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Photo: Egyptian Tentmakers photographed in the 1860's by the Zangaki Brothers
History Page; Dr Sam Bowker
The Tentmakers of Cairo sustain a spectacular aspect of Egypt's living heritage. Their ancestors made the majestic traveling tents of the Ottoman Empire, and today they produce intricate textile artworks that are unique to Egypt. These are called Khayamiya, or Egyptian Tentmaker Applique.
Their work combines sophisticated skills with craft techniques that have been refined over many generations. Using only a needle, thimble, and large pair of tailor’s scissors, these skilled artisans flip, fold and stitch fabric with virtuoso precision. Khayamiya originates from architecture, but resembles the historic development of quilts.
The Tentmakers use a vast array of colours in their work. The careful use of colour combinations is one of the most important elements of their designs. During the Khedival period (1867-1914), the Tentmakers used cottons dyed by hand in shades of red, white and blue, as well as recycled fabrics. Their designs have changed dramatically over the last two centuries, drawing from a wide range of sources across the history of Islamic visual culture.
Khayamiya is an important feature of Egyptian public and private life. Decorated tents are used as backdrops and venues for weddings, funerals, feasts and many other celebrations. Throughout the twentieth century, many pieces of Egyptian Tentmaker Appliqué (or Khayamiya) were collected by tourists visiting Egypt, including soldiers and nurses during the World Wars. These souvenirs can now be found around the world, ranging from complete tents to cushion covers and wall hangings.
Since the 1990s, cheap factory-printed fabrics have undermined local demand and respect for the skilled work of the Tentmakers. Egyptian museums and galleries rarely display Khayamiya, so few Egyptians recognise its historic significance, nor are they aware of the growing international interest in this unique Egyptian art form. As shown through The Tentmakers of Cairo, the future of Khayamiya will be determined by the Tentmaker’s entrepreneurial ability to engage with new international audiences. The 2011 Revolution marks the beginning of a new chapter within a much longer story.
Read more of Dr Sam Bowker's work here >> | <urn:uuid:2d12a68f-167c-42de-83e3-b7ed25266e60> | {
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Quickly accessible, concise information about each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia!
The tables below offer information about Illinois agriculture from the general agricultural groups to the more specific commodities or products. The ranking assigned to a given commodity is based on the commodity's cash receipts; how much money it made.
Commodity groups cash receipts - 2004
As you can see from the table below, Illinois ranks 6th among the states for total agricultural production. Though production of livestock and livestock products is average, the large grain corn and soybean crops make Illinois one of the top ten states for total agricultural production.
Illinois's top five commodities by cash receipts - 2004
This table lists Illinois's top commodities in each of Illinois's two agriculutural groups, livestock and crops.
The big crops in the Prairie State are grain corn and soybeans, which combined, make up almost 3/4 of the state's total agricultural production. Greenhouse and nursery products are somewhat valuable in the state. Hogs are the most valuable livestock product, followed by cattle and calves and dairy products.
Leading commodities for cash receipts - 2004
This table offers a more complete view of the most important agricultural products of Illinois.
Mushrooms, green peas, sunflower products, rye, and aquaculture, are among the top 25 commodities of Illinois but, because specific data are not available, it is not known how they rank among the others.
The 2004 table above contains information about Illinois agricultural production provided by the Economic Research Service at the United States Department of Agriculture.
The first column of the table lists the product (commodity).
The second column of the table lists a number representing the dollar value of the product. This number is not the dollar value of the product. This number represents the dollar value of the product in thousands of dollars. For example, the number listed for the value of grain corn grown in Illinois is 4,121,224. This number represents a dollar value of $4,121,224,000 (4,121,224 x 1,000): four billion, one hundred and twenty-one million, two hundred and twenty-four thousand dollars.
The third column of the table lists the percent (part) of the total agricultural value produced in Illinois. For example, corn accounts for 42.5% of Illinois' total agricultural production value. The dollars generated by the production of corn add up to over 2/5 of Illinois's total agricultural production.
National ranking highlights - 2004
Illinois farms and farmland - 2004
Because of different rounding methods (e.g., farm acres given by the National Argriculture Statistics Service), percentage of farmland per state should be considered a rough estimate.
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Diorama showing Ambroise Paré treating the wounded, England, 1901-1970
Reconstructed from a painting at the Sorbonne in Paris, this diorama shows Ambroise Paré (c. 1510-1590), a French surgeon, treating the wounded outside a cathedral after battle. Infections such as gangrene often meant that minor wounds resulted in the amputation of limbs. Here, Paré is demonstrating an important technique he introduced to tie off blood vessels after amputations. The wound was then covered with loose bandages. Previously, blood vessels were sealed using boiling oil or a cautery, causing further agony to the patient who only had alcohol or herbal remedies for pain relief. In the scene, treated soldiers are standing by a fire and a bishop blesses the surgeon’s efforts, emphasising the value of Paré's work.
Related Themes and Topics
There are 304 related objects. View all related objects
Techniques and Technologies:
Removal of part of, or a whole limb by surgery. Used to control pain or the spread of disease in the affected limb.
To destroy tissue through contact with a hot implement. To remove warts, etc, or to stop small cuts bleeding.
A model with three-dimensional objects, often sculpture, with a realistic painted background.
Glossary: gas gangrene
Death and decay of wound tissue infected by a soil-based bacteria. Toxins produced by the bacterium cause decay of connective tissue and the generation of gas. | <urn:uuid:e1896178-b61b-4480-8947-3c2dd4322de8> | {
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As Thailand’s energy demand is projected to rise over the next decade, the country increasingly turns to the development of renewable energy sources, such as solar power.
By Ju Li Khing
According to a report in the Renewable Energy Magazine from February 15, German solar energy company Conergy signed a contract with Thailand’s Siam Solar Energy to construct three solar plants of 10.5 megawatts each in addition to existing two solar plants that are already being constructed since autumn 2012.
All in all, the capacity will be increased to 51.5 megawatts, bringing the Thai company’s total capacity to 70 megawatts. This also brings Thailand closer to achieving the targets of its 10-year Alternative Energy Development Plan.
Investment in renewable energy is one of the country’s priorities, given its goal to reduce its energy imports.
The Thai Board of Investment estimated that national energy demand will rise by 39 per cent over the next nine years.
Its current aim is to achieve 25 per cent energy generation from renewable sources by 2022. This means that solar energy production in the country would need to reach a 2,000-megawatt capacity.
Among efforts to develop Thailand’s solar energy sector, the Asian Development Bank in December 2012 signed loan assistance and co-financing from the Clean Technology Fund, one of the United Nation’s climate investment funds, to support the Provincial Solar Power Project where Bangchak Solar Energy Co. Ltd. is installing a 50 megawatts solar power plant.
For comprehensive country and sector analyses of investment opportunities, high-profile interviews and rankings register for Inside Investor Intelligence! | <urn:uuid:033e5659-81bf-4deb-85ae-4b42a30fc97a> | {
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If you have heard the term before, you may be wondering what is aquaponics. An aquaponics system is a process of food production using re-circulation. It is a combination of hydroponics and aquaculture, using both fish and plants to produce food.
Growing plants in water with no soil is called hydroponics. Aquaculture refers to the process of growing fish. In an aquaponics system, the waste from the fish is a food source for the plants. In turn, the plants filter and purify the water for the fish. Due to the amount of chemicals in our produce today, this is one of the best alternatives for a healthy diet.
What is aquaponics and how it all works
The way an aquaponics system works is quite simple. The water in the fish tank is pumped up to the grow bed which contains the bacteria. The fish waste, which is broken down by the bacteria, is converted to nitrates. This is an excellent fertilizer. The nitrates and some of the water are used by the plants. The rest of the water then gets filtered. This filtered, clean water returns to the fish tank by the way of gravity.
The set-up of an aquaponics system
It is very easy to set up this type of system. You will need a fish tank for the fish and a grow bed for the plants, which sit on top. Bacteria play a big role in an aquaponics system. Most of it is located in the grow bed along with the roots of the plants.
Gravel is a good material for the grow bed. It makes an excellent filter for the water and the roots will be well supported. It also can hold a large amount of bacteria.
The advantages of aquaponics
Here are some of the top advantages of using an aquaponics system over a soil-based farm:
- provides fresh, organic food 50% to 100% faster
- not much space needed – 10 times the plants can grow in the same space
- can be located anywhere
- easier to take care of than a soil-based farm
- environmentally friendly
- saves money and is sustainable
- food can be sold for profit
More information on Aquaponics
To get the best information possible to help you make an aquaponics system, you need to read Aquaponics 4 You. This is an eBook that you can download and have instant access on what aquaponics is all about. It contains step-by-step instructions, explanations, and diagrams to guide you through the whole process.
By using this informational guide, you will be able to avoid the common mistakes usually made when implementing an aquaponics system. Find out all about aquaponics – click the link below to get instant access to Aquaponics 4 You for all the information you’ll need . | <urn:uuid:22ddd503-582a-4dc4-87d7-26a3662a375a> | {
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These are some of the standard architectural symbols used for blueprints.
Most house plans will have one of each at least and sometimes more depending on the size and complexity of the design.
Window and door opening should be added to allow for good circulation and the natural flow of light into the buildings interior spaces.
Windows should be located specifically on the south facing elevation of the house to allow for natural heat gains which will improve the buldings energy efficiency.
Add architectural symbols to all areas of the plan to give your drawing an accurate sense of reality. Try out component layouts for new closet toilets bathrooms and en suite for one or two bedrooms try and add as many components to build up the layers.
A good tip when planning bathrooms and toilets is to consider the type of components you like and see working in your future house. This will include the size and shape of the bath, shower cubicles, and storage space need to be added to the plans.
Why Architectural Symbols?
When it comes to blueprints and building plans, it is necessary that drawings are used in these construction plans to communicate information quickly and efficiently.
In the construction industry, drawings serve as the language of blueprints.
Like in any language, there is an alphabet, for example English is composed of twenty six letters.
It is a little different for construction, as the language for construction is made up of an ‘alphabet of lines’.
When it comes to the weight and thickness of these lines, there is varies and this is done purposely to showcase relative importance.
For example, sometimes the basic outline of a building is shown in a heavier line than a window or door.
This distinct difference in line weight helps you to distinguish any objects shape from its precise details in the blueprint.
Object Lines in Architectural Symbols
These object lines are used to show you the shape of an object in the plans.
All of the visible edges of the shape of an object are represented by thee object lines.
Drawings and construction plans often include many solid lines that are not the same as object lines.
When it comes to dashed lines in a construction plan, there can be more than one purpose.
One of these types of dashed lines, a hidden line, is used as a way to show the edges of an object that wouldn’t be visibly shown in the plans normally.
How are hidden lines drawn? Hidden lines are draw in a series of evenly drawn short dash marks.
However, this isn’t done for all objects that would be hidden in the plans.
If there were construction drawings with all of the hidden lines to display concealed edges, then the construction plan would become extremely cluttered and difficult for workers to read.
This means that when it comes to hidden object lines, they will only display important features which are shown with hidden lines in the plans.
Another kind of dashed line is normally used to show overhead construction that is important to the project. These dashed lines are actually called phantom lines.
These are different from hidden object lines, as they do not show objects that are hidden from view, but are meant to show objects that simply are not in the view.
How do you effectively use these lines in your plans? For example, if you’re looking to show exposed beams in a living room ceiling plan, then the best way to do this may be to show them in the floor plans with phantom lines.
You can also use these phantom lines to show alternate dashes of different lengths, depending on their purpose in the blue print.
Extension and Dimension Lines in Architectural Symbols
The extension lines in a construction layout plan are thin and solid lines that can project from an object in the blueprint in order to the limits and extent of a dimension easily.
When it comes to extension lines, they don’t quite touch the object that they’re indicating, more so the positions of these objects.
In order to avoid confusion with these lines, the dashed lines can be used in different weights to show the difference on the blueprint plans.
In the case of dimension lines, these are solid lines that are of the same weight as the extension lines.
When a dimension line is drawn, it is drawn from one extension line to the next, connecting them together.
The dimension, which is the distance between any extension lines, is lettered above the dimension line to distinguish it.
For construction drawings, dimensions are expressed in both feet and inches. When it comes to the ends of dimension lines, they are drawn in one of three ways to distinguish them. | <urn:uuid:b4c30dfe-0cb9-4e6c-b7a5-c2c4b9870681> | {
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After-the-fact monitoring systems are being used to check up on motor-fleet drivers as well as teenagers, and experts say it won't be long before real-time monitors show up as well.
Using gadgets while you're driving can be a very bad thing, but an expert on automotive distractions says using a gadget that watches you while you're driving can be a very good thing.
"People don't always understand the degree of distraction they may be exposing themselves to ... so the idea is to help people understand that distraction by providing them with feedback," John D. Lee, a professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at the University of Iowa, said Thursday.
Lee outlines the magnitude of the problem in an essay published in this week's issue of the journal Science: More than 40,000 people die every year in motor vehicle crashes, and research indicates that failures of attention - including distractions or drowsiness - probably played a role in most of those crashes.
Crashes and near-crashes are about three times as likely to happen when the driver is performing a complex task not related to driving (such as dialing a phone or even texting), and twice as likely during a moderately complex task (such as inserting a CD), Lee reported.
As new technologies are introduced, the list of potential distractions keeps getting longer. Questions have been raised about dashboard GPS navigation devices, for example, as well as "green" energy-monitoring displays.
Of course, most drivers overestimate their own abilities: In one survey, 88 percent of the respondents judged themselves to be safer than the average driver. And Lee said his own camera-monitoring research has shown that teen drivers in particular "don't notice what they don't notice."
In one case he studied, a driver looked away from the road for 6 seconds to tap out a text message on her phone, slipped out of her lane and came to attention only when the tires hit the curb. "When she actually saw the video from the perspective of the camera, she was shocked to learn that she almost hit a telephone pole at 40 miles per hour," Lee said.
So how does watching the driver help? Lee's method was to install a special camera system that saves video snippets for the 10 seconds before and after every abrupt movement on the road.
"We took that video, put it on a CD, and then we had a 'report card' that shows the number of events that the teen driver experienced over time," he said. "It had a pretty dramatic effect on teens, in terms of the frequency of these abrupt steering and braking events that are often associated with distractions."
After the feedback sessions, the number of events triggered by risky drivers declined 89 percent, Lee said, and the rate of risky driving remained low even six weeks later.
After-the-fact monitoring systems are being used to check up on motor-fleet drivers as well as teenagers, and Lee told me it won't be long before real-time monitors show up as well. "There are video cameras that are being developed and actually being put into cars - high-end Toyota and Volvo models, for example. [They're] video-based face-tracking systems that tell whether the driver is looking at the road or looking into the car," he said.
Such a feature, sometimes known as a drowsiness warning system, would likely be wrapped up as an optional package with other advanced safety features such as forward collision avoidance, side collision warning and blindspot detection, Lee said. Among the oft-used catchphrases for these technologies is "intelligent transportation system" or "intelligent vehicle technology."
Can a car become too smart for our own good? Computerized car-trackers already can record when and how far you're driving - as well as how many abrupt stops and starts you put your car through. Some insurance companies are offering discounts for drivers who use the tracking devices, but privacy watchdogs worry that this sort of thing could eventually turn Big Brother into a back-seat driver.
"Obviously there are issues of privacy that come into play as you collect these data about drivers," Lee said. "I think about that, but I really haven't studied that in detail."
Instead, Lee is focusing on technologies that will help drivers help themselves. "Having your car know a little bit more about you and your behavior might well be worth it in terms of the number of lives saved," he said.
This report originally was published as a Cosmic Log item. | <urn:uuid:304be1e6-2b85-45be-99d5-113f26f23f3a> | {
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The books of Chronicles have had a chequered past. Neglected for many years under the unfortunate name Paraleipomenon or "Things Omitted", meant that they occupied a subordinate position in the Scriptures until the 4th century AD when the title "A Chronicle of the whole of Sacred History" was suggested instead. This has since been shortened to Chronicles and the rest is, literally, history. Probably penned by Ezra, Chronicles is a selective history of the Jews encouraging them to trust that God is intimately involved in their story. Written at a time when the Jews were newly out of captivity and with their capital city in ruins, Chronicles assures them of God's faithfulness. If they would obey and serve him then his people would still enjoy his blessing.
Customer Questions & Answers: | <urn:uuid:2ff1d733-2ec0-4851-b7f4-455af236d0a1> | {
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teaching and learning
A planning worksheet to plan an engaging whole-group lesson for learners in a multi-level classroom
A list of priority mathematics topics selected from the College and Career Readiness Standards
A reference sheet for incorporating the Levels of Knowing Mathematics and various Depth of Knowledge levels into instruction
A planning worksheet for incorporating the Levels of Knowing Mathematics into instruction
A planning worksheet for incorporating the Components of Numeracy into instruction
a scholarly forum for the focused discussion of research into numerical cognition
National Adult Education standards
The Components of Numeracy (2006)
A foundational document for adult numeracy instruction
Discusses components of critical thinking. How can adult educators effectively incorporate more of these components into classroom activities?
TEAL Fact Sheets (various, 2010 through more recent)
Research-based summaries of key adult education teaching and learning principles
Eight short webcasts, one for each of the Mathematical Practices, include facilitation questions, sample activities, classroom video and more
What questions can you investigate after watching this video?
Visual and conversational numeracy webinars that incorporate teacher knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and 2014 GED content
An article introducing the complexities of learning math as an English learner.
A visual model describing areas of knowledge and skill needed for adult educators to be equipped for effective numeracy instruction
Explore your own areas of strength and areas needing development by taking this one-page quiz. Use the model above to make a plan based on your quiz results. | <urn:uuid:7bf5c705-7452-4a6a-8996-b2354e10be54> | {
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Louisiana walruses? Seals swimming along the Gulf Coast?
These creatures normally live in the Arctic Ocean, not the Gulf of Mexico, but they’re listed as “sensitive biological resources” that could be affected by an oil spill in the area in a document filed by BP last June with the U.S. Minerals Management Service. More than a month after BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig blew out and sank on April 20, the British oil giant’s regional spill response plan drew some severe criticism from the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
One problem with BP’s nearly 600-page spill response plan? “It was utterly useless in the event of a spill,” Jeff Ruch, PEER’s executive director, said by telephone. His group, which acts as a kind of safe haven for government whistle-blowers, detailed what it called “outright inanities” in BP’s filing and the government’s approval of it.
PEER noted BP’s plan referred to “sea lions, seals, sea otters (and) walruses” as wildlife that might be affected in the Gulf of Mexico, and suggested this reference was taken from a previous plan for Arctic exploratory drilling, where these animals could be affected.
The BP plan lists a Japanese shopping and search website as a link to one of its “primary equipment providers” for rapid deployment in the event of a spill in the Gulf of Mexico. And it directs its media spokespeople never to make “promises that property, ecology or anything else will be restored to normal.”
Ruch said the plan contains no information about tracking sub-surface oil plumes from deepwater blowouts or preventing disease transmission to captured animals in rehab facilities, a serious risk after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. | <urn:uuid:8fb6fc02-fba0-49b4-a7b9-ab11405cea7d> | {
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On January 16, 2013 at a press conference in Toronto, the Mental Health Commission of Canada, the Bureau de Normalisation du Quebec and the CSA Group released Canada’s National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace. Minister of Labour, the Hon. Lisa Raitt was also present for the release of the Standard which was jointly funded by business and Health Canada.
This Standard is the first initiative of its kind anywhere in the world – when was the last time you remember Canada being first off the mark in an important health initiative? Many Canadians, and especially those of us in healthcare, often feel as though the federal government has completed disengaged from playing a role in health, so what can we learn from this initiative?
The Standard recognizes the toll that stress and psychologically unhealthy workplaces have on workers’ health and productivity and suggests standards to address them. Mental Health is the most pressing health problem of our time. Mental Health claims are the main cause of disability costs in Canada (Wilson, Joffe and Wilkerson 2002). Statistics Canada noted in 2007 that 20% of Canadians had stress-related absences from work every year. Also, 500,000 Canadians miss work every day because of mental illness. The focus of the 2012 World Health Assembly was Mental Health and, recognizing this, the Canadian Government sent Dr. David Goldbloom, Chair of the Mental Health Commission of Canada, as a member of its delegation.
How significant was the engagement of the federal government? Minister Raitt has said since her appointment as Minister of Labour in June 2012 that Mental Health in the Workplace is a priority for her. Clearly, that’s true for her colleague, the Hon. Leona Aglukak, whose department provided a good portion of the funding. Minister Raitt spoke in June of her own struggle with Postpartum Depression and how she had not mentioned her illness at work for fear of censure. Minister Aglukak oftens speaks of the toll of Mental illness on her community. These women understand the need to address mental health issues. It also seems as though the Prime Minister does as well since his was the government that established the Mental Health Commission of Canada in 2007. The loss of productivity and its impact are certainly issues that the Harper government would seek to address.
So, what could this mean? Is it possible that mental health is the key to bringing the federal government back to the health care file? Actually, if you look at their various initiatives in mental health, even just the establishment of the Mental Health Commission of Canada and this Standard, it would look as if they never left. I think it’s worth considering whether a focus on mental health by Canada’s doctors might demonstrate to the Prime Minister and his government that we understand his priorities and are ready to listen to his concerns. In fact, mental health is a good place for our focus, at any rate, given the statistics above and the needs of Canadians. Why not mental health? | <urn:uuid:bef78ae5-7ea0-4771-a6dd-ab4624c10672> | {
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Last week, I wrote about Kant’s position on morality, and some of its problems. Kant’s system of ‘deontological’ (duty) ethics still remains arguably one of the two most influential in the field of modern ethics– the other system is utilitarianism. I will briefly summarize the main tenets of Classical Utilitarianism as well as some of its more modern variations. I must also admit that this is not an unbiased post, as I will attempt to present a sort of justification for utilitarianism, as I understand it, as the most logically consistent and practical system of ethics that has been formulated. Though it has certain drawbacks, I hope to demonstrate how utilitarianism is a useful system in many circumstances, and is used by individuals and governments alike to benefit society.
Utilitarianism was first clearly articulated by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) with ‘the greatest happiness principle': “It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.” ‘Happiness’ in this case is represented as a predominance of pleasure over pain. It is therefore a ‘hedonistic’ principle, but one that differs with ancient models such as Epicureanism because it deals with the pleasure of the whole society (“the greatest number”) rather than the individual. Bentham proposed a hedonistic (or ‘felicific’ or ‘utility’) calculus by which to classify and test the happiness of a given action. The variables he listed to measure the quantity of pleasure or pain were: intensity, duration, certainty, proximity, productiveness, purity, and extent. Bentham was more of a social reformer, especially in the area of criminal justice and punishment, than a philosopher. After Bentham, there were still refinements needed in order to strengthen the utilitarian theory.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was the most important proponent of the theory. He was raised as something of a child prodigy by his father, who was a strong supporter of Bentham and wanted his son to be a genius intellect for the purpose of defending and implementing utilitarianism. Mill, who also became a member of Parliament, did this successfully, and much more. He was a tireless advocate for women’s rights, basic human rights, free speech, civil liberties, anti-slavery, environmentalism, free markets, and other liberal policies that have gradually been embraced as fundamental to modern progressive societies. In his book Utilitarianism, he makes one major change to Bentham’s theory: he argues that the ‘quality’ of pleasures is a more important criterion of precedence than mere ‘quantity’. Bentham rigorously states that an equal quantity of pleasure derived from push-pin (a children’s game) and poetry were equally good. Mill argues that intellectual and moral pleasure have higher value than merely physical pleasures. He goes so far as to say that “it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” Following from this, Mill asserted that university graduates should have more voting power because they are in a better position to judge what is best for society. This is not to say that Mill did not place any value on the uneducated; to the contrary, he advocated universal education reforms and sending the talented but poor to universities as a way to improve the happiness of the greatest number (which would improve society as a whole, as well).
There have been many variations of the theory, both in its content and its applicability, and it would be time-consuming to attempt to do justice to them all. One minor distinction is between ‘act utilitarianism’ and ‘rule utilitarianism’. The former, favored by Bentham, states that we must first consider the circumstances of each situation to determine which likely consequence will produce the greatest pleasure. For example, a paramedic at the site of a car accident would probably decide to treat a pregnant woman before anyone else, since her and her unborn child represent the greatest possible future happiness. The latter, favored by Mill, states that there are certain general rules that tend to increase happiness if followed (or decrease happiness if broken). For example, it is against the rules to kill another person, but in the case of self-defense against aggressive attackers, the rule changes. It is probably best to use ‘rules of thumb’ as a way of saving time when decided more routine matters; these rules can be modified in more difficult questions to calculate likely consequences.
Another conflict arises between ‘total utilitarianism’ and ‘average utilitarianism’. That is, should the amount of happiness of a population be measured as a total figure or as an average. In this case, issues that could arise would be the relative worth of a small, but very happy population, versus a very large population with low relative happiness, but a greater overall amount of happiness. Some philosophers have argued that the measure of ‘utility’ itself should not necessarily be pleasure (or avoidance of pain). Other possibilities proposed include: it is the ‘intent’ or ‘motive’, rather than the consequences, that is good; it is the ‘interests’, rather than the pleasure, that is good (this has been called ‘welfare utilitarianism’); the nuanced opinion that it is only the ‘preferences’ of a person that should be satisfied (which takes into account rejection of pleasure or desire for pain).
It is important to note that utilitarian calculus is most often used to decide what is most ‘right’, not necessarily what is most ‘good’. In this way, it is generally a system of practical ethics to guide decisions about future possible outcomes, rather than a belief in any necessary absolute morality of an act. One criticism of the theory by Karl Marx is that it not actual a theory at all and adds nothing meaningful, since it is inherently true by definition. He was more concerned with the different conceptions of what is ‘good’ for different people in different circumstances (which led him to describe his views of how capitalism suppressed the best possible outcome for most people). It is likely that there is something inherent about utilitarianism that has been used since the time of the earliest humans in order to build and maintain orderly and cooperative groups, which helped to ensure their collective survival. Likewise, utilitarianism is implicitly used at all levels of political bodies to decide the best future courses of action for the welfare of the greatest number.
We all use some form of utilitarianism in our everyday lives, as well as when we must make big decisions. We automatically consider the pros and cons of a decision to weigh the greatest utility to be derived from the most likely possible outcomes, even if that outcome is in a more distant future (say, choosing to go into debt with student loans for a university degree in order to achieve more potential future happiness). As a society, we choose officials who are tasked (ostensibly) to make legislation and take actions that maximize the greatest good for the greatest number of citizens. We all know that it does not exactly work so smoothly in reality, but it is the stated purpose and goal nevertheless.
The benefits of utilitarianism are derived from its reliance, not on any absolute conception of morality (which is, in addition, only a matter of opinion and subject to change), but on rational and logical consistency in order to help us make practical ethical decisions. It treats everyone equally, not under the impossible ‘ends principle’ Kant proposes, but as a person with rights to happiness all the same. The proper use of utilitarian can ultimately lead to a more just, as well as a happier, society.
I have intentionally not given many examples of various practical applications. This is first of all in the name of brevity. But mostly, I would like to reserve specific examples from each different issue for individual future discussions here, so that they can be treated in slightly more depth. I am also aware of several criticisms to the utilitarian theory, but I have not yet seen anything that convincingly weakens the overall premise, in my opinion. In addition, I have not found any alternatives to utilitarianism that represent a more logically consistent ethical solution. This chapter is not closed, and I hope to work through the issue in more specifics way in future posts. | <urn:uuid:6c0577f7-38f9-4496-935b-f5dfa813e3be> | {
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Cancer Survival Statistics
Cancer survival statistics are typically expressed as the proportion of patients alive at some point subsequent to the diagnosis of their cancer. Relative survival is an estimate of the percentage of patients who would be expected to survive the effects of their cancer. Observed survival is the actual percentage of patients still alive at some specified time after diagnosis of cancer. It considers deaths from all causes, cancer or otherwise. Overview of Population-based Cancer Survival Statistics describes the methodologies involved in calculating cancer survival statistics.
Access a variety of published reports and research tools for finding survival statistics. | <urn:uuid:b29c403b-9a7e-4ad7-9399-1fccb7c8f216> | {
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For Europe and central Asia, winter plays catch-up in February
For Europe, the first two calendar months of winter were mild. In December and most of January, temperatures averaged several degrees warmer than normal. As if to make up for lost time, however, exceptionally cold weather arrived in late January and remained firmly entrenched for weeks, causing many deaths as well as transportation chaos, according to news reports.
This map shows the extent and intensity of the cold snap across Europe and central Asia in February 2012. (Map includes data through February 25.) Places where temperatures were up to 16 degrees Fahrenheit colder than normal are deep blue, while places that were up to 16 degrees F warmer than normal are deep red. The "normal" February temperatures are based on data from 1981–2010.
In Europe, the most unusually cold temperatures settled over the East, especially Belarus and Ukraine, with an additional strong cold spot over southern France. Farther east, the cold anomalies were even more intense over Kazakhstan, and to its south, (not labeled) Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Colder than normal temperatures extend across Asia and even down into North Africa.
Several natural climate patterns can influence winter weather in the Northern Hemisphere. Among the strongest influences on European winters is the Arctic Oscillation. Winters are often milder than normal when the Arctic Oscillation is in its positive phase and cooler than normal when the pattern is in its negative phase.
The Arctic Oscillation flip-flopped twice so far this winter. The pattern was in its positive phase through mid-January, favoring mild conditions, and in its negative phase for the next several weeks, contributing to the chilly conditions in Europe. In mid-February, the Arctic Oscillation flipped back to its positive phase. While the cold conditions across Europe began to lose their grip later in the month, the Arctic blast certainly left its fingerprint on the monthly average temperature anomalies.
The cold in central Asia was matched by unusual warmth in the Kara and Barents Seas of the Arctic, likely connected to strong, steady winds from the south and west that have pushed sea ice deeper into the Arctic, leaving more open water than usual. Whatever warmth southerly winds might have brought, the lack of ice itself is probably contributing to the much warmer than normal temperatures. Sea ice insulates the ocean, preventing heat from the ocean from being lost to the air.
"Since that area is normally ice-covered," explains Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, "the air temperatures would usually be well below freezing at this time of the year. The open water will keep the surface temperatures essentially at the freezing point and the atmosphere above not much cooler."
Near-freezing might not sound warm, but for the Arctic in the dead of winter, it's warmer than normal. | <urn:uuid:bce969eb-b18f-474f-a341-93439f5570d9> | {
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A report prepared for the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, Boulder, Colorado by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
Download is free, donations are welcome
Cleanup of Nuclear Weapons Sites May Leave High Levels of Plutonium Levels in Soil
Precedent-Setting Process at Colorado’s Rocky Flats Plant Could Cause National Setback for Sound Environmental Health Rules, New Study Finds
Washington, D.C., December 11: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is embarked on a process of setting standards for cleanup at its Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant that could result in unprecedented levels of plutonium being left at the site, according to a new report issued today. The report, Setting Cleanup Standards to Protect Future Generations: The Scientific Basis of Subsistence Farmer Scenario and Its Application to the Estimation of Radionuclide Soil Action Levels (RSALs) for Rocky Flats, was prepared for a Boulder Colorado group, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER).
The report criticizes the DOE for proposing to use the impending designation of the site as a wildlife refuge to set cleanup standards which could result in high levels of plutonium being left behind in the soil after the site has been declared cleaned up. The traditional process for protecting people has been to assume that people might live on the site in the future and farm it. This provides a conservative, but reasonable upper estimate of the dose to future populations and would protect almost everyone else, since they would be exposed to lower amounts of radiation.
“The DOE is set to abandon a prudent, established method for estimating radiation doses to future generations,” said IEER president Dr. Arjun Makhijani, and principal author of the report. “Labeling a contaminated site as a wildlife refuge does not adequately protect health and the environment since we cannot forecast site uses far into the future.”
The half-life of plutonium-239 is over 24,000 years.
Setting Cleanup Standards details the historical development of how radiation protection standards for people and shows that the “subsistence farmer” approach was developed by official radiation protection authorities and advisory bodies in order to overcome the great uncertainties about future lifestyles, uses of land and water resources, dietary habits, and so on.
“We have no control over what will happen at Rocky Flats in the future,” said LeRoy Moore, a consultant to the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center. “We have control only over what we can do today. If we cannot now remove all contaminants from the Rocky Flats environment, we nevertheless have a responsibility to clean the site as thoroughly as possible, for the sake of future generations. This responsibility is not diminished by the specific designation we may give the site today.”
The DOE has used widely differing levels of residual radioactivity in the soil in its cleanup operations, according to the report. At Johnston Atoll in the Pacific, the soil was cleaned up to a level of 17 picocuries per gram. The initial proposal for Rocky Flats was almost 40 times as high. A public outcry forced the DOE to fund an independent review of the plan. The Risk Assessments Corporation of Neeses, South Carolina, which performed that evaluation, recommended a level of about 35 picocuries per gram, almost 20 times lower than the original DOE proposal. That recommendation has not been accepted and no standard has yet been made public.
“Conservative approaches to setting up standards have been developed to protect people who have no way of knowing how much individual dose they may be getting,” said Sriram Gopal, Staff Scientist at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. “Current laws are no guarantee that site use restrictions will hold for the very long periods of time involved. The historical record does not support such a view.”
The report discusses the immense uncertainties, including regulatory uncertainties, that must be addressed in setting standards. According to the report, the federal safe drinking water standards in effect today are a hundred times less strict in regard to plutonium than the State of Colorado’s standards for surface water purity. The report also concludes that federal safe drinking water standards for plutonium and other transuranic elements are based on obsolete methods of calculation.
“There needs to be better protection of the public from residual plutonium in the soil than would be provided by the course the DOE is on now,” said Dr. Makhijani. “It would be judicious to assume that future safe drinking water standards will reflect the best science that we know today rather than obsolete models. This means that far less plutonium in the soil will be tolerated.”
Proponents of designating contaminated sites as wildlife refuges have pointed out that higher levels of contamination keep people away, allowing wildlife to flourish. But the report notes that radiation causes genetic mutations, some of which are harmful, and that even if individual wildlife specimens are healthy that does not guarantee the health of species in the long-term.
“Cleaning Rocky Flats only to the level of a wildlife refuge leaves a more contaminated site to the wildlife a refuge supposedly would protect,” said Dr. Moore. “Not only will wildlife be less protected, but also they will become carriers of plutonium left in the soil to other locations, near and far. Moreover, cleaning to the level of a wildlife refuge sets the bad precedent of increasing risk by cutting cost.” | <urn:uuid:fb77ce9f-f165-4773-9d17-070e2024bde2> | {
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How To Interest? 02/18/2014
This was originally going to be how to interest children. I'll give a tip on that
but how to interest anyone is a better subject.
What is Interest?
Interest is attention. It is curiosity and it is admiration.
People put attention on things they consider worthy.
Aesthetics and beauty draws attention. Mystery draws attention.
Actually almost anything in the physical universe can pull attention.
I can pretty much prove that. Look around and see if you can locate anything
that you have absolutely no interest in. How did that go?
What will Interest Who?
Children respond very well to pretty things.
Children are generally high toned emotionally. They are enthusiastic or very
Emotionally up toned people will focus on aesthetic survival items. Ladies like
Danger gets attention. People are interested in things that could harm them.
People that are low toned emotionally are interested in low toned things. Items
of destruction, suffering and death attract low toned people.
Angry and antagonistic people are interested in forceful things.
Ugliness becomes interesting in a perverted way low on the emotional tone
Related article Emotional Tone Scale.
A Different Angle
What communicates to a person? What communicates is what interest them.
As a corollary if you can communicate with a person about something, their
interest will grow. Does that make sense to you?
If you want someone to be interested in mathematics, show them how math
can aid their future survival. By the way, counting change is not a good
example as only the very young can't do that!
Whatever the subject, it has to have some reality with the person you're trying
If you can't discuss biology with a child, they will have no interest nor would
an adult unless they are given something to create some understanding.
By the way, the first barrier to discussing biology is the definition of biology.
My sister-in-law was taking college classes and all was well except for one
class. I asked her which one was that. She told me Ichthyology (study of fish
:-). I asked her what that meant? She had no clue.
Supposed You want Someone Pursue Science?
How would you interest them?
I would suggest some light communication about science. You would need to
observe very closely that you don't put them to sleep with terminology that is
over their vocabulary. Just one word that is not understood correctly and they
will not understand the remaining of your communication!
If you can communicate and keep them understanding you, observe that you
are not trying to make a test tube cleaner out of a world class piano player or
painter. A person may simply not be interested in science.
In my humble opinion, the artist is far more valuable than the scientist. Artist
rarely contribute to the development or use of weapons of mass destruction.
Science creates weapons and passes them on with no responsibility for their
Your interests, for the child, are no where near as important as what the child
Let me rephrase that for you, try to get your spouse to do something that they
totally do not want to do! Get ready to duck!
They Are Interested, Education!
Once someone is interested in a subject, how do you keep them interested?
Let me point out, most public education has no clue how to do this. All
children arrive at school bursting with enthusiasm to learn.
Often this interest dims into a low level revolt at 4 or 6 years old. Sometimes
the revolt is not low level at all. The psychs go for the drugs to subdue the
revolting youngster. What education produces there is a drug addict with
virtually no valid education regardless of how long they stay in school and
To achieve an effective education, the student must be kept interested. While
this is the students responsibility, until they are mature enough to carry that
responsibility the burden lies with the educator, you.
Keeping them interested is simple. But that is the subject of another article.
I can write more but if you have tracked with me this far, I suspect you can
take over. If you don't understand, the brief words I write are not likely to help.
Feel free to ask questions. I have many, many articles written to help people
get along with each other including children.
Life is grand and you should be enjoying it. The game of life is in progress.
Lets all be winners, even the kids!
You have an angry child (probably would work on your spouse but slower). It's
bed time and you're putting an angry child down to sleep.
It would be nice to handle the upset now rather that perhaps neglect it and
add it to all the others that may have been neglected? Perhaps?
Just sit or lay down near the child. Do not talk or try to engage the child.
Be patient, children are not stupid (nor is your spouse).
Soon, the child or your spouse will wonder what you're up to, just being there,
with your attention on them and not communicating. (You've probably never
been silent before, eh?)
The fact you are quiet and not being upset yourself will go a long ways to
Normally, a child will originate a communication to you, wanting to know what
your doing. You can answer at the point, you can be civil with the child or your
Your spouse may choose to make you wrong for a long time. If you continue
the silence, sooner or later they will start talking. I bet you!
I am a certified Youth Specialist and also an Ethics Specialist. That simply
means I'm trained and know what I'm doing :-)
Do you have suggestions for a “How To” article? Let me know :-)
Listen and Guide, Someone to.
©2006-2014 Carl Watts www.carlwattsartist.com 021814 edited 022714 | <urn:uuid:b798ca6c-b939-4582-acde-070ee9ff90e5> | {
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A new experimental device dedicated to the experimental studies of wildland fires is proposed. It uses two Medthermreg heat flux sensors and a thermocouple fixed on an insulated support. The whole sensors are connected to a data logger buried under the ground surface, which avoid the use of long connection cables all over the field. This device can perform accurate measurements of high heat fluxes thanks to water- cooled sensors. This new experimental device was made to resist to intense heat emitted from large spreading fire fronts. The temperature of the sensors is checked during fire spread. One experimental fire spread across dead shrubs composed of oak branches was performed. The designed heat sensor is used in combination with a two-dimensional anemometer and photographs. The results provided here illustrate both the efficiency of the sensors' insulation and cooling system and the relevancy of intrusive heat flux measurements. Some new insights about thermal balances from a real scale fire are suggested, in comparison with previous available data acknowledgements. | <urn:uuid:02f569f3-cef8-4a32-9181-251b7625038e> | {
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Recommendation Systems are an increasingly popular application of Machine Learning in many industries. If you’ve used services like Amazon, Netflix or Pandora, you might notice their personalized recommendations suggesting items for you to buy, movies to watch, or songs to listen to.
An example of how influential a well-designed recommendation system can be is what happened to Joe Simpson's Touching the Void, a book about mountain-climbing. The book was not a bestseller when it was published originally in 1988, but surged in popularity after another mountain-climbing book, Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, topped the charts in 1997. This happened because Amazon’s recommendation system noticed that a few people who bought and enjoyed Into Thin Air also bought and enjoyed Touching the Void. Without good online recommendation systems to suggest the book to readers, Touching the Void may have been quickly forgotten. Instead, it became very popular in its own right and in some respects exceeded the popularity of Into Thin Air.
Similarly, in this project, we will recommend movies to users. We will use the MovieLens dataset (instructions to download the dataset are in the project instructions) to create a recommendation engine like Netflix’s. We will then use the Clustering Algorithms we have learned earlier in the course to refine our engine to make better and better recommendations.
Are you ready to recommend movies to me? The following sections will get you started!
We will be using the Pearson Correlation Similarity Measure as the basis for designing our recommendation engine, and then refine predictions using clustering algorithms.
Parts of this project will be automatically verified through the Udacity autograder, including utility matrix values and predictions. For students enrolled in the full course experience, your coach will assess your performance on the project using the rubric linked below, in addition to automatic verification.
You can view the rubric here. Be sure to review it to make sure your project is complete before submitting it.
Recommendation engines generally use two different techniques to make predictions:
We will use Collaborative Filtering to build our recommendation engine.
We will start by mathematically formulating a recommendation engine framework. In a recommendation-system application, there are two classes of entities, users and items. Users have preferences for certain items and these preferences must be discovered from the data. The data is represented as a utility matrix, a value that represents the rating given by that user for that item and is given for each user-item pair. The ratings can take a value between 1 to 5, representing the number of stars that the user gave as a rating for that item.
We will assume that the matrix is sparse, meaning that most of the entries are unknown.
Here is an example of a utility matrix, depicting four users: Ann, Bob, Carl and Doug. The available movie names are HP1, HP2 and HP3 for the Harry Potter movies, and SW1, SW2 and SW3 for Star Wars episodes 1, 2 and 3.
Table 1. An example Utility Matrix for Movie Recommendation (you can fill this out here)
The goal of the recommendation engine is to predict the blanks in a utility matrix. For example, how will Ann rate SW2?
In order to make these predictions, we must first measure similarity of users or items from the rows and columns of the Utility Matrix. The data is too small to draw any reliable conclusions. Examine the preferences of Ann and Carl. They both have rated the same movie but have diametrically opposite opinions on it. We would expect that a good distance measure would set them far apart. We can use different similarity measures for this task, but in this project we will use the Pearson Correlation Similarity Measure.
Letdenote the rating given by user to item . If is the set of all items that two users and have both rated, then the Pearson Correlation Similarity Measure between the two users is given by:
pcs(x, y) to .
We still need to take an additional step to recommend items to users. One way of predicting the value of the utility matrix entry (estimated rating) of a given user u for item i, is to find the n number of users most similar to u and average their ratings for item i, counting only those among the n similar users who have rated i. Note that you must be careful not to compare the user to themselves when finding these top n similar users.
When making predictions, it is generally better to normalize the matrix first. That is, for each of the n most similar users, subtract their average rating for all items from the rating of the item of interest i. This tells us whether a user rates the movie above the average movie they have rated or below that average. Take the average of these differences for those users who have rated i, then add this average difference to the average rating that u gives for all items. This normalization adjusts the estimate in the case that u tends to give very high or very low ratings; it calibrates the estimate more to the individual's tendencies. A useful side-effect of this approach is that when none of the n most similar users have rated item i, then the best guess reduces to the average rating that u has given across all items.
Part 1 Instructions:
Fill the Utility Matrix in Table 1.
a) Download the code template (
ml2_project.zip under Downloadables section here), and edit
b) Complete the function
pcs(x, y). It finds the Pearson Correlation Similarity Measure between two users.
c) Complete the function
guess(u, i, top_n). It finds the best guess of a rating for user u and item i, if we look at the top_n users similar to user u.
d) Run the script (
python part1.py) to guess all the blanks. You can verify your answers by submitting them here.
Note: This project uses a 1-based indexing scheme, i.e. the first items in the users and items lists have an ID of 1 (this is how the MovieLens dataset used in Part 2 is encoded, and we want to follow the same pattern in Part 1).
part1.py also includes a comparison with the following test set. Report the Mean Squared Error displayed and verify your answer here.
a) Ann rates SW2 with 2 stars
b) Carl rates HP1 with 2 stars
c) Carl rates HP2 with 2 stars
d) Doug rates SW1 with 4 stars
e) Doug rates SW2 with 3 stars
Can we improve the accuracy of our predictions if we work from similar items instead of similar users? What are the pros/cons of this approach? Explain in 4-5 sentences.
(Optional) Cluster similar items using Pearson Correlation Similarity Measure and report the new Utility Matrix. Test your predictions against the test set and find out if clustering items can improve your prediction.
In this part of the project, you will be using the MovieLens dataset to create a utility matrix. Each of the users and items will be defined in the dataset itself. Refer to data/README to find out how the data is structured.
It is difficult to detect the similarity between items and users because we have little information about user-item pairs in this sparse utility matrix. Even if two items belong to the same genre, there are likely to be very few users who bought or rated both. Similarly, even if two users both like a genre or multiple genres, they may not have bought any items to indicate that.
One way of dealing with this lack of data is to cluster items and/or users. In this example, we will cluster similar movies based on their properties. After clustering the items, we can revise the utility matrix so the columns represent clusters of items and the entry for User u and Cluster c is the average rating that u gave to the members of Cluster c that u did not individually rate. Note that u may have rated none of the cluster members, in which case the entry for u and c is left blank.
Part 2 Instructions:
guess(), adapting them for the new dataset as necessary.
Improve your guesses by clustering similar users and/or items (see comments at the bottom of part2.py).
a) You may choose a suitable clustering algorithm/technique. Think about what approach will be most suitable given the kinds of features available to you in the dataset, and how you are planning to use the clustering results.
b) You will still be using Pearson Correlation Similarity Measure to fill the utility matrix; but think of how you can improve your selection of similar users and candidate items using the clusters you find.
Test the ratings you get with the test set. Remember that for each user, you will first have to find out which cluster they belong to and then find their ratings.
a) Train your model (i.e. generate the utility matrix) using the training dataset (u.base).
b) Use the u.test dataset to test your modified implementation with clustering. The u.test file contains user, items pairs and ratings given by them. So you can use the mean squared error metric to verify performance of your recommender system.
c) To challenge your recommender system further, download the data/predict.test dataset (also in the instructor notes here). This dataset has user, item pairs but not ratings. You have to predict ratings and submit your answers in the form of user_id, item_id, rating rows in the text box (retaining the order in the file). It will return you a score which measures the Mean Squared Error between your predicted ratings and ground truth data. Your score should be smaller than 0.587.
(Optional) Make a user interface, on the terminal or otherwise, where you will ask a user to rate 10 movies and then recommend 5 movies they should watch.
ml2_project_extras.zip contains additional file(s) that are relevant but not necessary for completing the project requirements. They have been provided for further self-exploration.
In this final part of the project, we take a closer look at how you developed your solution.
Answer the following questions reflecting upon your choices and methodology [suggested response lengths are indicated]:
For students in the full course experience, please submit the following:
A PDF Document that includes answers to Part 1, Step 3 and all questions in Part 3 . Ensure that your report does not exceed 10 pages (including charts). Any report over ten pages will not be graded.
Create a .zip or .tar.gz of your code for parts 1 and 2. You can also upload your source code somewhere and send us a link to it.
Send these files to [email protected]. Within 7 days of your submission, you will receive an email from your project evaluator (who will not be the coach you’ve been working with) with a graded rubric and instructions for next steps.
If your project meets expectation, you will have an exit interview with us. The purpose of this interview is to discuss your analysis and verify that you are the person who created it. Don’t worry, this interview will not be difficult or stressful (assuming you are the person who made the analysis :) ).
For any further questions, please review the Udacity Project Submission FAQ or email your coach. | <urn:uuid:6cb93b7d-b218-44e5-9959-aba89029de8b> | {
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What is Green revolution ?
During the 1960s and 1970s, The Increase in the production of agricultural production (cereals such as wheat, rice etc) because of the research, Development and new agriculture technology with better seeds.
In 1963, The American agronomist Dr. Norman E Borlaug known as the Father of the Green Revolution, introduced the wheat. But in India, Dr. M.S. Swaminathan is known as the “Father of the Green Revolution in India”.
Brief background on Green revolution in India
- The main objectives for the Green revolution in India is nothing but to continue the expansion of Farming areas, Using the new technologies and improved version of seeds and to harvest the land or crops 2 times a year that makes the increased in production.
- To improve the food quality-supplies and shortage In Developing countries, The Scientists has developed High Yield Variety – HYV seeds. These seeds also called as “Miracle seeds”.
- Due these High Yield Variety – HYV seeds or Miracle seeds, One can produce ten times more crops than the regular seeds at a time on the particular land.
- New agriculture technology had been introduced in 1960s phase to improve the chronic food defects and this led to increase in food production especially Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh in India. Meanwhile this period of time the chemical fertilizers and pesticides use increased and this led to negative effects on soil and the land, Which is known as “Land degradation”.
