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Conceptualized organization of activities an organization performs to provide value to their customers.
Value Chain Parts
1. Inbound Logistics 2. Operations Activities 3. Outbound logistics 4. Marketing and sales 5. Service
"Receiving, storing, and distributing the materials an organization uses to create the products and services it sells."
Transform inputs into final products or services.
Distribute finished product or service to customers
Marketing and sales
Help customers buy the products or services the organization provides.
Provide post-sale support to customers
Allow the five primary activities (value chain parts) to be performed effectively and efficiently.
Support Activities Outline
1. Firm Infrastructure 2. Human Resources 3. Technology 4. Purchasing
Firm Infrastructure Activities
"Accounting, finance, legal and geneal administration activities that allow an organization to function."
Human Resources Activities
"Recruiting, hiring, training, and providing employee benefits and compensations."
Improve a product or service.
"Procure raw materials, supplies, machinery, and the buildings used to carry out the primary activities."
A manufacturing organization interacts with its suppliers and distributors. Value chain is a part of this.
How an AIS can add value to an organization
1. Improving quality & reducing costs 2. Improving efficiency 3. Sharing knowledge 4. improving the efficiency and effectiveness of its supply chain 5. Improving the internal control structure 6. Improving decision making
"repetitive, routine, understood well enough to be delegated"
incomplete decisions need for subjective assessments; can be computer aided
"nonrecurring and non-routine, require judgment and intuition. "
effective efficient performance of tasks
effective and efficient use or resources
establishing objectives and policies to accomplish objectives.
adding features or services not provided by competitors
be the most efficient producer
variety-based strategic position
providing a subset of the industry ex. Jiffy Lube only oil changes
needs-based strategic position
trying to serve most or all of the needs of a particular group ex. AARP tries to get all retirees
access-based strategic position
serving a subset of customers who are different ex. Edward Jones only operates in small towns
the system is greater than the sum of its parts
use data and algorithms to forecast future events
value of information
benefit produced by the information minus the cost of producing it
MAJOR BENEFITS OF INFORMATION:
1. Reduction of uncertainty 2. Improved decisions 3. Better ability to plan activities
required by a governmental entity
required to conduct business with external parties
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For help fixing this issue, see this FAQ. | <urn:uuid:d353ca19-be8c-4cac-8897-74c4154301a6> | {
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A new teacher training program designed to help girls and minorities succeed in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics is focusing on how small actions in the classroom can affect a student's achievement.
The Educators' Equity STEM Academy began Monday for professors at the Community College of Baltimore County, and it eventually will be available to high school teachers and community college teachers elsewhere in the state.
"We're really focusing on the little messages, the implicit messages that add up over time," said Tara Ebersole, a biology professor and STEM liaison for the community college.
For example, some teachers might call on boys more often than girls or have lower expectations for minority students.
An $886,000 grant from the National Science Foundation will fund the three-year program. The state education department, the county's community college and the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity Education Foundation are teaming up for the project.
The training "gets at the issue of the subtle messages that we send" to students, said Katharine Oliver, assistant state superintendent for career and college readiness.
"The need for our workforce in STEM is huge," Oliver said. "It's a high-skill, high-wage career area. We want to ensure that every student has an opportunity to be successful."
Many researchers have examined why students drop out of math and science programs, said Claudia Morrell, chief operating officer for the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity Education Foundation.
"It all comes down to the perception of inclusion, or the belief that you are capable of being successful," she said.
The training program for teachers is based on research from professors at institutions including the Johns Hopkins University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Wisconsin, she said.
The first year of the program will focus on the county's community college faculty, Morrell said. The 15 faculty members are set to finish in-depth training this week, and will also receive continued coaching throughout the school year.
In August, 25 high school teachers in Baltimore County and 25 community college professors will receive training, she said. The next year, the program will open up to educators in other areas in Maryland.
A program that used similar strategies for physics teachers in Dallas helped boost girls' performance on the Advanced Placement physics test, Oliver said.
There, girls' pass rates on the exam rose from 12 percent to 41 percent. Boys' pass rates increased from 45 percent to 59 percent. | <urn:uuid:6c8e8240-9ecf-4858-8582-15649ad64c89> | {
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Home > Histories > History of Chester, PA by Hon. John M. Broomall
History of Chester, PA
Hon. John M. Broomall
The following "History of Chester, Pa., by the Hon. John M. Broomall," is taken from the Delaware River and West Jersey Railroad Commercial Directory, for 1872, pp. 93, 94, 95, 96, and is in these words:
"The city of Chester, is situated on the west bank of the Delaware River, below Philadelphia. Its distance from Market Street wharf, measured on the river, is about twenty miles, while that from Market Street bridge, on the Schuylkill, by the Philadelphia and Baltimore post-road, is but thirteen. This difference is mainly owing to the great bend in the Delaware, about the mouth of the Schuylkill, known as the Horse-shoe.
The line of highland on which the higher portion of West Philadelphia is located, recedes from the shore line, and running nearly straight along the island limits of the Tinicum meadows, approaches the river about a mile above Chester. At this point the meadow land narrows to a mere strip, and gradually disappears altogether on the approach to the town. The site of Chester is as high above tide-water as that of West Philadelphia.
While Chester is twenty miles nearer the Capes by water than Philadelphia, the distance between the limits of the two cities by land, is but about eight miles, and the actual distance between the built-up portions of each is rapidly diminishing. The two cities will be united along the highlands long before any great improvement will be made along the river line between them.
Chester is the oldest town in Pennsylvania. The titles of its town lots extend back through the ownership of Europeans and their descendants to 1645. A village of considerable size existed there in 1682, at the time of the founding of Philadelphia, containing a market house, court house, schools, places of public worship, a flour mill and several taverns. It is well known that Penn intended locating his city there, but was prevented mainly by the fear that it might prove to be within the limits of Lord Baltimores domain. There is good reason to suppose that this fear was not without foundation, and more than that, that the removal to the mouth of the Schuylkill did not mend the matter. It is shrewdly suspected that nothing but Penns influence at Court saved him from holding his grant under Lord Baltimore, if at all, up to a line considerably north of Philadelphia.
Chester was the seat of Government of the Colony of Pennsylvania for several years. It continued to be the seat of justice of Chester County until 1788, when West Chester deprived it of that honor. This event was immediately followed by a division of the county, when Chester became the seat of justice of the new county of Delaware, and remained so until 1850. At that period, the courts and records were removed to Media, a point five miles inland, about the middle of the county, the present seat of justice.
After the establishment of Philadelphia, Chester gradually declined in importance, if not in population and extent. For a century and a half nothing but its Court house distinguished it from Marcus Hook, its neighboring fishing town. Long since the commencement of the present century, its inhabitants consisted of three or four tavern keepers, a doctor, a few dozen fishermen, two country storekeepers and a custom house officer, whose arduous duties consisted of signing a receipt for his small salary four times a year.
About 1840, however, a spirit of innovation began to exhibit itself, a little to the alarm and discomfort of the old inhabitants. Delaware County had always contained much of the elements of progress, and the county town could not always escape the contamination. Manufacturers of paper, cottons, woolens, iron, &c., had sprung up in various parts of the county, and it began to be perceived that steam upon tidewater is better than water power a few miles off. The advantages of Chester as a seat for manufacturing establishments soon became manifest, and from that time onward, its progress in material wealth and population has surprised even the most far-seeing.
In 1840, the population was 700; in 1850, 1600; in 1860, 6400; and in 1870, including the suburbs, about 14,000. Not many towns in Pennsylvania, or anywhere east of it, can show a corresponding increase. With equal advantages of location, Marcus Hook and New Castle have remained nearly stationary during the period of thirty years.
In 1827, the first stationary steam engine was started in Chester, and its advent produced more sensation among the simple villagers than did the downfall of the French monarchy. Now the number in operation is about sixty. These engines operate 28 cotton and woolen mills, 8 machine shops, and some 18 or 20 other manufacturing establishments.
The Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad passes through the town with 23 trains daily, including six from the Baltimore Central road, and the new route along the highlands, which will soon be opened, will render Chester accessible to Philadelphia every half hour in the day without crossing the Schuylkill and Tinicum meadows, which constitutes so uninviting a feature of the present road, with its ditches, swamps and drawbridges. This new route is already attracting the attention it deserves, passing as it does, through a country beautifully undulating and rich as a garden, with streams of pure spring water coursing every ravine. Already streets are being laid out and buildings erected upon them, promising a continuous town, so that the southern traveller, in a few years, will not suppose he is outside of Philadelphia, until he reaches the Delaware State line.
The southern terminus of the Chester Creek Railroad, is at Chester. This road is leased and operated by the Baltimore Central Railroad Company, and it forms the connecting link between the two Baltimore and Philadelphia railroads. Connecting at Lenni with the Westchester railroad, and at Chadds Ford with the Wilmington and Reading Railroad, the Baltimore Central and Chester Creek roads open out to Chester the rich agricultural and mining districts of Chester County and the entire country traversed by those roads.
The Media and Chester Narrow Gauge Railroad Company has been chartered and organized; and its road is now being located along the valley of Ridley Creek. This, when completed, will bring Chester within twenty minutes ride of the seat of justice. The scenery along the route of this road is not excelled anywhere within the same distance of Philadelphia. In places it approaches the mountainous, and all along the valley are hill sides teeming with agricultural wealth, and manufacturing villages swarming with a busy population. It is in contemplation to construct an 80 feet carriage-way along the bed of the railroad, so as to afford the citizens of Chester an opportunity to reside upon the highlands of the county and be within a few minutes ride of their places of business.
With all the railroad facilities, and with a river not obstructed by ice up to that point once in twenty years, few localities offer the inducements to manufacturers which Chester does: and this, with the energy and enterprise of those who have made it their home, is the sufficient explanation of the fact, that in thirty years the population has increased twenty-fold.
The width of the Delaware at Chester, is about a mile and a half. The channel is near the town, and is deep and wide enough for vessels of ordinary draft of water to tack and manoeuvre [maneuver] in, so as to avoid the necessity of being towed. Few vessels that enter the port of Philadelphia require towing, except from Chester upwards. In 1856 and 1857, two winters in succession, the river was frozen over at Chester so as to bear loaded wagons, and for a few weeks, much hauling of wood and other commodities was done to and from the opposite shore. No such occurrence had taken place for years before, nor has the river there been frozen over since. On both those occasions, it was open opposite the present extension of the town southward, and at that point and below, the river has probably never been fast during the memory of the oldest inhabitant.
Among the public institutions of the town, may be mentioned the Delaware County National Bank, founded as a State Bank in 1816, and for many years so ably conducted as to merit and enjoy a high degree of public confidence. It became a national bank in 1865, with a capital of three hundred thousand dollars. The First National Bank of Chester, established in 1865, with a capital of one hundred thousand dollars. This institution ranks among the best in the country. The Chester Gas Company, founded about 1856, well managed and exceedingly profitable to the stockholders. The South Ward Water Works, supplying a large portion of the city with water from the Delaware. The Crozer Theological Institute, a college founded by the late John P. Crozer, and managed by the religious denomination of Baptists. The Chester Military Academy, under the charge of Col. Theodore Hyatt, as principal. Thirteen public schools and five private academies.
There are also 19 places of public worship; 2 Episcopal, 6 Methodist, 3 Baptist, 2 Presbyterian, 1 Catholic, and 2 of the denomination of Friends.
There are also 7 hotels, and more drinking houses than the Court of Quarter Sessions of the county is probably aware of.
There are 5 shipyards in Chester, one of which, then operated by Messrs. Reany, Son & Archibold, was extensively engaged during the recent war, in making iron vessels of war for the Government. Though the business of ship-building has been unprosperous in this country for the past few years, yet the facilities afforded at Chester have been such that these yards continue in operation, and are now doing a good paying business. These facilities consist of cheapness of the river front for locations, as well as of living for the workmen, and the opportunity of obtaining materials by water and by railroad at less cost than in the larger cities.
The town was erected into a Borough by Penns government in 1682. Its charter was reconstructed and amended on several occasions by the state Legislature, and in 1866, it was constituted a city. The old town occupied a part of what is now the Middle Ward. The North Ward was laid out and to a large extent built up by John Larkin, Jr., the first and present Mayor of the city, having been commenced in 1850. John P. Crozer and John M. Broomall laid out and began to build up the South Ward, in the same year. The three wards constitute the city proper. But the town has extended beyond the city limits in almost all directions. One of these extensions is the Borough of Upland, founded by John P. Crozer, about 1847, and still owned almost wholly by his heirs. It contains two large cotton mills, a church, several school buildings, and the theological college already mentioned. Another is the Borough of South Chester, laid out by John M. Broomall and William Ward, in 1863. This contains two shipyards, a brass foundry and machine shop, four cotton and woolen factories, three places of worship, and three school houses. The other extensions are embraced within the township of Chester, and contain factories and schools, and other establishments.
In giving the population and business of Chester, these extensions are necessarily included. Except in the case of Upland, they are mere extensions of the same streets, with nothing to mark where the city proper ends, and doubtless before long, they will be incorporated with the City, under the same government.
Among the curiosities of Chester and its vicinity, are several old buildings erected during the early importance of the place, and still in good condition. Among these may be mentioned the dwelling house of David Lloyd, an important personage in the early colonial history. It was built by Lloyd, in 1721, and is beautifully located on the banks of the Delaware. Though suffered to fall into decay within a few years, it still bears marks of its ancient grandeur. Many years ago, it became the property of the late Commodore David Porter, and it is still held by his heirs. The Logan house, built by Jasper Yates, about 1700, is still standing, though altered into two dwellings, and all marks of its antiquity effaced. This building is situated upon Filbert street. Until desecrated by modern utilitarian hands it was a grand specimen of the mansion house architecture of that day.
The City Hall, once the Court house of Chester County, and afterwards of Delaware, was built in 1724; it is still one of the best buildings of the place, and will outlast most of those now in process of erection, if spared by Vandal hands. The residence of Caleb Pusey, still standing on the banks of Chester Creek, in Upland, is older than any of these. It was built about 1683. It is a one-story building with a Mansard roof, better proportioned than roofs of that kind now being constructed. It was, however, the style of that day, and the change may justify the charge made against our age, that we take up what was really good of centuries ago and spoil it. This building has been carefully preserved in its original style by the late John P. Crozer and his heirs, who still own it.
But the present work has more to do with the town of our day than the past, and we conclude our observations of both by the remark, that from present appearances, before many years have passed by, Chester will be in fact, if not in name, a part of the city of Philadelphia."
*Chester (and its Vicinity), Delaware County in Penna. with Genealogical Sketches of some old families, John Hill Martin, Originally Published 1877, fully indexed by John A. Bullock III., 1999
© 2000, 2004 John A. Bullock III.
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Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the rate at which you burn calories at rest just to maintain vital body functions like breathing, heartbeat, and brain activity. Your BMR usually accounts for at least half of the calories you burn in a day and is estimated based on the physical data you entered when you set up your account: sex, age, height, and weight.
The calorie burn estimate that Fitbit provides takes into account your BMR, the activity recorded by your tracker, and any activities you log manually.
Your tracker's calorie count will reset each night at midnight and begin counting immediately thereafter. BMR is the reason your tracker starts the day with calories already burned—you've still burned calories even if you haven't gotten out of bed yet.
July 6, 2018 | <urn:uuid:f8d307fb-d792-49de-b0c4-3032c2ec867d> | {
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In the correct order:
t3 s3 sw w / y h w3 (w)
Some specialists correctly point out that the Egyptian vowels
are not known very well. However, for foreign words –
as in this case - Egyptians used a sort of standard alphabet
with ‘matres lectionis’ (semi-consonants which served
as vowels). In this system you pronounce: ‘3’ =
‘a’; w = u en ÿ = i.
Using this system, the hieroglyphic above says:
“ta sasûw yehûa(w)”
Or translated in English: “land of the nomads (or
Bedouins), those of Yehua(w).”
Some specialists choose to identify 'Yehua'
with an unknown toponym. This cannot be proven because there
are places with names like: land of Judah (Deuteronomy 34:2)
and land of Rameses (Genesis 47:11). Or if we look at Asiatic
toponyms from that time: land of Jakob-El, land of Josep-El,
land of Lewi-El, etc. Clearly names of people were used in names
for places! (1)
Jean Leclant writes: “It is evident that the name
on the name-ring in Soleb that we are discussing corresponds
to the "Tetragrammaton" of the god of the Bible YHWH."
He adds: "The name of God appears here in the first place
as the name of a place." In a footnote he explains that
place-names are often derived of the names of gods. (2)
It is interesting to know that the expression ‘Shasus’,
used by Egyptians, referred to Bedouins living with their bundles
in the region North of the Sinai. From the 15th to the 12th
century B.C. the Hebrew settlers conquering Palestine were called
‘Hapirus’. The word ‘Apiru’ or ‘Habiru’
in Semitic languages means “wanderings”.
(1) Gerard Gertroux: zie boek: “The Name Of God Y.eH.oW.aH
Which is pronounced as it is written I_Eh_oU_Ah – Its
(2) Jean Leclant, Le “Tetragramme” à l’époque
d’Aménophis III, in “Near Eastern Studies
dedicated to H.I.H. Prince Takahito Mikasa on the Occasion of
His Seventy-Fifth Birthday,” pages 215-219, 1991 Wiesbaden. | <urn:uuid:7b572c31-6c3d-4aaa-8073-695613cb921f> | {
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Experiment 4: Work, Power, and Energy
Gerome Simeon, Michael Tiu, Mary Grace Anne Trinidad, Darrel Aaron Udasco Department of Math and Physics
College of Science, UST
España, Manila, Philippines
The Experiment entitled “Work, Power and Energy” is about relationship between work and power and the concept of energy. Activity 1 is about power and its relationship with work, the computed power outputs of each member of the group for going up are 118W, 205W, 178W, 222W; for going down, the computed power outputs are -150W, -232W, -195W, -303W.
Energy is one of the most important concepts in the world of science. In everyday use energy is associated with the fuel needed for transportation and heating, with electricity for lights and appliances, and with the foods we consume (Serway & Vuille, 2012). In this experiment the focus is mainly on mechanical energy, which is the sum of kinetic energy, the energy associated with motion, and potential energy, the energy associated with relative position. The sum of the kinetic energy and the gravitational potential energy remains constant at all times and hence is a conserved quantity (Serway & Vuille, 2012).
In physics, work is done only if an object is moved through some displacement while a force is applied to it. If either the force or displacement is doubled, the work is doubled. Double them both, and the work is quadrupled. Doing work involves applying a force to an object while moving it a given distance. In the experiment, work is demonstrated by a person going up and down a staircase. Work is positive when the applied force is in the same direction as the displacement, otherwise it is negative. Power, the rate at which energy is transferred, is important in the design and use of practical devices, such as electrical appliances and engines of all kinds. The concept of power, however, is essential whenever a transfer of any kind of energy takes place. Power is defined as the rate of energy transfer with time (Serway & Vuille, 2012).
The primary concepts given importance in this experiment are work, power, and energy. Work is defined by the equations:
Where Fx is the x-component of the force F and ∆X=Xf-Xi, is the object’s displacement and W=Fcosθd
where d is the magnitude of the displacement and θ is the angle between the vectors F and the displacement ∆x (Serway & Vuille, 2012). It has an SI unit of joule (J). Power is the rate of energy transfer with time and is defined by the equation: P=W∆t
Where W is the work done and ∆t=tf-ti, is the time interval. In obtaining the work done by person in both going up and going down the stairs, the researchers used the formula (the formula for work done by gravity is also shown): Wupg= Fgrcosθup=-mgh=-Wupperson
Energy is defined as the ability to do work. There are variety of forms of energy such as mechanical, chemical, electromagnetic, and nuclear energy. Mechanical energy is the sum of kinetic energy and potential energy. Kinetic energy is the energy associated with motion and is defined as KE=12mv2, where m is the mass and v is the speed of the object squared, while potential energy is the energy associated with relative position. It is defined as PE=mgy; where m is the mass, g= 9.80 m/s2 and y is the height. Energy can then be calculated through the use of the Work- Energy Theorem which states that E=Ekin+Epot
Energy also has a standard unit of joules (J).
In computing for the power of each group member, the researchers used the following equation for power: Pup=Wuppersontup Pdown=Wdownpersontdown
In this experiment, the researchers used the following materials: * Ruler
* Vernier motion sensor
* Logger Pro software
For the first activity, the researchers studied power by first, determining the weight of each... | <urn:uuid:aa48895e-dd00-4f6b-9db6-5d97288c85f9> | {
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Jetsun Milarepa , 1052-1135 was one of one of Tibet’s most famous yogis and poets, a student of Marpa Lotsawa, and a major figure in the history of Tibetan Buddhism.
“If you lose all differentiation between yourselves and others,
fit to serve others you will be.
And when in serving others you will win success,
then shall you meet with me;
And finding me, you shall attain to Buddhahood.”
The facts of his life as they are popularly known come from the biography written by one of his chief disciples Rechung.
Born in the village of Kya, Ngatsa in Tibet to a prosperous family he was named Mila Thöpaga (Thos-pa-dga), which means “A joy to hear”. But when his father died Milarepa’s uncle and aunt took all the family’s wealth. At his mother’s request Milarepa left home and studied sorcery. While his Aunt and Uncle were having a party to celebrate the impending marriage of their son, he took his revenge by causing the house they were in to collapse, killing 35 people, although the Uncle and Aunt are supposed to have survived. The villagers were angry and set off to look for Milarepa, but his mother got word to him, and he sent a hailstorm to destroy their crops.
Milarepa knowing that his revenge was wrong set out to find a teacher and was led to Marpa the translator. Marpa proved a hard task master, and before he would teach him. He had Milarepa build and then demolish three houses in turn. When Marpa still refused to teach Milarepa he went to Marpa’s wife, who took pity on him. She forged a letter of introduction to another teacher, Lama Ngogdun Chudor, under whose tutelage he began to practise meditation. However when he was making no progress, he confessed the forgery and Ngogdun Chudor said that it was vain to hope for spiritual growth without the guru’s approval. Milarepa returned to Marpa, and after practicing very diligently for twelve years Milarepa attained the state of vajradhara (complete enlightenment). He is said to be the first to achieve this state within one lifetime. He then became known as Milarepa, which means the “Mila, the cotton clad one” (the suffix “repa” is given to many tantric yogis since they wear white robes) At the age of forty-five, he started to practice at Drakar Taso (White Rock Horse Tooth) cave, as well as becoming a wandering teacher.
Milarepa is famous for many of his songs and poems, in which he expresses the profundity of his realization of the dharma with extraordinary clarity and beauty. He also had many disciples, which include Rechung Dorje Drakpa (Ras-chung Rdo-rje Grags-pa)), Gampopa (Sgam-po-pa) or Dhakpo Lhaje. It was Gampopa who became his spiritual successor who continued his lineage and became one of the main lineage masters in Milarepa’s tradition. The Hundred thousand songs of Milarepa is an important spiritual scripture for Tibetan Buddhism. | <urn:uuid:72f8544f-0065-491c-869d-db5d5b644102> | {
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Hypomagnesemia can be a life-threatening emergency. Call your health care provider right away if you have symptoms of this condition.
Treating the condition that is causing hypomagnesemia can help. If you play sports, drink fluids such as sports drinks, which contain electrolytes. Drinking only water while you are active can lead to hypomagnesemia.
David C. Dugdale, III, MD, Professor of Medicine, Division of General Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine. Also reviewed by A.D.A.M. Health Solutions, Ebix, Inc., Editorial Team: David Zieve, MD, MHA, Bethanne Black, Stephanie Slon, and Nissi Wang. | <urn:uuid:f3b34a21-435e-4d75-aad6-d66e6c5e0804> | {
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The “great woman of Shunem” appears twice in the narratives about the ninth-century b.c.e. prophet Elisha. Her title suggests wealth, but also, as the story unfolds, independence of mind and faith. She recognizes Elisha as a man of God, offering him meals and building and furnishing a roof-chamber for his convenience (a decision announced to her husband, not submitted for his approval!). In response, the prophet offers her a boon, proposing to use his influence with the king or army commander. Although this offer foreshadows later events, here she proudly refuses such help, expressing confidence in her own people. Following up on his servant Gehazi’s observation of the woman’s childlessness, Elisha then announces she will bear a son. Again (and surprisingly, given the conventions of such announcement stories) she resists: “No, my lord, O man of God; do not deceive your servant” (2 Kgs 4:16). The child is born and grows into a youth. One day, while helping his father in the fields, he falls sick He is sent to his mother, the parent charged with health care and, in this case, with deciding what to do when the child dies. Brushing off her husband’s questions about her actions, the woman orders him to fetch her a servant and a donkey so that she might ride to Elisha at Mount Carmel. Notably unaware of what troubles her, Elisha sends Gehazi to question her. The woman, however, refuses to deal with an intermediary: she neither responds to Gehazi’s queries nor accepts Elisha’s wish to send his servant in his place. He accedes to her demand, returns with her, and restores the child to life.
The Shunammite woman appears again in 2 Kgs 8:1–6. Having accepted Elisha’s suggestion that she move her household away from Israel during a seven-year famine, she returns to appeal to the king for return of her house and her land. It so happens that she and her son appear at court just at the moment that Gehazi is regaling the king with the story of Elisha’s resurrection of the boy. Apparently impressed with this sight of a miracle in the flesh, the king restores the woman’s possessions.
Prophet legends such as these (compare 1 Kgs 17:8–24; 2 Kgs 4:1–7) usually serve to impress the reader or listener with the prophet’s power. The characterization of the great woman of Shunem both supports and subverts this purpose. In some respects she is stereotypically subordinated to Elisha: he is named, whereas she is not; he rarely speaks directly to her, even when she is present; he decides that she should have a child, when she has expressed no such desire; she speechlessly bows in the face of his resurrecting power. On the other hand, she is presented as the decision-making head of her household and as the initiating and unintimidated actor in her relationship with the prophet—indeed, one who reveals the limits of Elisha’s own communication with God.
Camp, Claudia V. “1 and 2 Kings.” Women’s Bible Commentary, edited by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe, 96–109. Kentucky: 1992.
Long, Burke. “The Shunammite Woman: In the Shadow of the Prophet?” Bible Review 7 (1991): 12–19, 42.
Meyers, Carol, General Editor. Women in Scripture. New York: 2000.
Shields, Mary E. “Subverting a Man of God, Elevating a Woman: Role and Power Reversals in 2 Kings 4.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 58 (1993): 59–69.
van Dijk-Hemmes, Fokkelien. “The Great Woman of Shunem and the Man of God: A Dual Interpretation of 2 Kings 4:8–37.” In A Feminist Companion to Samuel and Kings, edited by Athalya Brenner, 218–230. Sheffield, England: 1989.
How to cite this page
Camp, Claudia V.. "Shunammite: Bible." Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 1 March 2009. Jewish Women's Archive. (Viewed on June 1, 2016) <http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/shunammite-bible>. | <urn:uuid:a0f351d2-379e-4232-b544-bb00373f4756> | {
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(a) $\omega_1 = \omega_2 =\omega_3$ (b) $v_3 > v_1 = v_2$
Work Step by Step
(a) $\omega_1 = \omega_2 =\omega_3$ Each point on the wheel rotates through the same angle per unit time. (b) $v_3 > v_1 = v_2$ For a point on a rotating wheel, $v = \omega ~r$, where $r$ is the distance from the axis of rotation. Since point 3 is farthest from the center, point 3 moves a larger distance than point 1 and point 2 per unit time. Therefore, the speed of point 3 is greater than the speed of point 1 and point 2. Note that point 1 and point 2 move at the same speed since they are the same distance from the center. | <urn:uuid:50f3b7de-3662-4d7a-95e6-9350a4ad4f8c> | {
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While your young child isn't exactly ready to master complex math concepts, she can handle developmentally appropriate ones. Developmentally appropriate practices, according to the National Association for the Education of Young Children, include meeting a child at his own stage of development, knowing what the child is capable of doing and understanding his learning style. Math activities that fall into this category feature skills that match your child's current development and ability level.
The child development experts at PBS Parents note that by the age of 2, most toddlers are beginning to use at least a few number words and may even understand the difference between low-numbered quantities for a large group. For example, your toddler knows what he's saying when he points to one toy car and exclaims, "I only have one, not a lot." When it comes to geometry, it is developmentally appropriate to expect that toddlers who are 24 months and older to identify and match basic shapes such as squares and circles. By the close of the toddler years, as your child approaches age 3, he will start to recognize patterns and be able to sort objects into like-groups.
Young children between the ages of 3 and 4 are building new math skills that include understanding concepts slightly more complex than what a toddler can handle. Although your young preschooler isn't ready to solve lengthy word problems, she can, according to PBS Parents, understand and distinguish the numbers and quantities up to three and possibly count at least up to the number 10. While most 3-year-olds aren't developmentally ready to do major math addition and subtraction problems, some can understand that adding means making more of an item and that subtraction equals taking something away. Additionally, young preschoolers can grasp some simple size comparisons such as bigger and smaller along with identifying patterns and sequences.
By the second half of your child's preschool years -- ages 4 and 5 -- he is developing the mathematical skills to think more logically and solve simple problems. According to PBS Parents, older preschoolers may have the ability to count into the teens as well as counting backwards from either five or 10. Other developmentally appropriate concepts that older preschoolers can grasp include simple operations like adding 1 + 1, reading multi-digit numbers, matching shapes of different sizes and orientations, combining shapes into designs, understanding different quantities or measurements and discerning even from odd numbers.
The beginning of grade school, or kindergarten, marks a time when your child may need to know more complex math concepts and demonstrate the ability to tackle more solution-based problems. According to the Common Core State Standards Initiative, kindergarten math should primarily include learning about making whole-number comparisons and describing geometric shapes. Additionally, young grade schoolers should work with numbers 11 through 19 to understand place value, compare measurements, reason both abstractly and quantitatively and classify objects into categories.
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October 27th is designated World Day for Audiovisual Heritage by UNESCO. Had we enterprise enough and time, the Bioscope would have produced its own celebration of this event, but instead (and what is much better) let us point you to an exceptional resource produced for this day by the Museu del Cinema in Girona and Girona City Council through the Centre for Image Research and Diffusion (CRDI), with the collaboration of the International Council on Archives.
It is an online, interactive ‘poster’, entitled Audiovisual Heritage that provides a chronology of the historical development of the audio-visual media of cinema, photography, television, video and sound recording. Arranged by horizontally by decades and vertically by theme, it is a well-researched, well-illustrated, and compulsively browsable resource. Click on any box and a potted history pops up, with further illustrations, including some video demonstrations (also available through the Museu del Cinema’s YouTube channel). You can then explore that theme further by clicking through page arrows, or else return to the main arrow. The poster is available in Spanish, Catalan, English and French.
For a list of World Day for Audiovisual Heritage events taking place worldwide, visit www.pia.gov.ph/wdavh2011. For the Bioscope’s own account of the Museu del Cinema from earlier this year, click here. | <urn:uuid:dfd7c7c7-38ee-43d4-adc4-6a0d2be3c198> | {
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Where are the world’s top scientists? Over the four years of The Times Higher-QS World University Rankings, the verdict of the experts we poll has been unanimous: the world’s top scientists are in the UK and the US. Last year, they made Cambridge and Oxford the top two science universities. This year, they have chosen the University of California, Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with Cambridge and Oxford in third and eighth places respectively.
In this table and the following faculty-specific rankings, we place universities in order of the opinions of our peer reviewers, who are active academics in the subjects on which they are giving their views. This year they have put US and UK universities in the top 11 places. Tokyo, in 12th position, is the top institution from any other country.
But there is no room for British triumphalism. The large amount of research funding that goes into a small number of UK universities appears, on the evidence of this table, to buy top performance for a few universities, but is less good at building strength in depth. The US has 24 universities in this top 50, but the UK manages only three, putting it level with France and Canada, behind Australia.
France and Germany’s relatively modest showing in this table is often attributed to the fact that many of their scientists work in state labs, not universities. This argument is strengthened by this year’s Nobel prize awards. The prize for physics was shared by Albert Fert, who works partly for the company Thales and partly at Université Paris-Sud, and Peter Grünberg, who works in the Jülich research centre in Germany. The prize for chemistry went to Gerhard Erlt, who is based at the Max-Planck Society, the biggest German research institution. However, we are ranking universities, not countries.
This table also shows citations per paper over a five-year period for science publications, as measured by Scopus. Because the subject area being analysed is similar for each institution, this shows which universities are producing research with the most impact. We have not aggregated the two columns to produce an overall score. Experts on composite tables such as this agree that combining just two measures such as these would not produce a meaningful result.
Some US institutions such as New York University are rated far more modestly by other researchers than their citations might suggest. At the other extreme, 11 of the top 20 universities as measured by our peer reviewers manage fewer than seven citations per paper.
Drew Faust, installed last month as president of Harvard University, can draw comfort from the fact that her university is number one in the world overall, as well as in life sciences and biomedicine, with its biggest component, Harvard Medical School, regarded as the best. And so it should be. It has more than 11,000 staff, an annual budget of $470 million (£230 million) and an endowment given as $3,256,509,589.
Not everyone agrees that Harvard is top of the medical tree. It has won only two Nobel prizes for medicine since 1981. But the esteem in which it is held by biomedical academics around the world suggests it is producing key discoveries at an impressive rate.
There may be arguments about where the best economists or historians ply their trade. But this table shows that the sheer amount of cash available for medical research in the US enables it to dominate this high-pressure, big-money field, with 22 of the top 50 institutions. The funds open
to US institutions include about $23 billion a year for universities from the National Institutes of Health, plus funding from large medical charities and a range of government bodies such as the Veterans Health Administration. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation adds further to US resources for biomedical research.
However, this table suggests that recent increases in UK health research are paying off. The field is led by the Medical Research Council, whose budgets have grown rapidly in recent years and are set to expand further as its activities are co-ordinated more closely with National Health Service research. And as well as state funding via the MRC, the UK is home to the Wellcome Trust, the biggest medical charity outside the US. Cambridge and Oxford appear second and third, with Imperial College London seventh. A total of seven UK universities are in this top 50.
We separate this analysis from our look at the rest of the sciences because the sheer amount of biomedical research, and its ferocious publishing culture, would swamp the less prosperous and cut-throat natural sciences if we merged the two. But as well as being important and well-funded, biomedical research is controversial: think of stem cells or xenotransplantation.
But there is little here to suggest that the Bush Administration’s unease about some of these developments is hobbling medical scientists in the US. Apart from some high-profile defections to Asia and Europe, the US is where the top researchers in this field want to be.
Asian nations with ambitions on the world stage have realised that biomedicine offers a unique chance to carve out new industries and markets. Universities in Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong and China appear in this table along with more established institutions in Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Our citations data suggest they are producing some well-regarded papers.
By contrast, Chinese and Russian universities are well liked by their academic peers but produce few high-impact research papers.
WORLD UNIVERSITY RANKINGS 2007
- The world top 200 universities
- Top 50 universities for natural sciences
- Top 50 universities for life sciences and biomedicine
- Technology and social sciences
- Top 50 universities for technology
- Top 50 universities for social sciences
- Arts and humanities
- Top 50 universities for arts and humanities
- Top tens | <urn:uuid:41e977c7-be34-4c3e-9d7f-33ad96a05c6f> | {
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What would UK environmental policy and practice look like if we voted to leave the EU? With the referendum fast approaching, we explore the possibilities.
Once known as ‘the Dirty Man of Europe’, the UK has cleaned up its act in recent years thanks, in large part, to the influence of the European Union. If the UK votes to leave the EU, how might this impact environmental policy and legislation in the UK? And how would the UK’s exit affect environmental protection in the remaining EU countries?
EU countries have worked together over decades to build one of the most comprehensive packages of environmental legislation in the world, including habitat protection, pollution control and climate change mitigation. Much of the UK’s environmental law has been developed through its membership of the EU, so it’s important to explore the potential impacts of a Brexit scenario.
A large number of EU directives have helped to enforce standards in areas as diverse as water quality, air quality, fish stocks, waste disposal, hazardous substances, radioactive waste, recycling, construction, habitat and wildlife protection, GMOs, animal welfare and climate change.
Whilst some aspects of EU policy (such as the Common Agricultural Policy), have been damaging to the environment, most EU environmental policies have resulted in a raising of standards across EU member states. The EU-wide nature of these policies makes them more effective as many of the issues are trans-boundary (water, air and wildlife all move across boundaries). Single nations are also less likely to raise standards unilaterally due to fear of competitive disadvantage. EU-wide legislation creates a level playing field that countries are more willing to sign up to.
In the event of a ‘leave’ vote, there’s no clear consensus over which exit scenario the UK would follow but, irrespective of what the final arrangement might be, Brexit would result in some important changes:
- Loss of the UK’s voice in EU decisions affecting the environment.
- In international negotiations, such as the UN Framework Conventions on Climate Change, the UK would contribute independently. This would allow us to steer our own path, but we would lose influence over the EU position, which holds more sway at a global level owing to its size and economic importance.
- The Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy would cease to apply and we would need to find alternatives. The consequences of this change for land and marine management could be significant.
Options for the UK and Europe
Other impacts would be dependent on the type of relationship negotiated between the UK and the remaining EU Member States. There are a number of options, but it’s uncertain which option would be pursued by the UK government.
One option in the event of an ‘out’ vote is that the UK joins countries such as Norway and Iceland as part of the European Economic Area (EEA). In this scenario, most EU environmental legislation would continue to apply, with notable exceptions being the Bathing Water Directive and the Birds and Habitats Directives (see box). If the UK stayed within the EEA, we would retain some routes into EU policy debates, but could no longer vote on decisions affecting EU legislation.
In relation to industry, EU environmental law covers two broad areas: ensuring industrial processes don’t cause undue environmental damage and ensuring products entering the EEA meet agreed standards. Examples of the former include limiting emissions and setting broad standards for air and water quality; the latter includes restriction of hazardous substances in products and ensuring suitability for recycling. Most of this legislation would continue to apply if the UK left the EU but remained in the EEA.
Bathing water and habitats
The Bathing Water Directive was the main reason that the UK introduced improved water treatment from the 1970s onwards. Prior to this, the seas around the UK were some of the dirtiest in Europe, thanks to the government policy of ‘dilute and disperse’. In the event of the UK leaving the EU, this directive would cease to apply. Although it is unlikely that the UK government would take the unpopular step of weakening standards in this area, there would no longer be pressure from Europe to keep our seas clean.
Similarly, the Habitats Directive would no longer be in force under any of the likely Brexit scenarios. Enacted in 1992, this protects habitats and important species of animals and plants. The UK government has made clear its frustration with some aspects of the Habitats Directive, particularly where infrastructure developments have been affected. There is therefore real concern that UK habitats and wildlife could receive less protection outside of the EU.
Other options include a negotiated bilateral agreement with the EU, with some access to the Single Market, or the UK could withdraw completely from the Single Market. In both of these scenarios, different types of legislation would be affected in different ways.
EU regulations are applied directly in member countries so would no longer be applicable in the UK if we chose to leave the EU and not join the EEA. It would then be up to the UK government to decide on UK legislation in these areas.
