that since so-and-so is able to come back and work, I too can seek health care. So that is something that we have seen. Also, our government promised a roll-out of ARVs. They released medicines in one of our district hospitals. But they only can take about five persons and they are showing about 400 persons on the waiting list. So they don't even take the five because how can they select the five? So they are using the medicines for their prophylaxis for the health care workers -- when they are treating, they are going to get exposed -- so that's what they are using for medicine. So, the impact of that has not translated into anything.
I hope to strengthen our community strategy, in terms of strengthening treatment literacy. We hope that with the PEPFAR support the ARVs will be able to reach more people than they are reaching now. We also wish to reach other funders that work in this field because they don't provide ARVs. So we are hoping to influence them to provide the ARVs to people that are in dire need, because, in one of our secondary schools, we lost six teachers within eight months this year. These are graduate teachers. We lost them because of the TB/HIV/AIDS problem. So we feel that these other funders -- we have the CDC working in the area -- we feel that they need to do more.
Joshua Formentera, PhilippinesFirst, there are more people aware that the intervention of care and treatment and advocacy is a stepping stone for people to get involved. So a lot of people are making a change in their way of thinking now. Second is the availability of generic medications. A lot of our people who could not afford to buy medications before are accessing these drugs.
Care and treatment has to be set as a priority. People come around voluntarily when you say there is a treatment available. Some health workers never talk about ARV, because there's an issue of not knowing about it, and it is so expensive, which adds additional depressions to people who are ready to access it.
Rene Roa-Flores, ArgentinaNothing has changed. Nada. We have antiretrovirals and we even have the latest generation of them -- in the cities; in the country, where we work, it is a different story. These are not covered by the public national health program, but we do have a private national health program that covers them. But what has happened is that the economy has gotten much worse; nutrition has gotten much worse; and that quality of life has gotten much worse.
We work in the rural areas. In Argentina, someone could be 400km away from an HIV clinic. We need to improve their quality of life and find ways to get to the people we're concerned with. We don't have the money to accomplish the necessary logistics. We need an airplane.
Heidi Nass, U.S.A.For treatment naive people, the simplification of regimens is a big deal. Sometimes I hear people dismiss those issues in community advocacy meetings, but when you talk to people in the exam room, they ask how many pills, and how big are they; are they capsules or tablets; do I have to take them with food? There are very practical concerns that I think we sometimes undervalue.
We've got to come up with much better ways to manage salvage therapy. It's astounding. In our clinic, we are seeing double-boosted PIs (protease inhibitor), which seem to have come into vogue. I certainly see physicians using it in their salvage situations. It's really a tough thing when you've got someone with a really low CD4 count and then the good news is you get a response, but the bad part is you start having to look for all the immune reconstitution effects, which we see. And then you have to start treating all of these sometimes very intense and violent OIs (opportunistic infections) that appear. At the same time the person is on a regimen that, frankly, is difficult to manage in the best of circumstances, and even then getting a mediocre response. For people who are assessing a lot of issues, including quality of life, what is worth what? It's really frustrating to watch. Now that I work in a clinic I see people over and over. A lot of people, unfortunately, are coming to our clinic several times a week, given what's going on with them. The more up close you are to somebody in that situation, the more frightening it is, because you can watch it become more and more tenuous before your eyes. And it's one person after another after another. Salvage is a really difficult one.
Nelson Vergel, U.S.A.I've seen improvements in treatment advocacy. We're including more people like me around the table when we talk to drug companies. I think the introduction of Fuzeon and now tipranavir is expanding the possibilities for salvage patients. So is a renewed interest in that field. I think the lipoatrophy field has changed, with Sculptra coming in. People want to talk to me a lot about that. But a lot has gotten worse, like funding, the waiting lists for ADAPs (AIDS Drug Assistance Programs), and no new drugs have been approved this year.
I want to push the salvage agenda; teaching patients that going on sequential monotherapy is not the right thing to do. That's a big goal for me. With the entry of Tibotec, I'm very excited because we're going to have a company with two new agents for use in salvage therapy. And personally, my main goal will be to educate people about multi-drug resistant HIV and about their options.
Rajiv Kafle, NepalTreatment has started in the past year. There are also more groups coming out and more groups being formed. At the same time we who are based in the cities and have some reach with the policy makers and the donors are pressurizing the donor communities and the funding mechanisms to put more money on the smaller groups so that they can be sustained.
The scaling-up of treatment as well as care and support groups being funded are priorities. The people who know how to create support groups live in the city, but Nepal is many regions and we need to get support groups funded all over Nepal.
Anjan Amatya, NepalIn the past year I see a great deal more involvement of people living with HIV/AIDS in workshops, seminars and meetings. Also we see many more NGO and donor agencies in Nepal asking for workshops on HIV and we have many more people living with HIV involved in those.
In the next year, I hope to see more of the same but moving out of the city to the rest of the country.
Ramkumar Thankiah Selva, IndiaThe HIV prevalence has been reduced in my area. In my particular district, in the past year, we can strongly say, only one person we found positive. We ran a large VCT campaign last year among sex workers and we took a random sample of 300 and only 3 were HIV positive. Also, the stigma is reduced and the local people are understanding that we can support them.
Still we need some support for the children. The local people are doing some support but we need more.
Dario Abarca, EcuadorIn the last year the political view has changed, but nothing more. They have changed what they say, but nothing has really changed. The Global Fund proposal was approved in 2002, but in 2004, we have no money. Sex workers maybe have better access to health services now. They also have better access to condoms and information. That's very good.
The NGOs and the Global Fund should go away. It's not good with them in Ecuador. There is constant fighting between the NGOs over everything and with everybody. Also, Ecuador is a very corrupt country. We are afraid of what is going to happen with the Global Fund, because the NGOs also have the same problem of corruption.
Yulia Chorna, UkraineOur achievement in the past year is that our clients coming to our needle exchange point do not use dirty needles. For example, almost all of the clients that we work with for more than a year always try to have clean needles and condoms, and that is our influence on these clients. New people that become injection drug users, of course, at first they do not understand. But our workers try to explain to them and make them understand why it is very dangerous. Our achievement is that our clients do not use dirty needles.
Shirke Rajendra Arjun, IndiaGovernment has started training programs and they have been involving positive people in decision making. Most of my colleagues are on the governing boards of the government policy making groups.
I think the media campaign the government did previously was absolutely wrong. They have to come up with a good strategy involving positive people. There are things the government should be doing to help the positive people's organizations. They are afraid that if positive people become strengthened, then tomorrow they will stick out their heads and make demands. So they don't want that.
Tamara Gvaramadze, GeorgiaPeople are talking about HIV/AIDS more; the general population. They are more interested and less afraid. And that's great because that's how knowledge and understanding work. This is so important for people who are infected because they have to face these problems everyday ... everyday. And when they feel things improving, they will be encouraged to start getting better.
I think most urgent would be to start connecting TB with HIV because this is at zero level, so far. There are no NGOs working on this; there is no information about TB co-infection. We did not discuss it in our communities; we were not aware of it. We need to talk about it to our target populations next year then start talking about it to the general public.
U.S. advocates were interviewd at a meeting of the AIDS Treamtent Activists Coalition (ATAC), in Washington, D.C., on October 29, 2004. International advocates were interviewed at the 3rd International TB/HIV Community Mobilization Workshop, in Paris, France, from October 24 to October 28.
This article was provided by Gay Men's Health Crisis. It is a part of the publication GMHC Treatment Issues. Visit GMHC's website to find out more about their activities, publications and services. | <urn:uuid:ee95fe23-10fd-40d9-8373-df7d412ce6c8> | {
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Were animals carnivorous?
Hello Chuck. Since you asked
From a paleontological standpoint, there are numerous indications of carnivorousness in the fossil record including but by no means limited to a Daspletosaurus found with partly digested juvenile hadrosaur bones in it
, and the triconodont mammal Repenomamus found with juvenile Psittacosaurus
(a dinosaur) bones inside it. Unless you're one who advocates a pre-Mesozoic post-flood boundary as some do, that's a pretty good indication of pre-flood/early-flood predation.
From a biblical standpoint, below is the text of an essay I wrote many years back on the subject of predation before the flood which was published in the RMCF
Newsletter (although it predates the issues they now have available online). I think it plainly spells out my position on the question of whether animals were carnivorous before the flood from a biblical standpoint.
It has become popular in Creationist circles to suppose that animals were not carnivorous before the Flood. When I first encountered this idea some eighteen years ago in Paul S. Taylor’s children’s book “The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible,” I dismissed it as an odd curiosity based on poor hermeneutics that would simply fade away. To the contrary, however, I seem to encounter it more than ever today. On the surface this idea seems to be consistent with Scripture. In Genesis 1:30, for example, God says "Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food" (all Scripture quotations are from the New King James version unless otherwise noted). The next time that diet is specifically mentioned is not until after the Flood in Genesis 9:3 where God tells Noah, "Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs.” Despite this apparent confirmation, the assumption that animals were not carnivorous until after the Flood is not consistent with what Scripture says about the condition of the Pre-Flood world.
In order to see this inconsistency we first of all must do a simple word study, or more properly, a phrase study. The phrase “all flesh,” which in the Hebrew is (kol basar), occurs thirteen times in Genesis chapters 6-9, or, in other words, in the context of the Flood and its aftermath. Specifically, it is found in Genesis 6:12,13,17,19; 7:15,16,21; 8:17; 9:11,15a,15b,16,17. Three of those times it is explicitly defined. In Genesis 6:19, for example, God tells Noah “And of every living thing of all flesh you shall bring two of every sort into the ark,” and He lists them in Genesis6:20--"Of the birds after their kind, of animals after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the earth after its kind.” In Genesis 8:17 He gives a similar listing--"Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you: birds and cattle and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” In Genesis 7:21 we are given an exhaustive listing of what “all flesh” refers to where it says “And all flesh died that moved on the earth: birds and cattle and beasts and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man.”
In many of the other occurrences the phrase “all flesh” is implicitly defined in the same way. In Genesis 9:9-11, for example, God tells Noah “…I establish My covenant with you and with your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth…Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood.” In short, the phrase “all flesh” is clearly and consistently defined and used throughout this context to refer to all terrestrial creatures and not just man. It includes man, and the fact that man is also flesh is what God gave as being the problem with man in Genesis 6:3. Nowhere, however, is the phrase “all flesh” defined as a synonym for only man. It is important to recognize this usage of the term “all flesh” because the first two times it is used in Genesis 6:12 & 6:13 has a direct bearing on the question of whether or not animals were carnivorous before the Flood.
The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, "The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth. (Emphasis added)
The main problem with the notion that animals were not carnivorous before the Flood is presented by the verses above. If animals were not carnivorous before the Flood, if animals were not killing and preying upon and eating each other before the Flood, then what was the violence with which they had filled the earth? Granted not all violence that occurs among animals is predation. When a Cape buffalo mauls and kills a lion cub, for example, he is not doing so to feed a hungry belly. When two male Hippopotami battle each other over territory and one fatally wounds the other, dinner is not what is directly on their mind. The most common form of violence among animals today, however, is predation and without predation verse 13 becomes almost inexplicable. Were animals just arbitrarily battling and killing each other for any or all reasons other than food? The more reasonable explanation is that animals had begun preying on each other long before the Flood. Regardless, the image of animals complacently and peacefully coexisting is not consistent with the picture Scripture paints of the Post-Fall, Pre-Flood world.
As an afterword I would like to point out that the New International Version (NIV) erroneously mistranslates “all flesh” as “all people” in Genesis 6:12 & 6:13. Then it obscures this mistranslation by either not translating it at all (e.g. Gen 6:19), or rendering it as “every living thing” or “all life” where, without resorting to another version or the original Hebrew, you would never know that God uses the exact same phrase in Genesis 6:12 & 6:13 that He uses when referring to animals. Be very wary of building or basing doctrines on interpretive paraphrases like the NIV without consulting other more literal and consistent translations.
P.S. Wow! I just previewed my post and I love that RefTagger for the scripture verses. | <urn:uuid:3b49085c-e573-4653-89d8-91046fca554b> | {
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His ominous farewell silenced her.
Her voice sounded so serious and so sad that the chirping of the birds was silenced at once.
His honest answer silenced her.
He hissed, "I will stop when you have silenced yourselves."
The single word spoken by Davis held a tone that silenced Royce like a slap to the mouth.
The young woman I didn't know cried out but was quickly silenced by my knife.
He drew the eye of every woman in the room and silenced those around her with his presence.
Her arrival silenced conversations and made most everyone do a double take.
She hadn't heard or sensed him, as if he'd gone to some sort of stealth mode that silenced even his mind.
His lips silenced her protest and she involuntarily responded.
Their ministers, silenced by Wentworth, after an ineffectual attempt to reach New England, fled to Scotland, and there took a leading part in the great movement of 1638.
The family tradition, however, is that he silenced the drums to enable Louis to speak to the people, and that General J.
The untimely death of that monarch upon the battlefield of Megiddo (608 B.C.), followed by the inglorious reigns of the kings who succeeded him, who became puppets in turn of Egypt or of Babylonia, silenced for a while the Messianic hopes for a future king or line of kings of Davidic lineage who would rule a renovated kingdom in righteousness and peace.
Its immediate occasion was the disputation at Heidelberg (1568) for the doctorate of theology by George Wither or Withers, an English Puritan (subsequently archdeacon of Colchester), silenced (1565) at Bury St Edmunds by Archbishop Parker.
The former are reasoned with and exhorted to believe; the latter are contemptuously silenced by an exhibition of the futility of their religion.
The batteries were silenced for the time being; but bad weather interrupted the proceedings and the batteries had to be silenced afresh a week later (Feb.
Auxury in clothing and the use of tobacco were prohibited; attendance at the mosque was enforced: any doubt as to his orthodoxy was silenced by the amount and regularity of the tribute sent by him to Riad.
But although silenced the prophet was doomed, and the folly of his disciples precipitated his fate.
September 1872 saw the first official opening of a railway (the Tokyo-Yokohama line) in Japan, the ceremony being performed by the emperor himself, a measure which effectually silenced all further opposition.
King Stephen silenced Vacarius, and ordered the destruction of the books of civil and canon law which had been imported by Theobald.
The reign of Domitian, although it silenced the more independent spirits of the time, Tacitus and Juvenal, witnessed more important contributions to Roman literature than any age since the Augustan, - among them the Institutes of Quintilian, the Punic War of Silius Italicus, the epics and the Silvae of Statius, and the Epigrams of Martial.
In after times the only way in which the discomfiture of the bishops could be explained was by asserting that they had been silenced by fraud or violence.
But when a committee of the Royal Asiatic Society, with George Grote at its head, decided that the translations of an Assyrian text made independently by the scholars just named were at once perfectly intelligible and closely in accord with one another, scepticism was silenced, and the new science was admitted to have made good its claims. Naturally the early investigators did not fathom all the niceties of the language, and the work of grammatical investigation has gone on continuously under the auspices of a constantly growing band of workers.
The only public check which Stinnes was known to have received in the course of his career was at the Spa Conference in 1920, when he attempted to address that assembly in peremptory language concerning the impossibility of the coal deliveries demanded by the Allies and was summarily silenced by the president.
Porter claimed that his guns silenced Fort Fisher, but Major-General B.
In December 1529 he preached his two " sermons on the cards," which awakened a turbulent controversy in the university, and his opponents, finding that they were unable to cope with the dexterity and keenness of his satire, would undoubtedly have succeeded in getting him silenced by force, had it not been reported to the king that Latimer " favoured his cause," that is, the cause of the divorce.
The first platoon to get ashore made to the right toward the shore and silenced a party of snipers near No.
Akhenatons reform had not reached deep amongst the masses of the population; they probably retained all their old religious customs and superstitions, while the priesthoods throughout the country must have been fiercely opposed to the heretics work, even if silenced during his lifetime by force and bribes.
Meks fort was silenced by about 52.45 P.M., and a party from the Invincible landed and disabled the guns.
After the works were silenced, the ships moved in closer, with a view to dismount the Egyptian guns.
A considerable portion of this injury was inflicted, after the works had been silenced, by the deliberate fire of the ships.
The process was even hastened; for the emperor's stern discipline crushed out all independence of initiative and silenced all honest criticism.
In this letter, and especially in the postscript to the second edition of it, Newman finally silenced all cavillers as to his not being really at ease within the Roman Church.
The states-general were silenced and the royal prerogative increased; the royal domains were extended, and the wealth of the crown was augmented; additions were made to the revenue by the sale of municipal charters and patents; and taxation became heavier, since Charles set no limits to the gratification of his tastes either in the collection of jewels and precious objects, of books, or of his love of building, examples of which are the renovation of the Louvre and the erection of the palace of Saint Paul in Paris.
3 Sophronius, however, who meanwhile had been made patriarch of Jerusalem (634), refused to be silenced, and in his Epistola synodica strongly insisted on the "two energies."
He threw himself with ardour into the struggle for liberty, and refused to be silenced in his advocacy of the civil constitution of the clergy by the offer of high office in the church.
At the Restoration, George, Lord Berkeley, who had been one of the commissioners to invite Charles II.'s return from the Hague, petitioned for a higher place in parliament, claiming a barony by right of tenure before 1295, but his claim was silenced by his advancement on September 11, 1679, to be viscount of Dursley and earl of Berkeley.
Jeffreys spoke with his accustomed insolence to the vicechancellor, silenced the other deputies when they offered to speak, and ordered them out of court.
Serious disturbances thereupon ensued; and the Protestants, getting the worst of the argument, silenced their gainsayers by insulting the bishops and priests in the streets and profaning and devastating the Catholic churches.
In the Church of Rome the Dominicans favoured Augustinianism, the Jesuits Semi-Pelagianism; the work of Molina on the agreement of free-will with the gifts of grace provoked a controversy, which the pope silenced without deciding; but which broke out again a generation later when Jansen tried to revive the decaying Augustinianism.
The literal text of the Septuagint seems to be the only decisive authority, and that is so sacred and almighty, that, whenever it comes into collision with the human conscience, the latter is silenced when the voice of revelation speaks."
Verse 14), which would naturally be silenced by the overwhelming falsification of its comfortable predictions (iv. | <urn:uuid:368df956-81a5-40b5-b39b-bc49d12d86a6> | {
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Narcissism and Machiavellianism in Youth: Implications for the Development of Adaptive and Maladaptive Behavior
- Explain how exploitative personality styles and antisocial behavioral patterns emerge, and become entrenched, in youth.
- Identify differences and similarities between the three components of the Dark Triad.
- Describe both protective and risk factors of narcissism and Machiavellianism and their associated outcomes.
- Distinguish the strengths and weaknesses of existing qualitative and quantitative research on narcissism and Machiavellianism in youth.
- Specify future directions for research on these constructs in youth.
$90.00 for Members/Affiliates
Online tests can only be purchased online. Phone orders will not be accepted for online test. You can not purchase two or more of the same online test.
A valid email address or your UserID and a password are required during the ordering process. When the order is complete, you will receive an email notification with instructions on how to retrieve the test. The test is available immediately. | <urn:uuid:ffaacfad-eb10-4c68-884e-eab754ed6987> | {
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Family: Polygalaceae (milkwort family / false
legume family/ butterfly bush family)
Common names: butterfly bush, ertjiebos (Afr.)
Many people are familiar with the hardy coastal shrub, Polygala
myrtifolia which is useful addition to indigenous gardens. Kirstenbosch
staff have now selected a form of Polygala fruticosa, a similar
species, which makes an even better garden plant. This selected
form has been given the name 'Southern Shores'.
The original plant was found growing out of rocky fissures so close
to the sea that the plants were being splashed with salt water at
high tide. What attracted us was the unusually compact growth habit,
the pointed, heart-shaped, blue-green leaves and the masses of intensely
purple flowers. Plants grown at Kirstenbosch have retained this
lovely compact growth habit and leaf colour.
P.fruticosa 'Southern Shores' is a neat, rounded shrub up
to 1 m tall. The young leaves of this indigenous evergreen are tinged
with purple, the shade echoed by the deep purple, winged flowers.
Peak displays of flowers occur from spring to early summer, giving
an unequalled show. It also produces a scattering of blooms throughout
the year. Bees are particularly attracted to the nectar that the
flowers produce and are the main pollinators. Seeds are enclosed
in papery, flattened capsules that remain on the bush for quite
some time during and after flowering.
The truly lovely flowers superficially resemble those of the pea
and legume family but are actually quite different. All members
of this genus have three to five sepals and three to five petals.
The two lateral sepals are petal-like, larger than the others, coloured
like the petals, and resemble the wing petals of a pea flower. The
lower petal is boat-shaped and encloses the eight stamens and the
style, and resembles the keel of a pea flower. A characteristic
of all polygalas that makes them easily distinguishable from the
pea is the brush-like tuft on the lower, keel-like petal. Closer
inspection also reveals that the flowers do not have a large standard
petal (also called the banner) like pea flowers do. Another distinguishing
difference is that polygalas do not bear leguminous fruit.
The name Polygala is derived from classical Greek polys
meaning much and gala meaning milk, so named because the
plants were believed to enhance milk production in livestock. The
specific name fruticosa means shrubby or bushy in Latin.
Polygala fruticosa is a native of South Africa, growing on
mountain slopes and coastal hills from the southern Cape to the
Karoo and KwaZulu-Natal. It tolerates a range of soils, from clay
to rocky sandstone.
Members of the family Polygalaceae occur nearly world-wide in 17
genera, with 950 species. Of the 400-450 southern African species,
32 occur in the Cape region. The genus Polygala consists
of about 600 species that occur in temperate and warm regions of
the world. There are 232 species of Polygala in Africa and Madagascar,
approximately 88 of which occur in southern Africa.
Growing Polygala fruticosa
This hardy plant requires no special care. Good, enriched soil,
full sun or semi-shade and plenty of water, will ensure rapid, healthy
growth. It has excellent waterwise properties, and once established
it will tolerate fairly heavy drought.
It is ideal as a specimen plant grown to brighten up any patch
in your garden. It is a lovely container plant and it will also
do well in a mixed border, providing attractive flowers and/or foliage
all year round. The 'Southern Shores' selection grows very well
in rockeries, on slopes, terraforce walls and any well-drained,
sunny garden position providing a beautiful display. As it grows
naturally next to the sea it is also an ideal small shrub for coastal
Polygala fruticosa is freely self-seeding and small plants
will appear around the parent plant after the first flowering season,
and these will transplant easily. Seed is typical of Polygala
being a small, hard, oval, black seed. Treat seed with hot water
for better germination. Light scarification and treatment with pre-emergence
fungicide will give optimum results, but is not necessary for good
Polygala fruticosa can also be propagated vegetatively using
tip or heel cuttings, preferably taken during spring or autumn.
Pruning is not necessary as it retains a compact habit, but when
cultivated in bags they may be pruned and will readily resprout
from medium to hard pruning done on the young wood.
Other recommended species
the September butterfly bush, is a hardy, quick-growing coastal
shrub with lime-green leaves producing masses of purple-pink
flowers, mainly from spring to summer.
Polygala virgata, purple broom, is a sparse
shrub with arching branches, bearing graceful sprays of deep
purplish pink flowers.
Cherise Viljoen and Anthony Hitchcock
Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden | <urn:uuid:b4416986-7391-4d6f-9b16-b7469b7256bb> | {
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If you want to learn how to draw, you should not only run with lessons on drawing characters from comics and video games. It should not be a problem for you to draw any object from the world around you. To practice drawing ordinary objects we created a drawing guide on how to draw a plug step by step.
First, draw a figure that looks like an inverted cone. Do not try over perfectly flat lines in this step. However, basic symmetry should be present in this figure.
Now let’s draw the contours of the wire and electrical contacts. Only smooth lines should be used in this step. If you want this you can draw round-shaped electrical contacts.
You can see that our plug doesn’t look like a regular bar with two electrical contacts. Therefore, we need to draw the contours of a smooth bend and several edges that are located in front of the plug.
We erase the extra lines from the plug and from the wire. Outline the entire drawing as straight lines as possible. At the end of this step, we draw the holes and the edges of the electrical contacts.
This plug drawing is almost finished, and we just have to add a little volume to it, and make it not look flat. To do this, you need to draw the shadows using hatching in areas that are shaded in our drawing.
Was there a drawing guide on how to draw a plug very easy? Write to us in the comments and let us know what you want to see in new posts of Drawingforall.net. Also do not forget that only you can help us develop and create new drawing tutorials. Just share our drawing guides with those who want to be able to draw like a professional artist. Follow us on social networks and visit Drawingforall.net as often as possible, because we create new drawing lessons every day. | <urn:uuid:d79097b2-a479-42ea-bf34-24e3908f0c64> | {
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Gules, on a saltire Azure fimbriated Or between a castle, a rattlesnake coiled to strike, and a fleur-de-lis of the third and in base a battle-axe Argent, eight mullets of the last.
That for regiments and separate battalions of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard: On a wreath of the colors Or and Gules a lion rampant guardant Proper holding in dexter paw a naked scimitar Argent hilted Or and in sinister an escutcheon Argent on a fess Sable three plates.
GETTYSBURG TO THE MARNE.
The shield is red for Artillery. The blue saltire represents Civil War service with the Federal forces and the white stars, the engagements during that war. The castle, taken from the Puerto Rican Occupation Medal, denotes service in the Spanish American War, the coiled rattlesnake, Mexican border duty, the fleur-de-lis, overseas service during World War I, and the battle-axe, a medieval weapon in common use in the European area (added to the coat of arms), symbolizes combat service in Europe during World War II.
The crest is that of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard.
The coat of arms was originally approved for the 107th Field Artillery Regiment, Pennsylvania National Guard on 17 June 1929. It was amended to correct the wording in the description on 13 June 1930. It was redesignated for the 107th Field Artillery Battalion, Pennsylvania National Guard on 3 December 1942. The insignia was amended by addition of a charge (battle-axe) to represent World War II service on 20 May 1953. It was redesignated for the 107th Artillery, Pennsylvania National Guard on 14 September 1961. The insignia was redesignated for the 107th Field Artillery Regiment, Pennsylvania Army National Guard on 11 July 1972. | <urn:uuid:3c9614e0-17f2-4827-9652-a67bcb4be09d> | {
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Contents: 1. Introduction. 2. Methods of studying microorganisms. 3. Classification of microorganisms. 4. Structure of microorganisms. 5. Soil microbiology. 6. Microbiology of air (Aeromicrobiology). 7. Water microbiology. 8. Agricultural microbiology. 9. Industrial microbiology. 10. Environmental microbiology. 11. Food microbiology. 12. Plant pathogenic organisms. 13. Some bacterial, viral, protozoan and fungal diseases. 14. Microorganisms harmful to human beings and animals. 15. Immunology. 16. Virus. 17. Bacteria. 18. Control of microorganisms. 19. Laboratory experiments. References. Index.
"Microbiology as a science has revolutionized the field of biology throughout the world. There is growing recognition of the potential of microorganisms in many areas including food, industry, medicine and environment. This book gives a well-balanced account of the fundamentals of microbiology, the applications of microbiology, advances in medical microbiology and other applied areas of microbiology. The most recent advances in microbiology, molecular biology, immunology, virology, pathology, industrial microbiology, fermentation technology, antibacterial drugs and biosensors, have been comprehensively integrated which would help the students to appreciate the fascinating diversity of microbial life, the central importance of microorganisms in nature; and the role of microorganisms in our daily lives." | <urn:uuid:dd0dda92-7f56-41c9-806c-48254e6b8ab7> | {
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Hot Topics Webinar
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
4:30 – 5:30 p.m. EDT
Outdoor and hands-on learning experiences can engage students with environmental stewardship opportunities, as well as, develop competencies students will need to address environmental issues as citizens.
This webinar will highlight how Hands on the Land (HOL), a multi-agency national network of field classrooms, supports environmental literacy using environmental issues, or “Hot Topics,” that affect our public lands, waterways, and communities.
Featured will be HOL’s revised “Hot Topics” resource area with activity ideas and case studies on how to bring environmental issues into the classroom and “to life” in the context of hands-on, outdoor programs.
Targeted audience: classroom teachers and field-site program providers.
Pre-registration is now closed. But you still may attend the webinar.
Please visit the link below on Tuesday, September 24, 2013 at 4:30 – 5:30 p.m. EDT. | <urn:uuid:0ab50223-49bf-4c93-b300-2adb3cb754b1> | {
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Write your own Raspberry Pi game
Follow Stuart Andrews’ step-by-step tutorial to writing your own game on the Raspberry Pi and enter our fabulous competition to win £250
The Raspberry Pi is a computing sensation, but it was originally designed with one key intention: to inspire a new generation to look beyond games consoles, smartphones and tablets, and embrace the way of code.
If you're looking for projects to do with a Raspberry Pi, why not check out our tutorial on how to turn a Raspberry Pi into an XBMC media center?
It comes with a selection of programming environments pre-baked into its Debian-based Linux distribution, but the easiest way to get started is with Scratch. Created by the Media Lab at MIT, Scratch was designed to teach children the fundamentals of programming, without the need to learn complex syntax.
Scratch allows users to drag and drop characters and objects into a game environment, then program their actions using building blocks, which are grouped into colour-coded categories such as Controls, Motion, Operators and Sensing. By dragging and dropping these into place you can create surprisingly sophisticated interactive stories, animations and games, then share them with a global community of students and developers.
Getting started with Scratch
In this feature, we’ll produce an arcade game – we’re calling it Crustacean Storm – while giving you a few pointers on how to take it further.
If you’ve never come across Scratch before, it might be worth looking at our previous feature on programming with it, which covers some of the basic functions. However, Scratch is easy to pick up; its scripts are comprehensible, and you can learn a lot just by downloading games and finding out what makes them tick.
Don’t worry if you don’t have a Raspberry Pi: Scratch will run happily under Windows, OS X and Linux, and even on the most modest of PCs. You can download it and find plenty of example programs here.
We also want you to share your completed games with us. We’ve teamed up with the creators of the Raspberry Pi to run our very own Scratch game competition.
First, start up Scratch. Now, you can’t have a cat starring in a game called Crustacean Storm. Right-click on the sprite and delete it. Go to the New Sprite bar above the bottom-right-hand window, select the middle button to “Choose new sprite from file”, go to the Costumes|Animals folder and select “shark 1-b”.
As he is, the shark is too big. Let’s shrink him. Select the Shrink tool from the toolbar (as shown above) and click about 30 times on the shark until he’s roughly the size shown here. Now it’s time to name the sprite. Go to the name bar above the central window and type to change its name from “Sprite1” to “Shark”.
It’s time to put the player in control. First, select the Control category from the top left of the screen, then drag the blocks “when ‘space’ key pressed” and “forever” into the shark’s script window, as shown here. We’ll use the spacebar as the start key for our game.
Now drag the “if” block from the Control category into the “forever” block, then go to the Sensing category and drag the “key ‘space’ pressed” block to the control point on the “if”. Use the dropdown menu to change “space” to “up arrow”.
That tells Scratch to look out for the Up key, but now we need to assign the response. Go to the Motion category and drag the “change y by 10” block into the “if” block. If the spacebar then Up arrow is pressed, our shark now moves. You can now repeat this for the Down arrow, replacing the “change y by” value to -10.
To make the left and right arrows work, repeat steps 4 and 5, but replace the “change y by” block with the “change x by” block and set the values -10 and 10 respectively. Finally, our star needs a start position. Grab the “go to x: 0 y: 100” block from Motion and drag it into the place shown. Change both values to 0.
Now click again to “Choose new sprite from file” and select a fish, before shrinking it as we did in step 2 and renaming it “Fish”. Ensure it’s selected, as shown, and drag “when ‘space’ key pressed” into the central scripts window. Go to Motion and drag the “go to x:0 y:0” block into place below.
Set “x” to 205. To stop the fish always appearing in the same place, go to Operators and drag the “pick random 1 to 10” block into the “y” value. Set values to -180 and 180. Next, go to Control and drag in “forever” to snap in below “go to”, then go to Motion and pull the “change x by” block inside it. Change x to -5.
We want our fish to reappear if it hits the side of the screen. Drag an “if” block from Control inside the “forever” block, then go to the Sensing category and drag the “touching” block onto the “if”. Select “Edge” from the “touching” dropdown. Drag in a “go to x & y” block from Motion and configure it as in step 8.
Click on Variables and then the “Make a Variable” button. Call it “Score”. The score will now appear in the top-left corner of the game screen. Add a new “when ‘space’ key pressed” block from Control, clip on a “forever if” block; now go to Sensing and drag in a “touching” block. Choose “shark” from the dropdown.
Fish meets shark
What happens when the fish meets the shark? Our piscine friend gets eaten and the score creeps up. Go to Variables and drag in the “change score by 1” block, then go to Looks and drag in the “change ‘color’ by 25” block. Change the “color” option to “pixelate”.
It’s a nice effect, but over far too soon. Drag in a “wait ‘1.00’ secs” block from Control and change the wait duration to 0.02. Then drag in another “change ‘color’” block and change the “color” to “pixelate”. Add the “go to x” block with a random “y” position (as in step 8), and a “clear graphic effects” block from Looks.
It's crab time!
It’s crab time! Add a new sprite – crab 1-a – and shrink him. We can make the crab move by duplicating the fish script. Click on the Fish sprite, then click the Duplicate icon on the top toolbar, click on the first script for this fish, and drag it over to the crab. Go to the crab’s script and amend “change x by” value so it reads -8.
The crab moves, but we want him to be deadly. Drag in a new “when ‘space’ key pressed” block, then add a “forever if” block. Go to Sensing and add a “touching” block; use the dropdown to select the Shark sprite. Go to Control and drag in a “broadcast” block. Select New from the dropdown and call it “Death”.
Death equals Game Over. Select the Shark sprite, then go to the Control category and add the “when I receive” block. Select “Death” from the dropdown. Now add a “repeat” block from Control, go to Looks and add the same “pixelate” block as in step 12, and then a “wait” block.
Let’s stretch the shark’s demise out a bit. Set the “wait” value to 0.1 seconds, and set the value in the “repeat” block to 6. Add a “stop all” from Control to the end of this script. That will end the game when the shark is hit.
We need the score to reset every time the game is started, so drag a “set score to 0” block from Variables and a “show” block from Looks to the first shark script, placing them just below the initial “when ‘space’ key pressed” block.
We have one killer crustacean, but what about a swarm? In Scratch you can easily duplicate crabs. Click the Duplicate tool, then the crab, and make another crab or two. When you’re done, click the button in the top right to enter the full-screen presentation mode, press the green flag, then space – and start playing.
Where do you go from here? Adding a background would be one easy step (here we’ve simply edited the default background and used the Paintbucket tool to fill it with blue). Another would be to add sound effects, or even simple animation; both the shark and the crab have alternative costumes you can use, and it’s simple to do using the “switch to costume” block in the Looks category. By altering values it’s also possible to speed up the crabs and fish, while you can duplicate both to make for a busier game. Why not try adding more hostile sea creatures with different movement patterns, or change the theme altogether? Or add titles and a proper Game Over screen. Scratch makes all this and more possible – the rest is up to you.
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|Chesapeake Bay Program Data Hub|
Chesapeake Bay Program's data network providing access to water quality, living resources, fisheries, point source, plankton, and monitoring databases. Site provides a wealth of data and graphs all concerning the health of Chesapeake Bay waters. Features an interactive "bay atlas" where you can access such information as public access sites, habitat restoration sites, water quality monitoring sites, and much more.
Intended for grade levels:
Type of resource:
No specific technical requirements, just a browser required
Cost / Copyright:
Copyright and other use information is unknown. Please consult the resource directly for the latest information.
DLESE Catalog ID: BRIDGE-513
Resource contact / Creator / Publisher: | <urn:uuid:097f8d43-e061-45fe-9648-a473ce40244f> | {
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Understanding the fate and influence of glacial meltwater in heavily ice-covered fjord systems has proven difficult because previous measurement platforms were constrained to deeper water to keep instrumentation safe from drifting icebergs. Now, using novel, satellite-tracked devices that can withstand multiple collisions with ice blocks (see Figure 1) without incurring much damage, scientists have obtained new and detailed data about the role of Greenland Ice Sheet meltwater and its trajectories through Godthåbsfjord in western Greenland.
The drifters showed that meltwater led to strong stratification in the fjord, with a fresh and cold surface layer dominating the first few upper meters before changing sharply to much saltier and slightly warmer waters over the next 7 to 15 meters. This strong stratification in the upper 7 to 15 meters of the water column may play a critical role in regulating the fjord circulation, which in turn affects heat, ice, and seawater exchange between the open ocean and the ocean-terminating glaciers.
Knowledge of the role fjords play in ocean-glacier interactions is important because ocean warming is a key driver of the observed acceleration and thinning of ocean-terminating glaciers [Motyka et al., 2011; Rignot et al., 2012; Straneo and Heimbach, 2013]. Thinning reduces the mass of the Greenland Ice Sheet [van den Broeke et al., 2009], thereby contributing to the global mean sea level rise [Moore et al., 2013] and potentially affecting the freshwater balance [Bamber et al., 2012] and circulation in the North Atlantic [Weijer et al., 2012].
Between 2011 and 2013, scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Greenland Climate Research Centre deployed 14 drifters from a helicopter and boat into small patches of open water very close to the toe of the ocean-terminating glacier Kangiata Nunaata Sermia (KNS), which is located at the head of Godthåbsfjord (Figure 2, top).
Each year, two of the drifters were equipped with three conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) sensors positioned at the surface, 7 meters, and 15 meters depth. Each drifter also held a drogue, positioned at 20 meters depth to minimize the influence of wind and wave action on its motion. The CTD sensors communicated with the floating surface of the drifter via an inductive cable. The drifters sent real-time GPS and CTD data via Iridium satellite every hour. A total of eight satellite-tracked surface drifters, consisting of a buoy with a thermistor recording sea surface temperature just below it and a drogue stemming from it to a 1-meter depth, were deployed in 2012 and 2013.
Together, the drifters recorded data for up to 4 months as they drifted along the roughly 190-kilometer-long fjord toward its mouth and sometimes into the Labrador Sea.