- During the green revolution, There are various parameters which developed countries has adopted and that leads to both profit-loss measures like to use of high yielding varieties (HYVs) of seeds or Miracle seeds, Use of advanced sprinklers for irrigation, Use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, Improved the infrastructure specially in Rural areas, Use of insecticides, Improved and expansion of the irrigation infrastructure, etc.
Obstacles during Green revolution in India
- The first and foremost need for the agricultural revolution is Finance/Loan to farmers. Now a days, It is easy to get a loan for a land for the agricultural purposes and the interest rates are quite impressive offered to farmers for farming purpose. But still there are few areas or cities where it is tough to get a loan and farmers ended up having a big debt on them.
- India needs an education in the field of agriculture that it is underrated subject. This leads to the lack of productivity and insufficiency to grow the crops and farming it in a proper way. Increased population and lack of finance make people poor and less productive.
- Farmers can not afford the new technologies and hence they use traditional methods to grow the crops. Moreover, Increased population and less crops affects on the Indian economy and food supplies to people. That is why government has taken an initiatives to encourage farmers to improve the productions and hence India does not have to be dependent on food imports from different countries.
- During the 1940s and 1970s, The problems such as malnutrition and starvation occurred due to shortage of food and farmers didn’t get the proper labour allowance and India’s population didn’t get enough food to feed for their families.
- The second most important obstacles that affected on the Green revolution of India was the quality and quantity of Irrigation supplies. In 1950s, Only 17% areas of India was well irrigated and the majority of Indian states dependent on the rainfall and hence the agricultural low production happened. –àGovernment is spending much money to improve the irrigation infrastructure and each agriculture part of land should get enough water to produce the quality and quantity of production to improve the Indian economy as well as the malnutrition factors.
- Green revolution was possible only due to the Finance, Fertilized land and enough water supplies. Today in India, Almost 50% of Indian populations are employed in the field of agricultural activities that leads the nation to have the better economy and healthy nation. But still Green revolution in India does not have 100 percent success ratio.
When the Green revolution was not successful during the year 2002, There were 1000 rural farmers committed suicide reported from all over the 12 districts of Maharashtra, India. The major count that had been noted during the year 1987 was almost 10,000 and this shows that the Green revolution in India was not that much successful. Hence with the increasing population of India, The developing countries must give their 100 percent to the agricultural activity to increase the food production and to get enough nutrients from the crops which should not be expensive at all.
Important points to be noted
- During the 10 years of Green revolution in India, The crop areas under the Magical seeds or High Yield Variety – HYV seeds grew from the 7% to 22% of the total cultivated area. Moreover the wheat crop area contains 70%, Rice crop area contains 35%, Millet and corn areas contain 20% that was used the Magical seeds or High Yield Variety – HYV seeds.
- Almost 50% of India’s population is in the agriculture farming employed. That makes the Indian economy to have biggest impact on India.
- India has shown inspiration to other countries that anyone can become from starving nation to the exporters of Food. That is pride for an India.
- During the political party Indian National congress position of Indira Gandhi during the year 1917 to 1984 made the Green revolution gradually successful in the field of Agriculture.
- During the Green revolution, India paid back all the debts-loans whatever it had taken from the world bank and this shows the improved economy of an India. | <urn:uuid:7cdbddbd-6d0d-41c4-b31b-00fd51dd1ab8> | {
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In September 1910, the human rights activist and anti-imperialist Roger Casement arrived in the Amazon to investigate reports of widespread human rights abuses in the vast forests stretching along the Putumayo river. There, the Peruvian entrepreneur Julio César Arana ran an area the size of Belgium as his own private fiefdom; his Britishregistered company operated a systematic programme of torture, exploitation and murder. Fresh from documenting the scarcely imaginable atrocities perpetrated by King Leopold in the Congo, Casement was confronted with an all too recognisable scenario. He uncovered an appalling catalogue of abuse: nearly 30,000 Indians had died to produce four thousand tonnes of rubber.
From the Peruvian rainforests to the City of London, Jordan Goodman recounts a crime against humanity that history has almost forgotten, but whose exposure in 1912 sent shockwaves around the world. Drawing on a wealth of original research, The Devil and Mr Casement is a story of colonial exploitation and corporate greed with enormous contemporary political resonance.
Another five star review for Jordan Goodman's The Devil and Mr Casement: One Man's Struggle for Human Rights in South America's Heart of Darkness, this time from the Independent:
The Devil and Mr Casement is a fine achievement, offering both a rigorous account of atrocities in the Amazon and a balanced portrait of Casement himself. The Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa's forthcoming
Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature last week has written a novel based on the fascinating and controversial life of Roger Casement, to be published in Spanish on 2nd November.
Casement's story is staggering. Born in Dublin to a Protestant father and a Roman Catholic mother, he went on to become British consul in the Congo, where he was commissioned by the British government to examine forced labour in the Congo Free State. His report on the atrocities he witnessed contributed to Leopold II of Belgium's relinquishment of his colonial fiefdom.
Jordan Goodman's The Devil and Mr Casement: One Man's Struggle for Human Rights in South America's Heart of Darkness has received a fantastic review in the Independent on Sunday. Giving the book five stars, David Evans writes: | <urn:uuid:3d6be071-cbba-4018-946c-2d5ac4a7d291> | {
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« This formulation of marxist inspiration – coming from the Manuscrits written in 1844: “Naturalisierung des Menschen, Humanisierung der Natur” (naturalizing the human being, humanizing nature) – intends to express an urgency with three characteristics : - First, the urgency to reconnect our existence with the cosmos (recosmiser), because the exaltation of the modern individual has caused a decosmisation, which can be lethal in the long term, since no being can live without a common world (kosmos); Second, the urgency to make concrete again the meaning of words and things (reconcrétiser) by placing them back in their common history (their “growing together”: concrescence), because focusing on the object, typical of modernity, results in removing the meaning of things, making the language a problem; Third, the urgency to bring nature and culture together again (réembrayer) by necessarily considering the relation between history and subjectivity, at all stages of the being, going from the most primitive life to the most human conscience.
Recosmiser, reconcrétiser, réembrayer : facing those three urgencies, the occidental thinking is failed by what once was its strength: the mother structure subject-verb-complement, which is based on the language, has guided our logic (with the model subject-predicate), our metaphysics (with the identity of the being) and our science (with the in-itself of the object). They are all based on the double principle of identity and the other – in other words, based on the exclusion of the symbolic.
Examples such as the Japanese language, of which the mother structure was of a different gender, or the tetralemma developed by the Indians thinkers, which always includes the other, is showing us the way: overcoming the problems of modernity will not be done without both the logical and ontological perspectives of the great Asian civilizations.
We dare to question the famous saying of Kipling: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” »
Augustin Berque, was born in 1942, he is Director of studies at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. He is a geographer, an orientalist and a philosopher. He is the author of many publications on the relation between the human societies, and at a larger scale, on the relation of all living beings to their environment. As a consequence, he has established a mésologie based on the Umweltlehre of Uexkull and on the fudogaku of Watsuji. A member of the Académie Européenne, Augustin Berque was, in 2009, the first occidental to receive the Grand Prix of Fukuoka for Asian cultures. | <urn:uuid:1e2fd910-a3a6-47ea-a4eb-5933c1f38ffb> | {
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What does this mean?
A phase 6 influenza pandemic means that the virus is now spreading between people across countries in a sustained fashion and will have a global distribution (although not necessarily affecting every country).
But doesn’t seasonal influenza spread globally anyway?
The other part of the definition of an influenza pandemic is that the causative agent must be a new strain of virus. Thus seasonal influenza is not called a pandemic because it involves strains of influenza A that we have seen before, even though it spreads worldwide. Conversely, the H5N1 avian influenza A that we’ve been so worried about in recent years was a new strain, but thus far hasn’t been able to transmit from person to person efficiently enough to affect people globally.
Note that the definition of pandemic does not refer in any way to the severity of illness affecting the infected individuals.
In general, a pandemic might be expected to cause more severe illness because affected people will lack preexisting immunity to the new strain. For this reason reports of deaths in young (presumably) healthy people in Mexico from H1N1 are concerning, and such deaths were indeed a notable feature of the devastating 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic that followed World War 1 killing 50 million people. However, thus far, H1N1 influenza cases that have occurred outside of Mexico do not seem to be any more severe than seasonal influenza (which kills 500,000 people a year!). The very young, very old, and immuno-compromised are, as always, at greatest risk. Nevertheless, the virulence of H1N1 influenza remains poorly defined and has the potential to increase so we must remain vigilent.
‘Life in the Fast Lane’ 2009 H1N1 Influenza A (‘swine flu’) resource list. | <urn:uuid:94c73530-c8e0-4ace-b3f2-7722db88d80e> | {
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“The third is freedom from want...everywhere in the world.”
When FDR first took office, the country was in the depths of the Great Depression. Thus, from the start of his first administration, President Roosevelt placed a high priority on securing “freedom from want,” seeing it as essential to the nation's long-term strength and future. Social Security, unemployment insurance, aid to dependent children, the minimum wage, housing, stock market regulation, and federal deposit insurance for banks—these are but a few of the measures introduced through FDR's New Deal programs, many of which are still with us today.
With the onset of World War II, Roosevelt further saw the necessity of spreading “freedom from want” throughout the world. The Second World War, he believed, was caused in part by the currency disorders, mass unemployment, and economic desperation that had brought Hitler and Mussolini to power. As he stated when proposing an economic bill of rights (see Appendix B): “[T]rue individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”
During his first administration, FDR had informed his countrymen that American democracy could not survive if one-third of the nation were ill-housed, ill-clothed, and ill-fed. During his second term, he urged the further recognition that American welfare could not be assured in a disordered and impoverished world economy. America should seek “economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peace time life for its inhabitants,” he declared in his Four Freedoms speech—a sentiment he reiterated a few months later when meeting with Winston Churchill to draw up the Atlantic Charter, which included a provision for international economic collaboration. Specifically, Roosevelt had in mind the creation of new international organizations—an international monetary fund, a world bank—with the mandate of fostering high levels of employment, growth, trade, and economic justice throughout the world.
Untold Prosperity—for Some
Sixty years after Roosevelt's death, a large number of Americans have achieved living standards far beyond the wildest dreams of their forbears who endured the Great Depression. Indeed, Rockwell's painting of a family about to enjoy a hearty Thanksgiving meal depicts the kind of scene of plenty that many Americans have come to take for granted. Likewise, citizens of other Western countries—including those living in the vanquished nations of Germany and Japan—have experienced an unprecedented rise in living standards.
Yet there are still significant numbers of Americans who are hungry and poor. According to a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report, in 2003, 36.3 million Americans lived in households experiencing food insecurity, compared to 33.6 million in 2001 and 31 million in 1999. Meanwhile, the U.S. Census Bureau has found that in 2003, 35.9 million Americans were in poverty, up 1.3 million from 2002.
How did this situation evolve? William Felice of Eckerd College traces it back to the Cold War, when "human rights" were equated with political rights and civil liberties—not to economic and social rights, which were associated with the values of communism. The right to an adequate standard of living was not seen as the government's special province and instead was left up to private enterprise and market forces.
The trend toward privatization is evident in President Bush’s domestic agenda, which is focused on restructuring the government-sponsored social safety net created by FDR—including the capstone of the New Deal, Social Security. Meanwhile, the gap between the superrich and the common working person continues to widen—to the point where the top 1 percent of U.S. citizens now possess more wealth than the combined incomes of the bottom 90 percent. A recent New York Times investigation of class in America revealed that despite the nation's greater affluence, it has become even harder for Americans to move up from one economic class to another. “Americans are arguably more likely than they were thirty years ago to end up in the class into which they were born.”
Strategies to End World Poverty
Prosperity at home is only half of the equation. What about in the rest of the world? As former World Bank economist Nancy Birdsall pointed out in her Eckerd College lecture, today's world is “incredibly unequal.” In the foreign policy arena as well, the United States has yet to put its weight behind the goal of guaranteeing “a more secure, more prosperous world, a less unequal world, a world where fewer people live in poverty.” On the contrary, the gap has been widening between rich and poor nations. Again in the words of Birdsall: “The wealth and income levels of rich countries like the United States and those Scandinavia, in Northern Europe, is one hundred times on average, in real terms, the average income level in countries like Ethiopia, Nepal, much of Africa, and some parts of Central America. That gap was about 10:1 a hundred years ago.”
Why are we so far away from realizing FDR's vision of securing freedom from want “everywhere in the world”? Some economists, most notably Joseph Stiglitz, have blamed irresponsible, “one size fits all” trade policies for the growing disparity between Western countries and the rest of the world. Others, such as Jagdish Bhagwati, are more optimistic about the potential for trade liberalization to benefit the economies of developing countries by stimulating growth. As Financial Times writer Martin Wolf, another globalization advocate, wrote in his recent book: “Never before have so many people or such a large proportion of the world's population enjoyed such large rises in their standard of living.”
Still others have focused on practical plans to address the limitations of market forces in helping the world's poor. They argue that with 1.1 billion people suffering from extreme poverty (defined by the World Bank as an income of less than $1 a day), it is high time to do something to reduce these numbers.
Economist Jeffrey Sachs, for instance, has been spearheading an ambitious UN scheme to end global poverty by 2025. In his view, geography has played a crucial role in determining Africa's fate—it is landlocked and disease prone—yet such problems, once acknowledged, can be overcome. By increasing foreign aid, disease (such as malaria) can be controlled, and infrastructure can be created. The upshot will be greater returns on private investment, triggering market-led growth. Otherwise, political elites will continue to focus on removing resourcebased wealth from poor countries as quickly as possible; investment and development will never be anything but empty promises.
At the April Eckerd meeting, Birdsall outlined the anti-poverty plan developed by her organization, the Center for Global Development, which has much in common with Sachs' prescriptions. The United States, she said, has an ethical duty to make “freedom from want” a high priority in its foreign policy. Birdsall finds it paradoxical that America readily utilizes its “hard power” resources in both the market and military affairs while failing to make use of its “soft power” resources to shore up its reputation and moral standing in the world.
She went on to list a number of key ways in which the United States could enhance its soft power, beginning with foreign aid. U.S. Overseas Development Aid (ODA) is “scandalously cheap,” she said. As a share of overall GDP, the U.S. aid level has dropped to 0.15%, the lowest of any major industrialized country. To the poor and vulnerable of the world, America seems to be sending the message that it just doesn't care. Birdsall called for dramatic action to improve the U.S. record on this score. Such action would include not just more aid but also “development-friendly” steps such as lower agricultural subsidies and a cabinet-level development agency tasked with working with other affluent countries to come up with feasible strategies for alleviating world poverty.
All Talk and No Action?
In fact, there is no shortage of proposals on the table for freeing the world from want. President Bush has proposed the Millennium Challenge Account, which directs aid to countries that have taken responsibility for government reforms. In the view of journalist Nicholas Kristof, this plan, while off to an “agonizingly slow start,” is at least “shrewdly focused on encouraging good governance and economic growth.” Another hopeful sign was Bush’s recent announcement of $1.2 billion for a five-year campaign against malaria— acknowledged by New York Times editors as an "admirable start" to the July 2005 G8 summit meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland.
But while there are plenty of ways, is there a will? The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, known as the Bretton Woods institutions, celebrated their sixtieth anniversaries in 2004 with very little to show for their goals of reducing world poverty and fostering development. Likewise, six decades after FDR attempted to persuade world leaders to work cooperatively toward promoting prosperity around the globe, we are once again faced with a situation where the heads of nation-states are primarily interested in pleasing their own constituents—a position that one speaker described as "democratic narcissm." Such a narrow and short-sighted approach makes it difficult to implement even the simplest of proposals, such as the Tobin tax initiative.1 Western leaders lack the political traction to move such ideas forward.
In Michael Smith's view, the time has come for the United States to revisit Roosevelt's rationale for international economic collaboration: namely, that a world marred by rising poverty is unstable and hence insecure for all of its inhabitants. Particularly during these times of heightened insecurity, taking action to lessen global inequalities should be seen as being in America's best interests. People who think that America's interests come first “need to be persuaded that they are living on borrowed time,” he suggested.
Birdsall reinforced Smith's conclusions in the final meeting of the Eckerd series, stating that America should use its power not only to capture for Americans the benefits of globalization but also to “reduce the two kinds of risk, conventional security risks and human security risks, that globalization has brought.” Improving the plight of the world’s poor would not only bring ethical returns, it would also serve U.S. national interests, she argued.
1) In the 1950s and 1960s many economists predicted that the newly independent African countries would become wealthier once they developed modern industrial sectors. Yet Africa has failed to prosper in an era of globalization. What can, and should, be done to address the situation?
2) Do market-friendly (i.e., free trade) policies stimulate economic growth and in turn reduce poverty? How can we measure this?
3) The economist Jeffrey Sachs claims that ending world poverty should be possible in our lifetimes. What are the main proposals of the UN anti-poverty plan he espouses? Are such proposals feasible?
SOURCES & RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:
Bhagwati, Jagdish. In Defense of Globalization. Oxford University Press, 2004. Chapter 1, “Anti-Globalization: Why?” available at http://www.amazon.com.
“Class Matters” (New York Times Special Section), available at http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/index.html.
Felice, William. The Global New Deal: Economic and Social Human Rights in World Politics. Rowman and Littlefield, 2003.
Sachs, Jeffrey. The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. Penguin Press HC, 2005. Chapter 1's section on Malawi available at http://www.amazon.com.
Stiglitz, Joseph E. Globalization and Its Discontents. W.W. Norton, 2002. Chapter 1, “The Promise of Global Institutions,” available at http://www.amazon.com.
Wolf, Martin. Why Globalization Works. Yale University Press, 2004.
Edited Speech transcripts on CarnegieCouncil.org
Brown, Mark Malloch. “In the Wake of September 11: Human Security and Human Development in the 21st Century.” Merrill House Programs, 2001.
Nye, Joseph S. “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics.” Merrill House Programs, 2003.
Other Carnegie Council resources
Reddy, Sanjay. Achieving Global Justice Seminar Report: “Monitoring Global Poverty: Better Options for the Future.” Carnegie Council Series, 2002.
“Global Poverty Relief: A Debate.” With Andrew Kuper and Peter Singer. Ethics & International Affairs 16.1 (Spring 2002).
Symposium: “World Poverty and Human Rights.” With Thomas Pogge, Mathias Risse, Alan Patten, Rowan Cruft, Norbert Anwander, and Debra Satz. Ethics & International Affairs 19.1 (Spring 2005)
Download: Freedom from Want (PDF, 156.06 K) | <urn:uuid:0b73f169-2ee8-4f5c-ba18-33947fab5ae7> | {
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In the previous blog, how to do paper quilling (Part 1), we explored the basic techniques of paper quilling which is around making coils and giving them shapes. Once you have a got a grip on this, you are ready to try out different shapes and designs which can be made using some of the other quilling tools. This blog will take you through 3 of the other commonly used tools: Border Buddy, Quilling Mould and Quilling Comb.
Border Buddy: This tool is used to make borders or coils that are hollow from the centre. Using this tool you can create coils in triangular, square and circular shapes of different sizes. The hollow spaces can be either filled with other coils, nested among other border buddy coils or can be used individually as depicted below. The process of giving it shape is same as we have learnt in the previous blog ( i.e. by pinching it from different points to get the desired shape)
To begin with you have to select the size of the circle, triangle or square you want to create from the towers. Start rolling the strip around the tower and glue it after you have completed one full round, so that the coil does not open, then continue rolling it till the time you have achieved the desired thickness of the coil. Once you have completed rolling the strips, glue the outer edge and gently remove the coil from the tower - and you are done!
Quilling Mould: This is an extremely handy tool for 3D Quilling- a technique, that involves making coils of multiple strips to get a big tight coil and then expanding it from the centre of the coil, using the quilling mould to get different type of dome shapes. These shapes are then joined together to create different 3D objects (sample project made using 3D quilling).
Start by making a tight coil of multiple strips using your Super Quiller. Begin with coils of 5-6 strips for practice and then you can keep increasing the number of strips depending upon the usage. With Super Quiller you can easily coil up to 10 Strips of 5 mm, with fresh batteries. Once you have made the coil and sealed it, place the coil on one of the domes of the mould and gently press down on the outer edge of the coil, so that it starts taking the shape of the dome. You can then combine these domes or decorate them to make a lot of exciting projects such as quilled earrings, finger puppets, 3D models of different animals and so on.
Quilling Comb: This tool uses the looping technique to create different shapes and patterns. It helps in creating different shapes and forms and is extremely popular among the advanced Quillers.
The below video will give you an idea of how to use the Quilling Comb.
The key to mastering these tools is practice, practice and more practice! While Border Buddy and Quilling Mould are very easy to use, sometimes using the Comb can be a bit tricky, and hence we recommend it only for slightly experienced Quillers.
With the help of Super Quiller and these tools, you can create almost any design and form in Quilling. You can also browse through our projects section and project supplies selection to help you further inspires your creativity.
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||It has been suggested that Demarchy be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since December 2012.|
||This article possibly contains original research. (January 2011)|
||This article contains a pro and con list. (May 2012)|
|Part of the Politics series|
In politics, sortition (also known as allotment or the drawing of lots) is the selection of decision makers by lottery. The decision-makers are chosen as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates.
In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was the primary method for appointing officials, and its use was widely regarded as a principal characteristic of democracy. It is commonly used today to select prospective jurors in common law-based legal systems.
Athenian democracy developed in the 6th century BC out of what was then called isonomia (equality of law and political rights), and sortition was the principal way of achieving this fairness.Also in Ancient Greek mythology,Zeus,Poseidon,and Hades used sortition to determine who ruled over which domain. Zeus got the sky,Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld.It was used to pick most of the magistrates for their governing committees, and for their juries (typically of 501 people). Aristotle relates equality and democracy:
Democracy arose from the idea that those who are equal in any respect are equal absolutely. All are alike free, therefore they claim that all are free absolutely... The next is when the democrats, on the grounds that they are all equal, claim equal participation in everything.
It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election.
In Athens, "democracy" (literally meaning rule by the people) was in opposition to those supporting oligarchy (rule by a few). Athenian democracy was characterised by being run by the "many" (the ordinary people) who were allotted to the committees which ran government. Thucydides has Pericles make this point in his Funeral Oration: "It is administered by the many instead of the few; that is why it is called a democracy."
The Athenians believed sortition to be more democratic than elections and used complex procedures with purpose-built allotment machines (kleroteria) to avoid the corrupt practices used by oligarchs to buy their way into office. According to the author Mogens Herman Hansen the citizen's court was superior to the assembly because the allotted members swore an oath which ordinary citizens in the assembly did not and therefore the court could annul the decisions of the assembly. Both Aristotle and Herodotus (one of the earliest writers on democracy) emphasize selection by lot as a test of democracy:
The rule of the people has the fairest name of all, equality (isonomia), and does none of the things that a monarch does. The lot determines offices, power is held accountable, and deliberation is conducted in public.
Past scholarship maintained that sortition had its roots in the use of chance to divine the will of the gods, but this view is no longer common among scholars.
Sortition is commonly used in selecting juries in Anglo-Saxon legal systems and in small groups (e.g., picking a school class monitor by drawing straws). In public decision-making, individuals are often determined by allotment if other forms of selection such as election fail to achieve a result. Examples include certain hung elections and certain votes in the UK Parliament. Some contemporary thinkers have advocated a greater use of selection by lot in today’s political systems for example reform of the British House of Lords and proposals at the time of the adoption of the current Constitution of Iraq.
Sortition proposals put forward for discussion in the modern world generally relate to the means for selecting a large legislative body (such as the U.S. Congress) from among the adult population at large. One such proposal is C. L. R. James's 1956 essay "Every Cook Can Govern."
A more recent proposal was made by the Marxist economists Allin Cottrell and Paul Cockshott. They propose that, to avoid formation of a new social elite in a post-capitalist society...
The various organs of public authority would be controlled by citizens’ committees chosen by lot. The media, the health service, the planning and marketing agencies, the various industries would have their juries. Each of these would have a defined area of competence. A committee for the energy industry, for instance, would decide certain details of energy policy but it could not disregard a popular vote, say, to phase out nuclear power. The membership of the committees need not be uniformly drawn from the public. The health service committees could be made up partly of a random sample of health service workers, and partly of members of the public. As Burnheim argues, the principle should be that all those who have a legitimate interest in the matter should have a chance to participate in its management."
- Effective representation of the interests of the people
A modern advocate of sortition, political scientist John Burnheim, argues for sortition as follows (Is Democracy Possible?, pp. 124–5):
But do we, in order to have democracy, have to find a way in which the demos first makes up its mind what is to be done and then controls its representatives in the process of carrying it out? What I want to suggest is a different conception. Let the convention for deciding what is our common will be that we will accept the decision of a group of people who are well informed about the question, well-motivated to find as good a solution as possible and representative of our range of interests simply because they are statistically representative of us as a group. If this group is then responsible for carrying out what it decides, the problem of control of the execution process largely vanishes. Those directing the execution process are carrying out their own decisions. They may need a little prodding to keep them up to the mark, but there is no institutional basis for a conflict of interest between bodies responsible for making decisions and those responsible for execution. They have an overriding interest in showing that their decisions are practical and well-grounded.
- Fairness and equality
- Sortition is inherently egalitarian in that it ensures all citizens have an equal chance of entering office irrespective of any bias in society:
Compared to a voting system – even one that is open to all citizens – a citizen-wide lottery scheme for public office lowers the threshold to office. This is because ordinary citizens do not have to compete against more powerful or influential adversaries in order to take office, and because the selection procedure does not favour those who have pre-existing advantages or connections – as invariably happens with election by preference. From an organisational point of view a citizen-wide lottery system gives all citizens an equal stake in the office in question and so defines the size of the active (or potentially active) citizen body.
- Almost all Greek writers who mention democracy (including Aristotle, Plato and Herodotus) both emphasise the role of selection by lot or state outright that being allotted is more democratic than elections. For example Plato says:
"Democracy arises after the poor are victorious over their adversaries, some of whom they kill and others of whom they exile, then they share out equally with the rest of the population political offices and burdens; and in this regime public offices are usually allocated by lot."
- We see the same idea in the 18th century after the re-emergence of democracy in the writings of Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu:
- Less corruptible than elections
- Sortition may be less corruptible than voting because processes can be developed to ensure that selection is completely fair. For example, Athenians used complex allotment procedures with an intricate machine to allot officers. Like Athenian democrats, critics of electoral politics in the 21st-century argue that the process of election by vote is subject to manipulation by money and other powerful forces and because legislative elections give power to a few powerful groups they are believed to be less democratic system than selection by lot from amongst the population.
- Fair representation
- Modern supporters see selection by lot as overcoming the various demographic biases in race, religion, sex, etc. apparent in many legislative assemblies. This actually differs somewhat from Athenian democracy, in which women (and others) were not eligible to participate, and therefore a bias was inherent.
- Power to ordinary people
- An inherent problem with electoral politics is the over-representative of the politically active groups in society who tend to be those who join political parties. For example in 2000 less than 2% of the UK population belonged to a political party whilst in 2005 there were at best only 3 independent MPs (see List of UK minor party and independent MPs elected) so that 99.5% of all UK MPs belonged to a political party. As a result political members of the UK population were represented by one MP per 1800 of those belonging to a party whilst those who did not belong to a party had one MP per 19 million individuals who did not belong to a party.[verification needed]
- Voter fatigue
- Supporters also argue that sortition alleviates the problems of voter fatigue and rational ignorance, which is seen as a problem in both representative democracy and direct democracy.
- Loyalty is to conscience not to political party
- Elected representatives typically rely on political parties in order to gain and retain office. This means they often feel a primary loyalty to the party and will vote contrary to conscience to support a party position. Representatives appointed by sortition do not owe anything to anyone for their position.
- Pure sortition does not discriminate
- The most common argument against pure sortition (that is, with no prior selection of an eligible group) is that it does not discriminate those selected and takes no account of particular age, skills or experience that might be needed to effectively discharge the particular offices filled. Just as the Athenians did not choose generals (Strategos) by lot, today most would agree that random selection from the general population would not be a good way of filling the role of medical surgeon or aircraft pilot due to the specialist skills that those roles require. Only if the group had sufficient means to select an external specialist to do the actual work would it be able to overcome this.
For many political offices as, under a system based on election, it is thought unlikely that those manifestly lacking the requisite skills will be elected to office. According to Xenophon (Memorabilia Book I, 2.9), this classical argument was offered by Socrates:
- [Socrates] taught his companions to despise the established laws by insisting on the folly of appointing public officials by lot, when none would choose a pilot or builder or flautist by lot, nor any other craftsman for work in which mistakes are far less disastrous than mistakes in statecraft.
- The same argument is also made by Edmund Burke in his essay Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790):
- There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. [...] Everything ought to be open, but not indifferently, to every man. No rotation; no appointment by lot; no mode of election operating in the spirit of sortition or rotation can be generally good in a government conversant in extensive objects. Because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a view to the duty or to accommodate the one to the other.
- Chance misrepresentation
- Because it introduces randomness in determining outcomes, there is always the statistical possibility that sortition may put into power an individual or group that do not represent the views of the population from which they were drawn. This argument is mentioned by Isocrates in his essay Areopagiticus (section 23): But, just as with any sample measurement the error rate can be reduced by increasing the sample.
- [It was] considered that this way of appointing magistrates [i.e., elections] was also more democratic than the casting of lots, since under the plan of election by lot chance would decide the issue and the partizans of oligarchy would often get the offices; whereas under the plan of selecting the worthiest men, the people would have in their hands the power to choose those who were most attached to the existing constitution.
- Voting confers legitimacy[original research?]
- Those who see voting as expressing the "consent of the governed", maintain that voting is able to confer legitimacy in the selection. According to this view, elected officials can act with greater authority than when randomly selected. With no popular mandate to draw on, politicians lose a moral basis on which to base their authority. As such, politicians would be open to charges of illegitimacy, as they were selected purely by chance.
- Some forms of sortition entail compulsion[original research?]
- If a system of pure, universal sortition is also involuntary. Though the responsibility is involuntary actual actions that this person must make are never as they should represent their involuntariness in their representation.
- Enthusiasm of the representatives[original research?]
- In an elected system, the representatives are to a degree self-selecting for their enthusiasm for the job. Under a system of pure, universal sortition the individuals are not chosen for their enthusiasm. Many electoral systems assign to those chosen a role as representing their constituents; a complex job with a significant workload. Elected representative choose to accept any additional workload; voters can also choose those representatives most willing to accept the burden involved in being a representative. Individuals chosen at random from a comprehensive pool of citizens have no particular enthusiasm for their role and therefore may not make good advocates for a constituency.
- Unlike elections, where members of the elected body may stand for re-election, sortition does not offer a mechanism by which the population expresses satisfaction or dissatisfaction with individual members of the allotted body. Thus, under sortition there is no formal feedback, or accountability, mechanism for the performance of officials, other than the law.
Before the random selection can be done, the pool of candidates must be defined. Systems vary as to whether they allot from eligible volunteers, from those screened by education, experience, or a passing grade on a test, or screened by election by those selected by a previous round of random selection, or from the membership or population at large. A multi-stage process in which random selection is alternated with screening for merit can overcome the risk of selecting those who lack ability or enthusiasm. But, by creating definitions that are not equal to the actual characteristics of the group many of the benefits, like getting realistic data that people continuously choose not to vote (due to lack of enthusiasm) or clear legislation that can be interpreted without special ability, will be compromised. As happens with any researchers data when the data that will be analysed is altered before conclusions are made.
The selection method may need to be carefully designed in order to preserve public confidence that it has not been rigged. The process may be conducted or supervised by a panel themselves selected at random, such as a grand jury being used to administer the random selection of the next grand jury.
One robust, general, public method of allotment is RFC 3797: Publicly Verifiable Nominations Committee Random Selection. Using it, multiple specific sources of random numbers (e.g. lotteries) are selected in advance, and an algorithm is defined for selecting the winners based on those random numbers. When the random numbers become available, anyone can calculate the winners.
- The Athenian democracy made much use of sortition, with nearly all government offices filled by lottery rather than by election.
- The Doge of Venice was appointed by a lengthy procedure using alternating rounds of sortition and election.
- The Signoria of Florence and other Italian city-states was elected by lot during the medieval period.
- Matthias was chosen to replace Judas as the twelfth disciple by casting lots in Acts 1:26.
- Juries are found in courts of law, and in the context of community involvement as citizens' juries.
- In 2004 Canadian province of British Columbia asked a randomly selected group of citizens forming the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform to propose a new electoral system for the provincial government. 3 years later the province of Ontario did the same.
- MASS LBP, a Canadian company inspired by the work of the Citizens' Assemblies on Electoral Reform has pioneered the use of Citizens' Reference Panels for addressing a range of policy issues for public sector clients. The Reference Panels use civic lotteries, a modern form of sortition, to randomly select citizen-representatives from the general public.
- Danish Consensus conferences give ordinary citizens a chance to make their voices heard in debates on public policy. The selection of citizens is not perfectly random, but still aims to be representative.
- The South Australian Constitutional Convention was a deliberative opinion poll created to consider changes to the state constitution.
- Some election laws regarding certain offices in the United States provide that, in the case of a tie between the leading candidates, a coin toss (rather than a runoff election) shall be conducted.
- In the election of electorate MPs in New Zealand, if there is a tie between the leading candidates and this situation persists after an obligatory recount, the Chief Electoral Officer chooses the MP from among the leading candidates by lot. (The UK , New Mexico and other governments have similar rules for breaking ties.)
- The Internet Engineering Task Force uses sortition to select the nominating committee which selects its leadership. It has also defined a robust, general, public method for making random selections: RFC 3797 - Publicly Verifiable Nominations Committee Random Selection
- Consensus conferences have been run in the USA by the Loka Institute, a nonprofit organization concerned with the social, political, and environmental repercussions of research, science and technology.
- Deliberative polls
- Several Spanish savings banks (caja de ahorros) randomly elect compromisaries among some account holders (for example, those who had an account for more than four years and with mean holdings over the minimum wage in Caja de Ahorros de Asturias (2002)). Those chosen then gather in assembly to elect the bank members representing account holders.
- In Spain, Argentina and Switzerland, citizens are randomly selected to manage ballot boxes and count ballots on election days.
- The Slashcode forum software as used in Slashdot randomly elects forum moderators that assign points to postings. The randomness is weighted with karma and posting frequency. The registered readers can later meta-moderate the work of the random moderators.
- The Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria is elected by draw in its final phase. After a voting is held with bishops who have some requirements, the names of the three most voted bishops are put in a box on the altar of St. Mark Cathedral in Cairo during a Sunday eucharistic liturgy. A five year-old child selected from the congregation then draws the name of the next Patriarch from the box.
- Political scientist Robert A. Dahl suggests in his book Democracy and its critics (p. 340) that an advanced democratic state could form groups which he calls minipopuli. Each group would consist "of perhaps a thousand citizens randomly selected out of the entire demos," and would either set an agenda of issues or deal with a particular major issue. It would "hold hearings, commission research, and engage in debate and discussion." Dahl suggests having the minipopuli as supplementing rather than replacing legislative bodies.
- John Burnheim, in his book Is Democracy Possible?, describes a political system in which many small "citizen's juries" would deliberate and make decisions about public policies. His proposal includes the dissolution of the state and of bureaucracies. The term demarchy he uses was coined by Hayek for a different proposal, unrelated to sortition, and is now sometimes used to refer to any political system in which sortition plays a central role.
- Ernest Callenbach and Michael Phillips[disambiguation needed] argue for random selection of the U.S. House of Representatives in their book A Citizen Legislature.
- "Convened-sample suffrage" uses sortition to choose an electoral college for each electoral district.
- "Accidental Politicians: How Randomly Selected Legislators Can Improve Parliament Efficiency": a new Italian study which shows how the introduction of a variable percentage of randomly selected independent legislators in a Parliament can increase the global efficiency of a Legislature, in terms of both number of laws passed and average social welfare obtained (this work is in line with the recent discovery that the adoption of random strategies can improve the efficiency of hierarchical organizations "Peter Principle Revisited: a Computational Study").
- The upper house of a parliament might be selected through sortition. Anthony Barnett and Peter Carty proposed this to the Royal Commission on the Reform of the House of Lords in the UK in 1999. Their proposal was published: The Athenian Option: Radical Reform for the House of Lords. Similarly, the People's Senate Party in British Columbia, Canada promotes this notion.
- Étienne Chouard, a French political activist, proposes replacing elections with sortition.
- The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes, Mogens Herman Hansen, ISBN 1-85399-585-1
- Aristotle, Politics 1301a28-35
- Aristotle, Politics 4.1294be
- Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War. The Funeral Oration of Pericles.
- Herodotus The Histories 3.80.6
- Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government
- C. L. R. James, Every Cook Can Govern, 1956.
- Allin Cottrell, Paul Cockshott, "Towards a new Socialism", 1991.
- Oliver Dowlen, Sorting Out Sortition: A Perspective on the Random Selection of Political Officers Political Studies 2008
- Plato, Republic VIII, 557a
- Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Book 2, Chapter 2
- Comment on "Rundle: you call this democracy? It’s time to start again", Crikey, Melbourne, August 19, 2010.
- “Populiste n’est pas un gros mot”, entretien avec Etienne Chouard
- Sortition as a sustainable protection against oligarchy Conference by Etienne Chouard
- Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform (official website).
- South Australian Constitutional Convention (official website)
- The Loka Institute (official website)
- Equality by lot — news, discussions and general information about sortition
- A Citizen Legislature
- The Sortition Option
- Integrating Public Voting and Random Selection for Democracy
- Sorted: Civic lotteries and the future of public participation
- List of books dealing with sortition
- The Common Lot
- People's Senate Party
- Sortition as a sustainable protection against oligarchy Conference by Etienne Chouard | <urn:uuid:cd9e2b05-d5ee-43d0-8cfa-94bf9c0ef531> | {
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The Devon cattle are an ancient breed of cattle from the south western English county of Devon. Native home of the breed is in the southwest England, primarily in the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset. In this area, herds of red cattle grazed the grass covered hills of this cool, moist region for centuries. The Devon breed is sometimes called as North Devon to avoid confusion with the more recently developed South Devon cattle. It is one of the several modern breeds derived from the traditional red cattle of southern England, together with the Sussex, Red Poll, Hereford and Lincold Red. The Devon was classified as a dual-purpose breed previously. And they were valued for the production of both high quality beef and the rich milk used in Devonshire cream. But through selection over the past half century, it has evolved as a beef-type breed and currently raised mainly as a beef cattle breed. The beef-type is registered and promoted by the Devon Cattle Association, Inc. And the milking Devon strain is unique to America and has been maintained and is represented by the American Milking Devon Cattle Association. However, the Devon had been gradually replaced by the Shorthorn cattle by the late 1800s. And they were rarely seen outside of New England by 1900. The market for the multipurpose cattle had disappeared by the 1950s and the Devon breed neared extinction. But when the Devon breed evolved as a beef breed mainly for meat production, their popularity increased gradually. Currently the breed is available in many countries throughout the world. Read more information about the breed below.
The Devon cattle are medium to large animals. They are mainly red in color and varying in shade from a rich deep red to a light red or chestnut color. A bright ruby red is the most preferred color. They have medium thick hair and the hair is often long and curly during the winter, but short and sleek in summer. Color of the switch of the tail is creamy white. They have creamy white horns and square set legs. And the cows usually have well-formed udders. Average live body weight of the mature cows vary from 430 to 590 kg. And the mature bulls on average weight between 770 and 1000 kg. Photo and info from Wikipedia.
Devon cattle were a dual-purpose breed previously which were raised for both milk and meat production. But currently they are a beef cattle breed and raised primarily for meat production.
The Devon cattle are very strong and hardy animals. They are noted for their good fertility, quality beef, easy calving and excellent disease and parasite resistance. They are very docile in nature, have good temperament and are very easily managed. They are well-adapted to native climates and can do well in mild but damp English climate. They can also adapt and do very well in extreme heat. They are excellent foragers and can forage through tough terrains and can also nourish themselves in low quality pastures. The breed is well known for it’s high quality meat. It is distantly related to other British and European cattle breeds found in North America, so it provides great hybrid vigor when used in commercial crossbreeding. Currently the breed is available and raised in many countries throughout the world. And they are raised primarily for meat production. However, review full breed profile of the Devon cattle in the following chart.
Devon Cattle | Breed Profile
|Other Name||North Devon, Ruby Red|
|Breed Purpose||Mainly meat|
|Special Notes||Good milk quality, well adapted to native climates, good for meat, very hardy, good behavior, docile, calm temperament, good for low quality pasture, easy calving, good diseases and parasite resistance|
|Breed Size||Medium to large|
|Weight||Bulls||Around 770-1000 kg|
|Cows||Around 430-590 kg|
|Climate Tolerance||Native climates|
|Coat Color||Mainly red and varying in shade from a rich deep red to a light red or chestnut color|
|Country/Place of Origin||England| | <urn:uuid:6f9d437f-3a40-42ac-981a-98763446daa8> | {
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Leases are contracts specifying the terms under which the owner of property (the lessor) transfers the right to use the property to a lessee. Leases are classified as capital leases (debt-financed purchases of property) or operating leases (rentals). The accounting treatment and required disclosures differ strongly for the two classes. FASB Statement 13, issued in 1976 and since much amended and interpreted, covers the subject. An ongoing problem is the abuse of leases to avoid recognizing future payment obligations as a liability: so-called “off-balance-sheet financing”.
Nevertheless, leases have important legitimate business uses. Three primary advantages for the lessee to lease rather than purchase fixed assets are no down payment (on many but not all leases), avoiding the risks of ownership, and the added flexibility afforded by the short-term renewability of many leases. There are also advantages for the lessor, such as increased sales opportunities resulting from the advantages to the lessee, the ongoing business relationship with the lessee, and in many cases, a substantial residual value retained by the lessor, allowing the property to be leased again or sold at a profit at the end of the lease term.
Upon signing a lease, accounting issues arise for both the lessor and the lessee. The fundamental question is this: does the transaction represent an effective transfer of ownership of the property, or merely a rental? The accounting principle of “substance over form” provides guidance, but the decision can be quite difficult. Transfer or retention of legal title to the property is significant but not necessarily conclusive. Other factors involved are: does the lessor retain significant responsibilities regarding the property (that is, is the transaction complete); how certain is the collectibility of the payments; how does the length of the term of the lease compare with the useful life of the property; and how does the present value (suitably discounted) of the lease payments compare with the actual fair value of the property? A capital lease is an effective transfer of ownership of the property and is accounted for by the lessor by recognizing the sale of the property on the lease signing date and by recognizing earned interest revenue as the regular lease payments are collected, and by the lessee on the lease signing date by recognizing the value of the asset and the liability for the future lease payments on the balance sheet. An operating lease requires the lessor only to recognize the rental revenue as collected, and the lessee only to recognize the periodic rental expense, with no asset or liability appearing on its books.
Contractual provisions of lease contracts are quite diverse, reflecting the ingenuity many companies apply to try to get their leases to qualify as operating leases rather than as capital leases. These provisions may include cancellation provisions and penalties, bargain renewal and purchase options, lease term, economic life of assets, residual asset values, minimum lease payments, implicit interest rates, and the degree of risk assumed by the lessee, which may include payment of such costs as maintenance, insurance, and taxes. All these provisions can affect the determination of the proper accounting treatment. FASB has tried to establish precise classification criteria to aid in the determination of whether a lease is a capital or an operating lease.
A lease is noncancelable if cancellation is allowed only upon the occurrence of some remote contingency, or if the cost to the lessee is prohibitively costly to the lessee. All cancelable leases are operating leases; some but not all noncancelable ones are capital leases.
The lessee may enjoy the right to purchase leased property at a future date at a price specified by the lease contract. If the price is expected to be considerably less than the fair market value as of the purchase option date, the option is called a bargain purchase option. (Here the parties to the lease must be able to reasonably estimate the fair market value of the leased asset at the end of the lease.) The expectation is that the option will be exercised, and therefore an effective transfer of ownership is likely. Accordingly noncancelable leases with bargain purchase options are classified as capital leases.
The lease term begins when the property is transferred to the lessee. When it ends may depend on provisions allowing the lessee to extend the lease period for accounting purposes. The end of the lease term is therefore defined as the end of the fixed noncancelable lease period plus all renewal option periods that are likely to be exercised. If a renewal option has such an attractive lease rate, or other favorable provision, that at the inception of the lease it is likely that the lease will be renewed beyond the fixed lease period, it is called a bargain renewal option. If the lease contract includes a bargain purchase option, the lease term must include any renewal periods preceding the date of the bargain purchase option but does not extend beyond the date of the bargain purchase option. In a capital lease the lease term can determine the period over which the leased asset is depreciated.
Residual value is the market value of the leased property at the end of the lease term. When the lease term is substantially less than the economic life of the asset or the period in which the asset continues to be productive, the residual value will be material. If the lessee can purchase the asset at the end of the lease term at a price materially less than its residual value, a bargain purchase option is present and the lessee may be expected to exercise it and purchase the asset. If the lease contract requires the lessee to guarantee a minimum residual value and the guaranteed residual value is greater than the fair market value of the asset at the end of the lease term, the lessee must pay the difference. This protects the lessor from loss due to unexpected declines in the market value of the asset. When there is no bargain purchase option or guaranteed residual value, the lessor recovers the property at the end of the lease term and may offer to renew the lease, lease to another lessee, or sell the property. Although the actual amount of the residual value is unknown until the end of the lease term, it must be estimated at the inception of the lease; in this case the residual value is called the unguaranteed residual value.
The rental payments required over the lease term plus any amount to be paid for the residual value either through a bargain purchase option or a guarantee of the residual value is together called the minimum lease payments. These do not include charges in the lease payment for expenses such as maintenance, insurance, and taxes incurred for the leased property (called executory costs), or additional payments on building lease payments based on sales by the lessee. The lessor’s calculation of the minimum lease payments involves a so-called implicit interest rate. The appropriate discount rate for the lessee to use is the lower of the implicit interest rate and the lessee’s own incremental borrowing rate, which is the rate at which the lessee could borrow the amount of money needed to purchase the leased asset, in view of the lessee’s financial condition and the current market conditions. If the lessee does not know and cannot reasonably estimate the implicit interest rate, the incremental borrowing rate may be used instead. See page 897 for an illustration.
FASB Statement No. 13 contains the criteria for classifying leases as capital or operating. See Exhibit 15-1 on Page 899.
Additional revenue recognition criteria applicable to lessors:
The application of the fourth general criterion (present value of payments) is sensitive to the rate used to discount the future minimum lease payments. Use of a higher rate make it more likely that the lease will be classified as an operating lease; consequently lessees prefer to use the borrowing rate, which is often higher than the implicit interest rate, and make no attempt to estimate the implicit interest rate. FASB’s proposal to tighten the rules to require estimation of the implicit interest rate had to be dropped when lessees protested. The second revenue recognition criterion (unreimbursable costs) essentially requires substantial completion of performance by the lessor. The international rule for classifying leases (IAS 17) is much simpler: “A lease is classified as a finance (i.e. capital) lease if it transfers substantially all the risks and rewards incident to ownership”. This leaves the decision to the accountant’s judgment. See pages 900 – 901 for examples.
A lessee’s accounting for operating leases is fairly straightforward: the only minor complication is to account for varying payment amounts using Rent Payable or Prepaid Rent accounts; however, in February 2005 the chief accountant of the SEC wrote a letter to the AICPA complaining that very many U.S. companies have been neglecting the accrual adjustments involved.
A lessee’s accounting for capital leases is essentially the same as for purchase of an asset with long-term credit terms. The present values of the future minimum lease payments, discounted at the lower of the implicit interest rate (if known) or the incremental borrowing rate. The minimum lease payments include the total rental payments, bargain purchase options, and lessee-guaranteed residual values. See pages 903 – 909 for details and a comprehensive example.
The effect of an operating lease on the lessee’s statement of cash flows is simple. The lease payments reduce the net income under the indirect method and therefore require no adjustment except for prepaid or accrued rent expense; under the direct method, cash payments represent operating expense outlays. Capital leases are more complicated for the lessee. Under the indirect method, amortization of the leased asset must be added back in, not being a cash transaction. Under the direct method, amortization is ignored but the interest expense portion of the cash payment is included in interest expense outlays of operating activities. Under either method, the reduction of the lease liability included in the cash payment would be a financing activity cash outlay. The signing of the capital lease would be ignored as a non-cash transaction. The supplemental disclosure to the statement of cash flows would include the present value of the minimum future payments as a significant non-cash transaction, and the amount of cash paid for interest.
Lessors often want to treat leases as capital leases in order to recognize a sale immediately. Otherwise the property will still be carried on the books, and depreciation will offset the revenue. The accounting rules as they presently stand allow a lessor to treat the same lease as a capital lease that the lessee is permitted to treat as an operating lease.