EU directives are not directly applicable in UK law. Many of them have been transposed into UK law so would continue to apply until changed by the UK parliament even if we left the EEA. Other directives have been implemented under the 1972 European Communities Act, so new legislation would have to be enacted if this act was repealed.
New UK legislation could of course increase, maintain or reduce the level of environmental protection. However, the current government’s actions and promises to ‘cut the green crap’ do not bode well. It’s worth noting that EU states are currently allowed to adopt ‘more stringent protection measures’ than EU legislation requires (albeit with some limitations), yet the UK government has chosen to adopt a ‘no gold plating’ approach – sticking with the minimum standards – while complaining that many of those standards are unnecessary ‘red tape’ for industry.
Even where the UK is no longer bound by EU environmental legislation, companies exporting to the EU would have to comply with EU industry standards. The EU is unlikely to allow equal access to the market for products developed under lower environmental standards where this might have implications for competitiveness.
In or out?
Overall, there’s still much uncertainty over what impact an ‘out’ vote might have. Before its involvement in Europe, the UK did not have a strong record on environmental protections, but in some areas it’s unlikely that we would move backwards. If we remain in the EEA then many protections remain.
However, evidence of the government’s dislike of ‘red tape’ and ‘green crap’, particularly when it comes to protecting the environment against the interests of big business, does give cause for concern. Environmental protection is a long-term investment, often overshadowed by headline-grabbing short-term issues, and in the age of austerity it’s easy to see how certain environmental considerations could become neglected without the safeguards offered by the EU.
In the next few weeks, the voices for ‘in’ and ‘out’ will clamour ever more loudly for your vote – you can use this chance to ask questions about their vision for the environment, putting the issues you care about at the heart of the debate.
Both the EU collectively and individual members states sign up to new treaties on climate change.
Climate targets are implemented through the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), covering emissions from power plants and aviation, and the Effort Sharing Decision (ESD), covering emissions from elsewhere. Together, these policies govern overall totals for emissions, and EU legislation determines how allowances are allocated.
Other policies that help reduce emissions within the EU include legislation on transport and energy, including rules on energy efficiency and renewables, and emissions targets for car manufacturers. Energy efficiency rules include the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive and the Energy Efficiency Directive. Targets are set for the percentage of energy that should come from renewable sources, plus targets and regulations on biomass.
EU commitments agreed at the Paris climate change talks are currently being developed into a package of new measures, including revisions to ETS, new renewables targets, changes to energy efficiency legislation, and the possibility of the inclusion of legislation on carbon stored in land and forestry.
So what would be the impact of Brexit on EU climate policy? The UK, along with other North-West Member States, has pushed for an ambitious approach to targets, whilst states in the South and East of the EU have been more reluctant. The UK has been particularly influential in determining targets for 2020 and 2030. UK support has been for market-based mechanisms such as ETS over targets for particular technologies. Under a Brexit scenario, EU policy may therefore become less ambitious and more technology-focused in its targets.
There are a few useful reports that cover these issues in more depth:
The EU Referendum and the UK Environment
The potential policy and environmental consequences for the UK of a departure from the European Union
Brexit – the Implications for UK Environmental Policy and Regulation
This is an extract from Clean Slate Summer 2016. To receive Clean Slate once a quarter and stay up to date with news and veiws from CAT, sign up for membership today. | <urn:uuid:e4a0dde2-12e5-435a-85e7-a8c382a3cbd8> | {
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UNION COUNTY WILL BE CLOSED MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1ST FOR LABOR DAY
Union County, created in 1862, organized in 1862, was originally named Cole County for Austin Cole, who was a member of the first Territorial Legislature. Two
years later, the boundaries were rearranged and the name changed to Union because of sentiment for the Union side of the civil war. The county seat is located in Elk Point, and it also includes the communities of Alcester, Beresford, Dakota Dunes, Jefferson, & North Sioux City. We have a population of just under 15,000 people. The county is bordered by Iowa and the Big Sioux River on it’s Eastern side & Nebraska and the Missouri River on it’s Southern side. Interstate 29 runs through the county from North to South. | <urn:uuid:e75bcae6-2584-4280-9052-ea168d8d2d64> | {
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SOCAL-15 continues a multi-year research collaboration called the “SOCAL-BRS” (Southern California Behavioral Response Study). This project is designed to better understand the behavior of numerous protected marine mammal species that inhabit the southern California Bight and provide direct, controlled measurements of their reactions to sound, including military sonar systems. The overall objective is to provide a better scientific basis for estimating risk and minimizing effects of mid-frequency active sonar (MFAS) systems for the U.S. Navy and regulatory agencies. SOCAL-BRS includes collaborations among the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), private sector and academic scientists, and U.S. Navy researchers. It is jointly funded by the U.S. Navy Living Marine Resources Program (LMR) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and is part of an international collaboration to measure the impacts of noise on marine mammals.
Several successful field seasons of SOCAL-BRS have already been completedand over 170 tags have been deployed on individuals of nine different species and 83 complete experimental BRS sequences have been conducted on individuals from seven different federally protected marine mammal species (Cuvier’s beaked whale, Baird’s beaked whale, sperm whale, Risso’s dolphin, blue whale, fin whale, and humpback whale). The results of these experiments have been presented in scientific meetings and increasingly in the scientific literature (please see numerous papers available at www.socal-brs.org for more detailed discussion).
SOCAL-15 will use similar configurations, protocols, focal species, equipment, and areas with an increasing reliance on smaller, adaptive vessel configurations. SOCAL-15 will build on earlier integrations of CEE methods with ongoing regular training operations to directly use Navy sonar systems in experimental applications. Whales will opportunistically be tagged around these activities at much greater distances than typically used in simulated sonar exposures. The experimental objective is to match received sound levels with those tested using simulated sonars but in a completely realistic scenario to study the relative effects on behavior of source type, received sound level, and physical range to sound sources. | <urn:uuid:afb3468c-153a-4477-95e6-4701df4e7281> | {
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As one of America’s leading biographers and historians, Stephen E. Ambrose shapes our national memory of great leaders and the important events of our time.
At the core of Ambrose’s phenomenal success in awakening the historical curiosity of the reading public is his simple but straightforward belief that history is more interesting than almost anything because “history is biography. History is about people, what they have done and why, with what effect. The reason biography is the most popular form of nonfiction writing is that nothing is more fascinating to people than people,” Ambrose says.
Now retired, Ambrose taught history for thirty years at the University of New Orleans after graduating from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Ambrose thinks much is lost when academic historians concentrate on social history, movement history, organizational history, or class or race history. Ambrose, sixty-two, argues students and adults still want to know “Who were our leaders? What did they do and how did they do it? What were their strengths and weaknesses, their goals and value structures, their adventures and misadventures?”
During three decades as a historian and a writer, Ambrose has practiced this approach in producing nineteen books while also teaching in New Orleans. After visiting during a spring vacation, “I just fell in love with this old bag of bones of a city,” Ambrose has said of New Orleans.
As a young historian, Ambrose set out to write his second biography about a relatively obscure military figure, Henry Wager Halleck, a Civil War general and Lincoln’s military chief of staff. It was this book on Halleck that led Ambrose to the man with whom he is most closely identified in the public mind: General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme allied commander in World War II and thirty-fourth president of the United States.
Ike coincidentally admired Halleck and the book sparked the general’s attention. The former president appointed the twenty-seven-year-old Ambrose to edit his papers.
Given this access to Eisenhower’s papers, Ambrose went on to write his highly acclaimed biography of the former president and later several books about Richard Nixon, a man about whom Ambrose has strong opinions, both positive and negative.
Ambrose described Eisenhower as “a perfectly wonderful person: the greatest man I’ve ever known. I just loved him.” Eisenhower, he says, taught him a valuable lesson as a historian: Never question a man’s motives because you never really know the secrets of his heart. This lesson has stood Ambrose well, allowing him to write passionately but without moral judgement about people and great events.
Ambrose’s interest in the explorers Lewis and Clark came in 1975 when he started reading the journals of their expedition. This kindled a lifetime fascination with the men, the political leaders of the day, and the American West. The resulting book was one of his most popular, the best-seller Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. His love for the expedition, the men, and the country they explored still takes him to the West every year. He served as chief consultant to the PBS series on Lewis and Clark produced by Ken Burns.
Undaunted Courage is a striking example of how Ambrose evokes history with literary allusion. He wrote that at the outset of the expedition, “Lewis knew he was stepping into the unknown…He was entering a heart of darkness. Deserts, mountains, great cataracts, warlike Indian tribes — he could not imagine them, because no American had ever seen them. But far from causing apprehension or depression, the prospect brought out his fullest talents. He knew that from now on, until he reached the Pacific and returned, he would be making history…He turned his face west. He would not turn it around until he reached the Pacific Ocean. He stepped forward, into paradise.”
Following the great success of Undaunted Courage, Ambrose turned to the theme of courage as a common virtue among GIs in World War II.
After writing eight books on the Second World War, Ambrose has become increasingly focused on the lives and trials of the American fighting soldier. His latest book, also a best-seller, has brought him an even wider public acclaim.
Citizen Soldiers: the U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945, tells in graphic reality the horror and experience of total war, not from command headquarters, but from the ground, from the perspective of the GI doing the fighting and the dying. The book had a profound influence on producer Steven Spielberg and the making of Saving Private Ryan, the film he wanted to be the definitive statement about fighting to end the war in Europe. Ambrose, who served as a consultant for the film, argues in the book that the American citizen soldier of World War II overcame fear, inexperience, the mistakes of the high command, and the formidable German army to eventually win the war.
The success of Ambrose’s work may be that it reminds us of the human qualities we aspire to: vision, courage, loyalty, and patriotism. And in the process, his books let us touch those who dedicated their lives towards greater goals.
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The word “puzzled” is a remarkable adjective to use at the end of this poem because it implies that Charlotte Brontë will continue to be “This bird – observing others”, though who now will be applying her craft as a writer and observer in “Heaven”. Emily is suggesting that Charlotte will live forever and that her works will continue to inspire even though she is no longer with us.
Emily is quite bold in making a connection between Charlotte and Jesus, however I would assume that Charlotte was an incredibly important figure in Emily’s life, not just as a writer, but as a successful woman writer. Perhaps this is why Emily includes Charlotte’s pen-name, “Currer Bell” because she wants to recognize the struggle for female writers who work in a field dominated by men. The middle portion of the poem is dominated with the image of “anguish” which she compares to Jesus’ “anguish” in the Garden of “Gethsemane” (a topic Emily has written about in “I like a look of Agony“) to Charlotte’s struggle with her illness but also as a female writer.
In fact, Emily is keen on exploring the notion of “anguish” as it relates to the loss of one’s name and identity. “Currer Bell” was the name chosen so that Charlotte could publish without the public knowing she was a woman, but imagine the pain involved in such a decision, to spend so much of one’s self in the act of creation only to have born into the world as an orphan without its rightful mother. Emily would likely have felt the same way if someone had tried to separate her from her work, but as Christ agonized at “Gethsemane”, so too must have Charlotte who also wanted to be published and to allow her art to take flight but at the same time would most likely have been conflicted about having to change her name to make that happen. Which is the right choice? Allow your child to go of into the world without the protection of your name attached to them, or keep them at home in the nest never to fly? The parallel to Emily’s decision to remain anonymous is thus greatly illuminated.
But Emily is also concerned with transformation. The poem is structured so that by the end “Currer Bell” is rightfully identified as Charlotte “Bronte”; she no longer has to hide behind a false name, yet she is like the “Nightingale” who, though her song can still be heard, she remains hidden from mortal view in the next life at Elysium among the “Asphodel”. And as transformation involves growth, Emily uses the imagery of gardens (Elysium, “Gethsemane”, and “Eden”), and “cunning moss” and the “weed” to infuse the poem with a vitality of life that when cultivated has the potential to grow riot all over not just the mortal earth but also in the afterlife. Barren fields where “When frosts too sharp become” are reseeded the next season by “This bird” who seems to migrate between the gardens of this world where the cages of the dead artists gently fertilize the soil with art’s potential and the next world where the “Asphodel” grows and the dead listen with a “puzzled Ear” at the “soft” “sounds of Eden” for all eternity. | <urn:uuid:4e8d01a1-5123-4aed-b133-da778b3f5262> | {
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Educating boys to respect womenJanuary 29th, 2011 - 8:24 pm ICT by IANS
Mumbai, Jan 29 (IANS) International human rights organisation Breakthrough is using sports, dance, vibrant skits, trivia and video to educate students to stop and prevent public harassment of women.The initiative called Parivartan will reach out to over 25 schools in Mumbai in a video van and will interact with students between 13-15 years.
It is also using India’s most popular sport, cricket, to teach boys how to be respectful towards women and, in turn, help reduce violence against the fair sex.
The van has a variety of interactive elements like games and quizzes where children can win prizes, an audio-visual video and a street play as well. The programme, which kickstarted Jan 17, will continue till Feb 13.
“The programme disseminates information using pop culture to educate the audience and re-define the concept of masculinity as is taught to boys,” Sonali Khan, country head of Breakthrough, told IANS.
“In many places, gender inequality and the abuse that stems from it is often socially accepted,” she added.
The programme is endorsed by cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar and according to Khan, a role model helps to reach out to youngsters in a simple way.
“Through cricket and influential role models like coaches and community mentors, Parivartan helps young athletes understand that part of being a ’star’ is stopping violent and abusive behaviour and language towards women and girls, like eve teasing (harassment of women),” Khan said.
“Role models make things easier as it is believed that young men have access to peaceful, gender-equitable men in their lives and they are more likely to embrace these characteristics,” he added.
- Sports effective tool for change in gender issues: Study - May 30, 2012
- Jamia Millia reaches out to women in distress - Feb 25, 2011
- UNFPA-Laadli awards 14 gender crusaders - May 12, 2010
- TV show aims to curb domestic violence - Mar 08, 2012
- No more films for Sonali after 'Once Upon...' - Aug 22, 2012
- Nawazuddin feels training must for actors - May 27, 2012
- 100 men arrested in Kolkata for harassing women - Feb 19, 2011
- UN holds Holocaust memorial ceremony - Jan 28, 2012
- UN campaign to protect Delhi women from violence - Nov 22, 2010
- Little Bengal in a Mumbai school (With Images) - Jan 02, 2012
- IGNOU launches diploma in women and gender studies - May 10, 2012
- African women set to drive continent's resurgence: AU official (Interview) - Jul 23, 2012
- Rabindra dance marathon lands her in Guinness book - Apr 26, 2012
- Young South African women told to be independent - Aug 12, 2011
- 'India making progress on women's political empowerment' - Mar 17, 2012
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Most readers would probably have come across Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs: a pretty neat explanation of how humans should view our existence in terms of our needs. Abraham Maslow, an Amercan psychologist, created this hierarchy as he was trying to understand human nature.
The hierarchy of needs is usually produced in a pyramid like the one shown below. The theory goes like this: humans have needs and we need to fulfill our basic needs before we can advance to the next level. For example, the most basic needs like food, water, shelter have to be fulfilled before we can think about health, starting a family, owning a property etc. As we move up the hierarchy, we need friendship and connections, develop self esteem and finally achieve what we are supposed to achieve - self actualization. In short, reaching our potential in life.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs
As civilization progressed, most developed countries today, including Singapore, have moved up the pyramid and a lot of individuals do have opportunities to achieve self actualization. Maslow postulated that only 1% of humans would actually succeed. Well, that's probably not far from the truth given that a few hundred million people still live in poverty, in war torn territories, fearing for their lives, wondering if they could eat the next meal. Let's pray for them. However, in developed countries, the population of people who can self-actualize would be much higher, including most readers here.
In the world of personal finance, we can modify the pyramid to map our financial needs following more or less the same rules as the original Maslow pyramid. In this new hierarchy of financial needs, we also need to fulfill the lower levels before we advance upwards. The lowest level corresponds to the very basic and important needs. In life, obviously we need food and water before we talk about other needs. In finance, it's the same reasoning, we should fulfill fundamental needs first. However there would be minor differences as we delve further.
At the most fundamental level, we first need to build our foundation before anything else. This foundation incorporates, most importantly, stable income which is salary, or for entrepreneurs, cashflow from their core business. Once we have achieved that, we should own our homes or for some countries, make sure that the salary takes care of the rent (unfortunately Singapore might fall into this culture some day as it gets too expensive to own our homes). And as the old adage goes, we also need savings for the rainy days. As a rule of thumb, we should have cash savings of around 12 months of expenses to cater for emergency needs. Since this website started out talking about investment, we often neglect these bread and butter issues. Investment actually comes after we have our foundations built! The following pyramid gives a sense of how the financial needs are ranked.
Hierarchy of Financial Needs
The second level is security, or protection. This is where we make sure we are protected by buying insurance and strive to have more incremental savings (beyond 12 months of expenses) if we can. We also then try to supplement our cashflow by investing these savings, thereby receiving dividends if we buy stocks, or bond coupons if we have bonds. Needless to say, one of the best security is having a second property that gives good rental income. The goal here is that the dividends, coupons, rent received from stocks, bonds, property here would cover expenses some day. It is worth mentioning that salary, by and large, will always be the main source of income. Rich Dad Poor Dad did the world a major dis-service by introducing the concept of passive income. It's a lie. Passive income cannot replace salary or an entrepreneur's main source of cashflow. Even if we reach aforementioned scenario where our dividends, coupons and rent can cover all our expenses, we should still work if we are employable. Of course, we then have the freedom to choose jobs that we find meaningful and hence can truly enjoy.
Insurance is a topic that deserves more scrutiny, but perhaps in another post. The whole industry is made complicated by agents as most of them mis-inform and mis-guide their customers. While it is important to have insurance, it's more important to buy the right ones with the right amount of money! A rule of thumb could be using 5-10% of the overall income to buy the correct insurance (usually term insurance) for good protection. Insurance is ultimately a cost paid to gain protection from adverse events and agents like to use emotional blackmailing to make people pay more than they should. We need to exercise common sense and rationality extremely well when dealing with insurance agents.
At the growth level, the focus for this website, we are actually talking about investing like the great investors - Warren Buffett, David Einhorn, Ray Dalio etc. We think hard and try to pick stocks well - stocks that compound growth and becomes multi-baggers over time. Or we take advantage of rare arbitrage opportunities to compound wealth. Hopefully we beat the markets when we measure ourselves across decades and make really good money. By right, this level should only be attempted when we have fulfilled the lower levels. But we do need stable income from dividends and bonds (at the security level). So, in a sense, there are overlaps. We need a few good stocks to supplement our income at the security level, yet the same capital would help catapult our growth. It's also worth noting that the growth level takes on higher risks to achieve higher returns.
The highest level, arbitrary termed wealth maximization is about maximizing returns, which means we engage in the highest risks investments which can pay out big amounts, usually by utilizing a small percentage of our net worth (say maybe only 3-5% of our total net worth). For instance, buying long dated options or bio-tech stocks or for high net worth individuals investing in venture capital and the likes. This is a stage where we are prepared to lose the whole amount, but since it's limited to a small percentage of the portfolio, it doesn't really change things. But we have the opportunity to hit the jackpot i.e. like finding the next Facebook or Alibaba. Again, as with Maslow's needs, perhaps only 1% of the global population would reach this stage.
Over the years, many experts had also reviewed Maslow's original hierarchy and it was proposed that changes should be made to reflect how the world had evolved since Maslow's days. So the new hierarchy looks something like this:
Haha! Yes more fundamental than anything else, today we need WiFi! It comes before the need to eat, sleep and having a shelter. Okay, just kidding. The new hierarchy actually adds to the highest level which is termed self-transcendence or simply transcendence. Later in his life, Maslow and others believed that perhaps self-actualization was not the ultimate goal in life. It was to self-actualize and use that ability to help others. In Maslow's own words:
Self Transcendence - seeks to further a cause beyond the self and to experience a communion beyond the boundaries of the self through peak experience
In our hierarchy of financial needs, perhaps there is a similar transcendence. What is our purpose of accumulating so much wealth when most of our financial needs would probably be finite? Most billionaires have come to this conclusion. They would never finish spending their billions and it might not be such a good idea to simply give it to their sons and daughters, as it kills their motivation to work hard. Hence people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates actually pledged to give away more than 80% of their wealth to further progress the human race. This is very noble and perhaps an inspiration for us as well. No matter where we are at the hierarchy, we can always transcend and give away whatever we can afford to those who need it more.
Financial Transcendence - giving away what we can afford to help others | <urn:uuid:80c094e2-3550-4e6d-986b-b12633c23934> | {
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GLENDALE, Ariz. – What do baseball players and astronauts have in common?
Odd dream jobs. Other than that, usually very little.
This week is different. The Dodgers have been using technology developed for astronauts on the International Space Station to help adapt to a time zone 18 hours away. If the players seem slightly less tired than their opponents during the first two games of the season, science deserves partial credit.
A set of two LED (light-emitting diode) light bulbs were given to players Saturday, the day before the team flew to Sydney, Australia. One light bulb tricks the brain into thinking you’re seeing daylight, the other into thinking it’s nighttime.
“Scientists have found a new sensor in the eye that’s directly connected to the part of the brain that controls our body’s internal clock,” said Robert Soler of Lighting Science, the company behind the bulbs. “It is looking for daylight (think blue sky) frequencies to understand what time it is.”
Soler said the human brain can be tricked only so much, that it won’t move the internal clock forward or backward by more than an hour or two. That’s why the Dodgers were given the bulbs a day before their flight: to get a head start on their new time zone by turning the daytime bulbs on during daytime in Sydney.
It was quite a scene. At one point Sunday afternoon, pitcher Zach Lee sat by his locker in a well-lit clubhouse with a reading lamp glowing nearby. He wasn’t reading a book or doing a crossword, just letting his brain receive the light.
“When it’s time to go back to L.A., we do the opposite,” Soler said. “Turn this light on before the sun rises, and trick your body clock to thinking it’s daytime.
“This one is the tricky part,” he continued. “You can’t shift back more than two hours per day, or your clock will want to go the opposite way. For example, if a player sees a sunrise in Sydney, then sees a second sunrise in L.A. 18 hours later, his clock won’t know how to process an 18-hour day. It can, however, understand a 22-hour day. So we need to approach with a series of 22-hour days in order to get back.”
The Dodgers’ brains should be less difficult to trick than the astronauts’. The technology that went into the light bulbs was originally developed for the ISS, where astronauts see 16 sunrises every 24 hours, Soler said.
The light bulbs were installed in every player’s hotel room by the time the team arrived in Sydney. Still, performance on a baseball field isn’t a practical tool for measuring the success or failure of the light bulbs. There are too many outside variables.
To provide more useful feedback, the Dodgers were given a set of nine Basis wristwatches. In addition to telling time, the $200 watches collect data about deep sleep, light sleep and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, as well as heart-rate activity, skin temperature and perspiration. Manager Don Mattingly is among the nine wearing the watch.
“This will be the best way for us to find out if the players are acclimating correctly,” Soler said.
Besides using the light bulbs and the watches, Dodgers head athletic trainer Stan Conte told players to not sleep for at least the first four hours of the flight into Sydney, and drink plenty of water before and after arriving.
Dodgers pitcher Chris Withrow isn’t questioning the wisdom behind the technology.
“I trust ’em,” Withrow said. “We can’t get there and not be prepared for the game. Our bodies have to be ready.”
Will any of this work?
“I don’t know,” Dodgers infielder Justin Turner said. “I’ll tell you when I get back.” | <urn:uuid:8e45f9b6-9a4a-45c8-927d-479874b2ada5> | {
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The average school start time in the United States is 8 a.m., which can often make for grumpy students and frustrated parents.
But Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended middle schools and high schools delay the start of the school day to combat sleep deprivation in teenagers.
Doctors said teenagers are biologically programmed to sleep from about 11 p.m.-8 a.m., which can often be when students are well into their first-period class. Doctors recommend a school start time of 8:30 a.m. or later.
"I was just a zombie walking to my classes, because I was just so sleep-deprived that I was like falling asleep in my classes. I was just absolutely exhausted,” said Madison Meyer, a junior at The Bolles School. “I would have to take huge chunks out of my day just to take a nap.”
Meyer's sleep schedule was so turned around she resigned herself to naps in the nurse's office between classes, just to get through the daily grind at Bolles.
“It was hard for me to concentrate, and I felt bad because I was falling asleep in my classes,” Meyer said. “I felt bad that the teachers thought I wasn’t interested in their classes, which wasn’t the case.”
Stories like Meyer's should be a wake-up call to school districts across the country, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is now pushing for that first school bell to ring after 8:30 a.m.
“We know that these adolescents end up getting less sleep than is recommended for them,” said Dr. Erick Viorritto, a sleep specialist at Nemours Children's Health System. “And this leads to decreased academic performance (and) increased rates of depression. We know that inadequate sleep leads to increased rates of obesity and being overweight. Increased rates of auto accidents are right at the time when they are most vulnerable to that as new drivers.”
Viorritto said biological changes during puberty create a shift in circadian rhythms causing teens to get tired later at night and wake up later in the morning – by as much as two hours.
“My message to them is that this is a biologic fact. This can’t be changed. But it can be accommodated,” Viorritto said. “And by doing so, kids are going to perform better.”
In Duval County, middle schools start at 9:30 a.m., but high schools start at 7:15 a.m.
In St. Johns County, middle schools start at 7:50 a.m., while high schools start the day at 9:15 a.m.
“We know that kids are not performing up to their potential with the way things are set up,” Viorritto said.
Meyer's mother, Christine Meyer, said she wants to see the start times change at all schools
“I think it’s very important. And I hope that the school districts will pay attention to it, because I’ve seen my own child struggle with it,” Christine Meyer said. “If we want our children to be successful in school, they have to have sleep.”
Madison Meyer said she finally has her sleep schedule back on track, thanks in part to Viorritto’s advice. He said he has patients turn off all electronics one hour before bed and just say no when it comes to caffeine.
District spokespeople for both Duval and St. Johns counties said there's been no discussion about changing start times for their respective schools, but the districts welcome any feedback on the topic. | <urn:uuid:3c3075a4-fe16-4666-8164-8317e26f755d> | {
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Lenz Microphthalmia Syndrome
National Organization for Rare Disorders, Inc.
It is possible that the main title of the report Lenz Microphthalmia Syndrome is not the name you expected. Please check the synonyms listing to find the alternate name(s) and disorder subdivision(s) covered by this report.
- Lenz dysmorphogenetic syndrome
- Lenz dysplasia
- Lenz syndrome
- microphthalmia or anophthalmos with associated anomalies (obsolete)
Lenz Microphthalmia syndrome is an extremely rare inherited disorder characterized by abnormal smallness of one or both eyes (unilateral or bilateral microphthalmos) and/or droopy eyelids (blepharoptosis), resulting in visual impairment. In rare cases, affected infants may exhibit complete absence of the eyes (anophthalmia). Most affected infants also exhibit developmental delay and mental retardation, ranging from mild to severe. Additional physical abnormalities are often associated with this disorder such as an unusually small head (microcephaly) and/or malformations of the teeth, ears, and/or fingers and/or toes (digits). The range and severity of findings may vary from case to case.
Lenz microphthalmia syndrome, which is inherited as an X-linked recessive genetic trait, is fully expressed in males only. However, females who carry one copy of the disease gene (heterozygotes) may exhibit some of the symptoms associated with the disorder, such as an abnormally small head (microcephaly), short stature, and/or malformations of the fingers and/or toes.
BCOR (MAA2 locus) is the only gene known to be associated with this syndrome.
American Council of the Blind
- 2200 Wilson Boulevard
- Suite 650
- Arlington, VA 22201
- Tel: (202)467-5081
- Fax: (202)465-5085
- Tel: (800)424-8666
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: http://www.acb.org/
Genetic and Rare Diseases (GARD) Information Center
- PO Box 8126
- Gaithersburg, MD 20898-8126
- Tel: (301)251-4925
- Fax: (301)251-4911
- Tel: (888)205-2311
- Website: http://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/GARD/
International Children's Anophthalmia Network (ICAN)
- c/o Center for Devel Medicine & Genetics
- 5501 Old York Road
- Philadelphia, PA 19141
- Tel: (215)456-8722
- Fax: (215)456-2356
- Tel: (800)580-4226
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: http://www.anophthalmia.org
NIH/National Eye Institute
- 31 Center Dr
- MSC 2510
- Bethesda, MD 20892-2510
- United States
- Tel: (301)496-5248
- Fax: (301)402-1065
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: http://www.nei.nih.gov/
National Association for Parents of Children with Visual Impairments (NAPVI)
- P.O. Box 317
- Watertown, MA 02272-0317
- Tel: (617)972-7441
- Fax: (617)972-7444
- Tel: (800)562-6265
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: http://www.napvi.org
National Federation of the Blind
- 200 East Wells Street
- at Jernigan Place
- Baltimore, MD 21230
- Tel: (410)659-9314
- Fax: (410)685-5653
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: http://www.nfb.org
For a Complete Report
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PrefaceThere are different types of operating system models around. Some are used in existing commercial/freeware operating systems, and others are being invented at universities in development projects. All OS types have their strong sides and their weaknesses, making them suited for different types of hardware or purposes. Off course, computers have changed a lot, so kernels have changed too. Older OSs are still based on the low-performant hardware of the sixties and seventies, but do deliver stability, while newer OS need teh power of the modern computers and still have to prove themselves.
Talking about the weak and strong sides of OSs is difficult, because most OSs are targeted to a specific group of users or applications or are used on a specific base of computers. There are OSs that claim to be general-purpose, but the first OSs that can handle all tasks as efficiently as one should like, has still to be written.
First, some words about the meaning of "kernel". Operating Systems can be written so that most services are moved outside the OS core and implemented as processes.This OS core then becomes a lot smaller, and we call it a kernel. When this kernel only provides the basic services, such as basic memory management ant multithreading, it is called a microkernel or even nanokernel for the super-small ones. To stress the difference between the
Unix-type of OS, the Unix-like core is called a monolithic kernel. A monolithic kernel provides full process management, device drivers,file systems, network access etc. I will here use the word kernel in the broad sense, meaning the part of the OS supervising the machine.
Most kernels offer 2 basic incapsulations of programs. The terms used to describe these differ between the OSs, but I will use these:
This leads us to the second important feature in operating system kernels: memory spaces. Each process has it's own protected (whatever this means in different OSs) memory space it runs in. It can share parts of this memory with other processes. Some OSs use a shared memory space for all processes. This means less or no protection however, like in DOS.
When it comes to existing "modern" and wide-spread operating systems, only monolithic kernels and microkernels are used. There are however, different types of microkernel architectures. Off course, lots of large mainframes in the world still run the good old VMS and other old operating systems. Unix, the OS with a monolithical kernel, was based on the ideas of the first successful OS: Multics.
The OS without kernelNot all operating systems have a "kernel" wich is protected from user programs and wich manages the hardware and the user programs. Some operating systems, the early ones, just provided some interface to the hardware programs could run on, but didn't protect themselves from these programs or didn't offer protect the programs from each other. Thus, the user could do with the machine what he wanted to do,access the hardware directly. The strong side of this "architecture" is the speed of the system, but it can off course only be used as a personal system for 1 user.It's not stable at all when running several programs at once (if this is, at all, possible).
OS with ring structure, MulticsThen people found out "protection"... The OS was divided in several rings with different privileges. The parts of the OS that needed to access the hardware and provided the basic metafores of processes,memory and devices, run in ring0, some system tasks run in ring 1 etc... The normal user processes run in the rign with the lowest privileges. This means a process running in a certain ring cannot harm the processes in a ring with more privilege. Multics was the OS that brought this ideas to us, and formed the base for all later operating systems up to now. This architecture offers off course a lot more stability and security than the earlier architectures, and is able to provide multitasking and multi-user facilities. It can however only implemented on a system if the hardware (mainly the cpu and the mmu) provides a kind of protection facility.
OS with a kernelThis architecture evolved to an OS design with two rings: one ring running in system mode, and a ring running in user mode. The kernel has full control of the hardware and provides abstractions for the processes running in user mode. A process running in user mode cannot access the hardware, and must use the abstractions provided by the kernel. It can call certain services of the kernel by making "system calls" or kernel calls. The kernel only offers the basic services. All others are provided by programs running in user mode. This is generally the whole interface.
Monolithic kernelsThis type of kernel can easily be described as "the big soup". The older monolithic kernels were written as a mixture of everything the OS needed, without much of an organization.The monolithic kernel offers everything the OS needs : processes, memory management, multiprogramming, interprocess communication (IPC), device access, file systems, network protocols and whatever the OS should implement.
Newer monolithic kernels have a modular design, which offers run-time adding and removal of services. The whole kernel runs in "kernel mode", a processor mode in which the software has full control over teh machine. The processes running on top of the kernel run in "user mode", in which programs have only access to the kernel services.
The monolithical kernels (mainly Unix) were build for systems that don't have to turned on and off every day or hour and for systems to which no devices are added during their lifetime or hardware is changed. The manufacturer tailors the OS to the machine and then sells the machine with the OS installed for once and always.
This leads to a very stable system, but it is not very suited for PCs, where devices are added or removed and that reboot every day. It is a fact, however that it's just these OSs that now even offer hot-swapping of devices etc. e.g., the new Solaris can even hot-swap cpu boards ! The main strong sides of monolithic systems is that they are extremely stable and that they achieve a very high speed.
Also, they have been in the world for so long (Unix was developped in '69, first as a single-user OS for the minicomputer)
MicrokernelsMicrokernel designs put a lot of OS services in seperate processes, that can be started or stopped at runtime.This makes the kernel a lot smaller and offers a far greater flexibility.
File systems, device drivers ,process management and even part of the memory management can be put in processes running on top of the microkernel. This architecture is actually a client-server (what a buzz-word :-) ) model: processes (clients) can call OS services by sending requests through IPC to server processes. eg,. a process that wants to read from a certain file send a request to the file system process.The central processes that provide the process management, file system etc are frequently called the servers. Microkernels are often also highly multithreaded, putting every different service in a different thread, offering greater speed and stability. The main difficulty of microkernels is then to make the IPC as fast as possible. This was a design problem in early microkernel design, because IPC, while being intended to be the power of the architecture, often proved to be the bottleneck. Now, however, microkernels do offer fast IPC.
When talking about microkernels, one must really clearly make a difference between the first and the second generation. The first-generation microkernels, like Mach, are fat and provide lots of services, or multiple ways to do the same thing. The second-generation microkernels more follow the "pure" microkernel idea: kernels with a very small footprint, only offering the abstractions really needed, with a clean and unambigous ABI. Examples of the second generation are l4 and QNX.
The ExokernelThe Exokernel let user programs override the standard code exported by the system and the kernel itself. This leads to very fast operation , because a programmer will know how to implement the specific algorithm as fast as possible. So, exokernels let normal users take over the functionality of the kernel. But the weakness is safety, how to restrict what user programs can do. So, this means another boom in kernel size, when protection algorithms have to be implemented. Also, exokernels use a "soft" protection boundary, trying to force the programmer use only safe languages.
This depends on the integrity of the programmers, and faulty programs can heavily weigh on the fault tolerance of the system.
Cache kernelThe cache kernel (developped at Stanford) is based on the idea of caching. It only caches threads, memory spaces, inter process communication and kernels. This cache kernel executes in kernel mode. With each cached object, an application kernel is associated. This application kernel runs in user mode and provides the management of the address spaces and thread scheduling.So, every application kernel can do thread scheduling the way it wants, e.g. the Unix scheduling and it can manage the memory how it wants.This is a very short description, but it makes clear that the Cache Kernel also offers the extensibility of exokernels. Cache kernels provide a "hard" protection boundary: they use the kernel-mode/user-mode convention.
To my personal opinion, however, I think also well-designed microkernels can offer the extensibility needed while retaining the stablility. The big example is QNX. Most OS designers still say microkernels don't offer the performance one should want, but this is not true: a microkernel with a good design can perform as well as a monolithic OS and as the Exokernel.
UnixUnix uses a monolithic design, implementing all services in the kernel. It offers great stability and speed, but it is technically overaged. There are off course now some enhancements to monolithic kernels, that make monolithical kernels more modern.
Modules, pieces of code that can be plugged into the kernel,offer run-time extensibility like microkernels do, but these modules run also in kernel mode, so they must be secure and stable.
Linux is off course the hype of the moment, with it's stability,it's speed and it's power, but from an architectural point of view, it is outdated.(Not the design of the part of the OS running on top of the kernel is outdated, no, Linux's (and Unix's in general) programs offer the most high-tech in the world, but the idea of a monolithical kernel itself is outdated.
Linux uses a modular design, which lets you slot in drivers and other modules into the kernel at run-time. The downside is that all drivers , even those not needing access to the hardware, run in full kernel mode and are not protected from each other and the kernel is not protected from them.
MachMach was the first microkernel architecture with a lot of impact. Most modern operating systems are based on its ideas. It was developped at CMU. Mach offers everything discussed in the microkernel section. It is a microkernel of the first generation and is very large, providing more than 1 way to do something. Mach has very powerfull memory management, but this enlarges the kernel. The Mach memory management was designed to handle very large and sparse memory spaces, providing memory-mapped files etc..
Mach is a message-passing microkernel based on the client-server ideas (well, most microkernels are, but Mach was really the big inventor).
So-called servers extend the functionality of the kernel (file systems etc). These servers can run in a seperate memory space, but also in the kernel memory space, offering bigger speed for vital services (device drivers etc). A Unix/POSIX server was thus implemented on mach, so that all Unix programs can run on Mach without needing to do lots of porting work.
All abstractions provided by the kernel are represented as objects, so Mach is fully object-oriented (allthough written completely in C). Mach uses the idea of "ports" to implement the access to these objects. Processes can send messages to objects through these ports only if they have access to them. The messages are then sent through the port to the owner of the port. So, Mach is a message-passing microkernel. Message-passing is the way the IPC works between the processes, but also how processes request services from servers and do system calls.
Windows NTWindows NT uses a HAL that implements the hardware-dependent part of the OS. This HAL provides functions to access the hardware in a generic way.This allows for a hardware-independent kernel. The NT Hal can also emulate parts of the hardware if the actual hardware isn't available. A microkernel runs on top of this HAL, based on Mach ideas. Then, running on top of the microkernel, but also in supervisor mode, are the servers : the object manager, I/O manager, process manager, file system, GDI etc. The I/O manager contains the device drivers. These access the hardware through the HAL. All these servers, together with the microkernel, form the Windows NT executive.
The servers are running, just like the kernel, in kernel mode, so this leads to fast I/O and system services, but the downside is that all drivers have access to the whole system. What is the difference with Linux, offering as much extensibility with it's modular design?
Well, the servers/drivers in the NT executive are all running in seperate memory spaces, so they can't interfere with each other and can't play with the kernel's memory.
Windows NT is Object-oriented just like Mach. All system services and abstractions are represented as objects. Programs must have the right access rights to use them. The WindowsNT memory management is also much like that of Mach, using the same objects just with other names :-).