Circulation Features and Water Column Stability
Surprisingly, 4 of the 10 drifters that continued into the outer fjord system took a less direct path through an unstudied side fjord, Uummannap Sullua (US; also see animation of all drifter tracks in the supporting information found in the online version of this article). Prior to this study, US had not been viewed as an important exit pathway for glacially modified surface water into the open ocean within the Godthåbsfjord system. Two drifters were allowed to exit the fjord, one of which tracked the glacially modified surface water across the Labrador Sea, providing new insights into the long-term fate of meltwater from the Greenland Ice Sheet.
The drifter observations show a wide range of surface salinities, from as low as 4 in the inner fjord to 33 in the middle and outer fjord region (Figure 2, top; for comparison, average seawater in the region has a salinity of 33), meaning that the middle and outer fjord areas are roughly 8 times more saline than waters near the glacier. In the inner fjord system, the upper 7 meters were heavily stratified into layers of increasing density with depth (Figure 2, bottom). This density gradient was induced by large salinity differences between the melted lower-density icewater floating at the surface and the more saline higher-density water submerged below.
Strong winds, tidal forcing, or abrupt changes in bathymetry are required to mix these heavily stratified waters. Some drifters recorded such distinct mixing events as they passed through the middle fjord system. For example, two drifters located roughly 10 kilometers apart recorded a large simultaneous mixing event, where surface salinities increased from 5 to around 18 in concert with an increase in surface temperatures. Precise drivers of this particular mixing event are still being studied. As the drifters moved toward the open ocean, the upper 15 meters of the ocean changed to a well-mixed structure.
Expansion of Drifter Network
This study points to a very dynamic fjord system with large spatial and temporal gradients in upper ocean properties. To learn more, in February 2014 project scientists drilled a hole through sea ice near the glacier front and deployed one drifter to monitor the annual break-out of the ice melange—a mixture of glacial ice and sea ice—at the glacier’s terminus. Future plans involve expanding this high-resolution upper ocean data set with autonomous vehicles to survey the physical properties of the upper 200 meters of the fjord system and the entrance to the Labrador Sea.
Together, these data will provide a uniquely detailed view of the linkages between the glacier, fjord, and open ocean and may help researchers to better understand how climate change will affect each fjord component and the coupled fjord-ocean system as a whole. In time and through sustained data collection, scientists may be able to map in detail where glacial meltwater from Greenland travels and how the buildup of this freshwater in the North Atlantic may affect global ocean circulation patterns. | <urn:uuid:610ecc0e-3e84-4902-a325-e48fc9f8f4b5> | {
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From 4th century B.C to fourth century A.D a number early empires emerged in the Indian subcontinent. The earliest of these was the Mauryan Empire (c-324-187BC). Then there came satvahanas(c-324-250 A.D), kushanas (c.AD-50-320), and guptas (c.AD320-570) successively. Kushanas, originally a central Asian nomadic tribe, established a huge empire with Bactrian (Balk in north Afghanistan) as its main centre. Under kanishka 1 (c.AD100-123) this empire extended over a large area by encroaching extensive areas of north India up to Champa or Bhagalpur in the east, the lower Indus valley and Gujarat in the west, Chinese Turkistan and areas lying to the north of the river oxus. The successors of kanishka 1 had little control over the areas to the east of Matura.
The economy of Kushana Empire can be best known from literature, epigraphy and numismatics, various archaeological sites explored and excavated in the later period also acts as good source for the study of the economy of the Kushana Empire.
The kushana period was remarkable as kushana monarchs issued a large number of coins. Besides, there were numerous inscriptions, most of which are donatives in nature. Some of the Indian literatures like the Jatakas, the Angavijja, and the Lalitavistara highlights on the economy of the period.
Very little is known about the land system under the kushanas. During kushana reign agriculture was given due importance. No evidence can be put forward to prove this statement; in the north western part of the Kushana Empire a survey conducted by different scholars helped them to locate remains old canals, agricultural lands on the river courses and plain areas on the terraces of hills with means to canalized rain water from top to bottom.
It is evident from, archaeological evidences that agriculture was not the principal source of income in the kushana reign. Trade was given utmost importance both internally and externally huge amount of resources were mobilized through trade. Besides crafts production mining and different kinds of taxes were imposed on the subjects carved bone and ivory products, potteries excavated from different areas within the kushana realm shows influence of ancient Matura and Taxila art. Movements of ideas and people in the form of merchants’ artists inside the Kushana Empire resulted in exchange of ideas related to culture, art and literature.
Besides internal trade, external trade both over land and maritime played a great role in the kushana economy. Roman Empire had trade links with china. There was a great demand for Chinese silk in roman market. The famous Silk Road from loyang in china reached the two Mediterranean parts of Antioch and Alexandria by passing through central Asia, west Asia and Eurasia. Chinese silk had a great demand not only in the roman but also ion the European markets besides Indian wares, crafts, gems and spices were sold in the overseas markets. Better knowledge and utilization of the monsoon wind system through the Red sea cannels gave a fresh impetus to the flourishing trade during the kushana period. To maintain overseas trade with European countries two major parts of north India known as Barbaricum at the north of the river Indus and Barygara on the mouth of the river Narmada played a vital role and it was quite evident from perilous and Ptolemy’s geography. The city of Matura was a major political center. In case of trade with central and west Asia the cities of Taxila and pushkalavati acted as gateways.
Large scale commercial prosperity during the kushana period led to extensive monetization of the whole economy. kushana gold coins found in Ethiopia proves the value of kushana gold coins in international arena. These gold coins were mainly used in the overseas trade. The kushanas themselves struck silver coins only in the lower Indus area. Large number of copper coins were also struck and used copper coins and Bartend system which were very much in practice indicate that the impact of monetization ran parallel with system of exchange of goods on the basis of needs.
With the expansion of trade proliferation of crafts also took place. Crafts in practice during the kushana period were varied in nature and form. There were different occupations like constructions (navakarmikah), actors (sailakah), carpenters (vaddhaki), perfumers(gamdhika), goldsmith (suvarnakara), clothmakers9pravarika), ironsmith (lohakara), jewelers (manikara0 etc. the mining industry was directly under the state control. the of the state was augmented through mining and marketing of precious stones. Guilds mostly called srenis acted as an early form of bank in which money was deposited and only the interest could be utilized. Cities like Taxila, Matura, Bactra were well planned and blossomed further during the kushana period. | <urn:uuid:f0988e44-e9e4-496a-8e5d-1da7a3966d7d> | {
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Power shade system uses solar energy to produce electricity in austere conditions
August 17, 2011
CAMP LEMONNIER, Djibouti - More than a year ago, a team of Kansas National Guard Soldiers set up a solar shade system here that produces two kilowatts of power. With relatively no maintenance, the system continues to silently and steadily produce eco-friendly electricity from the sun.
Recently, Maj. Tim Franklin, the Uniformed Science Technology Advisor to U.S. Army Africa and Steve Tucker of the U.S. Army Natick Research, Development and Engineering Center traveled to Djibouti to assess the power shade system and train Soldiers on its use.
"The system performed well during the year-long, limited military user assessment. Despite the harsh winds, high temperatures and extremely dusty conditions, the system remains fully operational with only minor de-lamination on three of the 72 panels. It produces virtually maintenance-free power," Franklin said.
He said the silent, zero-emission and logistic-free power the system produces provides tangible savings.
"The solar shade system produces the same amount of power that would be produced by a gas driven generator using eight gallons of fuel a day, or approximately 2,900 gallons in a year. In remote sites, gas costs about $15 a gallon when you factor in transportation and handling. When properly used in the optimum environment, a system like this has the potential to save the Army as much as $40 thousand dollars a year," Franklin said.
He said there are many other second and third order positive effects, such as less maintenance to generators and refueling trucks, reduced manpower requirements for mechanics and drivers and decreased power requirements due to the thermal protection the solar shade provides.
"Most importantly, the reduction in fuel convoys equates to a reduction in associated casualties from IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and small-arms fire when used in a hostile environment. That's a metric that you cannot hang a dollar value on," Franklin said.
The system is simple and consists of 72 solar panels located on the top of the 40-by 60-foot surface of the shade. Power is stored in six Hawker HMMWV batteries encased in three metal boxes. It resembles a tent-like awning used at outdoor events and can allow smaller tents to be set-up underneath it.
Tucker, an electrical engineer uses the "bathtub" analogy to describe how the solar shade system works.
"Using the solar shade as an alternative energy source is all about understanding of the balance of power," Tucker said.
"Think of the solar shade as a bathtub filled with water. The water is the energy produced and stored by the shade. It's usable energy. The solar panels create energy that goes into the battery system, just as the faucet pours water into the bath tub," Tucker explained.
"This is where the balance of power comes in, where users must ensure the power used doesn't exceed the amount of power stored," Tucker said.
"It's a paradigm shift. It's a different mindset from having a generator, where you have energy only as long as you have fuel. The biggest challenge is managing the expectations of the user. The system has advantages far above and beyond fossil fuel fired generator systems. Again, there isn't a logistics tail. It doesn't require fuel, nor does it require weekly maintenance," Tucker said.
The power shade is particularly appropriate to power small electric devices such as fans, radios and computers.
"We'll continue to work with Army units and Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa to refine and validate requirements for remote, silent expeditionary power, especially where logistical resupply is a challenge," Franklin said.
"This is not a science project. The end-state is to see promising alternative energy technologies such as the solar shade advance to enduring solutions for the Army. That can only be accomplished with validated requirements and a coordinated effort between the warfighters, program managers, TRADOC combat developers, and the RDECOM science and technology office," Franklin said.
During the two-day training Franklin and Tucker engaged eight Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa personnel in the use and assembly of the solar shade. They took the shade down and reassembled it after a complete cleaning and maintenance of the system.
The solar shade has been added to the organization's property book and is ready for use in any of several CJTF - HOA operational area. | <urn:uuid:9463c3a5-e18f-457d-8456-7b05f049ec5d> | {
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The flowers we smell may be getting a whiff of us at the same time. No one knows if roses take time in life to stop and smell the humans, but some plants take action when they smell insect pests.
A study at Penn State found that when tall goldenrod plants sense the sex attractant released by male fruit flies, they produce their own chemical defenses. Those defenses make the plants less appealing to female fruit flies looking for a place to lay their eggs. Females puncture the plants and lay their eggs inside the stems. The attack isn't deadly, but plants serving as fruit fly nurseries tend to produce fewer and smaller seeds.
However, when goldenrod plants in the wild had been exposed to male fruit fly's amorous odor, the plants tended to harbor fewer egg-laying sites. What's more the plants also became more resistant to attacks by other insects.
The exact physiological means by which the plants smell the flies is still a mystery.
"Our understanding of plant olfaction in general remains quite limited," said Mark Mescher, an entomologist at Penn State, in a press release.
"It's become increasingly clear in recent years that plants are responsive to odors," said Mescher. "But previous examples of this are all plant-to-plant. For example, some plants have been shown to respond to the odor of insect-damaged neighbors by priming their own defenses. What's new about this is that it seems that plants may sometimes be able to smell the insects themselves."
The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. | <urn:uuid:4f9cf14f-04f3-4e92-9bb0-713c3bcf9e0c> | {
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Using an essay template is a way to make sure you don’t miss any important part of it. Many of them are available online, and you won’t have problems downloading one. However, there are always two sides of every story. While relying on essay templates might save you time, it can also have a bad impact on your grade. How so? Easy. Every educational establishment sets its own requirements to writing assignments. They might differ greatly, and neglecting to heed them will lead to failure. See where I am going? Using an essays template of another university is associated with the risk to violate requirements of your own establishment. Therefore, if your institution does not provide the necessary materials, it is better to rely on your own knowledge. To help you a little bit, I made a list of the key parts of every essay. From now on you won’t need any extra help.
Abstract. This is a summary of your paper, which is usually written in the end. An abstract should be a short version of your essay, where you state why you decided to write on this topic, what issue you researched, how you researched it, what results you obtained and what conclusions you made.
Introduction. This part should be devoted to background information about your subject and also contain the most important component of every paper – a thesis. The latter is a statement you struggle to prove in the course of writing. It is also important to use the introduction to hook your reader’s attention. Quotations, fun facts, and jokes might serve well for this purpose. Don’t forget to explain why the problem is of importance for you.
Main body. This is the part where you offer your arguments to readers. Place each of them in a separate paragraph and support with facts. Start every paragraph with a summarizing sentence. Essay writing rules for the most frequently assigned papers stipulate that there must be at least three paragraphs in the main body.
If what you are writing is not an essay, there might be other parts in its structure. For instance, in the Methodology chapter you are to explain how you researched the subject, how you collected data and analyzed them. Do not be afraid to use statistics. In Results, one should describe the findings obtained in the research process.
Conclusion. This part is designed to wrap up your work. However, it would be wrong simply to restate what has already been said. Instead, revise it in view of your findings. A conclusion can also offer directions for further research.
As you see, there is nothing THAT difficult in fulfilling a writing assignment. With some help and persistence, you won’t need any templates. However, if you are still having difficulties, our experts are ready to satisfy your Write my essay! plea. All you have to do to get help is ask for it. | <urn:uuid:3d2a5da9-2ee8-4e96-a63d-d3b69b67ea59> | {
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Science at your fingertips: see how the world works at museums of nature and technology
Those with a passion for nature and technology are spoilt for choice by Germany's fascinating museums. Best of all, many of the exhibitions allow you to learn by doing. So, if you've always wanted to ride on a steam engine, understand how solar technology works or hear whale song, these are the must-see museums for you.
It was around 150 years ago in Mettmann near Düsseldorf that Germany's most famous resident was discovered: Neanderthal man, now the star attraction at one of Europe's most popular and innovative museums.
Marveling at the fire tornado, setting a ball in motion through brainwaves or lying as a fakir on a bed of nails: Over 350 interactive stations stimulate visitors to discover the world of scientific phenomena. | <urn:uuid:209e793a-e6a9-4b3a-ae24-27e93ce4f738> | {
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9 Surprising Benefits of Tagetes Essential Oil
The health benefits of Tagetes Essential Oil can be attributed to its properties as an antibiotic, antimicrobial, anti-parasitic, antiseptic, anti-spasmodic, disinfectant, insecticide, and sedative substance.
Tagetes is also known by a few other names, including Khaki Bush and Mexican Marie Gold. This herb is believed to be native to Africa. From there, it spread to America, Europe, and Australia. Its scientific name is Tagetes Minuta and it is highly valued as an insect repellant, anti-parasitic, and antiseptic in the locations listed above.
The Essential Oil of Tagetes is extracted from its leaves, stem, stalk, and flowers by the process of steam distillation. The main components of this oil are limonene, ocimene, tagetone, and valeric acid.
Despite having a nice fragrance, it is neither popular in aromatherapy nor as a deodorant. However, that does not affect its reputation as an anti-parasitic and antiseptic. In addition to these properties, it has other medicinal properties, which are explained below.
Health Benefits of Tagetes Essential Oil
Antiparasitic: This oil can help you get rid of the most annoying and harmful parasites on the human body, such as mosquitoes, fleas, lice, bed bugs, and others. It keeps them away and neutralizes the effects of bites and stings.
Antimicrobial: As discussed above, the essential oil of Tagetes is useful in stopping the growth of microbes in the body and thereby protecting it from infections. In cases of infectious diseases caused by bacteria, fungi, or protozoa, such as food poisoning, athlete’s foot, cholera, septic, tetanus, typhus, malaria, skin diseases, and dermatitis. This oil can be employed in wiping out these infections and giving relief from the diseases listed above.
Antiseptic: Again, as most of you are aware by now, septic is another name for an infection caused by a bacteria called Staphylococcus Aureus. It is very dangerous and can even be fatal. It may start from a simple-looking wound and engulf the whole body within a few hours. It readily affects newborn babies. Its symptoms include convulsions, extreme spasms, and muscular contractions, swelling with redness, immobility of the limbs, and even insanity. This oil is lethal to these bacteria and helps to get rid of septic.
Antibiotic: Biotic means anything that concerns life. Biotic growth means the growth of living cells or higher forms of life. In the context of the human body and pathology, biotic growth means growth of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, or any other form of parasites in the human body. So, obviously, an antibiotic means an agent that counters or inhibits biotic growth in the body. Our Tagetes Essential Oil is such an antibiotic. It does not allow any biotic growth (growth of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, or other parasites, such as worms) in the body. It has been found to be very beneficial on open sores, ulcers, rotten wounds and even gangrene. In some places, it is used to clear wounds and eliminate the growth of maggots in them.
Antispasmodic: Being relaxant in nature, this oil relaxes any type of spasm in the body and gives relief from spasmodic coughs, diarrhea, cramps, and convulsions.
Disinfectant: The antimicrobial, anti-parasitic, and antibiotic properties of the essential oil of Tagetes prove very effective in disinfecting the body or an area. When ingested or applied externally, it cures infections in the body and when used in fumigants, vapourizers, and sprays, it disinfects the whole space within its reach. This also protects from airborne diseases like the common cold, mumps, measles, pox, and others.
Insecticide: The Tagetes essential oil is lethal to insects and kills them. Therefore, it keeps away parasitic insects such as mosquitoes, fleas, bed bugs, and lice. Common household insects such as cockroaches, ants, white ants, or termites are also kept away.
Sedative: The sedative property of this oil is well known and has been in use for a long time. It sedates inflammation and irritation in the digestive, nervous, excretory, and neurotic systems, as well as convulsions, afflictions, anxiety, stress, depression, anger, panic, and other emotional and psychological hyper reactions.
Other Benefits: Apart from the uses discussed above, it is further used to ease phlegm and catarrh deposition, as well as congestion and also to treat wounds, burns, Athlete’s foot, skin diseases, dermatitis, and colitis.
A Few Words of Caution: It may cause sensitization and irritation. Heavier doses or doses of higher concentration may be hard to withstand. It should therefore be avoided during pregnancy. | <urn:uuid:1579d1d5-f895-4d20-8065-c46bbd69b44f> | {
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hi, i was wondering does anyone know anything about egyptian uses of different herbs (perfuming,incense, medicinal etc.) im curious about herbs that were popularly used in ancient egypt, and what types of herbs they had connections to, either by native growth, or by trade with other countries.
Here are some remedies that the Ancient Eyptians used with herbs:
: Used as an incense to remove demonic possession. Used as an ointment to relieve headaches, or drunk to relieve stomach aches.
: Remedy for snake bites and fevers. Also used to heal broken bones and sores after being mixed with honey.
: Mostly used for stomach upsets.
: Uses included relieving toothache and headaches.
: Drunk to banish fevers. Also was used as an insect repellent.
: Mainly used for headaches.
Plants used in perfumary:
There is apparently
a perfume called Kyphi engraved on the temple walls of Edfu and Philae.
Cinnamon, Juniper Berries, Cyperus, Cardamom, Marjoram and Lotus, were among the many ingredients in perfume making. Along with animal fat, oil and sweet wine.
I believe that many of the Ancient Egyptians herbs and spices were imported from the Mediterranean, although in the later years the Egyptians attempted to grow many foreign plants in their land.
Frankincense and Myrrh were used as incense as offerngs in rituals to the gods. These resins were imported from Central Africa via Nubia. | <urn:uuid:6e662b5b-5b62-47b2-8c8c-ee727f55d04f> | {
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Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Sometimes body language can speak volumes—especially during a stroke.
The American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association, is launching a new public awareness campaign, Together To End Stroke. The Association advocates awareness, education and action against stroke.
Stroke is the No. 4 leading cause of death of Americans—claiming a life about every four minutes. Also the leading cause of long-term disability, Americans paid about $73.7 billion in 2010 for stroke-related medical costs and disability.
But there is good news— a stroke is preventable, treatable and beatable.
The American Heart Association urges Americans to control risk factors including high blood pressure, obesity, smoking and high cholesterol in order to reduce their risk for developing this devastating disease. Studies have shown that nearly 80 percent of cardiovascular events may be prevented if risk factors are controlled and that lowering your blood pressure may reduce your risk of stroke by up to 50 percent.
It is also vital to be aware of the warning signs of stroke—because if caught early enough from the onset of symptoms, the most common type of stroke can be treated and lasting side effects reversed with proper medical treatment.
The Association is urging everyone to be aware of body language, including face drooping, arm weakness and speech difficulty.
For more information about the American Stroke Association, visit www.strokeassociation.org.
Berkeley Independent is pleased to offer readers the enhanced ability to comment on stories. We expect our readers to engage in lively, yet civil discourse. We do not edit user submitted statements and we cannot promise that readers will not occasionally find offensive or inaccurate comments posted in the comments area. Responsibility for the statements posted lies with the person submitting the comment, not Berkeley Independent. | <urn:uuid:e7df9ea1-00fc-4b8e-8e96-ffd42755a1fa> | {
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Rembrandt van Rijn, whose name has remained famous for centuries, was born in 1606 and lived to become a celebrated painter and champion of realism. He is most known for his Baroque paintings and, to a lesser extent, for his etchings, which display similar matters fashioned in different ways. Students, faculty and Holland residents now have the opportunity to view several prints of these unique etchings, which are on display at the Kruizenga Art Museum in the exhibit “Rembrandt Etchings,” which opened April 9. Even among other etchers, Rembrandt’s work stands out. The art form itself is unusual; it consists of scratching the desired lines into a metal plate covered in acid-resistant substances, usually beeswax or resin. The plate is then dipped in acid, where the unexposed regions are eaten away until recessed lines are revealed. Ink is then applied and the print is formed. A plate will not last forever and must be re-scratched; this means very few prints are exactly the same.
Rembrandt had taught himself the form, and while other artists have had a similar uniform scratch style, Rembrandt’s was more uncontrolled and erratic–more like styles seen in painting or sketching. Rembrandt went through various phases in his artistic process; look for these different styles in the 13 on display, which were completed between 1632 and 1655. Rembrandt van Rijn’s paintings and etchings were commonly centered around biblical, historical and mythological themes. The 13 etchings currently on display at the Kruizenga all were inspired by Rembrandt’s Christian interests and feature scenes taken directly from the Bible as well as scenes imagined by Rembrandt, such as the death of the Virgin Mary. What is unique about the works on display is that they weave together both European and Middle-Eastern aesthetics, each one contrasting the other but still resulting in an intact print. He also brings a dramatic flair to his artwork through his experimentations with light and dark. Lanterns really seem to shine, and the wonder emanating from the scene as Lazarus rises from the grave is shocking. Especially considering his chosen medium of art, the realism Rembrandt was able to convey with simple scratches on a metal plate is remarkable.
Rembrandt’s natural curiosity bleeds out through in his art, as each piece itself is a study of space, shadow, exaggeration and raw human emotion. 2019 marks the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt’s death in 1669. To this day it is unsure what exactly his status was in the years surrounding his death. The “Rembrandt myth” states that as Classicism from France overtook the Netherlands, Rembrandt’s realism lost its luster, and the painter died in poverty and shame. Other sources say that his fame continued throughout his living years and well past his death over 300 years ago. Nevertheless, Rembrandt van Rijn remains one of the greatest storytellers in the history of art and a master of bringing his subjects alive with emotion. The pieces on display have been donated to the permanent collection at the Kruizenga Art Museum and all are encouraged to stop by and view these unique, complex etchings. | <urn:uuid:30bfb9e4-ea4f-4232-b529-b1ee129fc04f> | {
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Egyptian religion was polytheistic, containing many gods and goddesses including Isis, Osiris, Ra, Bastet and Seth. Other Egyptian gods included Horus, Thoth and Anubis. In Egyptian art, gods and goddesses are portrayed as having hybrid forms, with human bodies and heads representing either animals or natural phenomena.Continue Reading
The Egyptian pantheon had hundreds of different gods, some associated with specific functions and some with specific regions. For example, Sobek, the crocodile god, was worshipped at Tebtunis, where archaeologists have excavated hundreds of crocodile mummies. Hathor, a cow-headed goddess, was associated with fertility and childbirth. Although people believed in the existence of any number of gods, they devoted their worship to the ones most relevant to their own regions, vocations and personal needs, often shifting the focus of their worship as their personal circumstances changed.
Osiris is the god and judge of the dead, ruling over the underworld. He is portrayed as a mummy with a human head, surmounted by a crown of ostrich feathers. He holds a crook and flail. Anubis is the god who oversees mummification and embalming, and guides the dead to Osiris in the underworld for judgment. He has the head of a jackal, a beast that eats carrion. Bast or Bastet, the daughter of Ra, the sun god, was a cat goddess, greatly beloved as both a fierce protector of the home and a gentle and loving companion. She was portrayed with the head of a cat.Learn more about Ancient Egypt | <urn:uuid:33c4d7bd-fa4f-47c6-b814-9ce50e1702cd> | {
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Of the many reasons why Asia (outside of Japan) weathered the Great Recession more ably than other parts of the world, one of the most important was the fact that the region never experienced a financial crisis. The banks of Asia generally avoided indulging in the toxic subprime securities that tanked some of Wall Street’s most famous institutions. Part of the reason was they could earn real returns in their core business — lending to expanding companies in their high-growth home economies. The banks had also learned a lesson — a painful lesson — from the 1997 Asian financial crisis about the dangers of risky lending and unsustainable debt, and had become more conservative than they had been in the past. Government officials in Asia, as well, tend to take an old-fashioned attitude on budget spending and borrowing (again, outside of Japan), and they, unlike their counterparts in Europe, were able to stimulate their economies without undercutting their solvency.
Now, however, analysts in Asia are ringing alarm bells that debt in the region is rising at a worrying pace. A recent study from megabank HSBC noted that, based on the ratios of bank credit to GDP for the region, “leverage is now higher than at the peak before the Asian crisis in 1997.” Adding in record bond issuance in recent years, a financing option not common in 1990s, “overall leverage is even higher today than implied by traditional measures of bank lending,” the report explained. In some countries, debt is rising at a disturbing rate. According to data from Standard & Poor’s, lending from financial institutions to the corporate and household sector as a percentage of GDP in Hong Kong jumped from 143% in 2005 to an estimated 202% in 2012. In South Korea, the same ratio surged from 132% to 166% over that same time period; in Singapore, 91% to 117%; and in China from 112% to 130%. Vietnam’s ratio nearly doubled from 66% to 113%. The culprits differ from economy to economy. In Vietnam, state-owned enterprises are to blame. In South Korea, it’s households.
The debt has been rising in some respects for perfectly rational reasons. Lending and borrowing have been encouraged by superlow interest rates just about everywhere. And rising debt levels are a natural outgrowth of rising wealth. As economies advance, financial sectors become more advanced and debt tends to increase.
Nevertheless, there are reasons to be concerned about what’s going on in Asia. HSBC noted that Asian economies are requiring more debt to keep going, a sign that Asia is not as economically healthy as its GDP growth rates suggest. “With economic growth still highly credit-dependent, more and more debt is needed to generate one percentage point of GDP growth,” the HSBC report said. “Fundamentally, this is a worrying trend.” Furthermore, analysts worry that debt in Asia is set to keep rising because of the incredibly easy money conditions in the entire global economy. “Debt has the possibility to rise even further,” S&P senior director Tan Kim Eng in Singapore told me. “Financial institutions are under pressure to lend money. At a macro level you have to worry about the leverage building up.”
How nervous should we be? For now, Asian debt doesn’t seem particularly dangerous. Debt levels in Asia are still generally lower than in Europe. But rapidly escalating debt does leave economies more vulnerable to shocks and sudden shifts. If growth were to slow down in the region for a period of time, or if the permissive monetary conditions tighten meaningfully, the rising debt in Asia could become a serious problem. “I’m not yet worried, but wary,” says Tan. “In some countries the debt level has gone up quickly in a short period of time.” Here’s how Tan explained the situation in a recent report:
“Debt levels in key economies are much higher today than they were just six to seven years ago. Betting that they can avoid the law of gravity to stay safely at these elevated levels indefinitely doesn’t seem wise … The unusually easy global monetary conditions today may be magnifying financial and economic risks. And the conditions that supported robust economic growth in the region could turn less supportive in the future. In the current circumstances, a lack of regulatory vigilance could create possible financial instability.”
As any Kansas housewife or Greek civil servant can tell you these days, taking on too much debt in too short a period of time can be lethal to your future economic prospects. Asia has suffered from poor lending practices and unsustainable debt levels in the past. For the good of the global economy, let’s hope the bankers, consumers and corporate executives of the region haven’t forgotten that fact. | <urn:uuid:fe27e64d-8b32-49d1-bb0f-9d131b575bdd> | {
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Asynchronous Servlets: Suspendable Requests.
Most non trivial web applications need to wait at some stage during the processing of a HTTP request, examples of waiting request handling include:
- waiting for a resource (eg. thread, JDBC Connection) to be available before processing the request.
- waiting for an application event in an Ajax Comet application (eg Chat message, price change, etc.)
- waiting for a response from a remote service (eg RESTful or SOAP call to a web service).
The current servlet API (<=2.5) supports only a synchronous call style, so that any waiting that a servlet needs to do must be with blocking. Unfortunately this means that the thread allocated to the request must be held during that wait with all its resources including kernal thread, stack memory and often pooled buffers, character converters, EE authentication context, etc. It is wasteful of system resources to be held while waiting.
blocking servlet example
Consider a modest web application with requests taking 10ms of CPU to handle and generate the response.If run a 2 CPU machine, then you could expect close to 2*1000/10 = 200 requests per second to be handled with only 2 threads.
However, if the handling of the request needs to wait for resources, more threads will be required. If for example, the average handling spent 5ms waiting for synchronized locks and 15ms waiting for IO to flush write the response, then total time per request will be 35ms and the thread pool will need to contain 200*30/1000 = 6 threads.
Now typically a web application will interact with a database of some kind, often on a remote machine, so database operations can often take 50ms or more, during which time the servlet has to wait for the response. Thus total request time is increased to 80ms and 200*(30+50)/1000 = 16 threads are needed.
If that web application is modified so that it requires a remote web service (eg a SOAP or RESTful call), then it is not unusual for a web service to take many hundred milliseconds to produce a response. Assuming only 100ms for a web service request, the total request time is increased to 180ms and now 200*(30+50+100)= 36 threads are needed.
If the database is needed both before an after the web service request, that means that the JDBC connection will be held by the application for 50+100 ms,
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Like critic Meyer Schapiro, many 20th-century artists also saw Paul Cézanne as a sort of spiritual forbearer. Pablo Picasso called him a "mother hovering over"; Henri Matisse said he was a "father to us all." As much as it is a portrait of a wistful young man, this painting is equally, and perhaps as essentially, an arrangement of colors and shapes. We can see it as a kind of stepping-off point for modern art, one with direct links to those younger artists’ work. The greens and mauves Cézanne used in the boy’s face and hands, for example, are like the “wild” colors that won Matisse and his colleagues the title “fauve” (wild beast), arbitrary touches with little connection to human flesh. The background—it is hard even to “read” it as floral-patterned drapery—is fractured and flattened into a kaleidoscope of angles and arcs in a way that looks forward to the reconstructed spaces of the first cubist experiments by Georges Braque and Picasso.
Yet it would be a mistake to view this painting only in terms of what comes next. Boy in a Red Waistcoat also reflects Cézanne's admiration for and connection to the past. He said himself that he "wanted to make of impressionism something solid and durable, like the art of the museums." He spent many hours teaching himself to be a painter by studying old masters in the Louvre. This boy’s pose, with hand resting on cocked hip, and the air of languid elegance that envelops his slender form are reminiscent of 16th-century portraits by mannerist artists. | <urn:uuid:d6fe7dbe-4196-406b-bc99-11771e15f615> | {
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(page 3 of 5)
As is common with many historic events, the story of the Danish rescue has been revised over the decades.
Historians have drawn attention to Denmark’s harsh immigration policy during the 1930s which, like those of most other European nations, prevented Jewish refugees from escaping the Nazis. They have also highlighted Denmark’s expulsion of almost two dozen Jewish refugees between 1940 and 1943 back to almost certain death in Nazi Germany. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen apologized for the expulsion in 2005.
Historians have also argued over Denmark’s weak resistance to the Nazis before, during and after the Nazi invasion. And they have highlighted the exorbitant prices a small but significant number of Danish fishermen charged for passage to Sweden.
A skilled Danish worker in 1943 earned a little over 400 kroner per month. The average price of a crossing was 1,000 Danish krone per person, according to Bak, who says that some fisherman charged up to 50,000 krone.
Bak’s research revealed many tales that had never previously been discussed. “Every one of the hidden children thought that they were the only child that was left behind,” Bak said. “They never told their stories and nobody asked.”
Many parents did not talk about leaving their children behind because of the guilt and distress they still suffered. Similarly, many Danish Jews who escaped to Sweden felt unable to talk about the hardships they faced when they returned to Denmark after the war.
Denmark tried its best to support its Jewish citizens when they returned from exile. Danish refugees qualified for state assistance and, in some cases, friends, neighbors and even Copenhagen authorities safeguarded possessions while their owners were gone. But there were instances too of unscrupulous Danes raiding the apartments of Danish Jews while they were gone.
Bak believes that many of the more nuanced stories — about Danish Jews returning to find their apartments occupied or their possessions missing — have only come out recently because aging survivors realized that if they didn’t tell their stories now, they would be lost forever. She said that the interviews she collected of “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, emotional loss, anti-Semitism, hidden children, destroyed and robbed homes and property are genuinely new.”
Bak’s book about the Danish rescue “Ikke noget at tale om,” which was published in Danish and in English, has been translated as “Nothing to Speak Of” but it might be better translated as “It’s not worth mentioning.” It is a phrase that Bak heard often from Danish survivors. And it neatly encapsulates how the Danes who returned from Sweden and from Theresienstadt with physical and psychological scars chose not to talk of their experiences.
Danish Jews wanted to rebuild their lives, raise their children and move on. They were acutely aware that, compared to other European Jews, they were fortunate. “They had to be grateful,” said Kirsten Nilsson, a reporter for the Danish newspaper, Politiken, who has interviewed many survivors. “Six million Jews were killed and they were survivors.” | <urn:uuid:2292ee92-6680-4f8c-9ed6-b0a57db07fde> | {
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history of CzechoslovakiaAlthough the political parties formed a coalition called the National Front, collaboration between the communists and noncommunists was difficult from the beginning. While all parties agreed that economic recovery should remain the priority, and while a two-year plan was launched to carry it out, they began to differ as to the means to be employed. The noncommunists wanted no further...
Political party, Czechoslovakia
Simply begin typing or use the editing tools above to add to this article.
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Jalam b. Shayban
Exact dates are not known for him
Texts for Jalam b. Shayban
About the end of the 3rd/9th century, even before the Fatimid Caliphate was established on the North African soil, the Fatimid mission was at work in many countries including India. On this point we have the evidence of the learned Qadi an-Nu'man (d. 363/ .974)., Chief Qadi of the Fatimid Caliph ai-Mu'izz (d. 365/976), who states that in 270/883 the Yamani Da'i Abu I-Qasim b. Hawshab Mansur al-Yaman sent his nephew al-Haytham as da'i (missionary) to Sind and the Da'wa (mission) spread to Hind'. | <urn:uuid:c579d55d-d988-42c4-a2ad-3e028159b96b> | {
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Evolution is still touted as the Devil's tool, debated and refused as required curriculum in science classrooms by religious fundamentalists who refute scientific findings.
Bacterial strains, now able to resist antibiotics, only fifty years in use, and malaria's total resistance to any of the last fifteen years' known cures, surely both illustrate and represent evolution, in its clearest sense.
Such minds assert and retort that the Devil plants dinosaur bones to confound us and that our Earth, as the Bible states, is merely 6,000 years old- Carbon 14 dating be damned- that man coexisted, lived with dinosaurs.
What can science do to deter such minds who deny the fossil record and who see, "The Flintstones", as a documentary?
Family Of Man: Evolution and The Human Genome Project
Surprisingly, they may find it hard to deny DNA research findings.
Because even if they will not admit science into their classrooms or churches, they will admit it into their living rooms!
Through television crime stories, they're well acquainted with how DNA mirrors an individual’s unique identity and now from genome research we also know it reflects how closely related we all really are to one another and to all Earth life.
The Human Genome Experiment Research Project has determined some additional scientific findings that may further illuminate these unknowingly -television-educated Bible Thumpers.
Research has determined that the DNA relationships among ALL of Earth's organisms, are almost as alike as we are to all other humans.
DNA, Deoxyribonucleic acid, the building tool of living tissues and all of their functions, has molecular codes that regulate the output of genes, the timing and extent of protein-making, and these are remarkably identical and alike in almost all aspects from the oak tree to a human being, from a whale to a worm, with negligible differences.
Don't be fooled; despite the fact that we LOOK different, from each other, all over the world, or seem different from a tree or a whale, we, all of life, are a family and are all almost exactly identical in our DNA!
The genetic difference between individual humans today is minuscule – about 0.1%, on average.
What about being a "monkey's uncle"?
Was Darwin onto something?
Surprisingly, the species of African great apes, including humans, has a closer kinship bond with one another than the African apes have with orangutans or other primates.
DNA research p;cemented that fact.
The scientific surmise and prediction that was made in 1871 – that human evolution began in Africa, has been upheld by DNA research, as well.
Because of many billions of years of constant evolution, humans share genes with each other and all living Earth organisms.
The raw percentage of genes or DNA that organisms share, records their similarities.
Of course, we share more genes with organisms that are more closely related to us, but only a smidgen more.
Today's humans belong to the unique biological group known as Primates, and are classified with the great apes, one of the larger groups of the primate evolutionary tree.
Besides our distinct similarities in anatomy and behavior, our close biological brotherhood with other primate species is clearly indicated by DNA research evidence.
It clearly confirms that our closest living biological relatives are indeed chimpanzees with whom we share many common traits.
However,we did not evolve directly from any of the primates living today.
Preachers, at revival meetings get, "AMENS!" when they hollar from the pulpit, "Iff'en evolution is a happen'en, why don'cha see monkeys STILL a changin' to people, these a days!?"
Scientific research hollars back and tells them to seek more 'light' and less 'heat', in their search, for understanding.
DNA evidence from research clearly shows that our species and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor species that lived between 8 and 6 million years ago.