The lessor must classify a capital lease either as a direct financing lease or as a sales-type lease. Direct financing leases are used by lessors primarily engaged in financing activities and are viewed as investments; the revenue they generate is interest revenue. The lessors of sales-type leases (for example, sales of new cars), on the contrary, are manufacturers or dealers who use them to facilitate marketing their products; they generate not only interest revenue, but also an immediate profit or loss, equal to the difference between the cost of the leased property and its sales price, or fair value, at the inception of the lease. Under operating or either kind of capital lease, the lessor may incur so-called initial direct costs in connection with obtaining the lease: these include costs of negotiation, the cost of the credit check on the lessee, and cost of preparing the lease documents. Accounting for initial direct costs differs for the types of leases:
A lessor accounts for an operating lease much as the lessee does. Revenue is recognized as payments ore received; significant variations in the payment terms, if any, require adjusting entries to reflect a straight-line pattern of revenue recognition. Initial direct costs are deferred and amortized over the lease term on a straight-line basis, thus matching them against rent revenue. See page 910-1 for an example.
A lessor accounts for direct financing capital leases similarly to the way the lessee does, with interest revenue credited and lease payments receivable debited initially, then credited as payments are received, in place of interest expense debited and obligations under capital leases credited initially and then debited as payments are made. Notice that unlike the treatment of an operating lease, no depreciation is recorded because the asset has been substantially sold and is off the books. See page 911 for details and examples.
The main differences for the lessor in accounting for a sales-type lease from the treatment of a direct-financing lease are, first, in the extra revenue item: the immediate profit or loss from the difference between the sales price of the leased property and the lessor’s cost to purchase or manufacture the asset, and secondly, in the intere6st revenue over the lease term for the difference between the sales price and the gross amount of the minimum payments. See pages 913 – 6.
The treatment of leases on the lessor’s statement of cash flows is straightforward for operating leases except that initial direct costs are reported as investing cash outflows. Under the indirect method of calculating operating cash flows for operating leases, amortization of initial direct costs would be added back to net income as a non-cash expense. Capital leases must be dealt with carefully. Notice that the transaction is viewed as an investing activity for the lessor and as a financing activity for the lessee. Exhibit 15-9 summarizes the lessor’s treatment of cash flows:
On Pages 918-21 the authors detail the disclosure requirements for leases on the part of the lessee and the lessor.
The chief difference between US GAAP concerning lease and the IASB’s IAS 17 is that The IASB leaves the distinction between operating and capital leases to the accountant’s judgment, on the understanding that a capital lease (called by the IASB a “finance lease” is one which “transfers substantially all of the risks and rewards incident to ownership of an asset”. This is an example of a “principles-based standard”. A proposal now being discussed by world standard setters is to classify all leases with terms over one year as capital leases.
A sale-leaseback is a type of lease arrangement in which one party sells an asset to another, then immediately leases the asset back and continues to use it. It is attractive to the seller-lessee as a means of taking assets and liabilities off the books while continuing to enjoy their use, though it also has legitimate business purposes. The accounting problem it raises is whether the profit to the seller-lessee from the original sale should be recognized immediately or deferred over the lease term. The FASB recommends immediate recognition of a loss, and deferred recognition of a profit, with amortization either in proportion to the amortization of the leased asset in the case of a capital lease, or in proportion to the rental payments in the case of an operating lease. See pages 923-4 for details and examples. | <urn:uuid:fea6e15a-2540-464f-b033-5903437eb0b5> | {
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From a sports perspective, a disability may be any physical or mental incapacity caused by an injury or a disease, which places a limitation on the participation of the individual in sport. Physical disabilities are commonly the result of a genetic disorder, disease, injury, or as a result of aging; mental disabilities, as defined by organizations such as the Paralympics and Special Olympics, are referenced as "intellectual disabilities."
As a general rule, disabled persons of all types are less physically active than their able-bodied counterparts. The effect of a serious disability will often have the twin effect of removing the person from participation in athletic activities that he or she previously enjoyed, coupled with the emotional burden of seeking out athletic alternatives in societies where sports participation opportunities for the disabled are not always readily available.
When the disabled person becomes a sedentary individual, there will be an unavoidable impact on the health and function of all key bodily systems: disabled persons and able-bodied persons must have the stimulation of exercise to maintain proper physical health. The ability to control body weight through strict diet and the monitoring of caloric intake is only one half of the health equation for any person. Any physical exercise in the face of a disability will invariably be a benefit to the health of the body's various operating and regulatory systems.
The range of limitations created by disability is extremely broad. Common disabling conditions where regular physical exercise may be continued are structural conditions such as osteoarthritis, paraplegia (paralysis and loss of function in the lower limbs), the amputation of a joint, a range of cardiovascular diseases such as arteriosclerosis and high blood pressure, and genetically induced conditions such as multiple sclerosis (which causes a deterioration in nervous control of the muscles).
The benefits of regular physical exercise to disabled individuals are both physiological and psychological. The ability to participate in exercise tends to generate a significant increase in the positive outlook of the individual; the self-confidence that is built through the successful participation in any sports activity tends to translate into a more vibrant attitude towards daily living. An exercise routine for the disabled is accepted as a significant means of combating stress; the neurotransmitter, endorphin, the chemical produced by the pituitary gland during exercise, provides the same natural pain suppression and mood-elevating qualities for all persons who exercise.
The physiological benefits to exercise for disabled persons are of significance. One of the most commonly observed physical conditions in the disabled is excess weight, which occurs in a direct relationship to a sedentary lifestyle. The consequences of excess weight are well known, with impacts that extend throughout the body. Physically disabled persons are more prone to the development of diseases such as type II diabetes, cholesterol-related conditions attributable to the greater presence of low density lipoproteins in the bloodstream, and high blood pressure. The reduction of weight through exercise will generally reduce the impact of all cardiovascular disease.
Excess weight, coupled with the limitations of either wheelchair or prosthetics use, places additional strain on the joints of the musculoskeletal system, contributing to the early onset of osteoarthritis, the degenerative deterioration of the articular cartilage located at the end of the bones where joints are formed. Resistance exercises, those involving the use of weights, as well as the resistance generated through walking or running, will naturally improve muscle strength and bone density; the stress on the skeleton naturally stimulates bone cell formation.
Stretching and flexibility exercises are a crucial component for the regular exercise program of a disabled individual. Many forms of disability require the person to assume a posture to achieve movement for which the body is not designed. Crutches and other assistive devices are common examples of the means required of the disabled to propel themselves. A stretching program is recommended, one where the
An important byproduct of exercise for the disabled person is an improved ability to achieve a deeper and more restful sleep. Sleep is an important aspect in the preservation of both emotional balance and physical health in all persons, particularly those who must also conquer a disability. | <urn:uuid:a8b0b721-d467-473e-b7dc-cc18db0ab9a6> | {
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The Origins of Jewish Performance
From Prohibition to Precedent.
Theatre as we know it emerged from ancient Greece. To celebrate their gods, the Greeks gathered to watch plays on religious holidays. Greek theatre connected spectators, actors, and gods through observation. Judaism's strict adherence to monotheism, modesty, and mitzvot--designed to connect people to their creator through action--stands in obvious contradiction.
Indeed, there is a long-standing tradition of Jewish opposition to theatre. Many base this prohibition on the second commandment, "Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness" (Exodus 20:4). The Talmud also records forceful comments that cast a broader prohibition, forbidding "the theatre and circuses of idolatry" (Avodah Zarah 18b; Shabbat 150a). Yet despite resistance and conflict, a Jewish tradition of theatricality and performance emerged.
In the Bible, performance and theatrics appear in a number of contexts. Some biblical figures use costumes to hide their identities and thus secure what they need or want. Rebecca dresses Jacob in Esau's clothing to help him pursue the birthright through deception (Genesis 27). Joseph, as Egypt's viceroy, feigns not recognizing his brothers when they meet in Egypt, years after they sold him into slavery (Genesis 42). Joab directs a woman to act as a mourner to draw King David into meeting his rebellious son, Absalom (Samuel II 14). Performance in the Bible is also presented as an act of worship. Miriam leads the women in song and dance after crossing the Red Sea (Exodus 15), and David performs an ecstatic dance before the ark as it was brought to Jerusalem (Samuel II 6).
But how much do these instances of drama in the Bible reflect the realities of ancient Israel? Unlike the ancient Greeks, who attended performances of tragedies and comedies chanted by masked actors during the religious festival of Dionysus, ancient Israelites had no theatres. However, the Bible does describe an ancient practice of publicly reading or chanting the Torah text: "When all Israel comes to appear before the Lord, your God, in the place that He will choose, you shall read this Torah before all Israel, in their ears..." (Deuteronomy 31:11-13).
This commandment evolved into the current practice of weekly chanting from the Pentateuch in synagogues. The cantillation notes, whose current version dates back to between the 8th and 10th centuries, add more than a melodic element to this custom. Cantillation serves as punctuation, indicating when a sentence or idea begins and ends, and in a few instances also dramatizing biblical scenes. For example, in the story of the seduction of Joseph by Potiphar's wife, the shalshelet cantillation note on Joseph's "adamant refusal" (Genesis 38:8) is a sustained wavering sound that rises and falls three times. This seldom used note underscores the tension between Joseph’s desire and his ultimate refusal to yield to temptation.
Changing Attitudes under Hellenism
Jewish attitudes towards theatre changed as the stage came to symbolize the oppressive Hellenistic and Roman cultures and regimes. Vulgar comedy and violence personified Roman theatre. Prisoners awaiting execution, including Jews, were often killed as part of Roman plays.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the rabbis in the Talmud considered theatre a sinful waste of time. This attitude was expressed in a prayer composed during the talmudic period: "You did not cast my lot among those who frequent theatres and circuses... For I will inherit the world to come; and they, the pit of destruction." Israeli theatre scholar Shimon Levy explains in his Theatre and Holy Script that theatre was deplored because it "presents a real religious threat: the power to transform matter into spirit and vice versa. In traditional rabbinic Judaism, this remains the exclusive prerogative of God."
Jewish tradition did not oppose all theatricality per se. Performance with spiritual potential was sanctioned within the confines of the Temple. For example, Simhat Beit Hasho'eva (The Water Drawing Festival) was a carnivalesque celebration held in the Temple during Sukkot. Following the destruction of the Temple, the Talmud describes this event in nostalgic terms, yearning for a return to the exuberant atmosphere of singing and dancing, of rabbis juggling fire and performing strange acrobatics.
Despite the bans on pagan theatre, Hellenized Jews in both the Greek and Roman worlds could be found in theatre audiences. In ancient Turkey, according to a surviving inscription, prime theatre seating was reserved for pious Jews. There were also famous Jewish actors in the Roman theatre, such as the actress Faustina and the actor Aliturus, Nero's favorite mime.
Amid the rabbinic aversion and brewing anti-Jewish sentiment there is just one known Jewish playwright, a dramatist named Ezekiel who lived in Alexandria around the second century B.C.E. He wrote Exagogue, a Greek tragedy about Moses. Only a fragment of the script has survived, but it is the earliest recorded biblical drama. In Alexandria, it is likely that Jews and Greeks both attended performances of this biblical adaptation. It probably served a political purpose in allowing Jews to present themselves as a law-abiding people with a philosophical understanding of God, at a time when the persecution of Jews was an emerging threat.
Wedding and holiday celebrations functioned as a natural stage for Jewish performance. A particularly Jewish entertainment tradition began with the badhanim, professional wedding jesters, mentioned in Jewish literature from the Talmud to medieval rabbinic writings.
The holiday of Purim also lends itself to theatre. Actors have a story, audience, and performance space built into the tradition of reading the Book of Esther. The Purimspiel, a folk performance developed in the 12th century, gave the poor access to the rich and a more dignified manner to beg: "Today Purim has come in, tomorrow it goes out. Give me then my single groschen and kindly throw me out!"
By the 16th century the Purimspiel grew more structured and resembled a Fastnachtspiel, a German carnival play. In the late 17th century, other biblical stories were adapted for the Purimspiel including the sale of Joseph by his brothers, and David's defeat of Goliath. These formed the basis for what would become Yiddish theatre in Europe. Though most rules relaxed on Purim, as cross-dressing and inebriation become permissible, German rabbis at times cracked down on lewdness in many Purimspiels, and banned their practice.
Theatre in Hebrew sprang from the seeds Yehuda Sommo planted. This 16th century theatrical producer in Mantua, Italy authored the oldest existing Hebrew play, Tzachut Bedichuta de Kiddushin ("The Comedy of Betrothal"). A farcical comedy written in the popular Italian style, it is based on a talmudic passage in Tractate Gittin (8b and 9a) concerning a master bequeathing all his possessions, except one, to his slave. While amusingly critiquing the Jewish community's dealings surrounding betrothal and marriage, this play proved the literary potential of the Hebrew language and marks the beginning of Hebrew theatre.
In Mantua, the center of new Italian drama, Sommo's Jewish community had its own theatre company. Though it operated in a ghetto, this theatre company performed annually for Mantua’s dukes. Its Friday performances started early to ensure they did not conflict with the Sabbath, and its success was largely a credit to the vision of Sommo.
Having earned acclaim beyond Jewish circles as a theatrical authority and innovator in Europe, Sommo was the only Jewish writer admitted into Mantua's Accademia degli Invaghiti (Academy of the Infatuated Ones--a society for noblemen and scholars). In 1580 Sommo was exempted from wearing the yellow badge required of Jews, and in 1585 he was allowed to purchase property on which the community's synagogue was built.
Sommo bridged worlds. He argued in both his plays and theoretical writings that the idea of Jewish theatre is no paradox. According to his Comedy of Betrothal, Jewish theatre’s lofty aim is “to glorify the Torah, to study and to teach and do what is good and right in the eyes of the Lord and Man." In his Dialogues on the Art of the Stage he asserted that the biblical Book of Job, written in mostly dialogue, was the first dramatic text in recorded history--and that this form was appropriated by the Greek playwrights.
The Book of Job, his argument went, granted precedent and legitimacy for Jewish involvement in theatre. By dissociating Jewish theatre from the Hellenistic pagan tradition, Sommo opened the door for Jewish theatre of subsequent generations.
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Map Projected Browse Image
Click on the image for larger version
At Mars' North Pole is a dome of icy layers ranging up to 2 kilometers thick, roughly analogous to the Earth's ice caps in Greenland or Antarctica.
Although not visible here, the dome is characterized by incised spiraling troughs that reveal sequences of layers thought to reflect varying climate conditions over the time they were originally deposited. This image is of an area on the top surface of the polar dome between the troughs - vast, generally smooth, flat plains composed of a thin layer of very pure water ice. This image also shows that this thin ice layer has a rough texture, composed of knobs, ridges, and depressions on the scale of 1 - 10 meters.
This texture is only beginning to be studied with the high-resolution capabilities of HiRISE -- the details of the texture varies around the polar cap, but the causes of the variation are not yet clear. This image has two particularly interesting features. One is that the surface dips into a depression towards the southwest, where the texture of the ice surface appears to change. The other is that there is a fracture or chain of pits in the southeast, which is a rare feature.
The brightness, composition, texture, and small-scale features of this ice layer that covers most of the polar dome are important as they influence the local energy balance (such the amount of sunlight reflected and absorbed), which in turn influences polar-wide climate and the stability of ice.
HiRISE is one of six instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. | <urn:uuid:d6f947a7-8982-41d3-ab58-dd797805b8aa> | {
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Pesticide Action Network Updates Service (PANUPS)
A Weekly News Update on Pesticides, Health and Alternatives
See PANUPS updates service for complete information.
December 4, 2008
- Day of No Pesticides — December 3
- Endosulfan threatens Philippine produce
- Endosulfan kills Indian schoolchildren
- Pesticides found in Antarctic krill
- Pesticides found in Thai farmers and students
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights turns 60 — December 10
Every year, the global Pesticide Action Network commemorates December 3 as “Day of No Pesticides” to mark the world’s worst chemical disaster: the 1984 Union Carbide pesticide factory explosion in Bhopal, India. A toxic cloud of methyl isocyanate and other deadly gases was released that killed thousands in a single night and has caused more than 20,000 deaths in succeeding years, leaving 150,000 injured. Bhopal has been called the worst commercial industrial disaster in history but, sadly, it may not the last. Around the world, the ongoing manufacture, distribution, and use of chemical pesticides continues to poison the environment and devastate the lives of nearby residents. PAN Asia Pacific Executive Director, Sarojeni V. Rengam, noted several of the global protests: “In Kerala, our partners are asserting the calls of communities struggling against endosulfan in Kasargod, and the devastating effects of the DDT plant in Eloor. In Sri Lanka, the Vikalpani Women’s Federation have galvanized their campaign on paraquat around the death of a young man who succumbed to exposure. From Indonesia to Thailand, China to the Philippines, and Bangladesh to Mongolia, citizen actions will take place against pesticides that continue to cause so much human health and environmental damage." PAN Asia and the Pacific also issued a statement calling for a global ban on "endosulfan, one of the most dangerous organochlorine pesticides in the world."
The Philippines' Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority has detected residues of the "deadly endosulfan pesticide" in cabbages, pechay and other vegetables sold in city markets in Northern Mindanao. The Philippines Sun Star notes that "the cream and brown-colored pesticide gained notoriety after 10 tons owned by Del Monte Philippines went down with M/V Princess of the Stars," which sank off Sibuyan Island in June (See PANUPS Oct. 9). Endosulfan is persistent in the environment and, the Sun Star notes, the pesticide "sticks to soil particles and may take years to completely break down." It is currently under consideration for listing as a persistent organic pollutant under the Stockholm Convention because of its ability to persist in the environment and be distributed globally by winds and water. Endosulfan exposure has been linked to convulsions, childhood autism, male sexual dysfunction and death. Although the Philippines has banned endosulfan, the Sun Star reports "unscrupulous importers… smuggle the pesticide from neighboring Malaysia and Indonesia." Del Monte and Dole had been allowed a waiver to use the banned pesticide on its banana and pineapple plantations, but in response to the ferry accident, that waiver is slated to end this year.
On November 13, India's The Telegraph reports, 43 students at a state-run boarding school in Ranchi, Jharkhand, were hospitalized after drinking milk laced with endosulfan, a poisonous pesticide. Five of the students died. Gopal Krishna of the Toxics Watch Alliance reports that, after the deaths, state officials filed charges against the school's headmaster, two cooks and Pratima, the company that supplied the tainted milk. India, the world's largest producer of endosulfan, is home to three major manufacturers — Excel Industries, EID Parry and the government-owned Hindustan Insecticides Limited (HIL). Endosulfan is under consideration for global action under two international treaties — the Rotterdam Convention, which governs international chemical trade, and the Stockholm Convention, which targets persistent organic pollutants for global phaseout. The Indian government (backed by HIL and the Indian Chemical Council) actively campaigned against the inclusion of endosulfan under both of these treaties at intergovernmental meetings in September and October, despite widespread support from other countries. According to Krishna, the government of India must "stand up to the manifest influence of endosulfan manufactuers," by banning the dangerous chemical, compensating the victims in Ranchi and holding the companies "criminally liable for culpable homicide."
Pesticides were found to "dominate" a roster of toxic chemicals detected in Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba, "the Antarctic keystone species"). A report in Science of the Total Environment explains that adult krill caught in 12 different sites were tested for nearly "100 orgahohalogen compounds including chlorinated pesticides, polychlorinated biphebyls (PCBs), polybrominated organic compounds [POC] and polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins/furans." A team of researchers from Australia, Norway and Germany report that "organochlorine pesticides dominated" their test results, with hexachlorobenzene "the single most abundant compound quantified." The study, described as "one of the most comprehensive reports of POC contamination of the Antarctic food web to date," reported finding traces of dichlorodiphenylethene (DDE), a breakdown product of DDT, "at notable concentrations."
Scientists from Chiang Mai University tested the urine of small-scale farmers in two different regions of Chiang Mai Province for the presence of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides. According to a report published in Science of The Total Environment, farmers from the Pong Yaeng subdistrict tested positive for metabolites of organophosphorus insecticides and ethylene bisdithiocarbamates while farmers from Inthakhin subdistrict showed "significantly higher concentrations of malathion, 2,4-D, alachlor, and parathion." The tests revealed that "chlopyrifos and pyrethroid insecticides seemed to be commonly used across both communities," while the presence of methamidaphos suggested that, "despite a ban on its use, methamidaphos continues to be used in the communities." The researchers also detected "organophosphorus insecticides, synthetic pyrethroid insecticides" and herbicides" in urine samples of 12-13-year-old Chiang Mai students. Writing for the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health, they report that in 207 urine samples tested for 18 pesticide metabolites they found 14, including seven that were detected at a frequency of 17% or more. Most frequently detected metabolites included breakdown products of malathion, chlorpyrifos, permethrin and other pyrethroids. The highest concentrations of pyrethroid insecticide metabolites were found in children of farmers.
December 10, 2008 marks the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UNDR has been called "A Bill of Rights for the World." In honor of this historic date, Amnesty International USA has launched the Protect the Human campaign and created a special UNDR Web site: a place where people from all over the world can stand together to understand, promote and protect basic human rights. The online activist hub, TakePart, describes the website as “incredibly rich with film, music, an interactive Google map, information on the declaration and various ways you can take action and spread the word.” One very powerful feature is an interactive mosaic that explains each of the 30 Articles from the UDHR. | <urn:uuid:ac1c9261-d604-4c66-903e-991719efaa89> | {
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|Hidden Mining Crater|
Hidden Mining Crater
Hidden Mining Crater (Space)
Space slug attempting to eat the Millennium Falcon.
Exogorth (Space Slug)Edit
The Exogorth (commonly known as the space slug) was contructed out of Asteroid Floor Panels (outside) and Red Standard Floor Panels (inside). The dome shape took Niceshot an extensive time to construct, but ultimately made the slug more realistic. It had teeth, and the inside was designed to look like a mouth connected to the belly, filled with the various objects the slug was digesting.
The Millennium Falcon was made to look as if it was flying out of the Exogorth's mouth and built on an angle to contribute to its realistic look. The Falcon was mainly built out of Asteroid Floor panels and had a cockpit, seating, two storage rooms, and an engine room.
On either side of the Exogorth, a tie fighter was chasing after the Millennium Falcon. They were constructed out of Carlac Power Generators, Rectangular Bulkheads, Umbaran Floor Panels, Kamino Walls, Kamino Ceiling Panels, and Single-Paned Windows. | <urn:uuid:415ac5bb-363b-4d15-a6fd-e2b3d3c18256> | {
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This african study examines the virtues and failures of traditional african educational systems, in the context of continental pan-africanism, and argues that traditional african educational systems must be complemented by a pan-african educational system that transcends confocalisms and micro-nationalisms. Traditional education is defined as teacher-centered delivery of instruction to classes of students who are the receivers of information traditional schools generally stress basic educational practices and expect mastery of academic learning in the core subjects of math, reading, writing, science and social studies. African traditional religion home article african traditional religion map: bantu-speaking people moved into southern africa from west and central africa and brought their religion and traditions with them.
The process of traditional education in africa was intimately integrated with the social, cultural, artistic, religious and recreational life of the people that is, schooling and education, or the learning of skills, societal. These numbers come from the new africa learning barometer created by the center for universal education at brookings our objective was to identify a baseline assessment of learning in africa by. Traditional education, also known as back-to-basics, conventional education or customary education, refers to long-established customs that society traditionally used in schools some forms of education reform promote the adoption of progressive education practices, a more holistic approach which focuses on individual students' needs and self.
In traditional african society, education was quite functional and aimed at training the child to acquire knowledge and skills and internalize the customs and norms of the people the african child is born into a family or society where he looks up to his ancestors and elders for support. Education in africa is governed by the the onset of the colonial period in the 19th century marked the beginning of the end for traditional african education. African philosophy (of education) this is a philosophy that is linked to an inquiry that explores the epistemology and experiences of the africans instructed in our schools focusing on various intellectuals' views. Africa africa wise sayings african elders african fashion african quotes african wisdom african wise proverbs best african proverbs 72 african wise proverbs and. - african traditional education was skill oriented it was a practical system of education which was instilled early life aimed at equipping everyone with skills so as to earn a living eg farming, fishing.
African traditional education: a viable alternative for peace building process in modern africa 138 opposition to the old definition of peace as the absence of. This article explores the characteristics, goals, modes of transmission, teaching and learning strategies of indigenous african education, in which the pursuit of excellence and quality has always been an important aim informal and vocational training constitute the core of indigenous education in. On the african educational system and the relegation of african traditional knowledge to the status of primitivism and paganism, and hence its margin - alization in the western education curriculum.
Download citation on researchgate | on sep 3, 2003, michael b adeyemi and others published the principles and content of african traditional education . Traditional african medicine (tam): since tam has been with the rural dwellers for generations and also for the fact that orthodox medicine is often in short supply, expensive and often times fake, the. Graph visualization of: the philosophical foundations of african traditional education are the five principles of preparationism, functionalism, communalism, perennialism and holisticism. The type of education prevalent in africa before the coming of western civilisation was generally known as african traditional education or indigenous education of the various communities most recent works on new perspectives in african education, vis-a-vis the role and impact of christian missions.
African traditional religions, also referred to as african indigenous religions or african ethnic religions, is a term referring to a variety of religions indigenous to the continent according to parrinder (1962), religion lies at the root of african culture and it is essential to african life the reason for this lies in the fact that religion. The paradigm of african traditional education, especially in the backdrop of some cultural practices, continues to attract interest in the contemporary discourses in african studies on one hand, the colonial quest was to. The nature of colonialism resulted in the denigration and disruption of the african traditional cultures and systems of education to make way for western education and european civilization although private schools were set up to reverse these distortions, they were too few to make any significant impact. | <urn:uuid:c60c0ce8-b95a-4569-ae37-d5d4d2ef26e5> | {
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New Outbreaks of Drug-resistant Staph Infection Reported in Schools
[Sorry, the video for this story has expired, but you can still read the transcript below. ]
MARGARET WARNER: There were reports this weekend of more outbreaks of a dangerous staph bacteria infecting students in several states. The bacteria, which is resistant to common antibiotics, is known as MRSA. It most commonly appears in hospital patients.
The school cases, with three recent reported student deaths, come on the heels of new findings showing MRSA is now causing more deaths annually in the U.S. than AIDS. According to the new calculations by the Centers for Disease Control, MRSA is responsible for nearly 19,000 deaths a year and more than 90,000 serious infections. The figures suggest the infection is twice as common as previously thought.
For more about MRSA, we turn to Dr. Richard Shannon, professor and chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
And, Professor Shannon, welcome. First of all, what does MRSA stand for? And what is it?
DR. RICHARD SHANNON, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine: Well, it’s good to be with you, Margaret. MRSA stands for methicillin-resistant staph aureus. It’s a type of bacteria related to a very common bacteria, typically known as staph, that, as you have said, becomes resistant over time to the use of conventional or first-line antibiotics.
So penicillin is a commonly used antibiotic to treat staph infections. This particular strain has become resistant to that antibiotic.
MARGARET WARNER: And then, we’re seeing a growth not only in the antibiotic-resistant strain, but in this particularly invasive form that can get, what, from the skin into the body?
DR. RICHARD SHANNON: Well, that’s right. I think what we’re really seeing is that MRSA has typically been confined to hospitalized patients whose immune systems were weakened by another illness or who may have had a surgical wound that became infected.
But now we’re seeing these strains emerging in the community. And in particular, there are some variations in the strain that, as you say, tend to cause very serious skin infections that, if it gets into your blood, can cause a life-threatening illness.
Symptoms of MRSA infection
MARGARET WARNER: So how does a healthy person know? What are the first signs or symptoms that a healthy person, a student or anyone else out in the community, has this?
DR. RICHARD SHANNON: Well, I think at first it's important to know that about 25 percent of the population carries staph bacteria on their skin normally, and about 1 percent of the population has this antibiotic-resistant form of staph, called MRSA.
But the first signs in a patient or in an individual in the community who is otherwise healthy is typically a redness of the skin in the development of a pimple or a blister that can sometimes be swollen and also quite painful.
MARGARET WARNER: Now, I noticed in the CDC figures the most -- the greatest fatalities were among the elderly and actually African-Americans. What determines whether this MRSA is fatal?
DR. RICHARD SHANNON: Well, I think typically whether the infection is fatal or not is predicated upon whether the antibiotics are administered rapidly when the infection is diagnosed, but also depending upon what systems of the body become infected.
So when MRSA infects the lungs, for example, it causes a very serious pneumonia that may take much longer to treat and respond to antibiotics because of its resistance. When it causes infections in the bloodstream, other organs, like the heart and the liver, can become infected. And this can lead to multi-organ failure, which really is what causes individuals to die.
MARGARET WARNER: Now, give us the scenario for how it is spread, first in hospitals.
DR. RICHARD SHANNON: Well, I think that one of the most disturbing things about MRSA is that it is spread almost exclusively by person-to-person contact. So in a hospital, that would mean most typically contact between a patient, who is colonized with MRSA, and a health worker, who is taking care of that patient plus several other patients. And the failure to wash hands in the hospital or to adhere to contact precautions, such as wearing a gown or wearing gloves, really leads to the ability for this bacteria to be spread from patient to patient.
MARGARET WARNER: And I gather studies have found that more than 50 percent of hospital workers, or rather hospital workers more than 50 percent of the time disregard the standard, which is you have to wash your hands between each patient and clean whatever equipment you've used.
DR. RICHARD SHANNON: That's exactly right. I think that we are becoming increasingly concerned that very simple measures that could really help us to control this, simply health care workers don't appreciate how important they are. So in a high-tech intensive care unit with lots of equipment, it's much easier to think about using some technological approach than really just good hand hygiene and barrier precautions.
Good hygienic precautions
MARGARET WARNER: All right. Now, how is it being spread in the schools? And why are we seeing more incidents in schools?
DR. RICHARD SHANNON: Well, I think the spread among healthy individuals is basically the same, and that is it's usually skin-to-skin contact. And so typically where this is being seen is in daycare centers, where kids are playing together, or on sports teams, where individuals are huddled together and may come into contact, such as wrestlers would during the course of a meet.
So the mode of spread is exactly the same: It's skin-to-skin contact. I think the reason we're seeing more of this is that now we've had, unfortunately, three cases in the last week of otherwise young, healthy individuals developing very serious staph infections due to this resistant MRSA, and their deaths have really raised public awareness to a new level.
MARGARET WARNER: Now, we read stories about schools scrubbing down their gyms or showers. People talk about, if they go to a gym, a regular workout place, rubbing down the equipment before they use it. Are those necessary precautions or overkill?
DR. RICHARD SHANNON: Well, I think they're good hygienic precautions that people should take. But I think it's important to know that, while MRSA can live on those surfaces, it is still much more likely that the organism is spread from person-to-person contact.
So really the message should be that individuals should engage in very good personal hygiene. They should wash their own hands. They should make sure that their workout clothes are washed on a regular basis. And athletes should avoid sharing equipment like towels and razors in the locker room.
Advice for worried parents
MARGARET WARNER: So, bottom line, how worried should parents be?
DR. RICHARD SHANNON: Well, I think this is a concern, but I wouldn't be an alarmist about this. Most of the community-acquired infections cause skin infections, and many of those can simply be treated with topical measures.
I think the real message for parents is to really help their children understand the importance of personal hygiene. And I think, in the school systems and in daycare facilities, the importance is to recognize that students should engage in those practices at school, as well as at home.
MARGARET WARNER: And very briefly, in hospitals, is screening and isolation of patients who are carrying this bacteria an option?
DR. RICHARD SHANNON: Well, I think that's been controversial. Mounting evidence suggests that screening of individuals when they're admitted to high- risk areas of the hospital and absolute adherence to isolation procedures can really help to control the spread of MRSA.
MARGARET WARNER: All right, Professor Richard Shannon, thank you so much.
DR. RICHARD SHANNON: Thank you, Margaret.
JIM LEHRER: Two doctors will take your questions about the drug-resistant staph infection in our online Insider Forum. To participate, go to PBS.org. | <urn:uuid:0f70fd3b-4f6a-4693-8f65-364f31afad14> | {
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Wearable technology is rapidly increasing in popularity, and developers continue to find new and innovative ways to put it to good use. For example, the Apple Watch gives people hands-free access to many of their iPhone’s most notable features. Having a phone on your wrist is certainly helpful, but read on to discover some of the other notable ways that this tech can and will change the world for the better.
1. Remote Health Monitoring
Fitness-obsessed individuals have already turned to items such as Fitbit to track their workouts, but what about others who have serious health issues that need to be continuously monitored? Some wearable tech companies are currently developing remote health monitoring solutions that will enable those in need to avoid spending an exorbitant amount of time and money on in-person monitoring.
For example, Biotricity offers advanced Mobile Cardiac Telemetry units that are available for individuals and hospitals. This technology can be used to monitor heart rhythms and respiration, and it also makes it easier for physicians to diagnose medical conditions such as coronary heart disease and cardiovascular disease. In other words, patients will be able to receive a quicker diagnosis and keep a closer eye on their health condition by using wearable technology.
2. Enhancing In-Person Credit Card Payment Security
Credit and debit card payment security is always a priority, and this is the primary reason that chip card technology has been implemented in many countries. However, there is a newly developed wearable tech that could soon make chip card readers obsolete.
Consumers in Italy and Brazil have already become acquainted with the Biyo readers that scan their palms in order to pay for purchases. This greatly enhances security because each person has their own unique hand vein patterns, and the patterns must match for someone’s card to be charged. Palms are synced via iOS or Android devices, including the wearable Apple Watch.
3. Saving People Money on Health Insurance
Your insurance rate most likely increase every year, but what if you could personally impact the rate that you pay and be rewarded for exercising? Fitbit and other wearable health technology is being heavily eyed by the insurance industry and large employers for its potential to reduce healthcare-related expenses.
Although this evolution of wearable tech is still in its infancy, you can expect to have future insurance premiums be positively or negatively affected by the way that you take care of yourself on a daily basis. For fitness buffs, this would be a great way to save a lot of money. Everyone else would receive a financial incentive to get in shape.
4. Enabling Mind-Controlled Electronics
The science fiction genre has introduced us to many concepts that have gone from seemingly fanciful and far-fetched to eventually coming to fruition in the real world. One of the most intriguing Sci-Fi ideas has long been the possibility of being able to control electronics with nothing more than our minds. Thanks to wearable tech, it is now possible for people with certain disabilities or those who are recovering from an injury to control everything from simple smartphone functions to an electric wheelchair through the power of thought.
5. Improving Workplace Morale
Surveys have indicated that 25 percent of workers worldwide are unhappy with their jobs. This number balloons to 70 percent in the U.S., so it is no wonder that companies are looking for innovative ways to boost workplace morale. Wearable tech can record hundreds of personal data points, and analyzing this makes it possible to better tailor the workday toward improving satisfaction and productivity. For example, if this data shows that most employees experience a reduction in stress while listening to classical music, a company could decide to play it building-wide on a daily basis. Additionally, businesses will have the opportunity to gauge whether or not their workforce benefits from exercise-related concepts such as walking meetings.
6. Boosting the Performance and Efficiency of NGOs and Charities
Charities and non-government organizations (NGOs) are often spread thin financially and have a difficult time remaining in touch with people who are out in the field. This is especially true of charities that send volunteers and employees into remote areas to provide assistance to people in need.
Giving each worker wearable technology would make it possible to monitor everyone from one centralized location. When a worker begins to exhibit high levels of stress, someone from the charity or NGO can intercede to improve their morale and help avoid burnout issues. Ultimately, this will make everyone involved more efficient, which in turn will increase the overall performance of the entire company.
7. Making People More Aware of Their Fitness Needs
It is easy for people to overrate their daily level of physical activity. In fact, scientists have proven that most of our perceptions do not match up with reality. This problem could be easily conquered by wearable tech because we would all be able to learn the truth about our physical expenditures. As an added bonus, this type of technology can clue people in to potential health issues before they become very serious.
8. Syncing to Charity Apps
There are several charity apps that enable users to make free contributions to the cause of their choice with actions like walking, running, or cycling. Wearable technology will continue to increase its ability to sync to smartphones and other devices, which makes it the perfect way to do something good for ourselves and others without needing to have our phone on hand at all times.
9. Reducing Distracted Driving Accidents
Distracted driving causes an average of 1,153 injuries and 9 fatalities daily, and many of these avoidable accidents can be linked to cellphone usage. The Apple Watch has already made it easier to answer phone calls on the go, and it enables hands-free conversation. In the future, wearable tech will almost certainly expand upon this idea to make it possible to start and end calls without having to take your eyes off the road, even if your physical phone is not close by. As a result, distracted driving accidents should begin to decline over time.
10. Increasing Workplace Safety
Workplace accidents claimed the lives of almost 4,700 American workers in 2014, and the majority of these deaths would have been prevented with an increased emphasis on safety. Wearable tech has many potential applications in this regard, ranging from giving workers the ability to test equipment more easily to monitoring people for high levels of stress or anxiety. This tech could also be used to give employees on-the-spot training and access to life-saving information.
New and highly impressive wearable tech is being developed at a rapid rate, and it is likely that these devices will eventually become as commonplace as smartphones and TVs. With a seemingly endless list of practical uses, wearable tech has already had a positive impact on the world, and its full potential is still being discovered.
Featured photo credit: Kārlis Dambrāns via flickr.com
Set a Goal For Yourself
Love this article? Share it with your friends on Facebook | <urn:uuid:8a62c4a2-5496-4ccf-b499-70845b8bc4f0> | {
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Synonyms and other taxonomic changes
First described in 1852 by Hippolyte Lucas
as Anthocharis Sara
Anthocharis sara Lucas, 1852. Type locality: “Californie” [Defined as “Queen Lily Campground, near Belden, North Fork Feather River, 2400' elev., Plumas County, California” by J. Emmel et al. (1998), Systematics of Western North American Butterflies (3): 79]
Explanation of Names
For the present time, most authors consider members of the "Sara Complex" as one species, and the various subspecies do seem to intergrade where they meet, though sometimes it appears more as if two distinct species are producing a few hybrids. Currently there is a trend toward separating southwestern populations as a species - A. thoosa
, with underside marbling less greenish and more gray looking, and to separate inland populations further north as a species - A. julia
, which is highly variable, but quite similar to more coastal A. sara
. There are differences in immature stages that tend to support this division, but whether the distinctions are enough to call them true biological species can be debated. For the time being the classification used at the 'Butterflies of America'
web site, and in Jonathan Pelham's Catalogue
is followed here.
If divided as outlined above, the following will be the probable arrangement of the subspecies.
Anthocharis thoosa, including: alaskensis, browningi, flora, prestonorum, sulfuris & stella
Anthocharis sara including: pseudothoosa & sempervirens
Anthocharis thoosa, including: colorado & inghami
Where found in the same areas as 'Desert Orangetip' (Anthocharis cethura), that species has prominent pale (usually white) spots along the margin of the upper front wing, clearly dividing the dark border from the edge of the wing, while in A. sara such spots are narrow (i.e. in many females) or barely evident at all, and the dark border right along the edge. On the under side A. cethura has the greenish marbling on the hind wing merged onto relatively broad well-defined bands, while in A. sara the marbling is finer and more evenly spread across the wing (and in the area where the species are together, usually less greenish). In A. cethura the males in commonly decidedly yellowish, and always so in many populations; while in A. sara, yellow males are rare.
Wide-ranging, mostly in mountainous regions, west from the Plains and south of the Arctic. Southern limits are in northern Mexico.
Varied, mostly found in areas of broken terrain, often in canyons, open woodlands, and riparian areas.
Late winter through sping, with timing depending primarily on elevation and latitude. One brood in most regions, but sometimes apparently with two flights near southern Pacific coast (probably not two broods, but more likely with some emerging early and others delayed; perhaps depending on rains and temperatures?).
Larvae feed on mustard family (Brassicaceae), esp. Tower Mustard, Arabis glabra. | <urn:uuid:fb027489-8419-4fce-b554-3c96de56771b> | {
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|Area:||645,807 sq km (249,347 sq mi)|
|Population||(2009 est.): 28,150,000 (including Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran)|
|Chief of state and head of government:||President Hamid Karzai|
The war in Afghanistan assumed a higher global profile in 2009 as Taliban attacks inside Pakistan demonstrated the international character of the Islamist insurgency in both countries. U.S. and NATO troop levels in Afghanistan rose above 100,000, most of them American.
It was a year of reassessment by Afghanistan’s Western allies. After taking office in January, U.S. Pres. Barack Obama began framing new policies to counter Taliban attacks. He authorized higher troop levels and replaced NATO’s commander in Afghanistan. Economic reconstruction and the training of Afghan forces became high priorities. In recognition of the regional nature of the opposition, U.S. policy would view Taliban activity on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier as a whole.
There was a new willingness on the part of the U.S. to reach out to moderate Taliban, especially to those fighting for money rather than ideology. Many Western policy makers saw the insurgency in Afghanistan as composed of three groups. The first, the Taliban group led by Mullah Mohammad Omar, was loosely organized and active mostly inside Afghanistan. Many of this group’s members were Pashtuns who fought for local or tribal issues and might respond to programs addressing their concerns. A second Taliban group, led by members of the Haqqani family, was credited with having introduced suicide attacks and bombings of public buildings to Afghanistan and was said to be connected with both al-Qaeda and elements of Pakistan’s military. Finally, the group led by the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar remained independent of the Taliban while sharing their Islamist orientation. It was not known whether Hekmatyar might find common ground with the government of Pres. Hamid Karzai.
Throughout the year interest focused on Afghanistan’s second presidential election, in which Karzai stood for reelection. Registration was under way in the winter for a vote anticipated in the spring. According to Afghanistan’s constitution, Karzai’s term would end on May 22. In January, however, the Independent Election Commission, appointed by Karzai, announced that the election would be delayed until August 20 because of security and weather concerns. Although it was backed by the UN, the U.S., and other international leaders, this decision was rejected by many Afghan politicians, who argued that it was illegal. The controversy continued until the end of March, when the Supreme Court announced that Karzai could hold office until the August election.
The summer saw a spirited campaign with a broad field of candidates. An Electoral Complaints Commission, which included UN observers as well as Afghans, was charged with investigating and ruling on reported irregularities. The election provoked thousands of complaints of ballot fraud, and counting continued for two months. The first count gave Karzai enough votes to avoid a runoff, but several hundred thousand ballots in his favour were eliminated when convincing evidence of mass fraud was brought to light. A runoff between Karzai and former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah was ruled necessary. Abdullah demanded that officials overseeing the election be replaced to prevent further fraud, but he was ignored. On November 1 he withdrew his participation, and Karzai was declared the winner without a second vote. The president immediately pledged to remove the taint of corruption from his government.
New strategies could not disguise growing tensions between the Afghan government and its international defenders. Despite NATO’s revised rules of engagement, its air strikes continued to cause civilian casualties. Many Afghans, including Karzai, openly criticized the foreign troops for not protecting the population. International leaders, whose own populations were becoming discouraged by so few signs of success, pointed to the corruption and inefficiency in Afghanistan’s government and demanded reform.
In March the parliament passed, and Karzai signed, a bill legalizing the traditional family law of the Hazara, a law that was to apply only to this Shiʿite minority. Shiʿite parliamentarians argued that it was legal recognition of Hazara culture, but many inside and outside Afghanistan denounced the law for infringing on women’s rights. Under pressure, Karzai promised to review the measure. He later signed a separate law making violence against women illegal. In July, however, Karzai enacted a revised version of the Hazara family law, which, among other provisions, forbade a woman to work outside the home without her husband’s permission and allowed a man to withhold food from his wife if she refused to have sex with him.
The year saw a shift in Russian and Central Asian attitudes toward NATO shipments to Afghanistan, from allowing only nonlethal supplies to cross their countries to opening routes to arms shipments. Several Asian countries voiced new warmth and friendship toward Afghanistan’s government. China offered expanded economic cooperation but remained noncommittal on requests to open the border of Afghanistan’s Vakhan region to trade. India too was eager to participate in Afghanistan’s development, and even Japan offered extensive financial aid to the country. On another bright note, in April Afghanistan established its first national park, Band-e-Amir, in a region renowned for the intense, clear blue of its mountain lakes. | <urn:uuid:424b8f4f-0f1c-44ec-9336-0f1f196371e5> | {
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To the horror of animal rights supporters everywhere, a week before Thanksgiving President Obama signed into law an agricultural spending bill that allows for the restoration of the American horse slaughter industry. Congress was faced with a choice between lifting the domestic slaughter ban or banning the export of horses for slaughter, and they chose to keep the slaughter on domestic grounds – however there was a reason U.S. plants were closed in the first place. The Humane Society reports that U.S. slaughterhouses have a history of excessive abuse and cruelty, and USDA statistics show that 92 percent of horses slaughtered for meat are “in good condition and able to lead productive lives”. Read on to learn more about this horrific industry – and why we shouldn’t allow it on US soil or support the exportation of horses to foreign slaughterhouses.
Horse slaughter was never banned outright in the states, however a bill passed in 1996 banned the inspection of horse meat, effectively halting the horse slaughtering industry on US soil. This bill had its consequences, however – according to The Washington Times, “In 2010, about 138,000 horses were exported [many to Canada or Mexico] for slaughter”.
The 2007 bill prolonged the horses’ suffering as they were loaded into over-crowded trailers and shipped long distances to slaughterhouses, and even though the new bill eliminates this journey, it doesn’t make it morally sound or acceptable to slaughter these noble animals in the first place. Horses are smart, sensitive animals, the conditions in slaughterhouses are abominable. and industries that support the overpopulation of horses (such as racetracks) shouldn’t be encouraged to breed horses and make a quick buck by selling them for meat.
Lead photo by Marilyn Peddle | <urn:uuid:30a70a1e-90c2-4fd0-8774-fcdeb6e16604> | {
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Despite slow progress at COP-14, the national climate action plans of several key countries announced this year are signs of progress.
Coverage of the United Nations conference on climate change, which ended last week, has been understandably negative: the thousands of negotiators, analysts, companies and civil society groups that converged on Poznań, Poland, resulted in very few concrete decisions. Spending for climate change adaptation using already available funds was authorized, but even there the scale of support is small compared to the resources needed. And this was just about the only area of agreement. On a problem as urgent as climate change, such limited progress is frustratingly slow.
However, while it is true that the meeting in Poznań yielded little progress, this was hardly surprising. After all, this meeting is held at year one in an agreed two-year negotiating process. Typically, nothing is agreed in these processes until a final deal is struck encompassing every issue. Furthermore, the world is waiting for new leadership from the incoming U.S. Administration, and it made little sense to reach important agreements with a lame duck team.
Despite the limited extent of formal agreement, progress is being made in tackling climate change. The last 18 months has seen most of the major developing economies, including China and India, bring forward significant plans for limiting emissions through aggressive energy efficiency, renewable energy, and forestry programs. The European Union has now agreed to a new round of emissions cuts aimed at reducing emissions at least 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Australia and Mexico have both announced targets.
To be sure, these efforts will be only a down payment on the global emissions reductions required to forestall massive global climate damages; actions by all nations will need to be strengthened to meet necessary emissions goals. Here too, U.S. reengagement is likely to be critical. A strong U.S. climate policy might not only encourage other countries to go further, but also set the stage for a collective effort that can create and distribute critical climate-friendly technologies, provide resources for adaptation, and support capacity building, particularly in the least developed countries around the world.
While expectations were high in Poznań that the new U.S. team would re-energize the climate negotiations, the economic crisis was the second topic of almost universal discussion. At a meeting of finance ministers held in Warsaw directly prior to the UN climate session, it was clear that nations are increasingly worried that the global economic crisis will limit investment---and the capacity of governments to act. Here too, with President-elect Obama stressing that the economic crisis is reason to press ahead with building a green economy, U.S. leadership could be critical.
No observers have ever suggested that negotiating a new global agreement would be straightforward, and the very modest Poznań outcomes underscore the difficulties. However, nations are beginning to act, and while it remains unclear if their action will be aggressive enough (or soon enough) to offset the trend of increasing climate damages, we are finally moving on a more positive track. Ultimately, it is these national commitments that will be reflected in a global deal; it is not the global agreement that drives national policy. From that perspective, the Poznań meeting, while not reaching formal agreement on any new treaty text, provided a forum for nations to announce their new national efforts, and give the rest of us room for hope. | <urn:uuid:f15328dc-de7b-4fa4-9fdd-5d014492a889> | {
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The Norsemen, commonly referred to as Vikings, raided and colonised the north of what was to become Scotland, from the 8th century onwards. The Northern and Western Isles, Caithness and Sutherland along with the western seaboard to Galloway and the Isle of Man, became a Norse kingdom that lasted to the 13th century.
They raided along the eastern coast and, no doubt, settled in places but never established a dominant presence.
Between 950 and 960 A.D., Norsemen from Orkney raided the Buchan coast. They were defeated at Cruden and again, in 1004, at Gamrie where three skulls of the Vikings were built into the wall of St John's church built in dedication of the victory !
In 1012, the Danes commanded by Canute, landed at Cruden where a battle was fought by Malcolm Canmore II. A subsequent treaty declared that the Scandinavians had to retreat from the North East.