QNXQNX uses a very small microkernel (only 32KB !!), that provides in-place execution, so it is suited for embedded systems too. It is very stable and the overall code size of the system is very small.This small kernel and code size allows of course for very easy development of both kernel and programs. The microkernel only implements multithreading, interrupt handling, IPC and memory management. A process manager thread (32KB) extends the kernel and runs in kernel mode too. All other drivers, servers and user programs run in user mode as normal user processes. The scheduling algorithm and overall design make it a real-time OS; when speed is your need... You can easily scale QNX from a coffee-machine to a huge SMP-server if you want. What is Microsoft talking about "scalability" ??. QNX can easily recover from faulting drivers or system processes without even rebooting and you can add and change even system DLLs (shared libraries) without rebooting. This is what we call real extensibility and flexibility. QNX has a really very clean design.
BeOSBeOS also uses a Mach-like microkernel. It uses pervasive multithreading, wich means it uses lots of threads, for each possible job, so it has a threaded design throughout the system. This makes BeOS very fast and very useful for multimedia applications. It is ready for multi-processing. BeOS also uses a 64-bit file system and direct graphics access, bypassing the graphical subsystem. BeOS has a simple API and it has a POSIX-interface too, with all the standard UNIX utilities and a bash shell. It is said to boot in a few seconds, unlike other operating systems.
L4/FiascoL4 is a microkernel of the second generation. It is the successor to L3. And Fiasco is a new L4-compatible kernel. The Fiasco kernel can be preempted at allmost any time, which leads to short response time5 for high-priority threads, so Fiasco is suited for real-time systems.
MinixMinix is a Unix-like operating system developped for learning OS design at universities. Well, actually, it is not like Unix at all. It uses a modular design, more like a microkernel. All system services are implemented as threads running on the kernel. The drivers also run as threads, but in kernel mode, statically linked. So, it's design is much more modern than Unix's, more something like NT's structure, but with the file system and user interface running in user mode. And because it's really very small, it' easy to program and teach. | <urn:uuid:5ae35ad6-7b4b-4f95-8e3d-3c6d97b51cef> | {
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I’m no fan of resident geese. Canada geese are not supposed to stick around all summer. They are supposed to fly north in the spring. I do admit they’re pretty, and I like the honking call, but Northern Canada is where geese need to be in summer.
Canada geese are likely the most recognized waterfowl species in North Carolina. To the average person they all look pretty much the same, but there are several different subspecies. There’s the rub.
Most subspecies are migratory, but the large resident type is not. Populations of this ecotype have been exploding over the last 20 to 30 years. Conversely, numbers of migratory types are less than ten percent of what they were 60 years ago.
In the 1980’s the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, trying to bolster declining goose numbers, raised and released this giant subspecies. Neighboring states did as well. Birds were easy to rear and established well but had weak migratory tendencies.
Geese must learn to migrate from their parents. They also breed in the same locale as where they were reared. Consequently, when parents stay in an area, the goslings do as well.
Resident types also are more successful parents than their migrating cousins. The result is a huge increase in residents and a decline in migrating populations. It’s not that geese forgot how to migrate. They are different types.
Another reason for the imbalance is loss of natural habitat. Changing farming practices also entice many migrating geese to stop their migration and breed further north than they once did.
Some people say a goose is a goose, but these resident geese are bolder than the migrating kind. They are comfortable around people and feed wherever they please. They take their toll on crops and landscaping. They also leave their droppings everywhere. It is unsightly and a health hazard.
What can we do about it? First, don’t feed them. Also if you are a landowner, consider allowing hunting on your property during the September resident goose season. Most hunters are responsible and will respect your property. If they don’t you have their identification, since written permission is necessary to hunt on another’s land in North Carolina.
Don’t worry; the migrant birds won’t be here for another two months. They also are less likely to frequent densely populated areas. These resident birds make great table fare if dressed shortly after being harvested. Cook them as you would domestic duck or goose.
The season is in, so now is the time to scare these squatters out of the residential areas and into adjacent legal hunting places where populations can be thinned. If their numbers increase much more, health of the entire goose population will be jeopardized.
If harvesting is repulsive to you, you can still discourage geese on your property by limiting their access to water. Geese tend to walk and not fly into the water, so erect a wire barrier to make it inconvenient. If you harass them they might go somewhere else.
Ted Manzer teaches agriculture at Northeastern High School. | <urn:uuid:f751c787-523d-432a-a794-9a5338985c62> | {
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According to Food Chemical News, a Senate bill "stipulates that tomato paste used to make pizzas can be counted toward the weekly total of vegetable servings" for school lunches
Food Chemical News (FCN) reports that the USDA has sent its final rules on nutrition standards for school lunches and breakfasts to the Office of Management and Budget for approval. The final content of what was submitted is not known.
Several of the USDA's proposals for implementing these suggestions have elicited more than the usual level of fuss. The most controversial:
- Limits on starchy vegetables to two servings a week. As I noted recently, the Senate passed an amendment to the USDA's appropriations bill to block any restrictions on potatoes. Most observers think this means that unlimited potatoes will stay in the school meals.
- Preventing tomato paste on pizza from counting as a vegetable. According to FCN, language in the appropriations bill "also stipulates that tomato paste used to make pizzas can be counted toward the weekly total of vegetable servings."
Does the Senate think this can pass the laugh test?
Historical note: Remember when the Reagan administration proposed to allow ketchup to count as a vegetable in school meals:
An additional proposed change in crediting policy would allow vegetable and fruit concentrates to be credited on a single-strength reconstituted basis rather than on the basis of the actual volume as served.
For example, one tablespoon of tomato paste could be credited as 1/4 cup single-strength tomato juice. Previously, it was only credited as 1 tablespoon, the volume as served (Federal Register 9-4-81).
The press had a field day. The ensuing bipartisan hilarity and what Nutrition Action (November 1981) called a "maelstorm of criticism from Congress, the press, and the public alike" induced the USDA to rescind the rules one month later.
- The Washington Post (9-26-81) quoted the budget director's comment that USDA "not only has egg on its face, but ketchup too."
- Republican Senator John Heinz (whose company owns Heinz ketchup) said "Ketchup is a condiment. This is one of the most ridiculous regulations I ever heard of, and I suppose I need not add that I know something about ketchup and relish -- or did at one time."
- The New York Times (9-28-81) noted that "Democrats are still chortling at what they hail as 'the Emperor's New Condiments' -- the attempt to declare ketchup a school-lunch vegetable."
Times have changed. Senators used to have the health of American school children in mind. Now, they undermine efforts by USDA to improve meals for kids.
The Senate's action has nothing to do with public health and everything to do with political posturing and caving in to lobbyists.
The Senate should reconsider its actions. The USDA should not back down on this one.
This post also appears on Food Politics, an Atlantic partner site.
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I’ve gotten to the part now in my Folklore Foods salon (see–> MamaMuse) on proper preparation of grains and legumes, and have also seen a few things over at the HealthyHomeEconomist on it.
Grains and legumes (and seeds and nuts) contain anti-nutrients: gluten and phytates are some examples. These anti-nutrients adhere to the intestinal wall and prevent the body from absorbing vital nutrients/vitamins/minerals from food as it passes through the gut and is digested. Also, such as with gluten, these particles actually are absorbed into the body through the intestinal wall and are seen as a foreign object requiring the body’s immune system to fend off. Unfortunately, not only does this cause inflammation (which leads to disease) but it also causes the body to start attacking itself because these foreign particles look similar to the body’s own in certain parts of the body.
This is the part where Paleo Diet followers have it right, but this is where they stop. They claim that our ancestors went millions of years without eating grains and that our bodies are just not adapted yet to properly digesting them since we’ve ben eating them for a shorter time frame than we’ve been not-eating them. However, this view and approach to grains/legumes is arguable.
First argument: evolution/time-frames and digestability. This is both right and wrong. Anthropologists and archeologists are now hypothesizing and discovering that stone age man (prior to the onset of agriculture) utilized wild grains and legumes. So this makes the time frame of when “man ate grains” to longer than previously suspected.
Second Argument: branching from the first, man has been eating refined grains (and sugar) and not properly preparing grains/legumes/seeds/nuts for a much shorter time frame (roughly 200 years give or take) compared to thousands of years of properly preparing these food items, and even millions of years of “supposed” non-consumption of these food items by early man.
From pre-agricultural revolution up until the introduction of refined grains and sugar (over 10,000 years), people were properly preparing their grains and legumes and had no known digestion issues pertaining therein. It was when man began to not prepare their foods properly/traditionally, was when these issues arose (along with an increase in degenerative diseases, cancer, poor dental health, etc.).
Well, then how do you properly prepare them?
4. Extended cooking
These pertain to seeds, nuts, legumes, and grains. Some require all three processes, some only require one or two (such as nuts). Some foods require an acidic environment, others require a basic one.
Grains: Over at the HealthyHomeEconomist she has a blog and a few videos on grain and legume preparation. Here is a general overview for grains:
1. Take your whole grain and sprout them in a jar (just until the first white flecks appear).
2. Spread the sprouted whole grains on a cookie sheet and dry in the oven, or use a dehydrator.
3. Run your dried grains through the grinder to make flour. *Immediately store in the freezer if you don’t plan on using it all immediately! This is to retain nutritional content which begins to deteriorate around 2 weeks post-grinding if left to the elements*.
If you don’t make your own flour, you can purchase whole grain flour. Try to find sprouted whole grain if you can. Whether you make your own flour or purchase it, you should soak/culture the flour before cooking. This ferments the flour some and further breaks down the anti-nutrients and releases absorbable nutrients. You can use yogurt, kefir, whey (from raw milk), or soured raw milk *never pasteurized! (Pasteurized milk won’t sour, it will only spoil. Soured raw milk= edible)*. This process is similar to what happens during traditional sourdough preparation. This can be done for bread, pancakes, cake, crepes, etc.
Legumes: Legumes (ie. beans) need to be pre-soaked then cooked for an extended period of time. They should be soaked in an acidic solution (some require a basic solution) such as water+whey for a minimum of 8 hours. Then they need to be cooked on low for a minimum of 8 hours (give or take on both times), but some cook their beans for as long as 24 hours or as little as 3 hours. The benefits of soaking and cooking don’t really improve after 24 hours.
**I did my first bean preparation the other day, using black beans soaked in a whey solution. I soaked them for a little over 8 hours, then cooked them. I only cooked them for about an hour and a half, however, and found it difficult to keep them cooking and then they began to fall apart. I think I should have cooked them on a lower setting with more water and definitely for longer– I was wanting to take them to work hence the short cook time.**
They can also be soaked and sprouted, instead of cooked.
Seeds & Nuts: seeds really only need to be soaked. Some people may try sprouting them. Soak time depends on each nut or seed as some need longer or shorter soak times. Almonds can be soaked for 4-6 hours, others need 8 or longer, and some like cashews need shorter. Usually they are soaked in a slightly salty water solution then dried in the oven or in a dehydrator. | <urn:uuid:bb69ead6-9808-46d8-851d-54009c718e98> | {
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Beer inhibits cancer in rats
Japanese study finds dark malts may help fight colon cancer
Feb 2, 2004 - Drinking beer or eating certain ingredients in the beverage helped protect rats from colon cancer, according ot new research shows. There is a catch - freeze-dried beer performed particularly well in the study.
Dr. Hajime Nozawa, who works for from Kirin Brewery Co. in Yokohama, Japan, led the team that studied the ability of beer to prevent a type of chemically induced colon cancer in rats. The results are reported in the International Journal of Cancer. They have not done similar tests for humans.
Consumption of beer or malt extract for two weeks reduced the amount of DNA damage that occurred. Moreover, beer intake for the full five-week study period reduced the formation of early lesions that can become colon cancer.
The ability of beer to inhibit these lesions depended on the type of malt, with dark-roasted malts being more effective than pilsner malts. In addition, only freeze-dried beer, not ethanol, had a protective effect.
Intake of malt extract also inhibited the early lesions, but consumption of hops extract did not.
In a 42-week follow-up study, beer intake was associated with a 22% reduction in the tumor rate, including a big drop in the number of cancers.
"The results suggest that daily moderate consumption of beer may reduce the risk of cancer susceptibility in colon," the authors state.
Search The Real Beer Library For More Articles Related To:
JAPAN, Beer and health | <urn:uuid:6f8bbfcd-b262-4211-9a05-38c3c8956e6e> | {
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Seattle Times Editorial, October 25, 2013, Seattle Times
A FEW weeks ago, this page commented on the cleanup of sediment in the Duwamish River. In the conflict over the cleanup goal, our position was that the goal must be achievable — and that the people expected to pay for the cleanup should reasonably be able to do it. A similar position makes sense regarding water quality for Washington’s rivers.
Under the federal Clean Water Act, river water should be clean enough so that people can eat the fish. For some rivers, that’s a goal that will take a while. Regarding, say, liver cancer from ingesting PCBs, there will be some risk, even one in a million. The question becomes: How much risk based on how much consumption of fish?
In 1992, regulators assumed that people ate less than half a pound of fish a month from local rivers. Later, Oregon surveyed Native Americans and immigrants and reset the assumption at 12 pounds a month. In 2011, it plugged this 27-fold increase into a formula it had, and the result was a standard not currently possible to meet.
Oregon hasn’t enforced its standard yet, but industry and municipalities worry about it. In some cases, the discharge is supposed to be purer than the river.
“You end up with numbers that are not realistic,” says John Ledger, vice president of Associated Oregon Industries. “But there they are, and the courts will uphold them.”
Washington’s discharge permits are still under the old standard, but the Department of Ecology is working on a new one, and has just been sued by environmental groups for being too slow. The department is under pressure to adopt Oregon’s standard. Industry here, led by Boeing, says Oregon’s standard is impossible.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency, which has oversight over Ecology, is reassuring: “Nobody is going to implement a water quality standard in a way that shuts down the ability of business to go forward,” says Dennis McLerran, EPA’s administrator here. “You will be able to get permits.”
Yes, industry replies, you will give us permits. But if your standard of cleanliness is so high that we cannot meet it for 30 or 40 years, environmental groups will sue us for failing to meet it. And, under the Clean Water Act, they will win.
This state should improve the quality of its rivers while keeping such things as paper mills, and not suffocating local governments under lawsuits. That means discharge standards should be attainable during the period of the permit. The standards should also be at a cost viable operations can reasonably pay.
As technology improves, standards can go up. And will. | <urn:uuid:62241ceb-0e53-4b0b-a24e-701bd2917d30> | {
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UPTIME • October/November 2013
“Many different tools have been used over the years to detect changes in machinery condition. The human hand, eye, and ear have been the oldest tools used to detect conditional changes in machines. It is important to understand the value and limitations of our human senses.”
Most machines give some indication that a potential component failure is about to occur that will lead to a functional failure. Our goal should be to identify, monitor and correct components that are failing before they create a functional failure that will prevent the machine from performing as intended. Condition Monitoring is a primary tool used for this process. For example, a bearing defect is an example of a potential failure. The bearing would be monitored for degradation and replaced before it completely fails, preventing the machine from performing its intended function (functional failure.)
It could be argued that God created the first condition monitoring instrument when he created man. Our main senses are touch, sound, sight, taste and smell. Additionally, humans have other senses that can detect balance, heat, pain, etc. All of these senses can provide very valuable data about the environment around us and the equipment we work with each day. Therefore, the human being is the first CM instrument to be used—versatile in application and proven to be very a beneficial tool.
Download my entire article Moving Beyond our Human Senses | <urn:uuid:6af18cd5-a405-4b4c-8f1c-23c4df4f1d2c> | {
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A: Disrespect from anyone can be a problem. Especially in the family situation, mutual respect is a very important element. In other words, not only should the wife respect her husband, but the husband must also respect the wife. As this respect is modeled to the children, they will then show respect to their parents, and each other. This makes for a successful family.
If there is a family member who is demonstrating disrespect to another family member, this situation should be addressed. The way to do it is found in the way Jesus treated people. Certainly he was a person who suffered great disrespect from the rulers and leaders of his time. Jesus was always patient and kindly, even when he was being reviled. He never responded in kind, but always tried to show the disrespectful person a better way.
Please see "As Jesus Passed By" for a detailed account of the way Jesus gained respect and love from others. In it, we read this:
Now, sometimes, people respond in a disrespectful way when they are upset. Sometimes, a family member may have some resentment when it comes to fulfilling their role in the family...they may resent being told that they are not doing the right thing, or they may resent being told what to do. This can cause the person to say critical things, or to refuse to accept their responsibility. Often, this kind of resentment springs from some offense they feel they have suffered. It may be real or imagined—but nonetheless, it is very real to the person feeling it.
"Goodness always compels respect, but when it is devoid of grace, it often repels affection. Goodness is universally attractive only when it is gracious. Goodness is effective only when it is attractive."
Again—Jesus was a positive and gracious person. In all his dealings with people, he stressed the positive—he helped people find a way to DO the right thing, instead of telling them what they should NOT do. In the case of your questions, I would advise this husband to approach the wife in a friendly, loving manner, and try to find out why she is upset and acting out in this way. Once the husband finds out the WHY, then together, the husband and the wife can discuss a solution that will be helpful to both of them. It is important that the solution to the problem feels like a win for everyone, and so, the wife's input should be listened to carefully. When she feels that her feelings and her opinion are respected, she will respond in kind.
It also may be helpful to this husband to examine his own actions and words with his wife. Has he said or done something that might cause his wife to feel resentment? Is he willing to admit this and amend his own behavior? Does he treat her with the same respect that he demands from her? Again, talking it over is the best way to approach this situation...not with demands or threats, but in an atmosphere of love.
The integrity of the family is very important. This integrity balances very harmoniously when each member feels a necessary part of it, and when each member feels that they have an important role to play. If there is disrespectful discord from any one of the family members, this can undermine integrity and upset the balance, putting the family under stress. Just like a championship soccer team, all members of the family "team" need to pull together for success. Like a winning team, the "prime directive" of any family should be success: Successful relationships, successful harmony, successful problem-solving. And achieving these successes are lessons that can be used by the children as they go out into the world. When each member see themselves as a vital part of the team, they may be better able to subdue their own self-interests for the success of the team.
Husbands and wives are together for a reason—often, this partnership involves children and home-making. And like any partnership, mutuality of purpose is vital. So, in the case of a disrespectful wife, the husband can make a difference by reinforcing the partnership with love and tolerance, inspiring a renewed sense of purpose. This can effectively defuse any disruptive situation.
Thanks again for writing. I hope that my reply has been helpful..." | <urn:uuid:9fbbf18c-90b8-4439-a39f-bd2da6768e2a> | {
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Some basic tips on using CHGIS datasets are provided for various applications listed above. These are not meant to be tutorials on how to use the software, but are provided for a quick start. For more in-depth lessons on GIS skills, we recommend the folllowing websites:
What is GIS and how does it work? Please see the GIS Self-Learning Tool Web-based Tutorial.
How can I learn more advanced techniques? A virtual course is the Complete GIS Curriculum by the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis
The CHGIS datasets can be roughly divided into two types of data:
- time slice data
- time series data
Time Slice Data refers to GIS layers that contain spatial objects representing a single year, or "slice in time." All of the 1820 and 1911 layers fall into this category. When working with time slice data, all of the spatial objects are represented as the documentation indicates they existed for a particular year. Therefore two adjacent areas, such as two prefectures, would share a boundary, and by means of visual exploration of the data it is easy to distinguish one from the other.
Time Series Data refers to GIS layers that contain many instances of spatial objects as they changed over time. Therefore, when spatial changes occurred to an object, both the previous and subsequent objects are included. Visually, this results in many overlapping objects, or "spaghetti," as it is referred to in GIS terms. Taking the two adjacent prefectures mentioned above, let us presume that from Time 1 to Time 2 a certain boundary was valid. But at Time 3 a boundary change occured. Because the boundary is shared by both the adjacent areas, it means that new objects are created for both areas. Therefore, instead of two objects we would have four objects. The changed portion of the boundary would show up as a distinct line, while the unchanged portion of the boundary would overlap the previous version.
When dealing with Time Series Data it is necessary to keep in mind the visual ambiguity of the temporally distinct spatial objects, or "historical instances," which are all stored in a single GIS layer. It is necessary to do a selection of the objects by a particular year, in order to see the equivalent of a Time Slice. Please see more details on using time series data. | <urn:uuid:501e2289-1f56-4d59-a9e3-7d9382a0b6df> | {
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To type accented letters and other symbols on Windows you can use the numeric codes listed below. These should work in any program.
How it works:
To type a lower case letter with an acute accent on it (á é í ó ú) you can:
Hold down the accent key plus the letter:
Apostrophe (') + letter (a,e,i,o,u) = acute accent (á,é,í,ó,ú)
Slant apostrophe (`) + letter (a,e,i,o,u) = grave accent (à,è,ì,ò,ù)
Quote marks (") + letter (a,e,i,o,u) = umlaut (ä,ë,ï,ö,ü)
Circumflex (^) + letter (a,e,i,o,u)= circumflex (â,ê,î,ô,û)
Note: you have to switch your keyboard layout to United States-International for this method to work. See http://www.lrc.salemstate.edu/aske/accents.htm for details of how to do this.
You can also assign requently-used letters to particular key combinations.
Orthographic diacritics and multilingual computing
Typing International Accent Marks and Diacriticals
Free keyboard layout for typing many European languages and Japanese rōmaji
Character finder - a site where you can find out which accented letters or other characters are used in which language(s), and other useful information about characters, fonts and unicode: http://transliteration.eki.ee/ | <urn:uuid:7aaad7fb-a496-486f-b4dd-96340dc91f2b> | {
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Two major events culminated in the United States going into the two major world wars. From the sinking of the British steamship the Lusitania [i] on 7 May 1915 in which 128 American citizens lost their lives to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 which took 2,400 lives. [ii] Another 1,100 were wounded. [iii] An enemy attack is a justifiable reason to retaliate in kind. However, from reliable sources and witnesses we can conclude that the devised circumstances of both events were known in advance and could have been prevented.
During the administration of John F. Kennedy some very influential members of his staff proffered a document entitled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba,” [iv] dated 13 March 1962, which recommended a fake attack on America for the sole purpose of instigating an invasion against communist Cuba. According to them, this fake attack might incorporate any of the following strategies: hijacked airplanes, bombings, “innocent people to be shot on American streets” and blameless people would be held accountable for acts they did not commit. The proponents of this nefarious scheme stated “We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington.” So intent on their political agenda, that they were willing to target a specific group of individuals who would then be incorrectly vilified as terrorists.
This covert plan was called Operations Northwoods [v] and apparently had been drawn up before Kennedy was even inaugurated. Kennedy categorically opposed the Northwoods plan. His endorsement would have cost the lives of many Americans as well as Cubans fighting in a devised war driven by the globalist agenda.
Kennedy strongly opposed other globalist plots. On 4 June 1963 he signed Executive Order, No. 11110 that would virtually strip the privately owned Federal Reserve of its power and return the authority to issue currency, which would be backed by silver, to the Federal government. [vi] That order, still valid, would have prevented the national debt from reaching its current astronomical level. Five months later Kennedy was assassinated. No other president has ever applied that order. [vii] Sudden death can be a mighty strong deterrent.
Pertaining to the stealth Northwoods Operation, Bamford says the following: “In retrospect, the documents offer new insight into the thinking of the military's star-studded leadership. Although they never succeeded in launching America into a phony war with Cuba, they may have done so with Vietnam. More than 50,000 Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese were eventually killed in that war.” [viii] War is devised, orchestrated, directed and declared, for a variety of reasons, by the elite and always fought by the patriotic citizens who also comprise the resulting carnage.
What exactly did the Vietnam War accomplish? It divided our country and caused significant economic, moral, cultural and social changes. While the war raged in Vietnam there was also a battle at home. The Feminist Movement was pitted against the American family. The combination of World War I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Feminist Revolution impacted the American family. By the time the fifteen year Vietnam War was over, abortion was in and would ultimately take the lives of over forty-four million weaponless people. The 1965 subtle but significant change in our immigration policies also influenced the American landscape. The wars are not always fought on traditional battlegrounds. Many are fought in the halls of congress, supported by special and subversive interests, against the American citizens. The result is always the same – the citizen loses.
How does the preceding information relate to contemporary events? Coincidences are rare and nothing is accidental. Successful prototypes are frequently repeated. Seemingly random events occur to bring about a desired result. And a President’s objectives can readily be recognized by their chosen accomplices.
George W. Bush officially took office on 20 January 2001. He selected the following individuals to assist in a globalist premeditated agenda:
Richard B. Cheney (CFR) – Vice President. He was President of Halliburton until 2000 and maintains connections to this company. They build oil pipelines, among other oil related ventures. He was one of the twenty-five signatories of the mission statement of the Project for a New American Century.
Condoleezza Rice (CFR) – She is currently Secretary of State. From 1991 to 2000 she was a Manager of Chevron Oil, and a Kazakhstan go-between. Chevron named their biggest oil tanker after Rice – the Condoleezza Rice. That name was changed in May of 2001 probably by request of the Bush administration. She was on the National Security Council for the first President Bush. She met with Bush Sr. in 1998 probably to discuss tutoring Bush Jr. She has not adopted “bushisms” but he has attempted to embrace her attitudes. She left her position at Stanford University to help Bush’s campaign on 1 July 1999. She shares the foreign policy mentality of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and other birds of prey.
Donald Evans – Secretary of Commerce. He is the former CEO of Tom Brown, Inc. (a $1.2 billion oil company).
Douglas Feith (CFR) – He is another Richard Perle protégé and is currently Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the department's number-three man, and has worked closely with Perle both as a lobbyist for Turkey and in co-authoring strategy papers for right-wing Israeli governments. He plans to resign the summer of 2005. He also served in the Reagan administration.
Colin L. Powell (CFR) – Secretary of State, the first general to ever be named to this position. He worked as an analyst at the Pentagon before securing an appointment in the Office of Management and Budget under the director, Caspar Weinberger, and his deputy, Frank Carlucci. In 1987 he replaced Carlucci as the national security adviser for the duration of the Reagan administration. Powell was nominated by President Bush Sr. in 1989 to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the nation's most prestigious military position. He continues in this position.
Spencer Abraham - Secretary of Energy. Up through his failed bid for senatorial reelection in 2000, he received more oil and gas industry money than all but three other senators (January 1997 through July 2000)
Thomas White – Secretary of the Army. He was a former Vice Chairman of Enron and a large shareholder of that company's stock.
Donald H. Rumsfeld – Secretary of Defense. He was a member of the House of Representatives from Illinois from 1962-1969 when he resigned to join the President's Cabinet. He became U.S. Ambassador to NATO in 1973. He was the youngest Secretary of Defense during 1975-1977. He is the former Chairman of G. D. Searle & Company, a well known pharmaceutical company which was later purchased by the infamous Monsanto, known for their worldwide distribution of poison. He was one of the twenty-five signatories of the mission statement of the Project for a New American Century.
John Ashcroft – Attorney General. An ex governor of the state of Missouri. He did not appear to favor the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. This is especially apparent in the anti-terrorism legislation. Ashcroft was replaced by Alberto Gonzales who was sworn in 3 February 2005 despite strenuous opposition. He served with the president when Bush was governor of Texas. Gonzales has a record of very questionable human rights concerns.
Roderick R. Paige - Secretary of Education. He assisted in implementing the benign sounding let us further brainwash your children “No Child Left Behind” unconstitutional program of the Bush administration.
Richard Perle – He was the ultra hawkish chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board until he resigned on 27 March 2003 probably due to the Seymour Hersh (9 March 2003, The New Yorker) public exposure of Perle’s many conflicts of interest. [ix] “His behavior in both the public and private spheres has been investigated and the board of Hollinger International singled him out in a report citing diversion of profits from shareholders to executives. One of his nicknames is "the Prince of Darkness".” [x] Perle had been employed by the bankrupt telecommunications firm Global Crossing Ltd. which attempted to get Pentagon clearance to be sold to Asian investors. According to the reports he solicited money from a Saudi who sought to influence our policy regarding Iraq. He would benefit personally from an invasion of Iraq. [xi]
Perle served on the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee from 1987 to 2004. He was the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy from 1981 to 1987.
Perle designed what has been called the “creative destruction” of the Middle East which included an initial invasion of Iraq. He was the group leader for the 1996 document called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” which called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. [xii] Richard Perle is an advocate of first strike bombing which is doublespeak for invading any country deemed a possible threat.
I. Lewis Libby (CFR) – Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff and Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs. He served in the first Bush administration including the position of Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. He is a founding member of the Project for a New American Century. He was one of the writers, along with Wolfowitz, Kristol, Kagan, and others in writing its 2000 report entitled, "Rebuilding America's Defenses - Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century." He also assisted, with Wolfowitz, in the writing of the “Defense Planning Guidance” for Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in 1992.
Paul Wolfowitz (CFR) – He is a ruthless, uncompromising protégé of Richard Perle. He was Deputy Secretary of Defense until he was appointed by George W. Bush to be President of the World Bank. He recently announced his “plans to underwrite – with U.S. tax dollars, of course – various global initiatives to combat the mythical menace of ‘global warming.’” [xiii] During the G-8 Summit in Scotland he said he wanted to use the World Bank as a mechanism for developing dialogue among nations in order to promote sustainable development, a United Nations program under their Agenda 21 plan.
Wolfowitz was the Undersecretary of Defense from 1989 to 1993 in the administration of George H. W. Bush. In that administration he was in charge of 700 people who had the task of restructuring military policy at the termination of the cold war.
Together with Lewis Libby, he co-authored the draft (later rewritten) of the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance. This is usually prepared every few years as an internal set of military guidelines. In 1992 this plan recommended U.S. military dominance over Eurasia. It also sanctioned preemptive strikes (doublespeak for invasion) against those who are even remotely suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction. He favors redrawing the map of the Middle East. After 9-11 the National Security Strategy of the United States incorporated some of the key points from that draft. [xiv] Wolfowitz wanted to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime during the 1991 Gulf War. He was one of the twenty-five signatories of the mission statement of the Project for a New American Century.
On 6 January 1998 the Project for a New American Century wrote a letter to Bill Clinton urging the removal of Saddam Hussein among other things. This neo-conservative group favors big government but functions under the umbrella of conservatism.
This letter was signed by the following PNAC members, some of whom, waiting for the right administration, later joined the George W. Bush administration:
Elliott Abrams (CFR) – He was Deputy Assistant to George W. Bush and Deputy National Security Advisor for global democracy strategy in February 2005. From December 2002 to February 2005, he was the Special Assistant to the president and Senior Director for Near East and North African affairs.
Elliott Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress regarding the Iran-Contra scandal in 1991. President George H. W. Bush pardoned him in 1992. His wife is Rachel Decter, daughter of big time CFR neo-cons Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter.
Richard L. Armitage – He is served as Deputy Secretary of State from 03/29/2001 to 02/22/2005. He worked in the previous Bush administration and was a Special Emissary to Jordan’s King Hussein during the 1991 Gulf war.
William J. Bennett – He served as Secretary of Education and Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities in the Reagan administration. He is a Distinguished Fellow with the Heritage Foundation, a front for the Republican Party. He currently has an early morning talk radio show on which he promotes the Bush agenda. He apparently has a major gambling addiction despite his popularity as a morals advocate.
Jeffrey Bergner – Recently wrote a piece for the Weekly Standard about our Iranian options – Iran apparently is our next imperialistic target. Previously, he served as Staff Director of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, overseeing 60 employees.
John Bolton (CFR) – He was recently appointed as Ambassador to the U.N. after not being confirmed by Congress. He will leave his position as Under Secretary for Arms Control which is the top non-proliferation rank in the U.S. He held various positions in both the Reagan and previous Bush administrations.
Paula J. Dobriansky (CFR) – Since March of 2001 she has been Bush’s Under Secretary of Democracy and Global Affairs. Previous to this appointment she was the Senior Vice President and Director of the Washington Office of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Francis Fukuyama – He wrote State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century. Among other books, several on democratization and international political economy, he also wrote The End of History and the Last Man in 1992. Currently he is a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics.
Robert Kagan – Cheney selected Victoria Nuland, Robert Kagan’s wife as his Deputy National Security Adviser. In that capacity she promoted the expansion of democracy in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Lebanon. On 13 July 2005 she became the United States Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Zalmay Khalilzad (CFR) – George W. Bush and his talk radio cheerleaders identify the major problem as Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. And Presidential Advisor extraordinaire Khalilzad can conjure up the antidote. As Special Assistant of the National Security Council to both Afghanistan and Iraq he helped to install the Afghanistan puppet president, Hamid Karzai in December 2001.
However, for at least twenty years, Khalilzad’s chief function is carrying out the brilliant Brzezinski strategy which involves using CIA trained Islamic fundamentalist terrorists to build the U.S. Empire which in turn strengthens the United Nations. Khalilzad is a Brzezinski protégé. Both were on the board of a company called Friends of Afghanistan. No one is exempt from manipulation when it comes to fueling the fires of globalist expansion. Just indoctrinate the willing or the impoverished, provide weapons and point to the devised target. This strategy was used in Afghanistan against Russia.
William Kristol (CFR) – He is the son of neo-con originals Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb. He is not officially part of the administration but serves as a propagandizing cheerleader as editor of The Weekly Standard, a magazine owned by Rupert Murdoch. He also owns the New York Post.
Richard Perle: See his information above.
Peter W. Rodman (CFR) – He is the current Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. He worked in the Reagan administration as the “Director of the State Department Policy Planning Staff (1984-1986), Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (1986-1987), and Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and NSC Counselor (1987-1990).” [xv] He worked for Henry Kissinger before working for Reagan.
Donald Rumsfeld: See his information above.
William Schneider, Jr. (CFR) – He is the Chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board and a member the State Department's Defense Trade Advisory Group.
He also belongs to several neo-con groups including the Hudson Institute, and the Center for Security Policy.
“Vin” (John Vincent) Weber (CFR) – He is a former Republican Congressman from Minnesota (1981-1993). He is a lobbyist at Clark and Weinstock which boasts of clients such as Governor Schwarzenegger, Microsoft, and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers.
Paul Wolfowitz (CFR): See his information above.
R. James Woolsey (CFR) – He is a former CIA director and a Rhodes Scholar.
Robert B. Zoellick (CFR) – He is the current Deputy Secretary of State and is the former U.S. Trade Representative. As a Trade (traitor) Representative he held negotiations with China and Taiwan to entice them into the World Trade Organization. He also worked with the Central American countries to arrive at the most recent CAFTA which was narrowly passed in the House on 28 July 2005 after vote buying and arm twisting.
Zoellick worked in the first Bush Administration. He was the major U.S. official who negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement. He played a role as the personal representative at the G-7 Economic Summits in 1991 and 1992. He was appointed as the White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President in August 1992.
Many citizens focus on the qualifications of Supreme Court replacements – with an emphasis on Roe versus Wade. Despite the importance of that issue, there are other more grievous appointment concerns. George W. Bush very quickly filled his administrative ranks with members of the Council on Foreign Relations, a group dedicated to a globalist New World Order. With additional predatory war hawks from the Project for a New American Century and George H. W. Bush’s globalist gang we should not be the least surprised to find the United States participating in devised warfare, the path to the New World Order. We invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and there is the war against the American citizens known as the “war on terror” in which there will be an ongoing deprivation of our freedoms supposedly to “protect” us but rather – to control and terrorize us.
© Deanna Spingola 2005 - All rights reserved
Deanna Spingola's articles
are copyrighted but may be republished, reposted, or emailed. However, the
person or organization must not
charge for subscriptions or advertising. The article must be copied intact and
full credit given. Deanna's web site address must also be included. | <urn:uuid:546950be-d0f4-4baf-add1-9291a0243cdd> | {
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For the many lives impacted by MRSA each year, it often comes as a bit of a shock to learn that MRSA infections kill more people annually in the United States than AIDS. I personally found this shocking because I had heard so much about AIDS in school and in the media throughout my life, yet I had heard so little about MRSA when my dad died because of it in 2008. While approximately 18,000 individuals succumb to AIDS each year in the United States, another 18,650 lose their lives to MRSA infections.
MRSA is a term used to describe the several stains of Staphylococcus aureus that have become resistant to certain antibiotic treatments, meaning that they are harder to treat and especially threatening for individuals with compromised immune systems. MRSA is a common healthcare-associated infection, an infection acquired while receiving medical care, and is also a common cause of sepsis if allowed to enter the bloodstream.
Like many healthcare-associated infections, MRSA can live on the human body without causing any serious problems. This is problematic when patients enter hospitals for surgical procedures, which can present the opportunity for the bacteria to enter the patient’s body. Some individuals can also be carriers of the pathogen, passing it on to other people and thus causing problems for those whose bodies are unable to fight of the bacteria.
It is important to make the distinction that MRSA is a bacterial pathogen, whereas AIDS is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus, also known as HIV. In the last 30 years, significant improvements have been made in the fight against HIV/AIDS through various campaigns to raise awareness and other public health strategies. The progress that has been made to bring an end to the AIDS epidemic proves that when people are made aware of the problem at hand, as well as what can be done to prevent it, lives can be saved.
Another important distinction to be made between these two life-threatening pathogens is the various methods of transmission. HIV is transmitted through blood and bodily fluids, whereas MRSA is transmitted a number of various ways that may not be as apparent as with HIV/AIDS. For example, MRSA can be transferred through skin contact with an infected person, or any objects or surfaces that have been touched by an infected individual. As previously mentioned, some individuals can even be carriers of MRSA. Because such individuals do not have an active infection, they will more than likely remain unaware of their status as a carrier unless they are tested for MRSA, or develop an infection in an open wound.
It is important to reiterate that MRSA can occur in virtually any environment, not just hospitals. Any individual can develop an infection from MRSA, even without any knowledge of coming in contact with the bacteria. Comparing this killer to HIV/AIDS, we can learn that public awareness and general knowledge of the disease and what can be done to prevent it are of first and foremost importance in combating the epidemic. | <urn:uuid:b539f68d-35fe-4221-b26a-aa5928c3bef1> | {
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Scientists have made a long-sought—and controversial—breakthrough: They created stem cells from cloned human embryos for the first time, reports AP. In theory, the development by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University means that doctors might someday be able to grow tissue from an ailing patient's own DNA, thus reducing the chance of rejection in a transplant. Commonly cited examples are growing brain tissue to help a patient with Parkinson's disease, or pancreatic tissue to help diabetics.
It's "one landmark step in a very long journey," says an expert at Children's Hospital Boston who wasn't involved with the work. The Oregon scientists say they don't think the embryos used in their process could develop into babies, reports NBC News, but the procedure is nonetheless controversial because it requires that the embryos be destroyed. Nature notes that competing technology in the last decade has made the push toward embryonic stem cells less intensive, but adds that the new paper in Cell is sure to reignite the debate. The scientists used eggs from donors, and it took six years to replicate the success they had with monkey embryos. They chalked it up to a series of small revisions over the years instead of a single aha! moment. | <urn:uuid:024fdd40-274d-4fa2-91ca-9b5b3ccf00bb> | {
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landscape, rural, urban, still life, narrative, interior, portrait
original, reproduction, oil paint, direct painting, plein-air, studio, traditional technique, realistic, Impressionism, sketch, tone, modelling, composition, painterly, atmospheric effects
History and culture
nationalism, national identity, centenary of European settlement, Federation, pioneer
Australian Impressionism presents the work of five artists: Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin, Jane Sutherland and Charles Conder. The exhibition focuses on the work that these artists made between1883 and 1897. During this time each of these artists played an important role in the development of an Impressionist style of painting and a distinctly national art in Australia. The five artists in the exhibition shared many ideas and interests and sometimes worked together.