Also, the terminal, last common ancestor of monkeys and apes lived about 25 million years ago.
Our species’ almost negligible genetic DNA variation reveals a common African root for all people living today.
The movement of humans, the permanent migration dispersal to other continents, from Africa, began only a mere 60,000 years ago.
Human beings differ widely in skin color and other facile, superficial features, but these characteristics occur as gradients, not as separate geographic clusters; the pigmy and tall Nordic basketball player are closest DNA brothers.
Research into ancient DNA reveals amazing insights about ancient forms of mankind before Homo Sapien.
Ancient DNA has been found, recovered and analyzed in Neanderthal fossil remains.
These ancient preserved DNA molecules disclose the status of Neanderthals as a separate species, some characteristics of Neanderthal physical appearance, their likely speech capabilities, and population structure.
One species of humankind, living worldwide, is my family of mankind,
an amazingly adaptable creature, Homo sapiens; written into our genes, and into the fossil and behavioral evidence, is our Family Story.
Evolution's rudiments, can be proved and explained remarkably easily, to any open mind: Ontology recapitulates Phylology. It's that simple.
That is, the stages of development of an embryo, from a unicellular entity, to a fishlike entity with gills, to an amphibean-like entity, to a primate with a tail, within utero, mirror and reflect all the stages of evolution from our beginnings in the oceans, to our upright status now, as developing, evolving creatures.
I just heard you say,"Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle!"
All forms of life farmed throughout the Universe may well be seen as an enormous molecular nanotech creation by a intelligent Creator using amino- acid -thoughts, expressed mathematically.
Crick, DNA's discoverer, perhaps, said it best:
"Life did not evolve first on Earth, a highly advanced civilization became threatened so they devised a way to pass on their existence.
They genetically-modified their DNA and sent it out from their planet on bacteria or meteorites with the hope that it would collide with another planet.
It did, and that's why we're here.
The DNA molecule is the most efficient information storage system in the entire universe.
The immensity of complex, coded and precisely sequenced information is absolutely staggering. The DNA evidence speaks of intelligent, information-bearing design.
Complex DNA coding would have been necessary for even the hypothetical first ‘so-called' simple cell(s).
Our DNA was encoded with messages from that other civilization.
They programmed the molecules so that when we reached a certain level of intelligence, we would be able to access their information, and they could therefore "teach" us about ourselves, and how to progress.
For life to form by chance is mathematically virtually impossible."
"The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop."
"Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous."
"Darwinian man, though well-behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved."
Gilbert, W. S.
"The pre-human creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious viciousness toward its own kind. Humanization was not a leap forward but a groping toward survival."
"I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey."
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One study demonstrated that the rate of cognitive decline in social seniors was 70% slower than that of their non-social peers.
Now, researchers from Japan are finding that diabetes also negatively impacts the brain, causing cognitive decline and dementia.
Regular exercise could be a natural and effective way to help treat diabetes. A study conducted with diabetic Hispanic men and women undergoing a strength training routine found that within 16 weeks there was dramatic improvement with their sugar control.
We know walking is good for our health – duh! The benefits of walking are numerous, with the activity helping to extend life, reduce stroke, prevent heart attacks, and improve overall wellness. In addition, a joint study conducted by the University of California at San Francisco and the Harvard School of Public Health reports a connection between brisk walking and a lowered risk of prostate cancer advancement.
Early bonding is natural and important for healthy childhood development. But what creates the mother-baby bond? As many mothers might already believe, moms who breast feed are actually more apt to bond with their babies than those that formula feed. Research shows that breast-feeding mothers show stronger brain response when their baby cries as compared to mothers who do not breast feed.
Capsaicin, a compound responsible for the hotness of many peppers, is thought to increase the rate at which the body burns fat, ease pain, lower cholesterol and support healthy heart function. The compound is especially studied for its ability to aid in weight loss, where researchers from Purdue University in Indiana found that capsaicin reduces hunger and increases energy expenditure.
Research has indicated that omega-3 fatty acids may even help slow down the “fattening” of America. Omega 3’s keep metabolic function in check which helps keep the weight down. In addition, these essential fatty acids also keep the liver and white adipose tissue, which are vital for for fat metabolism, healthy. Omega 3’s also quarterback signals from genes to keep the body from storing calories as fat.
According to a study conducted at the University of Granada, melatonin can be quite helpful in controlling weight and increasing “good” cholesterol while decreasing “bad” cholesterol. After analyzing the effects melatonin had on obese, diabetic rats, the researchers found that melatonin was able to help prevent “heart diseases associated to obesity and dyslipidemia”.
Depressed women may have a higher risk of stroke, according to new research published online Aug. 11 in the journal Stroke. “We know that stroke can increase risk of depression, but depression itself may increase risk of future stroke,” said study author An Pan, a research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
Omega-3 fatty acids have received a great deal of attention due to their outstanding health benefits. Research has revealed just how spectacular omega 3’s are at reducing inflammation throughout the body. Already thought to help with such things as depression and rheumatoid arthritis; omega-3s may also be able to reduce the risk of developing diabetes, according to two studies.
According to a study conducted with elderly adults from Swedish, pesticides and other pollutants found in the blood may actually cause bodily changes that lead to diabetes. Researchers are careful, however, to note that this is not necessarily a causal relationship.
Obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and smoking have been linked to yet another frightening health condition — brain shrinkage. It may sound outlandish, but the famous Framingham Heart Study has published the findings as a part of a study that has been ongoing in a Massachusetts town since 1948.
In our inactive society, most people simply aren’t exercising enough to support their own health. However, contrary to what some people may think, findings show that just 15 minutes of daily exercise can increase life expectancy by 3 years while cutting your risk of “all-cause” death rates by 14%. This is good news for many who claim not to have enough time to exercise.
According to a new study published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association, optimism may be the key to stroke prevention in addition to improving overall health. Researchers pulled 6044 adults over 50 and asked them to rate their level of optimism based on a 16 point scale. When adjusted for age, each addition point on the optimism scale accounted for a 9 percent decrease in acute stroke risk.
Sleep is a precious biological resource affecting everything from mental clarity to fat loss, and new research has found that it may even be associated with your blood pressure. Researchers found that those who slept poorly were a shocking 80% more likely to develop high blood pressure as a result.
It is a known fact that what we eat affects how we feel, and how we think affects what we eat. Is your “stinkin thinkin” keeping you from being as healthy as you could be? Indeed, it is possible that healthy thoughts help people make better food choices.
An African study demonstrated that women who take birth control have a doubled risk of contracting HIV than women not taking the pill. In addition, an HIV positive woman who takes birth control pills is twice as likely to pass the virus to her uninfected partner compared to an infected woman not taking the pill. | <urn:uuid:f3fe9740-a1d7-425d-8247-02de8c111c0b> | {
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Network Load Balancing (NLB) in Windows Server 2008
Publish Date: 2/14/2008
We throw ‘clustering’ around a lot at Microsoft. There are a few different technologies that we refer to as clustering, but they all serve very different roles:
- HPC/Compute Cluster Server
- Failover Clustering
- Network Load Balancing
We’ve provided a fair amount of info about the first one, we’ve touched on (and will cover more about) the second one, but we’ve never really talked about NLB here on Edge. I thought I’d change that this week.
Wait, is this new? Not really. It’s been around in Windows Server for a long time. There are a couple features that are new for Server 2008 though:
Support for IPv6
- A new NLB cluster creation Wizard instead of a control panel app
- Better security
What does it do? Network Load Balancing is a way to configure a pool of machines so they take turns responding to requests. It’s most commonly seen implemented in server farms: identically configured machines that spread out the load for a web site, or maybe a Terminal Server farm. You could also use it for a firewall(ISA) farm, vpn access points, really, any time you have TCP/IP traffic that has become too much load for a single machine, but you still want it to appear as a single machine for access purposes.
How does it work? It’s pretty straightforward. After you install NLB on a server, you add two or more machines to a NLB Cluster. The machines are configured with 2 IP addresses: their own private unique one, and a second one that is shared by all the machines in the cluster. The machines all run an algorithm that determines whose turn is next at responding to requests. They also exchange heartbeats with one another, so they all know if one server goes down and won’t allocate any more requests to him. You can have up to 32 machines in a cluster.
You can do some smart stuff with regards to how requests are allocated too. You can set up affinity so that requests from one subnet will be responded to from Server A whenever possible, and that other subnets prefer Server B. Maybe you want 80% of all incoming requests to be handled by Server A, with the rest going to server B. You can do that too.
There are a few other things you can do with affinity:
- Single affinity: connections initiated by a given ip address are handled by the same server in the cluster until cluster membership changes. This is useful for those applications that maintain sessions across multiple connections (e.g. E-commerce applications). Note that SSL connections will need single affinity to avoid re-negotiation at every attempt.
- No affinity: connections are load-balanced based on originating address and port. This is more efficient, as connections from the same client can be routed to several hosts.
- VPN and IPSec affinity: vpn and ipsec sessions will be preserved even if cluster membership changes.
- Class C affinity: useful when internet clients access the cluster through proxies that expose the same class-C addresses. Load balancing is based on the class-C subnet portion of the incoming address.
How do I install it? I’ll give you three ways:
- From Server Manager, just click Add Feature and then select Network Load Balancing
- From a command line, type “ocsetup NetworkLoadBalancingFullServer”
- Use ServerManagerCmd! From a command line, type “servermanagercmd –install nlb”
Is there somewhere I can get more information?Of course:
NLB on TechNet
The Clustering/NLB Team Blog
Hiroshi for their contributions to this post.) | <urn:uuid:84d8e0e6-e582-452d-b222-3153f0ced442> | {
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By far the most critical safety problem being faced by the consumers in many advanced countries is food poisoning caused by pathogenic bacteria like virulent E,coli species, Salmonella and listeria. The products getting contaminated include meat, vegetables, dry fruits, nuts, poultry products etc and fatalities vary in different episodes. In Europe the fenugreek sprout contamination with Listeria claimed several lives before even it is identified and source of supply traced. It is ironical that these deadly infections are more or less confined to rich countries where the safety standards are very stringent and the vigilance infrastructure is most modern. One interesting fact that emerges from a close scrutiny of food safety episodes is that almost all of them involved cold foods which cannot be heat treated because of their vulnerability to significant quality changes not accepted easily by the consumers. Paradoxically one of the most effective technological tools available to "cold sterilize" such foods, gamma radiation is not availed off by the industry due to nonsensical labeling rigidity on the part of the safety authorities. Another alternate option that may soon be available to the processors is the cold plasma technology which is undergoing tests to establish its technical feasibility vis-a-vis food sanitization. The claims being made by the scientific group that is pioneering the development are contained in the report below.
"May was a rough month for fresh produce. Alfalfa sprouts, bagged salads, and diced onions were recalled because of possible listeria contamination, while baby spinach and papayas were recalled because of possible salmonella contamination. It's enough to make one scout for something new in food safety systems. And Brendan Niemira is working on something. Niemira, lead scientist at the USDA's Food Safety and Intervention Technologies Eastern Regional Research Center in Wyndmoor, Pa., has been studying cold plasma for nearly a decade. The process uses electricity and a gas — such as oxygen — to deactivate contaminating microbes on meats, poultry, fruits, and vegetables. Niemira and his colleague Joe Sites have treated a variety of foods — including almonds, apples, cantaloupe, lettuce and tomatoes — with cold plasma and produced multi-log reductions of E. coli O157:H7, salmonella and listeria. While cold plasma already is used to clean electronics, bond plastics in manufacturing and bind dye to fibers in textile production, its potential remains untapped in the food industry. "Anytime a technology is being developed, it's only going to be used in the industry if it shows some significant advantages," Niemira said. "Cold plasma is a waterless sanitizing process with no chemical inputs, so it's got some attractive points. The big key right now is to develop the technology so that it gives a solid level of sanitizing antimicrobial effects without unwanted side effects. That's the kind of thing that might lead an interested party to petition the FDA." Niemira said that in cold plasma trials with apples and almonds there were no changes in the product's appearance. Another advantage, he said, is the level of efficacy. While most chlorine rinses will give one or two logs of surface sanitization, Niemira said cold plasma systems have been shown to give three or four logs in trials".
As the development has yet to come out of the laboratory of the scientists concerned, it may be quite some time before technological facilities are designed and conditions standardized on a commercial scale. The fact that cold plasma sterilization has already become an industry standard for sanitizing electronic goods and bond plastics and may get accepted, to start with, for sterilization of food machinery surface, conveyor belts etc in the food industry. As multi log reduction in pathogens has been demonstrated using cold plasma, its efficacy or reliability may not be questioned. The present sanitization procedures use high volumes of water, besides chemicals like chlorine even to get a 2 log reduction of pathogens and there fore food industry is likely to accept the new technology as and when it is ready for commercial level operation. Of course investment cost and the recurring expense in using the technology may eventually determine its fate. | <urn:uuid:6a77bd1b-caac-4327-b291-678791d2fbce> | {
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Take This Course for 95% Off Now!
Update: The instructor updated the course ‘Learn 3D Modelling – The Complete Blender Creator Course’ to the new name of ‘Complete Blender Creator: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners.’
One great course that you can go for is the Complete Blender Creator: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners which is a complete blender creator course and is ideal for students who are interested in creating 3D models for 3D printing, video games, house design, etc. For your convenience, all the vital details of the course have been outlined below.
The first thing that you need to know about this Complete Blender Creator: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners is that it is ideal for students who want to take up 3D modeling as their career. The course is designed in such a way that it covers all the important fundamentals of modeling.
Even a beginner who has no knowledge of modeling can take up this Complete Blender Creator: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners course and learn about modeling brick by brick. It is guaranteed that upon the completion of the course, you will be able to create your own 3D models and bring your creative ideas to life.
The course includes the study of Blender which is a great platform to create AAA quality models that can be exported to any 3D printer, game engine or any other software. The main advantage of learning Blender is that it’s free to use. You can literally design anything you want using Blender which is a free-to-use 3D modeling suite.
For people who will take up this Complete Blender Creator: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners course will have the advantage of learning the following things:
There are some basic requirements that one needs to have in order to take up this course:
Students taking up this course will have access to the following things:
This Complete Blender Creator: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners course is taught by Ben Tristem and Michael Bridges who are considered to be the best instructors around. They are experienced 3D modeling artist who possesses vast knowledge on the topic, and they are ready to share their knowledge on the topic with you. And the fact that they are highly qualified in the field of coding and modeling, they are able to make you understand even the most complex of the concepts very easily and clearly.
Considering this, you will never have to face any problem understanding the lessons and then, applying it later on. The video tutorials provided by them include all the required details that one needs to know in order to work their skills. This project-based course will not only teach new skills, but it will prepare you to design your very own 3D models.
The tutorials made by them are inclusive of helpful resources, additional references, quality screencasts, powerful diagrams and much more. All these are included in the tutorials in order to help one understand the core concept of modeling before; they try their hands on it. Also, the course is regularly updated keeping the recent developments in the technology in mind so, that the students are taught only the latest of the versions and technologies.
One should also know that the course comes with a free community website where one can share 3D models and games and interact with the other students as well. Besides that, Udemy offers a 95% off Complete Blender Creator: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners coupon, which can help you get this course for only $9.99.
Like any other course, even the course of 3D modeling has its target audience. This Complete Blender Creator: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners course is ideal for the following group of people:
Blender is a Dutch Public Benefit Organization, Open Source that facilitates 3-D modelling, animation, simulation, rendering, composition and tracking of the motion of 3-D objects.
The Company operates from Netherlands. Since it is known that Virtual Reality is routed to be the future that will bring about revolutionary changes in many fields, the strong foundational knowledge in 3-D animation would only foster the enhanced learning of Virtual Reality.
The 3-D animation concepts can be used at free of cost from websites like Blender.org. It is a commendable effort that the website has come up with so many built-in features that will in turn only help the users to model their own projects.
Who can use the features of Blender.org?
Usually there are so many formalities that are involved in procuring the license of a software that one wishes to use. The licenses are bought for a certain amount of money and have to be renewed now and then in order to continue utilizing their services.
The licenses are provided at free of cost to the ones who wishes to use the Blender Website. The licenses are usually charged depending on if it is for commercial or for personal purposes. The main idea is to encourage the learning of multimedia concepts for all at complete free of cost.
Goal of Blender.org
The small-scale users who are new to the market and cannot invest a huge sum in the buying of a platform to work on to create their own content can make use of the facilities provided by Blender.org and can make it huge in the field of graphic designing and such. Thus, the site provides wings to the dreams of those who wish to make it big in the industry.
How is the Blender.org website constructed?
The site is completely built on the ideas that are contributed to them by the best VFX designers, 3-D modelers, animation specialists, scientists, artists and many more. They are here together united for a sole purpose-to provide an open source 3-D model pipelining software.
They have a small in-house team who accumulates the content and delivers it to the masses. They are also in need of documentation writers and core team workers who would contribute more for the development of the site.
There are contributors who contribute individually, contribute as groups, companies that contribute to the site and the site keeps growing to cater to the needs of all the kinds of people with different needs who visit the website.
The org since being a non-profit organization is open to getting donations from all around the world using the digital medium as a mode of transfer of money. The organization uses Cryptocurrencies are the new hit in the industry and the site accepts them for donations.
The PayPal is one money transfer option that has been accepted all over the world. The PayPal is widely used owing to its easy means of transfer options. The PayPal has been linked to the site since 2002 and the people can use it to send donations
The Bank Transfer details are also provided in the site that the people can make use of effectively to help the organization that serves with a noble purpose to grow.
How to teach in Blender.org?
There are people in the world who would love to teach others what they know and Blender gives them a good platform for this noble cause. The quality of content delivered is very much important when it comes to Blender.
Therefore, the Blender.org provides certification for those who want to teach to the students. The certification covers all the important points that need to be covered in the teaching process as the quality of content delivered should be top-notch.
The certification needs to be acquired.
Features of Blender.org
The Blender.org is built on C, C++ and Python. The site uses Python API. Every year conference is conducted to discuss ideas that would benefit the masses.
Rendering otherwise known as image synthesis is known as the automated process that generates an image that is photorealistic or that is non-photorealistic from two dimensional or three-dimensional models that are taken from the screen models. The software/tool that renders this image is known as a renderer.
Extra tips: Do you want to use the Complete Blender Creator: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners course at $9.99 coupon right now? Do you wan to save up to 95% discount? Follow a simple video guide to redeem a coupon and save 95% at checkout.
Mathematical representation of any surface of an object is known as modelling or 3-D modeling.
Video Editing is one of the in-built features that the site provides. The video editing will allow the scenes to be built upon as one desires to use. The Video Editing is one of the most exciting features as the video editing software as rich as the one that is provided by the Blender.org site is charged heavily when purchased.
The languages that used to interact with the computer graphics is known as scripting.
The Game Creation is the most amazing part of Blender.org. The game creator helps in creating games that will actually look on par with the ones that are created using specialized software.
It includes operations like
The ability of porting the models to any of a game engine even if it is third-party
The Blender software can be downloaded in all types of operating systems and that is one of the most prominent features of it.
In the age of AI, VR it is not that easy to find a genuine, open-source software providing a one-stop shop facility for all important services. The Blender.org serves this very purpose most genuinely.
So if you are one of them then, you should definitely take up this Complete Blender Creator: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners course and learn the thing that you always wanted to.
If you wish to bring your creative ideas to live and enter the world of 3D modeling then, this Complete Blender Creator: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners is the course for you. Create your own 3D models and get yourself a job in some of the big game developing companies. This is the perfect course that can let you earn some good amount and boost your career at the same time.
Now, that you know the details about the course, what are you waiting for? Enroll yourself in the course today and step into a bright future tomorrow. One thing that you can be assured of that you will not be disappointed with the course once you enroll yourself in it.
Don’t miss out on clicking on the Get The Deal Now button to use the Complete Blender Creator: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners coupon and get a BIG discount up to 95%.Get this Deal Now | <urn:uuid:b8f3025b-9442-4cec-b7ea-8113f11a6c71> | {
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Integrated Pest Management for Crops and Pastures describes in straightforward language what is required for farmers to successfully implement Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in cropping and grazing operations. It explains the differences between conventional pesticide-based controls and IPM, and demonstrates the advantages of IPM.
Effective control of pests depends on a number of approaches, not just chemical or genetic engineering. The opening chapters cover the different approaches to pest management, and the importance of identification and monitoring of pests and beneficials. Most farmers and advisors can identify major pests but would struggle to recognise a range of beneficial species. Without this information it is impossible to make appropriate decisions on which control methods to use, especially where pests are resistant to insecticides.
The book goes on to deal with the control methods: biological, cultural and chemical. The biological control agents discussed include both native and introduced species that attack pests. Cultural changes that have led to an increase in the incidence or severity of pest attack are also examined. The chapter on chemical control describes the different ways chemicals can affect beneficial species, also detailing acute, sub-lethal and transient toxicities of pesticides, drawing on examples from horticulture where necessary.
Finally, the authors bring all the components of integrated pest management together and show farmers how to put their IPM plan into action. | <urn:uuid:9e66e174-e3ff-4f34-ad29-44965bedf086> | {
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Two more people died last week due to West Nile virus infection, increasing the number of deaths since the begin of mosquitoes season to four. According to the latest epidemiological report by the Greek National Public Health Organization (EHOD) published on Thursday, August 8th 2019, the number of West Nile infection rose to 35 from beginning of the mosquitoes season until today.
Of these 35 infection cases:
21 had central nervous system events (CNS, encephalitis and / or meningitis / and acute loose paralysis).
14 people had mild events (febrile illness) or no CNS events.
Currently, ten people are hospitalized, four of whom are in Intensive Care Units.
The age range of patients with CNS events ranged from 52 to 91 years, with an average age of 77 years.
There are four deaths in total. All patients were over 80 years old.
Most cases are located in the regional units of Larissa, Kavala, Xanthi and East Attica. Pieria, Pella and Karditsa.
As EODY notes, each case of West Nile virus infection with Central Nervous System infection accounts for approximately 140 people infected with mild symptoms or no symptoms at all.
The West Nile virus (WNV) is a single-stranded RNA virus that causes West Nile fever. The West Nile virus is primarily transmitted by mosquitoes, mostly species of the genus Culex. The primary hosts of WNV are birds, so that the virus remains within a “bird–mosquito–bird” transmission cycle.
In humans, West Nile virus can cause a disease known as West Nile fever. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 80% of infected people have few or no symptoms, around 20% of people develop mild symptoms, such as fever, headache, vomiting, or a rash, while less than 1% of people develop severe symptoms, such as encephalitis or meningitis with associated neck stiffness, confusion, or seizures. The risk of death among those in whom the nervous system is affected is about 10%. Recovery may take weeks to months. Risks for severe disease include age over 60 and other health problems.
Diagnosis is typically based on symptoms and blood tests. While there is no specific treatment, pain medications may be useful.
There is no human vaccine.
The best method to reduce the risk of infections is avoiding mosquito bites. This may be done by eliminating standing pools of water, such as in old tires, buckets, gutters, and swimming pools. Mosquito repellent, window screens, mosquito nets, and avoiding areas where mosquitoes occur may also be useful. | <urn:uuid:d40d8d2d-b27b-43aa-882d-ba9c24bfb7b2> | {
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Control Systems/System Identification
Systems, in one sense, are devices that take input and produce an output. A system can be thought to operate on the input to produce the output. The output is related to the input by a certain relationship known as the system response. The system response usually can be modeled with a mathematical relationship between the system input and the system output.
Physical systems can be divided up into a number of different categories, depending on particular properties that the system exhibits. Some of these system classifications are very easy to work with and have a large theory base for analysis. Some system classifications are very complex and have still not been investigated with any degree of success. By properly identifying the properties of a system, certain analysis and design tools can be selected for use with the system.
The early sections of this book will focus primarily on linear time-invariant (LTI) systems. LTI systems are the easiest class of system to work with, and have a number of properties that make them ideal to study. This chapter discusses some properties of systems.
Later chapters in this book will look at time variant systems and nonlinear systems. Both time variant and nonlinear systems are very complex areas of current research, and both can be difficult to analyze properly. Unfortunately, most physical real-world systems are time-variant, nonlinear, or both.
The initial time of a system is the time before which there is no input. Typically, the initial time of a system is defined to be zero, which will simplify the analysis significantly. Some techniques, such as the Laplace Transform require that the initial time of the system be zero. The initial time of a system is typically denoted by t0.
The value of any variable at the initial time t0 will be denoted with a 0 subscript. For instance, the value of variable x at time t0 is given by:
Likewise, any time t with a positive subscript are points in time after t0, in ascending order:
So t1 occurs after t0, and t2 occurs after both points. In a similar fashion above, a variable with a positive subscript (unless specifying an index into a vector) also occurs at that point in time:
This is valid for all points in time t.
A system satisfies the property of additivity, if a sum of inputs results in a sum of outputs. By definition: an input of results in an output of . To determine whether a system is additive, use the following test:
Given a system f that takes an input x and outputs a value y, assume two inputs (x1 and x2) produce two outputs:
Now, create a composite input that is the sum of the previous inputs:
Then the system is additive if the following equation is true:
Systems that satisfy this property are called additive. Additive systems are useful because a sum of simple inputs can be used to analyze the system response to a more complex input.
Given the following equation:
Create a sum of inputs as:
and construct the expected sum of outputs:
Now, substituting these values into our equation, test for equality:
The equality is not satisfied, and therefore the sine operation is not additive.
A system satisfies the condition of homogeneity if an input scaled by a certain factor produces an output scaled by that same factor. By definition: an input of results in an output of . In other words, to see if function f() is homogeneous, perform the following test:
Stimulate the system f with an arbitrary input x to produce an output y:
Now, create a second input x1, scale it by a multiplicative factor C (C is an arbitrary constant value), and produce a corresponding output y1:
Now, assign x to be equal to x1:
Then, for the system to be homogeneous, the following equation must be true:
Systems that are homogeneous are useful in many applications, especially applications with gain or amplification.
Given the equation for a straight line:
Comparing the two results, it is easy to see they are not equal:
Therefore, the equation is not homogeneous.
Prove that additivity implies homogeneity, but that homogeneity does not imply additivity.
A system is considered linear if it satisfies the conditions of Additivity and Homogeneity. In short, a system is linear if the following is true:
Take two arbitrary inputs, and produce two arbitrary outputs:
Now, a linear combination of the inputs should produce a linear combination of the outputs:
This condition of additivity and homogeneity is called superposition. A system is linear if it satisfies the condition of superposition.
Example: Linear Differential Equations
Is the following equation linear:
To determine whether this system is linear, construct a new composite input:
Now, create the expected composite output:
Substituting the two into our original equation:
Factor out the derivative operator, as such:
Finally, convert the various composite terms into the respective variables, to prove that this system is linear:
For the record, derivatives and integrals are linear operators, and ordinary differential equations typically are linear equations.
A system is said to have memory if the output from the system is dependent on past inputs (or future inputs!) to the system. A system is called memoryless if the output is only dependent on the current input. Memoryless systems are easier to work with, but systems with memory are more common in digital signal processing applications.
Systems that have memory are called dynamic systems, and systems that do not have memory are static systems.
Causality is a property that is very similar to memory. A system is called causal if it is only dependent on past and/or current inputs. A system is called anti-causal if the output of the system is dependent only on future inputs. A system is called non-causal if the output depends on past and/or current and future inputs.
||A system design that is not causal cannot be physically implemented. If the system can't be built, the design is generally worthless.|
A system is called time-invariant if the system relationship between the input and output signals is not dependent on the passage of time. If the input signal produces an output then any time shifted input, , results in a time-shifted output This property can be satisfied if the transfer function of the system is not a function of time except expressed by the input and output. If a system is time-invariant then the system block is commutative with an arbitrary delay. This facet of time-invariant systems will be discussed later.
To determine if a system f is time-invariant, perform the following test:
Apply an arbitrary input x to a system and produce an arbitrary output y:
Apply a second input x1 to the system, and produce a second output:
Now, assign x1 to be equal to the first input x, time-shifted by a given constant value δ:
Finally, a system is time-invariant if y1 is equal to y shifted by the same value δ:
A system is considered to be a Linear Time-Invariant (LTI) system if it satisfies the requirements of time-invariance and linearity. LTI systems are one of the most important types of systems, and they will be considered almost exclusively in the beginning chapters of this book.
Systems which are not LTI are more common in practice, but are much more difficult to analyze.
A system is said to be lumped if one of the two following conditions are satisfied:
- There are a finite number of states that the system can be in.
- There are a finite number of state variables.
The concept of "states" and "state variables" are relatively advanced, and they will be discussed in more detail in the discussion about modern controls.
Systems which are not lumped are called distributed. A simple example of a distributed system is a system with delay, that is, , which has an infinite number of state variables (Here we use to denote the Laplace variable). However, although distributed systems are quite common, they are very difficult to analyze in practice, and there are few tools available to work with such systems. Fortunately, in most cases, a delay can be sufficiently modeled with the Pade approximation. This book will not discuss distributed systems much.
A system is said to be relaxed if the system is causal, and at the initial time t0 the output of the system is zero, i.e., there is no stored energy in the system.
In terms of differential equations, a relaxed system is said to have "zero initial state". Systems without an initial state are easier to work with, but systems that are not relaxed can frequently be modified to approximate relaxed systems.
Stability is a very important concept in systems, but it is also one of the hardest function properties to prove. There are several different criteria for system stability, but the most common requirement is that the system must produce a finite output when subjected to a finite input. For instance, if 5 volts is applied to the input terminals of a given circuit, it would be best if the circuit output didn't approach infinity, and the circuit itself didn't melt or explode. This type of stability is often known as "Bounded Input, Bounded Output" stability, or BIBO.
There are a number of other types of stability, most of which are based off the concept of BIBO stability. Because stability is such an important and complicated topic, an entire section of this text is devoted to its study.
Inputs and Outputs
Systems can also be categorized by the number of inputs and the number of outputs the system has. Consider a television as a system, for instance. The system has two inputs: the power wire and the signal cable. It has one output: the video display. A system with one input and one output is called single-input, single output, or SISO. a system with multiple inputs and multiple outputs is called multi-input, multi-output, or MIMO.
These systems will be discussed in more detail later.
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Nearly one-third of adults living in this area, which includes Washington and Holmes Counties, are family caregivers who could be at risk for heart disease, diabetes, depression and various other physical and emotional maladies as a result of caregiver distress, a potentially dangerous condition brought on by the pressures of caring for a senior loved one.
Studies increasingly point to caregiving as a leading stressor for families. In fact, one U.S. study revealed that more than half (52.8 percent) of those caring for individuals with diseases including cancer or Alzheimer’s had scores indicating depression.*
In response to this growing issue, the local Home Instead Senior Care® office has launched a public awareness campaign – Family Caregiver Stress Relief at FamilyCaregiverStressRelief.com – to help family caregivers determine if they are at risk for distress and to minimize problems before they escalate.
Included in the program are two new tools: The Are You a Caregiver Quiz, which is designed to help a family caregiver self-identify and recognize the role of a caregiver, and the Family Caregiver Distress Assessment, adapted for the Home Instead Senior Care network by Dr. Peter Vitaliano of the University of Washington. The assessment allows caregivers to determine their risk for distress and resulting emotional and physical issues, including depression, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity.
“So many spouses and adult children are unaware of their potential risk of caregiver distress because they don’t see themselves as caregivers,” said Angie Berry, owner of the local Home Instead Senior Care office. “These new resources enable them to understand their role, the stresses they may face as a caregiver, and how that stress might lead to more serious health effects.”
A recent Home Instead Senior Care study discovered that caregivers are prone to hiding their emotions and, as a result, their health suffers. Approximately 74 percent of caregivers who hide their feelings report fatigue, 53 percent report difficulty sleeping, 37 percent report depression, and 30 percent weight gain or loss.
Research shows that certain characteristics make family caregivers more vulnerable to caregiver distress, the top being:
• Gender: Women report more psychological distress than men (however, male caregivers have more negative physiological responses to caregiving, including higher blood sugar and insulin levels, poorer cholesterol and immune function, and obesity).
• Reluctance to ask for help: Caregivers who won’t ask for help are setting themselves up for the kind of exhaustion that can lead to distress.
• Chronic Illness: Caregivers who are already sick or have existing medical conditions, such as coronary disease, hypertension and cancer, are more vulnerable to additional negative health effects resulting from caregiver stress.
“It’s important for caregivers to understand that stress can impact one’s ability to care. If they don’t care for themselves, they may put their senior loved ones at risk. Whether it’s support groups, stress management techniques or respite help, caregivers need to realize the importance of managing their health, too,” said Berry.
For more information about the services of the Home Instead Senior Care office serving the Wiregrass Area call 334-699-6815 or visit www.homeinstead.com/689.
* Papastavrou, E., Charalambous, A., Tsangari, H., & Karayiannis, G. (2012). The burdensome and depressive experience of caring: What cancer, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's disease caregivers have in common; online at http://ktisis.cut.ac.cy/handle/10488/6053
ABOUT HOME INSTEAD SENIOR CARE
Founded in 1994 in Omaha, Nebraska by Lori and Paul Hogan, the Home Instead Senior Care network is the world's largest provider of non-medical in-home care services for seniors, with nearly 1,000 independently owned and operated franchises providing in excess of 45 million hours of care throughout the United States, Canada, Japan, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Taiwan, Switzerland, Germany, South Korea, Finland, Austria, Italy, Puerto Rico, the Netherlands and Mexico. Local Home Instead Senior Care offices employ more than 65,000 CAREGivers worldwide who provide basic support services – assistance with activities of daily living (ADLs), personal care, medication reminders, meal preparation, light housekeeping, errands, incidental transportation and shopping – which enable seniors to live safely and comfortably in their own homes for as long as possible. In addition, CAREGivers are trained in the network’s groundbreaking Alzheimer’s Disease or Other Dementias CARE: Changing Aging Through Research and Education Program to work with seniors who suffer from these conditions. This world-class curriculum is also available free to family caregivers online or through local Home Instead Senior Care offices. At Home Instead Senior Care network, it’s relationship before task, while continuing to provide superior quality service that enhances the lives of seniors everywhere. | <urn:uuid:bcf78953-cf38-41b4-b739-f9d3feb977bd> | {
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A new type of white blood cell has been identified that activates a killing immune response to an external source—providing a new potential target for vaccines for conditions such as cancer or hepatitis B. Publishing in the journal Immunity, a team of researchers from Newcastle University in collaboration with A*STAR’s Singapore Immunology Network describe a new human tissue dendritic cell (DC) with cross-presenting function.
Most cells are only able to present antigens from within themselves, and so will only elicit an immune response if they are infected themselves. Only a specialized subset of dendritic cells is able to generate a response to an external source of antigen, for example bacteria, vaccines, and tumors.
The identity of human tissue DCs that are capable of presenting external antigen to activate the cell-killing response by T cells—a process termed cross-presentation—has remained a mystery. Their discovery, as revealed by this research, will help scientists to design better targeted vaccine strategies to treat cancer and infections.
“These are the cells we need to be targeting for anticancer vaccines,” says Muzlifah Haniffa, M.D., Ph.D., a Wellcome Trust Intermediate Fellow and senior clinical lecturer at Newcastle University. “Our discovery offers an accessible, easily targetable system that makes the most of the natural ability of the cell.”
The researchers also showed for the first time that dendritic cell subsets are conserved between species and have in effect created a map, facilitating the translation of mouse studies to the human immune system.
The researchers isolated the dendritic cells from human blood and skin and from mouse blood, lung, and liver. Using gene expression analysis, they identified gene signatures for each human dendritic cell subset. Mouse orthologues of these genes were identified, and a computational analysis was performed to match subsets across species.This provides scientists for the first time with an accurate model to compare DCs between species.
“These gene signatures are available in a public repository accessible for all researchers to benefit from the data,” says Dr. Haniffa. “It will allow detailed knowledge of individual human dendritic cell subsets to enable specific targeting of these cells for therapeutic strategy.” | <urn:uuid:39582830-6dee-41bf-a1c0-565c0934343d> | {
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Listen to the podcast of this information.
Have you been meaning to add a few native plants to your garden? Now is the perfect time. Native plants provide beauty as well as food and shelter for wildlife. Native species are adapted to the Illinois climate. They require little or no watering and are resistant to drought, insects and most diseases. Because they are perennials, you can welcome their presence year after year.
blackhaw (Viburnum prunifolium)
Photo © 2013, Illinois Department of Natural Resources
Blackhaw is a small tree that grows along streams, in woods and on wooded slopes throughout Illinois. It may reach a height of 25 feet with a diameter of six inches. The bark is red-brown with many fissures. Its leaves are simple and arranged oppositely on the stem. A single leaf may be up to three inches long and two inches wide. The leaf edge is very finely toothed. Flowers are produced from April through June. These white flowers form in broad, rounded clusters. The resulting blue-black fruits are fleshy, contain one seed and are readily eaten by wildlife. Fall leaf colors on this small tree are outstanding.
For more information about native Illinois plants, including where to purchase them and planting guides, view the following publications at http://dnr.state.il.us/teachkids. You can access more information on the Schoolyard Habitat Action Grant page, too.
Prairie Establishment and Landscaping
Landscaping for Wildlife | <urn:uuid:53d09edf-95f7-49e5-bee4-cac40ee3a9de> | {
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Themes and Other Literary Devices.
There is a theme of The Rule of Three in this work. Three Curtis brothers, three greasers go into the burning building, Bob has three rings, and by the end of the book there have been three deaths. This theme of unity contrasts the theme of individuality. The younger Curtis brothers, Ponyboy and Sodapop, are individuals because of their names. What other characters in this book are independent and have a strong sense of individuality?
Start "Part 3" in your word document, answer the question that was just asked, and discuss other themes you have found in the book. Also, does this book follow the Mirror Effect, or the Window Effect of a Young Adult Novel? Next, list the 5 stages of conflict in the book.
Many people argue that this YA novel is difficult for it's audience to relate to. Scenes such as Johnny stabbing the Soc, and the group of greasers saving the children from the fire are not everyday occurrences in many teenager's lives. On the other hand there are many scenarios that readers can relate to. As the last part of this section in your word document, talk about any situations that come up in the book that you are able to relate to as a teenager.