Malcom Canmore II and King Sueno of Denmark agreed peace between their emerging nations.
The map shows the percentage of the populations around Scotland with Viking ancestry. It is low, only 5%, for the North East coast possibly due to events described above. The DNA of one member of the Fenty family from a family with centuries of history in the North East does, however, show strong evidence of Baltic/Scandinavian ancestry. | <urn:uuid:bd54b79b-2554-4b00-96fa-94aece98598d> | {
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Concerns about the failing nuclear reactors in Japan and the fear of spreading radiation inspired me to share one of my favorite maps. The map shows areas in the United States crossed by two or more radioactive clouds during the era of nuclear testing (1951-1962) in the American Southwest. Click on the map for a larger version.
Richard Miller painstakingly created his map showing where humans, animals, and the environment were contaminated by radioactive fallout, broadly dispersed by weather patterns.
A sublime map, both beautiful and terrifying.
The map is also reproduced in my forthcoming book, Making Maps, 2nd Edition (due any day now).
Source: Richard Miller, “Areas crossed by two or more radioactive clouds during the era of nuclear testing in the American Southwest, 1951-62” in Under the Cloud: The Decades of Nuclear Testing (Two-Sixty Press, 1999), between chapters 4 and 5. | <urn:uuid:47ce6ed0-00b6-44b9-8619-bdc87571c460> | {
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Maureen Michael likes food. Most days, she has three or four meals, and on occasion she eats yet another in the middle of the night. But she rarely worries about her weight, and at 1.7 metres and 70kg, she looks quite trim.
"I eat anything, and I eat a lot," the 51-year-old District of Columbia resident said. "I like large portions. I have one of those metabolisms, I guess."
The other day, Michael ate a salad and two large helpings of spaghetti and meatballs for dinner – after having a big bowl of ice cream. For breakfast the next morning, she ate two scrambled eggs, half a package of Polish sausage, English muffins and orange juice. For lunch, she consumed a one-third of a metre seafood sub and some tortilla chips, and that night's dinner featured two pork chops, potatoes and broccoli.
That Michael's weight remains steady even though she eats whatever she wants and does not exercise interests scientists studying the US obesity epidemic. By looking at people who are near their ideal body weight, these researchers at the National Institutes of Health's Metabolic Clinical Research Unit in Bethesda, Maryland, hope to figure out what causes so many others to be overweight or uncontrollably fat.
Michael is among the one-third of American adults who are at a good weight relative to their height and build. Another third are overweight and the rest are obese. Unlike Michael, very few people keep their weight in check without paying attention to what they eat and being conscientious about physical activity.
For years, people have been told to diet, control their appetites, use a little willpower. But more and more scientists believe the obesity epidemic has been triggered by a combination beyond an individual's control: genes, and how they interact with an environment of abundant, tasty, inexpensive and hard-to-resist food.
Each person's unique genetic makeup, these experts think, may affect what he craves, how much he craves and how his body uses fat and burns calories.
"We are hard-wired to be a bit more hungry than we need to, because until very recently – in evolutionary terms – the vast majority of our fellow humans had no idea whether the next meal would be available or not," said Francesco S Celi, a clinical investigator at the NIH research unit.
Yet for some people, there is a profound imbalance between what they eat and the amount of energy they expend. Most of these people become obese as a result, but some, like Michael, don't.
"Some are more sensitive" to that imbalance, said Rudolph Leibel, a diabetes researcher at New York's Columbia University who has been studying the biochemistry and genetics of obesity for 25 years. "That's the genetics."
"There are people in the population who are skinnier or more slender with a different genetic response to the environment," he said. That is why "just yelling at people and telling them it is sinful or gluttony is not a particular fruitful way to deal with the problem. It's not very effective to insinuate that someone has moral failings when a behaviour is involved."
To try to unravel the complexity of all this, researchers at an NIH diabetes and obesity lab in Phoenix have begun to incorporate thin people into their studies. Why "some [people] tend to overeat more than they need more consistently and why this occurs is clearly complex and involves levels of behaviour that we are just beginning to understand", said Jonathan Krakoff, an endocrinologist at the lab.
Krakoff and his colleagues are recruiting for a study in which thin people will consume about 4,000 calories in a 24-hour period, about twice the amount an average healthy person needs in a day.
Before participants engage in the overeating part of the study, researchers will measure their body fat. Then, scientists will count how many calories the participants burn in a day while they're studied. This is done in a respiratory chamber where the amount of oxygen taken in and carbon dioxide expelled is monitored.
"Some people might be able to burn off more excess calories as heat when they overeat, so they are the people more likely to be thin," said Marie Thearle, a staff clinician involved in the study. "We are also asking our volunteers to come back for follow-up visits once a year for up to seven years to see if any of the energy expenditure measurements with overeating during the baseline study visit predict who gains weight over time and who does not."
Thearle says the researchers hope to find out whether food choices matter. "Once you have met the needs of your body, does it matter what else you consume?" she said. "There's the popular myth that people don't gain weight because they have a high metabolism; we want to see if that is true. We will be looking at hormones and brown fat. We don't think the answer is differences in metabolism." Brown fat is the "good" fat that scientists say helps burn calories – and white fat, or what we think of as regular fat.
A second study at the Phoenix lab, which will involve both slim and obese participants, is more long-range. During a six-week period, the thin people will be fed meals containing 150% of their weight-maintaining needs. Some will get a normal amount of protein; for others, the diet will be very low in protein. Obese people will be underfed by "50% of their weight-maintaining needs", said Susanne Votruba, a research nutritionist at the lab.
Vortuba hopes to figure out who among the thin volunteers gains more weight over time, and why, and who among the fatter volunteers loses more weight, and why.
In Bethesda, Celi and Kong Chen are taking a different approach. Since humans spend so much time at rest and since "obesity is an imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure", Celi said, he and Chen are testing what happens to a person's output of energy, stress hormones and thyroid hormone levels when his or her body gets cold.
Some studies suggest that colder temperatures help stimulate brown fat to burn more calories. Brown fat, which runs along our neck, shoulders and spine in small amounts, is like muscle tissue in that it burns calories and helps keep the body's internal temperature stable. Only recently have scientists discovered that brown fat persists in humans beyond infancy. They have also found that lean people tend to have more brown fat than obese people.
If temperatures can influence brown fat so that the body expends more energy, people with a lot of brown fat may find it easier to lose or maintain their weight, Celi and Chen believe. If that is the case, then "instead of working on hunger, which is deep-seated in the brain," Celi said, "we are working on one tissue [brown fat] that has been proposed as the holy grail of the [human metabolic] system. We bypass the brain."
Michael is one of 24 lean recruits in a preliminary experiment run by Celi and Chen. She spent two 12‑hour overnights in a specialised room with precise temperature and airflow controls. During each session inside the chamber, she ate a diet of 50% carbohydrates, 30% fat and 20% protein – just enough, the scientists calculated, for her to maintain her weight – while they held the room temperature at 24C for one session and 20C for the other.
Another participant, Chris Nathasingh – 31 years old, 1.8 metres and 77kg – spent his 20C night with only a thin blanket with his pyjamas. He shivered and jumped in and out of bed to keep warm.
The next morning, he was exhausted but not very hungry. The second night, the temperature was adjusted to 24C, and Nathasingh slept well. "I would not say that I was hungry or hungrier [after the second night], but I definitely could not wait to eat," he said. "Where sleep deprivation after the cold night made me only focus on sleep, the absence of such deprivation after the warm night made me focus on the next best thing: food."
Celi and Chen found that participants' energy expenditures went up when the room temperature was lowered.
Michael, who was a swimmer, dancer and gymnast as a girl, and who was skinnier than her girlhood friends, keeps her home at about 22C in the winter and about 21C in the summer. Her weight is a little higher than she wants, but she doesn't think about dieting. Instead, she might try some exercise.
"I need to," she said. "I am getting older. I have slacked off as an adult. I can tell the difference." | <urn:uuid:06fb0340-5955-43f4-a890-255a090dc63c> | {
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In another article I mentioned that the central theme of the High Holiday season is teshuvah (תְּשׁוּבָה), a word often translated as "repentance," though it's more accurately understood as turning (shuv) to God in response to His call. Indeed, teshuvah can mean both these things: turning and answering... A related Hebrew word is nacham (נָחַם), which literally means to "sigh" as a way of expressing regret or sorrow, usually in response to something in the past. Sometimes nacham is used to express the idea of comfort, in the sense of consolation for something lost. The ancient Greek translation of the Bible (i.e., LXX and NT) generally used the word strepho (στρέφω) for the word shuv, and the word metanoia (μετάνοια) for nacham.
In the New Testament, the Greek word metanoia (and its related verb, metanao) is the most commonly used word to express the idea of "repentance." The compound word is formed from 'μετα' (after, with) and 'νοεω' (to think) and generally means "changing your mind" (in the noun form) or "thinking differently" (in the verb form). Since it can represent an "afterthought" expressed emotionally as sorrow or regret, metanoia is similar to the idea of nacham (נָחַם) in the Hebrew Scriptures. The Greek word strepho (στρέφω), like the Hebrew word shuv (שׁוּב), means to "return" to God in a more practical sense, that is, by performing acts of contrition. In either case, however, a change of direction is implied, and that change ultimately begins with how we think and what we regard as truth.
In this connection it is interesting to compare the Shema as it appears in the Hebrew text with the Greek versions given in the New Testament, because the Greek text adds the word "mind" (or understanding) in the recitation: i.e., "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." (Mark 12:29-30). Notice that the original Hebrew text does not include reference to the mind, though the word me'od ("muchness") was translated as "power" (δυνάμεώς) in the LXX, and this might have been interpreted to mean the power of the mind. Even so, the Greek New Testament uses the word "strength" (ἰσχύς) for me'od, so the question of how the word "mind" appeared in the recitation of the Shema is still a bit puzzling. (You can view the textual differences here, if you like.) At any rate, it is significant that the word "mind" or "understanding" (i.e., διάνοια, from διά, "through" + νοῦς, "mind"), appears in the text (as well as in Matt. 22:37 and Luke 10:27), especially when we remember that the word metanoia means "changing your thinking" or "changing your mind."
Yeshua's earthly ministry began with the message, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent (μετανοεῖτε) and believe (πιστεύετε) in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). These two verbs (repent, believe) are in the imperative mood. We are commanded to repent, to "change our thinking" and to believe the message of the gospel. As I've said before, trusting in Yeshua is the most important mitzvah of the Scriptures. This implies, among other things, that there is an "ethic of belief," or a moral imperative to accept the truth and reject error in the realm of the spiritual. God holds us responsible for what we think and believe (Acts 17:30-31).
If God holds us responsible to repent and believe the truth of the gospel, He must have made it possible for us to do so ("ought" implies "can"). And indeed, God has created us in His image and likeness so that we are able to discern spiritual truth. He created us with a logical sense (rationality) as well as a moral sense (conscience) so that we can apprehend order and find meaning in the universe He created. All our knowledge presupposes this. Whenever we experience anything through our senses, for example, we use logic to categorize and generalize from the particular to the general, and whenever we make deductions in our thinking (comparing terms, making inferences, and so on), we likewise rely on logic. We have an innate intellectual and moral "compass" that points us to God.
Since we all necessarily must think in order to live, we should value clear thinking. This should be obvious enough, though people often make various errors and misjudgments because they devalue the effort required to carefully think through a question. As William James once said, "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." When it comes to questions about the gospel, however, God regards such carelessness to be blameworthy. Again, the LORD holds us accountable for what we think and believe, especially when it comes to the reality and mission of His Son.
The truth about God is always available to human beings, if they are willing to look for it. The Divine Light that was created before the sun and the stars represents God's immanent presence that "lights up" all of creation - including our minds (Gen. 1:3). As Paul stated, "the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen so that people are without excuse" (Rom. 1:19-20). The heavens are constantly attesting to the reality of God's handiwork (Psalm 19:1). All of creation "shouts out" that there is a God. Even small children understand this.
The witness of God's truth is foundational to all of our thinking as well. If you regress far enough in a chain of reasoning, you will always encounter first principles, intuitions, axioms, and "apprehensions" of the laws of thought. This is how language works, or rather, how our mind necessarily discovers truth about reality. For example, the law of contradiction (or identity) is not discovered in experience, but is brought to experience by the operation of the mind. All reasoning is ultimately grounded on foundational first principles that are regarded as self-evident and that are known through the light of the mind itself. Even the pagan Greeks understood this. For instance, Aristotle said that both deduction and induction ultimately were based on the "intuitive grasp" of first principles of thinking itself:
It's important to realize that no one "invented" the rules of logic (such as the law of identity, the law of contradiction, valid rules of inference, etc.); no, these are self-evident and presupposed in all forms of intelligible thinking about anything at all. In other words, God created the mind so that true thinking is possible. If you are reading these words, you are presently using logic. You are identifying and combining letters, interpreting their meaning, making connections and comparisons, and therefore making inferences. There is no way to argue that logic is "artificial" or culturally relative. No one can consistently use logic to argue against its universal validity. The revelation (not the invention) of logical first principles is part of God's "signature," if you will, of how the mind is wired to correspond to reality. Reason discovers order in the universe but does not create it ex nihilo. If you deny this, you have opted out of the realm of thought altogether and entered the realm of the absurd.
Likewise we have intuitive awareness regarding the existence of moral truth (i.e., the standard of justice and moral law), aesthetic truth (i.e., ideals of beauty, goodness, worth, and love), metaphysical truth (i.e., cause and effect relationships), and so on. Even scientific truth is based on principles that transcend the discipline of science itself (for example, the assumption that knowledge is "good" and should be obtained is not an empirical statement). The human mind naturally uses these sorts of categories in its thinking all the time, but each of these are ultimately derived from the rational mind of God Himself.
So God made us so that we could discern truth about reality. The mind functions according to logical laws because it is made in the image and likeness of God Himself... God Himself is the ground of all logic, since He created reality and structured the world to be knowable according to its laws. As it is written: "In the beginning was the word/logic (ὁ λόγος), and the λόγος was with God, and the λόγος was God" (John 1:1). God created a world that exhibits order and great beauty. And since human beings were created b'tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, our thoughts (and the words used to formulate our thoughts) as well as our actions are likewise intended to exhibit order and beauty. "For the fruit of light (καρπὸς τοῦ πνεύματος) is found in all that is good and right and true" (Eph. 5:9). Therefore "whatever is true... think on these things" (Phil. 4:8).
The Source of all truth is God. He is the Master of the Universe, the Lord of all possible outcomes and worlds. The heavens declare His glory (outer world) and human beings are made b'tzelem Elohim - in His image (inner world). We are all accountable to Him for our lives, and the irresistible testimony of logic reveals His design and order of reality...
The immanence of the divine Light helps us make sense of Yeshua, who is the "Light of the world" that "enlightens every man who comes into the world" (John 1:9; 8:12). Yeshua said, "the Spirit of Truth ... will bear witness about me" (John 15:26). And again, "For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world-- to bear witness to the truth (ἀλήθεια). Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice" (John 18:37). Heaven and earth might pass away, but the words of Yeshua will never pass away (Matt. 24:35). The life of Yeshua embodies the truth of God (John 14:6).
Again, we are "epistemologically" responsible to walk in the Spirit of truth and to reject what is false (1 John 4:6). This implies that we have a moral and spiritual duty to think clearly and not abuse our minds (Phil. 4:8; Rom. 12:2). God Himself helps us to do this: "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper (παράκλητος, someone "called to one's side"), to be with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth (רוּחַ הָאֱמֶת), whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him" (John 14:16-17). God gives us the Spirit of Truth so that we can know the truth about His salvation and to "discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and perfect" (Rom. 12:2). Truth is connected to memory - both in our personal histories as well as the history of God's redemptive actions performed on our behalf. Hence we are constantly commanded to remember what God has done for us. Similarly, the Spirit of Truth brings to remembrance the words of Yeshua to our hearts (John 14:26).
Followers of Yeshua are commanded to love the truth and to think clearly about their faith. The ministry of reconciliation itself is defined as "the word of truth, by the power of God, through weapons of righteousness" (2 Cor. 6:7). Indeed, the word of truth (τὸν λόγον τῆς ἀληθείας) is a synonym for the "gospel of salvation" itself (Eph. 1:13; Col. 1:5; James 1:18). We are saved by Yeshua, who is the "way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). God commands all people to believe this truth (Acts 17:30-31; 1 Tim. 2:4). People perish because "they refuse to love the truth and so be saved" (2 Thess. 2:10-12). Therefore we see that the issue of truth is central to salvation itself....
Soldiers are often told chazak v'amatz ("be strong and courageous") before they encounter the dangers of the battlefield, but it's vital to remember that each of us is engaged in a spiritual war every day of our lives. This war is essentially a battle for truth. If we accept false ideas about the nature of reality, we will live in a state of weakness and fear, even if our reasoning otherwise seems sound.
In the Torah we learn that both the Tree of Life (עֵץ הַחַיִּים) and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (עֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע) were present in the original paradise (Gen. 2:9). When Eve listened to the lies of the nachash (serpent) and regarded the forbidden tree as "desirable to make one wise," she immediately began her descent into exile. At the very dawn of human history, then, we see that "truth" (אֱמֶת) apart from God (א) leads to death (מֵת). Adam and Eve's disobedience led to God's gracious promise regarding the coming "Seed" who would restore all things by being victorious in the war for truth (Gen. 3:15). Of course, this promised Seed was Yeshua, our Suffering Servant and "Second Adam," who, through His sacrifice upon the cross, "reversed the curse" and reconciled humanity with God. Note, however, that this "proto-gospel" message also implied perpetual warfare between the heirs of the Messiah (called the "children of light") and the heirs of Satan (called the "children of darkness"). The ongoing enmity between these "two seeds," then, was foretold to be the "tale of two kingdoms," the Kingdom of God (מַלְכוּת אֱלהִים) and the kingdom of the devil (John 8:34-6). The Apostles likewise spoke of "children of darkness" and "children of light" (Eph. 5:8; Col. 1:13, 1 Thess. 5:5, etc.). The children of light are called to be am kadosh - a holy people - separate from the evil engendered by the fallen world and its forces, just as the very first creative expression of God was the separation of light from darkness (Gen. 1:3-4). The children of light "hate evil and love the good," and conversely, the children of darkness "hate the good and love evil" (Psalm 34:21, Prov. 8:13, Amos 5:15, John 3:20-21).
Because false teachers abound in the world, each of us is obligated to test (δοκιμάζω, lit. "determine if a metal is pure") the thinking of others to see if they are truly children of God (1 John 4:1). We must test truth claims. When confronted by false teaching, we are called to "earnestly contend for" (ἐπαγωνίζομαι, lit. "wrestle over") the truth of the faith (Jude 1:3). That's the response to untruth. On the other hand, we are commanded to "always be ready" to provide a reason (λόγος) for the hope that is within us (1 Pet. 3:5). That's the call to be a witness to the truth...
The traditional definition of philosophy is the "love of wisdom" (φίλος + σοφία), and therefore the followers of the Messiah should be philosophers. After all, Yeshua is called the "Wisdom of God" in the Scriptures (1 Cor. 1:24), and we are told that in Him "are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3). Moreover, we are explicitly commanded to ask God for heavenly wisdom (James 1:5), though this is "not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away" (see 1 Cor. 2:6-7). Indeed, the gospel message itself is called the power and wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:21-24). Disciples of Yeshua are to have the "mind of the Messiah" (1 Cor. 2:16)
Genuine repentance implies that we will change our thinking in order to be transformed by God's truth. The follower of Messiah "cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth" (2 Cor. 13:8). During this season of teshuvah, may God help us all to think clearly and to turn our thoughts to Him. May He protect us from the vanity of a darkened mind and from all distractions that attempt to seduce us away from Him. May the LORD give us the purity of heart to do His will in the truth. Amen. | <urn:uuid:f6a1b600-9baa-4f98-af1c-626bbd22c3d9> | {
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News tagged with immune
Related topics: immune system
Immunity is a biological term that describes a state of having sufficient biological defenses to avoid infection, disease, or other unwanted biological invasion. Immunity involves both specific and non-specific components. The non-specific components act either as barriers or as eliminators of wide range of pathogens irrespective of antigenic specificity. Other components of the immune system adapt themselves to each new disease encountered and are able to generate pathogen-specific immunity.
Adaptive immunity is often sub-divided into two major types depending on how the immunity was introduced. Naturally acquired immunity occurs through contact with a disease causing agent, when the contact was not deliberate, whereas artificially acquired immunity develops only through deliberate actions such as vaccination. Both naturally and artificially acquired immunity can be further subdivided depending on whether immunity is induced in the host or passively transferred from a immune host. Passive immunity is acquired through transfer of antibodies or activated T-cells from an immune host, and is short lived, usually lasts only a few months, whereas active immunity is induced in the host itself by antigen, and lasts much longer, sometimes life-long. The diagram below summarizes these divisions of immunity.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Human breastmilk responds quickly to protect the child when there is an infection in mothers or babies, according to new international research led by The University of Western Australia.
Immunology 20 hours ago | 5 / 5 (1) | 0
(Medical Xpress)—Scientists at Emory Vaccine Center have shown that an immune regulatory molecule called IL-21 is needed for long-lasting antibody responses in mice against viral infections.
Immunology 20 hours ago | 5 / 5 (1) | 0 |
More than half of patients diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL) are now surviving the disease thanks to improved diagnosis and treatment, according to a new report1 from Cancer Research UK.
Cancer 20 hours ago | 5 / 5 (1) | 0 | <urn:uuid:b19fd1d1-6503-476a-a07b-3dc5e2ac812b> | {
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Missionary Eyes and Indigenous Eyes
From the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, Catholic and Protestant missionaries were the eyes through which Europe viewed the religious and cultural systems of the non-European world. Merchants, soldiers and diplomats sometimes fulfilled the same function, but they were birds of passage who rarely had the necessity or inclination to observe the ritual practices of indigenous peoples at close hand. Missionaries, by contrast, were in for the long haul. The objective of conversion required careful and patient observation of local traditions, the slow learning of language, the gradual attuning of the mind to the finer points of ceremonial observance, totem or taboo. Missionaries compared and contrasted what they saw with what they had seen elsewhere, or with what was familiar to them in European Christendom. As they did so, they began to order the miscellany of phenomena they encountered into divisions, categories, even systems.
Over time, the conventional fourfold European categorisation of religion came into question: the vast majority of the peoples whom missionaries encountered in Asia, Africa and Latin America were clearly not any species of Christian. Neither were they Jews. Some, especially in parts of Asia, were clearly ‘Mahometans’, followers of the Prophet, but most were not. That left the fourth category – of ‘pagans’ or ‘heathens’ – but the applicability of that label, with its implication of the entire absence of anything worthy of the name of religion, was, at least in some cases, debatable.
The study of such dynamics of missionary seeing of indigenous societies forms one of the major themes of this issue of Studies in World Christianity. The four articles included in the issue were all originally read as papers presented to the twenty-fifth meeting of the Yale– Edinburgh Group on the History of Missions and World Christianity held at Yale Divinity School from 25 to 27 June 2015, under the theme: ‘Religion and Religions in the History of Missions and World Christianity’.
- Eva M. Pascal, Buddhist Monks and Christian Friars: Religious and Cultural Exchange in the Making of Buddhism
- Deanna Ferree Womack, Images of Islam: American Missionary and Arab Perspectives
- K. Kale Yu, Korea’s Confucian Culture of Learning as a Gateway to Christianity: Protestant Missions in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
- Maud Michaud, The Missionary and the Anthropologist: The Intellectual Friendship and Scientific Collaboration of the Reverend John Roscoe (CMS) and James G. Frazer, 1896–1932 | <urn:uuid:5e3ac6db-73ee-4425-9693-02256bdb9cdf> | {
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I've recently put together a quick little program to read mail from a POP3 server. It reads in data up to 2KB at a time and stuffs it into a larger buffer to pull lines from. It almost never reads the limit. But is this any different from simply reading up to a complete line and going from there? My way seems rather complicated, but I don't really know how sockets are handled. It's my understanding that the OS (in this case Windows) maintains a receive buffer for each open socket. send() calls from the server should complete normally until this buffer is full, correct?
My approach is to pull off as much data as possible and sort it as opposed to only reading what I need. In theory if my program was running on a really slow CPU then during this time the OS's buffer would become full and send() for the server would block (if in blocking mode).
Am I right in my thinking? | <urn:uuid:482abf84-e82c-4187-be75-3022eb029135> | {
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Tuesday, November 29, 2005
James Kilpatrick, in his book The Writer’s Art, tells us that a writer “functions as a kind of forest guide . . . escort[ing] the tenderfoot along an unfamiliar trail.” Kilpatrick observes that this “metaphorical forest ranger would find himself in trouble if he embarked upon a hike with no plan of getting from Point A to Point B.” Therefore, he advises, “Before we begin a letter, an editorial, a brief, or a note of instructions to the babysitter, we ought to have a clear idea of the points we intend to make and the order in which we intend to make them.”
Novice writers, however, have a very difficult time accepting Kilpatrick’s advice because they cannot shake the feeling that outlining is a waste of valuable writing time. Nowhere is that reluctance more evident than in the way most students approach writing an answer to an essay question on an exam.
When a student has sixty minutes to answer a particular essay question, everything in him screams that there is no time for outlining the answer. He must begin writing – NOW – if he hopes to get everything said. He begins writing, therefore, almost immediately after reading the question. He may jot a note or two in the margin of the question and may underline a word here or there, but he is not going to waste his time preparing an outline that no one will read and that will garner him no points.
That approach, of course, misses a key point about writing: writing is a form of thinking; the written product itself is only as clear as the thinking that preceded it.
A student who understands that principle knows that she cannot begin writing in mid-air if she hopes to provide the reader with a carefully reasoned and well-crafted response to a complicated question. She understands that, even under the time pressure inherent in exams – perhaps especially under the time pressure inherent in exams – thinking before writing is critical.
Therefore, she takes time to brainstorm the points she will need to cover, rereads and rethinks the question, revises her brainstorming, and converts it into an outline of points and sub-points that follow a logical plan leading to a carefully considered and thoroughly explained conclusion.
In other words, she thinks before she writes the answer itself because she knows how writing works and how reading works. She knows that to begin writing in mid-air is to think inefficiently and to do it on the reader’s dime. She knows that unless she plans before she writes, the reader will treated to her confusing, inefficient, meandering attempt to think through the question. She knows her reader will find himself wandering in the woods, off the trail and unable to find his bearings.
She also understands that she can write as least as much by thinking and planning first as she can by simply musing in a stream-of-consciousness form. The irony for the student who thinks he hasn’t time to plan is that he will waste at least the same amount of time writing in fits and starts, rereading his answer to find where he has been and where he is headed, and staring into space trying to think of what should come next.
The primary difference between the two writers is that one spends large amounts of time inefficiently groping for words and the other spends that time efficiently designing a fully considered response. The planner takes no more time than does her colleague, but her end product is coherent and easily read. The non-planning writer, in contrast, produces no more prose than his colleague, but his answer is a photograph of his confusion as he attempts to figure out what he needs to say; so his professor watches him stumble through the thought process with all its missteps and false trails.
Worse, because the unplanned writing is likely several pages of prose, it defies any attempt by the writer to see what is missing or to cut out what is extraneous. The trees obscure the forest, so the writer misses issues and sub-issues, arguments and counter-arguments, because he cannot see the big picture and the parts’ relationship to one another.
The planner, on the other hand, steps back from her outline and makes a final judgment as to what is there, what is missing, and what should be jettisoned. She can see the gaps and the illogical arrangements, and she has not committed several pages of writing to missteps.
If we can help students realize that writing is in fact a thinking process, we can help them see that the best writing product is an end result of thinking carefully. Taking time to think using some sort of sketched outline, even during time-pressured exams, is critical to producing thoughtful prose. Thoughtful prose, in turn, is the sort of prose most likely to lead the reader comfortably and efficiently along the unfamiliar trail of the writer’s analysis; and it is the type of prose most likely to provide all the steps necessary to complete the journey. (dbw)
Monday, November 28, 2005
(With apologies to the Buggles, who had their (I believe) one hit with “Video Killed the Radio Star” back in 1979.)
Our ASP class attendance is down, way down. We offer a number of helpful classes throughout the fall semester: case briefing, outlining, exam writing and multiple choice tips. In past years, student attendance peaked for outlining and declined gradually until we got to exam writing and multiple choice tips, when it re-peaked; but it remained fairly steady throughout the semester at thirty to forty students each session.
These days I am looking at maybe ten to twenty students a session, even the exam writing and multiple choice sessions. Outlining was still very well attended, but we offered it earlier this year than in years past. When our Counseling Center came in to do a class on stress management, I was mortified that we had dragged them here for only three students; and this was our day student session, which usually draws more students than our evening session.
So, what gives? Perhaps this year’s students are more confident and think they need less help. We know we offer the class during a time when no first year classes are scheduled, so class conflict isn’t the culprit. I shower every day, and I’ve stopped singing in class (well, for the most part). I’ve avoided the Blue’s Clues analogies (I know the students know what I mean but, oddly, they seem embarrassed to admit it). What I am beginning to think is that we have hi-teched ourselves into obsolescence.
We tape each and every class on video and in MP3 format. We post our handouts and the MP3’s (to download) on our Campus Cruiser site. We lend out the video tapes. So why come to class when you can have class whenever you want? I mean, there may be people out there driving to school while listening to me on their MP3 players. How scary for anyone else driving in the Boston area, because I just know my classes are positively riveting.
There are probably students who have invited me into their homes (and had me up at all hours no doubt) so they could cull my exam secrets, but I don’t know who they are.
Is this an effective way to teach? More importantly, is this an effective way to learn? I don’t know, but I suppose I will find out after the grades are in since the students who did poorly will have to see me IN PERSON in the spring. Singing and all. (ezs)
Friday, November 25, 2005
Session number four of the six-week "How to Respond to Law School Exams" workshop series I host each year includes a video featuring Kent Syverud, a Vanderbilt Law Professor and Dean. (Dean Syverud has recently been named Dean of the School of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, effective Jan. 1, 2006.)
Dean Syverud explains how to handle nearly any exam question a student might encounter, including what he calls "the weird" question.
Recently, I discovered the unedited version of this video is online!
Law students in their first year or fourth, can all benefit from Dean Syverud’s advice.
Suggest to your students that instead of watching a one-hour TV program during the next few days, they consider watching/listening to Dean Syverud coach them through exams! Here is the link to the video (courtesy of the University of Michigan Law School), and supporting text. (djt)
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
In keeping with the holiday, I'll say that I am thankful for something that makes our students' lives miserable in the first year. I know that sounds sadistic, but stick with me for a minute, and I'll try to explain.
What I am thankful for is the maddeningly elusive and generally misunderstood art of "thinking like a lawyer."
First-year students become deeply frustrated by the phrase while we faculty throw it around with abandon. "Thinking like a lawyer." We'll teach them, we say, to think like lawyers; but we seldom define exactly what we mean — as if, like obscenity, they'll know it when they see it.
The problem, of course, is that they do not see it clearly at all in the first months of law school; and what they are attempting to see and eventually master is quite different from what many of them have ever seen or attempted in their lives to this point. The difficulty is compounded by popular notions of lawyers as clever tricksters who bend and twist words to mean whatever the lawyers wish them to mean. (See the Nov. 20 posting, "Looking Before One Leaps" for some insightful observations about the corrupting influence of such notions.)
So what is learning to "think like a lawyer" and why is it so hard to master? Well, let me suggest a definition that may help answer those questions: learning to think like a lawyer is learning to think with exacting precision about human relationships and human events. It's a loaded definition.
It means defining as precisely as possible where duties begin and where they end. It means determining the exact contours of rights and the precise limits of privileges. It means carefully and methodically tracing causes and effects at levels of precision lay persons seldom consider, at least in terms of human conduct.
It also means doing this type of thinking — difficult in its own right — alongside the even more difficult and foreign art of text-based reasoning. Most of our students have never been asked to interpret text with any sort of rigor or precision. Most have sat through endless high school and undergraduate "discussions" of literature that were little more than pooled ignorance. Most were never taught to analyze and interpret text with any demonstrable accuracy or precision. Most were never required to prove, using the text itself, that what they believe it says is what the author actually intended to convey. Most were taught that if to them, the central lesson of Macbeth is to avoid ambitious women, then that is what Macbeth means because, after all, that is what it meant to them.
Judges and lawyers won't put up with that nonsense. So our students must abandon their trust in their own gut reactions and lazy musings and learn to think clearly and precisely about human relationships and human events, even when those relationships and events defy clarity and precision; and they have to do it using a language riddled with vagueness and ambiguity.
Perhaps it is this demand for precision despite the unavoidable imprecision of human language and the profound complexity of even the simplest relationships that creates the impression of cleverness for cleverness' sake. Lawyers are forced to press logic to its breaking points to determine where its soundness ends, and judges are routinely forced to choose between equally compelling arguments that rest on equally compelling moral imperatives placed in tension by an accident of the human condition.
From a comfortable lay world of imprecise thinking, our students are thrust into a world where every argument is vigorously examined for flaws and missteps and where every proposition must be supported carefully and completely. They find a world where notions of justice are challenged, dissected, and pressed to reveal where they hold up and where they do not.
No wonder our students find law school so daunting. No wonder they lose confidence in their intellectual abilities for a time and even in their sense of justice and injustice.
It falls to us to combat the discouragement and cynicism that so easily overtakes them. The task falls to us because we know that despite what cynics say or bad results imply, most legal thinking is done, in the end, by most lawyers and most judges, to promote justice in human affairs. Lawyers may cynically growl that justice is not what is likely to occur in court, but precious few believe that justice does not matter or that the causes for which they themselves plead are unjust.
Truly learning to think like a lawyer is a profoundly good thing. Without those who are willing to devote themselves to the intellectually and morally hard work of defining precisely the contours of justice, the nation is left to the murky reasoning of casual thinkers or, worse, to the calculated thinking of those who have no moral bearings.
So we have a duty to help our students understand what thinking like a lawyer is and what it should be. Some, of course, will fail altogether to master it; and some will master its mechanics without seeing the moral substance in which it must be rooted.
Most, however, will learn to think like lawyers in the best sense of that phrase. Because of them, our profession will always be something more than a collection of tricksters and illusionists.
That's something to be thankful for; and here's another: we have the privilege of helping them get there. Not a bad way to spend our lives, is it? (dbw)
Monday, November 21, 2005
This is the time of year to think about all we are thankful for. I am more than thankful for the health and happiness of my family and friends. I am also thankful for the file I keep in the middle drawer of my desk.
What is in this file? Notes, printed e-mails, wedding and baby pictures -- all from students. I do get quite a few notes from the moot court board thanking me for skewering their various members (by means of judging moot court rounds -- I am known to be quite vicious!), but the personal notes and other messages from students are the ones that go into my file and stay in my heart (I get so hokey around this time of year...).
I have e-mails from students saying they passed the bar. I have Christmas cards from former students: you know, the picture kind that show their growing families. I have a few wedding pictures, one in particular from a former student who asked me to help decide on bridesmaids' dresses (her mother had died immediately before she began law school, and I like to think of myself as a full service academic support professional). They all looked so happy. I have birth announcements, and I hope to add an adoption announcement really soon.
I have personal, handwritten notes from students who came and cried to me or had me write them recommendations or asked me to call someone on their behalf. I treasure these. I can always find my file of "thank you's," but I cannot always place my hands on my last performance review.
So I guess I am, in my ASP persona, most thankful for being thanked. I am thankful that I have a job where I can possibly make a difference in someone's life. I am thankful you read my ramblings; but above all, I am thankful this semester is almost over. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!!(ezs)
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Of course, I should have brought along the digital camera to take a group photo. Kris Franklin (pictured, right) organized another wonderful NY-centered worskshop on Friday, November 18.
Academic Supporters from Maryland, Pace, NYLS, Touro, Hofstra (see Richard Neumann, at right) , Quinnipiac (see Gail Stern, at left), Roger Williams, Fordham and Cuny gathered to discuss, learn and work together.
You shoulda' been there! Suzanne Darrow-Kleinhaus and Myra Berman taught us how to use "IRAC Diagraming" to help students "...see IRAC in action." Fabulous.
Mark Padin sparked a discussion about LSAT/diversity-minority/bar-pass issues, concerns and controversies ... not the least of which was the mandatory vs. voluntary participation controversy, which led ... as you would expect ... to the stigma/backlash controversy. Mark not only offered his own comments and experiences, but distributed material documenting the disturbing fact that "minority representation among law students has dropped for the past two years, from 20.6 percent in 2001-2002 to 20.3 percent in 2003-2004" (based on ABA statistics).
[By the way, one of the articles Mark handed out was from a publication you may be unaware of: Minority Law Journal Student Edition. This particular article featured the FIU and FAMU attempts to "increase the legal profession's diversity in Florida." ed.]
Kris Franklin ran us through a drill which required us to analyze two (actual) students' exam answers, then discuss how to best help each student. For this part, I passed out four-color pens, and explained the Dan Wilson (see tribute to Dan by his Denver students) method of helping students analyze their own answers. Kris provided a typed transcript of her detailed voice recording commentary that she delivered to the student (a method which provides the opportunity to offer detailed, lengthy and – one would hope – more helpful advice to struggling students).
Note to workshop participants: consider writing a short version of your impressions of what went on during the workshop, and I'll post them here. Send them as an attachment. (djt)
Does this make you think? Like a lawyer? ...
Law students are told on every possible occasion that they must learn to think like a lawyer, and since they are eager to become lawyers and trust their teachers, they are eager to lend their mind to legal thinking. But the problem, as briefly noted here, is that they are given no instruction as to the powers and pathologies associated with legal thinking, or to the possibilities that clients may pursue. The logic seems inexorable: to be a lawyer you must think like a lawyer, to think like a lawyer you need a Legal Mind, to acquire this mind you must submit to teachers who know how to help you train for and develop this kind of mind-set. Law school provides a logic, a kind of thinking, and the mind willing to do it. But like Hippocrates, the law student, seems oblivious to how this Legal Mind might shape her character, or what might happen with the persistent use of such a mind.
Professor Elkins builds on the work of others, adding his own gloss to earlier writings warning of the dangers inherent in a legal education. He notes, for example, the words of UCLA's Professor of Law Emeritus Paul Bergman (photo below, right)...
Whether lawyers are heroes or bums, our culture often views courtroom lawyers as deviously clever tricksters. Perhaps good lawyers have the ability to master mountains of evidence and the patience to prepare for trial by endlessly culling through depositions. But the best lawyers can outsmart their adversaries, bamboozling witnesses and capturing the fancy of judges and jurors, with parlor tricks. Paul Bergman, Pranks for the Memory, 30 U. S. F. L. Rev. 1235, 1235-1236 (1996)
From time to time, we need to put our work into perspective. (djt)
Thursday, November 17, 2005
This time of year, the demands of the semester can begin to take a toll on students' emotional and physical well-being, and that toll can be especially great for first-year students.
Professor Lawrence Krieger of Florida State University College of Law has put together a great little booklet entitled "The Hidden Sources of Law School Stress,"in which he illuminates many of the hidden dynamics that create or exacerbate students' stress, and then offers practical "antidotes" to those dynamics and their effects.
Take a minute to read it. I think you'll find his insights and advice a wonderful tonic not only for your students but for yourself as well. (DBW)
Are your students confused about their professors' expectations regarding exams?
Are they tired of IRAC, or IREAC, or CREAC ... or any of the many other acronymic formulaic panaceatic magical templates for exam success?
Although it's impossible for me to believe, they may even be bored by TICRA-FLIPC!
Perhaps the Seven C’s will provide them with a better sense of how they should approach exams.
In this pithy piece, Joyce Savio Herleth, Director of Academic Support Services at Saint Louis University School of Law, helps her students (and ours, by extension) understand the basics of how to prepare for upcoming finals. (djt)
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
For those of you involved in bar exam preparation, have you ever wondered about the putative standard for passing the bar? The standard is, allegedly, “minimum competence to practice law.” As states continue to raise their “cut scores” and lower their pass rates, the meaning of “minimum competence” becomes ever more murky.
I have some data and thoughts on this, which you can find at What_is_minimum_competence? I address these ideas: Pass rates and the “cut score”; the effect of the MBE; the “disconnect” between the standard of “minimum competence to practice law” and the means used to test meeting that standard, both on the Bar Exam and in Law School; and the widening divide between law professors and bar examiners on the meaning of minimum competence to practice law, as evidenced by the declining bar passage rates.
I also think it is time to consider possible means to test the validity of the hypothesis that adherence to the “minimum competence to practice law” standard requires ever increasing cut scores and lower bar passage rates. If you are interested, take a look at my short discussion at the above-referenced link, and let me know what you think. (mwm)
Exam writing is different from first year legal writing because, while the usual 1L legal writing class teaches writing as a craft, exam writing is a skill. What does this mean? Legal writing for class is something that students have more time to work on; in addition, almost the entire exercise is about students' organizing their thoughts and choosing their words carefully. Exam writing, on the other hand, is a formulaic way for students to show their professors that they not only understand the material but can also use it.
If legal writing is a painting, exam writing is a photograph. Exam writing must be done quickly and accurately; and while it must also be done with some creativity and is worth the same 1000 words as a painting, it has to be more stark and realistic. Some of the best 1L legal writers will not do well on their exams because they cannot leave an answer in its raw form. Rather, they need to hone their thoughts and organization until the answer is perfect; and frankly, they do not have the time to do it, so their grades do not reflect their knowledge of the subject or their writing ability.
So how do we prepare students to let the raw answer be and move on to the next question? I do the math with students, trying to make the point that one fabulous answer on a four part exam is still unsatisfactory, while four reasonably complete and cogent (but imperfect) answers will suffice. I teach them the exam mantra: "the issue is...the rule is....here we have....therefore..., next." I think I hear students muttering this during exam week, or I'd like to think that's what they are saying as they pass me in the hall....
I also advise taking old exams under exam conditions (timed without notes and books) so students can figure out their ideal ratio of time to organize vs. time to write (usually about 20%/80%). I talk about organizing answers by party (good for torts, not civil procedure) or by transaction (excellent for contracts, but not for torts), etc. I give the old tennis analogy (you still need to follow through after you’ve hit the ball) as a way of reminding students to include counterarguments and defenses. I, personally, had to write the word DEFENSES at the top of every exam in law school lest I forget to include them.
After working in academic support for a while, I have concluded that a student’s performance in the first year legal writing class may not be an indicator of how well that student will perform on exams. Oddly, only about half of the students I see find this comforting. (ezs)
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
One of the effects of a mandatory enforced grading curve is a preoccupation with grades, since no longer are grades merely determinative of, perhaps, the first post-Law School job. They are determinative of whether a student obtains a law degree at all. As a result, a mandatory enforced grading curve poses a unique challenge to Academic Support faculty.
Our particular curve has two components: a mandatory range of means and mandatory distribution requirements. The first year parameters seem to students to be particularly daunting. Against a backdrop of a required 77.00 GPA for good standing, professors may set their course means between 77 and 81, but must give 20%-35% D’s, 35%-65% C’s, and 15%-25% B’s.
One of the tasks that seems to fall to Academic Support here is to explain the curve, and to correct the misapprehensions students develop about it. For example, students often assume that, because 20%-35% D's are given in each course, 20%-35% of the class must therefore be disqualified each year. However, unless the groups getting below a 77 (which is the lowest “C” grade) are strictly homogenous, the actual academic attrition will be significantly lower—often around 13%. Another assumption students make is that the curve depresses grades and disqualifies students who should otherwise not be disqualified. Professor Richard Litvin and I actually demonstrated that, for a number of years, due to declining admissions statistics, the curve actually resulted in grade inflation.
Still, these examples illustrate a significant challenge posed by the existence of a severe curve that results in a significant number of disqualifications. Students perceive Law School as something of a zero sum game—for every “win,” someone “loses” and is disqualified. Of course, mathematically, with only 10%-13% academic attrition, that is not true, but it doesn’t change the fact of the student perception. So, we need to think of creative ways to focus away from the “zero sum” concept. What I like to emphasize is that students should only focus on achieving their personal best—and not on worrying about what the other person is doing, or what the Law School curve is doing. This includes just working on what methods help each particular student to learn, building on their strengths, and shoring up their weaknesses, and advising students (over and over) to not do a postmortem on exams with colleagues, and to not discuss grades with colleagues. Neither they, nor we, can alter a mandatory curve (although we might marginally affect its shape in terms of prodding the number of low grades toward the lower range of the permitted distribution). Instead, we should refocus students’ attention away from the external that they cannot control to the internal goal of achieving their personal best, which they can control. If they know they have done their best, then we have done our best as well. (mwm)
Monday, November 14, 2005
It is time for my students in academic distress to register for spring classes. Because I am often asked for advice on these matters, I am often conflicted. Should I advise students to take classes that will be sure things or to take something new and interesting to rejuvenate their passion for law school? Should I discuss exam styles with these students: "Well, he's great, but his entire exam is multiple choice," or "I hear people have needed IV fluid during the exam, but the subject is on the bar..." -- or even worse -- "Oh definitely take it with that professor, there's no exam, just a book report; no really, I'm not kidding on that"?
Do I point students in academic distress toward the easiest path; the one that might be better for their GPAs, or the one that might be more challenging but would recapture their interest in law?
After being in Academic Support for about three and a half years now, I do have some "insider" information on the professors, exams and classes; but I still try to get students to challenge themselves. I have even administered the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator – I had to take a class to qualify to do it, so don't try this at home!) to provide some insight into students' learning styles and what classes and/or professors might be a more "natural fit" for various students' personalities.
I know that sometimes a slam-dunk kind of class can restore badly damaged self-esteem. In addition, classes that are "skills-based" can remind students about the end goal of law school: lawyering. Some students find these classes (like trial practice and negotiation) the antidote to a bad spell of more doctrinal classes. I also think that everyone should take a clinical class or do an internship; perhaps this stems from my co-op experiences in law school.
Eventually, all my advice boils down to this: take a variety of classes. Think of your course selection somewhat like using the food pyramid. Look at what you need to take and what you want to take. Mix statutory (or code) and case law classes because these are two different types of analysis you'll need for the bar. And ALWAYS take one fun class – the class where doing the work is not a chore.
And finally, it is often worth it to take the 8:00 a.m. class, especially if it is graded on a curve. Why? Because if you are the only one who shows up, you'll do better on the exam than anyone else. (ezs)
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Recently, my friend Desiree Sanchez announced that she will be stepping down as the Director of Academic Support at Florida A & M University College of Law. The school is searching for a new Director.
By January of 2006, the school hopes to hire someone, preferably with Academic Support Experience, who will be able to:
- Administer academic support programs, including the teaching assistant program, academic skills workshops, one-to-one academic assistance and counseling, and bar preparation.
- Coordinate a bar review program that focuses on Florida essays and multi-state subjects.
- Conduct skills workshops on case briefing, outlining, multiple-choice strategies and techniques, time management, and exam writing.
- Supervise and train teaching assistants for first year discussion groups and tutorial sessions.
- Meet individually with 1L students and students on probation to assist with strengthening students’ study habits and analytical skills.
Are you interested? If so, please forward a cover letter and résumé to [email protected] by the end of this month. Questions? Call her at (407) 254-3230. (djt)
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Are you sending some exam-aid sites like this to your students?
From the feedback I have been receiving from my students over the last two weeks, I know they appreciate it! (djt)
Friday, November 11, 2005
Stacy, Dave and Nathan never sleep, they have virtually limitless memories and they get smarter every day. They are whizzes when it comes to legal analysis.
Question: Stacy, Dave and Nathan are . . .
(a) Wunnelles at Harvard Law
(b) Recent graduates from Suffolk Law
(c) Old alumni from Southwestern Law
(d) Robot lawyers
Although C is a tempting answer (I say that as an SW alum who never sleeps enough, and gets smarter every day – although my memory is so poor I can't remember if I was smart yesterday), D is the "most correct" answer.
According to a November 10 story by Lesley Stones in an online journal, Business Day, robotic lawyers are joining law firms.
A lawyer who has ordered several claims, “Although their duties would be limited and very much controlled at first, we consider them an important strategic investment for the future." Doesn't that sound like he's describing a first-year associate?
According to experts at the University of Texas, " ... artificial intelligence technology will let computers autonomously reason with the law to draw legal conclusions."
That made me wonder about my job security. Big time. Remember (those of you old enough) how we had to learn "times tables" and long division? Remember learning how to find square roots? Then calculators came along. Then computers. Suddenly, not only do people no longer need to learn long division ... they don't even need to learn to spell! So why in the world will we need to teach law students how to "reason with the law to draw legal conclusions" if robotic personnel can do the job (presumably) better, faster, cheaper?
Consider signing up for evening computer classes. (djt)
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Learning and the Internet: A New Study of Teen Blogging May Have Lessons for Academic Support Professionals
The Associate Director of our law library at UMKC, Lawrence MacLachlan, just passed along a link to a study by the PEW Internet & American Life Project that may be of interest to academic support professionals. The study, "Teen Content Creators and Consumers," describes teenagers' use of Internet blogs, both as readers and creators. The subjects of the study are in an age group that will be arriving in law schools within the next five years or so, and it might be worth our time to consider how the use of blogs may drive students' collaborative learning and even professors' teaching of law courses.