Look at a selection of artworks by these artists.
Which artists/artworks are familiar? What do you already know about these artists/artworks, and how?
Which artists/artworks are less familiar? Why might these artists/artworks be less familiar?
What evidence can you see of the shared interests of the artists?
What evidence can you see of artists’ individual styles and interests?
The paintings of the Australian Impressionists provide a vivid picture of many aspects of Australian cultural and social life in the late nineteenth century.
Look at paintings of a range of subjects. What do these paintings reveal about the everyday life of the period, including the urban and rural environment, work, transport, leisure, fashion and people? (Students could look at different paintings in a ‘pair and share’ activity and present their observations to the class for this activity.)
What aspects of the life of the period are not represented in the paintings? Suggest why.
What value do the paintings have as historical documents? How do paintings compare with other historical documents in the information they present?
Compare and contrast one of the paintings by the Australian Impressionists with a photograph taken around the same time of the same scene (for example, a photograph of the view represented by Tom Roberts in Allegro con Brio, Bourke St West c. 1885–86).
What different information does each of these views provide?
Many of the buildings associated with ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ and/or the work of the Australian Impressionists are still standing today (e.g. Grosvenor Chambers, the GPO, the Exhibition Buildings, Princess Theatre, William Wardell’s ANZ Bank building).
Locate the buildings on a map and, if possible, try to visit some when you visit the exhibition.
Research the history and significance of one of the buildings and present a short illustrated talk about the building.
The years between 1883 and 1897, which are the focus of Australian Impressionism, encompass the centenary of European settlement in 1888, and the years leading up to Federation. The strong nationalistic spirit that prevailed at this time inspired an interest in the nation’s pioneering past and focused attention on the issue of national identity.
Although most people lived in the cities, it was the bush and bush life that were seen as uniquely Australian, and which exerted the most powerful influence on Australia’s emerging sense of national identity. This interest in the bush and bush life was reflected in the work of many poets, writers and artists of the period, including the Australian Impressionists.
Identify a range of factors that contributed to the growth of nationalism in the 1880s.
Why do you think the bush and bush life are often viewed as distinctly Australian, when most Australians live in cities?
Identify a range of works by the Australian Impressionists that you believe look distinctly Australian. What aspects of the paintings look distinctly Australian (consider subject matter, characters, colour and light)?
What ideas and values about Australian culture, history and identity do these paintings communicate? How are these ideas and values suggested in the paintings?
Did the ideas and values about Australia and Australian life, evident in these paintings, represent the views and experiences of all Australians when the paintings were made? Whose views and experiences were not represented, and why?
Are the ideas and values about Australia and Australian life evident in the paintings relevant to contemporary audiences? Explain.
Most of the paintings in Australian Impressionism are made with oil paint on canvas or board. Although the artists used a direct painting technique (see below) in many paintings, at times they also used more traditional methods.
Traditional oil painting techniques involve working with layers of thinned oil paint to gradually build up smooth areas of carefully blended tone and colour within clearly defined outlines. Artists can create very realistic effects working in this way. Artists usually work in the studio when they are using this technique.
Traditional painting techniques can be seen in some of the artworks of the Australian Impressionists, for example Old stables c. 1884 by Frederick McCubbin, and in the figures in the large-scale paintings created by McCubbin, such as Down on his luck 1889, and Shearing the rams 1890 by Tom Roberts
Identify paintings by the Australian Impressionists where you can see evidence of traditional painting techniques.
Discuss the visual effects that have been created using this technique.
Suggest why McCubbin and Roberts used traditional painting techniques for their large-scale paintings, such as Down on his luck and Shearing the rams. Consider, for example, how the subject matter, purpose and audience of these paintings may have influenced the artists’ approach.
Like many other artists of the period, theAustralian Impressionists also adopted a more modern, direct style of painting. This involved applying obvious strokes of colour and tone directly onto the surface of a painting to create an ‘impression’ of a subject, rather than a detailed description of it. The artists used a direct painting technique when they worked en plein air.
In the nineteenth century, artists and critics began to use the word ‘impressionism’ to describe the informal, direct painting style that was being used by many artists.
There were groups of artists working in an Impressionist style in many parts of the world, including Europe, England, North America and Australia. The most famous group of Impressionist artists worked together in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s. Several of the artists associated with this group, including Claude Monet, developed a bold new approach to using colour. However, the Australian Impressionists were not directly influenced by the French Impressionists.
This was, in part, because they were interested in making paintings that looked distinctly Australian. They were, however, interested in the work of the French artist, Jules Bastien-Lepage, and his followers. These artists combined aspects of an Impressionist style with a more traditional painting style to make images that celebrated rural life and work.
Identify paintings by the Australian Impressionists that show evidence of a direct painting style.
Discuss the visual effects that have been created using this technique. How do they differ from the effects created by more traditional painting techniques.
Why do you think artists and critics began to use the term ‘impressionism’ to describe paintings made in a direct painting style?
Look at examples of French Impressionism. How does this form of Impressionism differ from Australian Impressionism?
Look at the work of Jules Bastien-Lepage. Consider why his work may have interested the artists associated with Australian Impressionism.
The artists in Australian Impressionism often painted en plein air (out of doors) to observe and record the light, colour and atmosphere of their subjects. This frequently involved painting very quickly, using a direct painting style, to create an impression of changing effects, such as sunlight or weather.
Earlier artists, including artists of the Colonial period, such as John Glover and Eugene Von Guérard in Australia, had made oil sketches of the landscape en plein air, but these sketches were made as preparatory work for paintings that were completed in the studio.
What practical challenges did working en plein air present to artists?
Identify several paintings by the Australian Impressionists made en plein air that reveal different light colour and atmospheric effects. Describe the different light, colour and atmospheric effects in each painting.
Consider how the artist’s technique, style (including use of colour and tone) suggests these effects?
Compare these paintings with a landscape painting by an earlier artist that was completed in the studio. What differences are there between the works?
Australian Impressionism highlights many of the significant sites where the artists associated with Australian Impressionism worked en plein air. These include Box Hill, Heidelberg and Mentone, outside Melbourne, where the artists set up artists’ camps for plein-air painting. There are also a significant number of paintings in the exhibition about Melbourne and Sydney.
Look at maps of Sydney and Melbourne and the surrounding areas to locate the main sites where the artists worked in and around these cities.
Investigate what factors led the artists to each site, who worked there, when they worked there and what paintings were made there. Different students in the class could research different sites and report back to the class.
In 1889 the Australian Impressionists held an exhibition of paintings made in an Impressionist style. They called it the 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition because many of the paintings were painted on boards that measured 9 inches by 5 inches. The exhibition attracted enormous interest. Although many people admired the paintings, some critics were shocked by them and felt that they looked unfinished.
Look at some reproductions of the 9 by 5 paintings.
Why do you think the artists described these paintings as impressions?
Read some of the reviews of the exhibition, especially the comments of James Smith. What concerns are expressed in these reviews?
Who did the paintings appeal to, and why?
Read about the planning, promotion and presentation of the exhibition. Suggest why the artists organised an exhibition of these paintings and why they put so much effort into the planning, promotion and presentation.
The 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition is regarded as one of the most significant exhibitions in Australian art history. Suggest why.
What is your opinion about these paintings?
The paintings in Australian Impressionism are among the most well-known images in Australian art. Many people know the paintings through reproductions in books or on posters, postcards, stamps, jigsaw puzzles and even coffee mugs.
The exhibition features the original paintings, including many of the most well-known paintings of the period. The National Gallery of Victoria owns a significant number of these paintings, but many have been borrowed from other galleries and private owners around Australia and overseas.
Why are the paintings of these artists so popular?
Where have you seen reproductions and in what form?
What role have the reproductions of these paintings played in our understanding of the period, including ideas about national identity?
Why is it important to view the artworks in the original? | <urn:uuid:2a38305e-557e-487b-a9bf-ca2109bc65ed> | {
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Switzerland - Member state
Switzerland became member of the Council of Europe on 6 May 1963.
Prevention of torture
The European Committee for the prevention of torture visits places of detention (for juvenile or immigration detainees, police stations, psychiatric hospitals) in order to assess how persons deprived of their liberty are treated.
Fight against racism
The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) is an independent monitoring body which provides member States with concrete and practical advice on how to tackle problems of racism and intolerance in their country.
Protection of social rights
The European Social Charter is a Council of Europe treaty which guarantees social and economic human rights. It was adopted in 1961 and revised in 1996. The European Committee of Social Rights rules on the conformity of the situation in States with the European Social Charter, the 1988 Additional Protocol and the Revised European Social Charter. Switzerland signed the European Social Charter on 6 May 1976. It has not yet signed nor ratified the Revised European Social Charter.
Protection of minorities
The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities provides for a monitoring system to evaluate how the treaty is implemented in State Parties. An advisory Committee adopts recommendations to improve minority protection.
Fight against corruption
The Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) monitors member states' compliance with the Council of Europe anti-corruption standards with the objective to improve the capacity of its members to fight corruption.
Fight against money laundering
MONEYVAL Committee of experts
The committee evaluates the effectiveness of domestic measures to counter money laundering and the financing of terrorism in Council of Europe member states which are not members of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Council of Europe member states which are members of MONEYVAL but subsequently become members of the FATF can elect to retain full membership of MONEYVAL. Applicant states for membership and other non-member states which are not members of the FATF may apply to join the terms of reference under certain conditions. Switzerland is member of the FATF.
The Conference of the Parties under the Council of Europe Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime and on the Financing of Terrorism (CETS No. 198) monitors the proper implementation of the Convention by the Parties.
Democracy through Law
The European Commission for Democracy through Law - the Venice Commission - is an advisory body on constitutional matters which plays a leading role in the adoption of constitutions that conform to the standards of Europe's constitutional heritage
Fight against trafficking in human beings
The Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) is responsible for monitoring implementation of the Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings by the Parties. It regularly publishes evaluation reports.
European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ)
The aim of the CEPEJ is the improvement of the efficiency and functioning of justice in the member States.
Consultative Council of European Prosecutors (CCPE)
This consultative body to the Committee of Ministers prepares opinions, promotes the implementation of Rec(2000)19 and collects information about the functioning of prosecution services in Europe.
Switzerland is represented in the Parliamentary Assembly by a delegation of 6 representatives and 6 substitutes.
Switzerland is represented in the Congress by a delegation of 6 representatives and 6 substitutes.
- Judge to the European Court of Human Rights: Helen Keller.
- Applications allocated to a decision body(*) in 2014: 303
- Judgments in 2014: 18 of which 8 violations and 9 non-violations
(*) Do not include applications which are at the pre-judicial stage (incomplete case file)
As part of his mandate, the Commissioner carries out visits to countries in order to monitor the human rights situation and pursue a dialogue with national authorities and civil societies.
The Council of Europe's budget for 2015 is € 416 981 300.
The contribution of Switzerland is € 7 877 887. | <urn:uuid:c6ec989a-a8f2-4293-8280-8e722af2dd2b> | {
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A brand-new evaluation 1 released in Rheumatology(Oxford) recommends that weight management and appropriate diet plan and nutrition might contribute in handling signs of osteoarthritis. In an evaluation of 68 current research studies, scientists discovered that weight decrease, in specific, can assist to lower the development of osteoarthritis signs. They likewise discovered that lipid-modifying diet plans might add to minimized signs, though the proof for that result was more sporadic.
Osteoarthritis is the most common kind of arthritis. As the international population ages, osteoarthritis is most likely to end up being a significantly typical issue; by the year 2050, as lots of as 130 million individuals will struggle with osteoarthritis, the scientists compose. Existing treatments for osteoarthritis are rather minimal, although it is thought that weight decrease, especially for overweight or obese clients with osteoarthritis, is an essential technique for attenuating osteoarthritis signs. Hence, the scientists presumed that diet plan might likewise have an influence on the intensity or development of arthritic signs.
In Between October 2015 and Might 2017, scientists browsed the PubMed database for posts on the results of weight problems, in addition to polyunsaturated fats, cholesterol, and vitamins A, C, D, E, and K, on threat or development of osteoarthritis. The scientists consisted of research studies released within the last 10 years, however likewise consisted of research studies that went back to 2000 for vitamins A, C, D, and E, and to 1995 for vitamin K. Amongst the 1,190 research studies sought advice from were human research studies and randomized, managed trials. The last list of posts consisted of 68 research studies.
Research studies concentrating on weight problems and osteoarthritis showed that weight problems increases pressure on weight-bearing joints; as a result, overweight people are at a greater threat for knee arthroplasty. Even more, a big Netherlands Public health of Weight problems mate research study revealed that a greater fat portion was connected with hand osteoarthritis. Weight problems was likewise connected to a greater threat for type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes, in turn, was discovered in one research study to be an independent threat aspect for extreme osteoarthritis. In amount, weight decrease in obese or overweight osteoarthritis clients minimized joint effect, enhanced inflammatory adipokine secretion patterns, and favorably impacted metabolic-risk profile.
Concerning polyunsaturated fats, the scientists discovered that there might be a connection in between fish oil supplements and osteoarthritic discomfort decrease. Particularly, the scientists kept in mind “a strong association in between osteoarthritis and raised serum cholesterol.” Polyunsaturated fats are understood to assist lower cholesterol; therefore, a diet plan greater in polyunsaturated fats might assist to lower some signs of osteoarthritis. In addition, they compose, fish oil is understood to have heart-health advantages, which “might pertain to this population owing to the association of [osteoarthritis] with metabolic syndrome.”
While the scientists did not discover any definitive information on vitamin D shortage as a causal aspect for osteoarthritis, there do seem advantages of vitamin D supplements for muscle strength, which can assist overweight clients with osteoarthritis slim down through workout. This, in turn, might assist to attenuate a few of the signs of osteoarthritis.
Similarly, the research studies consisted of in this evaluation did not supply appropriate information to figure out a connection in between vitamin K shortage and osteoarthritis. Nevertheless, the authors keep in mind, “the vital function of vitamin K in bone and cartilage health is incontrovertible.”
Among the crucial constraints of the existing evaluation is that the proof spoke with was mostly based upon observational research studies, keep in mind the authors. However, excess fat did seem a substantial consider the intensity of osteoarthritis signs. Hence, they concluded that “dietary adjustment to accomplish weight decrease where suitable, together with increased exercise, are the greatest evidence-based suggestions,” to minimizing the signs or development of osteoarthritis signs.
Lastly, although proof for the advantage of dietary-lipid adjustment and lowering of serum cholesterol on osteoarthritis is doing not have, the dietary suggestions proposed in this evaluation might supply, at minimum, an advantage for topics’ metabolic health. “While vitamin/micronutrient information are restricted,” the scientists state, “there is a possible function for these nutrients in preventing/slowing osteoarthritis, however at exactly what consumption levels stays to be seen.”
Likewise checked out:
Joint-Health Solution Movardol May Reduce Osteoarthritis Signs
Eggshell Membrane May Ease Osteoarthritis Discomfort, Tightness
Alternative Joint-Health Ingredients Are on the Increase
1. Thomas S et al., “Exactly what is the proof for a function for diet plan and nutrition in osteoarthritis?” Rheumatology Released online April 17, 2018. | <urn:uuid:f2c4c201-589b-4a8f-9cd8-c9a7c92003f6> | {
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‘Why misguided humans have attempted to make their homes in it is more than I can comprehend': Francis Ratcliffe’s first impressions of Australia.
(Monash University School of Historical Studies)
Francis Noble Ratcliffe, young Britisher
To a public exhorted to be ashamed of its birth rate, still being told to populate what was considered a virtually empty continent or else perish, Francis Ratcliffe wrote in 1938 that Australians had ‘every reason to be intensely proud of their record in settling the great spaces of the inland’. Their feat was a courageous conquest. ‘They are only to be blamed’, he insisted in his travelogue and scientific diary, Flying Fox and Drifting Sand,’in that they seem to have done the job too thoroughly’. Having travelled the margins of white settlement on two major scientific expeditions, Ratcliffe was saying that no biologist’s wand could be waved over the arid interior to force its difficult landscapes to support more people. Therefore, those who relied on that land would be forced to change their expectations, reassess their national ambitions, and perhaps even decrease the pastoral population. At least, they must admit their destructive agency.
Ratcliffe’s famous book, which has been frequently reprinted and set from time to time as required reading in school and environmental history classes, described the exact point at which he was struck with this realisation ‘that man must share the blame with providence’. In September 1935, somewhere along the Broken Hill railway line in north-eastern South Australia, Ratcliffe was ruminating in the guard’s van at the rear of a freight train when the wind picked up. Soon he could see ‘no more than a yard or two beyond the railway fence’ on the right side of the track, which had been grazed down to what looked like ‘yellow asphalt’ by a leaseholder’s stock. To his left, where neither sheep nor cattle had been roaming and so the native scrub thrived, the view was relatively clear.
Long before he helped establish the Australian Conservation Foundation, Ratcliffe’s account of these sorts of revelations helped turn the public and political lens towards the consequences of mismanagement. Environmental historians have long considered Flying Fox and Drifting Sand crucial in this respect: J.M. Powell has called it ‘the classic reference’ in the public history of conservationism; Geoffrey Bolton a ‘minor classic’ at least in arousing the reading public. The text bequeathed a legacy to the next generation of Australians, as Libby Robin suggests, by raising their consciousness about ‘the ecological limits of agricultural enterprise’. While acknowledging the book’s enormous popularity, Drew Hutton and Libby Connors in their recent history of the Australian environment movement characterised Ratcliffe’s efforts as ‘the work of a good government scientist, not a social movement activist’. Most, however, downplay such a distinction. Thomas Dunlap recognises that Ratcliffe’s recommendations were sufficiently ‘radical’ to inspire subsequent activists to identify the dissonance between social demands and the rhythms of the land, and Tim Flannery sees the text as one of the key moments of recognition that only ‘a courageous but deluded people’ could persevere at scratching away towards the centre of the continent at land that had died beneath them.The legacy was a gift, albeit laced with a challenge, to the Australian community, of which Ratcliffe was an important member.
Ratcliffe’s message was typical for the scientists of his era whom we would now consider conservationists. He implied that the people deserved the best possible advice to prevent any dangers in their environment threatening their progressive way of life. Yet when he travelled, Ratcliffe maintained a far more candid commentary in his faithful correspondence with his family in Britain and his superiors in Australia. These suggest precisely the opposite: the environment needed to be defended from the ravages of a backward people. His letters home in which he drafted his first impressions of Australian lives were recently deposited in the National Library of Australia, and his correspondence with senior civil servants is held by the Australian Archives. Some of these items are typical of any young traveller’s letters home: expressing dutiful concern for his sister and parents (S.K. Ratcliffe was a BBC lecturer with particular interest in American affairs), inviting them to follow his progress in their family atlas, and reassuring them that he was still solvent. Others present a significant counterpoint to both the published work and the historical reputation of the Australian conservationist. In the early pieces, there is little sign that Ratcliffe could ever settle in the alien environment, let alone come to consider himself an antipodean patriot leading others in the effort to defend the nation’s soil.
Francis Noble Ratcliffe was just twenty-five years old when he made his first voyage to Australia. In 1929, fresh from Oxford University and after a year as a Proctor Fellow at Princeton, New Jersey, he was commissioned to study the spread of flying foxes in the fruit growing regions of Queensland. He was then an unknown animal ecologist eager to learn and if possible to impress his employer back home (the Empire Marketing Board). However, during his second trip six years later for the official central Australian survey of soil erosion, he was on close terms with the hierarchy of the local Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. On both occasions, Ratcliffe conducted his surveys with no fleet of vehicles or technical support staff. He was usually solo, travelling by train, mail van, motor cycle, and often by hitching rides from the locals.
At the time, Ratcliffe told his family that he dreaded steering his motor cycle daily over one ‘apology for a road’ after another, though in retrospect he remembered singing at the top of his voice as he rode, and counted these days ‘among the happiest in my life’. In spite of the difficulties he faced in getting around the outback, Ratcliffe’s impressionistic accounts that he sketched whilst on the road now have a hallowed place in the evolution of Australian nature conservation. Perhaps their popularity stemmed from this very sense that his findings relied as much on serendipity as science. First he wrote The Flying Fox (Pteropus) in Australia as a CSIR bulletin in 1931. Two soil drift pamphlets emerged from his following trip, on The Arid Pastoral Areas of South Australia (pamphlet 64, in 1936) and then With special reference to South-Western Queensland (number 70, 1937). While he was contracted for technical bulletins, he is remembered for the 1938 publication of Flying Fox and Drifting Sand. Subtitled ‘the adventures of a biologist in Australia‘, this brought what Ratcliffe called his ‘youthful wanderings’ together, serving as both a travelogue and a clarion call for greater sensitivity to Australian ecology. His wanderings might have been youthful, but the combination of naturalism and social critique contained a wisdom that went to the heart of the relationship between people and the land.
On his arrival in early 1929, Ratcliffe – sweltering in the Brisbane summer – found that the local administrators and academics to whom he was expected to report hardly knew or cared who he was or for what purpose he had come. Unacclimatised, he interpreted the native nonchalance as barbarism or an obsessive quest for mediocrity. In time, he would happily consider the heads of Australian research organisations mentors in place of his Oxford dons (having studied under Sir Julian Huxley, who wrote his book’s foreword). His disappointment with the apparent ‘tiring uniformity’ of the Australian eucalypts and flat wilderness would similarly yield to a love for the fragile diversity of the bush. In his first year, this redemption was yet to come, and he struggled to see the silver lining on the clouds of apathy hanging over the northern wet season.
Ratcliffe’s lifeline was the correspondence he maintained with his parents and sister, punctuated by their precious parcels of traditional British news and magazines. ‘I try not to think too much of friends just now’, he typed from his temporary digs at the University of Queensland, ‘as I have not yet discovered anything to replace them, and am afraid that I might develop some form of homesickness, which I rather want to avoid’. He soon found a few families vaguely associated with home, often urbane emigrant Scottish and English administrators, although their hospitality only cast the typical Australian in an even dimmer light. This postcolonial settlement seemed at every turn to reinforce the stereotype of a succession of slothful, violent frontier towns. The one solace he could draw was that the locals might make a less than demanding readership. ‘Luckily’, he wrote in an attempt to sound upbeat, ‘the people do not expect any practical results from my survey’. Evidently, the politicians (whom he presumed were corrupt and inefficient) and the fruit-growers (whom he feared would be as brutish as the rest) simply wanted him ‘to state the problem’, in other words to confirm that fruit-eating bats were a pest worth eradicating.
Ratcliffe’s first ventures into the exotic scenery, made with some new acquaintances from a Brisbane naturalists’ club, started the process of being won over by the continent’s ecology. While the stage was increasingly enchanting, the players remained less impressive. The ‘congenital laziness of the Australian’, and the astounding inefficiency of the state public service and railways, shone through constantly. The people excelled only at the usual vices, and in murdering their native birds and animals. By June 1929 Ratcliffe had drawn a few conclusions and vented these to his family, determined ‘to retract any of the decent things I have said about Australians, except that I continually meet kind and hospitable individuals’. Whenever he found a spot of natural beauty, he just knew that the ‘useless rotters’ who inhabited it would find a way to ruin everything:
But the People! … What the men do for a living I cannot guess, but there [outside the innumerable pubs] they remain, hour after hour, when decent folk should be working, propping up the pillars of the wide verandahs, dressed in the national dress of a collarless shirt and a pair of blue serge trousers or dungarees. And the faces! I can most easily sum them up by saying that they are of a low type. And the language! …
No matter how pestilent or malodorous the fruit bats, they stood a good chance of making a more favourable impression upon the traveller.
In quieter, more reflective times, Ratcliffe admitted that his more intolerant lines were penned in fits of ‘if not exactly temper, at least of loneliness and depression’. From Rockhampton on 4 October 1929, the correspondent attempted a more measured generalisation about the ‘Americo-Cockney’ inhabitants. He prefaced his remarks by acknowledging that this was too new a country to have cultivated what is considered elsewhere high culture, and he reserved his judgement on the larger centres of Sydney and Melbourne. However, he was disparaging nonetheless. Whereas his own English people were organised into an organic pyramid of classes, in Australia there seemed to be ‘a great cubic block’ of the masses, on which rested ‘an insignificant die’ of upper-class expatriate Britishers and leisured, educated Australians. As for the block beneath, these presented all the features of the more differentiated lower classes of the mother country: the ‘good-humoured irony’ of the British worker, the ‘narrow conservatism’ of the lower middle-class, the worker’s habit of the drink. Arrogant complacency had displaced the pioneers’ resourceful independence, leaving the typical Australian ‘a foul-mouthed, incorigibly [sic] lazy waster, whose chief pastimes are drinking and betting on horses’.
Conservation has never been the sole preserve of political liberals. Ratcliffe for one traced these national characteristics back to the rotten, locally-orientated politics of the country, spoiled by insular protectionism and the basic wage, and especially by the Roman Catholic liquor interests he presumed were behind the Labor Party. The country, it seemed, had too much democracy, and ‘the sooner the day of reckoning comes the better':
Unfortunately the independent, arrogant spirit of the people precludes the possibility of a Mussolini. If one did appear, I may say, I should be one of the first to put on a black shirt.
Ratcliffe felt differently about the people on the farms he visited. These families formed a rough but ‘rather nice crowd’ once one surmounted their initial barrier of suspicion, whereas to him the rest of rural Queensland seemed to remain a cultural desert. He could only do his best to avoid the ‘hopeless’ sorts, who filled him with ‘a mingled despair and contempt – for I cannot help thinking that the results of my own work will be judged by a jury of this type’.
Perhaps one should not read too much into these observations. The traveller was young and an outback novice, often writing when tired from uncomfortable journeys and frustrated searches for his elusive nocturnal frugivores. Ratcliffe did indeed type a disclaimer to his family in June 1930, which said in part that ‘anyone reading my diary say in fifty years time … would be very much disappointed and disgusted’ by his shallow sense of context. He knew that he was an expert on fruit bats and not social politics. Yet, he still felt qualified to judge ‘that the public life of the Australian is about as low a development as civilisation can afford to produce’.
If his local superiors had few expectations, and his suspicions about the ultimate audience were well founded, then the biologist would have to set his own standards of scientific rigour to transform the potentially inconsequential journey. This difficult and self-directed adventure in natural history became the first section of Flying Fox and Drifting Sand . He sometimes thought of himself as a civilised hunter in an uncivilised, if not necessarily savage, land at the ends of the empire. The scientific bureaucracy was largely a male public school preserve, and Ratcliffe was not averse to replicating some elements of a ‘boys’ own’ safari:
When I left Brisbane for the north I had no plan of campaign. I had no idea how long I should be away, or where I should finish up. This is quite the best way of setting out on a journey.
True, he had the backing of senior scientists in the capital, but by and large they left him to his own devices, for they had few preconceptions about how a study of the ecology of an Australian mammal should be conducted.
Packing his motorbike, shotgun and camera as luggage, he settled onto numerous trains to complete a diary entry or a half-written letter. ‘Never have I filled my time so fully’, he wrote in one letter to his parents, continually burying the recent past in ‘a mass of new experiences’. The game he hunted breathlessly was a large bat that the first European explorers had described as an airborne vampire, and which scientists were only beginning to differentiate into species. His mission was to drift from town to town, observe, capture and examine specimens from the foxes’ camps. In the absence of reliable textbooks, he relied on the intelligence passed on by locals, Department of Agriculture field workers and fruit inspectors.
Ratcliffe’s first encounter with a native fruit-bat was with the grey-headed flying fox on Tamborine Mountain. On the hill at dusk, he became aware of what he described as a ‘noiseless gliding shadow’ overhead, followed by little groups of wingbeats ‘like a whistled whisper’ receding into the vague outline of what he would come to recognise as the creature’s tell-tale ‘sharp triangular silhouette’. Invariably, he broke the still of the forest with his shotgun to collect specimens, measuring their canine heads, tapering torsos, and wingspans of up to five feet. (Later he would regret the numbers involved. Then, he treated it as a hunt, and even killed rare snakes and other animals unrelated to his research contract to get a closer look). From Bundaberg, he headed north of the Tropic of Capricorn to picturesque Cairns and the Atherton Tablelands in search of the black flying fox and arrived with or without notice on cattle stations. He warmed to hardy dairy farmers, though he worried that their children missed out, for the typical Australian parent had ‘no idea of the home comforts & good food that the American and Canadian insists on’.
While tracking a seasonal bat migration route into the New South Wales border highlands, or slogging through the mangrove habitats of the little red fox northward near Rockhampton, the hints of the character who would become the famous conservationist were only gradually showing through. Often, he made his points to show how unthinkingly destructive Australians could be to their pristine environment, leaving evidence of ‘[m]an’s unbeautifying hand’ everywhere, in the ugly scars on the landscape which made way for hideous houses.
The flocks of fruit bats could number half a million, and although they were adept at supplementing their native diet of forest flowers by raiding the nearest cultivated fruit farm, he only found sizeable camps in wilderness areas. In terms of the species’ ecology, which he, in concert with his contemporary researchers, often called their economy, he concluded that the damage to fruit crops was the work of rogue elements of otherwise harmless populations. His conclusions were somewhat subversive. Australian zoology had only been interested in their types and habitats to the extent that they represented an official economic pest to the horticultural industry. Ratcliffe viewed flying foxes from the perspective of the naturalist, not the despairing orchardist. Perhaps the industry could just learn to live with and budget for their occasional mischief; mass extermination would make as much sense as mass human imprisonment in order to stamp out petty theft (no allusion to Australia’s convict history seemed intended).
Initially, Ratcliffe did not think that his travels amounted to much scientifically. On the first anniversary of his arrival, he reflected that his investigation was ‘90% common sense and 10% science’, leaving him no better off in terms of job prospects than he was when he graduated with his first degree. Towards the end of his second year, realising he had the basis for a book of traveller’s impressions, he determined to ‘pocket my conscience’ rather than fret over how to justify interesting side-trips entirely unrelated to the flying fox study. He made a detour to the famous heart of Australian naturalism in Dunk Island at the invitation of its resident Spenser Hopkins (the father of a schoolmate, and successor on the island to the beachcomber E.J. Banfield), while trips to Fraser Island and Lamington National Park became evocative ornithological or zoological digressions in the book rather than contributions to the official purpose of his travels. In the other direction, travelling the inland pastoral and sheep country, he saw enough of the continent to convince him that it was far from monotonous. He found verdant pasture blending gradually into the coloured sands of the desert, where scraggy grass partly covered the red dirt and the trees were for the most part, he wrote to his family, ‘arboreal abortions’.
Ratcliffe confided to his family that he would publish a travelogue, mainly for the few pounds it might earn, for in literary terms, it would only amount to ‘a bit of a hodge-podge, I am afraid, natural history, anecdote, description, all going to paint a realistic picture of the land and the people’. We know now that this hodge-podge was precisely what would find a ready reading public. But then he was focused on his official report on the flying fox, and that progressed more slowly. Due at the beginning of March 1931, it was continually delayed as he waded through his notes. At first he had been stung by criticism, and he leapt to counter negative local press about his work, but by May 1930 he told his family that he had reached ‘a state of indifference’ to the barbs of small-town distributors and aldermen. He had grown fond of their country by then, and he viewed such locals as threats to, even parasites upon, that precious environment. In fact, he looked forward ‘to the pleasure of writing what must be to them a rather unflattering report’.
Disgusted by some of the coastal inhabitants, Ratcliffe was won over by their habitat. In his brief forays into the forbidding interior on the other hand, he had found that the more he looked, the more he realised that ‘[n]ever, in my life or dreams, have I been in such incredible country’. He wondered if he should ever return. Meanwhile, the flying fox report earned some critical approval, and Ratcliffe left for Aberdeen where he won a lecturing position on the strength of his two years of field work.
Then in late 1934 Senator A.J. McLachlan, Commonwealth Minister for Development, telephoned Sir David Rivett, the CSIR chief executive officer, saying that he was ‘rather perturbed about the question of soil drift’ and wanted to know what could be done. Rivett supposed that the removal of trees and the spread of rabbits left the earth open to the elements, but nothing was known for sure. Over the next couple of months, he sought the counsel of two experts at the Waite Institute of Agriculture in Adelaide known for their work on trace element deficiencies in soils. They convinced the federal Standing Committee on Agriculture to commit £500 to soil drift research survey in inland pastoral areas. While Rivett said he could not see ‘how an officer could obtain any definite data on the problem unless he had the opportunity of carrying out controlled experiments over a long period of years’, Professor A.E.V. Richardson of the Waite Institute thought otherwise. Considering the available field workers, he suggested the civil service might again ‘put Ratcliffe on the job': he had done well from scratch last time, and might be itching for a return to Australia.’Suppose we let him loose on this problem for say six months’, he suggested,’and let him evaluate the various factors involved’. It was all rather ad hoc, but the invitation went out anyway.
Francis Ratcliffe, therefore, returned to Australia knowing only to report to the Division of Animal Nutrition based at the University of Adelaide. From there, Professor Richardson sent him on his way, admitting that until the authorities could ‘put [their] finger on the real cause’, no-one knew which solution should be chosen. Edible soil-binding vegetation had some connection with animal nutrition. But there was more to it, and the country needed Ratcliffe’s observant, open mind.
The fabled ‘interior’ had already enticed many explorers. Since Edward John Eyre and Charles Sturt in the mid-nineteenth century, Northern Expeditions had named landmarks after their sponsors, or in recognition of their feelings (disappointment, deception, and so on), as they searched for suitable cattle-droving or transcontinental routes, if not a mythical inland sea. While Goyder’s Line of the 1860s was still a familiar shorthand definition of the margins of safe cultivation in South Australia when Ratcliffe passed through, the tragedy of Burke and Wills, and to some extent the Adelaide to Darwin journey made by J. MacDouall Stuart, remained part of national folklore. More recently, William Austin Horn had led anthropologists and botanists into central Australia, David W. Carnegie won many readers for his more literary Spinifex and Sand despite warning that he would describe the ‘unbroken monotony of an arid, uninteresting country’, and J.W. Gregory coined a phrase with his book The Dead Heart of Australia. C.E.W. Bean, later the nation’s official war correspondent, completed a journalist’s tour closer in its rationale to Ratcliffe’s, in 1907. In On the Wool Track, Bean singled out erosion on the western plains of New South Wales for a chapter entitled ‘The Rape of the West’. The era of heroic exploration was drawing to an end when Ratcliffe set off. Cecil T. Madigan, however, had only recently named the Simpson Desert which the erosion researcher intended to skirt, and would not traverse it on camel until three years after Ratcliffe’s trips.
In this case, unlike the mystery of the unstudied flying fox, he foretold his conclusion from the very start. Barely out of Adelaide, Ratcliffe had a premonition that talk of the rabbit and bad luck with the weather would prove to be no more than excuses. He wrote to his superior, saying that overstocking was probably the ‘only important factor’ leading to soil erosion further north. He would recommend a change in land-use policy rather than perpetuate any delusions. As soon as he had his first glimpse of the territory, Ratcliffe was making plans for a report which would advise landowners to retreat from permanent to nomadic pasture, at stock levels based on what was sustainable in normal drought conditions and not on the rare good seasons. This could be what he called the ‘thin edge of the wedge’ in forcing politicians to respond. He proposed that Rivett’s CSIR wrap up the soil drift baby and hand it back to the politicians, for it was principally political and economic demands which were ‘forcing the pastoralists to stock their country in an unscientific and dangerous way (dangerous to the country and to posterity)’.
Good seasons were not just around the corner, Ratcliffe insisted; the natural state of the interior was drought. He hoped to collect evidence of this by ‘trusting to the kindness of managers to run [him] around a bit’ and filling gaps with ‘a trip or two with the mails'; Rivett told him to ‘regard yourself as free to settle your own course’. Yet, as this correspondence implies, Ratcliffe’s course was settled long before he hitched his first ride. Although again he had few preconceptions about his exact route (he had not even sighted a map), this time he anticipated what he would find. His methods were again innovative. From the Flinders Ranges to Lake Eyre he caught freight trains, got out in dangerous bogs to push old cars, with or without headlights and kept alive by bush mechanics, flying at breakneck speed across the sand hills. As he crossed silent salt plains in state pastoral board vehicles and took mail trucks up the Birdsville Track beside the Simpson Desert, he passed some of the last camel teams ever to transport staples to the settlements. After the extreme humidity of the lush tropics, here was the toughest environment the desert fringes could offer.
To his hosts, the still noticeably young and obviously British biologist more often represented the latest mad explorer than the promise of assistance from research organisations to improve the fate of the soil and the people who lived off it. He was alone and under-resourced, and because his studies were under the auspices of the CSIR, they could have quarantined soil conservation as a scientist’s quandary rather than the farmer’s concern. In his mind, however, Ratcliffe was still a naturalist writer, and he had the vision to recognise the need to publicise scientific findings and recommendations as widely as possible rather than hoarding them in the academy. He would indeed wrap up the politicians’ unwanted baby in his reports on arid pastoral South Australia and south-western Queensland: as predicted, his verdict was that the problem was one of pastoral administration and stock management.
Some anecdotes and local faces and families featuring in his early drafts of the two soil erosion bulletins made way for the science in the published versions, but Ratcliffe’s contacts with many remote communities did influence his book. City housewives turning these pages, he said, could hardly imagine the complications created for ‘their sisters in the interior’ when the dust darkened their lives. He helped their imaginations by delivering their experiences to the suburbs, using the words of one of his own hostesses:
We have had seven dust storms already this month. I don’t mean just days with dust in the air, but bad enough for me to have to clean the house out. Three of the seven were bad, and by that I mean that I got about half a kerosene tin of dust and sand out of every room!
While these families wanted their stories of the unremitting dust and grasshoppers or rabbits swarming in their millions to be relayed to politicians and city folk, Ratcliffe commented most on the story-tellers, whose resilient decency impressed him more the longer he spent with them.
Everyone seemed worn down to a slower pace, but this was not the same as the apathy that had frustrated him in Brisbane. This was stoic survival. In tropical Queensland he found the natural magnificence marred by the people. Here, the inhabitants managed to humanise, if not redeem, the hellish environment. He invariably described the landscape his hosts called home as bleak, sickening, empty and cruel – indeed, in private letters during respite from imprisonment by sandstorm in the Dead Heart, he confessed that ‘why misguided humans have attempted to make homes in it is more than I can comprehend’. In his book, he remembered desolate stations where he could distinguish nothing but ‘shimmering pale blue-grey emptiness under a vast cloudless sky’, an environment that seemed like the ‘most inhuman world that it was possible to conceive’. Spending too long there at any one time, he was sure, would turn him raving mad. Yet the locals managed. The brutality of the country magnified the generosity of some of its settlers, and the sheer persistence of all who stayed, yet retained their sanity. His experience left him with ‘an unshakable [sic] belief in the fundamental decency and kindness of the human race’.
Francis Ratcliffe became an official soil conservation ambassador on radio and through other media in 1937 before his book came out, and then once in publication he was considered an unofficial advocate of the heroism of the settlers of the interior. Yet, based in Melbourne as a biological adviser to the CSIR, and then in Canberra with the Division of Economic Entomology, he remained to some a book-educated agricultural expert full of theories rather than experience. Just as he refused to blame entire populations of flying foxes, he said that rabbits arrived once the devastation was done rather than causing the land problems. One rural reader who had lived through the rabbit plagues of the previous decades wrote to the Adelaide Advertiser in February 1939, and dismissed Ratcliffe as ‘a young Oxford graduate, who had not been born at the time, and so never saw the country before it was ravaged’. This was one of the last times that his patriotism was implicitly called into question.