After doing all of that, click here to view the final page. | <urn:uuid:3fd01a6e-55b8-49d0-8548-c73b1ca6175b> | {
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Economic Value Added
What is economic value added?
Economic value added (EVA) is a corporate financial term for the valuation of a company's economic profit after it has reached the required return of its shareholders. The idea is that profit is generated from a company’s economic capital when that capital exceeds expenses.
Where have you heard about economic value added?
Economic value is calculated by subtracting cost of capital from operating profit, adjusted for taxes. EVA aims to capture the real economic value of a company and is also known as economic profit. Another similar approach is residual income valuation.
What you need to know about economic value added...
The concept of economic value added was devised by Stern Stewart and company and is rooted in the belief that a firm is only successful profitably when it creates revenue and rebound for its shareholders and a profit which exceeds a companies cost of capital. This makes EVA a very useful tool of gauging performance. Through balance sheets, this method can chart exactly where and how a company has generated its wealth. A project that generates a profit that exceeds its returns of the required minimum return is considered a positive EVA. | <urn:uuid:7ece6752-16e7-45b3-a044-0259873d457e> | {
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Today’s post was prepared by ES-Cat ESR Nikolas Capra
Video games made their breakthrough in the 80s, but have been part of our daily life and pop culture for almost 10 years. Like comic book characters and superheroes, they have become popular, and have an estimated 2.5 billion players worldwide1 (Fig. 1). Of course, video games cover a wide range of genres and topics, and luckily science found a place among all the shooters and well narrated, breath-taking, plots.
Before 1998, scientists in video games were almost always evil and villainous (like Dr. Eggman from the Sonic series) but this situation was saved by Dr. Gordon Freeman, a fictional theoretical physicist featured in the Half-Life series. Unfortunately, he had to fight aliens with a crowbar, not with science.
Again, in 1998, a masterpiece appeared on the console market by the name of Metal Gear Solid. Although the game is tactical-action and has absolutely no glimpses of scientists, the plot starts to introduce the topic of genetic engineering and nanotechnology (Fig. 2). The main character Solid Snake, who has been injected with nanorobots, must infiltrate a facility and fight villains that have been enhanced genetically, making his way among the genomic soldiers. This time there are no rogue scientists but a misuse of science. It might be that I overthink things, but the message that struck me, other than feeding my interest in science, is how science can be used for the wrong purposes, even if the technologies were made with the purpose of improving life quality. Besides the message, it has been a powerful vehicle for science by inspiring young players to know more about it, including me.
This mixture of science, action and sci-fi opened the doors to science in the video game world.
Since the release of Metal Gear Solid, the topic of science in games has reached a crescendo. Many video games over the next years used science to enrich their plots. Some accurately, some…originally.
Covering a wide range of topics, from biology to engineering and physics, games are becoming more accurate and some of them are totally focused on the science, like in Kerbal Space Program where you need to build a space rocket, take off and land, adjusting the flight according to gravity and your orbit. To be honest, it was too difficult for me to play so I couldn’t try all the features and explore the physics behind the game.
But since we are way fonder of biology than physics and there are a huge number of games that involve science, it’s easier to make a list of the most (in)famous biology moments in video games.
Therefore, here is my personal list of the “Best Biology in Games”.
+ Resident Evil (1998): This famous game (and spin-off movie), paints a portrait of a world where a modified virus capable of bringing dead cells back to life, makes its way to the outer world. Despite the fictional idea of bringing back dead cells, the so-called T-virus, being modified from Ebola, can be spread only though saliva or blood and modifies the host on a cellular level. In the years after, the infectious virus is replaced by a parasite that modifies the host’s behaviour. Considering that parasites that changes host behaviour exist in nature (like the Cordyceps, also known as “zombie fungus”), I would consider the biology quite accurate.
+ + Spider-Man (2018): There is no need for introduction. Spider-Man has been part of many people’s childhoods. I’m not here to discuss whether being bitten by a radioactive spider gives you superpowers or a horrible and painful death. We all like to dream that if it ever happened, we would wake up with the amazing features of the animal that bit us. Except if it is a skunk. That’s the worst superpower. EVER. Terrible for social interactions too. Anyway, in this video game, Norman Osborne finds a cure that can correct genetic abnormalities. I was like “Hey, that’s cool but tell us how!” and apparently this cure uses CRISPR genome editing combined with an AI controlled gRNA to identify and edit mutations in the DNA. I would say that is quite an impressive mention in a video game. But the even cooler thing is that machine learning coupled with genome editing is not sci-fi but actual science and you can find it in here. This is shockingly accurate for being a video game on a non-biology topic.
+ + + Plague Inc. (2012): This is absolutely the most accurate non-educational game featuring biology. The game is very simple: select a host, infect people, change your features, annihilate the whole world (Fig. 3). The starting choices are “the usual suspects”: bacteria, virus or parasite. Each one of them has different traits such as fast replication rate and sturdiness for the bacteria, high mutation rate for the virus, and low detection for the parasite. Through the game you have to manage virulence, infectiousness and lethality. The goal is to infect and kill every human on Earth but as the plague spreads, the humans will respond by closing airports, harbours and they’ll start cooperating to find a cure to the disease and stop it from destroying humanity as we know it. The game was so realistic that has even attracted the attention of the CDC!
Of course, there are more games concerning science and game designed by scientists to allow people to help with research, like the protein-folding game Foldit. There are also a variety of educational games that unfortunately are not well-know or promoted.
I will leave you then with a question: can we scientists use video games as a tool to inspire young players to become scientists? Can we use games to explain complex concepts in an easy and appealing way to share science with non-scientists?
Science and knowledge belong to the world and as a scientist, I think that our duty includes gifting our knowledge to everyone with every means we can use. | <urn:uuid:e7eafb59-9abc-438a-a388-6416c12e6b0c> | {
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The history of the United States is vast and complicated, but can be broken down right into moments and also time periods that split, linked, and altered the United States into the country it is now. The American flag didn’t resemble like it does currently. Apart from that, it underwent a lot of changes and also modifications.
The American Revolutionary War
Enter the American Revolution. Sometimes referred to as the American War of Independence, or the Revolutionary War, it was a war which lasted from 1775-1783 as well as enabled the original 13 colonies to stay independent from Great Britain. Beginning in Great Britain in the late 1790s, the Industrial Revolution at some point made its way to the United States and also altered the focus of the nation’s economy as well as the means it manufactures items.
For greater than 10 years before the break out of the revolution in 1775, tensions had been developing in between colonists as well as the British authorities. These tensions emerged from expanding tensions between citizens of Great Britain’s 13 North American colonies as well as the early american government (which stood for the British crown). Attempts by the British government to increase income by taxing the colonies (significantly the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Tariffs of 1767 and the Tea Act of 1773) met violent demonstration amongst several colonists, that resented their absence of depiction in Parliament and also required the very same legal rights as other British citizens. Colonial resistance led to physical violence in 1770, when British soldiers opened fire on a mob of colonists, eliminating 5 men in just what was known as the Boston Massacre. After December 1773, when a band of Bostonians impersonated Mohawk Indians boarded British ships then unloaded 342 chests of tea right into Boston Harbor, an outraged Parliament passed a collection of procedures (called the Intolerable, or Coercive Acts) developed to reassert royal authority in Massachusetts.
George Washington was made its commander-in-chief. Congress wished they might require the British to bargain however George III refused to negotiate. Instead, in August 1775 he proclaimed that all the American colonies were in a state of disobedience.
By June 1776, with the Revolutionary War in full swing, a growing bulk of the colonists had come to prefer independence from Britain. That exact same year Richard Henry Lee of the Virginia Assembly offered Congress with resolutions declaring the freedom of the colonies, requiring a confederation and also shared the have to discover international allies for a battle against Britain. On July 4th, the Continental Congress elected to embrace the Declaration of Independence, composed by a five-man committee including Franklin as well as John Adams yet composed mostly by Jefferson. By the autumn of 1781, the American army had begun to force the opponent to retreat to Virginia’s Yorktown peninsula, near where the York River clears right into Chesapeake Bay. Backed up by a French military led by General Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau, Washington moved against Yorktown with a total of around 14,000 soldiers, while a fleet of 36 French warships offshore stopped British reinforcement or evacuation. Caught as well as subdued, the adversary was required to surrender their entire army. Stating health problems, the British general sent his replacement, Charles O’Hara, to surrender; after O’Hara came close to Rochambeau to surrender his sword (the Frenchman deferred to Washington), Washington gave the nod to his very own deputy, Benjamin Lincoln, that accepted it. After French aid assisted the Continental Army require the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, the Americans had effectively won their freedom, though the war would certainly not formally end up until 1783.
The motion for American freedom successfully triumphed at Yorktown, contemporary observers did not see that as the decisive success. British and American arbitrators in Paris authorized initial peace terms in Paris late that November, and on September 3, 1783, Great Britain officially recognized the freedom of the United States in the Treaty of Paris.
How the American Flag happened
The American flag was made to represent the brand-new union of the thirteen original states: it would have thirteen stripes, alternate red as well as white, as well as thirteen stars, white on a blue field. Among the very first flags had the stars set up in a circle, based on the idea that colonies were equal. The thirteen stripes, resting side by side, stood for the battle for independence; red represented valor, white signified pureness as well as blue represented loyalty.
In 1818, after a couple of design adjustments, the United States Congress chose to maintain the flag’s initial thirteen stripes and also add brand-new stars to show each brand-new state that got in the union.
While there is no question that the real Betsy Ross was worthy of interest in her very own right, it is the tale of Betsy sewing the initial stars and stripes that has actually made her a remarkable historical number. The Betsy Ross story was brought to spotlight in 1870 by her grandson, William Canby, in a speech he made to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Canby as well as various other participants of Betsy’s household authorized vouched affidavits stating that they listened to the story of the making of the initial flag from Betsy’s very own mouth.
According to the oral history, in 1776, 3 men – George Washington, Robert Morris, as well as George Ross, went to Betsy Ross in her upholstery shop. On a piece of paper Washington revealed, was a drawing of a flag with thirteen red and white stripes and also thirteen 6-pointed stars.
Washington asked if Betsy can make a flag from the design. Betsy responded: “I don’t know, yet I will certainly attempt.” This line was made use of in the vouched statements of many of Betsy’s family members, suggesting that it is a direct quote from Betsy. As the story goes, Betsy suggested changing the stars to 5 points instead of 6. She showed them the best ways to do it with simply one snip of her scissors. They all accepted to transform the design to have stars with 5 points.
Some people think that it was Francis Hopkisnon that offered birth to the idea of the Stars and Stripes. Francis Hopkinson was a prominent patriot, a legal representative, a Congressman from New Jersey, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, poet, artist, and also identified civil servant.
He was designated to the Continental Navy Board on November 6,1776. It was while serving on the Continental Navy Board that he turned his focus on making the flag of the United States. Making use of stars because design is thought to have been the outcome of an experience in the battle directly related to his propriety.
A book in Hopkinson’s collection at his home in Bordentown was taken by a Hessian soldier in December 1776, a dark year of the battle. The book, Discourses on Public Occasions in America (London, 1762) by William Smith, D.D., had been a gift to him by the writer. The soldier, an I. Ewald, wrote on the inside cover that he had seen the author near Philadelphia which he, Ewald, had actually taken the book from a great country seat near Philadelphia. The book was consequently provided to a person in Philadelphia that returned it to Hopkinson. The soldier had actually written above and also below Hopkinson’s bookplate, which had three six pointed stars as well as his household adage, “Semper Paratus”, or “Always Ready”. The safe return of the book could well have symbolized to Hopkinson the revival of the Americans’ wish.
In a letter to the Board of Admiralty in 1780 Hopkinson asserted that he had made “the flag of the United States of America” as well as several ornaments, devices, and checks appearing on bills of exchange, ship documents, the seals of the boards of Admiralty as well as Treasury, and the Great Seal of the United States. Hopkinson had gotten absolutely nothing for this job, as well as now he submitted a bill and asked “whether a Quarter Cask of the public wine” would certainly not be a sensible and appropriate reward for his labors.
Even so, no one could be so sure that developed the American flag. The American flag is the sacred symbol of the country. As you see the flag silhouetted against the peaceful skies of the nation, you are reminded that the American flag stands for just what you are – no more, no less.
Best American Flags close to state of Maine
As quoted from the Star Spangled Banner:
O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
ZIP codes in Fort Kent Mills we serve: 04744 | <urn:uuid:8968e2ce-0771-434d-bb22-a5a07c560908> | {
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Yes, adding too much oil to your car can cause it to smoke especially through the exhaust pipe.
An exhaust system is usually piping used to guide reaction exhaust gases away from a controlled combustion inside an engine or stove. The entire system conveys burnt gases from the engine and includes one or more exhaust pipes. Depending on the overall system design, the exhaust gas may flow through one or more of:
An exhaust pipe must be carefully designed to carry toxic and/or noxious gases away from the users of the machine. Indoor generators and furnaces can quickly fill an enclosed space with carbon monoxide or other poisonous exhaust gases if they are not properly vented to the outdoors. Also, the gases from most types of machine are very hot; the pipe must be heat-resistant, and it must not pass through or near anything that can burn or can be damaged by heat. A chimney serves as an exhaust pipe in a stationary structure. For the internal combustion engine it is important to have the exhaust system "tuned" (refer to tuned exhaust) for optimal efficiency. Also this should meet the regulation norms maintained in each country. In European countries, EURO 5, India BS-4 etc.,
Mechanical engineering is a discipline of engineering that applies the principles of engineering, physics and materials science for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. It is the branch of engineering that involves the production and usage of heat and mechanical power for the design, production, and operation of machines and tools. It is one of the oldest and broadest engineering disciplines.
The engineering field requires an understanding of core concepts including mechanics, kinematics, thermodynamics, materials science, structural analysis, and electricity. Mechanical engineers use these core principles along with tools like computer-aided engineering, and product lifecycle management to design and analyze manufacturing plants, industrial equipment and machinery, heating and cooling systems, transport systems, aircraft, watercraft, robotics, medical devices, weapons, and others.
Soft matter is a subfield of condensed matter comprising a variety of physical states that are easily deformed by thermal stresses or thermal fluctuations. They include liquids, colloids, polymers, foams, gels, granular materials, and a number of biological materials. These materials share an important common feature in that predominant physical behaviors occur at an energy scale comparable with room temperature thermal energy. At these temperatures, quantum aspects are generally unimportant. Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, who has been called the "founding father of soft matter," received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1991 for discovering that the order parameter from simple thermodynamic systems can be applied to the more complex cases found in soft matter, in particular, to the behaviors of liquid crystals and polymers.
Aftermarket exhaust parts
A smoke screen is smoke released to mask the movement or location of military units such as infantry, tanks, aircraft or ships.
Smoke screens are commonly deployed either by a canister (such as a grenade) or generated by a vehicle (such as a tank or a warship).
Aftermarket exhaust parts are intended to replace the factory fitted exhaust components of a car, motorcycle, or other motor vehicle in order to improve the performance, visual appeal, or sound of the vehicle. Generally, performance enhancements are achieved by reducing the back pressure of the factory exhaust system. Frequently a side effect of a free-flowing exhaust system is either a "different" sound, a higher noise level, or both, which is desirable to some people. Aftermarket exhaust parts can also be a styling upgrade by changes to the visible parts of the exhaust like the exhaust tips.
The intent of an aftermarket component is not necessarily to modify the appearance, sound, or performance of the vehicle in question. While that is almost always the goal if the aftermarket component is replacing a fully working component, it is frequently the case that when the stock or factory component has worn out that an aftermarket component is either more widely available or less expensive than a factory or OEM replacement. | <urn:uuid:fdef4327-b7be-434a-a5c3-c54a76f422b6> | {
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Publicado: 06 Diciembre 2018
Asian geckos were observed running over water at nearly a meter per second, as fast as on land. Lab experiments show how. They get support from surface tension but also slap the water rapidly with their feet. They also semi-plane over the surface and use their tail for stabilization and propulsion. They thus sit between insects, which use only surface tension, and larger animals, which run upright via foot slapping alone. Leer más. | <urn:uuid:a5ffee31-cffa-46bf-9002-9a3b30cf1583> | {
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Cyclopædia of Political Science, Political Economy, and the Political History of the United States
RENT. This is the term recognized in political economy, to denote the net product of the land, i.e., that portion of the total product, which, after deducting what covers the expense of production, remains, and constitutes a surplus. This surplus naturally reverts to the owners of the soil; they gather it themselves when they work their own lands; they receive it from the hands of farmers, or metayers when they leave to others the care of making them productive; in all cases. the rent forms part of the property. We must not, however, confound it with the price paid by one who hires a farm, (called sometimes farm rent), although it is one of the elements of the latter. Every case of farm rent, every leasing price, whether payable in money or in kind, includes something additional, viz., the remuneration due the land owners for expenditures made by them at various times in the past, to facilitate labor or increase its results. The buildings for farm service or for residence, the fences, ditches and plantations which the farm embraces, have often cost considerable sums, and it is just that those who enjoy the advantages connected with their existence, should pay all or a part of the interest on the capital that had to be devoted to them. On the other hand, the conditions of the lease of lands have been discussed by the contracting parties, and may have been so determined as to favor either. Nevertheless, wherever the price for the use of the farm is payable in money, there is a constant tendency for it to include the entire rent. Rent is a net product, it is only realized when active industry has been fully remunerated, and it is not less difficult for farmers to reserve any of it for themselves, than for proprietors to induce farmers to sacrifice to them a part of the profits due to their improvements. But, whatever may be the nature of the circumstances which determine the apportionment of the rent of land between the owner and farmer, they can neither permanently effect its real amount nor alter its original character.
—Among the great facts to which the attention of economists has been drawn, few have given rise to so many controversies as the rent of lands. What it is, its origin, its proportions, its effects, its legitimacy even, everything connected with its existence, has been the object of long and patient investigations, and still harmony has not yet been established between the differing opinions. This is the more to be regretted, because, in this very question of rent are involved many other problems of deep social import, and the effects of its solution naturally extend far beyond the limits which scientific investigation has attained.
—We will here commence by pointing out the order in which the opinions on the matter of rent originated; we will note their characteristic differences; then we will take up the question in its whole extent, and, in our course, we shall find occasion to show how far each of the theories before us seems to depart from or to approach the truth, so far as the best established facts permit us to discern it.
—It was the physiocratic school who first enunciated an opinion on the nature of rent. They characterized it as the net product of the land, and in this they were not in error; but soon, attributing to it an extreme and exclusive importance, they made it the only source of public and private wealth. We know how erroneous a doctrine must be, which is based on the idea that no other labor than that on land can obtain more than the equivalent of the values it consumes, a doctrine denying productive power to employments without which most things produced from the land would themselves remain unsuited to use, and not admitting that men could realize any other riches than that which the natural fertility of the soil put at their disposal. However, in spite of this fundamental error which vitiated all their conclusions, we can not deny the physiocrates the merit of having apprehended well the character of rent and having given a pretty accurate definition of it. Among their observations on the natural increase of rent, there are also some which are both just and important. The net product, rent, in the excess which is left from the crops after the expenses of cultivation are reimbursed; it is the portion of the fruits of the earth from which the non-agricultural classes subsist; and, doubtless, in the normal and regular order of things, the greater or less amount of this excess has a strong influence on the degree of power and prosperity in reserve for nations.
—With and by the illustrious Adam Smith, began what may rightfully be called true economic science. The opinion of Smith on the subject of rent is much like that of the physiocrates. It is substantially as follows. In labor on land, nature acts conjointly with man, and rent is the product of its co-operative power. It is this co-operative power of the earth, the enjoyment of which landholders grant in consideration of a price for the lease based upon a proportional share of the sum at which it figures in the results of production.
—The opinion of Adam Smith has obtained the assent of most economists. J B. Say, Storch, Rossi and Rau adopted it, or varied little from it. Dr. Anderson, however, had previously presented a harmonious series of ideas on the subject, which were at the same time more complex and better developed. *68 But his system did not attract attention until after having been reproduced again in the writings of Malthus and Ricardo, and it is under the name of the latter that he has taken a place in economic science.
—The starting point of Ricardo is in reality the same as that of Adam Smith. What the latter calls the co-operative power of land, Ricardo calls natural fertility, or original powers; but what he has added to the fundamental notion is, an exposition of the rules which, in his opinion. govern the formation and progressive increase of rent. According to Ricardo, rent is not solely the result of a natural fertility which permits the land to return, to those who cultivate it, harvests superior to their needs; it arises from the unequal distribution of this fertility. So long as the population, having plenty of room, can work only the best lands at their disposal, there is no rent: but just as soon as, on account of their increase in numbers, the same population are compelled, in order to procure means of subsistence, to attack lands of inferior quality, rent arises and becomes the share of the proprietors of the portions of the soil that were first cultivated. And the following is his explanation. Being less fertile than the others, the lands on which the labor is expended can not return, for a like expenditure in cultivation, as great a product. The crops they yield require additional expense and labor. and as it has become impossible for society to do without its complement of supplies, it is compelled to pay for provisions whatever price is necessary to insure production on land that has just been cleared. In this inevitable movement. it is the net cost of the produce on the worst land to which recourse must be had, which fixes the general price, and consequently determines the profits of the proprietors of the land first cultivated, the realization of which secures them a rent. They sell at a higher price what they obtain without increased cost or advances, and find themselves masters of a greater surplus than they had before prices had risen. A like effect is again produced whenever the necessity of increasing the arable domain is felt. Worse lands are continually being brought under cultivation; the price of produce rises because of the increased outlay they require; and, at each advance in prices which takes place, rent is seen to arise where it did not previously exist, and to increase where it had already arisen. Such are the ideas on which the theory is based which is called by Ricardo's name. This theory affirms, or at least appears to affirm, that rent has no other source than the difference in the degree of fertility between different portions of the soil: it attributes its origin and development to no other principle than the continual rise in the market price of food, and it makes the difference between a general price current, regulated by the expenses connected with production in localities where these expenses are greatest, and the particular net cost in the other portions of the soil, the measure of the rent that each of the latter affords or is adapted to afford.
—Ricardo's theory was of course widely taken into consideration by the economic world. It gave, or seemed to give, the explanation of a certain number of facts. which, at the time when it originated, were receiving much attention from the public. Moreover, many writers accepted it fully; and it was not until our day that it found decided opponents. Attacked first in England by Prof. Jones, of Hailebury, it was afterward assailed by adversaries whose denials extended even to the principle to which Smith had given his adhesion.
—A very distinguished American economist, Mr. Carey, has denied that the natural fertility of the soil is among the causes productive of rent. In his view, rent has no other source than the expenses successively incurred in the interest of production. And among these expenses he includes, besides those of which the lands under cultivation have been the direct object, the construction of roads, canals, and any means of communication designed to facilitate transportation and to render the markets accessible to products which, if they could not have reached them, would not have been demanded of the soil. Mr. Carey, moreover, has endeavored to demonstrate that Ricardo was entirely wrong in regard to the order in which cultivation has taken place, and that it has not begun with the most fertile lands, but with those most easily cleared, or the nearest to centres of consumption. Taking Mr. Carey's opinions in their plain signification, they consist in denying to the land itself any participation in the formation of rent, in attempting to prove that all this rent represents only the remuneration for advances made to render the soil amenable to culture; in a word, that rent is and can be only a simple creation of human industry.
—Such is also the point of view from which rent was regarded by a man whose premature loss science can not too deeply deplore. M. Bastiat, dreading the consequences of any doctrine which seemed to authorize the admission that wealth could exist which was not exclusively the product of services or of human efforts, started with the same idea as Mr. Carey. According to him, rent is and can be only the interest on the capital invested in clearing the soil and preparing it for production. Only M. Bastiat recognizes that rent may occur without the proprietor having to make any sacrifice to reap the benefit of an unexpected increase: and this case he explains by remarking that there is nothing peculiar in landed property; that what creates the value of the services rendered by every employment of human industry, whatever agent it may use, is not alone the efforts made by the producer, but also the efforts spared to the consumer; and that the latter, whenever his wants increase, pays more for the service rendered him in saving him the more costly efforts he would have to make to provide for himself without such aid. It is much to be regretted that M. Bastiat did not have time to make a precise and well-arranged statement of his ideas before his death. It was in connection with the treatment of real estate that he announced them, in the clever book he published under the title of "Economic Harmonies." The special chapter that he proposed to devote to rent was scarcely outlined. and what has been preserved of it consists only of incomplete fragments, in which the author's ideas are not clearly discernible.
—Such are the principal opinions to which the existence of rent has given rise. Their antagonism is very marked. While some attribute the formation of rent to the co-operative action of nature in agricultural labor, others, denying all influence to this action. consider rent only as the remuneration for the expenses and efforts by which mankind have succeeded in transforming the earth into an instrument of production. We will review the whole subject, and attempt to ascertain the truth amid the obscurities and complications which have hitherto hindered its successful investigation.
—Origin of Rent. There are, in the first place, two things which it seems to us impossible to contest. One is, that the earth is endowed with fertility; the other, that it is not equally so in all parts. It is a fact no less evident, that this fertility does not even need the co-operation of man in order to manifest itself. In the most uncultivated condition the land never fails to be covered with vegetable growths, some of which can supply food and support animals whose flesh may be eaten; and it is the land which, by insuring to the human race at the beginning harvests already produced, has permitted it to escape the destructive effects of famine. Of course, men had to be at the trouble of gathering the fruit, pulling up the roots, and catching the game and the fish on which they subsisted; but if such efforts had alone the power of conferring value on the products which the earth of itself put within their reach, it is none the less true that where these products were more abundant or more easily obtainable, less effort was needed to appropriate them, to adapt them to use; in a word, to convert them into exchangeable wealth. Well, it is to this natural fertility of the earth, which has from the beginning put its inhabitants in the way of obtaining means of subsistence which were not wholly the fruit of their labor even, that rent owes its origin. Rent is the surplus realized over the expense of production, and wherever it was possible to those who, in any way whatever, labored to gather the fruits of the earth, to amass more of them than their personal necessities required, there was a surplus to their advantage, which was rent, and rent very evidently due to the fertility of the portion of the soil on which their industry had been employed.
—The most savage tribes have nothing to learn in this regard. They contest with each other the occupation of places where the waters most abound in fish, or where the land furnishes the most game or fruit; and this is because they well know that as long as they keep exclusive possession of it, they will derive from a given amount of effort, time and fatigue, a quantity of the means of subsistence superior to what they would obtain on less favored portions of the soil; in a word, an actual excess over the expenses of production, which would be everywhere else less amply repaid.
—We will say more. From the first, the earth must, in certain places, have conferred a rent on those who as yet knew only how to gather its spontaneous productions, as otherwise civilization could not have arisen and commenced to advance. While most of the savage tribes were exhausting themselves in efforts to find enough to prevent them from dying of starvation, others, more favored, obtained, without any more skill or effort, resources more than sufficient to supply their necessities; and the latter were not long in bettering their condition. Free to provide in advance for future consumption, it became possible for them to devote leisure to occupations other than the mere search for food. They could make weapons, the implements needed in fishing and hunting, and the means of deriving more profit from their labor; and in the end, they could amass the provisions or capital whose possession would enable them to undertake the breaking up and cultivating the land. We may safely assert, that, if Providence had not so disposed things that the earth offered in some places, to its earliest inhabitants, products which it did not take all their time and care to obtain, the savage manner of life would never have come to an end: men would to-day be still wandering naked and hungry, a prey to invincible poverty, distinguished in no respect from the animals called into existence at the same time with themselves.
—The invention of the art of agriculture did not alter the nature of the primordial fact. There had been, during previous periods, lands which had yielded to those who sought their products, more than they needed for subsistence: there were, under the new order of things, lands which yielded to those who cultivated them, more than was necessary to compensate them for their trouble and expense. Wherever, after deducting the amount of the advances they required, lands left a surplus, this surplus constituted a rent. Wherever, for example, two workmen succeeded in realizing, beyond the returns due to capital immobilized with a view to production, products in a quantity sufficient to provide for the consumption of three, the rent was equivalent to the part of the resources necessary for the subsistence of a man and to pay for his services; and this rent was the result of the fertility of the soil; for, at points less favored, the same amount of work would not have obtained a like surplus; and at certain points it would not, had it been employed, have even obtained enough to indemnify those who had made the expenditure.
—The reader will see, that, like Adam Smith, we attribute the origin of rent to the existence in the soil itself of forces or properties naturally productive. Thanks to the assistance these forces give men whenever they require it, their efforts obtain, besides the remuneration which is their due, an excess which may be so disposed of as to favor other kinds of consumption than that of agricultural laborers. Never has this aid been lacking to those who have sought it. It was this which, even before agriculture was commonly resorted to, supplied unfortunate savage tribes, in possession of good fishing and hunting districts, with means of subsistence sufficiently abundant for them not to be compelled to sacrifice all the time at their disposal in search for food: this it was, too, which, in ages more advanced, by permitting proprietors of cultivated land to harvest more products than they expended in production, gave them the power to remunerate labors other than those expended on the soil, and to call into existence manufacturing and commercial classes and give them a position of continually increasing importance in the ranks of the population.
—Before examining the systems which are not in harmony with this opinion, or which differ from it, there is one assertion in reference to which we must enter into some explanation; for if it were well founded, rent could be regarded as having no other original cause than the power of the earth co-operating with the labor devoted to obtaining its products. This assertion is, that there is no rent in countries where land is so abundant that every one is free to appropriate to himself such a portion as he likes without compensation, or for a trifle. Rossi and some other economists have freely admitted the fact, and M. Bastiat has found in it a point of support for his system. Let us see where the truth lies. It is certain, that, where land is abundant, its products have little sale value, because they have few consumers and lack a market; but does it follow, that, on the few portions where cultivation exists, those who employ it do not find in the original properties of the soil an aid eminently profitable, and do not obtain crops out of proportion to their efforts for subsistence? Suppose a country where all the people cultivated land, and where they could not sell provisions to neighbors because the latter were as well provided for as themselves: the beneficent effects resulting from the co-operative action of the soil would still be felt. In such a country, no one would try to realize a surplus which could find no purchasers: every one would only demand of the soil the means of subsistence required for his own family: but, as little labor would be necessary to obtain this, the husbandman would enjoy long periods of leisure; and leisure is always, to those who know how to employ it, a source of wealth. The time not required in cultivating land, they would employ in making articles adapted to satisfy other demands than those of hunger. They would make clothing, furniture and dwellings; and these are products whose acquisition would be due to the co-operation of the land with their efforts. A relief from incessant labor, and leisure that can be employed in reproductive occupations, are what the earth gives those who cultivate it, whenever they do not know what to do with the surplus it yields. This is, in reality, rent, under a form sufficiently characterized.
—But, let us observe, things have never occurred altogether in this manner. Wherever cultivation of the soil has become established, it has never alone attracted all persons, and it has always found consumers who did not share in its labors. So far back as we can trace in history, we find no social aggregation without magistrates, priests, soldiers and artisans, all supported from the portion of the crops which the agricultural population could spare; and this portion was no other than the excess produced by the land. It has often been affirmed that rent long was, and still is, unknown in some parts of North America. "But lately," says M. Rossi, in speaking of the ideas of the physiocrates on the net product of the land, "there was no rent or scarcely any rent in America, and yet there was a great abundance of all the necessaries of life, and the course of society was toward great prosperity and rapid development." It is true that the conditions under which the colonization of North America has been effected, differ in all respects from those which governed the formation of social bodies in the old world; but the opinion of M. Rossi is, nevertheless, incorrect. One thing which does not exist in America, or exists there only in a very few localities, is the practice of hiring farms, and the reason for it is simply this: As land there costs very little, those who wish to till it, buy the ground on which they settle; and the acquisition counts but little in the list of expenses incurred in their industry; but there is in America a town population, who buy, either for consumption or export, the surplus which the local circumstances bring into market, and the agriculturists retain, by their right as proprietors, an actual rent. It is also true that nowhere in America does the surplus bear a definite relation to the expense of production; nowhere in that country does the agricultural class, after having recovered its advances, offer the other classes as much of the means of subsistence and remunerate as well their services; and it is just this which causes such an abundance and so many elements of life and prosperity in the Union. Some writers have thought that the surplus which American cultivators have to dispose of should not be considered as the result of the natural fertility of the soil, but simply a return for the capital invested in their operations. One need but examine the matter closely to see that it is quite otherwise. It is not because the general rate of profit is very high in America, that the land there brings in a good return to those who take advantage of its fertility: it is, on the contrary, because the land cultivated, which is still wholly choice land, returns much, that the rate of profits is high. Capital goes where it brings most. In America, as everywhere else, it is not invested in manufactures or commerce, except when it will yield as much as if employed in agriculture; and it is the amount of the net income from the soil which largely repays cultivation, that secures to all investments of savings, and to every employment of human activity, the ample remuneration they receive. Assuredly, if the vast territory of America were only composed of lands of a low degree of fertility, the expense necessarily incurred to obtain subsistence from them, would be more considerable, agricultural capital would produce less, and neither the general rate of profits nor that of wages would be maintained at the height they have now attained and are continuing to keep.
—Europe does not lack countries where land is abundant, and has only a low sale value. It is incontestable that rent exists in these places; and as the facts which give it a distinguishing characteristic are of a nature to throw much light on the question, we will say a few words in regard to them. In Hungary, Russia, and many parts of the original Poland and the principalities of the Danube, the rural population, held in servitude, or but recently having ceased to be so held, are, in general, too poor and too ignorant to purchase the land and subject themselves to the risks and perils consequent upon settlement. What is the result? It is that the proprietors, like American agriculturists, cultivate and harvest on their own account. Ordinarily, they leave the laborers, as their wages, the use of a piece of land, which the latter cultivate for the support of their families, and for which they are bound to give two or three days' labor per week to the rest of the estate. This arrangement clearly shows wherein consists the rent of the proprietor. It is the result of the employment, on his land, of the time which the laborers can spare from that which gives them their own subsistence. And let it be observed, that this time can be attributed by the laborers to nothing else than the natural fertility of the soil whose cultivation furnishes them their whole living. Whenever the laborers devote to other fields than those which they are permitted to enjoy, two days' work per week, the surplus over the general expenses of production, the rent is but little inferior to two-thirds of the total product.
—Now, there are, in these same countries, some places where reside either colonists of foreign origin, or peasants in full possession of the lands they cultivate, who often have more land than they can till. This is the case in America. Does any one think that rent does not exist in such places, as well as in the rest of the country? If so, he is greatly mistaken. The part which reverts to the proprietors, in cases where the laborers give their fields two days' labor every week, the cultivators retain for themselves when they are absolute masters of the soil, and if they do not harvest it, it is because they find they can more profitably employ the time which they refrain from devoting to agriculture.
—In whatever way we look at the question, on whatever side we take hold of it, we must always end by recognizing that the earth gives rise to rent, and that, even where the conditions of society are such as to prevent all being derived from land which it might produce, there is a compensation for this in the leisure it affords that can be employed in other avocations.
—Let us come to the theory adopted by both Carey and Bastiat. They deny that the earth can add anything of its own to the results of labor. In their view, land is only an instrument, an agent, of production, which man employs, and not a single element can be found in rent which is not wholly the product of the expense incurred to render the land fertile. M. Bastiat thought, that to admit the co-operative action of the soil in the benefits connected with production, would be to recognize that wealth might exist which was not due to labor, and that the earth had the power to create such wealth. Let us look at this point. No one, surely, of any repute among economists, has maintained that anything which nature has prepared for the use of human beings, has value before having been the object of some kind of labor;*69 but, positing this principle, is it the less true that the earth, if it does not furnish things which already have value, does afford those adapted to receive it, and that, whenever it furnishes these things in such abundance or so easily obtainable that the labor employed in communicating value*70 to them costs less than it produces, there results an excess over the expense incurred, which is not found when the efforts of man are otherwise exerted? Here is the fundamental point of the discussion, the point of fact. To affirm that this surplus would not be realized without taking the trouble to obtain it, is to say little; for that is not contested. What should be proved is, that it would be possible without the co-operation of the earth, and that there are industries not agricultural or extractive which have also the power to produce rent.*71 Now, this proof is wanting, and surely never will be given. As to the objection that it is demand, which, by assuring a value to the agricultural surplus, has alone the power to create it and to convert it into wealth, and that demand constitutes an action purely human, it has its response*72 in what has just been said in reference to the assertion, that there is no rent in regions where the land, while waiting for a more complete private appropriation. has as yet little or no exchange value.
—It is in vain for one to seek to delude himself. The land alone returns more than is needed to pay wages, interest and profit on the capital required to cultivate it; and as there is no other way in which labor can be applied to obtain a like surplus, we must recognize in the existence of rent the result of a co-operative action exercised by the earth itself. It would be wrong that the fear of having to admit that there is a gift from God, new the exclusive share of a certain number of his creatures, should influence our opinions; for this gift is an evident fact; and besides, without it, it would have been utterly impossible for humanity to fulfill its destiny in this world; and, if this gift has not continued the common domain, it is because it has pleased its author that it should produce its beneficent effect only on condition of becoming an object of private appropriation. All this it would be very easy to demonstrate, were this the place to do so.