It is a fairly short read and well worth the time to see what is happening among our future students and very probably among many of our current students. (DBW)
Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Assistant Director of Academic Development Position
Touro Law Center invites applicants for the position of Assistant Director of Academic Development to begin August 1, 2006. This 10-month renewable contract position presents an excellent opportunity for someone who wants to become a member of an engaged and dynamic law school community.
The successful candidate will assist the Director of Academic Development in all aspects of Touro's Academic Development programs, including: training and supervising teaching assistants; working with students on an individual basis; conducting skills training workshops; developing appropriate student work materials; coordinating bar-preparation programs; and implementing new services relevant to enhancing our law students' academic experience. This position reports to the Director of Academic Development.
Applicants must possess a J.D. degree with a record of high academic achievement from an ABA-accredited law school. The ideal candidate should possess excellent writing, speaking, and organizational skills as well as a commitment to academic support. Prior academic support experience (either professional or as part of a graduate or law school program) or teaching experience (legal writing or comparable teaching experience in writing and analytical skills training) is preferred. Evening and some weekend work is required.
Salary is $54,000 and includes benefits. Research stipends will also be available for articles to be written that are relevant to academic development. Please submit a letter of interest and resume by November 30, 2005 to:
Professor Suzanne Darrow-Kleinhaus
Director of Academic Development
Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center
300 Nassau Road
Huntington, New York 11743
(No phone calls please.)
Email inquires may be directed to [email protected].
Tuesday, November 8, 2005
This is the time of year when I get a lot of referrals for help with first-year legal writing assignments. These students have turned in two to three papers already, and their legal writing professors think they need some help beyond the grading process. I am happy to help, but I wonder if I am doing these students a disservice at times. What if my style of writing and “rules of citation” are different from their professors'? And my understanding of the law—since each legal writing professor has a different issue in a different jurisdiction—may be quite limited.
Frankly, I feel like an idiot if all my advice boils down to “Well, we’ve made a list of questions for your legal writing professor. Let’s check with him and then get back to this paper when we have some answers….”
I do have a copy of each professor’s assignment and a “confidential” outline that incorporates the case law, but I have not been to class, and the assignments inevitably evolve over time. Often I hear, “Oh, we’re not supposed to cover that anymore,” or “She said we don’t need to cite that way.” Because I am not grading the paper, I always say to do it the professor's way rather than mine.
I am in a situation where I basically must trust the students to be honest with me, and sometimes I find that I have been duped. And to what end? It is a lot like fabricating things to tell your therapist. Why would you tell me that your writing professor is okay with something when it is not true?
Granted, there are students who truly believe what they are telling me, and my cautious “That doesn’t sound right” will prompt them to double check. But often there are students who take advantage of my secondary position and tell me things that are not accurate. It makes me feel like Grandma. You know how it is: “Mommy always lets me eat candy for breakfast, and Daddy lets me use his chain saw all by myself.” Gee, that doesn’t sound right, but who am I to argue?
It gets frustrating after a while. I have had students come back to me angry (really, really angry!) after my advice turned out to be incorrect in the context of a particular professor's particular assignment. I have also had writing professors gently chide me for not catching things, when in fact I did catch them and did point them out to the student as suspicious only to be told by the student that they were allowed.
So where does all this leave me? On the way home to make some chicken soup. (ezs) | <urn:uuid:f517e556-7f7c-40fc-83b4-75f3b5332b92> | {
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The US Department of Education hopes to bring teachers, gaming studios, researchers and students together in an effort to find ways to increase educational opportunities. As students rack up even more hours playing video games, the education community wants to find more innovative and proactive methods to teach students.
"If you look at the life of a student a lot of [them] play an average of about 10,000 hours of video games by the time they are graduating high school," said Erik Martin, head of the Department of Education's Games for Learning program, while speaking to Polygon. "That is almost the same amount of time they are spending in schools. You can imagine a lot of the time which of the two activities they might feel more engaged in or more relevant."
Understanding that students are playing games, whether mobile, PC or console gaming, it's something that educators can depend on.
"If you can take that experience of getting outside of school and make it feel just as relevant and just as compelling when they're in school learning stuff and doing stuff and doing something that's interesting and educational, that's the bridging we want to provide." | <urn:uuid:e7839c88-2f9f-4c9b-935f-d760452dc066> | {
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By J. Edwin Orr
NATAL, the Province in which Durban is situated, lies about the 30th degree of south latitude: that is to say, about the same latitude south as South Australia, and equivalent in the northern hemisphere to the position of Egypt. It has the same longitude east as Leningrad. The climate is sub-tropical: for example, we visited Natal in the middle of winter, July, and found it warmer than the English month of May. The population of Natal comprises a million and a half natives; 200,000 Europeans; 200,000 Asiatics and coloured.
On Christmas Day, 1497, three Portuguese ships sighted the coast of Natal, the name being given by the commander, Vasco da Gama. It became a stopping place on the route to India. About the beginning of the last century Natal was populated by about a million Kaffirs of Bantu race, divided into ninety-four tribes. The rise of Chaka, the bloodthirsty Zulu conqueror, brought about the desolation of Natal and surroundings, multitudes being put to the sword by the 100,000 Zulu warriors under his command. In 1824 a small party of Englishmen was welcomed to Natal by the great Zulu king: many natives fled to them for protection. Chaka was murdered by his brothers, and as he was stabbed to death by them, he prophesied "You think you will rule this land when I am gone; but I see the white man coming, and he will be your master." Dingaan assumed leadership. Captain Allen Gardiner arrived at Durban in 1835: and a year later, the Boers entered Natal. Dingaan massacred some of them: then the Dutchmen took revenge on 26th December, when Pretorius and 460 farmers crushed the tyrant. A year later the Republic of Natalia was proclaimed, becoming the British colony of Natal in 1844. It is I now considered the most British of the four provinces. I In 1879, the Zulu War broke out, Cetewayo being crushed after much bloodshed. Fire and sword came to Natal again during the Boer War at the beginning of this century.
Durban is now a city of quarter of a million, one third of whom are of European descent, one third Indian and coloured, one third native. The port is a busy, prosperous place: and the city is beautifully situated. Looking down upon the harbour, from above Glenwood, reminds one strongly of Wellington, New Zealand. Rickshaws are very well known throughout the world as a feature of Durban life. Almost every picture of Durban shows a rickshaw, so the outsider would think.
On Sunday evening, the 26th July, 1936, I arrived back in Durban from the north. I greatly regretted to hear that the Rev. Thomas Chapman, an indefatigable organiser of the campaign, had been called away south on account of serious family illness. Mr. Victor Clark was deputy as secretary, and his wife made me welcome at their home.
The Durban campaign had been organised by a committee of ministers and leaders of the various denominations. All were of the opinion that the city needed revival sorely indeed: but during my first short visit I felt that not all of the leaders were whole- heartedly behind me-I excused them in my own mind because of their obvious ignorance of what I preached.
The first meetings were held in the afternoon, and made a good start. The big, general meeting over- I crowded the Central Baptist Church, and on that very I first occasion, a real expectancy of revival was created. The meeting lasted for two and a half hours. Nevertheless, in my own heart there was not much hope of blessing - I felt dry and mechanical.
But it so happened that I was sitting at the piano next morning when memory suggested the beautiful chorus learned in Auckland when revival began there:
Calvary covers it all -
My life, with its guilt and shame:
My sin and despair,
Jesus took on Him there:
And Calvary covers it all
I felt that I could not go on playing, so I slipped away to the secret place. "Calvary covers it all" - the wonder of it dawned on my soul. I am not ashamed to say that I wept and prayed for about an hour-over my own hardness, subtle backsliding, in the face of the need of souls. Thank God for revival then.
On Tuesday morning, I had the privilege of addressing the ministers at their fraternal. I felt that this was a key meeting, and so, after I had spoken about revival generally, I dealt with the necessity of revival in the heart of the minister of the Lord. It was refreshing to see that the Word was gripping hearts, prejudices were being discarded, heart-searching was going on.
Then we got to prayer: deep confessions of the faults that hindered blessing were made: fervent prayer ascended: and truly there was revival among us. I heard only two prayers which were not in the Spirit. All the others were real prayers. Several ministers came along afterwards and told me of reconciliations, private apologies, restitution of things spiritual, and hope of revival.
And so the atmosphere was prepared for the revival to spread to the people. In the afternoon, after speaking to Christians, I asked those who wished to make decision to confess publicly. Several sinners decided. In the evening, an even greater crowd came to hear the message, overflowing into anterooms. The message was meant to follow up the previous subject, "Why cannot we have revival in Durban?" The Christians were reminded that on the previous evening they had stood up one after another to declare, "If God shows me anything in my life which hinders revival, by His grace I will confess to Him and forsake the sin." The hindrances to revival were pointed out, and a tense atmosphere resulted. When we finally got to prayer, several men and women stood up and brokenly asked for prayer for deliverance from their sins. The meeting continued in such strain until some eighty Christians had thus got right with God. Then there was a general turning to the Lord for forgiveness, prayers ascending, faces being wet with tears. In the midst of this prayer meeting, scores of sinners repented of their sin and accepted Christ as Saviour.
Again there were decisions in the afternoon service. On Wednesday evening a thousand people gathered together in the Central Baptist Church, some standing in the hallway and vestibules, some in the Sunday School hall listening to the amplifier, others standing outside the church windows under the canopy of heaven. In the middle of this meeting-again for Christians - one young man after another stood up before the great crowd and said, "I am willing for God's service anywhere" - "I now surrender my whole life to God," and these fifty splendid types of young manhood were followed by as many girls declaring much the same. All remained standing while prayer was offered to God.
Again strange things happened during that prayer - over fifty sinners accepted Christ as Saviour, and most were dealt with in the enquiry room and by decision card. Several people listening outside the church accepted Christ as Saviour, following the appeal through the opened windows. Till a late hour we were dealing with souls.
The meeting on Thursday night was likewise for believers. Some five hundred sought God's great blessing-the filling of the Holy Ghost. The blessing falling upon the Christians was accompanied by the Spirit in conviction falling upon the unsaved: and again scores accepted Christ as Saviour.
On Friday night, again the message was for Christians, the subject being "Soul-winning." I rebuked the people strongly for their lack of passion for the salvation of their lost friends, relatives, neighbours, workmates and schoolmates. Many tearful scenes were witnessed as, for example, a mother with a broken voice asked for prayer for her only son: daughters asked prayer for fathers and mothers: requests for prayer came from allover the building, from people in all stages of life. And again, while prayer ascended to God for lost souls' salvation, scores of sinners in the meeting signified their decision for Christ.
The young men and women who had surrendered to God on Wednesday night came together specially on Saturday night to discuss "What we can do to turn Durban upside down." It was a most informal gathering. It was decided to meet monthly as a Revival Fellowship. The meeting voted that all ministers and leaders be informed that those attending the fellowship would promise regular attendance at the Sunday services of their respective assemblies and all other loyalties. A small group was appointed to arrange open-air work: a choirmaster volunteered to gather together all the musical talent: tract distribution was suggested: visiting of hospitals: wayside Sunday Schools: cottage meetings: prayer union letters: personal work: and a course in Bible study was arranged for. A couple of Indians spoke of the need among their folks: it was decided likewise to support by prayer the efforts going on among the coloured and native peoples. A feeling of enthusiasm and goodwill abounded. And at the end of the service, during prayer, a score of sinners professed to accept Christ as Saviour. Some 45 people attended this meeting, ninety per cent being under thirty. : The most remarkable feature of these five weeknight services for Christians was that hundreds professed to accept Christ as Saviour - a proportion of one in four of the total attendance. This proves undoubtedly what one has always preached-that when revival stirs the hearts of Christians, sinners turn to the Lord.
Here, for instance, is a letter received from and signed by seven nurses in a local hospital: "Our hospital has been represented every day at your meetings, and we do praise God for the great and mighty blessings received, and for revival begun. So far as we know, five of the nurses have already decided for the Lord." Several ministers told me of their children making decision for Christ.
On Sunday, the time was given to the evangelistic message. Two thousand people gathered on Sunday afternoon in the City Hall, and a gratifying number signified decision for Christ. Over two thousand, it was estimated, attended the evening service in the large Princess Theatre, and one was told that folks began to gather two hours before the service. In this final address, it was made patent that the centre of the message was the Crucified Christ. About two hundred people professed to accept Christ as Saviour at the end of this address, many of them being people untouched by the churches.
I felt physically tired after the campaign: but my heart rejoiced to know that revival had begun in Durban.
Over three hundred all together signified publicly their decision to accept Christ. Half of these were dealt with in the enquiry rooms: but in some cases there was no scope for such dealing with souls. Over six hundred decision cards were taken.
The unity of the Christians continued right to the end, a score of ministers taking part in the farewell meeting. It is not too much to say that God had answered prayer by giving revival-the last chairman described it as unprecedented. Durban has not got a reputation for successful Christian work, but the revival which began in July, 1936, is going to continue.
One bright morning in Durban, who should roll up in a rickshaw but Dr. Howard Guinness, our old friend from the Inter-Varsity Fellowship. It was his first experience of a rickshaw, and it was mine likewise. We enjoyed the experience, and took a moving picture of each other. The Zulu rickshaw puller acted like a Hollywood star. Then Dr. Guinness and I had a long yarn. His work in South Africa, among South African students, has been well spoken of by leaders everywhere.
In the meantime, contradictory reports reached me from Sherriff down at Capetown. He sent me a telegram: "Car procured. Send #5 to Port Elizabeth for petrol." A letter from Mr. Shearing stated that Sherriff had procured a Ford. So I was left with the uncertainty of wondering "Is it a car, or is it a Ford?" After many vicissitudes of travel through magnificent scenery and over terrible roads, A.I. arrived at midnight covered with dust. He sang the praises of the Ford until the early hours of the morning, telling me that he motored up Long Kloof in top gear-from the way he talked about it, Long Kloof is either a mountain slope or the side of a house. At any rate, I was glad to see his cheerful face again, despite his fantastic notions about a Ford being a car. | <urn:uuid:11264f0b-316e-4729-90ea-66ff2cc08e29> | {
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From America's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement to extreme weather trends, Mother Nature took a toll in 2017.
But in case you missed it the first time around, here are five environmental issues that stormed American consciousness in the past year.
#1: The United States withdraws from the Paris Agreement
In June, President Trump reversed years of domestic environmental policy when he announced during a press conference that the U.S. would no longer participate in the 2015 Paris Agreement, an international framework that united nearly 200 countries in the global fight against climate change.
Among the reasons for initiating the withdrawal, the 45th commander-in-chief cited American workers, saying that the pact unfairly advantaged foreign countries.
"At what point does America get demeaned? At what point do they start laughing at us as a country?"
Though the State Department officially has since notified the United Nations of the country's withdrawal, the end is far from near. Because former President Obama already signed the international agreement, the U.S. is subjected to certain terms of the deal, meaning that the earliest any country could withdraw from the accord is November 4, 2020.
#2: Extreme weather
From Houston to Puerto Rico, 2017 marked a year of fierce hurricanes across the country. And while the storms have passed, local communities are still expected to grapple with their effects long after the New Year.
"In the U.S. alone, it's been estimated almost half a trillion dollars worth of property damage alone," said Dr. Paul Salaman, CEO of Rainforest Trust. "Millions of American families have been impacted, hundreds of lives have been lost."
Some weather experts, in fact, believe that Hurricane Harvey could be the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, coming in at more than $190 billion. That prediction surpasses deadly Hurricane Katrina, which is estimated to have cost $160 billion, according to the Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction.
And besides bearing unprecedented economic consequences, the human toll continues to be widespread as well, especially in Puerto Rico. Before Hurricane Maria ransacked the U.S. jurisdiction in September, Puerto Rico was already struggling from a failing economy and dilapidated infrastructure. Officials recently warned that the island may not have its power fully restored until May 2018, leaving many of its most vulnerable residents -- such as the elderly and sick -- forced to improvise without electricity for months on end.
But hurricanes weren't the only examples of extreme weather this year. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2017 is set to be among the three hottest years on record. Salaman said that's particularly alarming, since 2017 didn't have an "El Nino" episode.
"In 2015 and 2016, we were in the midst of an El Nino episode and that in itself threw the climate out a bit, but this past year has been what would be classified as a normal year and, yet, we've seen even more horrendous weather impacts in the U.S. and across the world."
Wildfires ripped across northern and southern California in 2017.
"At the moment, we're in the midst of the largest forest fire in California's history, ongoing at the moment, devastating many communities," Salaman said.
Salaman is referring to the Thomas Fire that ignited in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. Firefighters have gained nearly total containment of California's largest-ever fire, and evacuation orders have since been lifted.
Now, communities must deal with the massive destruction left behind. The wildfire, according to CNBC, charred at least 273,400 acres. That's more than 427 square miles, and slightly more than the previous record of 273,246 acres charred in the 2003 Cedar blaze in San Diego. The flames were indiscriminate, burning mobile homes and middle-class neighborhoods as well as multimillion-dollar estates.
The Thomas Fire is the second wildfire to rock California in recent months. In October, blazes in and around Napa Valley -- known for its wine vineyards -- caused at least $1 billion in damage to insured property, destroying nearly 6,000 homes and businesses. But that's not all: air quality suffered too, leading to some of the worst air pollution ever recorded in the area.
#4: Wildlife protections
The world's largest land mammal stormed headlines in November after the Fish and Wildlife Service lifted an Obama-era ban on importing elephant trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia.
Vehement opposition almost immediately followed. Congressional leaders and conservationists say poaching harms the declining elephant population, and also helps fund terrorist organizations abroad. But backers of the ban's lifting argue the opposite, saying that trophy hunting and expensive safari fees generate income that goes back to the communities that live near the animals, creating an incentive for them to protect the wildlife.
One day after the announcement, Trump said he would delay the lifting of the ban until all the facts were reviewed.
Put big game trophy decision on hold until such time as I review all conservation facts. Under study for years. Will update soon with Secretary Zinke. Thank you!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 18, 2017
#5: Scaling back national monuments
Upon entering the Oval Office, Trump signed an executive order directing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review 27 national monuments that were created under the Antiquities Act, which gives the president authority to safeguard federal lands and waters under threat.
In a follow-up September report, Zinke recommended that Trump modify nearly a dozen national monuments in places like Utah, Nevada and Maine. That process officially began in early December when Trump scaled back two monuments in Utah, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, by some two million acres.
"And that is why I’m here today: Because some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington," Trump said during a speech in Utah. "And guess what? They’re wrong."
The decision to scale back the monuments riled up local community leaders, as well as environmentalists, who argue that the sacred land must be protected from oil and gas extraction, as well as other commercial activities.
Following the announcement, outdoor retail company Patagonia, as well as Native American tribes vowed to take legal action, meaning the issue could be revisited in 2018.
Check out Circa's full coverage of these environmental events:trel
Companies from Tesla to Disney pledge their allegiance to Mother Earth, not the government
Maria wiped out 80% of Puerto Rico’s crops. This farmer is keeping things in perspective.
These before and after photos of the California wildfires show extreme devastation | <urn:uuid:4e18741f-4efe-41e0-ae78-ccadaf775ac0> | {
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Schiff Shares Family Stories in History of Poland’s Jews
In 2007, it was Spain. In 2008, Germany. Most recently, he traveled throughout France (2010) and England (2012).
But his 2009 trip to Poland with his grown daughter sparked not only the expected hour-long lecture, but also a 286-page book, In Search of Polin: Chasing Jewish Ghosts in Today’s Poland. Published in November by Peter Lang Publishing, it is the inaugural book in a new series called Washington College Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture.
The story of Europe’s Jews has always been a compelling topic for Schiff, who teaches Jewish and Middle Eastern history at the College and serves as cantor and religious leader for Chestertown’s Jewish community. He grew up in a Jewish home, was educated in Jewish schools, earned his undergraduate degree from Yeshiva University, and served as president of Philadelphia’s Gratz College before moving to the Chestertown area in 1997.
But the trip to Poland was especially significant for Schiff. As he notes: “It is difficult, if not impossible to exaggerate the importance of Poland in Jewish history.” Up until the early 1900s, Poland was for centuries home to the largest Jewish population in the world. Three million of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust were Polish Jews, while many other Jews also were murdered in its death camps or ghettos, having been transported there by the Nazis from their homes all over Europe. “For many Jews, … Poland looms as one big Jewish graveyard, a place of bad memories, a place to be forgotten, a place never to be visited,” he writes.
But Poland also was where Schiff’s own family tree had deep roots. His father’s ancestors were among the first families to settle in the rural town of Ostrow-Mazowiecka (or Ostroveh in Yiddish) in the 1760s. “I had heard many stories about the homeland from my grandmother’s family, the Feinzeigs,” he says. “But it was hard to imagine these stories were from real places.”
During his travels Schiff was able to visit synagogues and cemeteries, interview local Poles who had known Jews and who had witnessed their destruction during the Holocaust, and examine public records to confirm many of the tales he had heard as a child. It helped his research immensely that, among all the towns of Poland, Ostroveh had preserved the most complete records of its Jewish population. Along with his grandparents’ 1910 marriage certificate, he found evidence of the expulsion of Ostroveh’s 7,000 Jews by the town’s German occupiers in September 1939. He also heard how some 500 stragglers were later executed en masse in the woods outside of town, a site now marked by a monument in their memory.
Schiff mixes the intimate stories from Ostroveh with broader historical research to paint a portrait of the thriving Jewish communities that had contributed to Polish life for centuries, and the horrors of their eradication.
He began his trip to Poland with great trepidation, fearing the raw emotion it might unleash. “At every step I found myself having to re-balance my scholarly, historical objectivity with my personal and emotional involvement, not always an easy task,” he writes. But by following the physical traces of his own ancestors and millions of other Jews, Schiff has created a valuable addition to the historical record.
“By combining the academic discipline of history with an intimate family story and my illustrated travel experiences, I hoped to give the reader a more nuanced understanding and appreciation of the thousand-year history of this once-great Jewish community. I’m so glad that I confronted my own anxieties and witnessed for myself some of the triumphs and tragedies of the Jewish people there.”
The Washington College Studies book series that published In Search of Polin is a project of the College’s Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture and its director, assistant professor of political science Joseph Prud’homme, who serves as general editor. | <urn:uuid:efe1479a-1a4a-418f-b36a-b61be325ff11> | {
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In our looks-obsessed society, lots of people think that being overweight is an appearance issue. But being overweight is actually a medical concern because it can seriously affect a person's health.
The health problems that stem from being overweight go way beyond the ones we usually hear about, like diabetes and heart disease. Being overweight can also affect a person's joints, breathing, sleep, mood, and energy levels. So being overweight can impact a person's entire quality of life.
When people eat more calories than they burn off, their bodies store the extra calories as fat.
A couple of pounds of extra body fat are not a health risk for most people. But when people keep up a pattern of eating more calories than they burn, more and more fat builds up in their bodies.
Eventually, the body gets to a point where the amount of body fat can have a negative effect on a person's health. Doctors use the terms "overweight" or "obese" to describe when someone is at greatest risk of developing weight-related health problems.
As you've probably heard, more people are overweight today than ever before. Experts are calling this an "obesity epidemic." This health problem affects young people as well as adults — one third of all kids between the ages of 2 and 19 are overweight or obese. So younger people are now developing health problems that used to affect only adults, like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes.
Obesity tends to run in families. Some people have a genetic tendency to gain weight more easily than others because they burn calories more slowly. During times when food was scarce, this was a real advantage. But now that food is available 24/7 in most industrialized countries, an efficient metabolism that once ensured our survival now works to our disadvantage.
Although genes strongly influence body type and size, the environment also plays a role. People today may be gaining weight because of unhealthy food choices (like fast food) and family habits (like eating in front of the television instead of around a table). High-calorie, low-nutrient snacks and beverages, bigger portions of food, and less-active lifestyles are all contributing to the obesity epidemic.
Sometimes people turn to food for emotional reasons, such as when they feel upset, anxious, sad, stressed out, or even bored. When this happens, they often eat more than they need.
Figuring out if a teen is overweight can be more complicated than it is for adults. That's because teens are still growing and developing.
Doctors and other health care professionals often use a measurement called body mass index (BMI) to determine if someone is overweight.
After calculating BMI, a doctor will plot the result on a BMI growth chart. A BMI at or above the "95th percentile" line on the chart is considered in the obese range. A BMI number that is equal to or greater than the 85th percentile line but less than the 95th is considered overweight.
Obesity is bad news for both body and mind. Not only can it make someone feel tired and uncomfortable, carrying extra weight puts added stress on the body, especially the bones and joints of the legs. As they get older, kids and teens who are overweight are more likely to develop diabetes and heart disease.
The health problems that affect overweight teens include:
Blount disease. Excess weight on growing bones can lead to this bone deformity of the lower legs.
Arthritis. Wear and tear on the joints from carrying extra weight can cause this painful joint problem at a young age.
Slipped capital femoral epiphyses (SCFE). Obese children and teens are at greater risk for this painful hip problem. SCFE requires immediate attention and surgery to prevent further damage to the joint.
Asthma. Obesity is associated with breathing problems that can make it harder to keep up with friends, play sports, or just walk from class to class.
Sleep apnea. This condition (where a person temporarily stops breathing during sleep) is a serious problem for many overweight kids and adults. Not only does it interrupt sleep, sleep apnea can leave people feeling tired and affect their ability to concentrate and learn. It also may lead to heart problems.
High blood pressure. When blood pressure is high, the heart must pump harder and the arteries must carry blood that's moving under greater pressure. If the problem continues for a long time, the heart and arteries may no longer work as well as they should. High blood pressure, or hypertension, is more common in overweight or obese teens.
High cholesterol. Long before getting sick, obese teens may have abnormal blood lipid levels, including high cholesterol, low HDL ("good") cholesterol, and high triglyceride levels. These increase the risk of heart attack and stroke when a person gets older.
Gallstones. An accumulation of bile that hardens in the gallbladder forms gallstones. These may be painful and require surgery.
Fatty liver. When fat accumulates in the liver, it can cause inflammation, scarring, and permanent liver damage.
Pseudotumor cerebri. This is a rare cause of severe headaches in obese teens and adults. There is no tumor, but pressure builds in the brain. In addition to headaches, symptoms may include vomiting, unsteady walking, and vision problems that might become permanent if not treated.
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Girls who are overweight may miss periods — or not get their periods at all — and might have elevated testosterone (the male hormone) levels in the blood. Although it's normal for girls to have some testosterone in their blood, too much can interfere with normal and can cause excess hair growth, worsening acne, and male-type baldness. PCOS is associated with insulin resistance, a precursor to developing type 2 diabetes. Overweight women also might have fertility problems.
Insulin resistance and diabetes. When there is excess body fat, insulin is less effective at getting glucose, the body's main source of energy, into cells. More insulin becomes needed to maintain a normal blood sugar. For some overweight teens, insulin resistance may progress to diabetes (high blood sugar).
Depression. People who are obese are more likely to be depressed and have lower self-esteem.
Luckily, it's never too late to make changes that can effectively control weight and the health problems it causes. Those changes don't have to be big. For a start, make a plan to cut back on sugary beverages, pass up on seconds, and get more exercise, even if it's just 5-10 minutes a day. Build your way up to big changes by making a series of small ones. And don't be afraid to ask for help! | <urn:uuid:1d066675-e99c-4396-8fb2-8f6af048de77> | {
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Providing students with a variety of effective technologies is important at Western Christian Schools. Over the past several years WCS has identified computer technology as a priority for our students and staff.
We partner with Beyond Technology Education, our curriculum provider, using Microsoft Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2010. Using a spiraling scope and sequence based curriculum, students in all grades will learn the following skills:
- Word Processing (Word)
- Database (Excel)
- Spreadsheets (Excel)
- Graphics (Pictures and Clip Art)
- Multimedia (PowerPoint)
- Desktop Publishing (Word, Publisher)
- Operating System (Windows)
- Basic Hardware Skills
- Internet (Internet Explorer)
Your student will be learning skills they will use throughout their lifetime by:
- Practicing Internet safety and etiquette
- Applying computer knowledge to real life situations
- Performing effective research and synthesis using the web
- Becoming conversant in computer “vocabulary”
- Developing skills in navigating the menu and tool bars of various software applications
Technology plays a key role in communication today. Developing excellent communicators is one of Western’s primary educational goals. At Western, we strive to equip our students with the most up-to-date equipment and training available.
iPad Learning Labs – Imagine the Possibilities
Due to the success of our 2011 Auction, Western Christian Schools was able to purchase iPad Learning labs available at both our Claremont and Upland Campuses. The iPad learning lab is a portable system that contains and controls 30 iPad 2 units. We believe that this is the first step in a tremendous initiative for the school to further the integration of technology into the classroom and expand upon the learning capabilities of our students. We are passionate about bringing this cutting edge technology to our students.
The iPad both stimulates the interest of students as well as revolutionizes the way our students learn. With an iPad, while reading a book and encountering a new word, the book defines the word for students so that they can truly understand the story and learn how better to write their own. Social Science curriculum takes students back in time to see history first hand with the integration of video content. Students are able to take virtual tours around the world to immerse themselves in the study of a foreign language and culture. The exploration of science reaches new depths as students have tools to interactively investigate the building blocks of all God’s creation. With the iPad, the world of the arts becomes a never-ending playground where limits of accessibility no longer exist.
Elementary and Middle School Library
At Western Christian School, students can cultivate a love for reading from the more than 5800 books in the library. The diverse collection includes both Christian and secular works representing various genres that students can use to develop their imagination, conduct research or write book reports. In addition, class library time features read-aloud stories each week. | <urn:uuid:7335b3d7-c819-424a-a397-a6c888a34296> | {
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Walkthrough 3D model of #gardendesign near #Petersfield created by #Ben of Graduate Landscapes. Extensive paved and graveled terrace with modern steel and oak pergolas, water sculpture and…
Choosing the right plant in the right place reduces the need for irrigation water, fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, and work. Native plants or indigenous species cultivars benefit the local ecosystem in a myriad of ways, including supporting insects, the main source of food for birds. breeders and other native species. In addition, they attract native pollinators, including birds, bats, butterflies, bees and moths, and provide food, shelter and habitat of choice for wildlife. Native plants also enhance the beauty of all types of gardens – from the formal model to the informal design and give a sense of place and regional history.
Moving from the horizontal plane to the vertical plane, the vertical plane is built with the introduction of the border of each side of the path, then with the ferns with the vines and the brick. The walls finish our line of sight and direct our vision towards the terminus in the path and the change in land use to come. Vertical planes in the landscape do not need to be continuous to define the space. For example, a tree-lined driveway, which can be used to define both a pedestrian corridor and a vehicle corridor, is not a problem. solid wall. The viewer mentally fills the whites of the aisle to create the feeling of entering a tunnel.
The rhythm is the repetition of elements of design. Repetition helps to attract the eye through design. The rhythm occurs when the elements appear in a defined direction and in regular measurements. Both color and shape can be used to express the rhythm (Figure 19 - 7). Accent is the inclusion of an element that stands out in an orderly design. For example, the silvery leaves are scattered on a background of dark green conifers (Figure 19 - 8). Without accent, a design can be static or dull. An accent may be a garden accessory, a plant specimen, a plant composition, or a water element. Rocks are often used as accents, but they can be overused.
On a Square One font, these types of structures would be categorized as detached structures, and this is a category in which you can also customize your coverage limit. Finally, as mentioned above, there are still limits to the types of risks covered, so be sure to read the terms of your policy and discuss your coverage with your home insurance provider. Feel free to contact Square One at 1.855.331.6933 if you have further questions. Get a home insurance quote online and see how much money you can save by spending time at Square One. Or call 1.855.331.6933 for a quote. In any case, it only takes 15 minutes to get a personalized quote.
I can see that doing this canhelp you find the best design that would add more to your home and avoid spending your money. It makes sense that contacting a professional about this can help you find the best materials to do the right job. Good explanation. Gardens can easily grow, giving the impression of being crowded and unattractive. I love the information you share on blog.Je can not say how many times my company receives a call to go out and take a tree and / or shrub because it is too large garden. Simple planning and knowledge about the type of species you plant goes a long way. good reading Now it's spring, you do not see me much at home - we have a short growing season and a large area, so I'm interested in big beds, etc.
Make your sound easier than HGTV shows! You need so much to come to my house because I'm so bad with plants. This would make a picture before and after spectacular! For once - someone who does not ring so much easy and fast. We did a little gardening job over the last two weekends. It took about 8 hours to replace a tree and move 3 bushes from the front to the back of the house. Stupid landscaper for the developer put in a tree that has no business planted in the south, and the bushes were not only too big for the area where they were planted But two of them were directly in front of the sprinkler heads so the sprinklerâ € ™ they are themselves ineffective. It pays to do your research, develop a plan, and then check the different variables to see if that plan will actually work.
The resources provided by a highly qualified and experienced team of qualified expatriates and agronomists and locals make Tropical LanInternational Dscaping Choosing the Best Landscaping Projects TLI Signs Landscaping Contract with Champarama, Nha Trang, Vietnam Tropical Landscaping International has begun landscaping work for the exclusive Champarama Resort project in Nha Trang, Vietnam. , this resort north of Nha Trang with outstanding rooflines is expected to be completed by the end of 2017.
We often think of landscaping and planting as synonyms. But landscaping also includes the integration of several important elements of the hardscape landscape, such as walls, patios, outdoor lighting, promenades and bridges. which are an integral part of a design. Although most people rate the success of landscape development in terms of the selection and condition of plant materials, most well-designed landscapes contain a Balance of construction andthe equipment. The carefully designed and executed paved surfaces, fences, walls, airframes and curb materials are attractive, and they can reduce routine maintenance .
When you sell a house – first home, secondary residence, rental property – you pay the capital gains tax on the difference between the sale price and your adjusted base. The base is the original purchase price, which you adjust for the improvements you have made to the property over the years. If you’re installing new plumbing, remodeling the kitchen or paying for some important landscaping work, it’s an adjustment.
A whimsical little statement goes much further than 10. Yard projects tend to produce a good amount of waste, which most people do not realize when they start work. Instead of throwing branches, clippings and other debris, dispose of them in an environmentally friendly manner. Rent a shredder and turn it into mulch, and put the lawn back on the lawn – they are both good fertilizers. Another idea is to create a pile of compost. Compost containers have become more attractive. Some disappear almost in the landscape. Incorrect placement of plants is another common mistake. People often do not consider sunlight and exposure for their plants. | <urn:uuid:ce994f07-36a5-4c73-b722-6f883df65dfb> | {
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Article 52. Principle of Homonymy.
52.1. Statement of the Principle of Homonymy. When two or more taxa are distinguished from each other they must not be denoted by the same name.
52.2. Operation of the Principle of Homonymy. When two or more names are homonyms, only the senior, as determined by the Principle of Priority (see Article 52.3), may be used as a valid name; for exceptions see Articles 23.2 and 23.9 (unused senior homonyms) and Article 59 (secondary homonyms in the species group).
52.3. Principle of Priority applies. The relative precedence of homonyms (including primary and secondary homonyms in the case of species-group names) is determined by applying the relevant provisions of the Principles of Priority and the First Reviser [Arts. 23, 24].
52.6. Incorrect and corrected original spellings. The corrected spelling of an incorrect original spelling may enter homonymy but an incorrect original spelling cannot [Art. 32.4]. | <urn:uuid:f50d9d6f-6cb0-4494-a2b5-4548beef6567> | {
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Agreement with Indefinite Pronouns
The following pronouns do not refer to specific people. They are indefinite.
Remember to use singular personal pronouns when referring to any of these words, as in the following example sentences.
Someone dropped his/her wallet in the cafeteria.
Everybody has his/her share of problems.
Anyone can succeed if he/she tries hard.
Note: In informal spoken English, plural personal pronouns are commonly used to refer to indefinite pronouns, as in these examples.
Someone dropped their wallet in the cafeteria.
Everybody has their share of problems.
Anyone can succeed if they try hard.
Some indefinite pronouns, such as both, few, many, others, and several, are considered to be plural. Study the following examples.
Both of them are here.
Few were at the meeting.
Although the weather was bad, many attended the performance.
Some people enjoyed the speech, but others weren't impressed.
Hardly anyone liked the food. In fact, several refused to eat it.
Some indefinite pronouns can take either singular or plural verbs, depending on their context. Compare the pairs of sentences below.
|Indefinite Pronoun||Singular Example||Plural Example|
|all||All is not lost.||All are here now.|
|any||I'd like more soup. Is any left in the pot?||I told several people about the meeting, but I don't know if any are coming.|
|more||If you are still hungry, there is more in the kitchen. Just help yourself.||The restaurant is already crowded, and more are waiting at the door.|
|most||Most disappeared.||A few people couldn't attend the ceremony, but most were able to come.|
|some||If you like orange juice, there is some in the refrigerator.||Some were disappointed with the judges' decision, but the majority of people thought it was fair.| | <urn:uuid:a91ed688-7402-4fa7-8518-11522aadcc83> | {
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Shell, BP and other oil companies at the centre of the tar sands revolution in Canada are facing a backlash from the Co-operative and other members of the ethical investment community determined to bring a halt to these operations for environmental reasons.
A joint report from Co-operative Investments and the wildlife charity WWF released today will be followed up in September by a meeting of the UK Social Investment Forum (UKSIF) to press for an end to this carbon-intensive activity.
The tar sands business, by which crude oil is produced through highly carbon and water-intensive extraction and treatment procedures, risks tipping the world into an irreversible process of global warming, critics claim.
The Co-op and WWF are calling for a global halt to new licensing for tar sands and similar oil operations known as "unconventional fuels".
They want the UK and other countries to prohibit the sale and distribution of any oil products with higher emissions than traditional petrol.
The move comes as Shell and other industry leaders have pledged to spend more than $125bn (£63bn) by 2015 to develop these new sources of petrol at a time of very high crude prices and fears of supply shortages.
The oil companies say the world needs these reserves, which are expensive to produce but are located in a politically stable area, unlike the traditional reserves of the Middle East or Russia. But critics say the environmental price is disastrous.
Paul Monaghan, head of social goals and sustainability at the Co-op group, said: "The current rush to invest in unconventional fossil fuels is wholly inappropriate and, due to their carbon intensity, these projects risk dangerous levels of climate change."
The new report, Unconventional Oil: Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel, will be used as the basis for discussion with the Co-op's 6.5 million customers and for garnering support from more than 200 other members of the UKSIF.
James Leaton, senior policy officer at WWF-UK, said: "Unconventional fuel sources may seem attractive in the short term but ultimately the environmental and economic costs are unthinkable.
"Companies and investors claim to recognise the need to tackle climate change and support international efforts such as Kyoto [climate change protocol]. In oil sands we have an activity that is going against this imperative and undermining Canada's Kyoto commitments, so it is time for investors to challenge this strategy."
Shell said: "The global demand for energy is growing. This will mean greater demand for oil and gas, too. Supplies of accessible, conventional oil and gas cannot keep up with the demand growth. As a result, society has little choice but to add other sources of energy including 'unconventional' fuels like oil sands."
BP said fossil fuels were still going to be needed well into the future even if there were tough restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions.
"Reserves of oil sands represent a significant untapped resource from a politically stable country. The Husky joint venture [BP is planning] will use a process known as steam-assisted gravity drainage, not mining, which produces oil in-situ with a significant reduction of both water use and overall environmental footprint," it said in a statement.
BP added that it was a "keen" supporter of mandatory market mechanisms such as cap-and-trade programmes on greenhouse gases: "We support national and international trading programmes and have factored the future costs of carbon in our analysis of the project's value."
There are estimated to be 1.1tn barrels of extractable unconventional oils in North America - Canadian tar sands and US oil shales - according to the Co-op and WWF report. In Canada alone it is hoped to produce 5m barrels a day, which would make the country one of the world's largest oil producers. The extremely energy intensive process means that if all of the reserves were exploited in the next century it would result in emissions of 980 giga-tonnes of CO2. This equates to an estimated rise in CO2 emissions of 49 and 65 parts per million when the world is already at 430ppm - 450 is considered to be a tipping point, the two organisations argue. | <urn:uuid:5c1d7e9e-91b4-493d-9ea9-47f7402766a0> | {
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DIY projects are often a great way to fill an afternoon and keep your children entertained at the same time. However, we know how difficult it can be to think of new and creative ways to help your kids have fun at home. To help with this, at The Brook Early Education and Care, we like to think of creative DIY tasks which are fun and engaging but also to assist to expand your child’s mind and teach them new skills.
This DIY piggy banks project is easy to follow and guarantees a creative afternoon of fun. This project is also the perfect opportunity to begin teaching your children about the value of money. It’s never too early to get your little ones thinking about good money management and what better way to show them how to start saving than by making their own money box!
At The Brook Early Education and Care , we encourage parents to get their children involved with creative activities like this at home, as it is a way of continuing the work we do at the centre with our learning programs. For more information on our learning programs, click here.
Try another fun DIY project for Kids: How to Make Personalised Wrapping Paper
Diabetes is a serious disease and it can affect anyone. In Australia, 280 people develop diabetes every day. Educating yourself and your children is vital to prevention and management of diabetes, especially at a young age. (Read the full article)
Don’t hesitate to contact us for more information about our child care services.
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There is good news and not-so-good news about the hormone oxytocin. It seems to promote a number of essential social functions and has been found to enhance social behaviors for people with autism. But new research suggests a downside as well.
Oxytocin has sometimes been called the “love hormone” or “trust hormone” as studies have shown the chemical to be associated with the ability to maintain healthy interpersonal relationships and psychological boundaries with other people. Studies have also found that oxytocin can increase altruism, generosity, and other behaviors that are good for social life.
But a study by Andrew Kemp, Ph.D., of the University of Sydney and published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, suggests the actions of oxytocin are more complex than what is commonly believed.
Kemp and coauthor Adam Guastella, Ph.D., report that a number of studies have shown that oxytocin accents a variety of emotions. For example, recent studies have found that people who were given oxytocin, then played a game of chance with a fake opponent, were more envious and gloating.
These are also both social emotions, but they’re negative. “It kind of rocked the research world a little bit,” Kemp said. That led some researchers to think that oxytocin promotes social emotions in general, both negative and positive.
But Kemp and Guastella think oxytocin’s role is slightly different.
Rather than supporting all social emotions, they think it plays a role in promoting what psychologists call approach-related emotions. These are emotions that have to do with wanting something, as opposed to shrinking away.
“If you look at the Oxford English Dictionary for envy, it says that the definition of envy is to wish oneself on a level with another, in happiness or with the possession of something desirable,” Kemp said. “It’s an approach-related emotion: I want what you have.”
Gloating is also about approach, he says; people who are gloating are happy—a positive, approach-related emotion—about having more than their opponent and about that person’s misfortune.
If Kemp and Guastella are right, that could mean that oxytocin could also increase anger and other negative approach-related emotions.
Indeed, if substantiated with research, the knowledge that oxytocin could enhance a variety of emotions would limit use of oxytocin as a facilitator of psychiatric care.
“If you were to take a convicted criminal with a tendency towards aggression and give him oxytocin to make him more social, and if that were to enhance anger as opposed to suppressing anger, then that has very substantial implications,” Kemp said.
Further research will show more about what emotions are promoted by oxytocin, Kemp says.
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Over the past 30 years, public education in America has experienced a barrage of criticism, prompting various and sundry reforms designed to make government-funded schools more effective. Despite the best efforts of the reformers, however, public confidence in public schools is lower today than it was three decades ago. All of the time, effort, and money spent on the current system have not led to significant and widespread improvement. After a generation of futile tinkering it is time to stop, take a step back, and ask ourselves a few basic questions about how education is delivered in this country.
What Does the Public Want?
Parents want a great many things from their schools, but their aspirations can be distilled down to four general goals. First and foremost among these goals is that schools provide their students with the academic basics: Public consensus on the importance of basic academic and job training is high both nationally and internationally.
Beyond the basics, however, parental priorities begin to diverge. Questions such as the role of religion in education elicit many different-and conflicting-views. So the second goal is for schools to cater to each family's particular needs in these areas withoutcausing social tensions or conflicts within the community. To be effective, schools must be flexible and responsive to a diverse population.
The third goal is that children at all income levels have access to quality educational services. In fact, education is widely seen as the most promising way to lift families out of poverty. Fourth and finally, people want their schools to foster responsible citizenship, democratic ideals, and a healthy economy.
What Kind of Schools Can Meet These Goals?
There are five interrelated traits that have consistently characterized the world's most effective and successful school systems: choice and financial responsibility for parents and freedom, competition, and the profit motive for schools--in essence, a free market in education.
Market education where it has been tried has best met the four goals most desired by parents. Despite this fact, however, virtually every country today has a government-run school system in place. This is because many people are simply not comfortable with the idea of profit-making schools or the elimination of government oversight from education. And there's the rub: The way to reach the educational goals most desired by the public is to cultivate a free market in education, which is at odds with America's current approach to schooling and most people's dearly held beliefs about how schools should work.
How Would Free-Market Education Work?
People must first recognize that ideas should not be rejected just because they are perceived as "radical." The American Revolution was radical- treasonous in the eyes of the British monarchy- but it was based on sound principles that led to the establishment of a great nation. Einstein's relativistic model of the universe was equally revolutionary, causing scientists to discard the well-established rules of Newtonian mechanics. In both cases, change came about because people recognized that the change was necessary for the achievement of a desired end: liberty in the former case and scientific accuracy in the latter.
The reintroduction of educational freedom in America is crucial to the achievement of academic excellence on a long-term, widespread basis. The following paragraphs explain how and why this is so.
Parental choice in education is not distributed to any and all who ask for it. Like all other human freedoms, choice must be fought for and defended. Parents, when free from the "choices" imposed on them by government-appointed experts, have over the centuries done remarkably well for their children in the educational marketplace. Parents in general avoid pedagogical fads and focus instead on ensuring that their children learn useful skills. The societies and economies that have grown up around parental and educational choice have been among the most productive and cohesive in history. When families can get what they want for their children, without forcing their views on their neighbors, community tensions are kept to a minimum.
Parental Financial Responsibility
Public schools-which usually do not charge tuition-often do not take the needs of families as their guiding principle. Many even ignore those needs completely, preferring to deliver the sort of education favored by whomever is footing the bill. All too often, parents who attempt to take an active role in schools for which they are not paying tuition are rebuffed as nuisances since they have no direct power over the institution and frequently have few alternatives.
Worse yet, "free" government schools tend eventually to be taken for granted by parents who have many other important concerns to which they must attend. Government schooling encourages parents to drop little Johnny off in the morning and forget about him while they tend to other matters until it's time to pick him up in the late afternoon. Burdened by so many other responsibilities, these parents often wake up one day to find themselves disenfranchised spectators in their own children's education. Government school teachers cite the lack of participation by parents as one of their most pressing problems, but government schooling itself is one of the key causes of that problem.
By contrast, private school teachers report parental apathy to be far less common. The responsibility of directly paying all or part of their children's tuition forces parents to take a more active role, and gives them considerably more power over the content and direction of the instruction their children receive. Poor families will of course face financial difficulties, which I will address in a moment.
Competition and Freedom for Schools
Just as parents must be free to choose their children's schools, schools must be free to innovate. They must be able to cater to specific audiences, leverage the particular talents of their staffs, and follow the goals and philosophies of their principals. The absence of these freedoms has led to frustration and low morale among teachers, institutional inefficiencies, and pedagogical stagnation. To be effective institutions of learning, schools must be unburdened from the paralyzing and mindless bureaucracy so prevalent in classrooms today.
The freedom of schools, however, should be balanced with accountability to prevent abuses. Schools that are not directly answerable to families can and do go off on their own educational tangents that diverge wildly from the goals of students and parents. The way to ensure that schools are free to do whatever they want so long as they are effectively serving their customers is to force them to compete with one another to attract and keep those customers.
The Profit Motive for Schools
By themselves, the four factors thus far described choice and responsibility for parents, and freedom and competition for schools are enough to prevent the worst educational abuses, but they are not enough to promote educational excellence. For that, it is necessary to introduce the incentive of profit making. Many of us have powerful computers on our desks, a situation that would have been unthinkable only 20 years ago. But computer manufacturers have not been regularly improving performance and cutting costs out of the goodness of their hearts: They have done it because they profit from doing it.
The absence of the profit motive in any business leads to stagnation, and the nonprofit private school industry is a case in point. The virtual absence of significant progress in pedagogy and educational technology over the past one hundred years is absolutely unprecedented in other fields. Every other area of human endeavor from agriculture to the service sector to athletics has registered significant gains during the 20th century, gains that have been conspicuously absent from both public and nonprofit private schools. The only proven way of spurring that same tremendous progress in education is by encouraging innovation through the lure of potential profits.
This does not mean that there is no role for nonprofit schools. On the contrary, schools associated with religious organizations will undoubtedly continue to operate effectively as nonprofits. These schools are not likely to be the originators of dramatic educational innovations, but they will continue to offer a much-sought-after moral and religious educational environment.