Ratcliffe’s newfound affection for the settlers won a generally receptive audience. If the solution to drifting sand lay not in the laboratories but in the attitudes of land users, then land-use regulations were needed to enforce sustainability and perhaps to rein in the more profligate in the pastoral industry. When state and federal bureaucracies began calling for reform in the mid to late 1930s, it helped that they had Ratcliffe’s technical pamphlets to draw upon. When politicians promised reforms, they represented constituencies familiar with the fate of the interior and more tuned in to the continent’s ecology by reading Flying Fox and Drifting Sand. Newspapers joined in, now that Ratcliffe had provided local evidence of a wasteful culture and proven that erosion was not confined to the well-known U.S. Dust Bowl. The Australian Natives’ Association even became involved, inviting Ratcliffe to speak at a special conference convened to discuss the land problem. The ANA resolved that erosion was too consequential for the country’s natural resources to tolerate ‘anything less than a national campaign’. But erosion control remained largely a state issue. Some states were more active than others, but progress was slow and uncoordinated until after the Second World War.
Francis Noble Ratcliffe, Australian
Having discovered his turn of phrase in two extremes of the young country, Ratcliffe settled permanently in Australia. Neither the travelling scientist nor his hosts knew that he would one day consider himself an Australian too. He returned in fact to the field of pest control, though his targets were smaller: beginning with termites, weevils and other pests of stored wheat. He would work too as a malariologist and monitor other arthropod-borne diseases during the war, including dengue fever and typhus. Ironically, the writer who was so insistent that people and not rabbits were to blame for soil erosion became the Wildlife Survey Section chief who oversaw the release of the myxomatosis virus from 1951. Working with Frank Fenner and other mid-century Australian scientific luminaries, including Ian Clunies Ross and Frank Macfarlane Burnet, Ratcliffe ushered in a biological control measure which revived the nation’s hopes for magic bullet solutions to pastoralists’ headaches.
If those Ratcliffe met on his travels expected their guest to harness the tools of ecological science to find a technical solution which might change the environment to suit their dreams, then they were disappointed. He always insisted, as Thomas Dunlap has since observed, that the question be approached from the other direction, ‘to fit the social and economic order to the natural one’. For all his increasing sympathy for the people, he saw not innocent victims of malevolent nature, but unrealistic human demands made of unsuitable land. Ultimately, Ratcliffe was instrumental in the establishment of the Australian Conservation Foundation . Beginning his public career as an alienated Britisher, he ended it as a treasured Australian. Yet this conversion is seldom noted in the public memory of his contribution. To retrieve this process might be one way to remember the capacity of the unique continent to entrance its sojourners to become settlers. What certainly remained constant was Ratcliffe’s message, which dared to confront the Australian people with awkward truths about their relationship with the environment that supported them.
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Francis Ratcliffe, Flying Fox and Drifting Sand: The Adventures of a Biologist in Australia, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1970 (first ed. Chatto & Windus, London, 1938), p. 332. The closest contemporary analogue of his depiction for an urban audience of the conditions faced by people in the outback was James Agee’s brooding visceral masterpiece on the lives of Alabama backwoods sharecropping families: James Agee and Walter Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1988 (first ed. 1941, and written in 1936, while Ratcliffe was surveying the arid interior). Back
After the 1938 Chatto & Windus release, the text was printed in Australia first in 1947, then again in 1948, 1951, 1953, 1963, 1970 and 1976. The page numbers did not change between the Australian editions, although unfortunately the illustrative photographs were phased out over the course of the reprints. A special school version was produced in the early 1950s, and it ‘would never have been given to school-children to read if the pastoral industry had been fully conversant with its subversive dimensions’ (Libby Robin, Defending the Little Desert: The Rise of Ecological Consciousness in Australia, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, 1998, p. 66). Back
Francis Ratcliffe, Flying Fox and Drifting Sand, pp. 204-05. Back
J.M. Powell,’Protracted Reconciliation: Society and the Environment’, in Roy MacLeod (ed.),The Commonwealth of Science: ANZAAS and the Scientific Enterprise in Australasia 1888-1988, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1988, pp. 249-271, at p. 256; Geoffrey Bolton, Spoils and Spoilers: Australians Make Their Environment 1788-1980, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1981, p. 140. Back
Libby Robin,’Ecology: A Science of Empire?’, in Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin (eds),Ecology and Empire: Environmental History of Settler Societies, Keele University Press, Edinburgh, 1997, pp. 63-75. Back
Drew Hutton and Libby Connors, A History of the Australian Environment Movement, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999, p. 57. Back
Thomas Dunlap,Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, Cambridge University Press, Oakleigh, 1999, p. 153; Tim Flannery, The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People , Reed Books, Chatswood, 1994, p. 353. Back
Letter from Francis Ratcliffe to Family (from Rockhampton), 27 October 1929, Francis N. Ratcliffe Papers relating to conservation (RP), Manuscripts Set 2493 (hereafter NL.MS 2493), National Library of Australia, Canberra; Francis Ratcliffe, Flying Fox and Drifting Sand, p. 31. Back
Francis Ratcliffe,Flying Fox and Drifting Sand, Introduction. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family (from Brisbane), 29 March 1929, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family, 29 March 1929, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family, 29 March 1929, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family, 3 May 1929, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family (from Townsville), 4 June 1929, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family (from Rockhampton), 4 October 1929, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family, 4 October 1929, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family, 4 October 1929, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family (from Brisbane), 2 December 1929, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family (from Brisbane), 4 June 1930, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Francis Ratcliffe,Flying Fox and Drifting Sand, p. 24. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family (from Maryboro), 25 May 1929, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
He knew of the Pteropus poliocephalus or grey-headed fox and Pt. conspicillatus or spectacled fox, but in deference to common usage, he renamed Pt. gouldi the black fox and Pt. scapulatus the little red fox. See Francis Ratcliffe, The Flying Fox (Pteropus) in Australia, CSIR Bulletin No. 53, Melbourne, 1931. Back
Francis Ratcliffe,Flying Fox and Drifting Sand, pp. 15-16. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family (from Cairns), 4 July 1929, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family (eastward bound on the Eidsvold Line), 23 April 1930, RP, NL.MS 2493.Back
This set the pattern for future studies. See L. Gillbank, ‘The Life Sciences: Collections to Conservation’, in Roy MacLeod (ed.), The Commonwealth of Science, pp. 99-129, at p. 115. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family, 23 April 1930, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family (Brisbane-bound from Rockhampton), 11 September 1930, RP, NL.MS 2493.Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family (from Jericho & Edwinston), 20 & 21 September 1930, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family (from Rockhampton), 30 August 1930, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family (from Brisbane), 7 May 1930, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to Family, 20 & 21 September 1930, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Memo from A.C.D. Rivett to Sir George Julius and Professor A.E.V. Richardson, 11 December 1934, CSIR Head Office correspondence files (CSIR), Archive Series A9778/1 (hereafter NA.A9778/1), National Archives of Australia.Back
Professor Richardson to David Rivett, 15 December 1934; Circular, David Rivett to members of the Standing Committee on Agriculture, 2 February 1935, CSIR, NA.A9778/1.Back
G. Lightfoot to Professor Richardson, 2 May 1935, CSIR, NA.A9778/1. Back
Professor Richardson to G. Lightfoot, 17 May 1935, CSIR, NA.A9778/1. Back
Quoted in Francis Ratcliffe, Flying Fox and Drifting Sand, p. 188. Back
See David W. Carnegie, Spinifex and Sand: A Narrative of Five Years’ Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia, C. Arthur Pearson, London, 1898, p. ix (for quote); J.W. Gregory, The Dead Heart of Australia: A Journey Around Lake Eyre in the Summer of 1901-1902, with some account of the Lake Eyre basin and the flowing wells of central Australia , John Murray, London, 1906.Back
C.E.W. Bean, On the Wool Track, Sirius Books, Sydney, 1963 (first ed. 1910), pp. 47-52.Back
Cecil T. Madigan,Crossing the Dead Heart, Georgian House, Melbourne, 1946; T. Griffiths,Hunters and Collectors: The Antiquarian Imagination in Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, p. 179. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to David Rivett, 19 August 1935, CSIR, NA.A9778/1. Back
He visited during the retreat from the post-war wheat surge, which repeated the first desertion of arid South Australia in the 1880s. See D.W. Meinig, On the Margins of the Good Earth: The South Australian Wheat Frontier , Rand McNally, Chicago, 1962; Michael Williams, The Making of the South Australian Landscape: A Study in the Historical Geography of Australia, Academic Press, London, 1974. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to David Rivett, 27 September 1935, CSIR, NA.A9778/1. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to David Rivett, 27 September 1935; David Rivett to Francis Ratcliffe, 18 October 1935, CSIR, NA.A9778/1. Back
See J.M. Powell,Protracted Reconciliation. Back
Francis Ratcliffe, Report of visit to West and South-West Queensland, May-August, 1936, typescript, p. 30, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Francis Ratcliffe,Flying Fox and Drifting Sand, p. 205. Back
Francis Ratcliffe to David Rivett, 11 November 1935, RP, NL.MS 2493. Back
Francis Ratcliffe,Flying Fox and Drifting Sand, p. 260. Back
Francis Ratcliffe,Flying Fox and Drifting Sand, p. 278. Back
Francis Ratcliffe,Some Difficult Problems in Soil Management, no. 2: soil erosion, broadcast talk on ABC, February 1937, typescript, CSIR, NA.A9778/1. Back
Letter, R.W.A. Warren (W.A.) to Adelaide Advertiser, 25 February 1939. Some of his colleagues too took the line that the rabbits were the real problem. See J. Mules, field officer, CSIR, ‘Major problem of pastoral areas: … the effect rabbits have had …’, Chronicle Stud Supplement, 26 August 1937. Back
See, for example,’Man-made deserts’, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 January 1936; The Land: Farm & Station Annual, 14 July 1937; ‘The erosion problem in Australia’, The Age, 18 August 1937; Adelaide Advertiser, 26 November 1937. Back
Francis Ratcliffe, Speech for erosion meeting, typescript, 29 July 1937; J. Parker, General Secretary, ANA, to Prime Minister Lyons, 4 August 1937, CSIR, NA.A9778/1. On the reservation of land use controls to the states, see Soil erosion, typescript, July 1936, Prime Minister’s Department, correspondence files, NA.A461/7. Back
See Frank Fenner and Francis Ratcliffe, Myxomatosis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1965; Eric Rolls,‘The Modern Scientists’, in They All Ran Wild: The Animals and Plants that Plague Australia, revised edition, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1984, pp. 223-265. Back
Thomas Dunlap,’Ecology and Environmentalism in the Anglo Settler Colonies’, in Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin (eds), Ecology and Empire , pp. 76-86, at p. 79. Back
See Drew Hutton and Libby Connors, A History of the Australian Environment Movement, pp. 107-108. Back
(the email you send to [email protected] will be read by the Eras editorial committee and published on the “Discussion” page) | <urn:uuid:160d6463-6718-4e90-9de7-40fd6e134366> | {
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The story of Humboldt County begins with a settlement of progressive dissenters and New England conservatives in north central Iowa. It is the tale of land-starved Scandinavian and Northern European immigrants who traveled to the area seeking rich soil for their farms. Early settlement in the county began in 1854, and Dakota City became the county seat. In 1863, the Reverend Stephen H. Taft brought a colony of his followers to form Springvale, now the city of Humboldt. After the coming of the railroad in 1879, the county prospered from the sale of agricultural products and equipment. Today, new industries are attracted to Humboldt County’s skilled labor force, work ethic, and high quality of life. The combination of high-tech school facilities and a wide range of recreational opportunities attracts thousands of people every year.
Author Bio: Pat Baker, a 50-year resident of Humboldt, is a researcher and archivist at the Humboldt County Historical Museum. She began collecting photographs for the celebration of the city of Humboldt’s sesquicentennial in 2013. Martha Schmidt is a retired elementary teacher and former president of Humboldt County’s Historical Association and Genealogical Society. She researches Humboldt County families and is a wealth of knowledge on Humboldt history.
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Last fall, the U.S. Supreme Court heard Fisher v. Texas, a case concerning the affirmative action policy at the University of Texas. The decision that the Court hands down later this term could shape affirmative action policy and jurisprudence for decades to come. At least two of the Justices call themselves originalists, saying that the Constitution should be interpreted in light of its original understanding. But what does originalism have to say about affirmative action? In this study, I argue that contrary to some expectations, both the original intent and original meaning inherent in the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause support reading it to allow states to implement affirmative action policies. Although the Clause is often assumed to mandate colorblindness in the law, the passage of laws affirmatively benefiting African Americans as a racial group by the same Congresses that passed the Reconstruction Amendments indicates that the framers of those amendments did not consider affirmative action to violate equal protection of the law. Furthermore, a unitary reading of the Reconstruction Amendments supports understanding the Equal Protection Clause to prohibit not simply race-conscious laws, but laws that connote stigma or inferiority upon a racial group. Because affirmative action does not imply the inferiority of whites even though it benefits African Americans, it does not violate the 14th Amendment. | <urn:uuid:03de2692-8b87-4496-923e-2daaebb547a9> | {
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are at greater risk of dehydration
than adults due to their lower body weight
and smaller reserve of body fluids
. Equally, whilst adults
often have easy access
to a supply of water
, children tend to rely
on their caregivers
to provide drinks and often don't recognise
the early stages of thirst
. Research s
uggests that just a one to two per cent
body weight loss can lead to significant reduction
s in concentration and mental performanc
e. As a child's body
is around 60 per cent water
, it is important to keep them topped up with fluid
during the day.
The effect of dehydration
on mental function is not very well known
about in children. Recent research
showed that children offered extra water
reported less thirst
and performed better
when visual attention tasks
were carried out. This suggests that children's mental performance
can be improved
when they drink more water.
There is an important message
for schools since it is often difficult
for children to access water
throughout the day. Teachers
may need to be convinced about the positive role
that adequate hydration
plays in maintaining normal attention span
and performance in schoolchildren.
Regular consumption of sugar sweetened beverages
, including fruit juice drinks, has been linked to excess weight
gain and obesity in children. The School Food Trust
aims to encourage healthy hydration habits
in children. They recommend
that schools serve only plain, natural drinks
such as water, milk and pure fruit/vegetable juices
In summary, water
is one of the most natural
, healthy beverages that children can drink. Encouraging children
to quench their thirst
before offering other types of beverages will help children to develop a taste
for water. This is the first step
towards developing lifelong healthy preferences
. Choosing to offer water
instead of calorie-laden soft drinks
can also help children to maintain a healthy body weight
as they grow, as well as preventing dental decay
and erosion. It is important that parents
make sure that young children are offered sufficient amounts
of water to maintain optimal hydration
. Parents of schoolchildren
should encourage them to make use of any water supplied at school
in order to support their children's mental performance
during the day.Top tips:
- Children should aim to hydrate healthily with plain, natural drinks that are unsweetened and free from additives.
- Limit empty calories by putting a bottle of water in lunchboxes instead of a sugary drink.
- Parents and other caregivers should offer younger children drinks on a regular basis and actively encourage consumption.
- Children should aim to have six to eight drinks per day which should ideally be water, milk or fruit/vegetable juices.
- Children taking part in sports need to replenish the lost fluids by drinking more water. | <urn:uuid:4213e1dd-a9b6-46e4-bf0c-fd980c33dab5> | {
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- Historic Sites
TR's Wild Side
As a Rough Rider in the Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt’s attention to nature and love of animals were much in evidence, characteristics that would later help form his strong conservationist platform as president
Fall 2009 | Volume 59, Issue 3
Another steadfast comrade from the wild was a New Mexican golden eagle nicknamed “Teddy” in Colonel Roosevelt’s honor. Roosevelt loved to watch these raptors swooping down to pluck a snake or other prey, and he even learned the art of falconry, wearing leather gloves and calling his namesake back to camp after it had gone hunting. “The eagle was let loose and not only walked at will up and down the company streets, but also at times flew wherever he wished,” Roosevelt recalled.
Josephine and Teddy had to be left behind in Tampa, but a “jolly dog” named Cuba and owned by Cpl. Cade C. Jackson of Troop A from Flagstaff, Arizona, did accompany the Rough Riders. Having dirty gray, poodle-like fur and the personality of a Yorkie, the little dog could be easily scooped up with the swipe of a hand. (One story, in fact, claims that Jackson had stolen Cuba just so from a railcar.) Frisky as a dog could be, Cuba accompanied the regiment “through all the vicissitudes of the campaign.” Aboard the Yucatan, Roosevelt asked a Pawnee friend to draw Cuba—who ran “everywhere round the ship, and now and then howls when the band plays”—for his daughter Ethel. Perhaps because Roosevelt was so comfortable with the trio of animals—knowing how to feed the eagle mice and to scratch Josephine behind the ears—the mascots added a compelling dimension to the press coverage of the Rough Riders. But even if TR did use the mascots to play to the cameras, they were part and parcel of his lifelong need to be associated with animals.
When the Yucatan finally set sail on June 13, Roosevelt was nearly giddy with joy at escaping Tampa. As the 49 vessels in the convoy steamed south in three columns, he noted that the Florida Keys area was “a sapphire sea, wind-rippled, under an almost cloudless sky” When he first caught sight of the shoreline of Santiago Bay, waves beating in diagonals, he wrote to his sister Corinne that “All day we have steamed close to the Cuban Coast, high barren looking mountains rising abruptly from the shore, and at a distance looking much like those of Montana. We are well within the tropics, and at night the Southern Cross shows low above the Horizon; it seems strange to see it in the same sky with the Dipper.”
At both San Antonio and Tampa Bay, his two horses Rain-in-the-Face and Texas practically never left his side. With Vitagraph motion picture technicians filming the Rough Riders wading ashore, a trooper was ordered to bring his steeds safely onto the beach. Alas, a huge wave broke over Rain-in-the-Face. Unable to burst free from his harness, he inhaled seawater and drowned. For the only time during the war Roosevelt went berserk, “snorting like a bull,” as Albert Smith of Vitagraph recalled, “split[ting] the air with one blasphemy after another.” As the other horses were brought ashore, Roosevelt kept shouting “Stop that god-damned animal torture!” every time saltwater got in a mare’s face.
On June 23 the Rough Riders debarked at the fishing village of Siboney about seven miles west of Daiquiri, behind Gen. Henry Ware Lawton’s 2nd Division and Gen. William Shafter’s 5th Corps. The soldiers took ashore blanket rolls, pup tents, mess kits, and weaponry, but no one thought to give them any insect repellent. There was no wind, and they felt on fire. The tangled jungles and chaparral of Cuba, particularly in early summer, were breeding grounds for flies that now swarmed the camps. Cuba also boasted 100 varieties of ants, including strange stinging ones that seemed to come from a different world. Unafraid of the soldiers, little crouching chameleons with coffin-shaped heads changed color from bright green to dark brown, depending on the foliage they rested on. “Here there are lots of funny little lizards that run about in the dusty roads very fast,” Roosevelt wrote to his daughter Ethel, “and then stand still with their heads up.”
Roosevelt’s letters crackle with the kind of martial detail also found in Stephen Crane’s 1895 Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage. Yet they’re also crowded with natural history, with observations about the “jungle-lined banks,” “great open woods of palms,” “mango trees,” “vultures wheeling overhead by hundreds,” and even a whole command “so weakened and shattered as to be ripe for dying like rotten sheep.” There was a strange confluence in Cuba between Roosevelt and the genius loci, as he constantly sought to conjure up nature as a way to increase his personal power.
Both in Roosevelt’s correspondence and his war memoir, the land crab is everywhere, its predatory omnipresence almost the central metaphor of his Cuban campaign. Carcinologists had noted that the local species, Gecarcinus lateralis, commonly known as the blackback, Bermuda, or red land crab, leaves the tropical forests each spring to mate in the sea. It made for an eerie spectacle all along Cuba’s northern coast as these misshapen creatures, many with only one giant claw, crawled out of the forests across roads and beaches to reach the water. Swollen with eggs, the female red land crabs nevertheless made their journey to incubate in the Caribbean Sea, traveling five to six miles a day over every obstacle imaginable. Roosevelt noted that they avoided the sun’s glare, often struggling to shade just like wounded soldiers. While basically land creatures, these burrowing red crabs—their abalone-like shells thick with gaudy dark rainbow swirls—still had gills, so they needed to stay cool and moist. “The woods are full of land crabs, some of which are almost as big as rabbits,” Roosevelt wrote to Corinne. “When things grew quiet they slowly gathered in gruesome rings around the fallen.” | <urn:uuid:8f15d900-b5ae-447f-a0b9-65badacf8d67> | {
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Zircon sand processing method varies with zircon deposit conditions, the introduction of common zircon sand processing as below.
What is Zircon Sand?
Zirconium sand, also known as zircon sand, is a mineral composed mainly of zirconium silicate. Pure zircon sands are colorless transparent crystals, which are often dyed yellow, orange, red and brown due to different origins and impurities. The crystalline structure belongs to the tetragonal crystalline system. The crystalline structure is tetragonal cone-columnar with a specific gravity of 4.6-4.71. The refractive index is 7~8, and the refractive index is between 1.3 and 2.0. The melting point fluctuates at 2190~2420 C with the impurity.
Zircon is a mineral consisting mainly of zirconium, silicon and oxygen crystallized from magma during igneous rock formation. Zircon is also found in dikes and metamorphic rocks. It is a tetragonal system and is usually well-developed pyramidal small tetragonal cylinder and irregular granular. Crispy and factoid. It is a high-quality refractory material. Most of them coexist with ilmenite, rutile, monazite and yttrium phosphate rock in seashore sand and are obtained by water separation, electric separation and magnetic separation.
Zircon sand distribution in the world
The regional distribution of zirconium reserves is highly concentrated, and the zirconium reserves are mainly distributed in Australia, South Africa and other countries, and the distribution is highly concentrated. From the perspective of regional distribution of zirconium resources, the world zirconium reserves are mainly in the hands of Australia, South Africa, Ukraine, India and Brazil. Five countries occupy 86%of the world’s zirconium resources, and the resource monopoly is very obvious. According to the US Geological Survey, China’s zirconium ore reserves are only 500 thousand tons, accounting for less than 1%of the world’s Zirconium resources. Output growth is moving steadily, and supply structure is changing.
Zircon Sand Applications
Zircon sand is extremely resistant to high temperature with a melting point of 2750 degrees Celsius. And acid corrosion resistance.80%of the world is directly used in casting industry, ceramics, glass industry and refractories. A small amount is used in ferroalloys, pharmaceuticals, paints, tanning, abrasives, chemical and nuclear industries. A very small amount of used for smelting zirconium.
High-quality zircon and other adhesives together have good adhesion and are used in the foundry industry. Zircon sand is also used as a brick for glass kilns. Zircon sand and zircon powder are mixed with other refractory materials for other uses.
Zirconium in metallic form is mainly used in the chemical and nuclear reactor industries, as well as in other industries requiring corrosion resistance, high-temperature resistance, special fusion properties or the absorption of special neutrons. In the United States, about 8%of the total consumption of zirconium is used in these industries, and the only meaningful application of hafnium metal is in Naval Nuclear reactors. | <urn:uuid:15b1f953-15f4-4aa2-b723-dcc2e7575093> | {
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Cardiomyopathy & Heart Failure
Heart Failure regularly specified as Chronic Heart Failure, happens when the heart is unfit to pump appropriately to keep up blood stream to address the body's issues. Common causes of heart failure include coronary artery disease including a previous myocardial infarction (heart attack), high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation, valvular heart disease, excess alcohol use, infection, and cardiomyopathy of an unknown cause. Two principle types of heart failures are there, one is heart failure because of left ventricular dysfunction and another one is heart failure with normal ejection fraction depending on if the ability of the left ventricle to contract is influenced, or the heart's ability to relax. The severity of disease is usually graded by the degree of problems with exercise. Heart failure is not the same as cardiac arrest or myocardial infarction. Other diseases that may have symptoms like heart failure include obesity, kidney failure, liver problems, anemia and thyroid disease. | <urn:uuid:ee542aea-737c-4fa8-b2ad-903141e2de97> | {
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Treaty of Fort Industry (1805)
The Treaty of Fort Industry was signed on July 4, 1805. In this treaty, representatives of the Wyandot (Huron), Ottawa, Objibwe (Chippewa), Munsee, Lenape (Delaware), Potawatomi, and Shawnee relinquished one-half million acres of land south of Lake Erie and west of the Cuyahoga River in northeastern Ohio. This land was part of the Connecticut Western Reserve.
The United States government agreed to make payments of one thousand dollars each year to the Wyandot, Munsee, Lenape, and Shawnee nations. The Ottawa, Objibwe (Chippewa), and Potawatomi groups then living along the Huron River received a payment of four thousand dollars and six yearly payments of two thousand dollars. These American Indian groups still -- at least by decree of the treaty -- kept the right to hunt and fish on the land.
Tarhe, Blue Jacket, and Black Hoof were among the signers of the Treaty of Fort Industry.
- Edmunds, R. David. The Potawatomis: Keepers of the Fire. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978.
- Hurt, R. Douglas. The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996.
- Tooker, Elisabeth. An Ethnography of the Huron Indians, 1615-1649. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1991.
- Vogel, John J. Indians of Ohio and Wyandot County. New York, NY: Vantage Press, 1975. | <urn:uuid:63a603e1-898c-475c-9464-1dfe88e3381f> | {
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Research links authoritarian parenting with kids who a retrospective study linking parenting styles and self-esteem to perceived parenting styles. Parenting styles and its effects on adolescents’ self-esteem higher self –esteem than those who perceived maternal and paternal parenting styles. Perceptions of parents questionnaire: evidence for a measure of parenting styles1 maternal responsiveness was also perceived to be greater than paternal responsive. Key words: middle school students’ perceived parenting style, self esteem income, maternal employment status and paternal employment status were. Abstract the authors compared the associations among perceived maternal socialization goals (self-development, filial piety, and collectivism), perceived maternal parenting styles. Retrospective theses and dissertations 2004 relationships among socio-economic status, parenting, academic achievement, and self-esteem in early and middle adolescence: a longitudinal. This study investigated longitudinal associations between perceived maternal self-esteem ) participants (n = parenting is a dimension of general parenting.
The impact of authoritative, authoritarian, and western cultures view authoritative parenting as ben-eficial to self-esteem maternal parenting styles were. We examined how perceived parenting style self-esteem, and general deviance (2008) relations of perceived maternal parenting style. Adolescent self-esteem: is there a correlation with maternal self-esteem authoritative parenting styles have been linked to high self-esteem in children. Self-esteem and perceived parenting styles individual with high self-esteem demonstrates self-respect and feelings of worth, whereas an individual with low.
J child fam stud (2007) 16:39–47 doi 101007/s10826-006-9066-5 original paper maternal and paternal parenting styles in adolescents: associations with self-esteem, depression. Parenting styles and its effect on self studied the link between self-esteem and parenting styles at study the influence of perceived parental support. Ideation in adolescents include depression,poor self-esteem relation to several measures of perceived parenting maternal and paternal parenting styles.
Paternal and maternal parenting styles psychology essay to determine relationships between paternal and maternal parenting styles and self-esteem or self. Differences in perceived parenting style between mothers and fathers: implications found an effect of paternal authoritative parenting style on self-esteem and. Self-esteem’s relations to empathy and parenting of the parenting variables: maternal care (r perceived parental rearing style, self-esteem and. Parenting styles and self-efficacy of adolescents: between parenting styles and self-esteem parenting styles and self-efficacy of.
Discussion this study was performed to determine the adolescents’ self-esteem and perceived maternal parenting styles and its dimensions and also the relationship. A comparison between parenting style, self esteem and scholar the relationship of parenting styles and self esteem with representations of maternal and. Maternal and paternal parenting styles in adolescents: associations with self-esteem, depression and life-satisfaction.
Self-esteem and body dissatisfaction in young children: associations with weight and perceived parenting style with child self-esteem, but parenting was not. Background: self-esteem is one of the basic needs for all individuals especially in adolescencethe aim of this study was to determine associations between adolescents’ self-esteem and. Perceived parental behavior, self-esteem and happiness(social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology) in this study of the effect of parenting styles and personality on adolescents, it was. Perceptions of maternal autonomy mediated self-esteem and parenting style: a model of parenting styles, self-regulation, perceived. Self-esteem and suicidal ideation as co-relates of perceived authoritarian and authoritative parenting styles in young adults by click to edit master subtitle style. | <urn:uuid:9b001fda-3475-4d6c-a310-875325b92b58> | {
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From cells to society, discovering explanations for thought and behavior from different angles, with diverse lenses.
Psychology concerns the study of thoughts, feelings, and behavior, which covers a wide-range of phenomena in humans and other species. As an academic discipline, it has strong traditions, formal curricula, and career pathways rooted in theory, empirical research using scientific methodology, and systematic applications of psychological knowledge to understand the human experience, including oneself and one's interactions with others. These characteristics help to differentiate psychology from other fields of study. At Occidental, students acquire the knowledge and skills needed to sustain their exploration of psychology during and beyond college. | <urn:uuid:f8c522be-8d61-4233-a115-b38da5c07ecf> | {
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| Christ died so we could write articles on
“”'Dad, what religion are we?' — 'You know... the one with all the well-meaning rules that don't work out in real life... Christianity!'
|—Bart and Homer Simpson|
Christianity is a highly successful monotheistic religion, that grew out of the Jewish religion as it was being practiced between 200BCE-100CE. The primary distinction between Christianity and Judaism is the belief that Jesus is the Messiah and Son of God, and that he died and was risen as a final sacrifice for human's sin. Generally, under the "New Covenant," anyone who believes in the Son of God can dwell at God's side in Heaven in the eternal afterlife.
Christianity is the largest of the Abrahamic religions by number of adherents. Though it is divided into many denominations and sects, it has three major branches: Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism. Of course, the variety of beliefs between the branches and within the various denomination is huge. Primary disagreements include: the Nature of God, the role of the church authority, the validity of various texts, and "access" to God himself.
Origins and early history
“”For God so loved the world that he gave his Only-Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.
Christianity was a continuation of centuries of Jewish theology, fused with aspects of Zoroastrian theology, influenced by Hellenistic philosophy, and peppered with some gentle ties to generic Mediterranean dying and rising gods. Most lay Christians are unaware of these connections, and even those who know of them, often intentionally downplay those connections or outright deny them.
The earliest forms of the religion (or cult, in its technical sense) of Jesus appear to focus on Jesus as teacher and prophet, with messianic aspects only hinted at, depending on the church. Paul, a leader of one of these distinct churches that would go on to become the dominant Church, described his and other "Christianities" in his New Testament epistles (ca. 52 to 58 CE). Other churches of note, which would go on to produce their own writings about Jesus, included the Church of Mary, the Church of Peter, the Church of Simon, and even the Church of Judas.
The Gospel of Mark (the first of the synoptic gospels, written in the latter half of the first century) provides some details of Jesus' ministry. The Gospel itself was likely based on oral tradition, and it offers scholars a clue about Jesus actual views and teachings, vs. what would be taught as "Christian" by Paul and the later "Christianity." A careful reading of Mark suggests that those early churches were as much political movements as they were religious, were actively challenging the authority of the Priesthood(s), and contained a strong sense of the individual's right to access God without priestly intercession.
The two other synoptic gospel accounts, Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John begin to show the tears in the fabric as the Churches fight over the message and meaning of Jesus. Was Jesus a friend to the Jews and an enemy of the Romans, or the other way around? Was Jesus mostly human, his miracles few? Or was he godly, largely a magician, performing tricks at every turn?
Christian authors produced many writings during the first few centuries CE. A large selection of them come from a schism of Christianity that perhaps more closely reflects Jesus' views, the Gnostics. While many of their works are extant, Gnosticism in its various forms did not survive the political Canonization of the early Christian Empire. Many of these works blended elements of Greek philosophy (in particular, neo-Platonism) with Christianity, elements which contributed greatly to later disputes over piddling fine points in theology that no one else could even understand.
Two centuries after the death of Jesus, the political powers shifted, and a single dominant religion began to emerge, crushing all divergent philosophies, theologies, and texts out of existence, and creating the first "official" orthodoxy. The First Council of Nicaea, convened by order of the Roman emperor Constantine I in 325 CE, started the path to Paul's non-gnostic Christianity becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 CE.
Christianity prior of 4th century was religion of the people, especially the poor. However, since 380 AD, Christianity became a giant business, and the Church at large alienated itself from Jesus' ascetic life.
Taken as a whole, the only single requirement to be a Christian is the belief that Jesus is the Messiah, and that he "died and was risen for our sins."
The Roman Catholic Church, and by extension the Protestant Churches, share many commonalities that begin with what was written in the Apostle's Creed, 390 C.E.
“”was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried: he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from there he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
It is somewhat worth noting that each line in the Apostles' Creed marks a belief that was opposed or contested by a lesser Church at the time. Gnostics, for example, did not believe Jesus was flesh, therefore he was not born and did not die.
Each specific branch of Christianity, and each denomination within those branches, have other specific views about:
Theological issues
- The nature of God - Is God one or three? Is God male, or is it also female, or all, or none?
- The nature of Christ - Is Jesus loving? Is he a vengeful Redeemer?
- The nature of saints - Is a saint worthy of veneration? Can saints grant prayers? Do saints even exist?
- The nature of Mary (the mother of Jesus) - Can she heal people? Should she be worshiped? Was she a virgin all her life?
- The nature of Sin - Is sin a representation of mere human failings? Is sin a true root of evil in all humans? Is personal sin (the things you yourself do) distinct from Original Sin, which every human shares regardless of their acts and deeds?
- The nature of the Afterlife - Do the souls of believers go directly to heaven, or do they have to make a stopover in Purgatory if their lives weren't completely sinless? Or are they "asleep" until the return of Jesus?
- Intercession - Can anyone speak with God, or do they require a go-between ordained by the Church?
- Sacraments - What are they? Do they even exist? Are they necessary?
Church organizational issues
- Priests - What is their role or should there even be priests?
- Pope - Is there one head of the Church? Does he possess the power of infallibility, and how is he selected?
- Liturgical language - What languages can or should be used?
- What is the role of women in the Church?
- What about gays, abortion, and other "social" issues?
- What Bible should we use?
- Is the Bible to be understood as literal truth?
Every time an important or trivial question could not be resolved, the Church splintered, leading to the host of denominations and sects that exist today.
At various times, Gnostics, Cathars, Protestants, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Quakers, Mormons, Universalists, and many other groups have been called heretical or non-Christian by other Christian groups. Historically, heresy was, in most Churches, considered an act equivalent to treason, and in situations where a Church had temporal power, disputes over doctrine led to massive persecution, torture, and murder. Not many people are bothered about heretics these days, though, and no one who is has any power; not yet, at least.
Theologians have long grappled with the idea of "What actually makes a Christian". Writer C.S. Lewis promulgated a definition known as "Mere Christianity," and some evangelical groups use the Four Spiritual Laws as a basic working definition for proselytization purposes.
Probably the most fundamental concept of Christianity is that the inherent imperfection of humanity (caused by original sin according to some traditions) requires salvation, given by the grace of God, in order for humanity to reside in the presence of God after death.
Through Jesus
Prior to Christianity's take on the issue, salvation was in part accomplished by sacrificing animals to atone for a person's sins. According to Christian doctrine , Jesus was the final sacrifice. His death brought about the end of the necessity to make continual sacrifices and obey the thousands of laws that the Jews had.
Deeds or Faith?
So if Jesus' death alone was not enough to rid the world, or more importantly, individuals, of sin, and allow one to reside with God, how exactly should one obtain one's salvation? As with every other theological doctrine, there are various schools of thought, but they mostly come down to faith and deeds, or some combination of those. Paul maintained that salvation is achieved mostly by faith, but he does include the need to lead a life free of serious sins (although he never stated that those were the only requirements for salvation), and the author of the letter of James held that "faith without works is dead" and that one also needed to show their faith by performing "good works." Originally, this included observing Jewish ceremonial rituals, such as circumcision and keeping kosher , but later, in the process of reconciling Paul's and James's views, when the ceremonial law was declared to be "deadly," this came to encompass such actions as penitential prayers and charitable giving acts of charity. However, it is universally agreed that Jesus' sacrifice was an atonement for the sins of the human race.
Modern views on exactly what people need to do to be saved include:
- Faith and works: The first view is that salvation lies in both faith and works. This means that one needs to believe in the sacrifice of Jesus and perform acts of penitence to be absolved of one's sins. Giving money to the Church, acts of charity to the needy, and so called "good deeds" are also – although not equally – important. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox hold this position formally. Many Protestant Churches follow this view, although it is not generally the official doctrine.
- Sola fide: The doctrine of sola fide ("by faith alone") states that good works are not strictly necessary for salvation, even though they are important for personal growth and being a "good Christian." However, except for a fringe minority of antinomians, Protestants do not believe that there is no obligation to live a moral and charitable life; only that one does not need to perform works to be absolved of one's sins. Anglicans and Lutherans maintain that baptism into the Church is required for salvation, while others take a more decentralized view and hold that mere belief is sufficient; this is a process known as "becoming saved" or "being born again."
- Unconditional election: This is a central tenet of Calvinism. In Calvinism, people have no free will; God is in complete control of the universe, and therefore God is the one who decides whether they have faith or not. Consequently, God must choose who is saved and who is not; those who are saved are known as the "elect," and have been elected unconditionally, with no regard to the beliefs or actions of each individual. Today, hyper-Calvinism, on which Dominionism is based, takes this idea to its logical extreme.
- Universalism: This holds that Jesus' sacrifice was sufficient for all humanity's sins regardless of personal acceptance.
The Trinity
Most Christians, and all orthodox Christians, subscribe to a concept known as the Holy Trinity, where the single god exists in three equal but distinct natures simultaneously — God the Father, God the Son (i.e. Jesus), and the Holy Spirit. The exact interaction and nature of the three depends on the theology of one's denomination; Martin Luther described it as one person filling three different roles, God the Father creating the universe, God the Son redeeming the people, and God the Holy Spirit doing the grunt-work of saving people afterwards. A more modern representation is that "God" is one and is the Father, who is not the Son, who is not the Holy Spirit, but all are God.
Trinitarianism is the majority and orthodox viewpoint within modern Christianity, but is not the only viewpoint. In particular, Unitarians traditionally recognize only a single person of God (the Unitarians today are part of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, which also welcomes polytheists and atheists), while Oneness Pentecostals consider Jesus alone to be God. In addition, some ancient Christian sects rejected God the Father and focused on Jesus in a manner similar to Oneness Pentecostals. Outside Christianity, the concept of a Trinity is generally considered blasphemous or even polytheistic, or nonsensical at best.
The Bible
- For more information on different denominational approaches to Biblical canon, see the Bible article.