—It remains for us to make a few observations on the particular points which characterize the theory called Ricardo's. This theory fully admits the existence of productive properties in the soil, which belong to it; but it accords to it the power of creating rent only in virtue of the fact that these qualities are not equally distributed through it. This is taking one of the circumstances which concur in producing the differences in the price of rents for the cause which gives rise to them. The origin of rent, as we have said, is the power of the land to return to those who cultivate it more products than they need for their subsistence and the recovery of the amount of their advances; and wherever the lands are adapted to do that, any one who desires can obtain from them this excess that is to say, a rent. Nor is there any need, as Ricardo supposes, of a rise in prices in order for rent to begin; rent appears the moment when the gathered crops leave a part disposable, and it is realized when those who harvest, finding consumers for that part, devote more time to their work than they would have to sacrifice if they limited their efforts to gathering only for themselves. Finally, it is a very simple matter to state how far Ricardo's theory conforms to the reality. One has only to examine what would happen in a country where the lands were all of the same quality, all adopted to remunerate labor liberally, and all so situated as to enjoy the same advantages for the sale of their products. Well, in this case, see what would happen! As everywhere else, the population would obey the laws which urged them to multiply, and as everywhere else, they would rise to the level of the subsistence that agricultural labor could procure for them. There would be an increasing demand, and the cultivators, certain of a market for that portion of the harvest which they would not themselves need, would devote enough time to their labors to gather it, enough time to obtain a rent. The more the town population or industrial classes increase in number, the more would be demanded of the soil by cultivation, the wider would be the extent cultivated, and the more would rent increase. In such a country leasing of farms would appear; there would be found at the same time proprietors possessing more lands than they could themselves cultivate, or desirous of ridding themselves of the whole or some part of their burden of personal labor, and workmen disposed to take their place or to offer prices for a lease, proportioned to the amount of net income which they judged the soil capable of furnishing. The principal error of Ricardo's theory consisted in ascribing a decisive influence to the rise in the exchange value of the means of subsistence, which he thought inevitable.
—Causes which influence the Value of Rent. It is an incontestable fact that the price of rent has risen in proportion as civilization and the comforts of life have increased in human society. It is essential to state clearly the causes under the influence of which this has been effected.
—There are three causes of which account has been taken. One is the incorporation into the soil of the capital necessary to render it more and more productive; the second is the gradual extension of cultivation, over lands either less fertile or more difficult to bring under cultivation than those which had already been applied to for crops; the third is the continual improvements in the application of agricultural labor and skill. We will point out their effects. and, as far as possible, estimate the extent of each.
—As we have said, rent is the portion of the fruits of the earth obtained over the expenses of production or quantities necessary to satisfy the demands of those who work the land, and, in the savage state, the most fertile lands leave some surplus at the disposal of their masters. But as soon as a population, in stead of confining itself to gathering the spontaneous productions of the soil, undertook to direct its active forces, to the primitive profit were added other portions of the product, these latter being due to the immobilization of capital or advances made in the interest of production. Before sowing seed, it was necessary to break and clear the land, and the work, almost always long and toilsome, cost much. This done, they had to level and prepare a soil full of hollows and humps, in consequence of the extraction of the roots; and then, to execute numerous works, some of which were designed to facilitate labor, others to insure the preservation of the crops; and, by degrees, a considerable amount of capital was incorporated into the fields brought under cultivation. What is to be remarked, is, that this capital, for the most part, returned not only the amount of the interest and profits acquired by its employment, but, thanks to the impulse it gave to the co-operative power of the earth, it made to spring up, besides, a new surplus, to increase that which existed previous to its consumption. Consequently, in the present condition of rents, the latter combine three elements having a distinct origin. It would be idle, moreover, to attempt to state exactly the proportionate part of any one of these elements, or even to decide what is only a suitable return for outlays embodied in material improvements all that can be affirmed is, that what holds the least place is the primitive element and it is very easy for any one to assure himself of this if he will merely notice wherein consists that which uncultivated lands yield to the wild tribes who live on their natural products. The two others, on their natural products. The two others, on the contrary, are by far the more powerful. Clearing of land, in our day, is very costly, and certainly must have been far more so originally, because of the coarseness and imperfection of the processes and the instruments in use. On the other hand, there are farms and metairies [i.e., small farms in France let on halves to the cultivator.
—Trans.] where the value expended in constructions and buildings for use, fences, ditches, and permanent works, is equivalent to from a third to a half of that of the land cultivated. This explains why there are economists who. impressed by the great and constant sacrifices made with a view to production, will not see in rent anything but the amount of the indemnity to which these sacrifices entitle those who make them.
—The necessity for a people who are increasing in numbers, to extend cultivation over lands lying fallow, has been ranked among the causes which exert a decisive influence on the price of rent. The reader has seen. in what we have said of Ricardo's theory, what consequences that writer attributes to it. In his opinion, prices rise gradually as labor has to take up with lands less adapted to recompense its efforts it is the expense incurred where it is least remunerated, which fixes the exchange value of the means of subsistence, and hence the rise and progressive increase of rent.
—People certainly consult, in the choice of lands to bring under cultivation, the degree of productiveness which these lands present at the time; and, in the natural order of the development of labor, they only attack the poorer lands when the others have ceased to provide sufficiently for the exigencies of consumption. It is an evil that all lands are not at the same time better and of like quality. Humanity would be better off for a different distribution of the natural fertility of the soil from which it is fed: but has this evil all the effects attributed to it? Does the upward movement which it tends to give the prices of products really take place as people suppose? Are there not causes of decline at work, which on their side are sufficient to maintain such relations between the expense and the results of production, as to prevent suffering in the community? This is a question of the utmost importance, and demands a serious examination.
—We have not thus far taken sufficient account of the influence on rent and prices, of the progressive development of knowledge of agricultural affairs. Of all causes this acts most energetically and constantly, and its effects are the most decisive. Sometimes it reduces the expenses of production by a given quantity of provisions. Sometimes it increases the quantity harvested at the same outlay; and, in both cases, it raises the rent by increasing the surplus obtained after deducting expenses; and, at the same time, it arrests the rise in price while multiplying the amount of provisions destined to meet the demands of consumption.
—One single thing might take away, from progress in the art of agriculture, the power of raising the rent. This would be if the sale value of the products diminished in proportion as labor, having become more enlightened and more powerful, succeeded in deriving more produce from the lands. But, as we know, the means of subsistence have the privilege of never waiting long for a demand. As soon as they become more abundant, the population is not long in multiplying, and soon wants rise to the level of the supply. And is there not also a saving realized in the expense of cultivation, an improvement in the application of the efforts of labor, which does not increase the part of the product which remains net after expenses are deducted, and which consequently does not add to the rent of the proprietors?
—In what measure has the diminution in the expense of production due to the improved application of labor, served to raise rent, and to preserve the higher prices which the extension of cultivation to new lands tended to produce? It would be impossible to state positively; but there is no doubt that this double effect has been fully produced.
—See, in the first place, what an economy in manual labor the gradual improvement of the instruments of production has brought about. Not only good modern plowshares perform in one day twice as much work at least as the best plows of the ancients, but they break lands formerly impenetrable to the share, and they plow the others more deeply. To reaping-hooks of brass or beaten iron have succeeded scythes highly tempered, under the blade of which crops fall rapidly and without loss, which, before their invention, required a much larger number of hands. All the tools and machines which were known in the middle ages have been improved, and, thanks to new inventions, there is no country even but little advanced in agriculture, which does not contain a good number of others of quite superior efficiency.
—This is, however, but the smallest part of the improvements realized. For the productions originally demanded of the earth, similar ones, which are both more hardy and of better yield, have been gradually substituted. By the side of the vegetables then cultivated, or in their place, have come new species from the most distant parts of the globe, which have been admitted in the rotations of crops, because of the increase of product they give on a like surface. This is not all: science has not ceased to reveal new means of fertilization. Materials whose power was unknown have added to the effect of fertilizers; substances that had been left unused have been mixed with arable beds, and have communicated to them the productive qualities which were lacking; and cultivation has been more widely developed and made increasingly productive. In consequence, lands that were despised at the close of the last century, for want of knowledge how to utilize them, have, with small outlay, taken rank among the most fertile, and some, like those characterized in England as poor lands, and in France as lean and dry, are to-day considered the most easily worked, and are farmed out at the highest price. And as to the other lands, we might show some in France, which, sixty years ago, yielded scarcely ten or eleven hectolitres to a hectare (i.e., less than twelve bushels to an acre), which now yield eighteen to twenty hectolitres. This is an addition of about 140 francs (about $27); and it is important to observe that this addition has only involved an increase of less than 70 francs in expense. Also, farm rents which did not reach 35 francs have risen to 70 or 80 francs, while yielding to those who paid them larger and surer profits. Certainly this is a case where the increased power of art has done more, of itself alone, to raise rent, than all other causes combined.
—Such facts (and it would not be difficult to cite many others) attest sufficiently the effects of the successive conquests of human intelligence, and how, by gradually reducing both the toil and the outlay appropriated to production, they must have increased the net product of the land, and consequently the rent. That they have sufficed at the same time, to prevent the price of provisions from rising, and to restrain the effect of the inconveniences connected with the extension of cultivation to lands of inferior quality, is so much the more certain because there has been effected in Europe another improvement, which, by itself alone, would have permitted the population to double, without recourse being had to new portions of the soil. and without any increasing demand for grain. This improvement is in the grinding of grain. the quantity of grain, which during the sixteenth century, only yielded 100 lbs. of flour at the mill, now yields more than 190, owing to the successive improvements in the processes employed.
—It should also be remarked, that, during the middle ages, the improvements in agriculture were both slow and little marked: the agricultural classes were ignorant, and their occupations were regarded with contempt. In our day, on the contrary, they are more enlightened; and on the other side, the natural sciences have put within their reach a multitude of inventions which it has become possible for them to utilize. Moreover, for the last fifty years especially, two well-attested facts have been noticeable: one is the stability or the decline in the price of cereals in most of the advanced countries; the other is a rise in rent and the leasing price of farms with a rapidity unknown at previous periods.
—There is, however, one fact of considerable consequence, which seems irreconcilable with the statement we have just given, and which, on that account, calls for an explanation. This fact is the decline in the price of wheat in the least populous countries of Europe. Thus, wheat is worth only 10 to 11 francs a hectolitre in Hungary, and only 9 to 15 in Russia and Poland, according to the provinces. On the contrary, it has been worth, on an average, for the last ten years, 16 francs 40 centimes in Prussia, 16 fr. 60 c. in Spain, 18 fr. 74 c. in France, and a little more than 22 francs in England. Surely, these figures differ enough to attest that abundance of land permits wheat to be produced on conditions which cease to be as advantageous in proportion as the land becomes limited. Doubtless it is indeed so. A thinly scattered population are free to sow only the better portions of the soil they occupy, and to leave each of the parts which have just furnished a harvest, to rest; and it is certain, that, owing to this mode of changing the localities cultivated, wheat is obtained at less expense than if they were obliged, in order to supply the more urgent necessities, to confine their labors more persistently and continuously to the same arable fields. But it is essential to remark that western Europe has passed through ages during which this mode of culture sufficed for the exigencies of consumption, and yet everything combines to strengthen the belief that it was not then provided with food in the same abundance nor at as low a price as it now is. The following reasons support this assertion. Doubtless it would be impossible to prove exactly what was the price of wheat in France five or six centuries ago. The measures of capacity, notwithstanding the identity of name, differed enormously in their contents, not only in different provinces, but even in different parishes in the same province. In the second place, the average prices, when obtained, confounded, under the designation of wheat, cereals of all sorts: finally, the purchasing power of money was greatly in excess of what it is in our day, when the coin and paper in circulation are abundant; but it is sufficient to read, in the authentic acts which have escaped destruction, the figures relative to the price of days' work, as well as of provisions, as they were at the same times and in the same places, to recognize that the exchange value of wheat was at least equal to what it is at present. Thus, in Normandy, agricultural wages at the end of the twelfth century, were equivalent to less than six litres (about 5¼ qts.) of wheat. From that time, we see them rise by degrees to seven; and only within thirty years have they exceeded eight. We are forced to conclude, from these facts, that the real price of wheat, i.e., its exchange value, has not increased in that part of France.
—Now, this is what facts attest since it has been possible to ascertain them. Fifty years ago the current rates of cereals in France began to be quoted with all the accuracy desirable. During this long space of time the population has not ceased to increase in number and in comfort, and nevertheless the price of wheat is far from having risen. Thus, starting at 1800, the five decennial averages succeeded each other in the following order 19 fr. 87 c., 24 fr. 79 c., 18 fr. 36c., 19 fr. 4 c., 18 fr. 74 c. The particularly high average of the years 1810-20 is attributable to the wars of the empire, the invasion of 1814 and of 1815, and the scarcity of 1816 and 1817: but after 1820, prices fell below the figures previous to 1810 and 1800; and it is a matter well worth attention that never has rent, in the advanced portions of France, increased so much as since 1820, when the sale price of grain diminished or remained stationary.
—In England also, prices, within thirty years, have not ceased to decline. Inconsiderate legislation, monetary circumstances, and the effects of war, had combined to render them exorbitant; and, during the ten years from 1810 to 1820, the average per hectolitre rose to a little more than 38 francs; but from that time they declined, first to 30 francs for the decennial average, then to 25, and finally, before the reform in the corn laws, to a little less than 22; that is to say, below their figure between 1790 and 1800.
—Why is it that the price of wheat has not risen in the most populous part of Europe to-day in proportion as more land has had to be brought under cultivation, and that we find it as low in that the least populous? It is because, in past centuries, art was still in its infancy. for lack of intelligence and knowledge, as well as for lack of properly conditioned working material, the laborers could gather their harvests only by the strength of their arms, and the expenses of labor, compared with its results, were much greater than they are to-day. If, in the United States of North America, or in the regions beyond the Oder, the abundance of land has, on the contrary, its effect, it is because the people derive an advantage from it by means of implements, methods and processes, of which communities in former times learned the use only when they had already begun to press upon one another in the territory at their disposal. American agriculturists, aided by implements which were lacking to the people in the middle ages, can turn to profit their natural advantages of space. Those of the north of Europe are still too ignorant or too poor to be able to make as general use of these improved implements; but they nevertheless do use them; and to be convinced of it, one has but to observe that there exist in Poland, Hungary, and even Russia, a goodly number of large seigniorial estates, under the management of men educated in the best agricultural schools of Germany, who carry into the details of the work the most recent acquisitions of their science and arts.
—Finally, it is wrong to adopt the practice of considering the price of wheat as giving the measure of the difference in the expense of agricultural production in the various countries. What we should examine is, the general price of provisions, and not that of particular articles which do not figure equally everywhere in consumption. Wheat is cheap in the half-untilled countries of Europe; and yet it is much too dear for the poor people who harvest it. They subsist almost wholly on rye; and, while in France rye does not occupy more than a third as much arable surface as wheat, and in England not more than a fourth, in Russia, Poland and Hungary, it takes from seven- to nine-tenths as much. What is the result? In these countries, wheat, for which a small number of particularly fertile lands are reserved, is not worth, relatively to rye, as much as in more advanced countries, and the price of the common means of subsistence there is really higher than the price of wheat, considered by itself, would indicate. On the other hand, it should be observed, that, by the side of the products the extension of whose cultivation tends to increase the price, man continually manures the soil, which, at less outlay, insures him the complement of his subsistence. In France, at the time when the average harvest was 80,100,000 hectolitres of wheat, 12,260,000 hectolitres of meslin (a mixture of wheat and rye), or 30,700,000 hectolitres of rye, there were also gathered 89,580,000 hectolitres of potatoes, more than 21,000,000 hectolitres of maize, buckwheat and millet, nearly 10,000,000 hectolitres of small grain and dry vegetables, and, besides, an immense quantity of garden products. Evidently, if the price of wheat had tended to rise, there would have been found, in the increasing abundance of other means of subsistence, a supplement which would have prevented living becoming more dear.
—These considerations and these facts authorize us to affirm that there is in the natural progress of the applications of labor a power equal or superior to that of the causes which tend to augment the charges of production. It is this power which, notwithstanding the necessity of extending the clearing to lands less adapted to produce, has prevented the price of products from rising, and which, by continually increasing the proportion in which the surplus is realized, has contributed most to the rise in rent.
—It is well to pay serious attention to this point. If such had not been the present course of things, everything would be inexplicable in the least contestable results of the progressive movement of the arts and of civilization. It is a fact beyond doubt, that the more enlightened any population is, the more they increase in number and comfort, and the more the means of subsistence at their disposal become abundant and improve in quality. No fact is better attested. The day laborers of England, France, Holland and Switzerland, are not only better lodged and clothed than they were in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, or than those of Russia, Hungary and Poland as yet are, they are also much better fed. Their bread is now composed in part of wheat, and not alone of rye. They eat meal and vegetables; they use less coarse and more varied food. Now, how could it be thus, if it were true that the necessity of increasing the area of cultivated land had resulted in rendering production more and more difficult and expensive? Under the fatal control of the law to which Ricardo's school accord an invincible predominance, we should have seen the remuneration of the efforts of labor gradually diminish; every addition to the quantity harvested would have been obtained only by means of sacrifices comparatively greater; the agricultural class would have increased its ranks as it became necessary to require more of the land; and the time would have come when the other classes, restrained by the obligation to surrender too large a portion of the fruit of their industry, in return for their usual subsistence, would have been arrested in their development. Well, quite the contrary of all that has happened. Starting with the centuries of ignorance and poverty, those centuries when land was so plenty that only the best was cultivated, it has been the manufacturing and commercial classes which have multiplied the most in proportion, and which have at the same time amassed the most capital and wealth. Surely, nothing like it would have been possible if the continual progress in agricultural knowledge had not put the laborers in the rural districts in the way of deriving more ample resources from the soil, and of supplying the rest of the community with food without having to demand prices continually higher.
—One other erroneous supposition is, that the market price of provisions must necessarily tend to rise, in order that the area of cultivation be enlarged. The entire history of agriculture attests, on the contrary, that everything in that regard has been only the fruit of happy discoveries. Thus, it was the invention of a plow with a broad share which determined the breaking up of many aluminous and compact lands previously refractory to the efforts of labor. The employment of lime and marl in places where they were unknown, has permitted the land to be sown to wheat; and it was the discovery of the fertilizing properties of animal charcoal, pulverized bones, and a good number of other substances belonging to the various kingdoms of nature, which revealed the possibility of obtaining rich crops from ground reputed too poor to repay the efforts of continued culture. Similarly, it was the introduction of sainfoin on chalky lands that rendered them productive; and it was an idea which occurred to a sutler in the Spanish army, during the long siege of Antwerp, of attempting to adapt the barren sand of the country to the cultivation of a few fresh vegetables, by burying in it the old, cast-off clothing of the soldiers, which revealed the secret of converting this sand into a soil which now ripens the best crops of Belgium. We have one more fine example of the manner in which discoveries and inventions operate. It is drainage. Is it the high price of food which led to its application? Assuredly not; for it came to take its place among the agricultural agencies and expenditures in England, at the very time when proprietors and farmers thought they had before them only a prospect of a decline. Thus have things happened, and thus will they continue to happen. Man has been cast upon this world, endowed with a faculty for improving his condition here. He has arrived armed, so as to be able gradually to extend the success of his struggles against nature, and the earth, very far from having been given to him as ground on which he would have to expend toil with constantly increasing ingratitude, has been given to him as an agent of production, for the direct assistance of which, when it should come to grow less, it would be easy for him to supply its place advantageously by the acquisition of intelligence destined to add more and more to the results of the application of his labor.
—Some Opinions originating in Accredited Theories on the Subject of Rent. The existence of the rent of the soil, and the rise it has gradually taken, have given birth to some assertions, of which we must here say a few words. Adam Smith, after having shown that rent was a natural result of the co-operative action of the earth in agricultural labor, refrained from pushing farther the analysis of facts, and the examination of their consequences. Taking the principle as he presented it, its result, nevertheless, seemed to be, that the entire rent proceeded wholly from the presence in the soil of productive qualities, which would at all times have operated equally, and created from the beginning a wealth which some had taken possession of, without leaving anything to the others. This opinion was not long, in fact, in acquiring some consistency, and several writers, through embarrassments and ambiguities of language, which betrayed the indecision of their mind, did not fail to conclude that the existence of rent emanated from an exclusive fact of nature. and constituted a sort of monopoly, having no other claim to duration than its utility. The system of Dr Anderson, taken up, commented upon, and formulated mathematically by Ricardo, came to add new motives to those which had given currency to these assertions. In this system, rent, besides originating in an evil, had the disadvantage of increasing only in consequence of a real public misfortune It was the inevitable rise in the price of provisions which almost alone decided the progressive increase. The more the necessity of extending cultivation over lands as yet untilled contributed to change the pre-existing proportion between the expenditure and the results of production, the larger the incomes of the proprietors became, and it was, in fact, by the impoverishment of consumers that they had the privilege of increasing their wealth. Most of the English economists received these ideas admiringly, and promulgated them. To some, rent was a monopoly, which forced those who did not possess land to pay those who possessed it more for provisions than their cost; to others, it was, to use the expression of Scrope, a restriction on the usufruct of the gifts which the Creator has bestowed on men for the satisfaction of their wants. From this position to that implied in the celebrated saying, Property is robbery, is but a step; and this step was speedily taken. Now, it is for us to bring within the limits of truth, conclusions that are either extremely exaggerated or palpably false. If we had to treat here of the question of the right of property, it would be easy for us to demonstrate that this right is based no less upon justice than upon social utility, and to prove afterward, that without its application to land, all the human race, condemned to a pitiless servitude to hunger, would never, in any part of the globe. have succeeded in escaping from the miseries of a savage life; but, to keep to what especially concerns rent, there are several points which it will be sufficient to mention. The first is, that those who first began to cultivate, did not in reality receive for themselves any other rent than the raw product which it was possible to obtain from the little portion of untilled soil they had cleared, that is to say, a product so small that its withdrawal from the common domain could injure no one; the second is, that by obtaining their subsistence by cultivation, they restored to their fellow human beings infinitely more than they took from them. A family of savages require not less than four square kilometres to succeed in obtaining their support; and those who first devoted themselves to agriculture, being incapable of extending their labor over the one-hundredth part of such a space, added in reality to the resources of the community, by leaving it the product of the rest. The third is, that at the time when agriculture began, there were so many vacant lands that it was optional for each to appropriate to his own use such a part as he chose, and that, if there were families who refrained from doing so, it was because they preferred either to live by hunting. fishing and gathering fruits, or to devote themselves to some manufacturing business. Such were the circumstances which controlled the agricultural regime. Certainly, nothing in what tools place was prejudicial to the rights of any one whatever; everything, on the contrary, in the ancient memorials of human races, attests, that, far from considering as despoilers those who first taught them agriculture, they regarded them as benefactors.
—What has caused an illusion in a matter of this kind, is want of knowledge wherein rent consisted, at the time when agriculture began. Looking at the income which land secures for those who possess it, wherever civilization is advanced, people assume that it has always given such returns, and forget the labor and sacrifice it has cost a long succession of generations to make its income what it is. Certainly, if it were possible to decompose rent, and to separate its constituent elements in a rich and flourishing country, one would be surprised at the little the portion derived from the soil would count for in the whole; it would be scarcely perceptible beside what the capital expended in the interest of production, and the savings of labor due to the progress of agricultural science, have added to it. On another side, the errors propagated by the school of Ricardo have not ceased to exercise an unfortunate influence on many minds. Without doubt, the necessity of having recourse to lands less fertile than those which had been first brought under cultivation, would have enhanced the price of food, if the better application of human activity had not come in to restrain or overcome its effects; but. as we have shown, such was the course of things; and, if that necessity acted as an obstacle to the best which might have been realized, never was it a cause of diminishing the wealth already acquired.
—Everything, after all, in the part of the question which occupies us, may be reduced to a knowledge whether the existence and development of rent imposes on the consumers of the fruits of the earth sacrifices which might be spared them. Now, this would be true only in case the rate of rent exercised some influence on prices; and this case, as we know, can not occur. Admit, for example, in its whole extent, the theory which shows rent under the most unfavorable light, viz., the theory of Ricardo. Whither will you be led? To recognize that rent, arising from the necessity of extending cultivation to ground of less fertility, is only an inevitable result of the enhanced price of products whose attainment becomes more and more difficult. In this theory, it is not because rent arises and increases that prices rise; it is, on the contrary, because prices rise, that rent is created and increases. Society is obliged, under penalty of dearth, to pay a price for the necessities of life which secures the producers remuneration for the charge imposed upon them by the cultivation of the worst lands whose culture is indispensable; and hence arise benefits to the possessors of the other portions of the soil, which secure to them a rent so much the larger as their expenses of production are relatively less. Admit the doctrine contained in this article, which is in our opinion much more simple and true, and you will arrive at conclusions still more decisive. It is the peculiar fitness of the earth for production, which, by permitting it to return to those who cultivate it more products than they need in order to subsist and receive a return for their advances, which brings about rent. The more perfect labor becomes, the more is the amount of the expenses incurred in it, in proportion to the quantities harvested. reduced, and the more the excess which is converted into rent increases. If it is true that the necessity of enlarging the arable domain tends to increase the price of production, this tendency encounters, in the advantages connected with the successive improvements due to human ingenuity and skill, a counterbalancing power more than sufficient to restrain it, and this is why the consumption of provisions becomes at the same time extended and improved in all countries when the people become more advanced and enlightened Thus, rent is nothing else than the product of a gift of nature which men are permitted to turn to more and more profit, and whose increase is only an effect of the general development of prosperity. And this is so true, that if it had pleased Providence to increase the fertility of the soil a few degrees more, the price of provisions would have been less, and of rent, more. In the beginning it must have required less labor to obtain subsistence, and, after defraying expenses, there would have remained a surplus, a net product, much greater than that which is now realized under the name of rent.
—The reader will now see how little foundation there is for the charges brought and lamentations made against the existence of rent. Under whatever aspect the question is viewed, whatever theory we adopt, rent appears only as the result of circumstances which it is not in the power of man to change, and not as a portion deducted, to the exclusive advantage of some, from the resources acquired by others. Monopoly is then a very singularly chosen word when applied to the existence of rent. To be sure, the earth is limited in extent, and men can neither increase its surface nor extend to all its parts labor equally productive; but does it follow from this that there is anything in common between the appropriation of land and the concurrence of circumstances which constitutes a monopoly? All have not a lot of land, it is true; but have all a share in the possession of things which, like the earth, own their sale value and the possibility of producing a revenue, to the development of the productive capacity of human society? Land, unless iniquitous and hurtful laws immobilize it in the hands of privileged classes, is transmitted and exchanged like houses, manufactories, contracts for stated payments, or stock in any industrial enterprise. Whoever has savings at his disposal, is free to acquire a greater or less portion of it, and those who possess it are so far from deriving exclusive advantages from it, that some among them may always be found who are ready to give up what they have, for capital from which they hope for a better revenue. The possession of land or of any other sort of wealth, is so simply a matter of taste or convenience, that there are times when, even with a like product, it is not the kind of investment most sought after. To go to the essence of things, there is nothing in the assertions we have just examined, which might not apply to the inequality of fortunes even; for property in land is only one of the forms under which exists this inequality, which, born with society itself, will assuredly last as long as society.
—Besides the questions treated of in the above article, there is one which has been mentioned in the articles COST OF PRODUCTION and DEMAND AND SUPPLY: it is, whether rent constitutes a part of the cost of production. We think we can not do better than to quote the opinion so clearly stated by Mill. (Principles of Polit. Econ., book iii., chap. v.): "Rent, therefore, forms no part of the cost of production which determines the value of agricultural produce. Circumstances no doubt may be conceived in which it might do so, and very largely, too. We can imagine a country so fully peopled, and with all its cultivable soil so completely occupied, that to produce any additional quantity would require more labor than the produce would feed: and if we suppose this to be the condition of the whole world, or of a country debarred from foreign supply, then, if population continued increasing, both the land and its produce would really rise to a monopoly or scarcity price. But this state of things never can have really existed anywhere, unless possibly in some small island cut off from the rest of the world; nor is there any danger whatever that it should exist. It certainly exists in no known region at present. Monopoly, we have seen, can take effect on value only through limitation of supply. In all countries of any extent, there is more cultivable land than is yet cultivated; and, while there is any such surplus, it is the same thing, so far as that quality of land is concerned, as if there were an infinite quantity. What is practically limited in supply is only the better qualities; and even for those, so much rent can not be demanded as would bring in the competition of the lands not yet in cultivation; the rent of a piece of land must be somewhat less than the whole excess of its productiveness over that of the best land which it is not yet profitable to cultivate; that is, must be about equal to the excess above the worst land which it is profitable to cultivate. The land or the capital most unfavorably circumstanced among those actually employed, pays no rent; and that land or capital determines the cost of production which regulates the value of the whole produce. Thus, rent is, as we have already seen, no cause of value, but the price of the privilege which the inequality of the returns to different portions of agricultural produce confers on all except the least favored portion. Rent, in short, merely equalizes the profits of different farming capitals, by enabling the landlord to appropriate all extra gains occasioned by superiority of natural advantages. If all landlords were unanimously to forego their rent, they would but transfer it to the farmers, without benefiting the consumer; for the existing price of corn would still be an indispensable condition of the production of part of the existing supply, and if a part obtained that price the whole would obtain it. Rent, therefore, unless artificially increased by restrictive laws, is no burden on the consumer: it does not raise the price of corn, and is no otherwise a detriment to the public, than inasmuch as if the state had retained it, or imposed an equivalent in the shape of a land tax, it would then have been a fund applicable to general instead of private advantage."
E. J. L.
Notes for this chapter
A main point in Anderson's theory was, that increased demand for food leads to increase of price, and this permits additional cost to be bestowed in bringing inferior land into cultivation. (See Macleod's Kcon. Phil., vol. ii., p. 29.) E. J. L.
Surely M. Passy can not think that Genovesi, Beccaria, Verri, the physiocrates, Hume, Condillac, Bastiat, Whateley, and all the other economists who have considered the cause of value to lie in human desire, thought there could be no demand for anything except that on which labor had been expended! How would he account for the value of undeveloped mines, quarries, etc., and what is more, for the value of labor itself!—E. J. L.
Here M. Passy falls into the error (pointed out by Storch in his Polit. Econ.) of confounding the production of articles which have value with the production of their value.—E. J. L.
The income from talents and moral qualities, being due to the "natural fertility" or "productive power" of the mind, bears so many points of resemblance to what M. Passy treats of under the title "Rent of the Soil," that some economists put it in the same category. Storch, in his Cours d'Economic Politique, devotes a chapter (chap. v., book III.) to the "Rent of Talents and Moral Qualities." [Original reads "Reat of Talents..."—Econlib Ed.]
End of Notes
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Issue No.01 - January/February (1998 vol.15)
DOI Bookmark: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/52.646885
Perl was invented by Larry Wall about 10 years ago. Wall, a computer programmer and linguist, combined his dual interests in Perl's design: He used his programming skills to create a language that was good at telling the computer what to do and his knowledge of linguistics to make that language easy to learn and use. Perl is sometimes perceived as a language limited to Web programming. However, as the box "Perl at Work" on the following page shows, Perl is a general-purpose programming language with many strengths-the biggest being in the area of string and data processing. Since most programs process strings or data or both, Perl works well for most programming, including system programming. It gives you access to C library functions for fine-grained control of files, processes, and network sockets, while at the same time handling the onerous details of low-level memory management and offering powerful built-in data structures. Perl also has advantages over other languages. It is much faster to write in than C, which makes it good for rapid prototyping. Perl can replace Unix shell scripting languages on Unix systems when you need to write a program quickly to do a small task. And it's faster than most other scripting languages because it's compiled in-stead of interpreted.
Mark-Jason Dominus, "Perl: Not Just for Web Programming", IEEE Software, vol.15, no. 1, pp. 69-74, January/February 1998, doi:10.1109/52.646885 | <urn:uuid:95293478-ac86-4977-9945-6f49c65c8bdc> | {
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ROSI solar-powered, mobile water filtration system tested in Tanzania
By Stu Robarts
June 23, 2014
Water-borne bacteria and viruses can cause serious health problems, but many places in Africa do not have access to clean drinking water. Mdori, in Tanzania, is one of those places. In addition, its natural spring water is too high in salt and fluoride. The new ROSI water filtration system could change this.
Due to high temperatures and a dry climate outside of the rainy season, water in Mdori is scarce. According to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), from where tests of the system are being run, a well in Mdori from which natural spring water can be extracted produces water that is both very high in salt content and has a fluoride content of 60 µg of per liter. This is 40 times the level that the World Health Organization (WHO) deems safe for human consumption.
In order to find a solution to this problem, Professors Andrea Schäfer and Bryce Richards developed ROSI (the Reverse Osmosis Solar Installation) and have been testing it in Mdori. ROSI is able to filter out undesirable substances, bacteria and viruses from water, as well as reduce fluoride levels to within WHO recommendations.
In order to do so, the system "combines ultrafiltration membranes of about 50 nm in pore size to retain macromolecular substances, particles, bacteria, and viruses with membranes for nanofiltration and reverse osmosis with pore sizes below 1 nm to remove dissolved molecules from the water."
ROSI is designed to be robust, mobile and to be operated with solar and/or wind power. If there is too little power available, for example at night time or due to cloud cover, filtration cannot be carried out. This was one area that Schäfer and Richards were looking at in their tests.
"If less power is available, pressure decreases. As a result, less water passes the membranes. The fluoride concentration increases for a short term," explains Schäfer. "The concentration of fluoride and other pollutants, however, is balanced as soon as more water passes the filter again. Hence, the water is completely safe."
ROSI was initially developed by Schäfer and Richards in Australia, before further work on it was carried out in Scotland. Field tests for the system were planned at at the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology in Tanzania, and test were carried out earlier this year in Mdori, amongst other places. The results of the tests are currently being analyzed at KIT. The next stage for the tests will be for ROSI to be installed at selected locations.Share
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Dornier's Swiss subsidiary at Altenrhein was one of the few German-controlled plants where, in the late 1920s, development of heavy bombers could be contemplated. The first to appear, in 1930. was the Do P with four Jupiter engines. This was followed by the Do Y, with three. and the Do F, which had only two similar engines. but nevertheless promised to be better than its larger ancestors. An innovation was the retractable landing gear, though this gave much trouble and eventually was permanently locked down. Worse, the production Do 11 flew poorly, and after many delays — partly owing to Siemens’ late delivery of engines - small numbers entered service as freighters with the German State Railways (a cover for the first Luftwaffe bombing units). By the end of 1934 the short~span Do 11D was well established, with 77 operating in by now overt Fliegergruppen and the Kampffliegerschulen (war flying schools). But accidents were frequent, and the unpopular Do 11 was never the important bomber it had been planned to be.[N 1] The improved Do 13 was not much better, but it eventually emerged as the Do 23.
Specification (Do F (Do 11a), 11C and D)Edit
- Origin: Dornier Metallbauten. Switzerland; later Dornier-Werke GmbH. Type: Heavy bomber. Engines: (C, D) two 650hp Siemens (Bristol-licence) Sh 22B-2 nine- cylinder radials.
- Dimension: Span (prior to D) 91ft 10 1/4in (28.00m). (D) 86ft 3 1/2in (26.29m); length 61ft 8in (18.79m): height 18ft (5.49m).
- Weights: Empty (D) 13.173|b (5975kg); maximum (D) 18.080|b (8200kg).
- Performance: Maximum speed (D) 161mph (259km/h); cruise 14Omph (225km/h); service ceiling 13,450ft (4,100m); max range (bomb load not stated) 596 miles (960km).
- Armament: Three manually aimed 7.92mm MG 15 in nose, dorsal and ventral positions; internal bomb load of 2.205lb (1000kg).
- History: First flight (Do F) 7 May 1932. (Do 11C) late 1933. | <urn:uuid:dc13a749-cacb-4cf8-97f6-9c5a262131f4> | {
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Tonight’s episode of Ancient Aliens, S08E05 “The Other Earth,” wasn’t of too much interest to me since it’s mostly about the question of how many other planets have Earthlike characteristics. If you are an ancient astronaut theorist and already believe humanoid aliens have visited the Earth, the answer is pretty clear that such planets exist and are the home of aliens. Our knowledge of them is of secondary concern. Since I am not a space enthusiast, I had still less interest in the science of looking for other planets that the laws of physics dictate I will never visit.
Oh, and my computer died just before this episode came on, with Windows 8 choosing this evening to have some catastrophic failure that left it unstable, so I am writing this on a borrowed laptop while I am trying to fix my own laptop with only 48 hours left on its Dell warranty. As a result, my comments will likely be briefer than usual.
We open on July 23, 2015, when the Kepler Telescope helped identify an Earthlike planet many light years from earth. This leads to a discussion of what makes for a planet capable of sustaining intelligent life similar to that of the Earth. Scientists apparently feel we will find proof of alien life by 2025, which this show seems not to notice contradicts its own prior claims that elites are so concerned about the panic confirmation of alien life would create that they have suppressed all evidence of aliens. The show briefly mentions the ancient “many worlds” hypothesis and then discusses the Drake Equation, which was a guess at how many civilizations might exist in the universe. It was a favorite of early ancient astronaut theorists in the 1960s. The show wonders then why we have received no radio transmissions from the space aliens. Giorgio Tsoukalos tells us that the aliens don’t need radio signals because they have already given us communications through mythology and art. This leads to a recap of some of the ancient astronaut theory’s greatest hits, all discussed before and long debunked. This includes the Orion Correlation Theory, the Sirius Mystery, and more.
The show then falls back on Zecharia Sitchin’s false claims about BA 243, a Mesopotamian cylinder seal that Sitchin (and now Jason Martell) claimed accurately depicted the solar system. It does not, either in distance, number of planets, or relative size.
The second segment is about the potential for humans to colonize Mars, including the current effort to train a squad of humans to go die on Mars as a first step toward colonization. This leads to a discussion of whether Mars can be terraformed into something wet and green. This is irrelevant to ancient astronauts, so the show tries to make it relevant by speculating that aliens terraformed the earth. Mike Bara thinks it’s astonishing that Earth got “exactly what it needed” to support human life, though logically speaking it is more like that it only seems that way because we evolved to think these conditions ideal. Bara tells us about round stones that have grooves on them. These ancient rocks are believed to be natural, but Bara tells us that they may really be pods used for panspermia, packed full of bacteria and sent to the earth. No one looks for any evidence that these rocks came from space, which might support such a claim.
The third segment begins with the Sumerian Kish Tablet from 3500 BCE, the oldest known piece of writing. This is introduced only to show how far human came between then and our own technological age. Astrobiologists express awe at our intelligence compared to our physical incompetence and general helplessness in matters aside from intelligence. The show discusses Ellis Silver’s suggestion that human beings evolved on another planet, which he believes explains why we have lower back pain, cataracts, and sunburns. Allegedly our circadian rhythms exactly match the length of a Martian day when we don’t have the sun to guide us. David Childress throws this out the window and instead claims humans are Neanderthal-Grey alien hybrids.