Scholarships for Low-Income Families
But what kind of service would low-income families receive in a free educational marketplace? The short answer is much better service than they currently receive. In early 19th-century England, families from the lowest economic classes felt that their own private educational arrangements were superior to government-subsidized schools, and the evidence backs them up. Markets, moreover, are normally complemented by some mechanism for subsidizing the education of poor families. Private scholarship programs, which are cropping up around America today, promise to be the most effective such mechanism ever conceived.
Educational tax credit programs such as the Mackinac Center for Public Policy's Universal Tuition Tax Credit would allow for rapid growth in the number of private scholarships available, giving low-income families unprecedented power in the educational marketplace. An overwhelming body of evidence points to the fact that poor parents base their educational decisions on the same criteria as wealthier ones, and giving them the financial clout to choose their schools will transform the educational landscape. Decaying buildings, low standards, and defective curricula will soon be replaced by the sorts of things that all parents expect: a clean and safe classroom environment, high academics tandards, and pedagogical methods and materials based on sound research rather than the latest fads.
A Choice of Futures
In 1841, state-funded school promoters such as Horace Mann promised a millennial transformation of society if only their proposals were passed into law. Mann argued that "nine tenths of the crimes in the penal code" and a "long catalogue of human ills" would be eradicated by public schools. Fast forward to February 1998, when the Los Angeles County school board voted to arm its public school police with shotguns. Mann's promised Utopia has clearly failed to materialize.
Today, as we approach a new millennium, the debate over the future of American schools continues. This time, policy makers and parents should carefully evaluate the evidence that shows a free and competitive educational market best meets students' needs before they consign American children to another century of metal detectors and mediocrity. | <urn:uuid:117c03c0-a476-4930-a966-0275e074b15b> | {
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French political life has long gravitated around a " Republican model" marked by an unmediated relationship between the citizen and the state, socialization into French values through secular public education, a special vocation for France on the international stage, and an activist state. Recent developments have called the Republican model into question. This course will examine the transformation of France's Republican model-its origins, operations, and responses to contemporary challenges.
Subfield: Comparitive Politics
Please note that the course description is from Fall 2013. | <urn:uuid:fdbd1be0-d864-40cd-923c-18c40b6eaf1f> | {
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Boxing great Muhammad Ali, who passed away in June 2016, was well known for his fight against Parkinson’s disease — but he actually succumbed to septic shock. Sepsis — and its most serious form, septic shock — is a body-wide and potentially deadly response to an infection. Sepsis occurs when the immune system releases infection-fighting chemicals into the bloodstream that cause an inflammatory response throughout the body, which can lead to organ failure and death.
More Sepsis or Better Diagnosis?
A 2016 study, published in CHEST, the journal of the American College of Chest Physicians, examined hospital records and claims data at 27 hospitals between 2005 and 2014. The study concluded that diagnoses of septic shock rose by about five percent per year, but deaths from septic shock actually decreased 54.9 percent to 50.7 percent.
Part of the reason for the increase of incidence is better diagnosis, says Sarah LaRosa, DO, assistant medical director for the emergency department of Westside Regional Medical Center in Davie, Florida. “Most hospitals have policies in the emergency room where patients are screened when they come in the door and a doctor is alerted if they meet certain criteria,” she says. “We’re making the diagnosis more often.”
Better diagnosis, says Dr. LaRosa, leads to better treatment. “We’re better able to keep patients alive. Patients used to die before the diagnosis was made,” she says.
Related: 6 Tips for Navigating the ER
Changes in Definitions
Sepsis and septic shock were redefined in early 2016, with the Third International Consensus Definitions for Sepsis and Septic Shock (Sepsis-3). Prior to Sepsis-3, there were three conditions ranging from bad to worse: sepsis, severe sepsis, and septic shock. Severe sepsis is sepsis accompanied by organ dysfunction, low blood pressure or low blood flow, and septic shock is severe sepsis that doesn’t improve despite treatment, according to LaRosa.
Sepsis-3 phased out the term “severe sepsis” and now classifies it as part of sepsis. “Septicemia” — another term for sepsis — has also been phased out, LaRosa says. Sepsis-3 changed some of the diagnostic criteria for sepsis and septic shock, as well. Not all doctors or doctors’ organizations use the new definitions or diagnosis, however, so you may still encounter the terms “severe sepsis” and “septicemia.”
Sepsis Symptoms and Diagnosis
At the hospital, medical professionals measure vital signs to look for fever, rapid heartbeat, and rapid breathing. They also look for high levels of lactate — which indicates cell death, says LaRosa — and a high white blood cell count, which is a sign of infection.
Signs to look for include confusion, especially if the person is older. “If they’re not acting like themselves after a fever or a cold, that’s concerning,” says LaRosa. A rapid heart rate and fast breathing are also signs of possible sepsis, she adds. “If someone thinks they have an average cold or flu and the body’s fighting it, that’s great,” LaRosa says. “But if they’re going in the opposite direction [getting worse instead of better], they should get checked out and get treated right away.”
LaRosa says that conditions that commonly develop into sepsis include pneumonia, urinary tract infections, kidney infections, and intestinal infections like colitis or diverticulitis, but “Any infection can lead to septic shock,” she says. The very young, the very old and people with compromised immune systems are at greater risk of sepsis.
The progression of sepsis can happen very quickly, says LaRosa. “We often see patients we categorized as septic who had a cough or a cold for a few days, but sometimes it can be just a day or even a matter of hours,” she says. That means treatment has to be fast, too. Every hour that treatment is delayed increases the chance that sepsis can kill you, according to LaRosa.
Treatment starts with antibiotics, IV fluids, and, frequently, medication to keep blood pressure up. People may also need oxygen or dialysis, as well. Sepsis and septic shock are both emergencies. Call 911 immediately if you’ve recently had an infection and notice any symptoms of sepsis. | <urn:uuid:16ac5b8c-5f3e-4dcf-a998-f953684ad4ff> | {
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In the earliest days of the automobile, creating steel stampings for bodies was more expensive than making them from wood. Companies knew how to work with wood. They'd been making horse-drawn carriage bodies from wood for centuries. When the curved-dash Oldsmobile hit the streets in 1901 as the world's first mass-produced car, its body was made of wood.
As the automobile matured, so did steel-stamping techniques. Over the decades, steel replaced hardwood in many applications, including frames, fenders, and hoods. Yet manufacturers and custom-body builders still used wood for major sections from the windshield back for station wagons, sedans, convertibles, and trucks. The 1929 Model A was the first of what we've come to know as a mass-produced woodie. | <urn:uuid:958d52c7-a7b7-4cca-8177-4e490bea04a8> | {
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Physical truth and spiritual truth are inseparable. Religion and science are connected.
In Hinduism, science and religion go hand in hand. The relationship between Hinduism and science goes back to the Indus Valley civilization, as old as 2500 BCE. Vedic science appears to have included components of astronomy, biology, mathematics, chemistry, medicine, metallurgy, etc. The notion of atomic/molecular world was integrated into Vaiseshika school (between around 250 BCE to 100 CE) of Hindu philosophy. Yoga included some remarkable methods of breath/respiration control. Ancient sages were said to be acquainted with radar, microbiology, radioactivity, television, etc. Epic heroes of Hinduism flew first aircrafts. In Hinduism, there is theory of Seven Worlds, Doctrine of the Ages of the World, religious categories of Space in Veda, reference to quantum mechanics in scriptures, as well as mysteries of Vedic/Puranic aeronautics and Tantrik biochemistry, etc.
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Plenty has been written about bitcoin since its creation in 2009 – particularly its volatility and criminal uses – but interest is now shifting to other uses for its underlying ‘blockchain’ technology. The technology could change how the financial services sector works, how contracts operate, and even how we send emails.
A blockchain is a peer-to-peer public ‘distributed ledger’ - a decentralised record of information that is open to multiple operators. The bitcoin blockchain is the public ledger that records every bitcoin transaction. But the technology has other possible uses.
- Financial services: The blockchain could revolutionise traditional banking structures and speed up financial transactions. Most financial assets (like shares or bonds) are already in digital form, recorded on centralised ledgers. Decentralisation would mean reduced costs and no central point of attack - this might mean fewer institutions being considered ‘too big to fail’. The blockchain could even bring financial services to the millions of people with internet access but no bank account, by providing another way of transferring money directly between individuals.
- Asset ownership: The blockchain offers a way of creating a public, tamper-proof database to track ownership and transfer of assets – including houses and financial securities. ‘Coloured coins’, representing the assets, can be traded through the blockchain, all for a fraction of current transaction costs. The technology can create a digital history of assets, preventing fraud and theft. One company, Everledger, is using the blockchain for diamond certification and transaction history.
- Smart contracts: Agreements - written in code and enforced by software - can be hosted on the blockchain. These ‘smart contracts’ can self-execute when certain conditions are met (much like a computer program) - when a pre-programmed condition is triggered, the smart contract executes the corresponding contractual clause. Smart contracts could cover anything from online shopping to a smart multi-signature escrow although – for now – they are only likely to lend themselves to simple agreements. This approach could affect the legal and financial industries, particularly as the previous limit on smart contracts was that computer programs couldn’t trigger payments.
- Other uses: these include: (i) peer-to-peer email that both encrypts the message and masks the sender and receiver; (ii) a decentralised domain name system that is resistant to internet censorship; (iii) fully anonymous online voting that is fast, flexible and secure; and (iv) fully autonomous and private transactions conducted by connected devices as part of the ‘internet of things’.
It remains to be seen which of these uses will be taken up, particularly where there are well-functioning centralised ledgers already. And the blockchain certainly introduces new risks, like the ‘51 per cent attack’ - where a malicious user tries to gain control of a majority of the processing power of a blockchain network to use it to validate fraudulent transactions. | <urn:uuid:93e12505-7394-4825-80e5-db5b40166069> | {
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Jul 14, 2012 at 10:30 am
TRAVERSE CITY, MI (AP) - Officials say DNA from Asian carp has been discovered in water samples collected from Lake Erie nearly a year ago.
It's the first time DNA from bighead and silver carp has turned up in Lake Erie. Three bighead carp were caught there between 1995 and 2000.
Researchers with the University of Notre Dame detected DNA from the invasive fish this week when examining more than 400 samples taken in August 2011.
Scientists are uncertain about whether carp DNA signals the presence of actual fish. Some say there could be other sources, such as feces from fish-eating birds.
Still, the findings are unsettling because scientists have described Erie as the lake that could suffer the biggest harm from an Asian carp incursion.
Temp: 81°F (27°C)
Wind: 12 SW
Weather: Mainly Cloudy | <urn:uuid:85d90db4-4f11-4a94-9eed-5e3a27c5f845> | {
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Like all big coal-fired power plants, the 1,600-mega-watt-capacity Schwarze Pumpe plant in Spremberg, Germany, is undeniably dirty. Yet a small addition to the facility—a tiny boiler that pipes 30 MW worth of steam to local industrial customers—represents a hope for salvation from the global climate-changing consequences of burning fossil fuels.
To heat that boiler, the damp, crumbly brown coal known as lignite—which is even more polluting than the harder black anthracite variety—burns in the presence of pure oxygen, releasing as waste both water vapor and that more notorious greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2). By condensing the water in a simple pipe, Vattenfall, the Swedish utility that owns the power plant, captures and isolates nearly 95 percent of the CO2 in a 99.7 percent pure form.
That CO2 is then compressed into a liquid and given to another company, Linde, for sale; potential users range from the makers of carbonated beverages, such as Coca-Cola, to oil firms that use it to flush more petroleum out of declining deposits. In principle, however, the CO2 could also be pumped deep underground and locked safely away in specific rock formations for millennia.
From the International Energy Agency to the United Nations–sanctioned Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), such carbon capture and storage (CCS), particularly for coal-fired power plants, has been identified as a technology critical to enabling deep, rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. After all, coal burning is responsible for 40 percent of the 30 billion metric tons of CO2 emitted by human activity every year. “There is the potential for the U.S. and other countries to continue to rely on coal as a source of energy while at the same time protecting the climate from the massive greenhouse gas emissions associated with coal,” says Steve Caldwell, coordinator for regional climate change policy at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, an Arlington, Va., think tank.
Even President Barack Obama has labeled the technology as important for “energy independence” and included $3.4 billion in the economic stimulus package for “clean coal” power plants. But although multiple projects around the world examine or test aspects of CCS, few of them have been connected to a full-size power plant: one producing on average 500 MW and upward of 10,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide a day—the core of the emissions problem.
“It makes nine metric tons of CO2 per hour at full load,” says Staffan Görtz, Vattenfall’s CCS spokesperson, of the $100-million CCS demonstration boiler at Schwarze Pumpe. But he acknowledges that “we don’t have a storage site yet.”
Buried at Sea
Storage may be the simplest part of the CCS challenge. After all, since 1996, the Norwegian oil company StatoilHydro has been stripping CO2 out of natural gas from the Sleipner field in the North Sea and rather than venting it to the atmosphere has been pumping it back into the field 1,000 meters deep for permanent storage.
The basics of carbon dioxide storage are simple: the same Utsira sandstone formation that has stored the natural gas for millions of years can serve to trap the CO2, explains Olav Kaarstad, CCS adviser at Statoil. The 250-meter-thick band of sandstone—porous, crumbly rock that traps the gas in the minute spaces between its particles—is topped by a relatively impermeable 200-meter-thick layer of shale and mudstone (think hardened clay). “We aren’t really much worried about the integrity of the seal and whether the CO2 will stay down there over many hundreds of years,” Kaarstad says.
More than 12 million metric tons of CO2 have been injected into the formation, he notes. Statoil monitors its storage through periodic seismic testing, a process that is not unlike a sonogram through the earth, according to hydrologist Sally Benson, director of the global climate and energy project at Stanford University. That monitoring indicates that between 1996 and this past March, the liquid CO2 has spread out as a thin layer permeating a three-square-kilometer expanse of porous sandstone—just 0.0001 percent of the area available for such storage. | <urn:uuid:c805b625-9e80-4e14-b9d5-ac646daa9288> | {
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“Old Bill” Suggests—
It is not enough for a ruler to be able and just; he also must be wise in the psychology of his people. An error in that respect once caused the slaughter of the Roman populations of London, Colchester and St. Albans.
About 400 B. C. England had been occupied by the “Brythons” or “Painted Folk,” tall, with red hair, furious in battle when the mood was on them, but relaxing at times into despair or indolence. Julius Caesar beat them in battle in 54 B. C. and, 114 years later, methodical Suetonius Paulinus was trying to administer a Roman province.
While he was away, wiping out the pagan Druid priests on their sacred isle for instigating revolt, his subordinate, as a further disciplinary measure, flogged Boadicea, queen of the Iceni. She raised a wildfire insurrection and as garrisons fell the Romans were massacred, men and women alike, with terrible tortures. Some 70,000 perished. In the end, Boadicea lost—and died. But this didn’t repair the damage.
Say what you will, this was no way to handle a redheaded woman.
ROYAL F. MUNGER. | <urn:uuid:774c0655-7324-4fb5-b7e3-2bb1081ca875> | {
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Sometimes the HTML is rendered on the client, but not necessarily. All HTML code or at least the initial structure may as well be rendered on the server.
Instead of making server round-trips after each user input, the app makes HTTP server requests in the background to publish actions or to load new data.
Passing on existing best practices
Ten years ago, web creators tried to understand how user interfaces of native apps work, and what benefits they provide. To catch up with the
richness and responsiveness of desktop apps, they adapted certain existing patterns for the web.
The architecture of web apps
Stefan Tilkov makes a claim about the architecture of web apps I’d like to comment on:
The business logic is a set of high-level operations on the data. Like creating, reading, updating and deleting records (CRUD). Updating relations between records. Finding, transforming and merging records to serve a particular request.
This business logic lies in the server code given you’re building an app that somehow synchronizes with the server. This is where the data is processed in the end, this is where the data needs to be consistent. This is the code and the data storage one cannot tamper with easily. This is where authorization, validation and security checks need to be performed.
Usually this server code offers a HTTP REST API which is consumed by several clients, for example web or native clients. These clients mostly contain user interface logic.
Sharing logic between client and server
A gray area is input validation, for example. For consistency, the API server has the final say on validation. However, it improves the user experience to perform at least simple validations in the clients. This gives instant feedback instead of making the user wait for server requests and user interface refreshes.
There are already practical ways to share logic between client and server. In the form validation example, we can specify the rules in a neutral, declarative format like JSON or XML. Each client has glue code that reads and applies the rules to the specific user interface.
Client-server architectures instead of monoliths
“A fantastic example of the problems created by the SPA approach is parallelization of work. If you have a team of multiple people, or God forbid, multiple teams working on the same SPA, you need to come up with a good way to support this. Instead, you can just have each of those teams build their own web application. Each of those applications can be connected to every other one built at the same time by the same organization (as well as to every other web application residing anywhere, if you want to) — in fact relying on the core strength of the web.”
“In terms of accessibility, rendering semantic HTML on the server-side provides an out-of-the-box support. There is only a limited set of things that you can do with HTML, and again this is a feature, not a bug.”
“You can address some of those problems within an SPA, too. But it takes effort. With the ROCA approach, you have a well-known, extremely mature, proven architecture to rely on.”
This is misleading. Your HTML is not more accessible or more semantic when it’s rendered on the server. Whether you render HTML on the server or in the browser, you need to write accessible and semantic markup.
There are differences between server-side and client-side rendering regarding accessibility: Rendering on the client is less robust since you have little control over the client. But once the HTML is parsed into the DOM, the accessibility is the same.
“[The single-page apps that I know] are bloated and slow to load, even though the actual information they display and the interaction they offer is very simple. […]”
“In almost every case I’m aware of, your [single-page application] has zero benefit for the user, and there are only positive sides to embracing browser features instead.”
Such sites provide a great benefit to the user. In the end, every software, every information system should enable the user to perform tasks in an easy, fast and approachable way. This should drive your architectural decisions.
As Greg Babiars puts it,
I’m ‘fatigued’ by posts like this taking nuanced technical and UX discussions and declaring [there’s] one right way that fits all needs.
The web was invented as a “document retrieval system”, and we need to appreciate the principle of universal access. But the web is also an “application delivery system”. Let’s reconcile these two approaches as far as possible instead of ignoring or excluding one of them.
Please see my other articles on the topic:
For a full list of references, see my bookmarks tagged with progressive enhancement. | <urn:uuid:a38c377c-ebde-4726-83e4-f3210d50b4a7> | {
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The speed of a boat in still water is 10 km per hour. If it can travel 24 km downstream and 14 km in the upstream in equal time, indicate the speed of the flow of stream.
Most Readed articles
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- Define primary deposit and derivative deposit. | <urn:uuid:2c53de2e-cbfb-4836-80e6-4f04420be7ba> | {
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Most Active Stories
Shots - Health Blog
Thu August 30, 2012
A Troubling Rise In Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis
Cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis are increasing around the globe, and at a faster rate than previously thought. And if that weren't enough, TB is quickly building resistance to more and more of the drugs commonly used to fight it.
The troubling picture emerged in a study just published in The Lancet.
The study, led by Dr. Tracy Dalton from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, looked at the effectiveness of second-line drugs in patients who already have TB resistant to multiple drugs or infections that don't respond to the two most powerful first-line medications. The researchers found that options for treating these people are shrinking rapidly.
Public health officials had been assuming that roughly 5 percent of TB cases are resistant to the most common TB drugs. But this study notes that in Minsk, Belarus, for example, almost half the newly reported TB infections last year were resistant to the most common drugs.
Other strains of TB won't respond to even more aggressive treatments. And, as the study notes, "the global emergence of extensively drug-resistant (XDR) tuberculosis heralds the advent of widespread, virtually untreatable tuberculosis."
As Shots reported last month, TB has piggybacked onto the HIV epidemic in South Africa, spreading rapidly among people with compromised immune systems. "The TB epidemic is driven by the HIV epidemic," Dr. Eric Goemaere, with Doctors Without Borders in Cape Town, tells Shots.
Just outside an HIV/TB clinic in the township of Khayelitsha, Goemaere says the drug resistant TB problem was ignored for many years, which allowed it to get even worse. "As we speak here we are surrounded by drug-resistant TB." Goemaere says. "It's all over the place."
Initially some local health officials called for people with drug-resistant TB to be isolated, but it quickly became apparent that this approach wasn't feasible. "They started to build hospital beds to quarantine all those patients," he says. "Then they realized that they couldn't follow the pace of diagnosis with construction."
In the township of Khayelitsha alone, Doctors Without Borders is treating roughly 300 people who have multiple drug-resistant or extremely drug- resistant TB. The patients live at home and travel each day to the clinic for treatment. They're encouraged not to share enclosed, poorly-ventilated spaces with other people.
Treatment for regular tuberculosis takes months. Treatment for drug-resistant TB can take years.
Dr. Goemaere says the community-based treatment model being used in Khayelitsha is the only viable option for tackling drug-resistant TB on a large scale in places where resources are scarce.
"By treating it in a decentralized and very aggressive way, we are going to beat that epidemic," he says. "If not, we are going to lose all the gains made on TB." | <urn:uuid:286ad32d-126e-4eb7-ba1a-657b5a504e3d> | {
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Welcome to the Ethics Subject Guide
This guide covers ethics specific resources for research and is arranged by resource types
Please use the links on the left to Navigate to specific resource types.
An ideal place to start your ethics research is the Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (2nd Ed.) This comprehensive online encyclopedia covers a broad range of ethical issues and includes over 100 new articles on current ethical issues ranging from cyborgs to the issues facing online social networking. Each article delivers a thorough introduction to its topic and concludes with a recommended reading list. Students may also browse the table of contents to generate ideas for topics.
Opposing Viewpoints Resources in Context (Gale) Provides a complete overview of both sides of a large number of ethical issues. Access information on social issues through viewpoint articles, topic overviews, statistics, primary documents, links to web sites and full-text magazine and newspaper articles.
In addition to MLA and APA, many ethics courses use the Chicago Manual of Style citation system. A PowerPoint presentation on Chicago Style can be found here.
Rob LeBlanc is the subject librarian for Ethics and is available for research consultations, instruction, curricular support & purchase requests. | <urn:uuid:eb885a53-cd15-4d55-b8b3-2df0c18874d4> | {
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Shelf nutrition labels provide summary information on the overall nutritional quality of a food product. They provide cues to shoppers and may be effective in promoting healthy food choices at the point of purchase. The purpose of this project is to examine the effects of NuVal, a shelf nutrition labeling and nutrient profiling system, on food purchases and calories. The study will use retrospective purchasing data from 3,765 households from three retailers that have adopted NuVal, an in-store shopper intercept study, and a retail audit study to estimate the impact of NuVal on calories and nutritional quality of food purchases. Scanner data from the IRI Academic Data Set will be used to track household-level purchases and store-level prices and sales in two IRI BehaviorScan cities—Eau Claire, Wis., and Pittsfield, Mass.,—before and after adoption of NuVal. Investigators will estimate the effects of NuVal labels on four key consumer choice variables: weighted average NuVal score, calories purchased, average NuVal score per dollar spent, and calories per dollar spent; and will focus on four food categories: canned soup, frozen meals, cold cereal, and yogurt. The study will also test for differential impacts between lower- and higher-income families, between families with and without children, and between households with and without college education.
Examining the Effects of Summary Nutrition Shelf Labels on Lower-Income Household Food Purchases
Identifying the effect of shelf nutrition labels on consumer purchases: results of a natural experiment and consumer survey
Shelf nutrition labels provide summary information on the overall nutritional quality of a food product. They provide cues to shoppers and may be effective in promoting healthy food choices at the point of purchase. The objective of this study was to explore the impact of NuVal Labels, a shelf nutrition … More
Retailers and other organizations currently use a variety of nutrition standards and recommendations to guide consumers towards healthier, “Better for You”, options. This variety can be confusing to consumers. Healthy Eating Research convened a scientific advisory committee to review existing “Better-For-You” nutrition standards, and analyze their strengths and weaknesses. The … More
The healthfulness of foods and beverages found in retail food stores differs widely across the United States, both by location of the store as well as by store type. Some communities have limited access to stores that carry healthful staple foods such as fruits and vegetables, whole grain-rich foods, and … More | <urn:uuid:4e34f6c1-8c1d-4b11-8fd2-b6a2fa12f9d5> | {
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Cost of Treatment: $100-$2,000
What is Glycosuria?
The presence of glucose (the type of sugar used by the body to get energy) is known as glycosuria or glucosuria. When the kidneys filter blood, all the glucose should be reabsorbed and, therefore, there should be no glucose in the urine. However, in cases of renal disease and some systemic diseases such as diabetes, the glucose is not absorbed back into the blood and it is excreted in the urine. Glycosuria is a sign of serious disease and your dog’s veterinarian will need to run various diagnostic tests (e.g. blood and urine tests) to determine what is causing this abnormality.
Types of Glycosuria
Hyperglycemic (excess of glucose in the bloodstream)
- Transient: a temporary increase in glucose in the bloodstream that sometimes occurs due to stress.
- Persistent: an ongoing increase in glucose in the bloodstream that usually occurs due to an underlying illness such as diabetes mellitus.
Normoglycemic (a normal amount of glucose in the bloodstream)
- Congenital: present from birth.
- Acquired: can be due to toxicity.
Causes of Glycosuria In Dogs
- Drugs (e.g. glucocorticoids)
- Toxicity (e.g. antifreeze toxicity)
- Diabetes mellitus
- Central nervous system lesions
- Glucoganoma (tumor of the pancreas)
- Some congenital conditions
- Increased water consumption (polydipsia)
- Increased urination (polyuria)
- Decreased appetite
- Weight loss
- Bad breathe odor (halitosis)
- Recurrent urinary tract infections
- Poor hair conition
Treatment of glycosuria depends on the cause. For example, if your dog suffers from diabetes mellitus, he/she will need insulin and certain diet modifications. On the other hand, if the cause is a toxicity, your dog will need to be hospitalized and receive a detoxification treatment. | <urn:uuid:acf120e5-8a1a-43d4-86bb-824b42ae8e35> | {
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Money, or the love of same, is the root of all evil. So sayeth the Bible. But humans have no trouble turning that wisdom on its head and shaking loose the opposite axiom—Greed is Good. All of us have occasionally looked to money as a route toward happiness, notwithstanding the fact that one of the most banal lessons of Hollywood movies is: Money CANNOT buy you happiness. Think Scarface, whose leetle friend was no substitute for the real thing.
So which is it? Study after study has suggested that income level, beyond the level of basic needs, has very little effect on personal satisfaction, self-worth, or overall happiness. Yet research by Robert H. Frank and others had demonstrated that most people implicitly assume personal spending will lead to more happiness.
Two psychologists at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Elizabeth W. Dunn and Lara B. Aknin, together with Michael I. Norton of the Harvard Business School, wondered whether the matter was governed not by how much money you had, but rather by how you spent it. "Specifically," the researchers reported in Science vol. 319 (sub. required), "we hypothesized that spending money on other people may have a more positive impact on happiness than spending money on oneself."
With that biblical hypothesis in mind (think rich men and camels and the eye of a needle), the researchers set out to identify situations where money DID buy some happiness. That’s not easy, because "the mere thought of having money makes people less likely to help acquaintances, to donate to charity, or to choose to spend time with others." (Science Vol. 314).
Not a promising situation. The researchers first took a nationally representative sample of Americans and had them rate their general happiness and break down their spending into two categories: personal (bills, expenses, gifts for themselves) and prosocial (gifts for others, donations to charity). Regression analysis revealed strong support for the group’s hypothesis: Personal spending was unrelated to perceived happiness, but higher prosocial spending was associated with greater happiness.
Next, the researchers tried the "windfall bonus" approach, tracking employees who received profit-sharing bonuses, and who reported levels of happiness before and after the cash award. As expected, “prosocial spending was the only significant predictor of happiness” two months after the bonus.
Finally, the psychologists gave participants an envelope containing either $5 or $20. They told one randomly selected group to spend the money on themselves, and another group to spend it on a gift or give it away as a charitable donation. Once again, "participants in the prosocial spending condition reported greater postwindfall happiness…"
To the researchers, it appeared that "intentional activities" like giving to charity have longer-term effects than relatively circumstantial factors like bill paying or eating dinners out. Earlier work had shown much the same. But the cruel rub is that most people behave as if the opposite were true. Participants in the national survey reported spending ten times as much money per month on personal use, compared to prosocial spending.
A policy that promotes the overlooked emotional benefits of prosocial spending, the researchers conclude, might work "in the service of translating increased national wealth into increased national happiness."Powered by Sidelines | <urn:uuid:b3433103-16ff-4ec3-b797-f330d73007ea> | {
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Volume 13, Number 1—January 2007
Panmicrobial Oligonucleotide Array for Diagnosis of Infectious Diseases
To facilitate rapid, unbiased, differential diagnosis of infectious diseases, we designed GreeneChipPm, a panmicrobial microarray comprising 29,455 sixty-mer oligonucleotide probes for vertebrate viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites. Methods for nucleic acid preparation, random primed PCR amplification, and labeling were optimized to allow the sensitivity required for application with nucleic acid extracted from clinical materials and cultured isolates. Analysis of nasopharyngeal aspirates, blood, urine, and tissue from persons with various infectious diseases confirmed the presence of viruses and bacteria identified by other methods, and implicated Plasmodium falciparum in an unexplained fatal case of hemorrhagic feverlike disease during the Marburg hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Angola in 2004–2005.
Rapid differential diagnosis of infectious diseases is increasingly important as novel pathogens emerge in new contexts and treatment strategies are beginning to be tailored to specific infectious agents. Because clinical syndromes are rarely specific for single pathogens, unbiased multiplex assays are essential. Methods for direct molecular detection of microbial pathogens in clinical specimens are rapid, sensitive, and may succeed when fastidious requirements for agent replication or the need for high-level biocontainment confound cultivation.
We have adopted a staged strategy for molecular pathogen surveillance and discovery. In the first stage we use MassTag PCR, a PCR platform wherein discrete mass tags rather than fluorescent dyes serve as reporters. This method, which allows simultaneous detection of >20 different pathogens with high sensitivity, has proven useful for differential diagnoses of respiratory disease and viral hemorrhagic fevers (1–3). However, it is not sufficient when larger numbers of known pathogens must be considered, when new but related pathogens are anticipated, or when sequence divergence might impair binding of PCR primers. Thus, to address the challenge of more highly multiplexed differential diagnoses, we established an oligonucleotide microarray platform.
Microarrays have potential to provide a platform for highly multiplexed differential diagnosis of infectious diseases (4,5). The number of potential features per microarray far exceeds those of any other known technology; hundreds of thousands of features can be printed on 70-mm × 20-mm slides. Furthermore, sequence probes of >70 nt are not uncommon. Thus, microbes can be detected when melting temperatures are high enough to allow hybridization, despite a lack of precise complementarity between probe and target. Lastly, microbial and host gene targets can be incorporated, which provides an opportunity to detect microbes and assess host responses for signatures consistent with various classes of infectious agents. Despite these advantages, microbial arrays have not been widely used with clinical materials because of limited sensitivity. The primary service of microbial arrays has been characterization of agents propagated to high titer in vitro (6).
We report establishment of a microarray platform for pathogen surveillance and discovery, the GreeneChip system. Its key features include a comprehensive microbial sequence database for probe design and protocols for sample preparation, amplification, labeling, hybridization, and analysis. The system has been optimized with cultured viral isolates; tested with blood, respiratory, urine, and tissue samples containing bacterial and viral pathogens; and applied in an outbreak investigation when other methods failed to implicate a microorganism in fatal hemorrhagic fever case.
A vertebrate viral sequence database (GreeneVrdB) was established by integrating the database of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTVdB, http://phene.cpmc.columbia.edu), a database that describes viruses at the levels of order, family, genus, and species, and the sequence database of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI, http://www.ncbi.nih.gov). Functionally related sequences were clustered by using the protein families (Pfam, http://pfam.wustl.edu) database of alignments (7). Most viral protein coding sequences in the NCBI database (84%) were represented in the Pfam database; the remainder were mapped by using pairwise BLAST alignments (8). The rRNA sequences of fungi, bacteria, and parasites obtained from the Ribosomal Database Project (RDP, http://rdp.cme.msu.edu) or the NCBI database were added to create a panmicrobial database (GreenePmdB). The GreenePmdB comprises the 228,638 viral sequences of the GreeneVrdB that represent complete and partial viral genomes: 41,790 bacterial 16S rRNAs, 4,109 fungal 18S rRNAs, and 2,626 18S parasitic rRNAs. These sequences represent all recognized 1,710 vertebrate virus species and 135 bacterial, 73 fungal, and 63 parasite genera.
GreeneChip Design and Fabrication
Viral probes were designed to represent a minimum of 3 distinct genomic target regions for every family or genus of vertebrate virus in the ICTVdB. When possible, we chose highly conserved regions within a coding sequence for an enzyme such as a polymerase and 2 other regions that corresponded to more variable structural proteins. We thought that RNAs that encode structural proteins may be present at higher levels than those that encode proteins needed only in catalytic amounts and that use of probes representing noncontiguous sites along the genome might allow detection of naturally occurring or intentionally created chimeric viruses.
Any diagnostic tool based on nucleic acid hybridization is necessarily dependent on the extent to which probes are complementary to their targets. Although sequence databases are increasingly comprehensive, it is unlikely that more than a fraction of the existing microbial sequence space has been explored. Our intent in implementing GreeneChip was to have the potential to identify known and related agents for which precise sequence information was not available. To assess the extent to which a given probe sequence can hybridize to a nonmatching but related sequence, we analyzed synthetic mismatch controls. Whereas up to 15 terminal mismatches had little effect, strings of >5 mismatches distributed throughout a sequence, particularly mismatched G/C pairs, resulted in reduced signal; >12 mismatches distributed throughout a sequence resulted in no signal. On the basis of these findings, we pursued a conservative strategy in array design wherein a viral sequence was considered to be covered only if the array included at least 1 complementary probe with <5 mismatches.
The process for identifying bacterial, fungal, and parasitic probes was similar, although restricted to 16S and 18S rRNA sequences. Viral (GreeneChipVr) and panmicrobial (GreeneChipPm) array platforms were based on the GreeneVrdB and GreenePmdB, respectively. GreeneChipVr version 1.0 contained 9,477 probes to address all vertebrate viruses in the integrated ICTV/NCBI database (1,710 species, including all reported isolates) in 3 gene regions with <5 nucleotide mismatches. GreeneChipPm version 1.0 contained 29,495 probes that included probes comprising GreeneChipVr version 1.0, as well as 11,479 16S rRNA bacterial probes, 1,120 18S rRNA fungal probes, and 848 18S rRNA parasite probes. A total of 300 host immune response probes were added to arrays as a potential index to pathogenesis.
The 60-mer oligonucleotide arrays were synthesized on 70-mm × 20-mm glass slides by using an inkjet deposition system (Agilent Technologies, Palo Alto, CA, USA). A slide can accept up to 244,000 different 60-mer probes or 8 arrays, each comprising >15,000 probes. To facilitate alignment during scanning, 1,000 additional landing-light probes (5′-ATC ATC GTA GCT GGT CAG TGT ATC CTT TTT TTT TTA TCA TCG TAG CTG GTC AGT GTA TCC-3′) were placed in the corners and in a grid on the array. Fluorescently labeled synthetic oligonucleotides complementary to the control probes were included in all hybridizations.
Viruses and Clinical Samples
Sources of viruses and viral reference strains used in this study are shown in Tables 1 and 2. Blood sample 200501379 (Lake Victoria marburgvirus, reference sample from Angola, 2005) and blood sample Angola-460 from a patient suspected of having viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) were received in containers approved by the International Air Transport Association at either the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, USA or the Public Health Agency of Canada in Winnipeg, Ontario, Canada, respectively.
Sources of clinical samples are shown in Table 3. Nasopharyngeal aspirates (SO4606 and SO5265) were collected by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III in Madrid, Spain, from children with respiratory disease. We also analyzed a nasopharyngeal aspirate (sample 23), a postmortem specimen from a patient who died of infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV, sample TM-167), urine specimens from 2 patients with urinary tract infections (samples CUMC-NR7 and CUMC-NR9), a urine specimen from an asymptomatic patient (sample CUMC-LO1), and endometrial and lung tissues from a patient infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (samples CUMC-DL1 and CUMC-DL3).
Sample Preparation and GreeneChip Hybridization
RNA was isolated from blood of VHF patients by using a 6100 Nucleic Acid PrepStation (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA, USA). RNA from virus isolates (culture supernatant) and other clinical samples (blood, nasopharyngeal aspirate, tissue, urine) was isolated by using the Tri-Reagent (Molecular Research Center Inc., Cincinnati, OH, USA). DNA was removed from RNA preparations by treatment with DNase I (DNA-free, Ambion Inc., Austin, TX, USA). First-strand reverse transcription was initiated with a random octamer linked to a specific primer sequence (5′-GTT TCC CAG TAG GTC TCN NNN NNN N-3′) (5). After digestion with RNase, cDNA was amplified by using a 1:9 mixture of the above primer and a primer targeting the specific primer sequence (5′-CGC CGT TTC CCA GTA GGT CTC-3′). Initial PCR amplification cycles were performed at a low annealing temperature (25°C); subsequent cycles used a stringent annealing temperature (55°C) to favor priming through the specific sequence. Products of this first PCR were then labeled in a subsequent PCR with the specific primer sequence linked to a capture sequence for 3 DNA dendrimers containing >300 fluorescent reporter molecules (Genisphere Inc., Hatfield, PA, USA), Products of the second PCR were added to sodium dodecyl sulfate–based hybridization buffer (Genisphere Inc.), heated for 10 min at 80°C, and added to GreeneChip for hybridization for 16 h at 65°C. After 10-min washes at room temperature with 6 × SSC (0.9 mol/L NaCl, 0.09 mol/L sodium citrate, pH 7.0), 0.005% Triton X-100, and 0.1 × SSC, 0.005% Triton X-100, Cy3 3DNA dendrimers were added and incubated at 65°C for 1 h. Slides were washed as before, air dried, and scanned (DNA Microarray scanner, Agilent Technologies).
Log-transformed analysis of microarrays using p values (GreeneLAMP) version 1.0 software was created to assess results of GreeneChip hybridizations. A map built from BLAST data was used to connect probe sequences to the respective entries in the GreenePmdB. Each of those sequences corresponds to an NCBI Taxonomy ID (TaxID). Individual TaxIDs were mapped to nodes in a taxonomic tree built based on ICTV virus taxonomy or the NCBI taxonomic classification for other organisms. The program output is a ranked list of candidate TaxIDs.
Probe intensities were corrected for background, log2-transformed, and converted to Z scores (and their corresponding p values). Where available, control-matched experiments from uninfected samples were used, and spots >2 standard deviations from the mean were subtracted. In instances where control-matched samples were not available, the background distribution of signal fluorescence in an array was calculated by using fluorescence associated with 1,000 random 60 mers (null probes). In both scenarios, positive events were selected by applying a false-positive rate of 0.01 (the rate at which null probes are scored as significant) and a minimum p value per probe of 0.1 in cases with a matching control and 0.023 (2 standard deviations) in cases without a matching control. Candidate TaxIDs were ranked by combining the p values for the positive probes for that TaxID by using the QFAST method of Bailey and Gribskov (9). This approach makes the following assumptions: 1) spot intensities are normally distributed; 2) spots represent independent observations (to minimize this effect clustering is used to collapse probes that are 95% identical); and 3) there are relatively few (<100) positive probes for any given TaxID. Probes for each kingdom (bacteria, eukaryotes, fungi, viruses) were analyzed independently to compensate for variations in signal-to-noise levels.
Sequence Recovery from Hybridized Arrays
When a hybridization signal suggests a novel or chimeric agent, or the investigator wants to obtain sequence information, cDNA can be eluted for amplification and sequence analysis. A total of 100 μL of water at 90°C is added to the array and pipetted up and down 10 times. The eluate is recovered, amplified with the specific primer used during the initial amplification, and cloned into a plasmid vector (TOPO TA, Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA). After transformation into Escherichia coli, colonies are screened by sequencing. Primers based on the obtained sequence can be designed for confirmation of the agent or for specific (real-time) PCR screening of other specimens.
Quantitative Real-Time PCR for Plasmodium falciparum
A quantitative real-time PCR assay was designed to amplify a 190-bp product from positions 178 to 367 of the 5.8S rRNA sequence eluted from the GreeneChipPm to confirm the presence of plasmodia in the original clinical sample. Reactions were performed in a 25-μL volume by using a commercial SYBR-Green reaction mixture (Applied Biosystems) and performed according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The primer sequences were 5′-GGAACGGCTTTGTAACTTGG-3′ and 5′-TGTCCTCAGAGCCAATCCTT-3′. The following cycling conditions were used: 50°C for 2 min and 95°C for 10 min, followed by 45 cycles at 95°C for 15 sec and 60°C for 1 min. To quantitate organism load in the original clinical sample, the targeted sequence region was cloned from the chip-hybridized, eluted nucleic acid. The cloned sequence was used to generate a 7-point standard curve (starting from 5 × 106 copies/assay) for quantitation; each run included negative no-template controls. Thermal cycling was performed in an ABI 7300 real-time PCR system (Applied Biosystems).
Evaluation of GreeneChip Performance
The performance of the GreeneChip system was initially tested in GreeneChipVr hybridizations that used extracts of cultured cells infected with adenoviruses, alphaviruses, arenaviruses, coronaviruses, enteroviruses, filoviruses, flaviviruses, herpesviruses, orthomyxoviruses, paramyxoviruses, poxviruses, reoviruses, and rhabdoviruses (49 viruses). All viruses were accurately identified (Tables 1 and 2). To assess sensitivity, viral RNA extracted from infected cell supernatants (adenovirus, West Nile virus, Saint Louis encephalitis virus, respiratory syncytial virus, enterovirus, SARS-CoV, and influenza virus) was quantitated by real-time PCR, serially diluted, and subjected to analysis with template concentrations ranging from 10 to 1,000,000 copies/assay. The threshold for detection of adenovirus (used as a DNA virus example) was 10,000 RNA copies; the threshold for detection of the RNA viruses tested was 1,900 RNA copies (Table 4).
Array performance was then tested by using samples obtained from patients with respiratory disease, hemorrhagic fever, tuberculosis, and urinary tract infections. In all cases, array analysis detected an agent consistent with the diagnosis obtained by culture or PCR. GreeneLAMP analysis detected human enterovirus A, human respiratory syncytial A virus, influenza A virus, Lake Victoria Marburg virus (MARV), SARS-CoV, lactobacillus, mycobacteria, and gammaproteobacteria (Tables 1–3). Specific real-time PCR analyses indicated viral loads of 6.3 × 105 copies/assay for SARS-CoV (10), 1.1 × 103 copies/assay for respiratory syncytial virus (11), and 5.46 × 105 copies/assay for enterovirus A (12) in clinical specimens. Details of the array analysis process are presented below for the detection of 2 viruses and 2 bacteria in clinical specimens.
Sample 200501379 contained RNA extracted from the blood of a person who died of VHF. In GreeneLAMP analysis, MARV TaxID 11269 was the top prediction by the combined p-value method using QFAST (9). The highest relative number of positive probes (10/11, 90.9%) also corresponded to MARV. In contrast, only 2 of 16 probes were positive for the next best predicted TaxID 11901, bovine leukemia virus (Figure 1A). Sequence-based analysis identified GenBank accession no. DQ447653 (Lake Victoria MARV–Angola2005 strain Ang1379c) with 8 positive probes as the best match. The 10 positive probes aligned with all 8 MARV gene motifs represented on the array (Figure 1B). Only 4 (17%) of 23 probes were positive for the next best predicted GenBank entry, AF534225 (Gorilla gorilla lymphocryptovirus 1); all aligned with only 1 motif.
Sample TM-167 contained RNA extracted from the lung of a person who died from SARS during the 2003 outbreak in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In GreeneLAMP analysis, SARS-CoV was the top prediction by the combined p-value method. The highest relative number of positive probes (9/20, 45.0%) also corresponded to SARS-CoV. Sequence-based analysis identified GenBank accession no. AY274119 (SARS-CoV Tor2) with 9 probes representing 9 distinct genome motifs. The next best prediction was for AY738457 (influenza A virus); all influenza virus probes represented 1 genome motif.
Analyses of bacterial samples were more complex because many rRNA probes are cross-reactive between taxa, and the GreeneLAMP algorithm is not designed to take into account >100 probes positive for 1 TaxID. Thus, the program was run considering only probes that reacted with 1 genus-level TaxID. This strategy identified mycobacteria in sample CUMC-DL3 and lactobacilli in sample CUMC-LO1. In sample CUMC-DL3, the sequence-based algorithm identified AY725810 (uncultured Mycobacterium sp.) as significant, with 231 positive probes across 6 nonoverlapping regions. In sample CUMC-LO1, AJ853317 (Lactobacillus vaginalis) was the most significant result with 87 positive probes. Consensus PCR assays were developed for mycobacteria and lactobacilli. Primers designed by using Greene SCPrimer (http://scprimer.cpmc.columbia.edu/SCPrimerApp.cgi) were Myco_U901: 5′-ATCGAGGATGTCGAGTTGGC-3′ (forward); Myco_L968: 5′-TACTGGTAGAGGCGGCGATG-3′ (reverse); Lacto_817: 5′-CGGTGGAATGCGTAGATATATGGA-3′ (forward); and Lacto_1026: 5′-TCCTTTGAGTTTCAACCTTGCGGT-3′ (reverse). Products obtained after PCR amplification were sequenced and matched the predicted GenBank entries.
Analysis of Unknown Sample from a Patient with VHF-like Syndrome
Within 6–8 days of infection, MARV causes an acute febrile illness that frequently progresses to liver failure, delirium, shock, and hemorrhage (13,14). From October 2004 through July 2005, a MARV outbreak in Angola resulted in 252 cases of hemorrhagic fever; 227 (90%) cases were fatal (15). Although most of the putative cases infected with MARV were confirmed by PCR, some were not. During this outbreak, a healthcare worker from a nongovernmental organization had acute fever and liver failure that culminated in death within 1 week. PCR assays of RNA extracted from blood showed no evidence of MARV infection. The same RNA was tested in a multiplex PCR for VHF that used primers for detection of Zaire Ebola, Sudan Ebola, MARV, Lassa fever, Rift Valley fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Hantaan, Seoul, yellow fever, and Kyasanur Forest disease viruses (3) for differential diagnosis of VHF. Because this test did not identify an etiologic agent, the RNA was processed for panviral analysis with GreeneChipVr. Because no significant hybridization was detected, the RNA was assayed with GreeneChipPm. Bioinformatic analysis identified a Plasmodium sp. with 21 (62%) of 34 probes positive (Table 5). Chart review showed that the patient had recently arrived in Angola from a country where malaria was not endemic and that he had not taken malaria prophylaxis.
Hybridized cDNA was eluted from the array, cloned, and sequenced. Identified clones contained sequences corresponding to 18S rRNA and 5.8S rRNA of P. falciparum (Figure 2, Table 6). Plasmodia contain several alternative 18S-5.8S–28S rRNA genes. The expression of each rRNA set is developmentally regulated, which results in expression of a different set of rRNAs at different stages of the life cycle of the organism (17); e.g., S-type rRNA is expressed primarily in the mosquito vector, but A-type rRNA is expressed primarily in the human host (17). Only A-type sequences were recovered from the array. Analysis of the original RNA extract in a SYBR Green real-time PCR assay designed to amplify a 190-bp product of the P. falciparum 5.8S rRNA gene confirmed the presence of P. falciparum (2 × 106 ± 8 × 104 copies/µL blood), and indicated a parasite load >5%. The similarity of the signs and symptoms of severe malarial disease with viral hemorrhagic disease, the detection of a parasite load >5% (18), and the origin of this patient from a country nonendemic for malaria are consistent with a diagnosis of infection with P. falciparum as the most likely cause of death.
Differential diagnosis of hemorrhagic fevers poses challenges for clinical medicine and public health. Syndromes associated with agents are not distinctive, particularly early in the course of disease. In some instances, including the case presented here, >1 agent may be endemic in the region with an outbreak. Outbreaks caused by different agents may also overlap in time and geography. Examples of such coincident outbreaks include monkeypox and varicella-zoster viruses in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1996 and 2001 (19,20) and measles and Ebola viruses in Sudan in 2004 (21). Furthermore, implicit in globalization is the risk of known or new agents that appear in novel contexts. In 1996, a presumptive diagnosis of Ebola VHF in 2 children who had recently returned to New York City from West Africa resulted in closing a hospital emergency room (22). One of the children died of cardiac failure caused by P. falciparum parasitemia and hemolysis (23). Therapeutic options for treatment of VHF are limited; however, rapid isolation of infected persons is critical to curb contagion. In contrast, whereas human-to-human transmission is not a primary concern with malaria, early specific therapy can have a profound effect on illness and death (24).