Another critical difference between denominations is the way they interpret the Bible, who they think wrote it, and even the actual wording of the Bible. On one extreme, most Christian fundamentalists espouse a position of Biblical inerrancy, where everything stated in the Bible is to be taken literally; at another extreme is the "looseleaf Bible" approach of extreme liberal denominations such as the Unitarian Universalists, which allows the worshiper to consider anything as scripture that they find inspiring. The middle ground, adopted by mainline Protestantism as well as the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, is biblical infallibility: the belief that the Bible was written as a spiritual text, not a historical or scientific text, and therefore is inspired as regards its moral and spiritual teachings, but is not necessarily accurate in regard to secular records and research. The Catholics and Orthodox have more leeway in doing this, as they are not reliant on the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura (scripture alone) and can allow more of a role for the Church brass in interpreting the Bible.
All schisms great and small, the Lord God made them all
“”Christianity supplies a Hell for the people who disagree with you and a Heaven for your friends.
The earliest schisms happened even before the Christian church was established, with the personal animosity between James, Peter, and the other original disciples and Paul of Tarsus. The single most critical issue was Paul's belief that the religion should be brought to the Greeks, but this was by no means the end of the differences. Paul's theology was more regimented than what Jesus is likely to have taught and his theology was less political than Jesus'.
A second major fight looming at the time of the temple destruction, was the right to define the essence of the Christ figure. Jewish gnosticism had permeated the religious landscape for a few hundred years before the arrival of Christ. Strongly influenced by the Hellenistic world, Gnosticism posited a view of God (and with the arrival of Jesus on the scene, a view of Jesus) that was doctrinally incompatible with Paul's vision of Christianity. With the help of the Romans, the newly forming "Christian Church" under Paul, marginalized them, and targeted them for political destruction. Not much later, fights between groups such as the Arians, Marcionites, and Coptics led to the formation of the state church of the Roman Empire under Emperor Constantine (313 CE), of which the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church are historical continuations.
The Great Schism of 1054 saw the Eastern Orthodox Church split from the Roman Catholic Church, predominantly over views of the authority of the Pope, but of course there were many other theological and ecclesiastical reasons.
Martin Luther's rejection of papal primacy in doctrinal interpretation led to the Protestant Reformation in 1517 and even further schism as Protestant and Catholic authorities simply refused to try to settle their differences and began to accuse each other of not even being Christian at all.
The Protestant doctrine of the "church invisible" — that the "One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church" is not a physical, temporal assembly like the Roman Catholic Church but instead a spiritually united structure showing limited to no temporal unity — has been particularly encouraging to schisms. In the modern United States, both because it was built on dissenting forms of Protestantism from the ground up and because of a literal right to freedom of religion, the tendency towards schism is especially strong. Large numbers of churches (particularly nondenominational fundamentalist, Baptist, and individual Congregational churches) are essentially denominations unto themselves, and even members of mainline churches such as Catholicism and the Anglican Communion have rejected the authority of church hierarchy, generally over increased liberalism in the church's thinking. For example, the Northern Baptist vs. Southern Baptist schism in the United States was over slavery and other racial issues—the Northern Baptists were largely neutral or abolitionist in their thinking, while the Southern Baptists made heavy use of scripture condoning slavery to maintain their position that it was not only justified, but even required.
Members of mainline churches such as the Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican churches have occasionally talked about reconciliation or reunification. While full communion has not been achieved between Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant groups, most mainline Protestant groups have entered into full communion agreements with each other; for example, the Porvoo Communion uniting Protestant churches across Northern Europe, or agreements between the Episcopal, liberal Lutheran, and United Methodist churches in the United States. However, while formal reconciliation is a long way off, many ecumenical (i.e. cross-denominational) groups exist and function well at local level.
Fundamentalist Christianity
Fundamentalist Christianity is an almost uniquely American version of Christianity, though they have been all too happy to share it with the rest of the world, especially countries in Africa where they can use the poverty to their proselytizing advantage. RationalWiki on the whole, takes a very poor view of fundamentalists because they tend to push a Christianity that is incompatible with science, and also rather sexist, racist, and homophobic. Fundamentalism as a sect is generally accepted as an early 20th century phenomenon, but it didn't get the attention it deserved until the 1980's with the election of Ronald Reagan who highlighted his religious views within his position as elected official. This emboldened the fundamentalists to come out of the woodwork, trying to pass laws to counter the humanist acceptance of such things as abortion rights and homosexual rights. In the beginning of the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election virtually every Republican candidate for president was a Christian fundamentalist. Fundamentalist Christians tend to believe in the following:
- A literal, infallible Bible. (usually, the English "King James")
- A sense that morality is very "Black and White".
- Abortion is wrong.
- Homosexuality is wrong.
- Atheists are more evil than child rapists, murderers, dictators etc., who can easily be forgiven of their sins as long as they believe the Bible.
- Anyone who does not wholeheartedly believe in their interpretation of Christ will be tortured forever in Hell.
American fundamentalist Christians twist religion with other political and "patriotic" issues:
- America is a Christian Country
- The Founders were 'Good Christian Men'
- Elected officials should not just be proud of their religion, they should push religious based laws.
- The US is better than other countries because we are Christian, we keep in God's favor. Other more secular countries (like France) are seen as historical failures.
- Religious laws are good and proper. Judges should vote on their religion when looking at challenged laws, not on the secular rights.
Christian apologetics
Christian apologetics is the field of study concerned with presenting a "rational" basis for Christianity thereby defending Christianity against criticism. Prominent Christian apologists include Josh McDowell, C.S. Lewis, Lee Strobel, and (in his pre-Pope days, in his role as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) Pope Benedict XVI.
For example, with regard to the divinity of Jesus, it is often argued that "Jesus was either telling the truth, he was a liar, or he was a lunatic" ("Mad, Bad or God" for short) an argument called the "Lewis trilemma" after its most famous promoter, C.S. Lewis. Another, Pascal's Wager, is an attempt to trick God, and assumes the benefits of belief outweigh the negatives.
Such arguments have limited utility in converting people to Christianity. While Christian apologetics can be useful for making a would-be Christian feel as though he is not moving in an irrational direction, faith based on logical arguments is subject to attack with logical responses, e.g., by arguing that Jesus never even walked the Earth, or that a supernatural entity that cannot be observed also cannot affect our universe.
Apologists have also been accused of using the logical fallacy of assuming the conclusion, that is, assuming that their faith is in fact the truth and then trying to support it logically, a variant of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.
Relationship with God
Christianity sees God as a personal God who interacts with each person individually, in a way very reminiscent to being another human. Catholic priests and nuns literally marry Jesus, and some of the more extreme mystics, in particular St. John of the Cross and St. Theressa of Avila, write of their relationship with Jesus as that of a lover to his or her Bride, including moments of what can only be called sexual intimacy.
Most Protestants have a less sexual view of God, and talk of God or Jesus as "a friend," "a brother," or "a parent." But they still see the relationship as a direct one-on-one relationship, where God or Jesus helps you, personally. Of course, it is not uncommon for Jesus to do such nice things as "help me find my keys," "win our football game," and "Bless our bread," so much so that he doesn't have much time to cure AIDS, or help babies who are dying of disease or starvation.
Pastors within the various Protestant religions try to encourage this one-on-one relationship, and talk about the root or core of the Christian faith as far more this direct relationship than the dogma that surrounds the religion, which to them is far less important. Several pastors have gone so far as to claim that Christianity is not even a religion. The goal here is to get people deeply committed to their "relationship" with God while ignoring the man-made traditions that have plagued Christians for centuries. The idea is that closeness to God will show through positively in a person's life, and no religious acts are necessary to demonstrate true faith. Religious acts only distance followers from the God who loves them and turns nonbelievers against the faith.
The Crusades
- Main Article: The Crusades.
In the eleventh century, the Muslims, who had conquered the Holy Land, began persecutions of Christian pilgrims who were coming there. Concurrently, Muslims began launching assaults on the Eastern remnant of the Roman Empire (more commonly known as the Byzantine Empire), prompting the emperor to appeal to the West for help.
Thus began a series of ugly religious wars. Centuries later, they would be called 'crusades'.
The Pope drummed up an army by promising massive spiritual rewards to anyone who fought to reconquer Jerusalem. This was done in 1099 and 50,000 of the "heathens" (Muslims, Jews, and Christians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time) were murdered, but He still did not turn up (unless He was somewhere under the piles of corpses). Gaudefroi de Bouillon, the First Crusade leader, boasted that he rode his horse through the Holy Sepulchre knee deep in the blood of the unbelievers.
Modern Christians have argued that maybe the Crusaders were not the proper sort of Christians, although they obviously thought they were. It should be noted that so-called 'holy' wars, of any religion, were invariably conducted in pursuit of wealth, territory or glory (or as often as not, all three).
Interestingly, the Fourth Crusade started with the intention of reconquering the holy land but they later realized that they had no way to pay the Venetians their boat fares. To settle this issue, they simply decided to sack the Christian city of Constantinople, permanently crippling the already weak Byzantine remnant of the Roman Empire.
Christianity in Asia
Christianity holds a special place in East Asia, because of its continuous growth. Although originally seen as inimical to social values and traditional belief, Christianity is gradually gaining ground in East Asia as conversion continues, mostly as an after-effect of globalization, the perceived affirmation of Western values in the wake of the Cold War and Christianity's insistence on proselyzation by its devotees.
The Philippines and East Timor, being former colonies of Spain and Portugal respectively, are the only predominantly Christian (Catholic in particular) countries in Asia. Both are located in the Southeast region of the said continent. Christianity is also relatively popular in South Korea, but this may have to do with certain coincidences between ancient Korean folk religion and Christianity (namely, both worship a "Son of God").
See also
- Essay:Christianity and the 6th Commandment
- Pascal's Wager
- Revealed religion
- Syncretism In The World Religions: A discussion of how Christianity's defining features are in no way unique.
- ↑ "Church" in this context, simply means a small collection of people following a supposed disciple of Jesus. They were, by and large, informal bodies, known more by their location than the name of the person they followed. For convention and convenience, they are often referred to by the writings they would later produce.
- ↑ (c. 70 to 100 CE or later) (based in part on Mark)
- ↑ The passion stories found in each of the 4 Gospels show a shift away from the "enemy" of Jesus being the Romans, to the enemy being the Jews. For further information on this, see: JD Crossan, Who Killed Jesus,1996
- ↑ The Gospel of John is largely a gnostic gospel; Jesus is God, not human (or less human), and John emphasizes this by having him perform many miracles
- ↑ Eastern Orthodox, Coptics, Gnostics and other groups do not use the Apostle or Nicene creeds.
- ↑ It is important to keep in mind that the Jewish concept of sin is quite different from the Christian concept and that Jews do not share the concept of Original Sin.
- ↑ http://carm.org/christianity/christian-doctrine/why-did-jesus-have-die-our-sins
- ↑ http://www.gci.org/disc/07-whydie
- ↑ 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, Matthew 23:36, Mark 13:30-31
- ↑ Romans 3:28
- ↑ 1 Corinthians 6:9
- ↑ James 2:17
- ↑ One of the first detailed theological splits in the early "proto-Christian" community, was triggered by the argument as to what level the new Church would appeal to Gentiles. Paul was of a mind that the most important conversions were of the Greeks, and therefore Mosaic laws were unappealing. Peter, and by extension, James, disagreed; they felt that the new Christianity was, at its core, Jewish. Clearly, Paul's views won out
- ↑ Many "born again" believers simply undergo a brief profession of faith known as the "Sinner's Prayer," very similar to the Islamic shahadah; other Churches, such as the Roman Catholic Church, have more formal conversion processes.
- ↑ http://bookofconcord.org/lc-4-creed.php
- ↑ How obviously metaphorical writing is to be taken is sometimes a bit up in the air.
- ↑ The Church of the SubGenius uses the same rule.
- ↑ http://www.adherents.com/adh_rb.html
- ↑ Though there are no surviving records of what Jesus taught, nor are there records from the various non-Paulene churches, scholars have recreated their idea of what these churches likely believed by analysis of what was said about them, as well as analysis of the Q documentand the Gospel of Thomas
- ↑ Ecclesiastical reasons:Authority of the pope, which texts were canonical, celibacy of priests, right to divorce; Theological: Original sin vs., ancestralial sin, inherant faith of humans, and free will.
- ↑ Give or take. The date is, like most things, disputed by different Protestant churches
- ↑ See: Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum
- ↑ Many non-Christian students of religion feel that both arguments, whether they are or are not sound in their logic, are based on faulty premises; the Lewis trilemma assumes that Jesus said all that was attributed to him (and was not honestly mistaken to boot), and Pascal's Wager assumes that the choice of belief will automatically be the correct one; with many choices of a "correct" path within Christianity alone, many claiming to be mutually exclusive, this is something of a long shot.
- ↑ http://www.christinyou.net/pages/Xnotrel.html | <urn:uuid:460f3179-7231-491f-933d-10487fe73d1a> | {
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By Bernhard Debatin
Recently, the EPA confirmed that “a pair of environmental monitoring wells drilled deep into an aquifer in Pavillion, Wyo., contain high levels of cancer-causing compounds and at least one chemical commonly used in hydraulic fracturing.” Although the EPA Groundwater Investigation of Nov. 9, 2011, only provided the raw data without interpretation, one can conclude that “the chemical compounds the EPA detected are consistent with those produced from drilling processes, including one — a solvent called 2-Butoxyethanol (2-BE) — widely used in the process of hydraulic fracturing.” (ProPublica, NOv. 10, 2011).
Moreover, another decisive result of this investigation is that the methane found in the aquifers was “at near-saturation levels (up to 19 mg/L)” and has a “similar isotopic signature to production gas” (EPA Presentation). This defeats the industry’s claim that methane in the groundwater is merely a natural occurrence and not caused by fracking, since methane from shallower layers has a different chemical makeup.
The importance of this EPA investigation cannot be overestimated. It officially confirms, for the first time, what local citizens and critical voices have said for years: That fracking chemicals can and will seep into the groundwater and result in severe contamination of our water resources.
The question remains why and how exactly the contamination is happening. The industry claims it is impossible because fracking is done at such a deep level that it is impossible for contaminated water to travel to shallow aquifers. However, in his article “The truth about Fracking” (in the American Scientist, Nov. 11, Vol. 305, Issue 5, p. 80-85), author Chris Mooney states: “Faulty cementing is the leading suspect in possible sources of contamination, and by industry’s definition it is not part of fracking.” Which means the industry’s claim that fracking causes no contamination whatsoever is based on the arbitrary and in fact faulty definition that “fracking” is limited to the event some thousand feet below the ground, but does not include the process of pumping pressurized chemicals, water, and gas up and down the well.
There is, in fact, growing concern among scientists about the lack of reliability of cement casings. The above quoted article in the American Scientists calls cementing the “weak link” of fracking:
Cementing is the obvious “weak link,” according to Anthony Gorody, a hydrogeologist and consultant to gas companies who has been a defender of fracking. Other scientists emphatically agree. “If you do a poor job of installing the well casing, you potentially open a pathway for the stuff to flow out,” explains ecologist and water resource expert Robert B. Jackson of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. Although many regulations govern well cementing and although industry has strived to improve its practices, the problem may not be fully fixable. “A significant percentage of cement jobs will fail,” Ingraffea says. “It will always be that way. It just goes with the territory.”
Dr. Anthony Ingraffea holds the Dwight C. Baum Professorship of Engineering at Cornell University’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He got his doctorate in rock fracturing and directs the Cornell Fracture Group, which specializes in computational simulations fracturing. He contends that while cement failure has been a chronic and known problem, the industry is not willing to share any data about cement failures with regulatory agencies.
It is obvious that the integrity of the casing and piping of fracking wells is crucial. Imposing strict controls and regulatory oversight of this particular aspect of fracking should not even be an issue of debate. It should be a basic precondition that anybody, including the industry, subscribes to in the name of the safety and well-being of everybody.
Update, Dec. 14, 2011: While the overall problem with cement casing remains the leading suspect for most cases of undergroundwater contamination, the case of Pavillion, WY, is different: The EPA report clearly excludes cement failure (due to the lack of cement traces in the water samples) and concluded that the contamination came directly from the fracking area through vertical fissures and cracks into the aquifer (see e.g. p. 20, 34, and 38f. of the report). This, in itself is a frightening finding because the industry has continuously insisted that such occurrences are impossible.
———————————————-Note: Here, you can sign on to the Ohio Environmental Council’s letter to the Ohio General Assembly asking for a moratorium on fracking | <urn:uuid:62da4970-e192-430c-841c-5dc66f55e008> | {
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Last modified: Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Einstein's relativity survives neutrino test
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 15, 2008
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Physicists working to disprove "Lorentz invariance" -- Einstein's prediction that matter and massless particles will behave the same no matter how they're turned or how fast they go -- won't get that satisfaction from muon neutrinos, at least for the time being, says a consortium of scientists.
The test of Lorentz invariance, conducted by MINOS Experiment scientists and reported in the Oct. 10 issue of Physical Review Letters, started with a stream of muon neutrinos produced at Fermilab particle accelerator, near Chicago, and ended with a neutrino detector 750 meters away and 103 meters below ground. As the Earth does its daily rotation, the neutrino beam rotates too.
"If there's a field out there that can cause violations of Lorentz invariance, we should be able to see its effects as the beam rotates in space," said Indiana University Bloomington astrophysicist Stuart Mufson, a project leader. "But we did not. Einsteinian relativity lives to see another day."
Mufson is quick to point out that the Physical Review Letters report does not disprove the existence of a Lorentz-violating field. Despite the sophistication and power of MINOS's detector, "It may be that the field's effects are so exceedingly small that you'd need extraordinary tools to detect it," Mufson said.
Mufson is a member of the MINOS Experiment, an international consortium of physicists dedicated to studying the mysterious properties of neutrinos, particularly their wave-like oscillations. MINOS stands for Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search. MINOS scientists utilize the facilities at Fermilab to create a neutrino beam. The neutrinos are aimed at two detectors: one at Fermilab (the near detector) and another in the Soudan Mine in northern Minnesota (the far detector).
To produce the neutrinos, the MINOS scientists point a proton beam at a carbon target. The interaction causes a spray of pions (or pi mesons, a type of subatomic particle), some of which decay into muon neutrinos in the direction of the detector. Neutrinos travel at close to the speed of light, are unaffected by gravitational and magnetic fields, and because of their peculiar properties, can travel right through the crust of the Earth unaffected.
The notion of a Lorentz-violating field has become popular among theoretical physicists. Known physical rules do not do a very good job of explaining the cataclysmically chaotic moments immediately following the Big Bang, so some physicists are developing new theories to sort out the mess. The possibility that some of these new theories violate relativity was proposed by Mufson colleague Alan Kostelecky, distinguished professor of physics at IU Bloomington. Kostelecky provided some advice to MINOS scientists for the present report.
Kostelecky's "Standard-Model Extension" describes the most general possible Lorentz-violating fields that could arise in the universe's beginnings and also ties together Einstein's relativity rules and post-Einsteinian quantum mechanics.
One of the implications of Kostelecky's ideas is that the Lorentz-violating field could have been very strong during the mind-numbingly brief first moments of our universe. Now that the universe has expanded to considerable size, however, the strength of the Lorentz violating field may be severely reduced, making its existence hard to detect, if it is, indeed, actually there.
"Every experiment so far has not found violations of Lorentz invariance," Mufson said. "That doesn't mean we'll stop looking. We knew the MINOS Experiment presented a new way of seeking out violations, and in a difference place. We do things that are simple and look for something profound."
Mufson says major credit for the research is owed to Brian Rebel, an IU Bloomington Ph.D. graduate who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Fermilab, in Batavia, Ill. Other IU Bloomington contributors include Robert Armstrong, Chuck Bower, Masaki Ishitsuka, Mark Messier, Jim Musser, Jon Paley and Jon Urheim.
The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, the Science & Technology Facilities Council (U.K.), the State and University of Minnesota, the University of Athens (Greece), and A Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo and O Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (Brazil).
Fermilab (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) is run by the U.S. Department of Energy in conjunction with the Fermi Research Alliance.
To speak with Stuart Mufson, please contact David Bricker, University Communications, at 812-856-9035 or [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:a37ca96a-5cd2-4204-b867-4f2bb4529387> | {
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Prairies are one of the rarest ecosystems in our country. Ninety-seven percent of prairie land has been eliminated in Washington State and of the remaining three percent, less than half is currently in a protected status. Wolf Haven partners with The Center for Natural Lands Management, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, The Audubon Society, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Department of Army to restore the 36 acres of Mima Mound prairie found on our 82 acres back to its former condition.
Historical Prairie Burns
Throughout history, Native American tribes used burning techniques on prairies to encourage growth and productivity of flowering plants. Burning replenishes nutrients and ash that support growth of certain plants like the camas lily, whose root was harvested in large quantities and was a staple of the Native American diet. Without fire, woody plants reestablish themselves, and in time, shrubs and tree seedlings would become a young forest shading out native prairie plant species. Conifers like the Douglas Fir are considered an invasive species on the prairie.
Systematic Burning of Prairie
Planned controlled burns are regularly conducted on portions of our prairie by our conservation partners. Tuber, seed plants and medicinal plants all germinate after a fire, which promotes the growth of native plant species, controls invasive weeds and provides minerals to the soil via dead vegetation. In the spring the native species of blooms are especially abundant on the area burned the previous summer.
The Center for Natural Lands Management regularly donates and plants plugs of native prairie plants to Wolf Haven in order to advance the continued restoration of our mounded prairie to its natural state. Volunteers spend hours annually removing non-natives such as Scotch broom, locust trees and vinca.
Wolf Haven is also part of a regional program to collect seed and grow native plants from a variety of genetic stocks. The collection includes seeds from larkspur, early blue violets, goldenrod, western panicum grass, blue camas and lupine.
The prairie plant Golden paintbrush is listed as Endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Wolf Haven’s prairie is one of six other remnant native prairies in western Washington where seedlings of this extremely rare and beautiful native plant have been planted. | <urn:uuid:f506da50-61ba-4c97-a3d3-e3dac73ca914> | {
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2005 SCIENCE AND MATH COMPETITION
QUIZ CONTEST GUIDELINES, RULES AND REGULATIONS
The Quiz Bee is conducted with the hope of achieving the following:
ELIGIBILITY OF CONTESTANTS/ TEAM
- To promote excellence in science, math and information technology among the students.
- To serve as a venue for awareness in development in the field of science and technology.
QUIZ TOPICS AND QUESTION TYPES
- Each participating team shall be composed of a maximum of three members and one faculty coach.
- Only currently enrolled undergraduate secondary students are allowed to be team members. They must present their validated ID cards or registration forms upon registration.
- Each team must assign a member to be the Team Captain and only the Team Captain or the faculty coach may act as a spokesperson for the team during the contest proper.
MECHANICS OF CONTEST PROPER
- The following topics shall be the scope of the Quiz Bowl.
- Mathematics covering Algebra, Trigonometry, Geometry and Statistics
- Science covering Physics, Biology and General Chemistry
- Trivia Questions covering I.T., current events and general knowledge
- The following question types must be given:
Multiple Choice Type (MC), with a credit of 1 point, 2 points, 3 points, where the team must write the
- letter corresponding to the best answer to the question, unless otherwise stated.
- Identification Type (ID), with a credit of 2 points, 4 points, 6 points, where the team must write down the required answer to the question always in CAPITALIZED form, unless otherwise stated.
- Problem Type (PR), with a credit of 3 points, 6 points, 9 points, where the team must write down the answer to the question accurate up to two decimal places together with the appropriate unit, unless otherwise stated.
- In addition, each question shall be given a time limit for the teams to submit their answers.
- A total of 30 questions shall be given in the Quiz Bowl, divided into three rounds of 10 questions each, with two intermission points.
- An official quizmaster will read the Type, Credit Points, Time Limit, and will give the signal for the teams to click on the Question. The question shall be read twice. Timing will begin only after the second reading of the question.
- Teams must write their answer on provided sheets and must submit their answer before the end of the time limit. Otherwise, they shall be considered as having no answer to the question.
- The use of calculators shall be allowed only for problem questions. All calculators shall be prechecked by the organizers prior to use. Programmable calculators shall be allowed only if it is free of stored programs and library function menu.
- After the time limit, the answers of each team shall be projected on the screen and the correct answer shall be read by the quizmaster for the information of the teams and the audience. Each submitted answer should be checked by the board of judges. The board will declare the teams, which got the correct answer.
- Any protest or inquiry from the teams regarding the answer must be made prior to the reading of the next question; otherwise the Board of Judges will entertain no more protests or inquiries pertaining to the said question.
- The decision of the Board of Judges on any protest or inquiry shall be considered final and not subject to appeal.
- A round is completed after 10 questions are finished. A short intermission follows where teams may field in their substitutes.
- The official scorer shall announce a running total of team scores at the end of the first and second rounds.
- The Quiz Bowl organizers reserve the right to eject any participant or member of the audience who they believe is detrimental to the orderly conduct of the contest.
1. Cash prizes, Medals and Certificates of Achievements and Recognition will be awarded for the top three winning
2. Certificate of Participation will be given to all teams.
A registration fee of Php300 will be collected from each team. | <urn:uuid:7adfcff6-14d1-4011-946d-ac63e5c540f1> | {
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The first face transplant in Canada was performed in May, 2018, by two teams of surgeons, nurses and anaesthesiologists working simultaneously in separate operating rooms. One team removed the face from the donor. The other prepared the face of the recipient. The entire transplant took 30 hours, beginning to end. In addition to the complexity of a “vascularized composite allograft,” a transplant of tissue composed of skin as well as muscles and bones, a face donation must occur while the heart of the donor is still beating. Donors are brain dead but organs must continue to receive blood flow — to function — until they have been transferred. Here is a broad overview of how the Montreal team approached the challenge.
1. Expose major arteries in the neck, the carotid and internal jugular veins.
2. Isolate, tag and cut the nerves that control the muscles in the face.
3. Cut through the bony structures of the face using surgical saws.
4. Lift the face off the skull, leaving it attached by two arteries and three veins.
6. Fix plates onto the bones of the face.
7. Cut and clamp final arteries and veins, and detach the face entirely from the body.
8. Clean the face and transfer it to recipient’s room.
9. Two new surgeons begin procuring other organs, the heart last.
1. Remove scar tissue, and any old plates and screws used in earlier reconstructions of the face.
2. Attach plates of the new face — first the nose, then the cheekbones, then the jaw — and secure with screws.
3. Use surgical microscope to connect the artery and vein from the donor’s face to the recipient’s neck.
4. Remove clamps to restore blood flow.
5. Connect remaining arteries, veins and nerves.
6. Stitch skin closed.
— Sharon Kirkey | <urn:uuid:8e7f5e5d-bd3e-40f5-a1a5-a3f14407c46d> | {
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Triple Extension: The Key to Athletic Power
There are many factors that contribute to athletic success; balance, core strength, spatial awareness, strength, tactical knowledge and of course hard work. However these things are useless without power, the ability to move quickly, apply maximum locomotive force in the shortest amount of time (the force impulse). In this article we will look at the secrets to training and improving impulse through triple extension. In most sports applications, where all other things are equal the athlete able to exert the most power will win the contest.
Consider the vertical jump a common method for assessing leg power. The lift off phase is characterised by the simultaneous and explosive extension of the hip, knee and ankle joints. While this is the most simplified example of an application of triple extension and athletic power the coach should consider other ways that power and triple extension are observed on the sports field. Sprinting involves the same movement albeit in a more forward direction and on a single leg, cutting (side stepping) also involves powerful triple extension in a lateral movement to avoid an opponent. This requires that triple extension and agility are trained together to fully develop the ranges in which triple extension is used in athletic performance.
So how can we train powerful triple extension? Some of the most common methods are the Olympic lifts and their variations, with Olympic weightlifters being the most powerful athletes, shifting more weight for body weight than any other athlete it is worthwhile considering their training methods. The Olympic lifts are characterised in a number of ways that make them attractive to strength and conditioning coaches of many sports:
- They are full body movements, requiring core strength and stability
- Triple extension is a key factor in successfully completing the lift
- They have a forced eccentric phase in the lift
- They have many variations which can be applied to any number of sports
The Clean and Power Clean
The clean comes from the lift clean and jerk, a two part lift which eventually results in the bar being lifted overhead. The power clean is a more easily coached version of the clean as it does not require the “catch” to be as deep and involves the following steps:
- The set up: Beginning in a dead-lift position with the arms outside the knees, shins touching the bar and both hands in a pronated grip and a straight back position
- The first pull: The shoulders and hips rise together lifting the bar off the ground to the knees
- The second pull: when the bar reaches the knees the hips , knees and ankles are rapidly extended so that the athlete is in an upright position on his tip toes and shoulders pulled to the ears
- The catch: At this stage the bar should have enough momentum to continued to travel upward, in the meantime the athlete rapidly dips into a squat position and catches the bar on the shoulders with elbows in front
- The recovery: The athlete should now be in a squat position and stands up keeping the bar on the shoulders until he or she has reached a full standing position
- The bar can now be carefully lowered back to the ground. Where very heavy weights are being lifted the weight can be dropped so long as they have the right equipment with rubber-coated weights, a lifting platform and a high quality Olympic bar
There are many variations on this exercise all involving triple extension and explosive power. These variations include, the clean from hang, the clean pull, the power shrug and the high pull. These variations are useful where the time is not available to teach the full version of the lift or as teaching tools in them for the full version the power clean and clean.
This is one of the most powerful athletic movements known. The movement requires moving the weight from the ground to overhead in one motion. To give an idea of the power involved the current world record is 212.5kg in the men’s 105kg+ category. Recent studies have been difficult to find n Olympic weight lifting however, Garhammer (1985) found that in the snatch elite lifters were achieving up to 35w/kg of body weight, which is about 30% more power than an Olympic sprinter generates in the first 30 metres of a 100 metre sprint. The snatch has the following components:
- The set up is similar to the clean except the hands grip the bar much further apart, this results in the bar not having to be lifted as high
- The first pull is the same with the shoulders and hips rising together to bring the bar to the knee
- The second pull similarly rapidly extends the hips, knees and ankles in unison to achieve maximum bar velocity
- The catch requires the athlete to dip below the bar while simultaneously fully extending the arms overhead to catch the bar above the head. Normally the feet will need to change to a wider stance to allow the athlete to get low enough to catch the bar
- In the recovery the athlete will need to stand out of a low squat with the bar overhead for completion of the lift
- The bar is lowered to the ground carefully or dropped if the right equipment is being used
These are two of the most effective exercises for developing power and strong triple extension on athletes. However they require significant expertise to coach and should only be coached by a qualified practitioner such as a strength and conditioning coach or weightlifting coach.
This article was adapted from Haff, G. G, (2009), Triple Extension: The key to athletic power. NSCA’s Performance Journal, 8 (1), 14-15.
Garhammer, J. (1985), Biomechanical profiles of weightlifters. International Journal of Sport Biomechanics, 1, 122-130. | <urn:uuid:ea5ef539-88e1-4b5a-9418-62ffceb00258> | {
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The Plastic Bank, founded in 2013 with a goal to preserve our Mother Earth and help developing countries, is the soul child of CEO and founder David Katz, and VP and co-founder Shaun Frankson. Their vision is to empower poor countries with access to ocean shores to harvest washed-up plastic.
Think this is a waste of time? Think again!
Waste impact on the environment
More than 45,000 tones of plastic waste is dropped every single year in ocean waters, many of them ending back on shores, creating entire beaches of waste. And if anyone believes no action should be taken against this, look at the picture below and convince yourself of the damage it can do to the environment.
The Plastic Bank Goal
“We share a vision of clean oceans, prosperous people and sustainable communities”
Focusing on a new concept, called social plastic, David Katz believes that recycled plastic can be used as a new form of currency, by creating products with monetary value, and of use to the community, instead of the classic recycling process that has turned hardly any result until now.
Katz believes that “It is important to provide the tools to a community and bring them together to be a part of the solution to eradicate poverty and eliminate plastic waste from our oceans, rivers and waterways“.
In order to demonstrate their goal and support their belief, The Plastic Bank celebrated World Ocean Day, on June 8th by printing their first 3D object, with recycled plastic filament. The result: a wrench! Useful, isn’t it?
Skeptics might say that a better way to reduce waste is to stop using plastic all that much. But until minds are changed at an individual level, the Earth’s Oceans are grateful to David Katz and hise tam at The Plastic Bank for trying to make them clean again.
Image source: Flickr.com | <urn:uuid:fd0bc011-33ea-42f1-a611-12b7314951d9> | {
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Teaching High School
High School consists of grades nine through twelve and constitutes the final level of education mandated by the government. Many students will go on to college, others will begin working as soon as they graduate, and, sadly, there are also students who will not graduate. Though the percentage of students who drop out is relatively small (6.5 percent as of 2014), for those who do drop out, this decision will forever change their lives. But whichever path a student’s future takes, high school is the place where much of that path is determined, and it is teachers who play a large role in a students' direction. High school teachers prepare students for college and “the real world.” High school curricula are structured around core academics that students need as the foundation for college. Classes delve more deeply into a wider array of subjects, such as physics, calculus and U.S. history. Students begin to study foreign languages and have more flexibility with electives like art and home economics. This is why it is so important that high school teachers be experts in their fields; whereas elementary school teachers introduce their class to a variety of basic subjects, high school teachers are often devoted to one subject and teach it to multiple classes. | <urn:uuid:5d70072a-96bd-4d7a-b259-6ef42f9ae5fd> | {
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American Flags around Grand Junction IA 50107 – Proudly Made in America
Unlike various other countries, USA only has two nationwide symbols: the bald eagle, as well as the American flag. While the bald eagle is globally recognized, the American flag is a symbol recognized worldwide. The flag has actually been the inspiration for vacations, music, poetry, books, art and also even more. It has been used to show nationalism, rebellion as well as everything inbetween. The flag is so essential that its background tells the story of America itself.
The American flag has thirteen alternating straight stripes of equal width, which 7 are red in color and six are white. In the upper-left corner, aka the canton, is a blue rectangular shape, on which are laid out fifty white five-pointed stars.
Although the American flag was taken on officially in 1777, at that time there was no significance attached to the colors. The exact same colors were utilized in creating the Seal of the United States of America in 1782, having certain definition. The definition behind the colors of the flag are as adheres to:
“White indicates pureness and also virtue.
Red, hardiness & valiance.
Blue, signifies caution, perseverance & justice”.
Ever since 1777 when it was first embraced officially, the American flag has undertaken a number of modifications to reach its current style.
Brief History of the American Flag
The background of our flag is as fascinating as that of the country itself. It has endured battles, motivated songs and also developed in response to the development of the nation it represents. The following is a collection of interesting facts as well as customs about the American flag and exactly how it is to be shown:
- The flag is normally presented from daybreak to sunset. In stormy weather condition, the flag ought to not be flown.
- The flag must be presented everyday as well as on all holidays, climate permitting, on or near the primary management structures of all public organizations. It needs to additionally be shown in or near every polling place on election days and in or near every schoolhouse throughout institution days.
- When presented flat against a wall surface or a window, or in a vertical position, the “Union” field of stars must be uppermost and to the left of the viewer.
- When the flag is raised or lowered as part of a ceremony, and as it goes by in parade or review, everyone, other than those in uniform, ought to encounter the flag with the right-hand man over the heart.
- The United States flag need to never be dipped toward anyone or item, nor must the flag ever before touch anything underneath it.
Over the years, lengthy standards have been put in place for how to manage the flag. You could see some individuals are even brought to tears when the flag is honored at events and also occasions.
The flag may be decorated with golden edge surrounding the perimeter of the flag as long as it does not deface the flag proper. Ceremonial displays of the flag, such as those in ceremonies or on indoor places, frequently make use of edge to improve the appearance of the flag. When the flag is affixed to the right side of a car of any kind of kind (e.g. automobiles), it needs to be placed so that the “Union” is to the front of the automobile, as if the flag were streaming in reverse from its hoist as the vehicle moves forward. Therefore, American flag decals on the right sides of automobiles may seem reversed, with the union to the onlooker’s right rather than left as even more frequently seen.
On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress passed an act establishing an official flag for the brand-new nation. The resolution specified: “Resolved, that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternating red and also white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue area, standing for a new constellation.” On Aug. 3, 1949, President Harry S. Truman formally declared June 14 as Flag Day.
Retiring your Old American Flag
Many American Legion Posts routinely carry out a dignified flag burning ceremony, often on Flag Day, June 14th. Lots of Cub Scout Packs, Boy Scout Troops, as well as Girl Scout Troops retire flags regularly. Contact your regional American Legion Hall or Scout Troop near the state of Iowa to inquire about the accessibility of this service.
Which Flag is Right for You?
There is a huge choice of American flags to pick from including hand flags, indoor flags, banner flags and also exterior flags from different vendors. U.S. flags are offered in a variety of dimensions and materials to match your needs and also your budget plan. Whether you’re searching for a lot handy flags to offer throughout a parade or wants to invest in a premium exterior flag to display at your company, there’s most definitely a flag fit for you. Here are some flag kinds you’ll see being marketed on the market:
Printed vs Fully Sewn Flag – A printed flag is a photo that is printed on the nylon product. A sewn flag is made by joining the individual parts of colored textile with string.
Chain vs Lock Stitch – A chain sewed flag will totally unwind if one thread is torn, but that won’t happen with a lock stitched flag.
G-SPEC Flag – The G-SPEC flag is for use by the U.S. federal government. The dimensions are made to the official government hoist fly ratio of 1:1.9. The star fields are bigger and they are mostly acquired for display at military bases.
American Flags made in America
Seek flag makers that are members of the Flag Manufacturers Association of America which established the “Certified Made in the U.S.A” qualification program of American Flags. Based on the FMAA web site,” ‘Certified Made in the U.S.A.’ accredits that your American flag has actually been made in the United States of products that are domestic in origin which all procedures in every action of its manufacture were finished in U.S. centers with U.S. labor”.
ZIP codes in Grand Junction we serve: 50107 | <urn:uuid:c42ea1a3-6327-457f-8293-151d25538b75> | {
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We use science to understand the world, to find new ways to make conservation work, and to involve people who share our passion.
YardMap is a citizen science project designed to cultivate a richer understanding of bird habitat, for both professional scientists and people concerned with their local environments.
Young birders, join us for one long weekend of total immersion in the world of birds and science July 10-13. Apply by March 15, 2014.
Check out our new albatross bird cam; learn how birds survive in the extreme cold; sign up for our Young Birders Event; join Project FeederWatch; and more.
Five key steps help birds survive in freezing weather.
Researchers with Project SNOWstorm take advantage of this winter's massive Snowy Owl irruption to learn more about these arctic visitors.
Learning bird sounds is probably the single most important skill in moving from beginning birding to intermediate birding. Here are some apps to get you started.
A fun citizen-science project where you tell us what's at your feeders and help us track changes in winter bird populations. Open to all skill levels and abilities.
A Cornell University faculty member discusses eBird's innovations in data gathering and usability for a French radio program (in English).
The MathWorks software provider recently recognized our Bioacoustics Research Program for their innovative analyses that help make sense of "Big Data."