After this, the show supports the claim that Adam and Eve were real, but they mention Jewish legends that Adam and Eve had parents in another realm before falling to earth after eating of the fruit. This story is found in the Zohar, and I found it in the Akhbar al-zaman, too. The narrator tells us that humans are interested in space because we come from space, because apparently cosmic wanderlust is genetic.
The fourth segment begins with a discussion of humanity’s search for other planets with various tools and telescopes, which is said to be a search for transcendence and/or a genetic compulsion to visit the stars. David Childress compares finding other planets to finding the Garden of Eden, and he says Eden might well have been on another planet. Various mythical paradises are alleged to be other planets remembered from journeys space aliens made from them to the Earth, which, if I understand the narrator correctly, is a shithole. The famous story of the Green Children of Woolpit is then told, a medieval legend that is colorful (pun intended) but not especially unusual for medieval legends. Kathleen McGowan Coppens tells us that the children were space aliens, even though the girl child allegedly had viable offspring with a human male. Many other possible explanations could be offered, and space aliens are probably one of the least likely.
The fifth segment discusses the claim that there is a very large quantity of water locked within the Earth’s mantle. The show asks if this means we are wrong about the interior of the Earth. Can the Earth really be hollow? Do aliens come from the Hollow Earth? Has the show been reading the Shaver Mystery? To the last question, we know the answer: They referred to the Shaver Mystery in an earlier episode. Various mythical underworlds are repurposed to support a hollow Earth, and we hear that the Garden of Eden is within the earth from “secret” teachings. I can’t recall an ancient text that says this, though I’ve read many that discuss Eden as being in one of the spheres above the Earth. The history of hollow Earth hypotheses is then discussed, though they neglect to note that John Quincy Adams once tried to send an expedition to enter it. More modern searches are reported, but they then discuss a fictitious claim that Admiral Byrd found the entrance. These claims are false and come entirely from sensationalized newspaper accounts. Childress has been pushing this claim for a while, though previously with subterranean Nazis rather than underground aliens.
The final segment takes us to a physics lab in Lively, Ontario, where scientists are looking for dark matter. Its various proposed properties are discussed, including the question of whether it connects to parallel universes or higher dimensions. David Wilcock says that this dark matter is a “world” and that “people” live in it. The narrator tries to make this make sense by proposing a planet floating in a parallel universe and/or other dimension that communicates with ours through dark matter. William Henry says this is a great thing because it would prove we are part of a cosmic family. Tsoukalos tells us that finding intelligent life would force scientists to reconsider the ancient astronaut theory.
I'm an author and editor who has published on a range of topics, including archaeology, science, and horror fiction. There's more about me in the About Jason tab.
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Please read all applicable terms and conditions before posting a comment on this blog. Posting a comment constitutes your agreement to abide by the terms and conditions linked herein. | <urn:uuid:4ced8af9-b530-46ad-83ed-584b53af1fe8> | {
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Lou Gehrig was born on June 19, 1903 in New York City. He was the son of two German immigrants, Christina and Heinrich Gehrig. In his youth he showed incredible promise in the sports of football and baseball, which ultimately led to a football scholarship at Columbia University. While attending Columbia he also joined the baseball team where he became known as “Columbia Lou” for his incredible pitching ability and his uncanny ability to hit home runs. These abilities ultimately led him to joining the Yankees in 1923 with the likes of Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio. He was deemed the “Iron Horse” by his teammates and his fans for his determination to play in spite of injuries.
In his career he boasted a lifetime batting average of .340 and in 1934 he won the batting “Triple Crown”. This is when a player leads the league in runs batted in, home runs, and batting average. He also, helped the Yankees to win six World Series championships. However, his career was cut short when in 1938 he noticed he was having trouble tying his shoe laces and was diagnosed with ALS by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. He retired the following year and died in his sleep on June 2, 1941.
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. It was first discovered in 1869 by Jean-Martin Charcot, a French neurologist. However, it was not in the public eye until Lou Gehrig was diagnosed in 1939, effectively ending his career. ALS usually presents itself between the ages of 40-70 and currently 20,000 people in the United States have the disease.
The disease itself is split into two categories: sporadic ALS and familial ALS. Sporadic ALS is most common and makes up about 90-95% of all cases. However, one of the gene mutations found in familial ALS is quite common in sporadic ALS. ALS is caused by oxidative stress that can cause oxidative damage to proteins, lipids, and DNA. This oxidative stress is caused by Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) that are a by-product of your body’s normal functions. In your body Mitochondria produce ATP and energy that your cells use to survive, and as a result ROS are produced as well as other molecules that can cause oxidative stress. If this oxidative stress is countered by your body it can cause problems and diseases such as ALS.
Your body has natural antioxidants such as SOD1 that turn ROS into normal molecules that are found in your body. When there are mutations in these molecules, or they are malfunctioning this can lead to an accumulation of ROS that can cause damage to motor neurons, mitochondria, and RNA/DNA. This damage to RNA/DNA can cause further problems in other natural processes that can accelerate ALS.
ALS is a terrible neurodegenerative disease that does not have a cure and the only hope is to prolong life as long as possible. Please visit www.alsa.org to donate or participate in a fundraiser to fight this disease. | <urn:uuid:6f7e64fb-ba14-42dd-a563-e593e363936a> | {
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Theme: Representation makes a difference… language, imagery in advertising selling your house dressing for an interview informational displays interfaces “…solving a problem simply means representing it so as to make the solution transparent” (Simon 153).
The Power of Representation Donald Norman “The powers of cognition come from abstraction and representation… for if the representation and the processes are just right, then new experiences, insights, and creations can emerge.” Cognitive artifacts – constructed device to support external representations a representation of a representation Experiential artifacts – provide ways to experience and act on the world Reflective artifacts – provide ways to modify and act on representations Examples where how information is displayed makes a problem easier/more difficult. “With the appropriate choice of representation, hard tasks become easy”
On Distinguishing Epistemic from Pragmatic Action David Kirsh and Paul Maglio “What actions can an agent perform that will make the task more manageable, easier to compute?” Epistemic actions – physical actions that make mental computation easier, faster, or more reliable Pragmatic actions – primary function to bring the agent closer to the physical goal Exemplified in Tetris: translate-to-wall and rotate to save mental rotation, among others.
Does the concept of epistemic action extend to beyond a game and into the real world? Robert Travis Are epistemic actions easier for the more expert user? Amal Aziz Are there limits to experiential representations? Marcia Lee Why do we have so many bad representations? Neema Moraveji, Greg Schwartz What might be some drawbacks of designing to reduce the user’s cognitive load? Do you give anything up? What are some of the dangers of abstraction and of choosing a representation? Jae min John, Brett Miller
Norman states that a good representation captures the essential elements of an event and leaves out everything else. Suchman claims that actions are highly context specific. – Antonio Ricciardi How can we understand this apparent contradiction? Prototyping – epistemic or pragmatic? Yeonsoo Yang How do we build representations differently for humans versus machines? Mike Krieger, Chen Wu Can representations affect one’s beliefs in ways that are external to the representation itself? - Loren Yu Kirsh and Maglio put emphasis on reflective action while Norman puts more emphasis on experiential. Nick Briggs Epistemic actions help us think.. Norman suggests the less thinking the easier we have it. Thoughts?
What are some things you do in your own life to reduce your cognitive load? Was that effective for the people’s task, not for mine? – Yeonsoo Yang, Jason Robinson Can we design to support how multiple people think? Do people think in the same way? Are there advantages to choosing one form of representation over another (experiential, reflective)? Amal Aziz Are there advantages to using multiple experiential and reflective representations? Yeonsoo Yang What would be some ways in which we could evaluate whether a certain representation is the right one for the problem? - William Choi
How can we design to reduce the user’s cognitive load? Can we represent our own research data differently to help us understand it better? :) | <urn:uuid:8ce28ae5-8f37-4c81-867f-012a877617d7> | {
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Many anecdotes have been passed down regarding Taft's tremendous weight. One of the most famous concerns him getting stuck in the Presidential bathtub and thus ordering a replacement - large enough to fit four average-sized men! Taft even had a new bed constructed at his friend Todd Lincoln's (son of Abraham) house because the springs in the original mattress broke under his weight.
Yet, Taft was not always obese. He was a collegiate wrestler at 225 lbs. and by all accounts quite athletic. He steadily gained weight after graduating college, eventually ballooning to 320 lbs. in 1905, at which point he began his first diet. Before the era of diet books (let alone DVDs) and personal trainers, physicians often constructed and oversaw their patients' weight loss regimens.
It is no surprise then that Taft enlisted the services of Dr. Nathaniel Yorke-Davies, a London physician, who created a personalized "reducing" diet for the War Minister. The diet consisted primarily of meat and vegetables and outlawed fruits, grains (except gluten-free biscuits), and sugar. In short, it was a low-carbohydrate diet. Taft presumably followed the diet because 6 months later he was a relatively svelte 255 lbs. Once at his target weight Taft adhered to Yorke-Davies' "stationary" or maintenance diet (the reducing diet plus some grains)...at least for a few months.
It seems that in addition to dieting, yo-yo dieting also existed in the early 20th century. According to an account by White House mailman of over 50 years Ira Smith, Taft's appetite during his diet became so voracious that he once ordered that a train he was riding on be rerouted so that a dining car could be attached to it- at 10:00 p.m.! (read the full account of the incident here).
Taft reached his all time high of 340 lbs. in 1913 and embarked on a second "reducing diet" shortly after leaving the office of President. After dropping to about 270 lbs., he managed to control his weight for the remainder of his life.
|President Taft in 1907, about one year after his first diet.|
Unfortunately for Taft, his characterization as a perpetually obese man was mostly a result of bad timing. Although Taft was one-half inch shy of 6 feet and close to 250 lbs for most of his life, his twin peaks of 320 and 340 lbs. occurred as War Minister and President, respectively (see chart below). And that is why he is remembered as the fattest U.S. President (among other things, of course).
Note: Need a mnemonic device to remember the fattest President? Just rearrange the letters in "Taft" and you get "Fatt."
Presidential Trivia (Ernie Couch) | <urn:uuid:1139f143-ec60-4b9b-9e17-4d41163e3790> | {
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One of the most common situations for drivers to have accidents is in low-speed traffic within a city. Drivers become distracted and before you know it rear end collisions happen. A number of automakers around the world have been introducing systems to improve safety and help prevent rear end collisions. Ford has offered this sort of system on some of its vehicles for a while that activates flashing lights, an audible alarm, and then hits the brakes if needed.
Honda has now announced that it has developed its own accident avoidance support system called the City-Brake Active System. The Honda safety system operates when the vehicle is traveling at speeds under 18 mph. The system relies on a laser radar installed in the upper part of the windscreen to detect when a collision is imminent.
Once the safety system identifies a high risk of collision, it will activate both audio and visual warnings for the driver. If the driver doesn't take action to avoid the collision the City-Brake Active System automatically applies the vehicle's brakes. The safety system also has a secondary function designed to prevent accidental acceleration.
At speeds of less than 6 mph, or from a standstill, if the system determines that the driver has pressed too hard on the accelerator when there is another vehicle within 4 m of the front, the system will deliver audio and visual warnings. The system will then restrict engine output to prevent the vehicle from moving forward. The idea is that the system can help prevent rear end collisions in instances where the driver mistakenly steps on the accelerator rather than the brake. | <urn:uuid:8382cdbb-3ef6-4c1c-8f8b-f0913bd40502> | {
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According to University of Texas psychologist James Pennebaker, “function words” are like fingerprints. We all use them a bit differently, and our style of function-word use reveals our character.
In English, the function words are: prepositions, pronouns, determinatives, auxiliary verbs, coordinators, and subordinators.
Nouns, full verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are “content” words.
The easiest way for beginning composition students to understand what function words are is to think of them as words whose meaning you can’t look up in the dictionary. The meaning of a function word comes largely from the sentence it’s in, or from the surrounding sentences.
Function words largely serve a grammatical purpose in a sentence — some people call them “glue words.”
- pronouns (he, she, it, what, which, that…) (another list)
- determinative (the, a, an)
- auxiliary verbs (do, is, am, have, got…)
- coordinators (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
- subordinators (although, when, because, ….) (Sierra College list)
- prepositions (in, by, on, beside…)
- nouns (Mercy College, chair, beach, love, grammar…)
- “full” verbs (run, sit, sing, fall…)
- adjectives (blue, tall, sunny, odd…)
- adverbs (slowly, sadly, inquisitively, ostentatiously…)
Another name for the distinction between function words and content words: “closed” and “open” word classes.
Content words are an open class; new content words are invented all the time.
Function words are a closed class; new function words rarely come into existence.
Different people have different styles of function word use. As an example, some people use the pronoun “I” more than others do.
Function words also predict romance.
The study below, from 2010, found that people whose function-word styles were similar were more likely than people whose function-word styles were different to: a) be romantically attracted to each other, and b) stay together.
An excerpt from the study:
Function words, such as pronouns and articles, are generally short, are frequently used, and have little meaning outside the context of a sentence (Chung & Pennebaker, 2007). As a result of these features, function words are processed rapidly and largely nonconsciously when people produce or comprehend language (Segalowitz & Lane, 2004; Van Petten & Kutas, 1991) and require shared social knowledge, or common ground, to be used effectively (Meyer & Bock, 1999). For example, the function words (underlined) in the sentence He placed it on the table make little sense without prior knowledge of the man, the object, and the table in question. Perhaps because of their key role in social cognition, function words are robust markers of a variety of individual differences and social behaviors, ranging from leadership style to honesty (Hancock, Curry, Goorha, & Woodworth, 2008; Slatcher, Chung, Pennebaker, & Stone, 2007; Tausczik & Pennebaker, 2010).
Language Style Matching Predicts Relationship Initiation and Stability by Molly E. Ireland, Richard B. Slatcher, Paul W. Eastwick, Lauren E. Scissors, Eli J. Finkel, and James W. Pennebaker Psychological Science 2010
- Function words are usually short
- Function words are used frequently
- Function words have little meaning outside a sentence (or outside the surrounding sentences in a text)
- Function words are processed very quickly by the brain
- Function words are processed mostly outside of conscious awareness (for example, people have no idea, consciously, how often they use the pronoun “I”)
- Function words require that speakers (or writers & readers) possess shared social knowledge in order to know what the function word means (If I say to you, “Give this book to her,” you and I both have to know what person I mean by ‘her.’
- Function words reveal numerous personality differences and social behaviors, including leadership traits and honesty
- In this study of speed dating transcripts, people whose function word use was similar were more likely to be romantically attracted to each other than people whose styles were dissimilar
- AND they were more likely to still be together 3 months later
- “Open” and “closed” word classes
- Richard Nordquist’s page on function words (terrific, short explanations from various sources)
- The Secret Life of Pronouns by James Pennebaker
- The myth of FANBOYS — discusses the fact that the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language recognizes only and, but, and or as coordinators “while nor is very close.” However, since American professors generally expect to see commas used with the FANBOYS, not semicolons, in our class we are calling all 7 FANBOYS “coordinators.” | <urn:uuid:f1de3f17-a956-481c-8318-80f68ef7942b> | {
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Nothing makes a teacher happy as much as an engaged classroom - one where the majority of the students are actually listening and asking questions relating to the subject matter being taught to them. In reality, lessons like that are difficult to pull off especially if you’re stuck with the period right after lunch or the one before the long school day ends.
Enter Virtual Field Trips.
With a PC, you can show your students a place they have never been to before from the comfort of the classroom. These activities will not only get your class energised and asking lots of questions but will help them to easily remember the concepts covered. No need to learn chapter after chapter by rote!
Here are three popular Virtual Field Trips you can begin with - just make sure you have a PC.
1) Discovery Education
Divided as per subject, grade and theme - Discovery Education can become a weekly fixture for your students. The themes include Earth & Space Science, Technology, History and many others, with the latest and most high-end footage. For example, the Tundra Virtual Experience shows the annual polar bear migration in the most beautiful and fascinating way bringing the real world into your classroom.
2) Google Earth
An educator’s paradise, use Google Earth to show your students remote places from all over the world and make the most of the built-in lesson plans. The whole world is quite literally in your PC’s browser. From flower mosaics in Antigua, Guatemala to fireworks in Florence, Italy, explore whatever your students want to see around the globe.
3) Zoom Earth
Your students can view the world from above quite literally with the global LIVE satellite feed of Zoom Earth. There is a feature called “locate me” which you can use to bring context to local history, city-specific climate or society in general. Let the class explore at their own pace and have a group discussion at the end to share each other’s learnings.
At first, you may feel that this is going off-syllabus, but, with the right lesson planning your students will be wanting to learn even more!
Aarambh is a pan-India PC for Education initiative engineered to enhance learning using the power of technology; it is designed to help parents, teachers and children find firm footing in Digital India. This initiative seeks to connect parents, teachers and students and provide them the necessary training so that they can better utilise the PC for learning, both at school and at home. | <urn:uuid:77a0df8f-5136-4083-b797-067d854390e7> | {
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Can a fictional damsel evolve?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, bringing phylogenetics to fairy tales.
Which is not as scary as it sounds. Biologists use phylogenetics when they draw trees to show how animals are related through evolution. Connections appear between species that share genes and traits.
The tool gave anthropologist Jamshid Tehrani at the UK's Durham University an idea. Maybe this approach could show connections among tales from all over the world. After all, stories change as they get passed from person to person—like genes!
Africa and East Asia both have stories similar to Europe's Little Red Riding Hood. But are they actually versions of the same story? Instead of genetic variations, Tehrani looked for shared plot variables among story variations. Like whether a tiger or wolf menaced the child. And what tricks the villains used.
By his analysis, the European version of Red Riding Hood is distinct from a similar story —The Wolf and the Kids—that's told in Africa. But similar stories in East Asia combine the two stories.
So look out, Brothers Grimm! If the giants aren’t coming after you, anthropologists are.
***** For more 90-SECOND SCIENCE FACTS, click here.*****
The Loh Down on Science is produced by LDOS Media Lab, in partnership with the University of California, Irvine, and 89.3 KPCC. And made possible by the generous support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. | <urn:uuid:ddf1f63d-23d1-4ced-92ab-859031efe553> | {
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David Mitchell, the Mitchell Library and Australiana
In 1907 David Scott Mitchell (1836–1907), a wealthy and obsessive collector of books, made a gift to the people of Australia. On his death, he bequeathed his collection of Australian books, pictures, records and other items, numbering in the tens of thousands, to the Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales. Under the terms of his last will and testament, the collection was to be housed in a separate building called 'The Mitchell Library'.
David Scott Mitchell, donor of the Mitchell Collection. Image courtesy of the State Library of NSW: gpo1_10694.
In March 1910, the Mitchell Library opened, just under three years after his death. The collection still stands as 'the greatest single cultural bequest ever made in Australia' (Elizabeth Ellis, Mitchell Librarian, June 2007). Mitchell's collection was, and continues to be, important to the people of Australia because it focused on Australian documents, books and art. Over the years it has helped Australians define themselves and understand the history of white settlement in Australia.
Mitchell's vision and foresight in collecting and preserving documents at a time when Australian history was unfashionable, and considered unimportant, was noted in 1907 on his death by the then Premier of New South Wales, Joseph Carruthers. He wrote that David Scott Mitchell's memory:
... is due an everlasting debt of gratitude for the noble work he has undertaken in gathering together all available literature associated with Australia ... and in making provision that the magnificent collection should, for all time, on his death, become the property of the people of his native state.
The start of a 'magnificent obsession'
David Mitchell was an enigmatic man. He is known first and foremost as a collector; details of his personal life are relatively scant.
He was born in Sydney in 1836 into a wealthy family who were seasoned book collectors by the time of his birth. His grandmother's, mother's and father's extensive and impressive collections of old and rare books attest to the fact that he was part of a family of avid readers and collectors. He graduated from Sydney University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1856 and was admitted to the Bar two years later, although never practised law. By the age of 30 (and probably much earlier) he was collecting—buying books at auctions and seeking out items of particular interest. Although he remained in Australia his whole life, in his tastes, education and pursuits, Mitchell was a man of the world.
Owen Stanley (1811-1850), George Street, Sydney from the Main Guard, 1847; bequeathed by David Scott Mitchell. Image courtesy of the State Library of NSW: PXC 281A f.1.
His collection began broadly, including early printed books, European poetry and fiction and medieval manuscripts. Yet on his death, his collection was considered important because of its massive number of items relating to Australia and the Pacific. By the late 1860s Mitchell had begun to collect Australian literature, although not exclusively and not with the passion that characterised his collecting in later years.
On 19 July 1868, he wrote to his cousin, Rose Scott, about some of the reasons behind this growing interest:
I generally get all the Australian literature I come across not so much for intrinsic merit ... as that I think some day anything like a complete collection of Australian books will be curious.
'I must have the damned thing'
Henry King (1855-1923), Coulston & Co., Toose Optician, Royal Hotel, Dymocks Book Arcade, George Street, Sydney (detail), ca. 1885-1895, photograph. Image courtesy of the State Library of NSW: SPF/187.
Over the years, Mitchell's interest in Australiana grew. He was a professional collector, with the financial means to purchase widely and secure expensive items, although he had a reputation as a haggler. Mitchell personally visited bookshops and pawnshops in Sydney on a regular basis – such as Dymocks Book Arcade – searching through discount bins for used books, pamphlets and any other rare or unusual item he could find.
But perhaps more importantly, Mitchell had a network of friends, dealers and fellow collectors who worked for him, buying books on his behalf or alerting him when items, out of their own reach, came up for sale at auction.
Booksellers came to know that if they found an item Mitchell would be interested in, he would pay well for it. His friend, the bookseller and publisher of Australian literature George Robertson, was a key player in the development of Mitchell's Australian collection and the acquisition of items for it. In 1897 he wrote to his colleague James Tyrrell, 'Do not purchase any Australian books except for Mr Mitchell's order ... Mr Mitchell will always give us a profit on such – you know how keen he is ...'
Joseph Banks - Endeavour journal, 25 August 1768 - 12 July 1771, bequeathed by David Scott Mitchell. Image courtesy of the State Library of NSW: a1193608.
Another important character who helped shape Mitchell's collection was Alfred Lee, a businessman and rival Australiana collector who encouraged Mitchell to further grow his interest in items relating to Australia. Joseph Banks' Endeavour journal, a key piece in Mitchell's collection and item of national significance, was originally purchased by Lee at auction in London.
Later, in 1906, Mitchell bought Lee's entire collection of over 10,000 books, paintings, pamphlets, prints and drawings for 5700. Most of Lee's collection were duplicate items that Mitchell already owned, except for a few rare and extremely valuable books he had coveted for years. It was an amicable arrangement and Lee sold his collection knowing that Mitchell intended to donate his entire library to the Public Library of New South Wales on his death.
One of the Principal Librarians at the Public Library was Henry Charles Lennox Anderson, who served in that position from 1893 to 1906. He was repeatedly frustrated by Mitchell's financial capability and network of 'assistants' as he increasingly found himself outbid at auctions by the obsessive collector. Anderson said that he was being 'cribbed, cabined and confined' by Mitchell who he described as 'a dreadful human bogey whose lair was 17 Darlinghurst Road'.
Album of photographs of family and friends, no.13 Rose Scott (detail) ca. 1863-1892, bequeathed by David Scott Mitchell. Image courtesy of the State Library of NSW.
In 1895 he was introduced to David Mitchell by Mitchell's cousin Rose Scott. Having personal experience of Mitchell's fervour for collecting, and knowing that the purse of the Public Library was unable to compete with him, Anderson changed his strategy. Instead of trying to beat Mitchell at auction, Anderson began to actively help Mitchell improve and expand his collection. For ten years Anderson acted as his agent and broker, and worked for him as an unpaid, part-time assistant, spending 26,000 on items for the collection on Mitchell's behalf.
Anderson's approach worked very effectively because in 1898 Mitchell decided to bequeath his collection to the Public Library. As confirmation of his intended donation, during that year Mitchell transferred 10,000 volumes of non-Australian works from his home at 17 Darlinghurst Road to the library. As the Public Library was already full and the new Mitchell Library building had not even begun to be designed, the only place for the books was Anderson's home, which was adjacent to the library, so Anderson moved out.
After this time, Mitchell's interest in growing his Australian collection intensified. He now solely concentrated on expanding his collection and finding rarities and oddities that had eluded him previously.
The Aborigine Piper, who accompanied Major Mitchell on his expeditions. Lithograph by Fernyhough, Sydney, c. 1836. Bequeathed by David Scott Mitchell. Image courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales: a1122021.
Some items immediately stand out as being priceless in terms of Australian history: miniature watercolours of Captain James Cook; the papers of Sir Henry Parkes;Sir Joseph Banks' Endeavour journal 1768–71; correspondence from the Colonial Secretary's Office; John Oxley's journal and Ludwig Leichardt's papers; paintings by S T Gill and Conrad Martens; a copy of the original manuscript documents of the arrest of Governor Bligh—the list goes on.
Yet David Mitchell's collection was not just of 'important' or notable official records—it was a treasure trove of all sorts of items and is proof of Mitchell's broad range of interests relating to Australia and the Pacific. He wanted everything and was not interested in hiding the truth of history or omitting facts. He reportedly said 'I must have the damned thing, if only to show how bad it is'.
Even today, his collection is surprising in its range. It includes concert programs; photographs; Christmas card designs; shipping registers; convict muster rolls and reports; maps; sheet music; family papers; private letters; drawings of insects; salary books; songbooks; autographs; poems; sketchbooks; botanical watercolours; scripts of plays; police files; items, papers and documents relating to aboriginals; ships' journals and legal documents. Overwhelmingly, the collection consists of everyday items that capture the popular culture and social reality of the day.
It is these pieces that are perhaps the most important to Australians today because they give us some sense of what life was like for ordinary people who lived in the colonies. The items in the David Mitchell collection are not an 'official' history—they are the real thing.
David Mitchell's understanding of the future value of papers he collected, especially items relating to Australia's convict history, cannot be understated. His friend, the collector and bookseller Frederick Wymark, recalled Mitchell's visionary approach when he later quoted Mitchell as saying:
The main thing is to get the records. We're too near our own past to view it properly, but in a few generations the convict past will take its proper place in the perspective, and our historians will pay better attention to the pioneers.
Mitchell's are prophetic words indeed, considering that now Australians are proud to have a convict in the family tree, and our politicians boast of being of good convict stock during campaigns.
Like the archive box or photo album of a nation, the collection contains a remarkable array of documents and images that together create a picture of an emerging Australia from the earliest days of white settlement. Without Mitchell's fervour for collecting, our understanding of Australia's history may not be the rich tapestry it is today.
When David Mitchell died in 1907, the terms of his bequest and last will and testament had already begun to be acted on. Several months earlier, as he lay ill in bed, the foundation stone for the new Mitchell Library was laid. The donation of his library was given on 'the condition that the same shall be called and known as 'The Mitchell library' and shall be permanently arranged and kept for use in a special wing or set of rooms dedicated for that purpose...' (Last will and testament of David Scott Mitchell).
Mitchell Library, Domain in course of erection. Image courtesy of the State Library of NSW: d1_10943.
Mitchell had provided a further 70,000 to purchase more items and to preserve what he had already collected. New South Wales simply needed to provide the building. It did this after some pressure and threats from both Mitchell and his friends, including George Robertson.
After his death, staff from the library visited Mitchell's home. A few had been Mitchell's friends and had visited there on a regular basis up until he died, so were aware of the state of the collection. Books were stacked haphazardly, covering tables, cabinets, the floor—literally every surface. Revolving wooden bookcases groaned under the weight of the volumes crammed into them. The walls were hung with artworks. The place was at once a treasure chest and a nightmare—there was no order to the stacks of books, and no catalogue of what was there. The house itself was in a terrible state of disrepair and damp permeated every room.
Residence of late David Scott Mitchell, the bedroom. Image courtesy of the State Library of NSW: d1_10951.
Staff quickly realised the books and art needed to be removed before they all decayed, but the new library was not finished. In haste, the books were loaded onto carts and taken down the road to the vault at the Bank of Australasia to await the completion of the new building. It was estimated that the number of items was in the range of 60,000.
Amazingly, however, librarians created no catalogue of the collection – neither when it was moved out of 17 Darlinghurst Road nor when it was moved into the new library in 1908. Almost immediately, new items began to be acquired, so items in the original collection bequeathed by Mitchell were 'lost' in the ever-growing collection.
Today, the library continues to fulfil Mitchell's vision and is a key repository for the documentary heritage of Australia. It remains an invaluable source for researchers and readers who want to learn more about Australia's heritage. Warren Fahey AM, a folklorist and researcher, has said that collections like David Mitchell's 'help us understand who we are as Australians'.
To mark the centenary of Mitchell's death and his gift to the nation, the Mitchell Library commenced a project to identify the original collection. A huge task, it began in 2002 and concluded in 2007. Now, the entire David Scott Mitchell collection has been catalogued and identified by library staff and can be viewed on their internet site. An exhibition was also held at the library during 2007 to commemorate the man and his collection. In 2010 to mark the centenary of the Mitchell Library opening its doors, the State Library of New South Wales has developed an exhibition and website showcasing objects from the collection.
Album of costume designs for Reedy River, Sydney New Theatre, 1954. Image courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales.
The importance and value of the Mitchell Library continues today as new generations of Australians discover the treasures that are kept within its walls.
Look, listen and play
- Download an audio program: The Story of the Mitchell Library, Sydney from ABC Radio National
- The Foundation of the Mitchell Library – an online 'lesson' from ABC Perth
- Listen to Clive James delivering the inaugural David Scott Mitchell lecture in 2002
The Mitchell Library
- State Library of New South Wales
- The Mitchell and Dixson Collections at the State Library
- 100 years of the Mitchell Library
- David Scott Mitchell Memorial Fellowship
- David Scott Mitchell
- Mitchell Library founder honoured –Transcript of Lateline (ABC TV) story
- The Obsession of David Scott Mitchell – April 2008, Quadrant Online
- A Grand Obsession: The DS Mitchell story (PDF) – guide to an exhibition from 2007 at the State Library of NSW
- Early matriculants from the University of Sydney (PDF) (see page 4 for David Scott Mitchell's entry)
- Rose Scott
- Rose Scott – Federation Gateway, National Library of Australia
- Dr James Mitchell
- Helenus Scott
- John Merewether (PDF)
Other people involved in Mitchell's life
The David Scott Mitchell collection
- A search of the books and periodicals in the David Scott Mitchell collection at the State Library of NSW
- National Treasures from Australia's Great Libraries – an exhibition from 2007 that includes items from the Mitchell Library
Selected items in the collection
- Queen Gooseberry's rum mug
- An album of images from Joseph Banks' Endeavour journal
- David Scott Mitchell's armchair and glasses
- An account of a convict named 'Isaacs' in 1821
- A collection of lithographs and sketches by S T Gill
- The journal of John Oxley, 1824
- Conrad Martens, Scenes in Sydney and New South Wales 1836-1863
- August Tronier, Album of photographic views of Sydney
Last updated: 12th January 2010
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Slavery and Anti-Slavery
Slavery and Anti-Slavery includes collections on the transatlantic slave trade, the global movement for the abolition of slavery, the legal, personal, and economic aspects of the slavery system, and the dynamics of emancipation in the U.S. as well as in Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions.
This database contains:
- 5.4 million cross-searchable pages: 12048 books, 170 serials, 71 manuscript collections, 377 supreme court records and briefs and 194 reference articles from Macmillan, Charles Scribner's Sons and Gale encyclopedias.
- Links to websites, biographies, chronology, bibliographies, and information on key collections, to give users background and context for further research.
- Collections published through partnerships with the Amistad Research Center, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the British Library, the National Archives in Kew, Oberlin College, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the University of Miami, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and many other institutions. | <urn:uuid:1ba579a8-3657-4250-9de9-1ed342e5ed10> | {
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Perhaps Dickens's best-loved work, Great Expectations tells the story of Pip, a young man with few prospects for advancement until a mysterious benefactor allows him to escape the Kent marshes for a more promising life in London. Despite his good fortune, Pip is haunted by figures from his past--the escaped convict Magwitch, the time-withered Miss Havisham, and her proud and beautiful ward, Estella--and in time uncovers not just the origins of his great expectations but the mystery of his own heart. A powerful and moving novel, Great Expectations is suffused with Dickens's memories of the past and its grip on the present, and it raises disturbing questions about the extent to which individuals affect each other's lives. This edition reprints the definitive Clarendon text. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst's new introduction ranges widely across critical issues raised by the novel: its biographical genesis, ideas of origin and progress and what makes a "gentleman," memory, melodrama, and the book's critical reception. The book includes four appendices and the fullest set of critical notes in any mass-market edition. | <urn:uuid:c4027943-6444-4438-b7c0-0783e7eb828c> | {
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Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Wikipedia.
Cartagena(kärtähā`nä), city (1993 pop. 616,231), capital of Bolívar dept., NW Colombia, a port on the Bay of Cartagena in the Caribbean Sea. It exports oil, coffee, and platinum. Manufactures include leather and tobacco products, cosmetics, and textiles. Tourism is a growing industry. Cartagena was founded in 1533 and became the treasure city of the Spanish Main, where precious stones and minerals from the New World awaited transshipment to Spain. Although the harbor was guarded by 29 stone forts and the city was encircled by a high wall of coral, Cartagena suffered sackings and invasions—in 1544, 1560, and in 1586 (by Sir Francis Drake). In 1741 it withstood a three-month British siege. The city was the first of those in Colombia and Venezuela to declare (1811) absolute independence from Spain. Known as the Republic of Cartagena, it was one of the bases used by Simón Bolívar to launch his campaign to liberate Venezuela. In 1815 the city was besieged and captured by the Spanish general Pablo MorilloMorillo, Pablo
, 1778–1837, Spanish general. Sent in 1815 to put down the revolution in New Granada, he captured Cartagena, quelled (1816) the insurrection in Bogotá, and then marched into present-day Venezuela. His military occupations were ruthless and bloody.
..... Click the link for more information. , who inflicted savage reprisals on the population. Captured by rebel forces in 1821, Cartagena was incorporated into Colombia. After the revolution the city lost its importance and did not regain it until the 20th cent., with the improvement of communications and the laying of a pipeline to the oil fields of the Magdalena basin. Shady plazas and narrow cobblestone streets make Cartagena one of the most picturesque cities in Latin America. Points of interest include walls and fortifications from colonial times, a 16th-century cathedral, and the Univ. of Cartagena.
Cartagena,Lat. Carthago Nova, city (1990 pop. 175,966), Murcia prov., SE Spain, on the Mediterranean Sea. A major seaport and naval base, it has a fine natural harbor, protected by forts, with a naval arsenal and important shipbuilding and metallurgical industries. Lead, iron, and zinc are mined and processed nearby, but the rich silver mines exploited in ancient times by Carthaginians and Romans are now almost exhausted. The city is an episcopal see. It was founded by Hasdrubal c.225 B.C. and soon became a flourishing port, the chief Carthaginian base in Spain. Captured (209 B.C.) by Scipio Africanus Major, it continued to flourish under the Romans. The Moors, who took it in the 8th cent., later included it in Murcia. The Spaniards recovered it definitively in the 13th cent. Cartagena was sacked (1585) by Sir Francis Drake and figured later in the Peninsular and Carlist wars. It served as the Loyalist naval base during the civil war (1936–39). In the 20th cent. it has suffered from the competition of other Mediterranean ports (e.g., Barcelona, Málaga, and Valencia). The medieval Castillo de la Concepción, whose ruins are surrounded by fine gardens, commands a splendid view of the city and harbor. No traces of the ancient city remain.
a city and important port and industrial center in Spain on the Mediterranean coast, in the province of Murcia. Population, 147, 400 (1969). The port has an annual turnover of goods of over 10 million tons. Nonferrous metals and fruit are exported, and oil is imported. Oil refining (the capacity of the plant is approximately 8 millon tons) and the petrochemical industry are located in a suburb, the port city of Escombera; the production of lead, zinc, and cadmium is located in another suburb, La Union. Other industries include shipbuilding and chemicals (in particular, sulfuric acid). There is also a steam power plant, with a capacity of 250 megawatts.
Cartagena, known in ancient times as Carthago Nova, was founded around 228 b.c. by the military leader Hasdrubal as the Carthaginian military base for the conquest of Spain. The city was under Roman rule from 209 b.c. to the fifth century a.d. It was conquered by the Vandals in 425, by Byzantium in 534, by the Visigoths in the seventh century, and by the Arabs in 711. In the course of the Reconquista, Cartagena was annexed by Castile in 1243.
Cartagena was one of the ports of the Republican fleet duringthe National Revolutionary War of the Spanish People of1936–39.
a city in northern Colombia, on the coast of the Caribbean Sea, the administrative center of Bolivar Department. Population, 323, 000 (1971).
Cartagena is an important Colombian port, with a goods turnover of half a million tons in 1969. The city is linked by highway with Bogota. It is the economic and commercial distribution center of northern Colombia. The production of crocheted and knitted wear, shoes, vegetable oils, flour, and sugar are important branches of Cartagena’s economy. An oil refinery and chemical enterprises are located near the city. Exports include oil and coffee.
Cartagena was founded in 1533 by the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Heredia on the site of an Indian settlement. Cartagena was the largest port and fortress during the flourishing of the Spanish colonial empire.
Many monuments from the colonial period remain intact, including the strong city walls and fortifications (1532–1796, engineers J. B. Antonelli, A. de Arevalo, and others), the cathedral (1538–1796, architects, J. C. Chacon and others), and monasteries, churches, and houses of the 16th to 18th centuries, all mainly in the baroque style. Modern structures include the baseball stadium (1947, architects G. A. Ortega and M. G. Solano), with a reinforced concrete roof projecting far over the stands. | <urn:uuid:593687d2-db69-4634-8372-c5166a601e2d> | {
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Being practitioners of a two-dimensional medium, photographers rely on various techniques, both tonal and compositional, to bring viewers into the frame and to create a sense of depth in their images. Some of these visual effects are as old as Renaissance perspective techniques itself, including vanishing points, leading lines, and pointers that bring the viewer's eye into the scene or that focus attention on a specific subject within the image borders. This month's Picture This! assignment was just that, and readers responded with a host of images that worked with many of the techniques from the visual perspective book.