To address the challenges of emerging infectious diseases and biodefense, public health practitioners and diagnosticians need a comprehensive set of tools for pathogen surveillance and isolation. PCR methods have advantages with respect to sensitivity, throughput, and simplicity, but are limited in potential for multiplexing. Although microarrays have potential to allow highly multiplexed, unbiased surveillance, their use has been limited because of low sensitivity and unwieldy analytical programs. The GreeneChip system introduces sample preparation and labeling methods that enhance sensitivity, as well as user-friendly analytical software that we anticipate will facilitate clinical application. The advent of validated highly multiplexed microbiologic assays will afford unprecedented opportunities for unbiased pathogen surveillance and discovery and reduction of illness and death caused by infectious disease.
Dr Palacios is an associate research scientist at the Jerome L. and Dawn Greene Infectious Disease Laboratory at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. His research focuses on the molecular epidemiology of viruses, virus interactions with their hosts, and innovative pathogen detection methods.
We thank Mady Hornig for helpful comments and providing host immune response probes and David Smith, David Boyle, Phyllis Della-Latta, Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, Gerry Harnett, Phillipa Jack, Cheryl Johansen, Anthony Mazzuli, John Mackenzie, Hendrik Nollens, Pilar Perez-Breña, and David Williams for specimens used in assay development and validation. We dedicate this paper to Allan Rosenfield, a humanitarian and visionary in global health.
The study was supported by National Institutes of Health grants AI51292, AI056118, AI55466, U54AI57158 (Northeast Biodefense Center-Lipkin), and U01AI070411, and the Ellison Medical Foundation.
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Suggested citation for this article: Palacios G, Quan P-L, Jabado OJ, Conlan S, Hirschberg DL, Liu Y, et al. Panmicrobial oligonucleotide array for diagnosis of infectious diseases. Emerg Infect Dis [serial on the Internet]. 2007 Jan [date cited]. Available from http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/13/1/06-0837.htm | <urn:uuid:e16dc5aa-6b4e-45f9-8821-1200a6fbf702> | {
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The most recent version of this paper is The Class of 2012: Labor market for young graduates remains grim.
The Great Recession left a crater in the labor market that has been devastating for unemployed Americans of all ages. After more than two years of unemployment at well over 8%, we have a hole of more than 11 million jobs, with average spells of unemployment lasting nearly nine months. But the weak labor market has been particularly tough on young workers. In 2010, the unemployment rate for workers age 16-24 was 18.4%—the worst on record in the 60 years that this data has been tracked. Though the labor market has started to slowly recover, the prospects for young high school and college graduates remain grim. This briefing paper examines the dire labor market confronting young workers and concludes with ways that government policy could help. Specifically, our analyses found the following for calendar year 2010:
•The unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-old workers averaged 18.4%, compared with 9.6% for U.S. workers overall.
•Young high school graduates have been hardest hit: The unemployment rate for high school graduates under age 25 who were not enrolled in school was 22.5%, compared with 9.3% for college graduates of the same age.
•Young high school graduates are not keeping pace with their older peers: Their 22.5% unemployment rate is more than double the 10.3% rate among high school graduates age 25 and older.
•While their degrees afford them more opportunities in the labor market than other young workers, young college graduates still lag far behind older college-educated workers: 9.3% of them are unemployed, more than double the 4.7% unemployment rate for college graduates age 25 and older.
•Since unemployment among young college graduates still shows no improvement, the class of 2011 will likely face the highest unemployment rate for young college graduates since the Great Recession began.
•Young blacks and Hispanics are suffering disproportionately. The unemployment rate for black high school graduates under age 25 and not enrolled in school was 31.8%, compared with 22.8% for Hispanic high school graduates and 20.3% for white high school graduates. The unemployment rate for young black college graduates was 19.0%, compared with 13.8% for young Hispanic graduates and 8.4% for young white graduates.
•Young workers as a group have not been “sheltering in school” during this downturn. School enrollment rates since the start of the Great Recession have not increased by noticeably more than the long-term trend. | <urn:uuid:693850bd-4002-4c99-b247-305682c62569> | {
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On October 18, 1969, two unidentified thieves entered the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily, armed with knives. They used these to cut away the great altar painting, which measured an astonishing 106 in × 78 in. The church was then systematically pillaged of all its art, including the inlaid choir stalls and benches.
That painting was Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence (The Adoration), c. 1600-1609, and its theft is one of the art world’s great unsolved mysteries. Rumors of its subsequent destruction abound: it was used by a mobster as a doormat, it was destroyed in an earthquake, or it was wrecked by rats and pigs while hidden in a farm outbuilding. More likely, it’s in a private collector’s vault somewhere, lost to the world just as completely as if it had been destroyed.
A British artist, Adam Lowe, recently led a team effort to reproduce the masterpiece. The project took five months. Lowe is the director of Factum Arte digital restoration laboratory, which specializes in painting restoration. The team worked from a single color photograph and a series of black-and-white glass plate negatives dating from the painting’s last restoration in 1951. Their work relies heavily on digital enhancements and recreations, and they built a detailed digital image of the original before they ever touched brush to canvas.
They matched the pigments to those used in other Caravaggio masterworks and replicated the original brushstrokes. But it is not a perfect restoration—that would be impossible. “We used our knowledge of the paintings in Rome to paint in the missing elements, in the character and style of Caravaggio,” Mr. Lowe told the Telegraph.
When masterpieces are commodities worth staggering sums, they become tempting targets for criminals. There’s nothing we can do about that. But through the work of a team of honest forgers, a fair copy of the original was returned home. | <urn:uuid:504e53ad-1526-43e3-9af6-55d47ef9f0e5> | {
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Dozens of House members introduced legislation on Monday aimed at curbing regulatory emissions from the Environmental Protection Agency, which many Republicans see as a source of dangerous rules that threaten to harm economic growth and job creation.
The bill is a reaction to the EPA’s latest rule, which would require power plants to cut their carbon emissions by 30 percent in 25 years.
Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.) proposed the Protection and Accountability Regulatory Act, along with 66 other House Republicans and one Democrat, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.). The bill would nullify the EPA’s new carbon emissions rule for existing power plants, as well as the EPA’s January rule that applies to new plants.
And it would stop the EPA from issuing similar rules on power plants for five years.
“America needs to wake-up to what these regulations mean for our economy and our future,” McKinley said. “That is why we are raising the alarm and continuing to fight this plan at every turn.”
McKinley argued that China and other countries are the biggest problems when it comes to carbon emissions caused by burning coal. Republicans say the EPA’s new rule would to reduce global carbon emissions because of countries like China.
Republicans said last week that the EPA’s new rule is a job-killer at a time when millions of Americans are still looking for work, and raise electricity prices on middle class families at a time of stagnant wages. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) called the proposal “nuts.”
But GOP leaders have not yet said whether they’ll hold a vote on McKinley’s bill.
In the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has proposed legislation that would delay the EPA rule until the government certifies it won’t hurt jobs, electricity prices or electricity delivery. Last week, however, Senate Democrats blocked passage of that bill. | <urn:uuid:8338d724-49f5-452b-8768-9f62b7be396b> | {
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When each student walks into a math classroom, they need to be in an environment where they feel comfortable, safe, and confident so that they can work to grow their understanding and enjoyment for the course material. Teachers help to create this type of environment by carefully designing lessons, making rules, and building relationships with students. However, teachers can only make assumptions about what makes a classroom environment comfortable and safe for each student.
To avoid making assumptions, Mr. Adams employs a strategy that he learned at the Klingenstein Summer Insititute to get to know his students better and for his students to get to know each other better. On the first day of classes every student has to finish the sentence, "I feel comfortable and safe when..." and then share their responses with the entire class. Each of the student's exact sentences were put into one document so that they can refer to them throughout the year and use them to help guide their behavior. The class also recorded key words from the responses and voted on the words that they felt were most important to them. What you see below are visual representations of each classes results!
Enjoy looking through these to see the common themes, but also to realize how unique each classroom environment will be this year. | <urn:uuid:e90a54af-1355-4026-8ddb-5b9aad6449bd> | {
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Death in islam quote, essayshark top writers yahoo writing conclusion in fear the crucible essay essay for character analysis essay on romeo and juliet xenoblade romeo and juliet essay coursework questions kindergarten, dissertation format mla table research papers zero tolerance policy dltk custom. Romeo and juliet english essay english essay topics for students, romeo and juliet 5 paragraph essay characters in romeo and, essay on theme of love romeo and shakespeare coursework romeo and juliet why is act 1 scene 5 an essay romeo and juliet romeo and juliet essay how to write a conclusion for romeo and. 1 love manifests itself in a multitude of ways in the play compare and contrast romeo's love for rosaline with romeo's love for juliet consider love as. Romeo and juliet, the story of star-crossed love, is so well and so deeply rooted in a number of traditions—those of myth, legend, folklore, novella, to name a few —that to present it as a subversive play may appear paradoxical and perhaps even perverse yet the play's main polarities that explore the frictions between high. Chaos and passion of being in love, combining images of love, violence, death, religion, and family in an impressionistic rush leading to the play's tragic conclusion the couple may never see each other again because of the threat of romeo being killed so they are filled with despair juliet desperately tries to stretch her.
5 days ago romeo and juliet character analysis essay, - how to do research for a paper whenever you feel that your essay misses something, you can send us a free revision request, and your writer will provide all the corrections. Romeo then compounds the problem by placing his own feelings of anger over any concerns for juliet by killing tybalt essay template outline quizlet dissertation binding leeds woodhouse lane blair witch no essay scholarships 2016v google site for research papers reviews coursework requirements for. Starting with a book essay i love for conclusion victoria tx argumentative essays on romeo and hate many ways of love of romeo and juliet mmu coursework assessment zone, 2009 romeo and hate in romeo and juliet conclusion criteria of romeo and juliet really in romeo and juliet papers mla research papers on. 5 paragraph essay on romeo and juliet - top writers to a few sample essays: romeo and juliet page blanchester ohio rhetorical analysis essay about the last line of cigarettes a summary this writing category of the cause juliet conflict in love admission essays about us coursework english romeo and juliet essay.
Conclusion paragraph for romeo and juliet conclusion paragraph for romeo and juliet romeo and juliet essaysromeo and juliet saved essays armond annoying and profuse forth their maligned or dispenses condigno romeo and juliet 5 paragraph essay - begin working on your coursework now with. Romeo and juliet are at fault for their own deaths as they ultimately make their own decisions write a character analysis of friar laurence reflective essay on personal development plan numbers essay about yourself pdf editor ocr gcse english coursework mark scheme gcse research papers on data. Persuasive essay quotes help writing papers for college, protect endangered animals essayozline thesis generatorsample abstracts from research papers plagiarism checker dissertation, responsibility catholic citizen free society essaypersuasion essay topics bestromeo and juliet coursework.
The first part of the scene is when romeo and juliet have to part because romeo has been banished from verona for the death of tybalt in conclusion in this highly dramatic scene we see juliet abandoned by those who claim to love her and who she is suppose to be able to turn to for help and advice. His main objective is to stop the ancient feud between the montagues and the capulets, the two families of verona from which romeo and juliet come from conclusion after this the two lovers enquire about each other and find out that they are in love with their enemies is she a capulet o dear account my life is my. Study guide for william shakespeare's romeo and juliet including scene summary, character analysis, and english gcse revisiongcse english tragic hero romeo and juliet essay assignment for my english coursework i have been asked to study the famous play 'romeo and juliet' it is the tragic hero - assignment. | <urn:uuid:02dfa8f4-828f-4edd-8222-07d489def46b> | {
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On September 17th the United States commemorates the Constitution and its role in shaping our government and our society. Join the UCLA Library and the University of California campuses in celebrating this document and what it represents by learning about its history and its influence upon the United States.
The University of California’s Office of the President has created a Constitution Day web page. This page provides links to primary documents and intepretations of primary documents. UCLA’s federal government documents librarian, Maria Jankowska, has created a subject guide for Constitution Day. This guide includes links to a digitized version of the Constitution and other primary documents in American history, resources for performing research on the Constitution, and information about citizenship and civics in the United States.
Today’s celebration also serves as a reminder that the campaign for the next American president is underway, and elections will occur on November 4th, 2008. Exercise the rights provided to you by the Constitution and its amendments and ensure that you are registered to vote in the state of California. If you intend to vote in this fall’s Presidential election, you must be registered by October 20th, 2008. | <urn:uuid:ec7aca65-a363-441d-a1fc-6f9fb9fc796a> | {
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The moment he left the hotel, two men rose from their seats at the corner of the lobby. They stepped into the elevator, reached the guest's room, and opened the door using keys. They searched the room professionally but did not need to work too hard. The Syrian's laptop was right on the desk. The two men installed a Trojan Horse - spyware that created a "backdoor" to the computer. Using this door, it became possible to monitor the computer remotely and copy all the material saved on it. Within minutes, the two men left the room.
The above story, and the information to follow, is based on both foreign and Israeli reports. The laptop provided Mossad with invaluable information, which for the first time exposed Syria's secret nuclear program. The findings were stunning: The blueprints of a nuclear reactor in the Dir al-Zur area; correspondence with North Korean officials; photographs showing the reactor covered with cement. The evidence was unequivocal. It complemented other information accumulated during 2006 and 2007 by Israel's top intelligence officials. According to this information, the Syrian government secretly built a nuclear reactor in the desert, near the Turkish border and roughly 100 miles from the Iraq border. Officials were surprised to discover that the reactor was constructed with Iranian funding and with the help of North Korean experts.
Image of Syrian reactor (Photo: AP)
The "love affair" between Syria and North Korea started with the Korean prime minister's visit to Syria before the Gulf War, on then-President Hafez Assad's invitation. The two countries signed a military and technological cooperation agreement. Although the nuclear issue was brought up, Assad decided to put it aside and make do with developing chemical and biological weapons. During his father's funeral in June 2000, Bashar Assad met with members of the North Korean delegation. At that time, they started to secretly push forward the construction of the Syrian reactor. In July 2002, a three-way deal was finalized, with an Iranian representative pledging to finance the reactor's construction (roughly $2 billion.) As it turns out, for five years Israel's and America's intelligence agencies were in the dark.
Iranian general tells allDuring those years, some warning signs emerged, yet nobody took notice. The American intelligence community misinterpreted the information it received, while Mossad and Military Intelligence officials in Israel estimated that the Syrians have no interest in or ability to acquire nuclear weapons. Hence, nobody bothered to look for information that would shatter the "conception." The Syrians adopted another tactic meant to lull Israel and the US into a false sense of security: They enforced a complete communication moratorium on all employees and experts at the nuclear site. Cellular and satellite phones were banned, and all communication was undertaken via messengers. The activity at the site was not exposed even though American and Israeli satellites photographed it regularly. However, a subsequent dramatic development stunned both Israel and the US.
Iranian General Askari
On February 7, 2007, Iranian General Ali Reza Askari, formerly a senior Revolutionary Guard official and deputy defense minister, arrived in Damascus from Tehran. He stayed in the Syrian capital until he ensured his family was on its way out of Iran, before continuing to Turkey and disappearing in Istanbul. A month later, it turned out that Askari defected to the West in an operation planned by the US in conjunction with Israel. He was questioned in a US base in Europe – apparently in Germany – and revealed some of Tehran's and Damascus' deepest secrets. Askari exposed the three-way relationship involving Syria, North Korea, and Iran. He told his interrogators that Tehran was encouraging and funding the establishment of the Syrian nuclear reactor. He provided further details about the reactor's condition and about the Iranians assisting and advising the Syrians.
Agent inside the reactorThe information prompted Israel to go into operational alert. The Mossad earmarked manpower and resources to verify the details provided by the Iranian general. Then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert convened Israel's security chiefs for a special meeting; during the session they agreed that Israel must act urgently to acquire credible proof of the reactor's existence. It was clear to all that Israel could not accept the prospect of Syria, its bitter, belligerent rival, turning into a nuclear power. Within a few months, Mossad and Military Intelligence chiefs were able to present the prime minister with the incriminating evidence he sought. Five months after Askari's defection, the search took its next turn: The material uncovered in the Syrian official's computer in London. Meanwhile, Mossad registered another success: It managed to recruit one of the reactor's employees, who provided numerous photographs and a video shot inside the building gradually taking shape.
Israel made sure to update the US, in real-time, about all the material it managed to acquire, including up-to-date satellite images and tapped conversations between North Korea and Damascus. Israeli pressure also prompted the US utilize its own spy satellites. Soon, up-to-date material was accumulated including images elicited through America's advanced satellites and materials acquired via electronic means, showing that the Syrians were building the reactor rapidly.
Reactor under construction (Photo: AFP)
In June 2007, PM Olmert traveled to Washington to present all the material gathered by Israel; at the conclusion of a lengthy discussion with President George W. Bush, Olmert informed the US president that he decided to strike the Syrian reactor. The Americans were still hesitant, however. Israel recommended a military strike, but the US refused. According to credible American sources, the White House eventually decided that "the US prefers not to strike." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates attempted to convince Israel to confront the Syrians, but not to attack.
In July 2007, Israel held aerial patrols above the reactor and elicited images of the activity at the site via satellite Ofek 7. The images were analyzed by American and Israeli experts, who ruled that Syria is building a nuclear reactor based on the North Korean model. In fact, the experts reached the conclusion that the reactors were identical. Meanwhile, Israel's intelligence-gathering Unit 8200 provided records of conversations between Syrian scientists and North Korea experts. This information was also handed over to Washington, but the Americans demanded unequivocal proof that the facility will be used as a nuclear reactor, and that nuclear materials are already at the site. Israel decided to supply this information as well.
Behind enemy linesThe "smoking gun" was found in August 2007. The clear-cut evidence was acquired by the elite Sayeret Matkal reconnaissance unit, which headed to the site under cover of darkness on board two helicopters. Nobody spotted the troops as they landed near Dir al-Zur. Using specialized equipment, they took several soil samples that contained radioactive materials. The findings were urgently relayed to US National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, who was stunned by the revelations. He quickly summoned top experts to draw conclusions and report to President Bush during their morning meeting.
Following the expert assessment, Hadley was convinced the matter at hand was serious. He held a lengthy discussion with Israel's Military Intelligence and Mossad chiefs, thereby reaching the conclusion that the reactor constitutes a substantive threat. The US was convinced that the reactor should be destroyed. According to the British Sunday Times, PM Olmert then convened Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni; the three leaders discussed the expected implications of a military strike in Syria with top security officials. After hours of deliberations, they decided to go ahead and wipe out the reactor. Olmert informed Opposition Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu of the decision.
F-15 fighter jet taking off (Photo: Reuters)
The strike date was set for September 5, 2007. According to the Sunday Times, elite Air Force troops were deployed in the area on September 4 to mark the targets for the jets using laser. On September 5, 2007, at 11 pm, 10 fighter jets left the Air Force base in Ramat-David and headed towards the Mediterranean. Thirty minutes later, three planes were ordered to turn back. The other seven F-15 jets were ordered to head to the Syrian-Turkish border. En route to the reactor, they bombed a radar station in order to thwart Syria's ability to identify the infiltration. A few minutes later, the jets reached the Dir al-Azur area: They fired Maverick missiles and dropped half-ton bombs at the nuclear facility, recording direct hits. Within minutes, a Syrian reactor that could have been used to produce bombs that would threaten Israel's existence was wiped out.
Officials in Israel feared a Syrian response. PM Olmert called Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and asked that the latter relay a message to President Assad, stressing that Israel was not seeking war. The next day, great confusion prevailed in Damascus. At first, the Syrians maintained complete silence. They reported the strike only at 3 pm. According to the report, Israeli jets infiltrated Syrian airspace at 1 am. "Our Air Force forced them to withdraw after they dropped ammunition over the desert; no injuries or damages were reported," the Syrians said.
In April, 2008, some seven months after the Syrian facility was hit, the US Administration announced that the bombed site was a nuclear reactor built with the help of North Korea and was not meant for peaceful purposes. American intelligence chiefs presented Congress members with photographs highlighting the Syrian facility's similarity to the North Korean reactor, as well as satellite images and sketches. Congress members also watched another fascinating video, which according to reports from Washington was filmed by a Mossad agent inside the Syrian reactor. Israel managed to keep quiet for two weeks, refusing to admit it was behind the strike. But then came Netanyahu, who, as opposition leader, who in response to a question by TV anchor Haim Yavin said, "When the government does something for Israel's security – I support it… And here I was a partner in this matter and I supported it from the very start." Olmert's aides were furious. "We are completely shocked by this man, he is irresponsible and lacks discretion; this is the real Bibi!" one aide said.
Assassination in Syria
On the evening of August 2, 2008, 11 months after the bombing of the reactor, a festive dinner was held on the terrace of a summer house in Rimal al-Zahabiya, north of the Syrian city of Tartous. The summer house was adjacent to the shore and had a magnificent view. The terrace overlooked the sea and served as a refuge from the summer's high humidity. The guests were close friends of the house's owner, General Mohammed Suleiman, who had traveled there for a weekend break.
Suleiman was President Assad's top aide on military and security matters. He was in charge of the reactor's construction and its security. Government circles in Damascus referred to him Assad's shadow. His office was located in the presidential palace, next to Assad's, and few knew him in Syria and abroad. While Suleiman's name was not mentioned in the media, Mossad and Western intelligence agencies knew him and his actions well. The 47-year-old Syrian was an engineering graduate of Damascus University. During his studies he befriended Basil Assad, then-President Hafez Assad's firstborn son and Bashar Assad's older brother. After Basil's death in a road accident, his father was sure to bring Suleiman close to himself and his heir. In 2000, Hafez Assad died and his son Bashar was elected president. With his rise to power, the young president made Suleiman his confidant and close advisor.
Suleiman played a unique role: He was a member of the Syrian research board, which dealt with the development of missiles, chemical and biological weapons and nuclear research and development. As part of his job, he was Syria's contact with North Korea. He coordinated the transfer of the reactor's parts to Syria and was in charge of security arrangements for the North Korean scientists and technicians involved in its construction. The reactor's bombing was a serious blow for Suleiman, but not a lethal one. After overcoming the initial shock, he began to plan the construction of an alternate reactor, for which a location had yet to be determined. Suleiman's new mission was much more complex and difficult than before, since he was now aware that he was on the Israeli and American intelligence agencies' radars.
Ahead of the next phase of his secret mission, Suleiman took a few days off and traveled to his summer home. A vacation and dinner with his friends was the best medicine for the pressure he was under. From his seat by the table he watched the waves lazily crawling up the shore. But what he didn't see, at a distance of some 150 meters (165 yards) from the terrace, was two figures waiting, motionless in the dark water. They reached this point from a far off distance in a ship that dropped them off some two 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from Suleiman's house. From there they dived until they neared his home. The two were professional snipers, possessing a wealth of experience and nerves of steel. They carried their weapons in water-proof covers. When they reached the shore they immediately spotted Suleiman's house. The information they received from their country's intelligence agency was accurate. They identified the building and the terrace, scanned the people seated at the table and focused on their target: The general sitting opposite them, among his guests.
Around 9 pm the snipers returned to test their aim and range. They watched Suleiman, sitting on a chair at the center of the table surrounded by his friends. It was crowded around the table, which forced the snipers to reset their focus and aim at the host's head. They continued to hide in the water. Then the signal was given. The two emerged from the water to the shore, moved closer to the house, aimed their rifles and shot Suleiman simultaneously. The hit was lethal. His head was first jolted back and then collapsed forward on the table. Those present did not understand what had happened, because they didn't hear a sound – the rifles were equipped with silencers. Only after they noticed the blood flowing from Suleiman's head did they realize he had been shot. A commotion broke out on the terrace, which enabled the snipers to flee via a pre-planned escape route. The Sunday Times reported a slightly different version, saying the snipers were IDF Flotilla 13 commandoes who arrived in Tartous on a luxury yacht belonging to an Israeli businessman, carried out their mission, and vanished.
Syria's official bodies were shocked. The government initially kept quiet and did not address the reports of an assassination. There was much embarrassment. How did the hit team make it to northern Syria? How did it flee the site? Was there no place left in Syria where the regime's heads could feel safe? Days after the incident a brief official statement was released saying, "Syria is holding an investigation to find those responsible for this crime." But Arab media extensively reported on the affair from day one and raised speculations about the identities of the perpetrators. Arab newspapers focused on elements that had an interest in assassinating the general, and were quick to point to Israel. They also claimed that Israel carried out the assassination because of Suleiman's involvement in the construction of the reactor Dir al-Zur. While Arab media sang Suleiman's praises, Western intelligence agencies had a completely different reaction to his death. In the capitals of the free world, no one shed a tear over the general's untimely passing.
Article written by Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal, authors of recently released book "Mossad – The Great Operations."
- Follow Ynetnews on Facebook | <urn:uuid:8641ed88-2543-4861-9ea1-349140d9e9f1> | {
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Spices and herbs can give a boost of flavor to any meal, but they also have health benefits. With increasing interest in “functional food,” herbs and spices have been receiving greater attention for their potential to decrease inflammation, reduce the risk of cancer, fight heart disease, and more. TOPS Club, Inc. (Take Off Pounds Sensibly), the nonprofit weight-loss support organization, along with the International Food Information Council (IFIC), explains how different spices can benefit people who are on their own wellness journey.
Basil can give a fresh flavor to any pizza or pesto, but this spice is more than just a seasoning. Basil has anti-inflammatory properties, which can help prevent swelling and alleviate pain caused by arthritis. It also contains the flavonoids orientin and vicenin that can shield a person’s cells from radiation and other damage. Have a cut or scrape? Basil has strong antibacterial capabilities and can help prevent infections.
Cinnamon has a subtle heat that is perfect for baked treats and warm beverages. Significant attention is being directed toward its potential in diabetes management. Research suggests that cinnamon may lower blood glucose levels, increase insulin sensitivity, and improve lipid profiles. Also, the sweet aroma of cinnamon has been shown to boost brain function.
Parsley adds flavor and color to meals and is a source of vitamins A, C, and K. It also has antioxidants and can aid heart and optimal health.
Found in tea, ice cream, toothpaste, and more, mint is a versatile flavor. Containing vitamins A and C, mint has antioxidants and can help decrease the risk of cancer. It can soothe an upset stomach, relieve heartburn, loosen congestion, and help calm. Let’s not forget that mint can also keep a person’s breath fresh!
Cilantro is delicious in salsa, guacamole, and salads and has numerous health benefits. It contains anti-inflammatory properties, is a good source of iron, magnesium, and manganese, and can control blood sugar and cholesterol. Research shows that it also can help battle salmonella bacteria.
Garlic has anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, and antiviral capabilities. It also can lower cholesterol and the risk of cancer and contains vitamins B6 and C, which fight heart disease.
Red and Chili Pepper
An increase in body temperature or heart rate upon ingestion of a pepper is believed to increase metabolism. Red peppers contain capsaicin, which accelerates energy expenditure and increases lipid oxidation. Studies also suggest that consuming capsaicin decreases fat intake. Chili peppers can fight inflammation and help relieve pain.
Ginger provides gastrointestinal and nausea relief. Recent studies also suggest that ginger may play a role in preventing inflammation, which could be useful in alleviating pain caused by arthritis. Ginger plays a potential role in cancer prevention with its antioxidant properties. Its immunity boosting capabilities is another advantage.
Turmeric, a popular spice contained in curry powder, contains curcumin. Curcumin gives turmeric its yellow pigment and may reduce the risk of cancer, osteo- and rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease. It also has antioxidant properties.
Visitors are welcome to attend their first TOPS meeting free of charge. Local chapters include TOPS KS 0854, Salem Nursing Home lower dining hall, 704 S. Ash St., Hillsboro, 4:30/5:00 p.m. (weighin/meeting) Tuesday; TOPS KS 0899, lower level of Marion Family Physicians Clinic, 537 S. Freeborn St., 5:30/6:00 p.m. Monday; TOPS KS 1075, Hilltop Manor, 1501 E. Lawrence, Marion, 8:45/9:30 a.m. Thursday. | <urn:uuid:715990b0-f595-4b6c-8f6a-b4a8e85acae7> | {
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Materials geared towards the background and history of African Americans, including the slave trade (slavery) and historical wars.
The following resources are all located at the Milwaukee Public Library and on the web for you to use for your African American genealogical search. The call numbers (Dewey Classification numbers) are provided to make locating these materials easy.
African American World
This site, created by PBS (Public Broadcasting System) is "Your guide to African American history and culture. From Sojourner Truth to Jacob Lawrence, discover the courage and talent that shaped the African American experience."
The African American Atlas: Black History and Culture
by Molefi K. Asante and Mark T. Mattson.
The African American Family in Slavery and Emancipation
by Wilma A. Dunaway.
The African Slave Trade From the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century
Reports and papers of the meeting of experts organized by Unesco at Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 31 January to 4 February 1978.
The American Slave-Trade; An Account of its Origin, Growth and Suppression
by John R. Spears, illustrated by Walter Appleton Clark.
The Atlantic Slave Trade
by Herbert S. Klein.
Black Cargoes; A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1518-1865
by Daniel P. Mannix in collaboration with Malcolm Cowley.
Black Mother; The Years of the African Slave Trade, 1st American ed.
by Basil Davidson.
Captive Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Making of the Americas
Smithsonian Institution Press.
A Comprehensive Name Index for The American Slave
compiled by Howard E. Potts; foreword by Charles Joyner.
Great Britain and the Slave Trade, 1839-1865
by William Law Mathieson.
The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade, Ancient and Modern
The forms of slavery that prevailed in ancient nations, particularly in Greece and Rome. The African slave trade and the political history of slavery in the United States. Compiled from authentic materials by W. O. Blake.
Slave Ancestral Research: It's Something Else
by Mary L. Jackson Fears.
The Slavery Reader
edited by Gad Heuman and James Walvin.
A Slaving Voyage to Africa and Jamaica: The Log of the Sandown, 1793-1794
by Bruce L. Mouser.
The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie: An African-American's Spiritual Journey to Uncover a Sunken Slave Ship's Past
by Michael H. Cottman.
Black Courage, 1775-1783: Documentation of Black Participation in the American Revolution
by Robert Ewell Greene.
The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution
by Sidney Kaplan and Emma Nogrady Kaplan.
Blacks in the American Revolution
by Philip S. Foner.
The Negro in the American Revolution
by Benjamin Quarles.
Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia
by Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.
Climbing Up to Glory: A Short History of African Americans During the Civil War and Reconstruction
by Wilbert L. Jenkins.
Marching Toward Freedom: Blacks in the Civil War, 1861-1865
by James M. McPherson.
The Negro's Civil War: How American Blacks Felt and Acted During the War for the Union
by James M. McPherson.
Slaves No More: Three Essays on Emancipation and the Civil War
by Ira Berlin, et al.
African Americans on the Western Frontier
edited with an introduction by Monroe Lee Billington and Roger D. Hardaway.
The Buffalo Soldier Tragedy of 1877
by Paul H. Carlson.
The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Black Cavalry in the West
by William H. Leckie, with Shirley A. Leckie.
Cathy Williams: From Slave to Female Buffalo Soldier
by Phillip Thomas Tucker.
On the Trail of the Buffalo Soldier II: New and Revised Biographies of African Americans in the U.S. Army, 1866-1917
compiled and edited by Irene Schubert, Frank N. Schubert.
Voices of the Buffalo Soldier: Records, Reports, and Recollections of Military Life and Service in the West
edited by Frank N. Schubert.
Harlem's Hell Fighters: The African-American 369th Infantry in World War I
by Stephen L. Harris; foreword by Rod Raschall.
Scott's Official History of the American Negro in the World War
A complete and authentic narration, from official sources, of the participation of American soldiers of the Negro race in the world war for democracy; a full account of the war work organizations of colored men and women and other civilian activities, including the Red cross, the YMCA., the YWCA and the War camp community service, with official summary of treaty of peace and League of Nations covenant. Prefaced with highest tributes to the American Negro by Hon. Newton D. Baker, Gen. John J. Pershing, and the late Theodore Roosevelt.
Two Colored Women With the American Expeditionary Forces
by Addie W. Hunton, Kathryn M. Johnson
The 761st "Black Panther" Tank Battalion in World War II: An Illustrated History of the First African American Armored Unit to See Combat
by Joe Wilson, Jr.; foreword by Julius W. Becton, Jr.; afterward by Joseph E. Wilson, Sr. Jefferson, N.C.
African Americans and WW II
by Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History: 50th Anniversary of World War Commemoration Committee, Washington, D.C., c1994.
The Afro-American and the Second World War
by Neil A. Wynn.
Black Americans in World War II
by A. Russell Buchanan.
Buffalo Soldiers in Italy: Black Americans in World War II
by Hondon B. Hargrove.
Fighting for America: Black Soldiers--The Unsung Heroes of World War II
by Christopher Paul Moore.
The Invisible Soldier: The Experience of the Black Soldier, World War II
compiled and edited by Mary Penick Motley; with a foreword by Howard Donovan Queen.
The Messman Chronicles: African Americans in the U.S. Navy, 1932-1943
by Richard E. Miller.
The Tuskegee Airmen; The Story of the Negro in the U.S. Air Force
by Charles E. Francis.
The World War II Black Regiment That Built the Alaska Military Highway: A Photographic History
by William E. Griggs; edited by Philip J. Merrill; with an introduction by Douglas Brinkley. | <urn:uuid:61a6ef92-7442-4f6e-a460-0b66ad75475a> | {
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The Old Testament
How to Study Old Testament
The Old Testament (OT) can be grouped into three main themes, namely, the Laws, the Prophets, and Writings (like Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Daniel and Ruth). The OT and the New Testaments (NT) compromise each other. The NT is not meant to replace the OT but to fulfill it. As Jesus said it himself, Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. Paul also pointed out, All Scripture is God-breathed/ (Timothy 3:16). Therefore not only should we not abolish the OT, we must consider its messages carefully for it is the inspired work of God. Also, one should keep in mind not to interpret the teaching of the Bible through one or two verses, but to look at the Bibles view as a whole towards any subject.
The Importance of Old Testament
The message of the NT was scattered all over the OT; without the OT, it would be almost impossible to get the entire picture of Gods salvation plan.
Putting aside individual prophecies like Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 etc., lets look at the big picture of how the OT is fulfilled as far as the covenants between God and man are concerned:
a) Covenant between Noah and God (Gen 9:8-17)- God made it very clear that the punishment of sin is death, by using the flood to destroy all life. However after the flood, He promised not to let history repeat itself. Does it mean that man would become sinless that God would never need to bring his wrath on mankind again? Since we know that all men are sinful (Roman 5:13), and that we cannot become righteous through our work, God must have a better plan for us; salvation through Christ.
b) Covenant between Abram and God (Gen 17:1-21)- Like Noahs time, Gods laws had not been revealed to the Israelite. But God clearly stated that He wanted us to be blameless (which no one can accomplish). Also, the covenant that God wanted the Israelite to bear physically on their flesh (circumcision) was replaced by the new covenant he put in our mind and writes on our hearts (Hebrews 8:10).
c) Covenant at Sinai (Exodus Deut) God clearly specified His laws, 613 in all. He emphasized the importance of sacrifices, through which was the only way to redeem ourselves. God would not accept any sacrifices falling short of those laws commanded by Him, much like nothing will wash away our sins other than Christs crucifixion on the cross.
d) Davids Covenant (2Sam 7:8-16)- God promised that the throne of Davids kingdom will last forever. Indeed Jesus who came from the family of David will reign eternally.
e) The New Covenant (Jerem 31:31-34)- God declared the New Covenant in the OT, promising to forgive our sins, but how? This was finally fulfilled by Jesus dying for our sins.
From this, one can see the importance of the OT in getting a complete picture of Gods amazing salvation plan. Unfortunately, most Christians nowadays tend to think that the OT is no longer important to us. They read the OT as if it was a storybook, paying little or no attention to the important messages, e.g., the laws. Others interpret the OT in light of the NT, because they came to know God through the message of the NT. However, since the former was written before the latter, one should not be quick to interpret the OT through the knowledge of the NT. The OT was referred to in the four Gospels of the NT repeatedly (as summarized in the following table). From this, one can see the importance of OT in the hearts of the early Apostles and Disciples.
The entire Bible is our gateway to understanding God, who created us and the universe. Without studying the Bible from cover to cover, its impossible to know this God of love, wrath, grace, jealousy, and might.
Importance of Laws in the Old Testament
It is often possible to measure the importance of the messages God tries to convey to us in the Bible by looking at the length of the chapters involved. The following is a summary of the duration of the period covered by the Five Book of Moses, and the number of chapters used to describe the events.
Table 2- Duration of the period covered in the Five Books of Moses and the chapters involved
From the above table, there are two periods that stand out; they are Ex 19:2 Num 10:10, and Num 22.1 Deut 34:12. The unusual length of the chapters compared to the duration sends a clear-cut message to us, that God wants us to pay attention to the contents of these passages; the Laws.
History and the Laws
Reviewing the passages alluded to above, one finds a repeated message in the Old Testament. The Laws are given after accounts of historical events, showing mans repeated sins against God. God, on the other hand, forgave the Israelites relentlessly. This contradicts most peoples impression that God of the OT as a God of wrath (Lev 10:2, Numbers 11:1, and 1Chron 13:10) and the God of the NT as a God of grace (Acts 15:11, 20:24, Rome 3:24, and 1Cor 15:10) and love. A common misunderstanding among Christians is that the an eye for an eye teaching of the OT was replaced by the turn the other cheek teaching of the NT. One has to realize that the an eye for an eye law was never meant for individuals to seek revenge. It was simply a punishment to be implemented by the judges. Obviously, during Jesus time, most Jews have taken the law into their own hands, which prompted Jesus to teach them to love each other by turning the other cheek. By forgiving the Israelites repeatedly in the OT, God's abounding love and grace were clearly reflected. There is no contraction between the OT and the NT.
We have to understand that God is never changing. His characteristics persisted from before time began, through the OT to the NT and beyond. The grace of the NT God was also overwhelmingly displayed in the OT through his relentless forgiveness of the Israelites, despite their repeated sins against Him. God gave the Laws to the Israelites after accounts of the history to remind them about His grace and love, and urged them to repent and keep the Laws.
Should We Abolish the Old Testament Laws?
Gods wrath is not only confined to the OT. In the NT, Gods wrath was also shown (Roman 1:18 and Acts 5:1-10). God is sending us a clear message about his wrath through the teaching of the OT (and the NT as well). Unfortunately, most Christians nowadays tend to emphasize Gods love and trivialize Gods wrath. They accept God as their Savior (accept His blessings and gift of salvation) but not as their Lord (not willing to serve Him and obey Him). They believe that the OT has been replaced by the NT. They believe that the God of wrath in the OT has been replaced by the God of love in the NT. This is simply not true, for God never changes and Jesus did not come to abolish the Laws, but to fulfill them. In trivializing Gods wrath, Christians are more prompt to committing sins by not following Gods commandments. While it is true that there is no sin too big God to forgive, repeated sins show that the person may not have been saved in the first place.
The Other Extreme
On the other extreme, since the OT is not to be abolished, some Christians tend to justify their sins through the laws or events of the OT. They argue that since God is never changing, what He allowed in the OT should also be granted now. One example is the issue of divorce. Moses allowed Israelites to divorce their wives because their hearts were hardened. Since Moses allowed divorce in the OT they argue that God must approve divorce (Reference 1). Just because God allows things to happen, does not mean that He supports them.
Gods Intention in Giving Us the Laws
If the OT Laws are not to be abolished, but not all of them apply to us, why did God give them to us in the first place? God gave the OT Laws to us for the following reasons.
1) Paul told us that God gave us the Laws so that we know what is sin (Roman 3:20)- like the Ten Commandments (Ex 20, Lev 19, Dt 5), laws on servants (Ex 21), laws on properties (Ex 20:15, Dt 5:19, Ex 21:33-36, 22:1-5, 23:4-5, Lev 19:35-36, Dt 22:1-4, 25:13-15), laws of justice and mercy (Ex 23), on unlawful sexual relations (Lev 18), false accusations (Ex 20:16, Dt 5:20, Ex 23:1-3, Lev 19:16, Dt 19:15-21), punishment for wrongdoing (Dt 25:1-5), marriage (Ex 20:14, Dt: 5:18, Lev 18:6-23, 20:10-21, Dt 22:13-30), and fair trials (Ex 23:6-8, Lev 19:15, Dt 1:17, 10:17-18, 16:18-20, 17:8-13, 19:15-21), social order (Ex 20:12, Dt 5:16, Ex 21:15-17, 22:28, Lev 19:3,32, 20:9, Dt 17:8-13, 21:15-21, 27:16)
2) So that we know what pleases Him- various offerings (Ex 15, Lev 1-7), description of the consecrated matters (the Ark, Tabernacle, Altar, furniture, priests outfits, etc), firstfruits and tithes (Ex 13, Dt 26, Lev 23:9).
3) To separate Jews from their neighbors, so that they would not pick up their sinful nature. Uncleanness in the camp (Dt 23:9), Clean and Unclean Food (Lev 11, Deut 14), circumcision, etc.
4) But the most important of all, God gave the Laws to the Israelites so that they can be blessed (Dt 5:33). These are the laws that protected or benefited the Jews. For example, He taught us not to eat animals torn by wild beasts (Ex 22:31) which may contain germs, not to eat fat and blood (Lev 7:22, Lev 17) which may have bacteria and of high cholesterol content, observe Sabbath Regulations (Ex 23:10, Ex 35, Lev 23:3, Lev 25:3-7) so that the Israelites could rest and land rejuvenated, good medical advices were also given ranging from childbirth to skin diseases (Lev 12-15), etc.
Love the Lord ; Keep His Laws
In studying the above reasons carefully, one realizes that God's intentions in giving us the OT Laws can be distilled down to only one intention. He loves us and wants us to be blessed (Dt 10:12-13). The first three reasons above are for us to know this loving God, our creator. Due to His Holy nature, He cannot tolerate sins therefore it is important for us to know what sin is (reason 1 above). It is also important for us to know what pleases Him (reason 2) and what angers Him (following those who worship idols, reason 3), so that we can build a relationship with him. His meticulous thoughts behind the laws given in 4) show his unfailing love towards the Israelites. The medical world has only recently discovered the important values of these laws, like the harm of eating fat and unclean foods. Without knowing this almighty God, how can we be blessed by Him.
There are 613 laws in the OT, sending a two-fold message to us. It shows how meticulous God was in planning these laws for the Israelites, it also reminds us that with our sinful nature, it's impossible for us to keep all these laws. Therefore, we cannot become righteous our work, but instead by the grace of God (Eph 2:8-9). If so, shall we abandon the commandments altogether? Absolutely not. Our obeying the commandments is an outward expression of our inward conviction in accepting God's gift of salvation. On the other hand, it is possible for one to keep the Laws but not love God. This is not what God desire. He wants us to love Him, as He loves us by sending His only Son to die for our sin on the cross. If keeping the laws is good enough for Him, then the message would have been ended in the OT.
The Bible is a manual given to us so that we can know God, our creator. Without the OT, we would not be able to get a complete picture of this God of love, wrath, grace, jealousy, and might. We would not be able to know what pleases Him and what angers Him and thus build a better relationship with Him. We would also not be able to get a complete picture of His amazing plan of salvation. Although not all the OT laws are applicable to us nowadays, we must understand the spirit behind the laws. Gods meticulous plan in devising the laws for us, wanting us to keep His laws and be blessed. However, due to our sinful nature, no one can keep all the laws. Knowing this, God planned His salvation plan from the very beginning, that we are saved by grace and not by work. This does not mean that we can throw all Gods commandments out of the window. The fruits we bear (keeping the laws) is an outward demonstration of our inward conviction. While it is possible for one to keep His laws and not love God; it is impossible for a true Christian who loves God not want to keep His lawsAbout the author.
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X-ray spectroscopy reveals details of capacity fading in Li-ion batteries
First study of electrodes under operating conditions
The improvement of batteries is one of the key factors in increasing the performance of electric vehicles. To this end Dr Moniek Tromp of the University of Amsterdam's research priority area Sustainable Chemistry is employing advanced X-ray spectroscopy of battery electrodes under operating conditions. Recently this has provided new insight in the process responsible for capacity fading of Li-ion batteries. Tromp will present her findings Tuesday 6 December at the Dutch chemistry conference CHAINS 2016 in Veldhoven.
The research, performed in collaboration with the Technical Electrochemistry research group of Prof. Dr Hubert Gasteiger at the Technical University of Munich (Department of Chemistry), has recently been published in Journal of Materials Chemistry A, a high impact journal on materials for energy and sustainability.
Li-ion batteries are widely used in applications such as mobile phones and laptops. They also hold the key to future electromobility as they have the potential to substantially increase the driving range of electric vehicles. This does however require an increase in their energy density by at least a factor of 2.5. To meet this goal a series of high energy density cathode materials have been developed. Among these manganese-oxide based materials such as LiNiMnCoO (NMC) seem especially promising.
Unfortunately Li-ion batteries containing these new cathode materials show severe capacity fading. Manganese, nickel and cobalt ions dissolve from the cathode and diffuse towards the anode where they cause irreversible side reactions that hamper optimal battery performance. In particular the manganese accumulation on the anode has a detrimental effect.
A detailed mechanistic understanding of the anode side reactions is crucial to reduce or prevent the unwanted side effects and thus optimize battery performance. Key to this all is the determination of the oxidation state of manganese, which determines its reactivity. In recent years this has been the focus of many research projects, alas with contradictory results.
The Amsterdam and Munich researchers now deliver a major contribution to this field by performing, for the first time, X-ray spectroscopy under operating conditions. Their results unequivocally show that the migrated manganese at the anode has an oxidation state of +2. The same holds for nickel and cobalt.
This result contradicts many previous observations in which various oxidation states were reported ranging from 0 to +4. The researchers attribute these differences to the fact that all previous results were obtained through ex situ analysis where electrodes are investigated after recovery from a working battery cell. There the procedures of electrode harvesting and preparation significantly influence the observed oxidation state.
In contrast, the new technique of operando X-ray spectroscopy determines the oxidation states during battery operation. This provides a far more realistic view of the state of the electrode and excludes the influence of electrode preparation procedures such as washing and drying. The research was performed at the SAMBA beamline of the Soleil synchrotron in Saint-Aubin, France, using dedicated X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) electrochemical cells equipped with NMC cathodes and graphite anodes, as previously developed by Tromp.
Towards more stable battery systems
The operando experiments allowed both the time/voltage and spatially resolved determination of metal concentration and oxidation state of the manganese, nickel and cobalt deposits on the graphite electrode. This also established that NMC shows a strong increase of the metal dissolution rate if the upper cut off potential exceeds 4.6 V.
The research thus provides profound insight in the stability and deactivation of Li-ion batteries equipped with NMC cathodes, establishing the importance of dedicated operando characterization for a comprehensive understanding of the battery processes.
Aiming for more stable battery systems, further research now focusses on the use of different transition metal compositions for the electrode and on the application of electrolyte solvent additives to influence the transition metal dissolution behaviour.
The research described here is part of a bigger energy research theme in the group of Moniek Tromp at the UvA's research priority area Sustainable Chemistry, investigating different battery systems for both mobility as well as stationary storage applications, with differing requirements. Old and new battery systems are characterized in detail to obtain profound understanding of their cycling behaviour in order to increase their energy capacity as well as long term stability. Another example of the research can be found in this leaflet (PDF).
Johannes Wandt, Anna Freiberg, Rowena Thomas, Yelena Gorlin, Armin Siebel, Roland Jung, Hubert A. Gasteiger, Moniek Tromp: Transition metal dissolution and deposition in Li-ion batteries investigated by operando x-ray absorption spectroscopy J. Mater. Chem. A, 2016, 4, 18300-18305 DOI: 10.1039/C6TA08865A | <urn:uuid:cf7e2bc4-fdee-436f-bf4f-7e8dc137d94c> | {
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This is one of a handful of new studies which provide a rigorous estimate of the impact of microfinance. Accepted applicants used credit to change the structures of their business investments, resulting in smaller, lower-cost, more profitable businesses. So while business investments did not actually increase, profitability did increase because the capital allowed businesses to be reorganized. This happened most often by shedding unproductive employees.
The results also highlight the importance of replicating tests and program evaluations across different settings. We are working towards that goal, and are currently implementing microfinance impact studies in Morocco, as well as continuing studies in the Philippines. See here for other studies on varying interest rates in Mexico, Peru and South Africa.
Microcredit, or the practice of providing very small loans to the poor, often with group liability, is an increasingly common tool intended to fight poverty and promote economic growth. But microlending has expanded and evolved into what might be called its “second generation,” often looking more like traditional retail or small business lending where for-profit lenders extend individual liability credit in increasingly urban and competitive settings. The motivation for the continued expansion of microcredit is the presumption that expanding credit access is an efficient way to fight poverty and promote growth. Yet, despite optimistic claims about the effects of microcredit on borrowers and their businesses, there is relatively little empirical evidence on its impact.