Read about eBird and the citizen scientists—like you, perhaps?—who make it work
Page: 1 of 1
Discover voices of the natural world with our WILDaudio project on YouTube
Browse bird images or contribute your own
Share photos, questions, and comments with a community of people passionate about birds
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Copyright © 2010 Cornell University
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
159 Sapsucker Woods Rd
Ithaca, NY 14850 | <urn:uuid:2e7b92e6-7d6a-446f-ac09-b83620e12481> | {
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The Warsaw Metro (Polish: Metro warszawskie) is one of Europe's newest metro systems and Poland's first (and the only one so far). It was opened in 1995 and consists of a single north-south line, still partly under construction that links central Warsaw with its densely populated southern suburbs. Plans exist for further lines once the first is complete.
Plans to build an underground rail system in Warsaw date as far back as 1918, when the idea was first floated in reaction to Warsaw regaining its status as Poland's capital city. An underground railway system was expected to solve the transport difficulties of the densely-built city centre. Proper preliminary planning and boring work were initiated by the Warsaw Tramway Authority in 1925, with construction expected to start in the late 1920s. The Great Depression buried those plans as Poland and the world was gripped by hardship. In 1934, with the election of a new mayor of Warsaw, Stefan Starzyński, work was to resume on the metro. The mayor dusted off the plans from the mid-1920s, and with some minor adjustments, construction of the metro was planned to start by the late 1930s, with a projected finishing date of the first of two projected lines scheduled for the mid 1940s. By then, the subway network was to consist of two lines. The A line (North-South line, 7,5 km or 4,6 mi long), followed most of today's route and was to link the southernmost borough of Mokotów with the city centre and the northern borough of Żoliborz. This line was to be connected with the newly-constructed Warszawa Główna train station and the railway tunnel crossing the city from west to the east. The B line (East-West, 6,3 km or 4 mi long) was to start beneath the westernmost borough of Wola, proceed along the Chłodna street to the pivotal station beneath the Saxon Sq. and then further eastwards to the Vistula river escarpment. There, the line was to go overground, cross the river through a newly-built bridge and proceed to the easternmost railway station of Warszawa Wschodnia. Altogether, in 35 years 7 lines were to be built). The works finally started in 1938, but World War II brought an end to the ambitious undertaking. The short trace tunnels made in 1938 serve as a wine cellar today.
The city suffered heavily during World War II. Although the majority of pre-war projects perished during the war, most of the engineers behind their creation survived the war and returned to their city to take part in its rebirth. However, the new Communist authorities of Poland envisioned a city completely different from what it used to be before the war. As the ideal communist city, Warsaw was to be decentralized and a need to commute to the city centre was to be reduced. Thus the Reconstruction of Warsaw Office (BOS) commissioned a number of engineers to prepare a project of a fast tramway (Fast Urban Railway, SKM) crossing the city in a deep cutting. Although to a large extent it was to follow the A line of the pre-war plans, only the central stations were to be located underground. However, by the end of the decade the project was cancelled. Instead, in 1948 a different concept was considered. This time the SKM was to be a rapid transit line at a depth of up to 15 metres (50 feet). The suggested North-South direction, with three parallel branches of the same line in the city centre, corresponded to the planned development of the city along the Vistula. The works however never started and this project was also abandoned.
In the 1950s, as the Cold War raged on, Soviet strategic plans required that a secure transport link across the river Vistula be built. One of the ways to achieve this was to create a deep metro system in Warsaw (up to 46 metres or 150 feet beneath the ground), which would be interlinked with the rail network and could serve as an underground conduit for transporting troops. Plans assumed that the first line (ca. 11 kilometres) would lie along North-South axis, with a branch of the same line crossing the Vistula river in the city centre. The construction works started almost simultaneously at 17 different points on both sides of the river. Until 1953 771 metres of tunnels were built, however after the death of Joseph Stalin and the start of a period of détente, all works were halted under the pretext of technical difficulties. In following years only one junction tunnel and one shield-driven tunnel were continued to be constructed. These works were undertaken experimentally, in order to discover the best driving methods suitable for the ground conditions beneath Warsaw (pliocene clay formations layer spread beneath quaternary soils). Finally, in 1957 all the work was halted.
Since 1955 there was a return to the old idea of a shallow metro network. However, the planning phase proceeded at a very slow pace and the economical situation prevented all successive communist governments from actually starting a serious work. Finally, in 1984, the programme was approved by the government and the first tunnels were built. Lack of funds, poor planning, and tedious bureaucracy meant that the work progressed very slowly, at a speed no greater than 2 metres a day. The Metro was opened in 1995 with a total of 11 stations. The line now has 18 stations along a distance of approximately 19 kilometres, and will be completed with a total of 21 stations by late 2008.
Perhaps alone among world metro systems, tickets are not sold by the transport company itself, but by post offices and privately-run shops and newsagents'; however, the ticket system covers all Warsaw public transport, including the Metro, buses, trams and some suburban trains. In addition to single (or daily/weekly) tickets, one can also purchase a proximity card at which can be charged for up to 3 months at a time, offering a cheaper alternative to single tickets.
The first line was a compromise between earlier route proposals further east and west (one of which belonged to the planned Line 4) and as such does not go to some important areas of the city. For example, it does not pass directly under the old town, Warsaw's main tourist attraction, which has few public transport links, passing it about 600 m to the west. It also does not go to the central railway station, and the nearest stop is over 400 m to the east (the planned second line will also avoid it, with the closest station also about 400 m to the north). Furthermore, the first line, and thus the Metro system for the immediate future, is confined to the western bank of the Vistula river, thus doing nothing to ease traffic problems on Warsaw's bridges, a major bottleneck between the city centre and the eastern Praga district. Plans for the third line to Okęcie airport have been abandoned for the foreseeable future.
Transport planners have suggested that the WKD, a light rail line that runs to the western suburbs, could be integrated with the city's tram system, or be more closely tied to the Metro and a future suburban rail network, or both. The first such plans were prepared in the late 1930s and the railway tunnel running below the city centre was to be shared by both the railways and the metro. In the mid-1990s the WKD, PKP and Warsaw Metro systems were temporarily integrated and Warsaw city travel cards were valid also in the suburban railways. This idea was, however, dropped in 1999 due to financial problems.
Initially, all of the trains were Russian built. They first arrived in Warsaw in 1990 as a gift from the USSR, five years prior to the Metro's opening, from Vagonmash plant in Mytishchi (near Moscow) (model 81-717.3/714.3 - 10 carriages). Subsequent trains arrived from Saint Petersburg's Yegorov Plant in 1994 (81-572/573 - 32 carriages) and additional 18 81-572.1/573.1 carriages in 1997.
In 1998, 108 new carriages were ordered from Alstom. These were all delivered by 2005 (24 were produced in Barcelona and the rest in Chorzów). In 2006 additional carriages were ordered from Russia, with deliveries taking place during 2007, to lengthen the existing trains using older Russian carriages.
Currently, out of the 33 trains running, 15 consist of Russian-produced cars and 18 of Alstom-produced cars. The Russian and Alstom carriages are incompatible and cannot be used in the same train.
|Segment||Date opened||Length (km)|
|Kabaty-Politechnika||April 7, 1995||11.0|
|Politechnika-Centrum||May 26, 1998||1.4|
|Centrum-Ratusz Arsenał||May 11, 2001||1.7|
|Ratusz Arsenał-Dworzec Gdański||December 20, 2003||1.5|
|Dworzec Gdański-Plac Wilsona||April 8, 2005||1.5|
|Plac Wilsona-Marymont||December 29, 2006||0.9|
|Marymont-Słodowiec||April 23, 2008||1.0|
|Total:||20 Stations||20.1 km| | <urn:uuid:dfee6ecd-09be-4bd2-8f84-b45136ff89e8> | {
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|School||Cardiff School of Geography and Planning|
|External Subject Code||K400|
|Number of Credits||20|
|Language of Delivery||English|
|Module Leader||Dr Francesca Sartorio|
This module aims at introducing students to issues surrounding sustainable neighbourhood planning and design. Students will learn about the history of residential communities and planning and design ideas for neighbourhoods. They will learn about how different cultures have developed their own particular forms of residential neighbourhood and how this has changed over time. They will learn about the principles of urban design and how we judge approaches to the design of the urban environment, as they apply to residential areas. Students will research lessons from the form of residential neighbourhoods from across the world, as well as look at examples of European practice from the last 20 years. For a particular site you will apply what you have learnt to a produce a design for a neighbourhood. The production of the design will entail competent and professional site analysis, the use of appropriate precedents, the exploration of alternative strategies and the crafting of an appropriate and ‘culturally fitting’ development or regeneration scheme.
Designing cities combines more traditional learning and teaching delivery modes with a typical studio format. It uses a mix of lectures, student-led seminars and studio sessions. Students will be given the possibility to attend training sessions on computer programme packages and basic skills in free hand sketching and in building physical models. They will work in parallel on surveying and designing their chosen site and on developing a deeper understanding of the effect of cultures on the physical and natural landscape.
An ability to analyse and discuss the design of a neighbourhood with reference to matters of urban design theory, informed by aspects of culture, and other matters such as climate, affluence and stage of development;
Explore the values and attitudes that underpin current theory and practice of design and development as localised and socially constructed values;
Ability to understand, explain and engage with various cultures and their physical environments;
Advanced site appraisal, design, plan drawing and presentation techniques;
Designing quality spaces, fitting for people’s life;
Sketching, 2D and 3D drawing preparation and presentation, report writing;
Awareness of various cultural, professional and public values in relation to the design of the built environment, and the need for respect in discussions involving differences of values.
There are three elements of assessment. Detailed guidance on each assignment is provided vua Learning Central and explained in class.
Space of culture and cultural space.
Quality of life/quality of space
Planning cultures as they relate to neighbourhood planning
Cultural values and design principles
Uneven neighbourhoods in a globalised city
Gated communities and their impacts
Residential building types and urban blocks
Urban Design Principles.
Opportunities and constraints and developing a spatial strategy
Movement, patterns of access and designing residential streets
Security and finding your way around
Social life in urban outdoor spaces
Wellness in neighbourhood planning and design
Mixing and delivering neighbourhood uses
Environmentally benign developments – landscape and ecology, biodiversity, water management and energy efficiency
Learning from great precedents
How to prepare a master plan
Banerjee, T. and A. Loukaitou-Sideris, (2011) Companion to Urban Design (Eds.) ; London: Routledge; (307.1216 COM)
Barton, H et al (2010) Shaping Neighbourhoods for local health and global sustainability, London: Routledge
Bentley, I. et al (1985) Responsive Environments: A manual for designers, Oxford, Butterworth Architecture (711.4R main and short loan)
Biddulph, M. J. (2006) Introduction to Residential Layout, Oxford: Architectural Press (711.58 B)
Biddulph, M. J. (2001) Home Zones: A planning and design handbook, Bristol, Policy Press (711.58094B)
CABE (2004) Creating Successful Neighbourhoods: Lessons and actions for housing market renewal, London, Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) (http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110118095356/http:/www. cabe.org.uk/publications/creating-successful-neighbourhoods) (363.50942G)
CABE (2005) Better Neighbourhoods: Making high densities work, London, Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) (http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110118095356/http:/www.cabe.org.uk/ publications/better-neighbourhoods) (363.50942G)
DfT, DCLG, CABE (2007) Manual for Streets, www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/sustainable/manforstreets/
Hall, P (2013) Good Cities, Better Lives: How Europe Discovered the Lost Art of Urbanism, London: Routledge
Knieling, J. und Othengrafen, F. (2009): Planning Cultures in Europe. Decoding Cultural Phenomena in Urban and Regional Planning, Farnham, Ashgate (307.1216 PLA)
Llewelyn-Davies (2000), The Urban Design Compendium, London, English Partnerships/Housing Corporation (711.4L)
Lynch, K. and Hack, G. (3rd Ed) (1984) Site Planning, London, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press (711.6L).
Neal, P (2003) Urban Villages and the making of Communities, London: Spon Press
Rudlin, D and Falk N (2009) The sustainable urban neighbourhood: Building the 21st century home, Routledge
Urban Design Group (2002) Urban Design Guidance, Urban Design Frameworks, Development Briefs, and Master Plans, Thomas Telford (711.4U) | <urn:uuid:8bd0eb5c-b18e-43c5-b70d-4bee1ae63c30> | {
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PROTECTIVE GEAR High-tech for first responders . . .
First responders could minimize the risk to themselves and do their jobs more effectively if they were wearing a protective suit proposed by a team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. As envisioned by Gary Steimer of the lab's National Security Directorate, the Advanced Integrated Responder Ensemble (AIRE) will be made of new materials, will be lightweight and incorporate sensors and a communications system. The suit will provide thermal protection, personal cooling and will detect and counter chemical and biological threats. "From boots to helmet, AIRE will provide first responders with technological advances that will dramatically increase their capabilities," Steimer said. Partners in the effort include the Georgia Institute of Technology, North Carolina State University and the University of Tennessee. [Contact: Ron Walli, 865-576-0226; [email protected]]
CHEMISTRY Self-organizing polymers . . .
By developing techniques to precisely control the growth and shape of polymers at the molecular level, researchers hope to make possible the design and synthesis of new materials with biomedical applications. The idea is to mimic the "bottoms-up" approach used in nature, which starts with single molecules of controlled size, shape and functionality, and assembles the molecules to form structures such as enzymes. Through a better understanding of these structures at the molecular level, Phil Britt of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Chemical Sciences Division and Jimmy Mays of the University of Tennessee hope they can impact chemical, material, biological and computational sciences. Ultimately, this research could lead to targeted drug delivery systems for treating diseases.
Contact: Ron Walli
DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory | <urn:uuid:c3322990-01ad-4508-8529-b1a76d7b1fbc> | {
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Another article on babirusas – yaay! Like many (but not all) pigs, babirusas are omnivorous, and are said to eat invertebrates whenever they find them. They have also been reported to eat fish on occasion, to catch small mammals, and even to catch and eat the juveniles of other babirusas (Leus & Morgan 1995). They eat all kinds of plant material, including fruits, leaves, flowers, berries, nuts, bark and tubers, and they not only browse and dig to obtain such items, they are also surprisingly good at standing bipedally (without support) to feed on leaves. This again is a curious parallel with deer, in particular Sambar.
So… what’s with the bizarre curving tusks? Present only in males (females lack canines entirely), they grow continuously throughout life, and their growth, anatomy and function are all odd. The lower canine is normal in position and anatomy, it’s just that it becomes particularly long during growth, overlapping the outside edge of the snout as it grows. The upper canine is another story. Initially growing downwards – like any normal mammalian upper canine – it is then rotated as the alveolus itself turns to force the tooth upwards, and it eventually emerges from the dorsal surface of the snout. The most anterior part of the spiral parallels the long lower canines. As mentioned earlier, we’re mostly familiar with those babirusas where the upper canines curl in a circle as they grow, forming a spiral over the animal’s forehead. As we’ll see later, spiralling upper canines of this sort are not present in all kinds of babirusas.
Regardless, in those babirusas with spiralling tusks, some authors say that, if the animal lives long enough, the tusks grow fatally into the face (Irven 1996). However, in the old male skulls that I’ve seen (see accompanying images: the woodcut is from Alfred Russel Wallace’s 1869 The Malay Archipelago), the tips of the upper canines begin the anterodorsal part of their curvature a short distance dorsal to the upper surface of the skull, so if they were to continue to grow they would harmlessly curl upwards. Furthermore, so far as I can tell from the literature, no-one has ever found a babirusa skull in which the upper canines have bored into the bone [though a colleague told me that he once saw a specimen where exactly this had happened... ].
A Balinese demon with curling tusks that emerge from its cheeks – the Raksasa – might have been inspired by stories or sightings of babirusas (Groves 1980) (Raksasa rendition below from here].
Famously, people on Celebes once supposed that babirusas hung from trees with their tusks, and then stayed there in wait for passing females. This seems to be the one ‘fact’ about babirusas that everyone knows, as it’s mentioned in just about every article, paper and book that discusses them. It’s often stated that the tusks might be used in display or fighting, but there’s also the old idea that the tusks allow males to push their way through dense stands of ratten cane, thereby allowing tusk-less females and juveniles to follow in single file behind. Well, maybe the tusks can be used in this way, but this can’t of course have been the main selection pressure driving the evolution of the teeth, given that the intermediate stages leading up to this ‘end’ condition wouldn’t have been at all useful. More on tusks in the next post.
Perhaps surprisingly in view of their sensitivity to cold, babirusas have fared quite well in zoological collections, having first been kept in Europe at ‘la Ménagerie du Roi’ in Paris during the 1840s, and having bred at London Zoological Garden as early as 1884. In 1995, 29 zoos worldwide held babirusas. Several individuals have survived in captivity for more than 20 years, with the record holder being an animal kept at Chicago which, on its death in 1920, was 21 years and 4 months old. Paul Irven (1996) wrote that captive babirusas are ‘sensitive and responsive … with an endearing character’. They are also said to exhibit excitement and enthusiasm on greeting familiar people, engaging in tail wagging, head shaking and jumping and running about. This friendly disposition makes them quite different from many other non-domesticated suids.
For previous babirusa articles see…
- The deer-pig, the Raksasa, the only living anthracothere… welcome to the world of babirusas
- Are anthracotheres alive and well and living on Sulawesi? No, but it was a nice idea. Babirusas, part II
For other Tet Zoo articles on artiodactyls see…
- McGowan’s mystery bovid
- The legend of Hogzilla
- Welcome…. to the world of sheep
- Return…. to the world of sheep
- Tet Zoo picture of the day # 23 [on entelodonts]
- Deer oh deer, this joke gets worse every time I use it
- Duiker, rhymes with biker
- Sable antelopes and the miseducation of youth
- Giant killer pigs from hell
- The plasticity of deer
- Over 400 new mammal species have been named since 1993
- Great Asian cattle
- Stuffed megamammal week, day 1: Khama
- Stuffed megamammal week, day 2: Eland
- Stuffed megamammal week, day 3: Okapi
- Death by lightning for giraffes, elephants, sheep and cows
- Dromomerycids: discuss
Refs – -
Groves, C. P. 1980. Notes on the systematics of Babyrousa (Artiodactyla, Suidae). Zoologische Mededelingen 55, 29-46.
Irven, P. 1996. The Babirusa. Mainly About Animals 29, 5-7.
Leus, K. & Morgan, C. A. 1995. Analyses of diets fed to babirusa (Babyrousa babyrussa) in captivity with respect to their nutritional requirements. Ibex J.M.E. 3, 41-44. | <urn:uuid:c7f84912-caad-47d7-89d5-ff193d015fe5> | {
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The cluster of quakes in Yellowstone Park has now been joined with a second cluster as over 450 small and mid level quakes have have been recorded in the famous park in the last seven days.
26 of these quakes have been above magnitude 2.5 with the biggest being magnitude 4.5.
The supervolcano has been rumbling with a series of more than 450 recorded since June 14th.
The University of Utah Seismograph Stations reports that an earthquake of magnitude 4.5 occurred at 06:48 PM on June 15, 2017 (MDT).
The magnitude 4.5 was the biggest quake at the super volcano since 2014.
Wikipedia claims the last full-scale eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, the Lava Creek eruption which happened approximately 640,000 years ago, ejected approximately 240 cubic miles (1,000 km3) of rock, dust and volcanic ash into the sky.
Geologists are closely monitoring the rise and fall of the Yellowstone Plateau, which has been rising as fast as 0.6 inches (1.5 cm) per year, as an indication of changes in magma chamber pressure.
The upward movement of the Yellowstone caldera floor between 2004 and 2008 — almost 3 inches (7.6 cm) each year — was more than three times greater than ever observed since such measurements began in 1923. From 2004 to 2008, the land surface within the caldera moved upward as much as 8 inches (20 cm) at the White Lake GPS station. By the end of 2009, the uplift had slowed significantly and appeared to have stopped. | <urn:uuid:185aefbe-2c4e-4fbf-9a00-b2a31c04ad2d> | {
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ASHLAND, ORE. — THE White House energy proposal, sent to Capitol Hill this week, stresses increased production over efficiency and conservation, traditional supplies over renewable sources, and market economics over government intervention. It is in sum: more of the same with a nod to environmental concerns and geopolitics.
A very different vision is presented by the Worldwatch Institute, a private research organization whose annual ``State of the World'' reports are read by governments and international agencies worldwide.
The essence of this year's Worldwatch report is that global economic progress in recent years (as measured by traditional indicators like output of goods and services) masks consistently negative environmental signs. These include annual forest losses of 42 million acres (an area the size of Austria), the loss of 24 billion tons of topsoil each year, and the yearly spewing of 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere.
At the same time, the rate of population growth has begun to rise again after declining for about a decade and a half. This has put greater demand on sources of food and energy.
``The result is a disguised form of deficit financing,'' warns Worldwatch president Lester Brown, that will eventually lead to economic collapse. ``In sector after sector, we are consuming our natural capital at an alarming rate.''
The institute warns that business as usual on energy would mean reliance on Persian Gulf oil would eventually increase from 26 percent today to more than two-thirds. It would also necessitate the building of three times as many nuclear power plants over the next 30 years as were built in the last 30.
The Bush administration does favor more nuclear power, but wants to reduce dependence on foreign oil by tapping new domestic sources.
Worldwatch says now is the time to switch to renewable energy sources, including solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and hydropower. (Recent studies done for the US Energy Department show renewables could supply 50 percent to 70 percent of US needs by the year 2030. The studies say renewables would also create more jobs than traditional energy sources while sharply curtailing carbon-dioxide emissions.)
The technologies are at hand, proponents say, but the shift will require major policy changes.
This means cutting current subsidies for fossil-fuel production, restructuring utilities to encourage energy conservation, and taxing fossil fuels ``so that prices reflect full security and environmental costs,'' the report says.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that a phased-in ``carbon tax'' on fossil fuels could generate $120 billion in annual revenues, offsetting 30 percent of federal income-tax receipts - which in turn could be lowered so that the overall tax burden remains the same.
Meanwhile, according to the CBO model, carbon emissions would be 37 percent lower than now projected for the year 2000, and energy efficiency would improve 23 percent.
Worldwatch researchers recommend similar taxes on pesticides, hazardous wastes, and the overpumping of ground water.
``Taxing products and activities that pollute, deplete, or otherwise degrade natural systems is a way of ensuring that environmental costs are taken into account in private decisions, such as whether to commute by car or via mass transit,'' they write.
Worldwatch stresses that such a plan is more efficient than regulatory standards and, in fact, fits the free-market mold favored by laissez-faire economists.
``Taxes can help meet broad environmental goals efficiently,'' says the report, ``since they adjust prices and then let the market do the rest.'' When Britain imposed a higher tax on leaded gasoline in 1989, for example, the market share of cleaner unleaded fuel rose from 4 percent to 30 percent in one year.
The challenges in moving to a more environmentally friendly economy are many, proponents acknowledge, including the need for strong political leadership, changes in consumption patterns, and considerable international cooperation.
For example, third world debt may need further restructuring so that developing countries are encouraged to conserve natural resources rather than sell them off to get quick revenue.
The World Bank and regional development banks (which usually fund large, capital-intensive projects like dams and roads) would need to reform lending practices to encourage conservation over ecologically damaging development.
``Achieving an environmentally sustainable global economy is not possible without the fortunate limiting their consumption in order to leave room for the poor to increase theirs,'' the report states. | <urn:uuid:2db9cd9d-f3ea-44a5-8bc6-b90f42f7edfa> | {
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Being Discriminated Against at Work
Sometimes discrimination is very obvious and apparent. It could take the form of a racist, sexist or derogatory comment, or there may be certain conduct indicative of discrimination against you. Other times, the discrimination might be subtle, or you might not even be aware that it happened until it comes to light at some later time. Regardless, if you have been discriminated against in the workplace, you should bring a legal action for employment discrimination.
Discrimination claims are based on disparate treatment, meaning you, the employee, are being discriminated against because of your race, sex, religion, color or some other immutable characteristic, or disparate impact, meaning the effect of certain employee policies adversely affects a group of employees based on race, sex, religion, color or some other immutable characteristic, even if the employer does not intend to discriminate.
Where Does Discrimination Protection in the Workplace Come From?
There are many federal laws in place to protect workers from discrimination. The most important federal protections include:
- Equal pay between men and women is provided for under the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA). The EPA protects men and women who perform substantially equal work in the same establishment from sex-based wage discrimination.
- Employment discrimination is prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII). Specifically, Title VII prohibits employment discrimination on the bases of color, race, religion, sex or national origin.
- Age discrimination is prohibited under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA). The ADEA protects individuals who are 40 years of age or older from discrimination in the workplace.
- Discrimination of the disabled in federal government employment is prohibited under sections 501 and 505 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
- Discrimination of those with disabilities is prohibited under Title I and Title V of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). The ADA prohibits employment discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities in state and local governments as well as the private sector.
- The Civil Rights Act of 1991, which, among other things, provides monetary damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination.
These federal laws are applicable to employers having 15 or more employees. Similar state laws provide employment discrimination protection to those who work for employers having fewer than 15 employees.
Discrimination should not be tolerated in any aspect of employment, including:
- Retirement plans
- Disability leave
- Job advertisements
- Fringe benefits
Remedies for Employment Discrimination
If you have been the victim of employment discrimination, you should contact an employment discrimination attorney right away. You may be entitled to relief for the discrimination through which you suffered, including back pay or front pay, promotion, reinstatement or hiring and/or reasonable accommodation. You could receive attorney’s fees and other court costs as well.
Contacting a Los Angeles Employment Discrimination Attorney
No one should ever suffer through the humiliation and unfairness of employment discrimination. If you believe that you have been the victim of employment discrimination based on your race, gender, age, color, religion or disability, please contact the experienced employment discrimination lawyers at the Law Offices of Kenechi R. Agu for immediate consultation concerning your discrimination concerns. | <urn:uuid:233e071a-11f7-4c39-af1c-e01185d61804> | {
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Teens @ the Library
Several databases listed here are made available through the Arkansas Traveler project. This project is made possible by a grant from U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services to the Arkansas State Library under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act. Additional state funds are provided by the Arkansas Department of Education.
- EBSCOhost Web Collection
- Critical Survey of Long Fiction (in-library and home access)
- Provides students and general readers with in-depth profiles of major authors in long fiction.
- Gale Discovering Collection (in-library and home access)
- The Discovering Collection is a comprehensive database of in-depth reference content for Literature, History, Biographies, Science, and Social Studies.
- Gale Virtual Reference Library (in-library and home access)
- Provides access Gale eBooks owned by SPL.
- History in Context: U.S. (in-library and home access)
- Provides a complete overview of U.S. history covering the most-studied events, issues and current information. Includes primary sources and journal articles.
- History in Context: World (in-library and home access)
- Combines a comprehensive and unique global collection of resources with easy-to-use searching for undergraduate and high school research and curriculums.
- MAS Ultra - School Edition (in-library and home access)
- Designed specifically for high school libraries, this database contains full text for nearly 500 popular, high school magazines. MAS Ultra – School Edition also provides more than 360 full text reference books, 85,670 biographies, over 107,000 primary source documents, and an Image Collection of over 510,000 photos, maps & flags, color PDFs and expanded full text backfiles (back to 1975) for key magazines. Arkansas Traveler database.
- Middle Search Plus (in-library and home access)
- Provides full text for more than 140 popular, middle school magazines. All full text articles included in the database are assigned a reading level indicator (Lexiles). Full text is also available for thousands of biographies and historical essays. Middle Search Plus also contains 84,774 biographies, 105,786 primary source documents, and a School Image Collection of photos, maps and flags. Arkansas Traveler database.
- Newspaper Source (in-library and home access)
- provides cover-to-cover full text for more than 40 (U.S.) & international newspapers. The database also contains selective full text for 389 regional (U.S.) newspapers. In addition, full text television & radio news transcripts are also provided. Arkansas Traveler database.
- Student Research Center
- TOPIC Search
- World Book Info Finder (in-library and home access)
- World Book Info Finder includes content and features designed for school-aged patrons’ homework and research needs. Based on the World Book Encyclopedia, the site features rich collections of multimedia on a variety of topics, science fair projects; a Biography Center; links to world newspapers, correlations to curriculum standards, 21st century research guides, and much more. Arkansas Traveler database.
- World Book Student (in-library and home access)
- World Book Student includes the articles of the World Book Encyclopedia, a Biography Center, dictionary, atlas, an extensive multimedia collection, thousands of editor-selected Web sites, correlations to curriculum standards, and much more. Arkansas Traveler database.
- Biography Who's Who
- Dead People Server
- Are they really dead?
- YALSA Booklists
- Find the best of the best books on this site.
- Teen Reads
- Get lists of the top best selling books.
- America's Career InfoNet
- Locate information on wages, what education you must have for a given occupation, and many answers to career questions.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics
- Career information, median salaries, job availability.
- Arkansas Scholarship Connection
- Provides the only comprehensive site on public and private financial aid opportunities in Arkansas.
- Princeton Review
- Information on colleges and careers, financial aid, and improving your test scores.
- Online FAFSA forms, including school codes and deadlines.
- Information for Financial Aid Professionals
- Access to publications, worksheets, and other information related to the Federal Student Aid program.
- Information on financial aid, loans, military aid, calculators, and other types of financial aid.
- Fast Web
- Browse scholarships, jobs, and internships.
- Arkansas Department of Motor Vehicles
- Training, information, manuals, handbooks, and practice tests for driver's license, motorcycle license, and CDL.
- Drive Home Safe
- For parents and future teen drivers who need instructions, solutions, education, and statistics for keeping teens safe on the road.
- Fun and games, show off your creativity through writing and artwork, shop and listen to music.
- Teen reviews for music, books, etc.
- Yahoo Games
- Monopoly, Pacman, Dominos, and many new and exciting games free for the playing.
- Pop Cap
- Lots of free games and many more that can be downloaded for a price.
- Addicting Games
- Silly games for folks with lots of time to spare.
- Cheat Codes
- Cheats for all the popular online and console games.
- GameSpot Cheats
- Find cheats on all your favorite games for X Box, PlayStation, and many more.
- National History Day
- MLA Style Guide
- Internet Public Library Teen Space
- Discovery School
- Rotten Tomatoes
- Excellent movie rating system and information about release dates and locations.
- Local Movie Theaters
- Need to know what is playing in a certain theater or what time a movie starts? This site will answer your questions.
- Radio Locator
- Find a station anywhere, or find which stations play a certain kind of music or talk.
- All Music
- Listen to music, find a biography of your favorite composer, listen to new releases and more at this site.
- Listen to music as long as you wish for free.
- Locate when your favorite artist will be in concert or listen to your favorite songs or program a lot of songs for uninterrupted listening.
- Reviews, music videos and more available here.
- A Plus Research and Writing Guide for Students
- Grammar and Style
- This site has everything! Strunk and White, Chicago Manual of Style, and more.
- MLA Style Guide
- Springdale Public Schools
- Shiloh Christian School
- Private school owned by the First Baptist Church with Southern Baptist affiliation.
- Regional Technical Center
- Providing career and technical programs for high school students. Affiliated with Northwest Arkansas Community College.
- University of Arkansas
- John Brown University
- Rated one of America's Best Colleges in 2007.
- Northwest Arkansas Community College
- Webster University
- College level classes specializing in business.
- Northwest Technical Institute
- Provides adults a second chance to obtain a high school equivalency and has classes in career building.
- Education Alliance
- Oldest homeschool organization in Arkansas.
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- What is a “smart” meter?
- How do I know if I have a “smart” meter or not?
- Can a “smart” meter be harmful to my health or unsafe?
- How could the government allow “smart” meters if they are harmful or unsafe?
- Who, then, does the “smart” meter benefit?
- I don’t want a “smart” meter. How can I avoid having one installed?
- I already have a “smart” meter. I don’t want it. What can I do?
_______________________________________BACK TO FAQ INDEX
Q: What is a “smart” meter?
“Smart” Meters are digital utility meters that send customers’ detailed usage information to the utility using a radio-frequency transmitter (or over the power lines in the case of Powerline Carrier (PLC) systems. The meter also contains other capabilities, such as remote shut-off. They are part of a larger plan to change the electricity grid to a “smart” grid–though there is controversy about whether the customer meter is actually crucial to that change. Electric smart meters are replacing older analog style meters, while gas “smart” meters are generally small devices attached to existing gas meters. Wireless water meters are also being installed in many regions.
“Smart” meter planning in the United States is related to the Energy Act of 2005 and administered by the US Dept of Energy, the FCC, and each state’s public utilities commission (PUC). However, in that Act, there was NO mandate to force all residential customers to accept installation of “smart” meters–only that they would be offered. Local utility companies in many states have been approved to install “smart” meters but this does NOT mean you have to accept them on your home or business.
Q: How do I know if I have a “smart” meter or not?
Non-transmitting analog (mechanical) electric meters have 5 small clock-like dials and a glass casing which allows you to see the spinning dial inside. “Smart” meters have digital displays and plastic casings which you cannot see into. Recent “smart” meters often have the word “smart” on the front, but absence of this label is no guarantee it isn’t transmitting. There are a very few mechanical meters which have a wireless-transmitting capability, which can only be identified by measuring RF emissions.
Utilities use a dizzying list of acronyms and technical terms to describe their ‘smart’ grid systems. Many insist that their meters aren’t the ‘smart’ meters that have been causing all the problems. ALL of the meter types below are ‘smart’ and are associated with health and safety problems:
AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) enables two-way wireless communication between the utility and the meter. Enables remote shut off & control of appliances.
AMR (Automatic Meter Reading- or ERT) meters are typically wireless one-way meters that report usage to utility personnel in a vehicle with a handheld device. Includes ‘bubble up’ meters that transmit all the time, and ‘wake up’ systems that transmit when they receive a signal.
PLC (Power Line Communication) uses the power lines to transmit utility usage data. Though this is a wired system, ‘dirty electricity’ used to send the signal also radiates into living spaces from unshielded wiring.
“Radio Off” Digital Meters can still act as a surveillance device. They also use switch mode power supplies, linked to dirty electricity and health problems.
Bottom line: A ‘smart’ meter is any utility meter that contains electronic components. Do not accept anything less than a ‘purely electro-mechanical analog meter with no electronic components.’ Be aware that some utilities have been installing meters that appear to be analogs but in fact are fully activated ‘smart’ meters. More on the “trojan horse analog problem” here.
Q: Can a “smart” meter be harmful to my health or unsafe?
Wireless “smart” meters emit radio-frequency microwave radiation (called “RF”), similar to that used by cell phones and wifi routers. The transmissions from “smart” meters go on day and night, and are not directly related to the amount or time of household usage. See section on Mesh Network. This frequency is part of the range of frequencies recently placed in the category “possible human carcinogen” by the World Health Organization (May 2011).
Public health professionals and scientists have been concerned about human exposure to this type of low-level radiation for some time now. You may have read about ways to reduce your exposure to the RF from your cell phone. But a “smart” meter is an RF emitter that you have no control over. There is no “off” switch, nor can you move it to a different location in your home. See section on RF Radiation Issues, or section on Health Issues.
Dirty electricity from all digital electronic meters is a hazard- read more on dirty electricity here.
Q: How could the government allow “smart” meters if they are harmful or unsafe?
Many scientists and academics have written to government agencies in charge of the decision to deploy “smart” meters, to alert them as to the possible dangers in such a widespread public exposure to RF, and to urge commissions in charge of overseeing utilities to exercise more precaution. Examples: Here is a letter from the California Department of Public Health (pdf). This page contains other objections submitted to the California Public Utilities Commission from medical and public health authorities and qualified individuals.
While the elected bodies of some towns, counties, cities, and states have taken notice of the dangers involved, many have not, choosing instead to swallow the assertions made by utilities of public safety and cost-saving. Often small government agencies are at the mercy (or in the pockets) of the utilities they oversee, which are large, well-financed corporations, and thus don’t heed these calls for caution.
In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission, a regulatory body with no doctors or medical professionals on staff, has set the guidelines for public RF exposure at a very high level, based on biased and incomplete science dating back to the 1950s. The FCC also appears to have waived some requirements for “smart”-meter manufacturers, allowing them to bend several rules that were intended to protect the public, such as not locating one transmitting meter near another transmitting meter (colocation). See this post about the FCC and “smart” meter violations. Apartment dwellers need only look for the “bank” of meters that service their building to see the precaution about colocation violated. Another provision that is ignored is the 20cm distance that is supposed to be enforced, keeping people from coming closer than that (about 8 inches). No “smart” meter has ever been installed in a way intended to keep people at that minimum distance.
Another FCC violation is the matter of transmitting power. A recent admission from a “smart” meter manufacturer affirmed that because of the type of antenna in their “smart” meter, the power of the transmitter may exceed the FCC limits. [See Sept 14, 2011 CPUC “opt-out” workshop videos, Part 2, at 0:13 and Part 5 at 0:16].
The current attitude of governmental bodies in the United States is that if radiation doesn’t heat tissue, it is considered safe. Ionizing radiation (e.g. x-rays) can alter molecular structures and standards for this type of radiation have been established. Non-ionizing radiation (such as cell-phone and “smart”-meter radiation) has been considered safe by government agencies because it doesn’t heat at lower levels of exposure. But a growing number of scientists, researchers, and experts feel this is a flawed position. Clear biological effects have been observed at “non-thermal” levels–most notably DNA breaks, breaches of the blood-brain barrier, and increases in brain glucose metabolism.
The RF emissions spikes from “smart” meters are supposedly under these very liberal FCC guidelines, but if the guidelines are flawed, as many who study the effects of low-level RF on humans and animals think they are, then “smart” meters are indeed a very dumb idea. See also: The Bioinitiative Report; The Seletun Statement; The Sage Report on Smart Meter RF
Q: Who, then, does the “smart” meter benefit?
Only the utility companies benefit. The utility can save itself money by getting rid of meter readers. Because the “smart” meter measures hour by hour, the utility can charge you more for electricity used during certain periods of the day of their choosing.
Their story is that this device will save you money. But there are no studies, no evidence, to back this up. In fact, in the one study done so far (from Canada), customers’ bills went up, not down. There is only one thing that will save you money on your utility bill, and that is using less electricity or gas. This is easily achievable by reducing your use of high-wattage devices (e.g. electric clothes dryer, air conditioner, and so on), choosing energy-saving appliances when it’s time to buy, and taking care to switch off electrical items not in use. Here are some ideas.
Q: I don’t want a “smart” meter. How can I avoid having one installed?
Three things: Secure your analog meter (make sure it is one first!); write your utility to let them know you refuse any “smart” meter; and/or prevent trespass on your property by your presence. Be aware that measures other than these, such as signs, have failed. Utilities have also destroyed locks and vandalized property but this opens them up to property destruction charges.
Take action now to safeguard your old meter. Prevent tampering by following some of the suggestions on this pages: Defend Your Analog Meter.
If your state or area has an opt-out, call now to make your wishes known. If it does not have such an option, advocate for it and in the mean time, take direct action and secure your analog meter. Without an opt-out, you can try calling, but your utility is very unlikely to want to allow you a choice, as they save money getting rid of your meter reader, and the mesh network depends on everyone having one of these meters. Still, some people have demanded their right to an analog, and done so repeatedly, and been able to keep or regain an analog. Prevent regret by securing your meter now.
Some people have suggested posting a sign alone is sufficient, but we have heard of too many signs simply ripped down by installers to recommend that you rely on this. You should also adapt and send this letter, but it alone is no guarantee of avoiding installation.