Picture This! - Our Next Assignment
Please Read This:
1) Images sent to us cannot be returned. You retain complete copyright over the images, but do grant us permission to print your image(s) in the magazine and on our website, www.shutterbug.com.
2) Because images are not returned please send a quality print or duplicate transparency. We will not accept or view images on CD, ZIP, or any other electronic media.
3) Images will be selected on the basis of content and technical quality. Please mark your outer envelope with the topic of the month (for example, "Wide View").
4) Enclose a short caption with the image stating camera, lens, film and exposure, plus location. If you are submitting an image with a recognizable person we must have a model release or signed permission from that person to reproduce their image in the magazine and on the website.
Send your image
and information to:
- Watch This Video and You’ll Never Shoot Photos on Railroad Tracks Again
- Top Guns: 4 of the Most Popular Photographers on Social Media Share the Secrets to Their Success
- Does It Bug You that Nature Documentaries Are Kind of Fake? Watch This Video & Tell Us What You Think
- Summer Project: How to Put Classic Nikon Lenses Back to Work
- Capture the Beauty of Long Exposures with Your Camera’s Live View Mode and an ND Filter (VIDEO) | <urn:uuid:589515af-c9c5-48fa-b612-f39edc8c3c7b> | {
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Though there was a museum at The Catholic University of America (CUA) going back to the university’s founding in the late 19th century, the Archives at CUA originated much later as shortly before World War II Msgr. Francis Haas began collecting the papers of important Catholic labor leaders such as Terence Powderly, head of the Knights of Labor (1879-1893), and John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers of America (1898-1908). These papers were stored in Mullen Library, but there was no staff to organize nor rooms where researchers might examine them. After the war, history faculty, particularly Rev. John Tracy Ellis, worried that university history and of Catholic Americans generally was being lost through neglect of vital records and papers.
As a result of Ellis’ advocacy, a committee that included Msgr. Edward Jordan (the vice rector), Mr. Eugene Willging (acting director of the library), and Rev. Henry Browne, was formed to establish an archives envisioned as the “memory” of the university, a depository for collection of the nation’s Catholic leaders and important organizations, and a resource for the history of Catholics in the American labor movement. The Archives officially opened on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8, 1949) in an impressive ceremony that included Wayne Grover, archivist of the United States; Archbishop O’Boyle, chancellor of the university; Ernst Posner, archivist of American University and a seminal theorist of archives; Philip Brooks, president of the Society of American Archivists; and Dr. Guy Ford Stanton, executive director of the American Historical Association (see photograph above). They spoke of the importance of archives in the preservation of culture, and, specifically, of the Catholic Church’s long tradition as a keeper of historical records. Continue reading “The Archivist’s Nook: More Than You Imagine – The Archives at CUA” | <urn:uuid:d019541e-0737-4328-bf72-3bc449bc1a24> | {
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The destruction will hit vulnerable areas all over the world from France and Italy to Alaska and Russia, to the American West Coast, Indonesia and Japan – and loss of life is predicted to be in the millions.
The group has been charting the movements of the so-called Black Star, aka Nemesis, Nibiru and Planet X, which they believe is a twin for our own Sun with massive gravitational influence pulling and squeezing the Earth.
NASA is sceptical as to its existence but that hasn’t stopped the American space agency spending millions of dollars on the hunt to find the Black Star.
Astronomers have been running the Micron All Star Survey – a four year infrared study of the night sky – and NASA sent up their Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer to hunt for pseudo-stars known as Brown Dwarfs.
The theory is that the Black Star / Nemesis is a Brown Dwarf, a massive clump of gas and dust which attempted to become a star but failed. Gravity pulls the star together and heats it up but there is simply not enough mass to jump-start the nuclear reactions of stars like our own sun.
As a result Brown Dwarfs radiate little or no light or heat – some are cooler than a domestic oven or the human body.
This makes them near-impossible to see, but their considerable mass can still impact on planets and stars.
Members of astronomy website Planetxnews.comhave been closely following the growing number of earthquakes and volcanoes hitting Earth in recent weeks and aligning them with the predicted path of the Black Star / Nemesis / Nibiru.
Writer Terral Croft said after a slight lull in seismic activity ripping apart the Earth’s crust there was to be a big rise culminating on November 19.
He added: “Global seismic activity reaches a peak in the second two weeks of November moving into December 2017.
“The predicted backside alignment quake event is scheduled for November 19, 2017, when the Earth passes behind the Sun relative to the Black Star.”
He predicted massive tremors along a fault originating in Indonesia and terminating near Gibraltar and warned: “This scenario can easily lead to new earthquake and volcanic activity for Italy and France.”
A spokesman for Space.com said Brown Dwarfs were notoriously difficult to spot and only existed as a theory until the late 1980s.
He added: “Because brown dwarfs give off so little light and energy, they can be challenging to locate.
“They were originally theoretical objects, unseen until the late 1980s.
“As astronomical instruments grew more sensitive, more brown dwarfs have been detected, though they remain a challenge.”
You have to know what is planet Nibiru….
When is the end of the world? Planet X and other doomsday theories explained – and what the scientific evidence shows
For as long as mankind has walked the earth, the human race has been predicting and discussing when the world will end and what may cause it.
Recently, conspiracy theorists argued a mysterious planet called Nibiru would smash into the Earth on September 23, 2017. Let’s take a closer look at the different “End of Days” theories – both crackpot and rational.
What was the September 23 theory?
David Meade, a Christian numerologist, first predicted that Planet X or Nibiru was hurtling towards the Earth and would wipe out humanity on September 23, 2017.
But after his ridiculous prediction, based on hidden numerical codes supposedly hidden within the Bible, failed to happen, Meade has changed his barmy claims.
Meade told The Sun Online that people have misunderstood his prophecy and the doomsday will take place over a period of seven years starting in October.
The seven-year transition period will include solar flares that could destroy electricity grids, nuclear attacks, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis, according to the imaginative numerologist.
When did Sir Issac Newton think the world was going to end?
Despite being the godfather of modern physics, including discovering the law of gravity, Issac Newton was also a religious man who was interested in the occult.
As a result, his prediction that humanity would be wiped out by the year 2060 was solely based on his deeply-held faith in Christianity.
He based his theory on the Bible’s Book of Daniel and calculated the date of the apocalypse as being exactly 1,260 years after the formation of the Holy Roman Empire.
A recently published letter by Newton, which was auctioned in 1939 after sitting unseen in a trunk for 250 years, went on display at Israel’s national library.
Newton’s prediction on the document also claims the world will end after “Jews” were returned to the Holy Land – something which happened in 1948 following the creation of Israel.
Will the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) destroy the Earth?
The LHC, located at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, can recreate the “Big Bang” in its underground facility in Switzerland.
As a result, some theorists have claimed the giant proton-colliding machine could create black holes which could swallow the Earth.
But while admitting that black holes could be created, CERN scientists claimed that any gravity-pulling voids would be too small to make any kind of impact.
Despite the dangers, the LHC was turned on in 2008 and the world is still intact.
Yet the boffins at CERN are not without a sense of humour.
Indeed, the facility is home to a two-metre-tall statue of Lord Shiva, a gift from the Indian government, who is known as the “destroyer of worlds.”
What is the Doomsday argument?
First popularised in the latter half of the 20th century, this theory is based on mathematic probability and estimates there is a 95% chance the human race will end in 9120 years.
Many theorists use the analogy of a lottery. If you were given ticket number five in the lottery it is statistically more probable that the game is made up of ten tickets than 10 million tickets.
And because there have been around 100 billion people born since the start of the human race it is statically probable that we are in the middle of the cycle rather than at the start.
This is because if the human race continues to maintain its current rate of reproduction and survives for thousands of years, the population will be in the high trillions which would not be sustainable, theorists argue.
When will the Earth be swallowed by the sun?
In around five billion years, the sun will turn into a red giant star caused by a helium-burning process.
It will expand and swallow Mercury and Venus and most likely Earth as well.
Whether our planet is consumed or not, the movement of the sun will mean the end of life on Earth.
The human race will have to figure out a way of leaving the planet to a more habitable home.
Another theory centres around the fact that when stars turn into red giants, their movement causes other planets in their solar systems to become habitable.
As a result, our technologically advanced future relatives could figure out a way of moving Earth to a more habitable part of the system.
This images can prove that planet Nibiru exists…..👇
Leaked still of the Planet X system on its approach, caught by infrared camera
The most satisfying images of planet X
1) A plane flies past the Shard in central London, as the sky takes on an unusual orange colour caused by Storm Ophelia
2) Red sun over London. The red appearance was due to the remnants of Hurricane Ophelia dragging in tropical air and dust from the Sahara
3) Yellow sky shows in the background during a BBC news interview in London
4) Red sun over London. The red appearance was due to the remnants of Hurricane Ophelia dragging in tropical air and dust from the Sahara
5) The yellow glow from the sky can be seen as Theresa May and Brexit Secretary David Davis leave Downing Street | <urn:uuid:edec64b9-567f-4900-a830-d1c63fa0590f> | {
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Tech Savvy - Teachers and Children
Access to tablets for the child of the future and computer training for the teacher of tomorrow.
Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting kids working together and motivating them, then the teacher is the most important. –– Bill Gates
We introduce children to the future and empower teachers with new skills.
Tablet smart and confident
Game smart and having fun
Excellent perceptual skills
Tablets are used to compliment concrete learning (not to take its place)
Computer literate, effective users
Connected and creative – making resources
Professional communicators and report writers
Computer training enables teachers to become more professional when it comes to their admin and also to google for educational aid thanks to free wifi. | <urn:uuid:fa5ff9d3-a587-498f-acb4-37edebf1dff9> | {
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Semi-scale? Super-scale? Fn good-enough-for-government work-scale? Make realistic model rockets based on real rockets. This is the Little Joe II, test vehicle for the Apollo space capsule which was launched on a Saturn V rocket. Wow, it's been 45 years since the first landing on the moon with Apollo 11. I remember watching that on a black and white TV.
This is a recreation of a model rocket that I built from scratch as a kid. Estes had a Little Joe II model rocket and the Saturn V which were the coolest things and top of the line. Couldn't afford to get one at that time so I built my own. Model rocketry was a great thing to get into since it was a way to learn about the "Space race" or who was going to get on the moon first. Any geek worthy of attending Starfleet Academy would know their spacecraft history. From the Mercury program, Gemini, and to the development of the Apollo program, space capsules that carried astronauts into outer space have always been fascinating. And Soyuz was the only other game in town.
Model rocket launch day was always exciting because that meant we had saved up enough to buy a pack of engines. It was a rare occasion to get C6-5s since they were more expensive. We launched from the middle of a small park in Brooklyn, always hoping for favorable wind conditions so that the rockets would not drift into the creek or hit the trees(yes, they grow in Brooklyn) when the parachute deployed. And also, hoping that big dry cell battery still had enough of a charge to make the nichrome wire ignitors glow to fire up the engine.
This turned out more of a static display model bigger than it ought to be but with slight modifications it could still fly, maybe with a couple of E or F engines. Cool to hang from the ceiling. Way back when, I only recall from seeing in magazines that people in Poland or Czechoslovakia were experimenting with high power model rockets. But alas, here in post 9/11 NYC, it would be difficult to fly even small model rockets without causing alarm, not even sure if it is legal now but supplies are sold at local craft stores.
Paper, thin cardboard, glue, some balsa wood and paint were all you needed. Model rocketry encompassed all the basics of crafting and the thinking of engineering. I just wanted to put up this instructable to show everyone what little it takes to stoke the imagination. Even if you do not have building skills, that's what it is all about. Learning, doing, making mistakes, try again. Get hands on. Get experience. Make it better.
CAUTION: Follow the National Association of Rocketry guidelines and credo for safe flight. SCUDs parked in your backyard should not be aimed at your neighbor, okay, only if they drive over your lawn trying to get into their blocked driveway, blocked by their own second car...wait | <urn:uuid:a9030645-1f8b-471a-bda1-e1b91fc8d25a> | {
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This chapter draws together the conclusions of the preceding argument. As Aristotle’s esoteric works began to attract some new interest in the limited circles represented by men like Tyrannio, and among Peripatetics like Andronicus and Ariston, we might see Andronicus as especially struck by the value of the Categories as a proleptic treatise able to ‘tease out’ and articulate our preconceptions. Andronicus, then, brought the treatise to the attention of a wider audience. The Platonist Eudorus exemplifies that interest, but the Platonists’ willingness to read the Categories as a map of intelligible reality drew criticism like that from Lucius’. Andronicus’ pupil, Boethus of Sidon, replied to these criticisms (engaging in turn in a more detailed metaphysical interpretation of the Categories), but also replied to the linguistic reading of the Categories represented by Athenodorus, of whom Andronicus may not even have been aware. Boethus introduces a fundamentally new way of understanding the Categories as a treatise about semantics.
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian. | <urn:uuid:0dcafcfc-0758-40bc-9bc7-8c3289dd3cea> | {
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Adrenal fatigue has been proposed for a number of years as part of the cause of Fibromyalgia. It is difficult to say how it rates in order of importance as an underlying cause, because it also develops as a concurrent problem due to any chronic illness. By the time any patience is diagnosed or discovers through their own research that they have Fibromyalgia, they have frequently developed chronic fatigue or lethargy. Not a surprise really.
Many of the underlying causes for chronic fatigue are the same for Fibromyalgia. Adrenal fatigue is often the result of chronic stress or lack of recovery from normal stress. Under normal conditions the body increases excretion of norepinephrine and epinephrine(same as adrenaline), and cortisol when we are under stress. Normal levels of these neurotransmitters and hormones help us feel like we are able to handle the stress. We have both the physical and mental coping ability to deal with and recover from stress.
Chronic or lingering stress strains the adrenal gland and central nervous system(CNS) leading to a slow depletion of cortisol, and the catecholamines, epinephrine and norepinephrine. Low levels result in fatigue and of feeling of being too easily overwhelmed by what used to be normal or average stressors. Other symptoms that may coexist with stress is poor sleep quality or restful sleep.
Lab testing is required here to determine the presence and extent of the adrenal fatigue. Many types of testing exist from straight measurement of cortisol, DHEA, and adrenaline in differing sources including urine, saliva, and blood or serum. Cortisol is frequently measured in saliva throughout the day in order to assess the baseline and circadian rhythm. Cortisol should be highest in the morning at rising and in the first few hours of the day. It follows a bell shape curve and reduces toward a steady baseline in the late afternoon and through the night. A flat or low bell curve indicates adrenal fatigue. Typically 4 saliva samples at varying times of the day help to extrapolate the curve. Samples are taken at 8am, 12 noon, 4pm, and 10pm for example.
This same curve or rhythm can be assessed using blood or serum samples throughout the day or simply as a single sample in the morning. If the curve or single sample of cortisol is low, adrenal fatigue is present.
Low DHEA-sulfate in saliva, urine and blood tests will also indicate possible adrenal fatigue. Although low DHEA-s can also be an indicator for hormone imbalance or deficiency. The other extremely valuable test is a serum catecholamine test measuring norepinephrine, epinephrine(adrenaline), and dopamine. Low norepinephrine and epinephrine are indicators for adrenal fatigue. These central and peripheral neurotransmitters are also found present in many other health concerns such as sleep disorders, depression, dysthymia, and inability in managing stress. When treated correctly, adrenal function can return to normal very quickly. Best outcomes occur when both the catecholamines and cortisol are assessed. Treatment to restore adrenals includes targeted amino acid therapy and herbs with specific actions which increase output of norepinephrine, epinephrine, and cortisol. | <urn:uuid:421f6ae1-62e1-4972-bd7c-f21cc9784fc2> | {
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Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide. It has the very nice feature of sublimation -- as it melts, it turns directly into carbon dioxide gas rather than a liquid.
If you ever have to handle dry ice, you want to be sure to wear heavy gloves, because a block of dry ice has a surface temperature of -109.3 degrees Fahrenheit (-78.5 degrees C). The super-cold surface temperature can easily damage your skin if you touch it directly.
It's actually a lot like if you were to touch the handle of a hot pot or pan without an oven mitt. If you did this for less than a second -- so that you simply felt the heat and quickly pulled your hand away -- then at most your skin would be a little red. However, if you were to grab a hold of the handle tightly for a couple of seconds or more, chances are you would get a pretty nasty burn. The heat kills the skin cells.
It's the same with dry ice. Dry ice actually freezes your skin cells. The resulting injury is very similar to a burn and should be treated with the same medical attention. For the same reason you never want to taste or swallow dry ice. This would be like drinking something that was scalding hot and you would risk damaging your mouth, throat and part of your esophagus. | <urn:uuid:c7dfac42-da08-491a-9c32-a09ae7165150> | {
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Thank you to KinderLab Robotics for sponsoring EarlyEdCon 2017!
KinderLab Robotics is the creator of KIBO, a robot kit based on 15 years of child development research. With KIBO, 4- to 7-year-olds create, design, decorate and bring their own robot to life! Created by Prof. Marina Bers at Tufts University specifically for teachers, KIBO is used in 49 countries and has been tested and approved by thousands of children and their caregivers. KIBO has proven efficacy (http://ase.tufts.edu/DevTech/ReadyForRobotics/index.asp) in helping kids learn STEAM—and get excited about it!
KIBO engages even the youngest children in active learning. When children build, code, and decorate their own robot, they are learning invaluable skills that will lead them on the path for success in science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) skills and future careers. As they learn all these skills, they will think it is just play! KIBO lets kids’ imaginations soar without requiring screen time on PCs, tablets, or smartphones.
In addition to KIBO, KinderLab offers a complete suite of teaching materials that help integrate STEAM elements into a wide range of curricula, including art, cultural studies, and reading literacy.
7 Sun Street
Waltham, MA 02453 | <urn:uuid:4b6af43a-dfb4-4ed0-b7fd-324fe0e9fece> | {
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off the charts
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
Hardship in America, 2013: Homelessness Remains High and Affordable Housing Is Increasingly Scarce
November 26, 2013 at 4:09 PM
Six years after the Great Recession began, the number of homeless families with children remains stubbornly high. And the number of low-income households with unmet needs for housing assistance — especially families with children — has soared. Funding cuts under sequestration threaten to halt progress against homelessness and worsen the shortage of affordable housing.
Let’s first look at the homelessness data:
- Over 1.1 million children and youth were homeless during the 2011-2012 school year, according to the Department of Education. Four-fifths were living in homes that were not their own and that may be crowded and unstable; the rest were living in homeless shelters or on the street, in cars, or in abandoned buildings.
- The number of families with children in homeless shelters or temporary housing for the homeless jumped by 30 percent in the first two years of the recession (2007-2009) and remained only slightly below the 2009 level as of 2012, according to a Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) report. This figure doesn’t include families who are doubling up with other households, even if they have to move every few weeks.
- HUD’s latest count of the number of people living on the streets or in shelters on one night in January showed a modest drop among families with children. (The drop since 2007, however, was close to 25 percent each among people with disabilities and veterans.) And one-night counts are less reliable than counts of the number of homeless households over a whole year.
Millions of families that aren’t homeless nonetheless face serious housing affordability problems. More than 8 million low-income households who receive no federal housing assistance pay more than half of their income for rent and utilities (see chart). That’s a 43 percent increase since 2007.
More than 2 million low-income households use vouchers to rent modest private-market housing at an affordable cost. But low-income seniors, people with disabilities, and working families with children eligible for the voucher program often must wait years for assistance due to limited funding.
Sequestration is hitting both the voucher program and anti-homelessness efforts (as well as public housing and other areas). Scheduled cuts in voucher funding could eliminate vouchers for as many as 185,000 low-income families by the end of 2014. Cuts in the grants that communities use to help homeless people could force them to cut back efforts to prevent homelessness or re-house homeless families. The voucher cuts also mean that many fewer families that are homeless or at imminent risk of homelessness will have access to vouchers.
Sequestration’s harmful impact on low-income housing is one of many reasons why budget negotiators should replace part or all of sequestration for the next year or two with alternative deficit-reduction measures. | <urn:uuid:a39daa7e-66ff-41e0-b982-d864153c1480> | {
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Polar bears are opportunistic hunters. They have been recorded stalking caribou, raiding eider duck colonies, catching geese from underneath the water and even taking a passing swipe at a snowy owl, raven or snow bunting.
Individual bears can adapt hunting strategies in a wide variety of ways. One interesting adaptation is the ice floe impersonation. A polar bear will swim/float within striking distance of a seal or even beluga whale. Bears have been witnessed exhibiting this behaviour in the Churchill River!
During Churchill’s bear season, you can watch bears learn how to hunt…tourists. In 2005, one bear, nicknamed Number One (pictured on page 23), learned to use the handle on the side of the Tundra Vehicles as added leverage to get just that much closer to a free lunch. Over the years, there have been bears who have learned to open doors, slide windows, climb on tires – luckily, we are too skinny for most bears to put forth that much effort.
Inuit hunters have told stories crediting bears with a variety of adaptations, including covering their black nose with their paw while stalking or even using large ice blocks to kill walrus.
While these stories have not been scientifically confirmed, the bears’ intelligence and resourcefulness should not be underestimated. Of course, I tend to take the word of people that used to hunt bears with a sharpened 3’ long stick even if it has not been proven.
Anyone who has spent time around polar bears knows that they are always watching and learning and waiting. Often, they seemingly nonchalantly assess a situation and retreat, only to come back under cover of darkness and enact their plan. Regardless, it is quite clear that many bears learn after only one repetition. This combined with their curiosity makes life in polar bear country quite interesting. | <urn:uuid:6624aaac-8b9f-4381-8f26-ab7669955666> | {
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Answers to key questions in Sedges (Carex) of Saskatchewan, Fascicle 3,
Flora of Saskatchewan by Anna Leighton leading to this species. The
answers are in the order you would normally work through the key.
achenes three-sided, occasionally terete, though their shape may be
concealed by flattened perigynia. NOT [stigmas 2; achenes
or more per culm, terminal and lateral; spike bracts present on lateral
spikes (except in Section Phyllostachyae), lowest bract usually
evident, often conspicuous. NOT [Spikes 1 per culm, terminal;
spike bracts absent].
pistillate scales not bract-like or leaf-like but similar in size and
shape to individual perigynia (up to twice as long as perigynia in C.
magellanica ssp. irrigua). NOT [Lower pistillate scales
resembling green, leaf-like bracts much longer and wider than individual
sparsely to densely pubescent or puberulent (in C. pedunculata
pubescence represented by very short hairs scattered near tip; in some
species of Sect. Acrocystis, perigynia may be glabrous or
virtually hairless, but all members of this group have convexly 3-sided
to terete achenes with tight fitting perigynia and a stipe-like base
about equal to beak in length). NOT [Perigynia glabrous.]
usually less than 5 mm long but if longer, beak distinctly shorter than
perigynium body; pubescence various. NOT [Perigynia 5-7 mm long with
beak as long as or longer than perigynium body; pubescence on the
perigynia dense, stiff and pointing toward tip]
with +/- flat sides; perigynia loosely fitting achene and variously
shaped in cross-section, densely to sparsely pubescent (faintly
puberulent with very short hairs scattered near tip in C. pedunculata);
pistillate spike bracts sheathing or sheathless. NOT
[Achenes convexly 3-sided to terete; perigynia tightly enclosing achenes
and convexly 3-sided to terete, sparsely pubescent, (rarely glabrous in C.
deflexa and C. rossii, pubescent only on ribs in C. tonsa);
stipe-like base about equal to beak in length; pistillate spike bracts
sheathless. Section Acrocystis (C. deflexa, C.
inops ssp. heliophila, C. peckii, C. rossii, C.
tonsa, C. umbellata).]
Beak up to
0.5 mm long and lacking teeth; lowest spike bract blade shorter than
lowest spike. Section Clandestinae (C. concinna, C.
pedunculata, C. richardsonii). NOT [Beak 0.5-2 mm long,
distinctly bidentate; lowest spike bract blade at least twice as long as
lowest spike, and often as long as inflorescence. Section Paludosae
(C. houghtoniana, C. lasiocarpa, C. pellita).]
scales acute, obtuse or rounded, awnless; perigynia 2-3.3 mm long with
tapering base, visibly pubescent with white hairs; terminal spike
staminate. NOT [Pistillate scales abruptly awned; perigynia 3.5-5
(6) mm long with stipe-like base about half the total length, faintly
puberulent with scattered, very short, straight hairs near tip (best
seen in profile along edges); terminal spike usually androgynous,
overlapping or densely bunched at culm tip; pistillate spikes globose to
ovoid-ellipsoidal, 4-8 mm long by 3-4 mm wide; staminate spike 4-7 mm
long; sheath of lowest bract 1-5 mm long, red only with age; pistillate
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overlapping; pistillate spikes longer than wide, 5-16 mm long by 3-4 mm
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Eglise Notre Dame – Notre Dame Church
Rue de la Paix
This 13th century church looks a little rundown but is noteworthy for this is not only the oldest monument in Calais, but this is also where Captain Charles de Gaulle married a young Calaisian women called Yvonne Vendroux in 1921.
Architecturally speaking it does seem a little odd looking. Construction was started in thirteenth century by Flemish masons and architects but was still being constructed in the fourteenth century during the English occupation. At this time English architects took over giving it an interesting Flemish/Gothic look. It is now acclaimed as the only English styled church in France.
It took around a hundred years to complete and in 1691 it was tinkered with again when Vauban, the most distinguished military engineer of the time built a large cistern on the north side to collect rainwater for drinking purposes in case of a siege.
The church was severely damaged in World War II and renovations are still, slowly, ongoing. | <urn:uuid:b1408686-4d5e-4d27-80dd-935a00932faf> | {
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Reducing the Parts
Part of the problem is in how technologists categorize skills. I used to explain to my development staff that you are not a particular type of programmer. You are not defined by the tool but by what you produce.
In truth, most technologies share common elements, with the differences largely being semantic and logistic. But the core implementation of one technology is, in fact, quite similar with that of another related technology.
Here's an example to illustrate. Numerous Novell engineers were left behind upon the emerging market dominance of Windows NT. They felt that they didn't have the time to learn Windows NT while supporting and developing their current NetWare environments.
However, technologists who understood that the differences between the two operating systems were not so great quickly added Windows NT skills. In fact, they understand that whether it is NetWare, NT, Banyan Vines, or some other network operating system, notable similarities made the technology philosophically similar.
In their core utilization, the network operating systems mentioned are still simply methods for the storage, retrieval, or integration of data and applications. In each, you had users, groups of users, protocols, and connectivity.
I am purposely oversimplifying the idea to make the point. The fact is that many technologists who were more conceptual in their approach made the transition with little or no training. They understand how to study and adopt new technology quickly and without panic, as described in the section that follows. | <urn:uuid:97963504-148b-4075-b9d0-94a284b692a4> | {
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Ensuring privacy when undertaking surveillance
Surveillance and privacy are not natural bedfellows. However, as the public begin to understand how surveillance can help with their safety and security, the use of surveillance in public places is becoming more accepted. While privacy has always been a priority in the surveillance industry, public awareness over their rights has been heightened by initiatives like GDPR in Europe and FISMA in the US. As a result, organizations have had to take note and show how they are safeguarding privacy to not only protect their brand perception, but also comply with union regulations that specify privacy protections in the workplace. All of this combined is putting more pressure on organizations to secure their surveillance data.
Ensuring users understand their obligations
Surveillance cameras are a common sight in public places – in 2016 there were thought to be nearly 350 million surveillance cameras worldwide – and people are accepting that they will be caught on camera regularly. In London alone, it is estimated that citizens are recorded on camera around 300 times each day, which puts the need to understand how all this data is processed and stored into perspective.
The organizations capturing the surveillance may be doing so for a variety of reasons – from securing an area against criminal activities through to ensuring traffic is running smoothly. Manufacturers and sellers of surveillance cameras can help users stay informed on surveillance best practices. This includes how to correctly and ethically use the information collected by surveillance cameras, as well as help them take the necessary steps to comply with local and international privacy regulation.
Enabling compliance through technology
While there are regional nuances in the exact wording of how organizations should comply with data security and surveillance regulation, essentially it is there to protect people’s human rights by safeguarding their right to privacy. Therefore, it puts in place controls that must be implemented around the capturing, storing and sharing of video data. Several tools and technologies exist to protect people’s privacy during the process of viewing, recording and exporting video. The most common are dynamic anonymization, permanent masking and redaction.
Dynamic anonymization: With this technique, analytics software is used to automatically anonymize people in the video in real time as the analytics monitors the actions and movements in a scene. Should the identities of those captured in the footage be crucial to an investigation, only authorized personnel can unmask the data to access the video. Not only does this protect individuals in their right to privacy, it also covers an organization’s obligations to keep people safe – especially in open, public spaces.
Permanent masking: This approach is most commonly used in environments where the identities of passers-by are not relevant to the primary aim of the surveillance. Permanent masking provides a more basic way of protecting people’s privacy by anonymizing everyone in a video and permanently burning the masking into the video so there is no way to undo the masking in the footage. This means that while areas can be monitored for things like hazards, footfall counting or non-human surveillance like traffic monitoring, should someone need to access the footage as part of an investigation, the identities of those in the video cannot be uncovered. Permanent masking may involve static masking – where there are defined areas of a scene that are permanently masked in live and recorded video – or dynamic masking, where masking is not static but dynamically applied to moving objects in a scene in live and recorded video.
Redaction: Rather than blanket-anonymizing people caught on camera, redaction is undertaken after someone’s image has been caught on camera to protect the privacy of non-relevant individuals. This is most commonly used when an organization has to share un-anonymized footage, such as with law enforcement as part of an investigation. While this technique helps organizations protect the privacy of innocent individuals, it does not safeguard privacy for live video streams.
As well as the above approaches to surveillance privacy protection, some non-visual surveillance technologies naturally lend themselves to identity protection. For example, thermal cameras are often used in sensitive environments, for example, patient monitoring in healthcare, so people can be observed remotely without capturing personal details – something that is required by HIPAA regulation in the US.
Making privacy protection the norm
At Axis, we strive to provide customers with the guidance and tools to help people secure their video data and safeguard privacy. We encourage organizations to be aware of their responsibilities and make responsible use of data part of the norm. | <urn:uuid:e0e8b146-dcdf-45a5-8574-00348296c38d> | {
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01 H1N1 Flu Disease FAQs (General Information)
The H1N1 flu virus is a new strain of the influenza or flu virus that first appeared last April and has spread around the world. This new virus was first detected in people in the United States in April 2009. This virus is spreading from person-to-person worldwide, probably in much the same way that regular seasonal influenza viruses spread.
On June 11, 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) signaled that a pandemic of 2009 H1N1 flu was underway. World Health Organization (WHO) http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/en/index.html.
The symptoms of H1N1 flu in people are similar to the symptoms of regular human seasonal flu infection. They include: fever, lethargy (lack of energy), lack of appetite, and coughing. Some people with H1N1 flu have also reported runny nose, sore throat, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.
Like seasonal flu, H1N1 flu in humans can vary in severity from mild to severe. Severe disease with pneumonia, respiratory failure, and even death is possible with H1N1 flu infection. Sometimes bacterial infections may occur at the same time as or after infection with flu viruses and lead to pneumonias, ear infections, or sinus infections.
What is the incubation period of the H1N1 (swine) flu? How long will it take to get the flu after being exposed?
The estimated incubation period is unknown and could range from 1 to 7 days, and more likely 1 to 4 days. Persons with novel H1N1 flu virus infection should be considered potentially contagious (able to spread disease) for up to 7 days after illness onset. Persons who continue to be ill longer than 7 days should be considered potentially contagious until symptoms have resolved. Children, especially younger children, might be contagious for longer periods. People with influenza-like illness should stay home for at least 24 hours after their fever is gone (without the use of fever-reducing medicine).
At this time, there is not enough information to predict how severe this H1N1 flu outbreak will be over the course of the flu season, or how it will compare with seasonal influenza.
With seasonal flu, we know that seasons vary in terms of timing, duration and severity. Seasonal influenza can cause mild to severe illness, and at times can lead to death. Each year, in the United States, on average 36,000 people die from flu-related complications and more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu-related causes. Of those hospitalized, 20,000 are children younger than 5 years old. Over 90% of deaths and about 60 percent of hospitalization occur in people older than 65.
So far, with H1N1 flu, the largest number of H1N1 flu confirmed and probable cases have occurred in people between the ages of 5 and 24-years-old. Pregnancy, as well as previously recognized high risk medical conditions from seasonal influenza appear to be associated with increased risk of complications from the H1N1 flu.
Certain people are more likely to get complications from H1N1 flu. They are 1) Children younger than 5 years old; 2) Pregnant women; and 3) People of any age with chronic (long-lasting) medical conditions (such as asthma, diabetes, kidney disease, or heart disease). Unlike with seasonal flu, adults older than 64 years do not appear to be at increased risk of H1N1 flu-related complications thus far.
Complications from the flu can include pneumonia, bronchitis, and sinus and ear infections. The flu can also make chronic health problems worse. For example people with asthma may experience asthma attacks while they have the flu and people with chronic congestive heart failure may have worsening of this condition that is triggered by the flu. If you are concerned about your health risks, see your doctor.
The H1N1 flu virus is spread from person to person the same ways that seasonal flu is spread: usually when someone with the flu coughs or sneezes close to another person, or coughs or sneezes into their own hands and touches another person’s hands or face.
Sometimes people may become infected by touching something with flu viruses on it, such as a door knob or handle, and then touching their mouth or nose. Flu virus survives in the environment for a few hours and sometimes longer. The H1N1 virus is new. Research is being conducted to better understand its characteristics. Studies have shown that influenza (flu) viruses in general can survive on environmental surfaces and can infect a person for up to 2 to 8 hours after being deposited (left) on surfaces like cafeteria tables, doorknobs, and desks.
Frequent hand washing by people with and without the flu will help reduce the chance of spreading the virus from person to person and from environmental surfaces. You cannot get the H1N1 swine flu from eating pork or touching a pig.
If you have a flu-like illness, your doctor will consider multiple factors when he or she examines you. Not all patients will be screened for H1N1 virus. Factors that will guide your doctor's decision to test include whether the virus is widespread, exposure to probable or confirmed cases, and severity of illness.
In California, most doctors are no longer testing patients. Instead they are mostly treating flu illness, as needed.
You are unlikely to get infected with the same exact strain of influenza (flu) more than once. Most people with flu-like illness since spring 2009 don't know whether they were infected with H1N1 or another flu virus strain. If you think you had H1N1 infection, ask your doctor if you should be vaccinated.
Even if you had a confirmed case of H1N1 flu, you can still get infected with other flu strains. You should get the seasonal flu vaccine if it is recommended by your health care provider.
No, the current H1N1 flu virus is a new virus, different from the 1918 pandemic flu strain that was so deadly. It's too soon to draw any definitive conclusions about what this variation of the virus will do but it appears to be acting more like a seasonal flu. Persons at high risk of illness and complications, as well as those with cancer, with weakened immune systems, or with HIV infection may be at higher risk for severe illness due to H1N1 flu.
The viruses detected in the U.S. in April 2009 are different from the H1N1 flu virus that caused an outbreak in 1976. Most genetic parts of these viruses are similar to other H1N1 viruses from North America and Europe.
The signs and symptoms of H1N1 flu are the same in pregnant women as in other people: fever, cough, and sore throat. Other symptoms can include body aches, headache, runny nose, fatigue, vomiting and diarrhea.
Because pregnant women can get sicker than other people who get 2009 H1N1 flu, they should call their doctor right away if they have flu symptoms.
Infants who are not breastfeeding are in general at higher risk of infection and hospitalization for severe respiratory illness than infants who are breast fed. Women who are not sick with flu should be encouraged to start breastfeeding early and feed often. Ideally, a baby should get most of its nutrition from breast milk to receive as many antibodies as possible from its mother.
The risk for H1N1 transmission (spread) through breast milk is unknown. However, with seasonal flu, it seems that the virus does not usually get into the blood stream and cross into breast milk. Sick women who are able to express (pump) their milk for bottle feedings by a healthy family member should be encouraged to do so if their doctor or other health care provider agrees. A mother who is taking antiviral medications (drugs that fight viruses) to prevent or treat H1N1 infection can still breastfeed if her health care provider agrees.
Sick women who don't have anyone to help with infant care while they are ill should wash their hands often, and practice good hygiene habits when coughing or sneezing. Women with flu-like illness are advised to use facemasks when feeding and caring for their babies.
During an epidemic, CDC works with state and local public health agencies to reduce transmission (spread) and illness severity and provide information to help healthcare providers, public health officials, and the public. See www.cdc.gov for more information about CDC's activities.
See H1N1 Flu FAQ for Information about the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and H1N1 Flu activities 03.13 What is being done to protect Californians?
For workplace and occupational health issues associated with H1N1 influenza (flu) virus, visit the H1N1 Flu and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Web sites for the latest guidance documents. (http://www.cdc.gov/niosh.)
Businesses should prepare for influenza first, by reviewing their current pandemic flu plan or developing a new plan. Involve employees in development and review of the plan. Conduct an exercise, drill, or discussion to test key components of the plan. Share the plan with employees and explain what policies, leave options, pay, and benefits will be available to them. See CDPH H1N1 Flu Information for Businesses and Employers http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/discond/Pages/H1N1Employers.aspx, and CDC H1N1 Resources for Businesses and Employers http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/business/.
Businesses should also prepare for influenza by taking the following actions:
Engage state and local health department to confirm channels of communication and methods for dissemination (sharing) of local outbreak information.
Review sick-leave policies and consider making them flexible and consistent with public health recommendations. Make sure employees are well-aware of these policies.
Try to provide flexible leave policies to allow workers to stay home to care for sick household members or for children, if schools dismiss students or childcare programs close.