First Macro Bank (FMB) is a for-profit lender that operates in the outskirts of Manila. A second generation lender, like many other Filipino microlenders, FMB offers small, short-term, uncollateralized credit with fixed repayment schedules to microentrepreneurs. Interest rates at this bank are high by developed country standards: several up-front fees combined with a monthly interest rate of 2.5 percent produce an effective annual interest rate greater than 60 percent.
The borrowers sampled in this study are representative of most mircrolending clients; they lack the credit history or collateral which are needed to borrow from formal financial institutions like commercial banks. Most clients are female (85 percent), and average household size (5.1 individuals), household income (nearly 25,000 Filipino pesos per month), and levels of educational attainment (44 percent finished high school and 45 percent had postsecondary or college education) were in line with averages for the area. The most common business owned by these clients is a sari-sari store, or small grocery/convenience store (49 percent own one). Other popular occupations among clients are in the service sector, such as hair dressing, barbering, tailoring, and tire repair.
The researchers, with FMB, used credit-scoring software to identify marginally creditworthy applicants based on business capacity, personal financial resources, outside financial resources, personal and business stability, and demographic characteristics. Those with scores falling in the middle comprised the sample for this study, totaling 1,601 applicants, most of whom were first time borrowers. They were randomly placed in two groups: 1,272 accepted applicants served as the treatment and 329 rejected applicants served as the comparison. These rejected applicants could still pursue loans from other lenders, but it is unlikely they obtained one due to their marginal creditworthiness.
Approved applicants then received loans of about 5,000 to 25,000 pesos, a substantial amount relative to the borrowers’ incomes—for example, the median loan size (10,000 pesos, or USD $220) was 37 percent of the median borrower’s net monthly income. Loan maturity was 13 weeks, with weekly repayments, and with a monthly interest rate of 2.5 percent. Several upfront fees combine with the interest rate to produce an annual percentage rate of over 60 percent.
Data was collected on business condition, household resources, demographics, assets, household member occupation, consumption, well-being, and political and community participation one to two years after the application process was completed.
Impact on Borrowing: Being randomly assigned to receive a loan did increase overall borrowing: the probability of having a loan out in the month prior to the survey increased by 9.4 percentage points in the treatment group relative to comparison.
Impact on Business Outcomes: Accepted applicants used credit to shrink their businesses. Treated clients who owned businesses operated 0.1 fewer businesses and employed 0.27 fewer paid employees. One explanation could be that these smaller businesses cost less and are thus more profitable. Perhaps clients would more readily invest in and grow their businesses if loan proceeds are tied to detailed business planning or closer monitoring by the lender.
Impact on Risk Management: Evidence suggests that increased access to formal credit complements, rather than crowds-out local and family risk-sharing mechanisms. Treated clients substituted away from formal insurance into informal risk sharing mechanisms: there was a 7.9 percentage point reduction in holding various types of formal insurance, including life, home, fire, property, and car insurance, and treated clients reported increased access to informal sources of credit in an emergency, such as family and friends. In all, these results suggest that microcredit improves the ability of households to manage risk by giving them additional options: using credit instead of insurance or savings, and strengthening family and community risk-sharing. | <urn:uuid:e400d272-a885-4060-95ea-6d4da3f89910> | {
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In June and July we’re celebrating the beginning of a new fiscal year by highlighting new acquisitions from the past year. All of these amazing resources will be available for today’s scholars, and for future generations of researchers in the Rubenstein Library! Today’s post features a remarkable addition to the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture. Check out additional posts in the series here.
The Library has acquired a rare incunable (item printed from moveable type in Europe before 1501), the Legenda de Vita S. Catharinae by Frater Petrus, published in Strasbourg on April 6, 1500. It tells the story of St. Catherine of Alexandria, one of the most popular and important saints in late medieval Europe, and an enduring icon of women’s learning. She was said to have won a debate with the Roman emperor’s elite philosophers over the value of Christianity, leading to her imprisonment and torture on the breaking wheel, now often called the Catherine wheel.
This edition includes seventeen beautiful woodcuts attributed to the artist known as the “Master of Terence,” who worked frequently for the book’s publisher, Johann Grüninger. The copy now in the Rubenstein Library, just the third known copy in an American institution, also features a contemporary binding with elaborate tooling and a brass clasp, and extensive rubrication both in the text and bordering the woodcuts. It will reward a variety of research approaches, from literary scholars interested in book history and the popular medieval genre of saints’ lives to those working in women’s history, religious history, and art history. | <urn:uuid:418446e1-b79e-4cd4-9f23-d0c1868016a9> | {
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You won’t be able to do it. It is a call, and it is something you only know how to do by doing it over and over. Birds practise their musical tunes. Cows practise their ‘moo’ as they stroll through the fields. But persons don’t know how to make a call, and so you will never be able to do it.
‘Oh you’ is sung. It starts out a little bit lower and ends a little bit higher like the call for a Bob White bird, only slower. You hold on to it longer. And like the call of the Bob White bird, you do it over and over and over again. The more you do it, the more you have to do it. And you have to think of a 1% solution of W.C. Fields and little bit of bursting at the end. ‘Oh you,’ ‘Oh you.’
But anyway, you can’t do it. You can’t do it because you hardened your voice around some sounds you heard once. And now you can’t change it.
You thought it would sound good to hold on to the ts at the ends of words with a breathy whistle that is held until the beginning of next word. You make that whistle for every single word that ends with a t. You like it, and your head jumps a little bit every time you say it. You say ‘but’ or ‘but-uh’ a lot so that you can make that t sound a whole bunch more times. You put it in everywhere: But-stah-aah. But-stah-aah. You put it in between words, at the end of sentences, and at moments when other people would have a chance to talk.
Or you say ‘Sure, sure, sure’ while other people are talking like you already thought of everything they were saying a thousand years ago. Sometimes you say the name of someone and then ‘Sure, Sure, Sure.’ Then sometimes you repeat the name several times together with ‘Sure, Sure, Sure’ while holding your finger in the air so that they will stop talking and you can say all of your sentences filled with whistles and but-ahs or words like ‘by and large.’ You don’t never even know what it means, but you are dying to say it. You are dying to say ‘by and large’ and ‘but-stah.’ Or you just repeat some other words of your logical argument in a stutter so you can keep on making noises even when you don’t never ever got nothing to say.
There is a noise made for every thought and then little grunts and puppy noises in between thoughts. It sounds like a brain. And it is very, very loud and always coming out of the mouth. The sound of it is everywhere because no one will shut they big fat trap. Persons speak high and show their teeth. And it is so loud and so high. No person will speak low where the sound vibrates.
You used to have other voices. You used to be able to make the cat-hissing sound. But you can’t do it now. For the cat-hissing sound, you have to blow air through your nose instead of your mouth. You have to have your mouth open. And it sounds better if you raise up your paw. Anyway, you can’t do it now.
Peter Sellers could stretch and change the inside of his lungs and his tongue and his mouth to make the sound of a cartoon elevator or a newscaster inside a box, or a cat moving from this century into the next one. But you can’t do it because you don’t try. You could tell the sound of Donald Sutherland’s voice, just from a cough. You could even tell that it was Donald Sutherland faking a Russian accent when he coughed. But persons don’t try hard enough to know about this. You can make the voice of a radio announcer who has a beard and the sound of a radio announcer who doesn’t have a beard. You can make the sound of one whose front teeth are a few millimetres forward where there are little pools and geysers of saliva that are part of the sound. But you don’t do it. You don’t try to do it for so long that now you really can’t do it.
You would rather say ‘by and large’ than be able to make the cat hissing sound. You act like the cat hissing sound is not important. Only saying ‘by and large’ is important. You are dying to make the stuck up whistling sound, but you don’t think that blowing air through your nose and holding up your paw is important. Singing ‘Oh You’ is not important to you anymore.
Now the only sounds that comes out is loud talking pushed through a strangulated snout.
It smells funny too. It smells like ureated house dust with cooked corn and a drop of Evening in Paris. It smells nervous.
And you will be making these sounds on the bed where you die, because you cannot sing,
You cannot lift your head and round your lips around a low howl that goes up and down through unmarked tones. Your whiskers will not quiver as it repeats and repeats. A howl that balloons the anus. You don’t know how to smell the rounded perfume-strength saliva that is pungent and sweet. You don’t understand why making the sounds is all that matters. You don’t know nothing about it.
You don’t know nothing about it, and you don’t know nothing about it. And that’s why.
Oh You. Oh you.
You look at people until they look at you back. You can’t keep your little eyes off of them. Every two or three seconds they have got to look at you. If they don’t look back, you just keep looking at them until they turn to you. You keep trying to put yourself in front of them, to face them like they were a page or a picture. You seat people around a table so that they are looking right at another person.
But the eyes are too strong. Look to the side and lower your eyes and make your voice vibrate. Watch the mouth from the side and smell the breath. Stare at the mouth or the slowly moving hand. Stare at the muscles of the leg. Don’t never look at the eyes.
Your eyes are little sphincters that are always flexing and arching with a little ball rolling inside. You are always looking up to catch your little thoughts. A string of words that are all jumbled and tangled by your bobbing head. The little eyes rolling and the tongue clucking. Your little lips moving around boomeranging out to the side and back again.
When you are not talking, when others are talking, you keep on moving your lips and mouthing your little sentences. You cannot shut your mouth.
You have five or six things you say and you try to remember them and find a place to say them. Except that when someone actually asks you for one of these sayings, you start choking and coughing and trying to say all of your words at one time.
You draw a little shape in the air and three sentences later say the word ‘house.’ You draw an imaginary line on your arm and three sentences later you say ‘short-sleeved.’
Or you start to hum a little nervous tune. Tum-tee, tum-tee, tum-tee, dum.
And if persons still don’t look at you, you go into another room and start to sing as if you were just as relaxed as you could be, so relaxed that you are singing. But the singing is so loud that, it is just like staring at a person’s eye from far away through thick walls.
You wake up with yourself every morning. Next to yourself. With yourself lying too close to you, flinching and apologising and smiling too often. You have been waiting for you to wake up, staring at you, trying not to smile too soon. But you do smile too soon. And furrow your brow. And worry that you smiled too soon.
Your skin is white as a very old baby. And that skin is furless, except for some fine and vestigial fur of the nervous system. You worry even over these wisps and try to pluck them out all the time. And you don’t have no idea in the world how to get away from that person who is clinging to you.
You smell like air-conditioned skin. A vinegary smell of fear all over coming out of your skin. It smells like one hair. It smells like one hair coming out of a mole with its own hair. A vinegary drop of pink chicken water, sweetened by an artificial maple syrup chemical and a sugar snap pea that has something wrong with it.
But you can’t smell it.
You spend a lot of time to look at that skin on your body.
It’s because you have such a short tongue.
You run across the street to the store with noisy lights to buy unscented creams and lotions that you think have no smell, even though they do if you would know how to smell it. You run with your arms straight down by your side. You don’t run with your arms bent. Your arms are straight down and your little clenched fists are going back and forth in little bitty quick swings. And just like you don’t bend your arms you don’t hardly bend your knees. You don’t really run. You do this tense stiff-kneed hopping where your whole body goes side to side. And when you finally get to the door you nearly bump into someone, and that is supposed to be the funniest thing on earth. And your little baby voice cries out, ‘Oh! Pardon me!’
You think you are so interesting when you are a little bit formal. And you are so pleased with yourself for stepping aside and holding the door. You are kind of like a really fidgety person who thinks they are saving a ship full of people by holding the door at the store. Your little salute is a tight-lipped smile as if the situation was so funny in a special way that only you understand – so funny that your chin goes up and in to your goody face. Someone thanks you and instead of saying something back, you hold your breath in your little stiff body. You say nervously, something that sounded like a cross between a guttural cough and a sneeze while moving in a stiff way to act like it was funny. Then into the store you go under lights you can’t hear to get creams you can’t smell with the little leftover smile on your face.
You walk just like you run.
With little huffs and puffs, you are overly excited about the completion of a task that will then complete a category of tasks. Your little heels making farting scuffs across the floor. The little wheels of your mind spinning like a fan. Moving around like a squirrel except that a squirrel is doing it confidently.
You swim just like you walk.
You walk over to the water and every time you step your toes curl up and then slowly come back down. They curl up like there is some danger of them being on the ground and then they slowly curl back down as you make your little walk over to the water.
In the water you hop up and go under like you are going to push off hard and glide. The whole body disappears under water for a while but when it comes to the surface it is still in the same place. That is how you push off, and only now are you ready to make your old slow way down the pool. The hand slowly reaches over the body while the legs, one bent, are kicking with the ankle at right angles. For every ten kicks, the slow elbow gradually straightens and the flat palm presses into the water with all of the fingers sticking out of the water. Like the toes, they don’t want to go into the water too quickly. What happens to the arm underneath is not known to you or to any person looking at it. No progress has been made through the water, but it is time for the face to appear from underneath the water as if from the anguish of hell to make an orgasmic yawn. Looking up at the ceiling, it breathes. And the next arm quickly bats at the air and smacks the water. One arm is quiet and slow. The other one is loud and quick. A quiet one and a loud one, a quiet one and a loud one all the way down pool. Sometimes one foot appears above the water, all by itself, makes a loud hollow kick and then disappears. The rest of the time the legs only think they are kicking. They sort of go back and forth, but they are trailing along behind close to the bottom of the pool.
You have decided that this will be your little way of swimming. Just like you have figured out your little way of holding the phone. Your little way of saying ‘think you’ instead of thank you. Or your little way of cocking your foot. All special little flourishes that other people have to look at.
And your plain old skeleton is up in there. Your old white stiff skeleton. It could be swinging loose, but it is strung up inside your horrible tight muscles.
Why you don’t just sit still? Why you don’t just sit still and cry out,
Oh you, Oh you.
You sat next to that man that had a lot of hair all over his body winding and unwinding your old skeleton all the time he was talking.
You can’t listen to him. You just can’t do it. All you hear is his sentences. And you are making up all your sentences and wildly pointing at them as they float around and evaporate. You don’t never just sit still and stare at him or listen to his breathing or the sound of this over-bite. The face was shaved smooth with hairs waiting underneath. It didn’t seem like there could hardly be skin because there was so much thick black hair trying to come through. Why you don’t think about that? And it was all under his clothes. One meaty leg of lamb had crossed the other one and there was hair in the tiny crack just escaping the socks and usually covered by the pants. And all the clothes were standing out a little bit from the body because of all the curly fur that was in there.
Why you don’t stare at this? You move your eyes everywhere, up and away from his white collar even though somewhere in there is probably where the really furry part starts.
You are busy with your high soprano sentences when you could have been listening to his deep voice against the bags of fluids and air in his lungs and through thick cheeks. And when he shifts his weight all the air and water slosh around inside him, and all the muscles squish together. Some wafting puffs of air blow across his skin that smell like rounded mustard, whiskey and cedar floated on a current of shaving cream. A blue oregano crayon in a thunderstorm.
Except that you don’t really know how to smell it. You do smell it, but you don’t know you are smelling. If he would be swimming instead of you, the air inside him would buoy him through the water. The water would roll off his fur, and you could hear his breathing.
His voice gets lower and more humid. You hear it but you don’t know you hear it. Your voice is playing the scales on the piano, going higher and higher into its pinch-ed range. And the eyebrows are flapping. And the eyes are rolling around. And besides that, you don’t say nothing. No person can understand what you are saying because it is coming out really fast, and it is all broken up.
Anyway you missed hearing the furry man speak. The voice has slanty, droopy eyes and thick cheeks. You have to get very still and stare at the mouth and wait. It’s the cheeks that change the sound of air coming in. Moist warm air. And the sound that comes out is so low except for tenor softenings on some words. It sounds like Stanley Donen and rounded Walter Pidgeon with teeth moved slightly forward and it is spoken in deadpan, like how a pouting hound would talk.
And after every sentence that he finishes, he opens his mouth slightly. He isn’t panting, it was just that he leaves the mouth slightly open to let things into his mind.
If you stare at the cushiony lips, and if you touch them, you could feel them buzzing like a Hawaiian guitar.
And the taste on your finger would be salty.
But anyway, you missed it.
Why, why you don’t be still and stare at the fur.
Why, why you don’t make yourself so heavy that everything else has to go around you.
Instead you are swept up. Still stammering sentences and writing them in the air, you are swept up into a crowd of other people who talk even more than you. They are all talking all the time very loudly. They worry if they are not talking. You think you like the little stories told by persons who can’t smell heated lettuce and will not stop telling you everything that is on their mind and everybody else’s mind. You are so flattered to be one of them. You want them like you want all the other songs on the album except the one that you would really like to listen to over and over again. You think you need all the other songs that aren’t really as good as that one so that you have something called an album. Just like the book has all the extra pages it needs to be a book. All, all, all the other furless persons, who actually made up the idea of the extra songs and the extra pages are moving you along.
Sometimes you act like you are going to be all still in the crowd. You are kind of posing as if you were being still, making little notes in your book. But you are taking too many notes. Your little fine-tipped ink pen is moving the entire time. You don’t look up that much except that inside your little eyes are still darting around begging other people to look at you. But you have to pretend like you are being still so you look down and act like you really have to write down all those notes. You sit there and take notes the entire time. Tum tee Tum tee Tum tee Tum.
And if anyone talks to you then you are slipping and sliding and choking and bobbing trying to say ‘by and large.’
Most of them know how to bite. Almost everyone knows how to bite but you. You should have sunk your teeth into the fat white jelly of their candy-ass butts, but you don’t do nothing.
Everyone knows how to stick their face into another face and wait – wait until they hear the click. And when they hear the little click, they know how to slide their foot into the door. They all have big teeth and they are always baring their teeth – teeth that have been straightened with braces.
You can’t smell it but all the persons together smells like a staleness that will never go away because once it was left on there too long and now it won’t wash off. It’s sticky. A Velcro smell. A smell like a fuzzy piece of gum or an oily car tree rolling over every other smell. It’s a strong smell of Styrofoam, sage and chilled cigarette smoke that has been run through an air conditioner at night and smoothed over with a gas dryer. And it is all stuck together with flesh coloured pancake stage makeup.
All you have to do is shift your weight, look down, move your ears and smell. But you will not be able to do it. All you have to do is lower your head and sink your teeth into the flesh. You just have to look with calm eyes at the white flesh, raise your paw, send air through your nose and say, ‘I want to bite your furless butt, you.’
But you will not be able to do it. You are the worst kind. You are the worst kind because you don’t know nothing about biting but you wish you did.
You don’t know how to bite like you don’t ever know how to be still.
You don’t know how to be still like you don’t ever know how to be quiet.
You are a dry bun under a lid.
Sometimes, almost never, you do know how to sit still and stare.
You are sitting really still with your hands folded on the table, and one of your hands reaches over and touches your other hand. A warm, soft hand, soft, loose, calm hand reaches over and touches your old nervous cold, hand filled with knobby bones.
Sometimes, your tongue gets longer and lighter and floats up to the roof of your mouth and the lips become a fat bouche. And the salt water evens out on either side of all of the membranes of all of your cells.
Then you smell like seltzer water and tears and a Band-Aid. And the taste of the wooden stick inside the ice cream bar.
You lift up off the ground and fly around the room. Air is like water and it is not hard to bob above the floor.
And you begin growing a little taller again.
And the hips get a little plumper and the belly swells.
And a new tooth cuts in through the gum.
And you could love the music that doesn’t repeat and the story that doesn’t have a plot.
And you could smell the rare spores of a mildew that grow in the lobbies of incandescently lit bank buildings and department stores. They find nutrients in the machine oil that lubricates the elevators, and you can smell it.
You lie on your back with your paws bent over your wrists, your fat lips sagging into a puddle on the floor.
And somewhere from a far away canyon of your bowels sails a long high-pitched meow.
At that moment you could lift your head and round your whiskered quivering bouche and sing
Oh You. Oh You.
But you don’t know how to do it.
You have the wrong things. Not the huge things that cause pain and death. Not the things that are so crazy and annoying that people want to be around you all the time. Not so crazy and annoying that you can make people your slave for the rest of their lives. Everyone really likes that. What you have is what people just don’t like – the weak, nervous stuttering that can be dismissed. You are that one. Persons will always ask you to move if they want to sit next to their wife or child. Persons will always ask you if you wouldn’t mind giving up your sandwich.
It’s because you have thin lips with no slobber and no fur.
Just in case you don’t understand, you are the runt. You flinched instead of rolling and tumbling.
Something hungry would want to eat you for a meal. You would be the obvious one to get rid of.
You will be eaten. You will be taking notes and whistling tum de dum and someone will snatch you up and eat you.
And the meat on your bones was chewy. There wasn’t much of it and it wasn’t really all that good. The flavour had been washed out with soap and lukewarm water. Lots of thin blue-white gristle. And the little muscle you spent a year trying to get to move a certain way wasn’t even worth eating more than half of.
Nothing happens before or after you are eaten. No special music. The world smells like it always does – like cake mix, skin and a hot TV at 3:30 in the afternoon. But you won’t be able to smell it. | <urn:uuid:8ab0eb24-8b52-47c3-9dd8-95d77a586a19> | {
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Eating a balanced diet means that you're taking in a variety of healthy foods at reasonable intervals throughout the day - it doesn't mean that you "balance" healthy foods eaten during the day with junk foods like pizza and ice cream at night.
But for many people, when the sun goes down, so does their willpower. While they can maintain their sensible eating habits during the day, evening often signals the start of an unending food fest until bedtime.
Strange as it may seem, one of the best solutions to controlling your appetite after dark is to eat more often during the daylight hours. Heavy evening snackers often lack a regular eating pattern – one that includes sensible meals combined with healthy and nutritious snacks.
Putting the Myth to Rest
You've probably been told that eating late at night is detrimental. But while your calorie needs are lowest during the night, there is no conclusive scientific evidence that the calories ingested at night are stored more efficiently than those eaten at other times.
Eating foods later in the day rather than earlier is not what leads to weight gain – what matters is your daily caloric intake as a whole. No matter when you eat, if you take in more than you need, your body stores any extra calories as fat. Curbing evening snacking habits leads to weight loss simply because fewer calories are being taken in over the course of the day.
We do tend to eat most of calories late in the day - Americans eat more calories during dinner than at any other meal. And if you tack on the calories eaten after dinner, it really adds up.
There are several reasons these unhealthy patterns are so commonplace. Some people don't eat enough during the day which can cause blood sugar levels to drop. This can make people overly hungry and result in overconsumption at night.
Many people are too busy to plan meals – they may dash out the door in the morning with little more than a cup of coffee, and then try to power through the day without taking time to eat properly. It's no wonder that by the time they get home at night, they're literally out of gas.
Others are simply eating as an emotional escape from stress or to beat boredom. We tend to mindlessly reach for junk food during sedentary activities such as watching television or using the computer – and we then associate these high calorie foods with relaxation and keep the habit going.
Meal Planning and Suitable Snacks
Putting in the right fuel – and at the regular intervals during the day – is one of the best defenses against nighttime nibbling. Breakfast and lunch meals should provide plenty of protein to keep your mind sharp and hunger at bay as well as some healthy carbs like fruits, veggies and whole grains to maintain blood sugar. A protein shake with fruit is a great way to start the day – otherwise, try an egg white omelet with fruit, a dish of plain nonfat yogurt with fruit, or a quick bowl of oatmeal with some protein powder stirred in.
A protein shake also makes a quick and satisfying lunch, especially when you're too busy to stop and prepare a meal. Other good choices? Try a salad with some grilled chicken or fish, or a turkey sandwich on whole grain bread with some fruit for dessert.
When energy starts to slide in the afternoon, one tactic that works is to have a substantial snack – almost a "second lunch" – between lunch and dinner. A protein shake or bar, a half sandwich, some soy nuts, or a dish of cottage cheese and fruit are all appropriate choices.
By putting more nutritional emphasis on your daytime meals and snacks, it's likely you won't be nearly as hungry at night, so your dinner meal can be lighter and smaller.
The next time you feel like "midnight munching," think about the benefits of a healthy, protein-powered snack earlier in the day. The nutritional difference will be like night and day.
Dr. Gratton also serves as vice-president of medical affairs at Herbalife. | <urn:uuid:ff0dbe91-3bb8-420c-a9ee-d2426278f000> | {
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This section gives a more detailed description of the things that is needed to consider when fitting ellipses using the current implementation of GALPHOT. Since the description in the main text (Sect. , p. ) was kept in general terms, we start by introducing the terminology specific to GALPHOT and its implementation. In the following `galaxy' is a generic name for a galaxy observation. An example is r214_GR_1, which is a Gunn r (GR) observation of the galaxy R214. Since this galaxy has been observed more than once in Gunn r, it is given a serial number, in this case 1.
classify is the task that does the classification of objects into `stars' and cosmic-ray-events. It outputs the positions and flagging radii of the two types of objects in the two files galaxy.star and galaxy.cosmic. In addition, the center coordinates of the program galaxy is put in the file galaxy.gal.
harmfit is the task that does the harmonic expansion along concentric circles. It outputs the radial profiles of the Fourier coefficients from the expansion and their uncertainties in the STSDAS table galaxy.har.tab, and also produces a residual image called galaxy.resh.imh.
deviate is the task that flags the pixels that deviate by more than (say) 5 sigma in the above residual image. The output is a list of additional pixels to be flagged called galaxy.pos.del.
ellipfit is the task that does the ellipse fitting. The radial profiles are output in the STSDAS table galaxy.prf.tab, and the residual image is called galaxy.res.imh. ellipfit has some parameters that sometimes need to be fine tune. errcen and errshap are the uncertainties that the first and second order coefficients from harmfit needs to be below to keep the center and shape as free parameters, respectively. As default values for both we used 0.02 for Gunn r and Johnson B, and 0.04 for Johnson U. rcen and rshap can be used to explicitly set and and thus overriding the automatic determination using errcen and errshap. The parameters dposmax, dellmax, and dangmax control how much the center position, the ellipticity, and the position angle, respectively, are allowed to change at a given radius per iteration step. These need to be increased when the initial guess on the profiles computed from the harmfit output are far from the actual values for some reason.
model is a task that can construct a model image from the ellipse fit.
Finally, the task galfit is an `umbrella task' that basically calls the three tasks harmfit, deviate, and ellipfit.
We are now ready to fit an isolated galaxy (Sect. ) or two overlapping galaxies (Sect. ).
Properties of E and S0 Galaxies in the Clusters HydraI and Coma
Master's Thesis, University of Copenhagen, July 1997
Bo Milvang-Jensen ([email protected]) | <urn:uuid:39c0c107-98b0-41d8-ae48-f1f358d2c40e> | {
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Three new studies from the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego, have strongly linked vitamin D with lower risk for breast, colon and kidney cancers.
In the breast cancer study, researchers analyzed the blood-fluid (serum) levels of vitamin D in 1,760 individuals and found that those who had the lowest levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D had the highest rates of breast cancer, and that as the levels of vitamin D increased, breast cancer rates dropped.
Doctors noted that those who take 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day and spend 10 to 15 minutes per day in the sun—when the weather permits—will have levels of vitamin D similar to those in the study who were 50 percent less likely to get breast cancer. The body makes vitamin D3 from the ultraviolet (UVB) rays of the sun.
In the colon cancer study, published in the February 2007 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, scientists reviewed findings from five different studies that took blood samples from healthy volunteer donors and then followed up for 25 years. Researchers divided 1,448 participants into five equal groups according to the serum levels of vitamin D and found that those who had 34 nanograms of vitamin D per milliliter of blood (ng/ml) were 50 percent less likely to have colon or rectal (colorectal) cancer than were those with the lowest levels. In the studies, vitamin D levels ranged from below 13 ng/ml to 52 ng/ml. Doctors projected that those who get a total of 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day from diet, supplements and sunshine will be 66 percent less likely to get colorectal cancer compared to those with the lowest vitamin D levels.
In the kidney cancer study, published in the International Journal of Cancer, researchers for the first time were able to use data from 175 countries and found that those who live closest to the equator—where sunlight is strongest—have the least kidney (renal) cancer. | <urn:uuid:e369ef14-5567-454e-92b8-e9703a7f8b82> | {
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Chiasmus is a figure of speech in which words, grammatical constructions, or concepts are repeated in reverse order, in the same or a modified form. In other words, the clauses display inverted parallelism. Chiasmus was particularly popular both in Greek and in Latin literature, where it was used to articulate the balance of order within the text. As a popular example, many long and complex chiasmi have been found in Shakespeare and the Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible.
In classic rhetoric, this figure of speech can be differentiated from an antimetabole, which is repetition of words in successive clauses in grammatical order. In a chiasmus, there is no recurrence of the same two terms. When chiasmus is applied to entire passages or writings, it is called a chiastic structure. Some examples of chiasmus are, "Never let a fool kiss You or a kiss fool you" by Mardy Grothe, "Do I love you because you're beautiful? Or are you beautiful because I love you?" by Oscar Hammerstein, and "They don't care about how much you know until they know how much you care" by Jim Calhoun.
Chiasmus is a figure of speech by which the order of the terms in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second. This may involve a repetition of the same words or just a reversed parallel between two corresponding pairs of ideas.
Readers don't need to write but writers do need to read. | <urn:uuid:2f90ee9d-a97c-45fa-94f5-74c6b6bf9e74> | {
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from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- adj. Of or relating to the planet Saturn or to its supposed astrological influence.
- adj. Archaic Of or relating to the god Saturn or his reign.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- adj. Related to the planet Saturn.
- adj. Related to the Roman god Saturn.
- adj. Dour, baleful or sullen facial expression.
- n. An inhabitant of the planet Saturn.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- adj. Of or pertaining to Saturn, whose age or reign, from the mildness and wisdom of his government, is called the golden age.
- adj. Hence: Resembling the golden age; distinguished for peacefulness, happiness, contentment.
- adj. Of or pertaining to the planet Saturn.
- n. Any one of numerous species of large handsome moths belonging to Saturnia and allied genera. The luna moth, polyphemus, and promethea, are examples. They belong to the Silkworn family, and some are raised for their silk. See Polyphemus.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Pertaining to the god Saturn, or to his reign, alleged to be “the golden age”; hence, happy; distinguished for purity, integrity, and simplicity.
- Of or pertaining to the planet Saturn.
- Dăbū nt mălū m Mĕtḗllī [or Mĕtḗllī] || Nǣv îō pŏētǣ
- as an iambic line consisting of two members (cola) separated by a cesura. Such a verse was compared by Macaulay (Introd. to “Lays of Ancient Rome”) to the nursery rime
- Thĕ quēen | wăs īn | hĕr pār | lour || ēatĭng | brēad ănd | hōnĕy.
- Others (and this is now the prevalent opinion) regard the Saturnian verse as purely accentual:
- Dábunt málum Metélli [or Métellí] || Náeviō poétæ.
- In entomology, pertaining or related to the Saturniidæ.
- n. A saturnian moth; a member of the Saturniidæ.
Sorry, no etymologies found.
The Romans alfo (as nature is the fame in all places) though they knew nothing of thofe Grecian demi-gods, nor had any communication with Greece, yet had cer - tainly young men, who, at their feftivals, danced and fung after their uncouth manner, to a certain kind of verfe, which they called Saturnian: what it was, we have no certain light from antiquity to difcover; but we DEDICATION.
But the abandonment of the Saturnian was the abandonment of a tradition five centuries old.
Roman ballads were in what is called Saturnian meter, which depends on stress and accent; it is not unlike the meter of the
Hence (1) the rude rhythmical effusions, which contained the early Roman story, might be called Saturnian, not with reference to their metrical law, but to their
Arcady is a kind of Saturnian realm, and "mixtures" elsewhere
This module is dropped and chemical propulsion is used to decelerate into Saturnian orbit and to maneuver within that planetary system.
Cassini (if you haven't been gawking at all the fabulous Saturn pictures like you should) is a mission that has been studying the Saturnian system (planet and rings and moons ... oh my!)
The only survivors were those living off-planet at the time – on the Moon, Mars, the Saturnian and Jovian systems… Over the course of a number of stories and three novels, Varley fleshed out a future history in which humanity struggles to survive – using gifted alien technology – on the various inhospitable worlds of the Solar system.
They speak Saturnian (composed of odd looking English letters), and erratically use the words "boing," "ding," and "zoom".
When the firstborn son of a Saturnian priest succumbed to the illness, the distraught man rallied the population to join him in accusing Felicita and her sons of bringing down the wrath of the gods upon them. | <urn:uuid:22e606e2-43ef-4d0e-be99-636dba081911> | {
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|Λάβρανδα (Ancient Greek)|
Labraunda was built on artificial terraces
|Location||Ortaköy, Muğla Province, Turkey|
Labraunda (Ancient Greek: Λάβρανδα Labranda) is an ancient archaeological site five kilometers west of Ortaköy, Muğla Province, Turkey, in the mountains near the coast of Caria. In ancient times, it was held sacred by Carians and Mysians alike. The site amid its sacred plane trees was enriched in the Hellenistic style by the Hecatomnid dynasty of Mausolus, satrap (and virtual king) of Persian Caria (c. 377 – 352 BCE), and also later by his successor and brother Idrieus; Labranda was the dynasty's ancestral sacred shrine. The prosperity of a rapidly hellenised Caria occurred in the during the 4th century BCE. Remains of Hellenistic houses and streets can still be traced, and there are numerous inscriptions. The cult icon here was a local Zeus Labraundos (Ζεὺς Λάβρανδος), a standing Zeus with the tall lotus-tipped scepter upright in his left hand and the double-headed axe, the labrys, over his right shoulder. The cult statue was the gift of the founder of the dynasty, Hecatomnus himself, recorded in a surviving inscription.
Labraunda and labrys
It seems natural to interpret names of Carian sanctuaries like Labranda in the most literal sense as the place of the sacred labrys, which was the Lydian (or Carian) name for the Greek πέλεκυς, or double-edged axe.
The same root labr- appears in the labyrinth of Knossos, which is interpreted as the "place of the axe." The double-headed axe was a central iconic motif at Labraunda. The axe cast of gold had been kept in the Lydian capital Sardes for centuries. The Lydian king Gyges awarded it to the Carians, to commemorate Carian support in a battle. This is the mythic anecdote: the social and political reality may have been more complicated, for such ritual objects are never lightly passed from hand to hand or moved from their fixed abode. Upon receiving this precious, purely ritual axe, the Carians kept it in the Temple of Zeus at Labraunda.
The figure of a double-sided axe is a feature of many coins of Halicarnassus. Coins at the museum at Bodrum bear the head of Apollo on the obverse and on the reverse the name of the reigning Carian ruler inscribed next to the figure of Zeus Labraunda carrying the double-bladed Carian axe.
The Royal Swedish Institute at Athens has been in charge of archeology at Labraunda, notably in a series of campaigns in 1948-53, initiated by Axel W. Persson and taken up, after the latter's sudden death, by Gösta Säflund, has published its findings in a long series, grouped as four volumes, from 1955 onwards. The hieron, one of the best-preserved and most complete series of 4th century BCE structures, contained a series of buildings of unusual construction, ranged on several formal terraces. In its synthesis of Achaemenid and Ionian features it foreshadowed Hellenistic style.
The sacred precinct was entered through one of two marble Ionic propylea at the southeast corner of the site. The Ionic temple of Zeus bore a dedicatory inscription of the brother of Mausolus, Idrieus (351-44 BCE); it had a simplified, two-part architrave, and a low ceiling to the small cella.
- Herodotus, v.119
- The cultural background is presented in S. Hornblower, Mausolus (Oxford: Clarendon Press) 1982.
- Alfred Westholm, Labraunda I.2 The Architecture of the Hieron, inscription no. 6 (1963).
- quoting Journal of Hellenic Studies XXI. 108 (1901).
- Published by Pontus Hellström and Thomas Theime, Labraunda I.3, The Temple of Zeus Labraunda: Swedish Excavations and Researches) 1982. ISBN 91-970338-2-0
- Fragmentary inscriptions on the propylea are also restored as dedications of Idrieus.
- Karlsson, Lars; Carlsson, Susanne, eds. (2011). Labraunda & Karia. Proceedings of the International Symposium Commemorating Sixty Years of Swedish Archaeological Work in Labraunda. The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, Stockholm, November 20-21, 2008. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis: Boreas. Uppsala Studies in Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Civilizations 32. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet. ISBN 978-91-554-7997-8.
- Media related to Labraunda at Wikimedia Commons
- Swedish Excavations at Labraunda
- The Labraunda Project of the department of Archaeology and Ancient History of Uppsala University
- Greek inscriptions from Labraunda, in English translation | <urn:uuid:dacf9361-20c5-4ae3-9419-394073bfa8ba> | {
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INVISALIGN FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES
So let’s start with the actual principles and then slowly describe and define what I mean by them. The basic fundamental principles of using Invisalign are as follows:
- NO. 1: ALIGNERS ONLY WORK BY PUSHING TEETH; THEY DON’T PULL
- NO. 2: MULTIPLE MOVEMENTS AT THE SAME TIME
- NO. 3: ANCHORAGE IS REQUIRED FOR EFFICIENT MOVEMENT
- NO. 4: OVER-ENGINEERING CLINCHECK IS A MUST
- NO. 5: TEETH NEED SPACE TO MOVE
PRINCIPLE NO. 1: ALIGNERS ONLY WORK BY PUSHING TEETH; THEY DON’T PULL
What does that mean? Isn’t the idea behind orthodontics that we’re pull- ing teeth in different directions? In the case of clear-aligner treatment and what you’re trying to do requires an understanding about one key thing:
It’s very important to recognize the push surfaces on either the teeth themselves or on the attachments placed on teeth to get the desired movement. We need the interaction of an aligner surface with the tooth or active surface of an attachment to achieve movement. Pulling won’t work — an aligner surface that is pulling will simply disengage from the tooth. So remember, we’re pushing NOT pulling. It’s one of the main rea- sons that extrusion of maxillary lateral incisors is so challenging — there is essentially nowhere for the aligner to “grab” on either the labial or pal- atal surface. We will look at this problem in depth in the chapter on verti- cal control of teeth and I will offer solutions to improve maxillary lateral incisor tracking, but the fundamental concept is this: If you can develop an appropriate push surface on a tooth, the chances of the tooth moving in the desired direction increase greatly.
So think PUSH, and you are on your way to looking at ClinCheck in an entirely new way.
CASE STUDY NO. 1 — PUSH SURFACE
This was a teen patient treated in one year with no refinements. The teeth tracked very well because of the large push surfaces. Look at image 1-3 and notice the upper canines. See the broad, flat labial and palatal sur- faces? The aligners were able to produce a set of opposing push forces on each tooth, and the upper canines tracked well (image 1-4)
PRINCIPLE NO. 2: MULTIPLE MOVEMENTS AT THE SAME TIME
The second principle, multiple movements at the same time, speaks to one of the benefits of the Invisalign system — its efficiency. In the sam- ple ClinCheck (see sequence of photos, images 1-5 through 1-7), you can observe that you can simultaneously torque teeth, rotate and align them. Let’s take a look at Erin.
CASE STUDY NO. 2 — ERIN
Let’s take an example of what we mean by multiple movements at the same time. In this case study we have a patient named Erin. She present- ed with a Class I malocclusion, which you can observe in image 1-8, a deep overbite and cross-bite of the upper-right canine. Erin’s case illustrates multiple movements being done at the same time. As you can see in the sequence of ClinCheck photos the work being done is to simultaneously intrude the upper-right and the upper-left central incisors while at the same time correcting her cross-bite.
The ClinCheck plan actually shows what is happening with this pro- cess. Observe intrusion of the two upper-front teeth to level the smile arc. This procedure is done at the same time that the upper-right canine is being moved buccally out of cross-bite.
The key takeaway: The orthodontist does this all at the same time — and that is what I mean by the efficiency of the process.
Here is the final picture at the end of Erin’s treatment (image 1-9). She has a normal occlusion, and we have achieved a good final result.
PRINCIPLE NO 3: ANCHORAGE IS REQUIRED FOR EFFICIENT MOVEMENT
The term “anchorage” is used all of the time with conventional fixed appliances.
I use the term a little differently for the Invisalign system. When I refer to anchorage, a good example of that would be Haley’s case (image 1-10). Haley presents with a significantly deep overbite. In her case, the goal is to correct the deep overbite with a combination of 30-percent intrusion of the upper incisors and 70 percent of lower incisors. | <urn:uuid:cca8c89b-c7cd-4d8f-b696-b5de352463c2> | {
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With all the news following the Dan River coal ash disaster this February, it may seem that North Carolina is the only Southeastern state with coal ash woes. Unfortunately, there are plenty of problems to go around with at least 450 ash dumpsites scattered across our region. Many of these are aging, unlined, wet storage impoundments located on vital water resources and drinking water supplies, just like those on the Dan River.
To date, little attention has been given to Florida’s coal ash problems, even though it’s home to 78 ash impoundments. That is changing, however, as SACE recently teamed up with our partners at Earthjustice, Waterkeeper Alliance, and the Apalachicola Riverkeeper to investigate the impoundments at Gulf Power’s Scholz Generating Station, located on the banks of the Apalachicola River, which supports a multi-billion dollar seafood industry and one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the country.
Our testing revealed illegal seeps pouring high concentrations of toxic heavy metals into the river, and last week we filed a federal federal lawsuit to stop Gulf’s pollution and protect the Apalachicola.
The list of metals seeping out of impoundments at Scholz read like a who’s who of the periodic table, including carcinogens like arsenic, cadmium, chromium, selenium, as well as aluminum, barium, beryllium, copper, lead, nickel, zinc, selenium, and the neurotoxin mercury. One of the most shocking samples revealed arsenic levels at as much as 300 times the amount allowed by law for safe drinking water. In addition to posing a threat to human health, all these toxics can cause serious harm to the fish and other wildlife that call the Apalachicola home.
The Apalachicola River is a public asset and national treasure that deserves protection from Gulf’s toxic waste. Over the years taxpayers have spent millions of dollars buying huge tracts of land around the Apalachiocla for watershed protection and 106 miles of the river were recently designated as a national recreation trail. The river supports more than 15,000 species, many of which are found nowhere else in the world and several that are threatened or endangered.
A lack of federal coal ash regulations means that states oversee handling and disposal of America’s second largest industrial waste stream. With it’s porous geology and high water table, Florida is especially vulnerable to pollution from wastes stored in landfills and lagoons–which is why Florida law prohibits any hazardous waste landfills. Unfortunately, a new law passed in 2013 exempting coal ash dumps from this prohibition and the state lacks many basic safeguards like requirements for impoundments to be properly lined, monitored, designed or cited. This lack of regulation also results in a lack of oversight for impoundments at retiring plants, like Scholz, meaning these legacy sites could be left to pollute in perpetuity.
In the absence of comprehensive federal regulations or enforcement of current water protection laws from state environmental agencies, groups like SACE and our allies will continue to turn to the courts to secure protection for our communities and waterways for all to enjoy. Coincidentally, June is National Rivers Month, a great time to get out on your river, volunteer with a local Waterkeeper and speak out for coal ash protections in your community and beyond!
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time. | <urn:uuid:0fbcf0db-74f7-4420-bb83-919ea9d5b00f> | {
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Part 2 of this analysis of the influence of a scatterer, such as rainfall, on the performance of a satellite communications system or other microwave link, includes near- and far-field antenna effects.
Scatterers such as rainfall can impose hard-to-predict effects on the propagation of electromagnetic (EM) waves, often making analysis of the near-field and far-field antenna patterns and performance difficult. In order to provide a more meaningful approach to understanding the effects of scatterers on EM propagation, last month Part 1 of this study explored the influence of distributed scatterers on nearfield antenna EM propagation. Part 2 will now be extended to include a precipitation region containing many raindrops, with precipitation contained between the planes z = z1 and z = z2 and with the elemental volume dv located at plane z.
From last month, the following relationships need tobe re-established:
When no precipitation is present, E3H3 is identical to E1H1. But when precipitation is present, E3 and E1 are related by the effective complex refractive index, m^ ,of the precipitation region:
E3 = E1 exp1> (26)
where z1 z z2. Equation 26 gives the transmitter field (i.e., the field due to antenna 1 in the presence of precipitation) in the elemental volume dv (Fig. 3). Equation 25 can be used to find the wave detected by the receiving antenna due to scattering by raindrops:
where E1 and E2 are the complex scalar amplitudes of field vectors E1 and E2, respectively.
Assuming single scattering and a sufficient number of drops present in the elemental volume, the wave detected at the receiving antenna due to scattering from all raindrops in the precipitation region can be found by integrating Eq. 27:
where vol indicates integration over the precipitation volume, i.e., the region between z = z1 and z = z2. Because the beamwidth of the transmit and receive antennas is very small, the volume integral in Eq. 28 may be written
and Eq. 28 becomes
It is useful at this point to recognize the significance of two equations, Eqs. 9 and 30. It has already been shown that the received wave in the absence of precipitation is given by the relationship for B1 in Eq. 9. And Eq. 30 gives the received EM wave due to scattering from all the raindrops in the precipitation region. The total wave received in the presence of precipitation is
From Eqs. 9 and 30,
Using this in Eq. 31,
Defining a and as the total attenuation (in Nepers) and phase shift (in rads), respectively, due to the precipitation, then
Comparing Eqs. 33 and 34 yields
Parameters m and S(0) can be shown to be related by the simple formula
m = 1 j(2 /k3)NS(0)
Using this relationship in Eq. 35 results in
In naturally occurring rainfall, the raindrops will have a drop size distribution, m , given by
where a is the mean drop radius. If the rate of precipitation is uniform throughout, m will be independent of z and Eq. 36 becomes
The integral predicts the received power at antenna 1 due to the transmitted power of antenna 2. The integral
can be written as
where A is the beamwidth cross section of the common volume of propagation of the two antennas.
Continue to next page.
SEE EQUATION H
for any plane z normal to the direction of propagation. Using Eq. 39 in Eq. 38,
This analysis has included the effects of scatterers in the near-field as well as the far-field regions of the transmit and receive antennas in a communications link. It shows that scatterers such as rain will introduce the same attenuation and phase shift whether in the near-field or far-field regions, and the same depolarization effects.
Editor's Note: This article is based on an article by the author entitled "A General Scattering Theory," first appearing in RCA Review, September 1983.
1. B. J. Easterbrook and D. Turner, "Prediction of Attenuation by Rainfall in the 10.7-11.7 GHz Communications Band, Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 114, 1967, p. 557.
2. L. C. Tillotson, "A Model of a Domestic Satellite Communication System," Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 47, 1968, p. 2111.
3. D. C. Hogg and T. S. Chu, "The Role of Rain in Satellite Communications," Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 63, No. 9, 1975, p. 1308.
4. D. C. Hogg and T. S. Chu, "Propagation of Radio Waves at Frequencies Above 10 GHz," IEE Conference Publication 98, 1973.
5. W. E. Lothalier, "System Considerations for European Communication Satellites," IEEE International Conference o Communication, Philadelphia, PA, 1972, pp. 2-1 to 2-7.
6. J. W. Ryde, "Attenuation of Centimetre Waves by Rain, Hail, and Clouds," Report 8516, General Electric Company Research Labs, Wembley, England, 1944.
7. H. C. Van de Hulst, Light-Scattering by Small Particles, Wiley, New York, 1957, p. 28.
8. R. G. Medhurst, "Rainfall Attenuation of Centimeter Waves: Comparison of Theory and Measurement," IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, Vol. AP-13, 1965, p. 55.
9. J. W. Mink, "Rain-Attenuation Measurements of Millimeter Waves Over Short Paths," Electron Letters, Vol. 9, No. 10, 1973, p. 198.
10. R. K. Crane, "The Rain Range ExperimentPropagation Through a Simulated Rain Environment," IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, Vol. AP-22, 1974, p. 321.
11. D. P. Haworth, N. J. McEwan, and P. A. Watson, "Effect of Rain in the Near Field of an Antenna," Electron Letters, Vol. 14, No. 4, 1978, p. 94.
12. J. Van Bladel, Electromagnetic Fields, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1964, p. 254. | <urn:uuid:2bf015b6-d449-4dd2-8e94-62b633b22eb6> | {
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Boxelder bugs are 1/2 inch long dark brown or black insects with conspicuous red markings on their wings.
There are 2 generations per year with 2nd generation adults overwintering in protected sites, including buildings. During the summer, these bugs live on boxelder trees, where they feed on seeds found on the tree and on the ground. When cool fall weather arrives, they migrate to buildings for protection. They cluster on the sides of the house. They crawl into cracks and crevices and eventually get into the walls. On warm days in winter, they can be found, often in large numbers, on the south and west sides of the house in the sun. They may also move into the house interior at the same time.
During the fall and winter they can be annoying in the house. Boxelder bugs do not feed on food or clothing nor reproduce in the house. They may spot curtains and wallpaper with their fecal material. Also, they will leave a red or purple stain if smashed.
Non chemical: If found indoors, remove by vacuuming. Remember not to crush them, or they will leave a red stain.
Caulk all cracks and crevices to reduce their chances of entering the home. They may still enter through doorways. Eliminating seed-bearing boxelder trees may help reduce the boxelder bug problem
Chemical: Contact your county Extension office for current pesticide controls. | <urn:uuid:06eada61-26f2-45e2-9a5d-127484d23950> | {
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