Share best practices with other businesses in the community. Work with companies in your supply chain as well as chambers of commerce and local associations to improve response efforts.
Add a "widget" or "button" to the company Web page or employee Web site so employees can access the latest information on the flu.
Purchase supplies such as tissues, soap, and alcohol-based hand cleaners to encourage healthful habits in the workplace.
California Department of Public Health, Office of Public Affairs | <urn:uuid:bb865758-edd2-4fe6-b88a-abf73e06304b> | {
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Mary Alice Downie has written and edited twenty-eight books for children and adults. Her many books include And Some Brought Flowers with Mary Hamilton, and The Well-Filled Cupboard with Barbara Robertson. She lives in Kingston, Ontario.
This selection of writings by twenty-nine women, known and unknown, professional and amateur, presents a unique portrait of Canada through time and space, from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries, from the Maritimes to British Columbia and the Far North. There is a range of voices from high-born wives of governors general, to an Icelandic immigrant and a fishermanβs wife in Labrador. A Loyalist wife and mother describes the first hard weather in New Brunswick, a seasick nun tells of a dangerous voyage out from France, a famous childrenβs writer writes home about the fun of canoeing, and a German generalβs wife describes habitant customs. All demonstrate how womenβs experiences not only shared, but helped shape this new country.
Some of the women writers were wealthy. Some were poor. Some wrote professional. Others kept journals. Together, they richly portray Canadas geography and early culture.
A splendid selection of the observations and experiences of twenty-nine women.
Replete with intellectually provocative commentary on women's experience of life in Canada.
Barbara Robertson earned degrees in history from the University of Toronto and Queenβs University. She was also the author of Wilfrid Laurier and co-editor of Ottawa at War.
Elizabeth Jane Errington is currently dean of arts at the Royal Military College and also teaches at Queenβs University. Her research interests centre on life in nineteenth-century Upper Canada. She lives in Kingston, Ontario. | <urn:uuid:d21ca490-6ce9-4583-bd52-ff50126b99f8> | {
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What does EDGE mean in Educational?
This page is about the meanings of the acronym/abbreviation/shorthand EDGE in the Community field in general and in the Educational terminology in particular.
Find a translation for EDGE in other languages:
Select another language:
What does EDGE mean?
- edge, border(noun)
- the boundary of a surface | <urn:uuid:f0e18248-2c92-405d-974b-cf90ead8a59f> | {
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Glenn Prickett is chief external affairs officer with The Nature Conservancy.
Delegates from 195 countries are meeting in Durban, South Africa to negotiate a global agreement on climate change. On everyone’s mind is whether the Kyoto Protocol, the first international accord to limit greenhouse gases, will be extended or allowed to lapse, leaving the world without a regime to slow global warming.
It’s an important question… but the wrong one.
Kyoto is valuable and should be extended. It spurred industrial nations (notably not the United States) to cut emissions. It fostered cooperation between developed and developing countries on clean development. It created a fund to help developing countries adapt to climate change. Without it, we would be worse off.
But the United States and China, the largest emitters, didn’t agree to be bound by Kyoto and won’t now. In the U.S., Congress hasn’t mustered the political will to adopt emissions limits. China, while it has taken steps to slow its emissions, argues that as a developing country it shouldn’t be bound by mandatory limits.
Kyoto enshrined the principle that developed countries must reduce emissions while developing countries may not. This made sense in the 1990s, but not today, when fast-growing developing countries contribute over half of global emissions and slow-growing industrial nations question why they should bear the greater burden. Negotiators haven’t agreed on a new formula. No one expects great progress in Durban.
We don’t have the luxury of waiting for this diplomatic standoff to work itself out.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just released a report on climate change and extreme weather. While there is uncertainty in the data, temperature extremes, intense precipitation, droughts, and floods appear to be on the rise and linked to rising greenhouse gas concentrations. Economic losses and human fatalities from weather-related disasters are rising too.
Time is running out to prevent more dangerous warming. The International Energy Agency, in its latest World Energy Outlook, concluded that after 2017, the world will lock in too much fossil energy infrastructure to limit warming to 2 degrees C—the target of Durban’s negotiators.
Climate change is too important to leave to negotiations. What should we do?
Individual countries must act now. They should make their economies more energy efficient, less dependent on fossil fuels, less destructive of nature, and more resilient to climate extremes.
These are smart things to do. They make a society more prosperous, healthier, and more secure. That’s where hope lies—doing things to make our individual societies better, which will get us moving toward a global solution.
The Obama Administration just proposed new fuel economy standards for light vehicles to reach an average of 54.5 miles per gallon in 2025. Soon, the Administration will propose new limits on mercury and other toxic pollution from power plants. These measures will save hundreds of millions of tons of CO2. But they are politically viable because they boost Americans’ health, prosperity, and security.
The Government of China released a report this month on steps it is taking on climate change. It described a wide range of commitments in energy efficiency, industrial pollution control, clean energy, green cities, forest conservation, sustainable agriculture, and emissions trading. It’s clear that these policies are motivated primarily by the economic, health, and security benefits they provide to the Chinese people.
In March, Indonesia’s President Yudhoyono declared a moratorium on logging in primary forests and peatlands. This is the centerpiece of Indonesia’s commitment to reduce emissions 26 percent on their own or 41 percent with international help. Implicit is a recognition that Indonesia’s rainforests are of tremendous economic and ecological value to Indonesia itself.
Measures like these bring climate change out of the atmosphere and back down to Earth. Climate advocates should remember that political leaders focus on the question that matters most to constituents: “What have you done for me lately?”
Image: Sunset in Monument Valley, Arizona. Image credit: © J. R. Schnelzer | <urn:uuid:8d01ac70-e87d-4ad0-9314-5a11fa46b027> | {
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HPV Vaccine Doesn't Encoruage Risky Sexual Activity
From Web MD
Girls and young women who are vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV
) appear to be no more likely than those who are not vaccinated to engage in sexually risky behaviors, a CDC survey finds.
HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the U.S., with an estimated 6.2 million new infections each year. Two types of the virus, HPV 16 and HPV 18, are responsible for 70% of cervical cancers. HPV also causes genital warts and can lead to cancer of the cervix, vagina, vulva, penis, and anus.
Read the full article here: http://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20111212/study-hpv-vaccine-doesnt-encourage-risky-sexual-activity | <urn:uuid:b2e354d6-fb6a-49d2-9654-e1974d7048af> | {
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HELP STOP DEFORESTATION!!!!!!!!
Deforestation is one of the leading causes of climate change and global warming. Forests take up 31% of the whole world and is home to hundreds of different animals.
This picture is from a forest in Africa being cut down. It is shaped like a lung to represent what trees help us do.
Deforestation kills animals and destroy their habitats.
This is an example of logging and people only plant about 3% of how many trees are cut down.
We are losing to many forests because of deforestation.Most trees get cut down for house -s and cities. But trees are one of our most important resources. Please make a difference and donate your money will be sent to our organization and for every $7 donated we will plant a tree somewhere in Africa to help people breath better. | <urn:uuid:82fbccfb-2644-4d9e-8117-0f954dd8935d> | {
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Everyone’s taste buds are different. That’s why some people can swallow the spiciest peppers while others have no fondness for sweet desserts (gasp!). Now a recent study suggests that taste-bud sensitivity may have something to do with the risk of obesity in children.
German researchers report that obese kids have less sensitive taste buds than their normal weight peers, and may therefore eat more food to get the same flavor sensation.
The researchers looked at 193 healthy children aged 6 to 18. Roughly half the kids were normal weight and half were obese. For the study, researchers placed 22 taste strips on the children’s tongues, representing each of the five types of taste — sweet, sour, salty, umami (savory) and bitter — at four levels of intensity, as well as two blank strips. The participants were asked to identify each of the tastes, and also rank each taste strip’s level of intensity.
Each taste was assigned a score, with the maximum score for identifying all five types of taste at the four different intensity levels added up to 20. Obese kids had a significantly more difficult time distinguishing between tastes, resulting in an average score of 12.6, compared with an average of just over 14 for the normal weight kids.
Overall, kids had the easiest time identifying sweet and salty tastes; they found it harder to distinguish between salty and sour, and salty and umami. In general, girls and older children were the best at correctly identifying the various tastes. As most kids got older, their ability to differentiate between taste sensations improved, but not among obese children. And although all the kids correctly identified the different sweetness intensity levels, obese kids rated most of the higher-intensity taste strips as weaker than did the normal weight kids.
While the study suggests an association between taste sensitivity and weight, it doesn’t make clear whether kids who have less sensitive taste buds are more vulnerable to weight gain, or whether obesity somehow reduces taste-bud responsiveness. It could be a bit of both. The authors say we are all born with individual taste preferences that are influenced by genes, age, gender and exposures to a variety of tastes. In addition, hormonal fluctuations may play a role — both in taste sensitivity and obesity — ABC News reports:
For example, the hormone leptin is associated with hunger, fat storage and the ability to taste sweet things. Obese people may be less sensitive to its daily cycles. Also, if the level of insulin circulating in the blood stream remains consistently elevated for long periods of time, as it does in many obese people, it could weaken the cells’ receptors to the hormone, which in turn could mute taste sensitivity.
Previous studies have suggested that people with highly sensitive taste buds tend to eat less, presumably because they don’t need as much food to get the same taste sensations, while overeaters may have less receptive buds. If taste sensitivity really does play a role in childhood obesity, the authors say the findings may hint at obesity-prevention strategies that focus on mindful eating and taste preferences, rather than counting calories.
The study was published online in the journal, Archives of Disease in Childhood. | <urn:uuid:0a8471b0-880e-4438-baff-934428fa87ec> | {
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Issue Date: March 24, 2014 | Web Date: March 21, 2014
Spray-On Polymer Mats Seal Surgical Incisions
To supplement or even replace sutures, researchers have proposed applying sticky, biodegradable mats of polymer nanofibers onto surgical incisions to seal them and promote healing. But existing methods of depositing such mats aren’t compatible with living cells and tissues. Now, researchers have demonstrated that they can spray polymer nanofibers directly onto biological tissues using an airbrush from a hardware store (ACS Macro Lett. 2014, DOI: 10.1021/mz500049x).
Mats of polymer nanofibers show potential not only for surgery but also as biodegradable, drug-releasing implants or as scaffolds for tissue engineering, says Peter Kofinas, a bioengineer at the University of Maryland, College Park. Current methods for making the mats—such as electrospinning, which involves electric current—would damage living cells if the mats were made in situ. To devise a way to create the mats directly on the tissue, Kofinas and colleagues adapted a commercial airbrush, a tool more commonly used to apply paint.
They tinkered with different formulations of a biodegradable polymer, poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid), or PLGA, to find one that would work in the airbrush. By choosing a particular molecular weight of PLGA and concentration of acetone as the solvent, they could control the diameter of the resulting fibers. They ended up producing mats with fiber diameters of about 370 nm.
The researchers showed that the mats could seal diaphragm hernias and cuts to the lung, intestine, and liver in a pig. The acetone appears to evaporate before the nanofibers get deposited, suggesting that the solvent won’t pose toxicity problems, according to the paper. Cells sprayed with the PLGA nanofibers show no change in health after 24 hours. In lab tests, the nanofiber mats degraded completely over a 42-day period.
“Using an airbrush to deposit biomaterials directly onto tissue is quite enticing and has potential in many areas of medicine,” says Jeffrey M. Karp, a bioengineer and codirector of the Center for Regenerative Therapeutics at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, in Boston. Kofinas’s group is currently doing safety studies and improving the materials for surgical trials in laboratory animals.
- Chemical & Engineering News
- ISSN 0009-2347
- Copyright © American Chemical Society | <urn:uuid:a7ae4b96-ec19-4aae-bac1-8cabc5c32ab6> | {
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Progenitor Hair Populations are Key to Understanding Male Pattern Baldness
It’s known that stem cells, the key players in regenerative processes in the body, play a key role in continually making new hair. This role created interest in studying hair follicle stem cells to better understand androgenetic alopecia (AGA), or male pattern baldness, the most frequent type of hair loss among men. Naturally, the hair follicle stem cells were the prime suspects for causing AGA. However, earlier this month a study by George Cotsarelis at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and colleagues published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation (Garza et al., 2011) revealed that patients with AGA actually had had a normal amount of follicle stem cells in their scalps. Surprisingly, it was found that different progenitor cell populations, suspected to be derived from the hair follicle stem cells, were in fact the ones playing the key roles in causing AGA. (Progenitor cells are like stem cells in that they can differentiate into different cell types, but progenitors’ fates are more limited and they can replicate only a restricted number of times.) By better understanding the exact cell types involved, it may help researchers devise better therapies for treating AGA.
A Hair’s Life-Cycle: In order to understand AGA and the newly discovered key role of these progenitor cells in it, it’s helpful to first review the normal life of a hair. In the skin, every hair sits inside a hair follicle, a little cavity that goes down through the dermis layer and has connected sebaceous glands (which lubricate the hair by secreting an oily substance) an arrector pili (a small bundle of muscles that can make the hair stand on end) (see Hair Follicle figure). Each hair carries out its own life-cycle. The first lifecycle phase is called anagen, a growing period that about 85 percent of the hairs on a person’s head are in at any given time. During anagen, which can last two to six years for one hair, the hair grows at the rate of about five inches a year. After anagen, the hair enters catagen, a transitional one- to two week-long stage when the hair follicle and root both shrink. The hair then enters the last stage, telogen, which is a resting phase that lasts about five to six weeks, during which time the old hair does not grow. At the end of telogen the hair follicle re-enters anagen, the growth phase, and often a new hair will push the old one out, starting the growth cycle over again (Furdon & Clark, 2003; Garza et al., 2011).
Androgenetic Alopecia: Normally, the new hair will grow similar to how the last one did. However, with AGA this isn’t the case. In AGA, hair follicles get smaller over time, and consequently make smaller and smaller, eventually microscopic, hairs. How is this caused? It’s not that well understood; it’s known that testosterone is necessary for this miniaturization (as inhibiting testosterone conversion to its active form can delay AGA progression), but not much else is known about what causes AGA (Garza et al., 2011).
But even if it’s not known what happens to cause AGA, researchers have done a lot of work to figure out what stem cells are normally active in the hair follicle. Within a hair follicle, there are stem cells that reside in an area called the hair follicle “bulge,” which is a small compartment located where the outer root sheath meets the arrector pili muscle (see Hair Follicle figure). The stem cells in the bulge are multipotent epithelial stem cells, and can become, or differentiate into, all the epithelial cell types in the follicle (including hair follicles, epidermis, and sebaceous glands) (Oshima et al., 2001). They’re intimately involved in the hair follicle lifecycle. Given this, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that if these stem cells are destroyed, so is the hair follicle (Ohyama et al., 2006; Ohyama 2007).
Are bulge stem cells involved in AGA? In the recent study, the researchers first set out to determine whether the stem cells in the hair follicle bulge play a key role in AGA. To do this, they looked at the expression of keratin 15 (KRT15), which is highly expressed by the stem cells in the bulge (which are also keratinocyte stem cells), but not by the cells in the surrounding hair follicle area (Lyle et al., 1998). These bulge stem cells, as identified by high expression of KRT15, have been shown to be small cells that are primarily quiescent (mostly inactive) in vivo, only springing into action when a new hair follicle starts to grow.
To investigate whether the bulge stem cells play a key role in AGA, Garza et al. isolated epithelial cells from the heads of people with AGA and compared the expression of KRT15 in cells from areas that were bald to areas that were haired (non-bald). Using flow cytometry, the researchers specifically looked at cells expressing the highest amount of KRT15 (the top 5 percent), a characteristic of the bulge stem cells, as well as the most integrin alpha 6 (ITGA6) (a protein in epithelial basal cells). The researchers found that, surprisingly, the percentage of cells expressing high amounts of KRT15 and ITGA6 were the same in the bald and haired samples. Because this reveals that bald scalp can form even in the presence of bulge stem cells, this indicates that other, unidentified cellular players may be primarily involved in causing AGA.
A novel progenitor population involved in AGA: By using other cellular “markers” in addition to KRT15, the researchers found that there was indeed a different population of cells that was present in the haired, but not the bald, epithelial cell samples. (Markers are proteins usually made by distinct cell populations.) Specifically, a population of cells that expressed high levels of CD200 and ITGA6 had relatively very decreased numbers in bald samples. Why did they look at CD200? CD200 is a membrane glycoprotein that has increased expression on the surface of cells in the bulge, and is consequently used to identify cells in the bulge, but it is also expressed in nearby cell layers (Ohyama et al., 2006). Additionally, while the cells it is expressed by greatly overlaps with those that express KRT15, the overlap is incomplete. Garza et al. found that the population of cells expressing high levels of CD200 and ITGA6 did not express the high levels of KRT15 found in the primary bulge stem cell population, and that the CD200/ITGA6-expressing cell population contained only 10% of all of the local cells that express CD200. Consequently, these cells represent a distinct cell population that has not been investigated previously.
Additionally, the newly identified population had hallmark signs of being progenitor cells: Garza et al. showed that the cells were slightly larger in size (about 130%) and less quiescent (with slightly fewer cells in the G0 quiescent stage) than the KRT15-highly expressing bulge stem cells. Because small size is often associated with being a stem cell, these cells’ relatively larger size further reinforces the idea that they have a more activated (less quiescent) identity than the bulge stem cells. Based on this evidence, the authors hypothesized that these novel cells most likely represent a progenitor cell population.
Enter CD34: Yet more progenitors involved: After discovering the presence of this novel cell progenitor population, the researchers decided to see if there were any other progenitor populations hiding around the bulge that had not been associated with AGA before. They did indeed find another progenitor population, this time with the help of a marker called CD34. A population of cells that lives just below the bulge, in the outer root sheath, was already known to highly express CD34 during the anagen (growing) phase, and then undergo apoptosis when anagen ends (Inoue et al., 2009). Additionally, these cells were already suspected to be a progenitor population that originated from the bulge, although some have argued that CD34 does not truly label a progenitor population (Gutierrez-Rivera et al., 2010).
However, in the recent Garza et al. study, researchers again presented evidence supporting the idea that the CD34-expressing population is made up of progenitors (based on relatively low KRT15 production and larger cell size compared to the highly KRT15-expressing cells). The researchers also, for the first time, showed evidence supporting this population’s potential role in AGA; the CD34-positive cells were present in bald cell samples at one tenth the level they were found in haired scalp samples.
Where exactly are these novel progenitor populations? Going back to their novel cell progenitor population, although the researchers could tell that it expressed certain markers (CD200 and ITGA6) and had other distinguishing characteristics (a larger cell size and lower levels of KRT15 compared to the bulge stem cells), they weren’t sure exactly where it called home. They used another marker (follistatin, or FST) to find that their novel population had members located outside of the bulge (FST is only in the bulge, but 15% of the novel progenitors did not express it).
They also determined that some of the progenitors resided in an area home to the “secondary germ cells.” The researchers discovered this by using two different markers: the epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EPCAM), which stains secondary germ cells, labeled 16% of the progenitors, and the leucine-rich repeat-containing G-protein coupled receptor 5 (LGR5), which labels bulge and secondary germ progenitors, was significantly elevated in the progenitors (and had decreased expression in bald scalp relative to haired samples). Consequently, the novel progenitor population was thought to reside in both the bulge and the secondary germ.
This isn’t that surprising though; other progenitors derived from the bulge are known to reside in the secondary germ cells (Ito et al., 2004). During catagen, the bulge produces progenitor cells which make their way down to the hair follicle base. There they are responsible for generating a new hair (mainly the hair shaft and root sheath) at the beginning of anagen. Some of these progenitors can also, amazingly, “dedifferentiate” into bulge cells if a bulge cells are lost when a hair is removed from the follicle (Ito et al., 2004). But none of this had been tied to AGA previously.
Multipotent progenitors: Lastly, the researchers showed that their novel progenitors were multipotent and could successfully create hair follicles. To determine their potency, researchers injected the progenitors into immunodeficient mice and, when combined with neonatal dermis, this resulted in the production of all hair follicle lineages, complete with outer and inner root sheaths and sebaceous glands.
Concluding reflections and next steps: The findings from the Garza et al., 2011 paper not only help us better understand how baldness in AGA may be caused, but also how AGA may be treated. The authors hypothesize that in AGA bulge stem cells that have somehow become inactivated may result in a loss of CD200/ITGA6-expressing progenitor cells. Because the CD200/ITGA6-expressing progenitors have been shown in this study to be multipotent, generating a number of important hair follicle lineages, this may lead to the miniaturization of the hair follicle, a hallmark sign of AGA. But because there are still stem cells present in all of the hair follicles of patients with AGA, it suggests that the AGA condition may be reversible. The next steps will be to figure out what signals are necessary for the creation of this vital progenitor population, and how stem cells that are still alive in the hair follicles of bald AGA scalp can be used to regenerate the lost progenitors.
Furdon, S. A., Clark, D. A. Scalp hair characteristics in the newborn infant. Advances in Neonatal Care. 2003. 3(6): 286-296.
Garza, L. A., Yang, C., Zhao, T., Blatt, H. B., et al. Bald scalp in men with androgenetic alopecia retains hair follicle stem cells but lacks CD200-rich and CD34-positive hair follicle progenitor cells. The Journal of Clinical Investigation. 2011. 121(2): 613-622.
Gutierrez-Rivera, A., Pavon-Rodriguez, A., Jimenez-Acosta, F., Poblet, E., et al. Functional characterization of highly adherent CD34+ keratinocytes isolated from human skin. Experimental Dermatology. 2010. 19(7): 685-688.
Inoue, K., Aoi, N., Sato, T., Yamauchi, Y., et al. Differential expression of stem-cell-associated markers in human hair follicle epithelial cells. Laboratory Investigation. 2009. 89: 844-856.
Ito, M., Kizawa, K., Hamada, K., Cotsarelis, G. Hair follicle stem cells in the lower bulge form the secondary germ, a biochemically distinct but functionally equivalent progenitor cell population, at the termination of catagen. Differentiation. 2004. 72(9-10): 548-57.
Lyle, S., Christofidou-Solomidou, M., Liu, Y., Elder, D. E., et al. The C8/144B monoclonal antibody recognizes cytokeratin 15 and defines the location of human hair follicle stem cells. The Journal of Cell Science. 1998. 111(21): 3179-88.
Ohyama, M. Advances in the Study of Stem-Cell-Enriched Hair Follicle Bulge Cells: A Review Featuring Characterization and Isolation of Human Bulge Cells. Dermatology. 2007. 214(4): 342-351.
Ohyama, M., Terunuma, A., Tock, C. L., Radonovich, M. F., et al. Characterization and isolation of stem cell-enriched human hair follicle bulge cells. The Journal of Clinical Investigation. 2006. 116(1): 249-260.
Oshima, H., Rochat, A., Kedzia, C., Kobayashi, K., Barrandon, Y. Morphogenesis and Renewal of Hair Follicles from Adult Multipotent Stem Cells. Cell. 2001. 104(2): 233-245.
Image of “Hair Follicle” was created by the author based off of images from Wikimedia Commons and other medical resources.
Hair Stem Cells © 2009-2010, Teisha Rowland. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:64c6d32c-426e-4186-a38e-8f69bcacd315> | {
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Change is seen in Atlantic from climate, fishing
The basic makeup of the ocean waters off the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic region has fundamentally changed in the past 40 years because of climate change, commercial fishing pressures and growing coastal populations, according to a new report.
Published 1:38 am, Thursday, September 3, 2009
PORTLAND, Maine - The basic makeup of the ocean waters off the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic region has fundamentally changed in the past 40 years because of climate change, commercial fishing pressures and growing coastal populations, according to a new report.
The 2009 Ecosystem Status Report says fish populations in U.S. waters from North Carolina to Maine have moved from their traditional home grounds because of a changing environment and human activities.
The report is the broadest study that researchers have undertaken for U.S. waters in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean, Michael Fogarty, who headed the study, said Tuesday. The findings show how interconnected the ecosystem is, he said.
"We need to consider these interrelationships and connections. In some cases they aren't obvious on the surface," said Fogarty, head of the ecosystem assessment program at the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts. "If we ignore them or don't understand them, then we could come away with the wrong picture of what's driving things."
Fogarty's research team looked at variables such as water temperatures, circulation patterns, fishing pressure, pollution and habitat loss in a 100,000-square-mile (259,000 square kilometer) area off the Northeast and mid-Atlantic coast. The area is one of 64 regions in the world's oceans designated as a large marine ecosystem.
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A recurring theme of the report is that the ecosystem is changing.
Commercial fishing practices have contributed to changes in the composition of the region's fishery population, which is now dominated by species such as mackerel, herring, skates and small sharks, the report says.
The change in the fish population mix is being felt by other species. For example, spiny dogfish sharks feed on silver hake, putting that type of bottom-dwelling fish under additional pressure.
The region's water temperatures are also on the rise, which affects where fish live.
Fish that prefer warmer waters - such as croaker in the Mid-Atlantic - are increasing in abundance in the region, Fogarty said. At the same time, fish such as cod are moving north in search of colder waters, causing a shift in their population range.
If the waters continue to get warmer, traditional fishing grounds could be hurt.
"If the projections for climate change hold, places like Georges Bank could potentially get marginal," he said, referring to fishing grounds off the Massachusetts coast.
There are some bright spots in the report. Scallop populations and lobster stocks in the Gulf of Maine are strong, and haddock and redfish populations have staged comebacks in recent years.
Still, the pressures on the ecosystem are likely to increase with climate change, coastal development and fishing activities. A better understanding of those pressures and will lead to better management and mitigation strategies, Fogarty said. | <urn:uuid:27f83e2a-6b28-4ee9-b308-c340d11c92d3> | {
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Why do I still get low sugar on Metformin?
Metformin is the most common medication used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes. It works by decreasing the amount of glucose secreted by the liver. Because it does not increase the amount of insulin secreted by the pancreas, it is generally not associated with hypoglycemia (usually defined as blood glucose less than 60-70 mg% with symptoms). If you are taking other medications that are associated with hypoglycemia (especially a sulfonylurea or insulin), then adding metformin can aggravate the tendency for hypoglycemia, but by itself it is not typically associated with hypoglycemia. I would suggest that you review with your healthcare provider what factors might be contributing to low blood glucose levels in your situation. | <urn:uuid:656d0f53-bcda-41d3-86ba-fa97bdeeb474> | {
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Lesson One — 220 Chinese word roots
by Tienzen (Jeh-Tween) Gong
In this lesson, Gong discusses 220 basic Chinese root words. Gong thinks that in an analogy similar to the elements in Chemistry, they are the atoms of Chinese words. Thus, the word roots are like the rock bottom building blocks for dissecting Chinese words anatomically visually. Chinese characters do have internal structure, similar to atoms in physics, and in this lesson, etymology physics of Chinese characters will be discussed ….
Read this article at: http://www.chinese-word-roots.org/prl010.htm | <urn:uuid:fdb8a993-1ce6-4edb-8757-28beb947e521> | {
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Read about the symptoms of nasopharyngeal cancer, and when you should see your GP.
Find out what causes nasopharyngeal cancer and how you might reduce your risk.
Read about the survival for nasopharyngeal cancer.
The type of nasopharyngeal cancer means the type of cell the cancer started in. Knowing this helps your doctor decide which treatment you need.
The stage of a cancer tells you how big it is and whether it has spread. The grade tells you how much the cancer cells look like normal cells. See how they are decided.
Find out what to expect when you see a GP, when you might see a specialist and which tests you might have.
The treatment you might have depends on the stage and type of your nasopharyngeal cancer. See which treatments are used and how you have them.
A lot of practical and emotional support is available to you. Read advice on living with nasopharyngeal cancer and find further resources and support.
Read about the latest research into nasopharyngeal cancer and see how you can take part in a clinical trial. | <urn:uuid:c69ff056-09f6-4c77-b7e1-3b4f0d228248> | {
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Must a health care provider or other covered entity obtain permission from a patient prior to notifying public health authorities of the occurrence of a reportable disease?
Answer:No. All States have laws that require providers to report cases of specific diseases to public health officials. The HIPAA Privacy Rule permits disclosures that are required by law. Furthermore, disclosures to public health authorities that are authorized by law to collect or receive information for public health purposes are also permissible under the Privacy Rule. In order to do their job of protecting the health of the public, it is frequently necessary for public health officials to obtain information about the persons affected by a disease. In some cases they may need to contact those affected in order to determine the cause of the disease to allow for actions to prevent further illness.
The Privacy Rule continues to allow for the existing practice of sharing protected health information with public health authorities that are authorized by law to collect or receive such information to aid them in their mission of protecting the health of the public. Examples of such activities include those directed at the reporting of disease or injury, reporting deaths and births, investigating the occurrence and cause of injury and disease, and monitoring adverse outcomes related to food (including dietary supplements), drugs, biological products, and medical devices.
See our public health section for more information.
Date Created: 12/20/2002
Last Updated: 03/14/2006 | <urn:uuid:6d9327e7-736a-4a36-b009-3701582eb116> | {
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David Bushnell (1754–1824), of Westbrook, Connecticut, was an American inventor and a veteran of the Revolutionary War. He is credited with creating the first submarine ever used in combat. He called it the Turtle because of its look in the water. His idea of using water as ballast for submerging and raising his submarine is still in use, as is the screw propeller, which was used in the Turtle.
Bushnell proved that gunpowder could be exploded under water. He also made the first time bomb. He combined these ideas to attack ships by attaching a time bomb to their hulls, while using a hand powered drill and ship auger bit to penetrate the hulls. He used the Turtle in attempts to attack British ships which were blockading New York Harbor in the summer of 1776. His efforts failed because the boring device was unable to penetrate the copper sheeting lining in the ships' hulls which was designed to protect against parasites in their previous destination, the Caribbean. | <urn:uuid:fada8759-018e-4f92-a5f8-2353ab1a6141> | {
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- Since 2011, the number of Americans who are prepared for disaster has risen by only 5%;
- Only half of the 36% who are prepared for disaster have an evacuation plan;
- Young people, although now more worried about natural disasters than older people, are less prepared.
In Hurricane Sandy's wake, the new YouGov survey showed the number of people in the Northeast who are “very concerned” about natural disasters nearly doubled from 2011 to 2012. Now 31% of Northeast residents are "very concerned", the highest percentage for any region of the country, with 39% having made disaster preparations.
Other regions of the country have not seen a similar shift.
YouGov uses cutting edge technology to collect high-quality, in-depth data for companies, governments, and institutions.
For more information visit research.yougov.com.
Media inquiries: Jenny Hall: 212-724-3040; E: [email protected].
More from U.S. News. | <urn:uuid:6bfbe2e0-6f2c-49aa-a686-ea05e00189d6> | {
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The Coaching Manual consists of six parts:
Before You Start - how to prepare yourself and maximise your palaeographical performance.
Letter Finder - a compendium of letter forms in Scottish documents.
Numbers - examples of numbers, Roman numerals and dates.
Problem Solver - a device which helps you when you get stuck reading a document.
Bibliography - books on palaeography, Scots dictionaries, legal glossaries etc to buy, beg or borrow.
Links - other online palaeography | <urn:uuid:afa4a0dc-47ce-4446-9671-8eaae53b0b62> | {
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In order to distract from the announcement this week that Arctic sea ice is at a record low, right-wing media are pointing to Antarctic sea ice as proof that climate change isn’t occurring. But Antarctic sea ice gains have been slight, whereas Arctic ice decline — a key indicator of climate change — has been extreme. Furthermore, scientists have long expected the Arctic to experience the first impacts of climate change, and still project that in the long run, sea ice in both regions will decline as greenhouse gas concentrations increase.
On September 16, the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced that Arctic sea ice reached its minimum extent for the year and the lowest seasonal minimum measured since record keeping began in 1979. But in a blog post published the day of that record low, climate contrarian Steven Goddard changed the subject, asserting that Antarctic ice on “day 256″ (September 12 in a leap year) was the highest ever recorded for that date, and the eighth highest daily recording ever. A few days earlier, contrarian Anthony Watts cited satellite readings showing “mass gains of the Antarctic ice sheet” to similar end.
Heartland Institute fellow and Forbes contributor James Taylor quickly seized on the argument, complaining that instead of covering the Antarctic, news reporters were “breathlessly spreading fear and warning of calamity because Arctic sea ice recently set a 33-year low.” Investor’s Business Daily used the Antarctic ice growth to pass judgment on “global warming alarmists” for noting record summer temperatures across much of the U.S. and concluded ” The alarmists’ bible has turned out to be full of false prophets.”
But the low Arctic sea ice came on the heels of a “record-breaking summer,” and it is lower than any since observation began “by a wide margin.” According to a NASA release on the record, the difference between the new Arctic sea ice extent and the old mark is larger than the state of Texas, whereas, as National Snow & Ice Date Center [NSIDC] Director Mark Serreze told LiveScience, “Antarctic sea ice hasn’t seen these big reductions we’ve seen in the Arctic.”
Indeed, the daily sea ice extent for the Arctic is well outside of two standard deviations from the 1997-2000 average, while the Antarctic daily sea ice extent is only slightly outside of this range for 2012:
And according to a study published in Nature of 69 sites around the Arctic, the drop in late summer sea ice in the Arctic is unprecedented in over a thousand years: | <urn:uuid:1fc35434-1afc-4612-a57e-6342e353a3e6> | {
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In medicine, the term zebra is used in reference to a rare disease or condition. Doctors are taught to assume that the simplest explanation is usually correct to avoid patients being misdiagnosed with rare illnesses. Doctors learn to expect common conditions.
When you hear hoof-beats, think horses, not zebras
But many medical professionals seem to forget that “zebras” DO exist and so getting a diagnosis and treatment can be more difficult for sufferers of rare conditions. Most definitely true in my case as it took 26 years to get a diagnosis after I was first hospitalised unable to walk at age 7.
Many types of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome are considered rare and the most common form of EDS (hypermobility type) is often rarely or mis-diagnosed.
People with Ehlers-Danlos are known as medical zebras. This identity has now been adopted across the world through social media to help bring our community together.
Charcot Marie Tooth Disease (CMT) and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (PoTS) are also on the list of rare diseases. So with all three in our house we think of ourselves as the unusual cross species of the zebra, the zonkey, which is actually a zebra crossed with a donkey and even rarer than a zebra. Or a ‘wonkey donkey’ as my children like to call it. All the time we just long to be a horse! | <urn:uuid:cfe61084-c377-4f95-b0b9-451766cd05bf> | {
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Constant stress is annoying all by its self, but did you ever consider that constant stress could be contributing to disease? It can and does if the stress becomes chronic. Below are several ways that chronic stress can contribute to disease processes in the body:
- When we are stressed the body produces adrenaline so that we can run from or fight off the threat. Adrenaline is very toxic to the body and since we are not running from or fighting off the threat and using up the adrenaline, it lingers in the body like battery acid, doing damage.
- When the body perceives a situation as stressful it prepares to defend itself. One of the ways it does this is by shutting down systems that the body does not need to defend itself. One of those systems is your immune system. I am sure you have experienced this – think back to a time when you were frequently stressed and how easy it was for you to catch colds or get sick in another way. Our immune system needs to be ever vigilant to protect us from viruses, bacteria and cancer cells.
- One of the other systems that shuts down when we are stressed is our digestive system. No wonder so many people have digestive issues. I always recommend that once you sit down for a meal that you take a few deep breaths and say grace to give your body a moment to step out of the stress state and redirect your energy back to your digestive system. The type of food we eat as well as how well we digest the food is important to our health and wellbeing.
- Chronic stress is very draining. As the body prepares to flee all energy is directed to the arms and legs and away the bodies core. This process wears us down. This is why some people are worn out mid-day. This process is like speeding from light to light as you drive home – you are going to use more gas this way and put more wear and tear on your vehicle. The same is true for our body when in a constantly stressed state.
- Cortisol is necessary to keep us awake throughout the day, but excess cortisol produced by chronic stress can start to negatively affect our sleep. Sleep is an important time for the body to cleanse and regenerate and if it is not able to run through these processes because we are not getting good sleep it starts to gunk up the body.
- Between excess cortisol and adrenaline chronic iInflammation can become a problem. There is a school of thought that chronic inflammation is the precursor to all disease. It certainly can have a negative affect. Think of a time when you were really stressed and how your neck or shoulders were tight or achy. This was likely caused by inflammation.
As you can see by the above list there are many ways that stress can be detrimental to our health and wellbeing. Below are links to a couple other articles on stress and disease as well as resources that can help you manage your stress.
Stress and Disease Articles:
Stress Management Resources:
Lifestyle Management Program with Cigna is FREE to those covered by the health insurance plan. You can call 866.494.2111 or go online to myCigna.com to access the program.
Employee Assistance Program (EAP) allows for 5 FREE one-on-one counseling visits which can be utilized for stress management. You can call 877.622.4327 or go online to myCigna.com employer ID: lpr to access the EAP benefits.
Man Therapy is an online resource that can direct you to other resources for all kinds of mental health subjects. You can find them at this link
If you find that you have developed a chronic condition and need some guidance on how to best manage it Cigna offers a Chronic Condition Coaching Program for FREE. With some disease coaching and stress management you might be surprised at how much better you can feel. If you want to know more about chronic condition coaching or want to sign up you can access support by either calling 866.494.2111 to get assigned a contact or by using the online tools found at myCigna.com | <urn:uuid:764dbda5-02e3-4dc4-8313-debdc82085d2> | {
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Getting parents involved in monitoring water, sanitation and hygiene services at schools
Updated - Thursday 16 August 2012
Rural schools in Kenya struggle not only to provide, but to maintain access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services. The SWASH+ project trained parents to inspect school WASH facilities to increase accountability of school administrations for providing WASH services. Parents conducted walk-through inspections of the facilities, thus gaining a new awareness of school WASH conditions. The involvement of at least one parent volunteer made other parents more likely to personally sacrifice to supplement clean water for their children at school. Additional commitment from parents, school administrations, and government is needed to maintain and monitor school WASH. | <urn:uuid:c2fa103a-b4c1-4443-8568-578eda94fc8c> | {
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