Your bodily presence on your property is the best protection you can have. You have the right to prevent trespass on your property. Even one renter can ask a trespasser to leave from a building or complex. Installation periods for your area are the time to be on guard. This is difficult for many who work, but you can authorize someone else to act in your place if you need to, including neighbor. Here’s one neighbor’s story of protecting his neighborhood.
Preventing access does not mean you don’t want to pay your bill or cheat your utility; it is protecting your health and safety. If you need to, learn to read your own meter and post the numbers for your current reader, if you have one still, or send them to your utility—so that you can protect your meter by limiting access.
No one we know of has had their power cut by taking these measures. They may have been threatened, but they have not been cut off. The bottom line is that your utility has no legal right to force a “smart” meter on your home against your will. They will threaten you with fines and service disconnection but in the end they do not have a legal right to force a device that emits what even the World Health Organization considers a Class 2B carcinogen.
Rest assured that not one single household has had their electricity switched off for refusing a “smart” meter. No fines have been levied for refusing a “smart” meter. Our advice is to lock up your existing analog meter securely, and ignore their letters. Talk to your neighbors and if they come to the neighborhood be prepared to drive them away.
If they disconnect your power, contact your public utilities commission immediately–they cannot disconnect a paying customer. Write us and we will publicize your story–that is just the sort of publicity that utilities try hard to avoid. As of Sept 19, 2011, The Utility Reform Network (TURN) says PG&E has no right to cut you off for refusing a “smart” meter.
Q: I already have a “smart” meter. I don’t want it. What can I do?
You can try to get your utility to change your meter to an analog or a non-transmitting meter. PG&E recently installed an analog for a customer:
Two other CA customers have demanded the CPUC for analogs and been granted them:
Call your utility (number is on your bill) and tell you want an analog meter. Ask to speak to someone in management. If you have been made ill by your ‘smart’ meter, tell them about it in detail. Tell them you know of the people who have gotten analogs. Tell them you are going to the press if they don’t do the same thing for you they have done for others. IF you accept a digital non-transmitting meter, be aware they also have problems, and are not proven safe like analog meters. Do not take ‘No’ for an answer—ask to speak to someone higher up. Report what you find back to Stop Smart Meters—we are keeping track of how people do when requesting analogs from their utility.
Some people, desperate to regain their health, have had ‘smart’ meters swapped out for analogs by electricians. Please read our section on changing a meter.
In addition, File a complaint in these places:
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HARRISONBURG, VA. – Future Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) students will not have to go far to enjoy an apple, pear or fig on their way to class.
Will Hairston, EMU grounds supervisor, and his team, have worked throughout the summer to cultivate and maintain edible gardens on campus.
“A few of the trees are already bearing fruit and we hope to have more plants producing shortly,” said Hairston.
“When these plants reach maturity and are producing, we hope to supply the cafeteria and have student groups harvesting them,” added Hairston.
Edible gardens have been around campus for years, according to Hairston, and will become more prominent thanks to a grant from the student group Earthkeepers. Hairston was able to buy more than 1,000 plants for landscaping around the Elmwood dormitory, turf field and Suter Science Center.
“We have apple and pear trees along the hill behind Roselawn dormitory and persimmon and pau pau trees around the EMU turf field.”
In addition, Hairston also maintains fig and crab apple trees, grape vines and cornelian cherry and black raspberry bushes.
Aly Zimmerman, a junior from Staunton, Va., said the push for edible landscapes around EMU began with the on-campus showing of the film “Food Inc.” The film focuses on the industrialized food system and its effect on environment, health, economy and workers’ rights.
“Almost immediately after see the movie Earthkeepers met and decided we needed to do something,” said Zimmerman.
Earthkeepers began using what they learned in “Food Inc.” to make changes around campus, including expanding the edible gardens. In addition to the fruit trees and plants that already existed they planted asparagus beds around the Elmwood dormitory and the Science Center. Asparagus can be harvested in March and April, so students will have ample opportunity to enjoy the vegetable before the end of the spring semester.
“We want to raise awareness to the availability and health benefits that these plants can provide,” said Zimmerman. ”EMU is an environmentally aware university and we hope to attract more students to science and environmental sustainability through our work.”
Tyler Groff, a senior from Lancaster, Pa., adds that the edible garden landscapes around campus will also benefit from increased use of technology, specifically Google Docs.
“We will be able to schedule watering cycles for all plants to make sure that none are missed,” Groff said.
“We hope to build an interactive display that can showcase where each plant is on campus and how they can be best utilized,” he continued.
Groff, like Zimmerman and Hairston, notes additional benefits to edible gardens.
“Edible gardens can provide enjoyment and add a new experience to campus. Hopefully, this will get people thinking about other ways they can make an impact while they enjoy something grown right here on campus.” | <urn:uuid:dc0d47d3-e3a6-4892-ba72-0a8b88a67cbc> | {
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If you live in the South, you probably know what you'll eat on New Year's Day: Black-eyed peas. For luck, of course.
If you live in the South, you probably know what you'll eat on New Year's Day: black-eyed peas. For luck, of course.
Why are black-eyed peas considered lucky? No one seems to know.
Black-eyed peas — which, by the way, are not peas at all but legumes (beans) — have been grown in China and India since prehistoric times. According to Israel National News, the 5th-century Babylonian Talmud prescribed certain "lucky" foods for New Year's, including pomegranates, apples, sheep's head, pumpkins, dates and black-eyed peas. In Israel, these foods are still served at Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year.
It's thought that African slaves copied the black-eyed peas dish either from Caribbean Jews or the Sephardic Jews who settled in Georgia in the 1730s. Since the slaves did not celebrate Rosh Hashana, they served black-eyed peas on the secular New Year's holiday instead. They also added smoked or salted pork to the beans, a distinctly non-kosher touch.
That dish, with rice and pork, is known as Hoppin' John, a traditional New Year's food in the South that is served with collards (symbolizing greenbacks) and cornbread (gold). According to Ted and Matt Lee — brothers and originators of www.boiledpeanuts.com (offering Southern food specialties) — another thing food historians can't agree on is how Hoppin' John got its name. Some say it is derived from "bhat kachang," a 13th-century Iraqi name for a similar dish. Others claim it's a mispronunciation of "pois de pigeon," French for the pigeon peas served in the West Indies.
Chef Bradley Ogden, author of "Holiday Dinners With Bradley Ogden" (Running Press, 2011), incorporates black-eyed peas into his New Year's menu with a complex stew. The Lee brothers contribute Saigon Hoppin' John, after a Vietnamese street food.
Whether the beans will bring you luck for the new year is debatable. But isn't it lucky you don't have to find a sheep's head?
Yield: 6 servings
From: "The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook" by Matt and Ted Lee (Norton, 2006)
1 cup dried black-eyed peas, rinsed and drained
6 cups vegetable broth
1 cup uncooked long-grain rice
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 (4-inch) stalk fresh lemon grass, bruised and cut into 4 sections, plus more for garnish
1 cup unsweetened coconut milk
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon sugar
¼ cup finely chopped fresh cilantro
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
Soak peas overnight covered in cold water by 2 inches. Drain.
Bring broth to a boil in a 4-quart pot. Add peas, reduce heat to medium-high and boil gently until just tender, about 25 minutes. Add rice, ginger, lemon grass, coconut milk, salt and sugar and return to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer 20 minutes, until rice and beans are tender and the dish has a soupy, porridge-like consistency. Stir in cilantro and season to taste with pepper.
Garnish with pieces of lemon grass and serve.
Yield: 4 servings
From: "Holiday Dinners With Bradley Ogden" (Running Press, 2011)
½ cup dried black-eyed peas, rinsed and drained
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
½ bay leaf
2 sprigs thyme
2 thick slices smoked bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 stalks celery, thinly sliced
2 small carrots, cut into 1-inch, bias-cut pieces
½ medium yellow onion, chopped
8 cloves garlic, finely chopped
¼ cup seeded and finely diced poblano chile peppers
½ cup roasted red bell pepper
2 cups chicken stock
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 cup water, plus more as needed
1 tablespoon olive oil
6 cups chopped fresh spinach
1 cup chopped tomato
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Soak peas overnight covered in cold water by 2 inches. Drain and place in a large saucepan. Cover with 1 inch of cold water, bring to a boil and cook 3 minutes. Drain and set aside.
Place pepper flakes, peppercorns, bay leaf and thyme on a square of cheesecloth. Tie closed with butcher's twine. Set aside.
Cook bacon in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat until bacon is slightly crispy. Remove with a slotted spoon; set aside. Add celery, carrots, onion, garlic, peas, chile pepper and roasted peppers; cook 5 minutes. Add stock, vinegars, water and the spice bag. Bring to a simmer; cover and cook until peas are tender, about 40 minutes, stirring halfway through and adding more water if needed. Remove and discard the spice bag.
In a large skillet over high heat, cook the reserved bacon and oil for 1 minute. Add spinach and wilt lightly, 30 seconds. Off the heat, stir in tomatoes. Add spinach mixture to the stew, season with salt and pepper, and serve. | <urn:uuid:b4627f4e-a7af-4abf-933c-c484cdd7662a> | {
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What Is Central Sleep Apnea?
Central sleep apnea is a sleep disorder in which you briefly stop breathing during sleep. The moments of apnea can occur repeatedly throughout the night. The interruption of your breathing happens may indicate a problem with your brain’s signaling. Your brain momentarily “forgets” to tell your muscles to breathe.
Central sleep apnea is not to be confused with obstructive sleep apnea. Obstructive sleep apnea is the interruption of breathing due to blocked airways. People who have central sleep apnea do not have blockages in their airways. The problem is in the connection between the brain and the muscles that let you breathe.
Central sleep apnea is much less common than obstructive sleep apnea. The American Sleep Apnea Association (ASAA) estimates that less than 20 percent of people with sleep apnea suffer from central sleep apnea. (ASAA)
What Causes Central Sleep Apnea?
Underlying health conditions are the cause of most cases of central sleep apnea. During a central sleep apnea episode, your brainstem does not signal your breathing muscles to function properly. Your brainstem is the section of your brain that connects to your spinal cord. Medical conditions that affect your brainstem, spinal cord, or heart can cause you to develop central sleep apnea.
Examples of related conditions include:
- heart attack
- congestive heart failure
- a weak breathing pattern called Cheyne-Stokes breathing
- encephalitis (an inflammation of the brain)
- arthritis in the cervical spine
- Parkinson’s disease (an age-related deterioration of certain nerve systems that affects movement, balance, and muscle control)
- surgery or radiation treatments in the spine
Medication use can also cause a type of central sleep apnea called drug-induced apnea. Opioid drugs are powerful painkillers that can lead to irregular breathing patterns. In some cases, you may temporarily stop breathing as part of this irregular pattern.
Drugs that can contribute to central sleep apnea include:
If the cause of your central sleep apnea cannot be identified, it is called idiopathic central sleep apnea.
Central Sleep Apnea Symptoms
The primary observed symptom of central sleep apnea is short periods during sleep when breathing stops. Some people exhibit very shallow breathing instead of an actual stoppage of breathing. The lack of oxygen can cause you to wake up briefly and frequently throughout the night. You may wake up feeling short of breath. The apnea episodes can cause insomnia, too.
Other symptoms associated with central sleep apnea occur during the day, as a result of an interrupted night’s sleep. You may feel very sleepy during the day, have trouble concentrating or focusing on tasks, or have a headache when you wake up.
Central sleep apnea caused by Parkinson’s disease or other neurological conditions can be characterized by additional symptoms, including:
- swallowing difficulties
- changes in speech patterns
- voice changes
- generalized weakness
Diagnosing Central Sleep Apnea
Your doctor will order a sleep study test called polysomnography to diagnose central sleep apnea. During polysomnography, your oxygen levels, brain activity, breathing pattern, heart rate, and lung function are monitored. You will be outfitted with a series of electrodes on your head and body to measure each function. The test is administered overnight as you sleep in a special sleep center.
Your doctor, a neurologist, and sometimes a cardiologist will view the results of your polysomnography. The results can help determine the underlying cause of your apnea.
A head or spinal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan may also be used to diagnose central sleep apnea. MRI uses radio waves to generate images of your organs. The test may reveal structural abnormalities in your brainstem or spine that are causing central sleep apnea.
Treating Central Sleep Apnea
Management of underlying medical conditions is the first line of treatment for central sleep apnea. Congestive heart failure, Parkinson’s disease, and other heart or nervous system conditions can be controlled with medications. You may need to wean yourself off of opioid medications if these drugs are causing your breathing to stop during sleep. Your doctor may also prescribe medications such as acetazolamide to stimulate your breathing mechanism.
Oxygen supplementation and the regulation of air pressure during sleep are effective treatments for many people with central sleep apnea. These include:
- CPAP, or continuous positive air pressure, provides a steady source of pressure in your airways as you sleep. You wear a mask over your nose and mouth that delivers pressurized air throughout the night. CPAP is used to treat obstructive sleep apnea, but can also be beneficial for people with central sleep apnea.
- BPAP, or bi-level positive air pressure, adjusts the air pressure to a higher level when you inhale and a lower level when you exhale. BPAP is also delivered through a facemask.
- ASV, or adaptive servo-ventilation, monitors your breathing as you sleep. The computerized system “remembers” your breathing pattern. The pressurized system regulates the breathing pattern to prevent apnea episodes.
Outlook for Central Sleep Apnea
Those who suffer from idiopathic central sleep apnea most often respond well to treatment. The overall benefits of treatment for central sleep apnea vary according to the exact cause of the condition. | <urn:uuid:bed4a6d3-a076-4e6e-9ece-0ab529762767> | {
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DIY Amplifier, Vacuum Tube Category
READ THIS FIRST!
Don’t just jump straight into DIY amplifier yet! Before we get started, we need to make sure we adhere to the DIY amplifier processes in order to avoid complications in the later stage. Spending more time now will reward us and prevent us from failure! Take this from a guy who had walked the rushed path before and regretted it till today.
Let’s do it right the first time! Here are the major steps:
- Wants & needs analysis
- Research & design amplifier
- Expandability and design for test
- Planning & sourcing for components
- Build and finishing
- Testing & tuning for good sound
- Installation and setting up in your system
Wants & needs analysis
What are your wants and needs in DIY tube amplifier? “Wants & needs” dictate what you’d like to build, in terms of internal (sonic) and external (outlook) characteristics. It also depends on your listening taste, environment, partnering equipment, setup biasing, and etc. Different tubes, circuits, components, output power, tuning and etc will affect the sound and look. Therefore, one needs to know all these before they go further into the DIY process.
There are slight differences between wants & needs. Want is what you desire, what you intended to have. Need is what you and your system requires. For example, if you like very brightly lit vacuum tube amplifiers – you can choose tubes with tungsten filaments. It has no relationship at all to what you need. Need is something like the output power required to drive your speakers sufficiently to fill your listening with sound or music. Need is something like the number of sources you have, therefore commanding the equivalent number of inputs to your amplifier.
Let’s move on. In this phase, you will get to know and define the following:
- Output power requirement:
- Size of the listening room – bigger -> higher power
- Speaker sensitivity – higher -> lower power
- Listening volume / behavior – louder -> higher power
- Type of music – more dynamic -> higher power
- Note 1: For vacuum tube amplifier, general rule is, the lower the power, the simpler the design, the smaller the size, the shorter the signal path, the lesser the coloration, the better it sounds.
- Note 2: The first Watt is the best Watt for usual vacuum tube amplifier.
- Distortion / noise / hum tolerance
- Different designs / circuits have different distortion behavior, noise level and hum level on an tube amplifier. How you layout will also affect these parameters and change the amplifier sound.
- Note 1: Single ended amplifiers usually have higher even harmonics and lower odd harmonics – that, to some, equals warmer, sweeter and mellower sound. Higher odd harmonics means more hifi-ish, steely or hard sounding.
- Note 2: AC heating sounds the best but for some tubes, especially for those with direct heated filament tubes, sometimes DC heating is necessary to reduce hum / noise level to a tolerable level.
- Functionality/ usage model
- How do you intend to use your DIY amplifier? Long hours? Enclosed space? Long cabling? Public Addressing? Bedroom use? Background music? Ventilation scheme? Long life? Durability? Serviceability?
- Pre / power / integrated / buffer – these need no introductions, right? Sometimes integrated are preferred for the cost and conveniences – single chassis takes up less space and cost for components and interconnects prices.
- Functions – What other audio functions are needed apart from amplification? Tone controls, equalizer, active crossover, bypass, loudness, integrated DAC, phono amplifier, speaker protection, short circuit protection, remote control, bi-amping, wireless transmission, and etc?
- Environment – Does it need to be reliable and durable? Is the ambient temperature high or low? Will it be subjected to moist, vibration and movements? This will determine the electrical and thermal design of the amplifier to fulfill the normalized working hours and temperature of the system. Temperature and heat buildup are always something that needs to be considered and calculated in a design.
- Note: These will affect how the amplifier is designed to match the usage model and functionality.
- Sonic characteristics / tastes
- Topology – single ended, push-pull, interstaged, class (A, A2, A/B, D), 2-3-4 staged, solid state rectifiers, tube rectifiers, constant current sources, and etc – different type of topologies have their own kind of sound.
- Character – warm, powerful, hifi, fast, mellow, dynamic, and etc. All these characteristics are tunable, by the design, implementation, component usage, cabling, and etc.
- Component selection is a big topic by itself. When you’re experienced enough, you will know that different types of components have different character. Use the ones that suit your taste!
Choose your own poison!
- Cost / budget
- $$$ - the amount of $$$ allocated will determine what type of design you can have, and whether can you go for audiophile or non-audiophile components, of course, with a premium.
- Remember this: garbage in, garbage out! Please do not expect stellar performance if you skimp on the quality. If budget is limited, focus on those parts that bring the most return, highest ROI. For a tube amplifier, it could be the vacuum tubes, output transformer, PSU, capacitor, and such.
- One can think about using exotic materials and components too and make your tube amplifier unique, only one of the kinds in this world! Life is just too short to be plain and boring!
- Size & weight – Simpler design, lighter weight, smaller size vice versa. Different design, different component requirement, different weight, different size and different price!
- Visual – higher cost, better looks! One can even choose to have cat’s eye tubes and vacuum tubes with tungsten filament to look better – for example the 10, 801, and 801A vacuum tubes.
- Types of I/O: speaker terminal types, input/output jacks, balanced, unbalanced, USB input, SPDIF input, pre-out, bi-wire, stereo jack, headphone jack, phono input, iPod docking port and etc, audiophile / non-audiophile versions.
- Front/back panel: decide what needs to be in front and what needs to be at the back panels. This will impact how you layout your amplifier blocks in the chassis.
- Partnering equipment
- Speaker impedance – 4 Ohm, 8 Ohm, 16 Ohm, impedance characteristics (dips, rises, even). For vacuum tube amplifiers, high impedance with lesser dips speakers is highly recommended.
- Damping factor requirement – This has impact on how good the amplifier can control the speakers. It doesn’t mean that the higher the figure, the better it is. Different speakers require different numbers.
- Input level & type (input sensitivity) – higher input level requires lesser overall gain at the amplifier side. Know your partnering equipment and you will save a lot of energy in the amplifier design.
- Safety is number one!
- This is the MOST important factor you need to think about! If you are unsure of what you’re doing, do not do it! Tube amplifier contains high LETHAL voltages!
- Safety can be on yourself, your family, your pets, your environment, your setup, and your wallet!
- If you’ve young family members or pets around the house, then you’ve to design your system to be accident proof.
- If you’re inexperience in dealing with electricity, then, hire an experience and qualified electrician to help you. Or, do not do it at all. Life is more important than hobby itself.
- Any voltages can be lethal! Choose the voltages you’re comfortable on working with. I myself would avoid anything that has too high voltage. Anything below 600Vdc is still OK with me. This could be different with each individual.
- What I mentioned above is neither comprehensive nor complete. So, take precaution and be extra careful when you are working with electricity.
DIY tube amplifier is starting to get complicated, isn’t it? Feel lost? Don’t understand all? Don’t be afraid. If you do not know what you want, just go look and listen around to see what you like, determine your tube amplifier requirements, or just for the fun of DIY, “Just do it”!
After you’re clear on what you needed and wanted on your analysis above, the real fun begins! It always takes me the longest time to research and design my own amplifier. There are just soooooo many designs out there and soooo many things to consider.
R&D here could be applied here to the chassis design, amplifier design, layout design, system design, thermal design, and etc. Think about it makes me feel high! I’m a natural born R&D engineer! The fun part about this is, instead of being limited to what other people designed, you can decide on your own! No one knows yourself better!
Finalizing one to build is really a big joy, or headache! :P Take your time here. You will be handsomely rewarded if you put enough care and effort in this, and the planning phase.
Expandability and design for test
Whenever you build your amplifier or system, always think about these 2 words – expandability & DFT (Design For Test).
Leave some room for expansion. One will never know what might arise in the future, or even during the construction process! Something might go wrong and demand for space for further / future upgrades, tweaks, or even correction!
On the other hand, always layout and make your amplifier as testable as it can be. After you finished building your amplifier, what comes next is the testing phase. Even after the system is in service, one might need to service or tune it if some components break down, or the tubes go weak. Or even when someone helps you to troubleshoot your amplifier.
All these require thoughts and planning prior to the construction.
Planning & sourcing for components
This could be the fun part for some, and pain in the *** for some. LOL. I, for one, love sourcing for parts, minus the act of taking out my credit card or hard earned cash to pay for them. LOL.
Sourcing is just like cooking! Think of what to cook, and go get all the ingredients. The fresher and better the ingredients, the better your dish would be. Once the design is finalized, you can start listing out all the required parts in a spreadsheet and categorize them:
- Electrical & electronics
Hardware could be chassis, screws & nuts, spanner, screwdrivers, saw, hole punch, drill & bits, and etc.
Electrical & electronics could be wires, capacitors, resistors, inductors, fuses, I/C, tubes (yes!), multimeters, LCR meter, oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzer, distortion analyzer, and etc.
All these can be obtained at your local stores, our bought online. There are mainly 2 types of stores, audiophile and non-audiophile versions. Non-audiophile versions could just be like Maplin, Mouser Electronics, Radioshack, RSWWW, Farnell, and those general hardware, electrical & electronics stores. Audiophile ones are those that cater for mostly audio related components, and usually they carry a premium due the better sound quality and marketing strategy of the shops.
I use a mixture of audiophile and non-audiophile components. Audiophile components do bring better sound quality no doubt! I use generic components for those less critical (to sound reproduction) areas and splash on those important sections like the coupling capacitors, output transformers, vacuum tubes and such.
Even eBay and Amazon are good sources for components!
Build and finishing
How do you want your DIY project to look? Like a “DIY project” or professionally finished? We’re quite lucky nowadays as there are lots of shops now selling finished or semi-finished amplifier chassis. The materials range from aluminum, mild steel, to stainless steel. My personal favorite are aluminum as they’re easier to work with but pain in the *** to finish.
Finishing options are plenty as well, like paint, plating, brushed, powder coated and such. Different finishing has their pros and cons. Recently I like buying semi-finished (brushed aluminum) chassis for my projects. They’re less hassle to work with.
One can even hire or commission someone to build the tube amplifier chassis for you. I do use this option some of the time since I’ve several friends who are in this line. They can use CNC machine to build me nice metal and wood based chassis with a charge.
If you want your DIY tube amplifier finishing to look nice, make sure you plan your hardware work properly. Defects on the surfaces will ruin the finishing and give you more hard work if you want to make it look nice later. So, use care and do not remove the protective covers (some do come with it) until you’re happy and finalized your project.
Testing & tuning tube amplifier for good sound
Have you used, or even heard of multimeters, oscilloscope, spectrum analyzer, frequency generator / synthesizer, distortion analyzer, and such? Don’t worry! We shall give you a briefing on them too in this website. For now, just remember that they will be your best friends in the DIY amplifier world.
The MOST basic equipment one should own is the multimeter. You can live without the others but this is a MUST. It will be used to check the inductance, capacitance, resistance, open / short, frequency, voltage (AC & DC) and etc of your DIY amplifier.
When a project is completed, we shall use the multimeter to check the DIY amplifier to make sure everything is built according to the design. After we powered-up the project, we shall use the multimeter to check for correct voltages and biasing of the amplifier.
How do we tune the tube amplifier sound? This is a very difficult question! This can be done through many, many ways! It is impossible to cover it all in just the briefing / introduction section. We shall share with you on the tuning as we post more DIY projects or DIY amplifier projects in this website.
These are just a few ways on how we tune the sound and is not comprehensive:
- Circuit biasing
- Circuit design
- Vacuum tube
- Components usage
- Chassis and hardware
- Placing and routing
- Electrical isolation & filters
- Mechanical isolation
Installation and setting up in your system
Congratulations! You’ve come to the stage of installing and setting up your tube amplifier in your system. You’ve come a long way and I’ve gotta give you a pat on your back, and tell you “Good job mate!”. Nothing beats listening to your own hand crafted project for the 1st time. I’m sure it would be a great looking and sounding project too if you put enough effort into making it.
All right! This sums up what we’ve to say on DIY amplifier. We shall cover more on those topics in the later phase. This is just the introduction!
Since I’ve just finished DIY tube amplifier: 5687 IT coupled 6B4G integrated amplifier to power the Zu Soul Superfly (101dB/w/m) , I will use that as the reference or example to illustrate the whole process.
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ROME (AP) — The United Nations said Tuesday its 2009 headline-grabbing announcement that 1 billion people in the world were hungry was off-target and that the number is actually more like 870 million.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization blamed flawed methodology and poor data for the bum projection, and said it now uses a much more accurate set of parameters and statistics to calculate its annual estimate of the world's hungry.
FAO issued its 2012 state of food insecurity report on Tuesday, and its core point was to set the record straight about the number of the world's undernourished people, applying the more accurate data retroactively to 1990.
And the good news, FAO said, is that the number of hungry people has actually been declining steadily — rather than increasing — over the past two decades, although progress has slowed since the 2007-2008 food crises and the global economic downturn.
"We have good news, we have made some progress in reducing hunger," Jose Graziano da Silva, the FAO director-general, told a press conference launching the report.
FAO said that if the right action is taken now to boost economic growth and invest in agriculture, particularly in poor countries, the U.N. goal of reducing by one-half the number of the world's hungry people by 2015 is very much within reach.
To be sure, 870 million hungry people is still far too many hungry people, said the heads of the three U.N. food agencies in a forward to the report.
"In today's world of unprecedented technical and economic opportunities, we find it entirely unacceptable that more than 100 million children under the age of five are underweight, and are therefore unable to realize their full socio-economic and human potential," they wrote.
FAO made headlines in 2009 when it announced that 1 billion people — one-sixth of the world's population — were undernourished. A high-level summit was called at FAO headquarters in Rome, where the pope spoke. The U.N. chief went on a daylong hunger strike to show solidarity with the 1 billion. The Group of Eight devoted much of its summit that year to pledging $20 billion for seeds, fertilizers and tools to help poor nations feed themselves.
It turns out, though, that the projections were wrong. They were calculated using figures from non-U.N. sources that were fed into the U.N.'s number-crunching model, because FAO was expected to quickly come up with an estimate of how many people might go hungry from the dual crises of high food prices and the global downturn, said Kostas Stamoulis, director of FAO's agricultural development economics division.
"There was considerable fear that that combination of lower incomes and higher prices was going to cause significant undernourishment," said Jomo Kwame Sundaram, FAO's assistant director-general for economic and social development.
But now, "no one really knows for sure if at any particular period whether that 1 billion figure was actually reached or not," he said of the three year period. He said the goal of the state of food insecurity report is to assess chronic hunger over time, rather than spikes caused by temporary food shortages and price hikes.
What the U.N. couldn't know at the time was how well governments would respond to the crises to protect their poorest, and how individual families would make sacrifices — such as in health care or education — to make sure they had enough food on the table, said Jomo.
"So it was in a way a mistake, an error, that we have made with many other organizations at the time," said Pietro Gennari, the statistics director for the FAO's economic and social development department.
Already, in 2010 FAO said the number of the world's hungry was down to 925 million, though it didn't explain how it came to that figure. On Tuesday, FAO officials said the new number of hungry people for 2012 was 870 million, and the organization revised all of its figures from 1990 using a new methodology based on:
—New population data from the U.N. Population Fund. China's population estimate for the 1990s, for example, has been revised upward by some 25 million people, whereas Bangladesh's population has been revised downwards by 17 million people. That affects hunger statistics because food production figures are divided by population figures.
—Estimates of food loss at the retail level. Previously, FAO considered the amount of food produced as the amount of food available to feed the world. The agency didn't take into account that one-third of all food produced is wasted along the distribution chain, either because it spoils, is eaten by rodents or is otherwise inedible. The 2012 survey takes into account these losses.
—New demographic and health surveys that measure people's height. FAO had been relying on 20-year-old World Health Organization statistics to determine how many calories were needed based on body mass, with taller people requiring more calories than shorter ones. For the 2012 report, FAO is using new height surveys to determine caloric requirements.
"What we are saying is we are recalculating everything with new data, improved data, and what we believe to be an improved methodology," said Jomo, the assistant director-general.
That said, he stressed that all hunger estimates by their nature are conservative. FAO's caloric requirements, for example, assume a sedentary lifestyle, even though many of the world's hungry often do strenuous manual labor, thus requiring more calories to meet their food needs.
Oddly enough, with the new number-crunching methods, FAO discovered that the world's hungry actually did hit the 1 billion mark, but it was back in 1990-1992. The world just didn't know it then because the FAO was using the old data that set the hungry figure for that period at 848.4 million.
The advocacy group Oxfam said the slowdown in progress in lifting people out of hunger over the past five years should "sound alarm bells around the globe."
"The fact that almost 870 million people — more than the population of the U.S., Europe, and Canada — are hungry in a world which produces enough for everyone to eat is the biggest scandal of our time," Oxfam's Luca Chinotti said in a statement.
Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield | <urn:uuid:179913b9-8237-426b-9679-f2f5e5634b5c> | {
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Reading in a Foreign Language
Volume 17, Number 2, October 2005
Processing glosses: A qualitative exploration of how form-meaning connections are established and strengthened
Using a think-aloud procedure this study explored why certain vocabulary interventions are more facilitative for word learning than others. Second Language (L2) readers' quality and quantity (Hulstijn, 2001) of word processing strategies were recorded to determine the effect on (a) establishing and (b) strengthening lexical form-meaning connections (FMCs) as well as (c) text comprehension. L2 learners read a text enhanced with either multiple-choice glosses (MCGs) or single-translation glosses (STGs). In both conditions the target words (TWs) occurred three more times in the text after the first glossed occurrence. The data-analyses suggested that MCGs may lead to more robust and complete FMCs than STGs. Strengthening of FMCs seemed to be related to the integration of multiple meta-cognitive and semantic-elaborative resources, the repeated search and evaluation of individual word meanings as well as recursive reading strategies. Weaker FMCs were marked by the use of only meta-cognitive resources, linear text processing, and a lack of motivation to assign concrete word meaning. Readers in both conditions comprehended main ideas equally well. But MCG readers showed a tendency to comprehend more supporting ideas.
Which reading interventions facilitate lexical form-meaning connections (FMCs) that are robust and retained over time? This question has been the incentive for recent studies on lexical development through reading (e.g., Rott, 2000; Rott and Williams, 2003). These studies have focused on reading as an avenue for lexical development because texts provide readers with meaning-bearing, semantically, syntactically, and pragmatically rich input. Logically, second langauge (L2) learners need to master such aspects of the lexicon to reach advanced and near native speaker language abilities (Judd, 1978; Nation, 2001; Richards, 1976).
At the same time, researchers have addressed the shortcomings of unenhanced reading. Repeated research (e.g., Parry, 1993; Parry, 1997) has shown that even though L2 readers may comprehend hitherto unfamiliar words in a text, they may not be able to access the word meaning after completing the reading task. This suggests that comprehending a word in its context does not necessarily result in a FMC, or if an initial FMC is established it may not result in a robust entry in the mental lexicon. Accordingly, it is well accepted that comprehension and learning may be complementary processes but not the same phenomena (e.g., Lee and VanPatten, 1995; Sharwood Smith, 1986). In fact, learning a new word seems to require that it be momentarily "isolated from its context" (e.g., Prince, 1996: 489)1 to assign a specific meaning to the lexical form. This isolation permits the reader to allocate attentional resources (e.g., Schmidt, 2001) to orthographic, syntactic and semantic aspects of the new word to potentially encode it in the mental lexicon. Subsequent lexical studies have, therefore, used interventions that direct the L2 readers' attention to individual target words (TWs) in the input passage. Some of the interventions supplemented the text with semantic resources to promote the establishment of initial FMCs; others supplemented the text with word-focused tasks to strengthen FMCs.
Numerous investigations have enhanced reading material with first language (L1) or L2 glosses (e.g., Hulstijn, 1992; Hulstijn, 1993; Hulstijn, Hollander, and Greidanus, 1996; Hulstijn and Trompetter, 1998; Jacobs, Dufon and Fong, 1994; Ko, 1995; Laufer and Hulstijn, 2001; Watanabe, 1997). Such semantic word interventions direct readers' attention to an unfamiliar word, stimulate the processing of its meaning and thereby promote the initial establishment of correct FMCs. Findings, however, have been inconclusive regarding the robustness, i.e., long-term retention, of the established FMC. Comparing the effect of an L1, an L2, and a no-gloss condition Jacobs et al. (1994) observed a significant effect for the gloss conditions immediately after the treatment but not four weeks later. Ko (1995) further found not only that the gloss condition outperformed the no-gloss condition but that learners receiving L1 glosses gained significantly more words than learners receiving L2 glosses. Word retention was measured after one week. Likewise, Hulstijn et al. (1996) found superior word retention, which was assessed within one hour of the treatment, for L1 glosses as compared to a dictionary access and an incidental acquisition group. Further exploring the effectiveness of glosses on word retention, Watanabe (1997) revealed that readers in the gloss condition outperformed readers whose text was semantically enhanced with appositives. He assessed word knowledge immediately after the treatment and two weeks later. In turn, two other studies (Hulstijn and Trompetter, 1998; Laufer and Hulstijn, 2001) found that when students engaged in an output task, such as writing a composition, they remembered significantly more words than readers who processed a text enhanced with glosses. However, the researchers were only concerned with word learning, neglecting reading as a tool to simultaneously provide semantically and pragmatically rich lexical input and present content information.
In order to address strengthening and long-term retention of lexical FMCs, researchers have compared interventions based on various theoretical constructs to explain why some word tasks are more effective than others. A majority of these interventions are based on Craik and Lockhart's (1972) levels of processing depth theory. It states that the chance that a new lexical or grammatical form will be stored in long-term memory is determined by the shallowness (sensory properties, such as orthographic and phonemic features) and depth (semantic-associative features) with which it is initially processed. Hulstijn (1992) proposed that a higher degree of "mental effort", through inferring and hypothesis-testing of word meaning, leads to better word retention. In a series of studies (see below) he found support for his claim. Hulstijn (2001) further attributed long-term retention of words to more elaborate processing. The level of elaboration increases as learners pay attention to more aspects of word meaning, such as morphophonological, orthographic, prosodic, semantic and pragmatic features, and interword relations. Fraser (1994 and 1999) reported that when readers engaged in more elaborate processing, through inferencing plus consulting, for example, word retention was higher than when readers engaged in less elaborate processing strategies. Additionally, Wesche and Paribakht (2000) showed that effective vocabulary learning involves the analysis of the meaning and the grammtical function of the new word.
Another line of investigations is based on the effect of generative processing. Generative models (e.g., Wittrock, 1974) claim that learning and retention are improved when learners create connections between old and new knowledge by using, reformulating and elaborating the new information. Lexical studies to date have confirmed that more generative processing results in increased word gain (Joe, 1995; Joe, 1998; Zaki and Ellis, 1999). Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) integrated and further expanded on these theoretical notions by introducing the construct of "involvement load". It describes the motivational and cognitive dimensions of a task that stimulate word processing to establish and retain FMCs. A perceived need for a word, along with the search for its meaning, and subsequent evaluation of whether a correct meaning and syntactic function were assigned, are its central components. Tasks that stimulate all three cognitive processes are most likely to lead to the establishment and retention of FMCs.
In order to stimulate cognitive mechanisms that lead to robust FMCs, Hulstijn (1992) introduced MCGs. Unlike "normal" glosses which present an L1 translation or L2 synonym in the margin of the text, MCGs display multiple L1 word meanings from which the reader chooses. This also reduces the likelihood of establishing an incorrect FMC as compared to unenhanced reading.2 At the same time, MCGs engage the reader in the cognitive process of evaluation, which is claimed to foster word retention (Laufer and Hulstijn, 2001). That is, the provision of MCGs in the margin of a text appears to be an intervention that triggers a higher involvement with a word than "normal" glosses. In a series of studies, Hulstijn observed that MCGs resulted in more word gain than L2 synonym glosses, but also that L1 glosses resulted in more word gain than MCGs. In addition, the study showed that a significant number of participants in the multiple-choice condition chose a wrong meaning. Hulstijn suggested that four alternatives might be too many. In a follow-up study Watanabe (1997) provided only two alternatives in the multiple-choice condition. He found no significant difference in word gain between the multiple-choice and the L2 synonym gloss condition. However, both gloss enhancement groups outperformed the incidental group immediately after the reading task and one week later. Likewise, Rott, Williams and Cameron (2002) showed that MCGs led to significantly more word gain immediately after the reading task as compared to the no-gloss control condition. The superior gain was, however, not retained over five weeks. In a qualitative investigation Rott and Williams (2003) further explored readers' processing mechanisms of TWs that were presented with MCGs at the first occurrence and unglosssed during three consecutive occurrences. The study revealed that readers searched for concrete word meaning and evaluated the meaning choice in the subsequent contexts. That is, additional encounters with the TWs increased the involvement load.
To summarize, the above outlined studies have not shown consistent support for "normal" glosses and MCGs on long-term retention of FMCs. Interpretations of the results have often been speculative because the mostly quantitative investigations did not account for and elicit L2 readers' word processing behavior. Consequently, this line of research bears further investigation. Specifically, the current qualitative investigation sought to develop further insights into the motivational and cognitive factors – need, search and evaluation – which Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) describe as indicators for the retention or words. Additionally, the increased quantity of word processing, i.e., processing a new word repeatedly in one or multiple texts, has been found to be conducive to incidental word learning (for a review, see Horst, Cobb and Meara, 1998; Paribakht and Wesche, 1999; Rott, 1999; Waring and Takaki, 2003; Zahar, Cobb and Spada, 2001). Nevertheless, most of the above mentioned studies focused on L2 readers' word processing strategies, i.e., the quality of word processing, during the first encounter but did not record word processing strategies during repeated encounters with the same word. Hulstijn (2001) has emphasized that both the quantity and the quality of word processing are crucial indicators for word retention. He stressed the importance of elaborative rehearsal3 of words during repeated encounters suggesting that "[h]igh quality information processing when a word is first encountered as such is not predictive of retention outcomes" (Hulstijn, 2001: 276). Therefore, the incentive of the current study was to record not only the quality and quantity of word processing strategies as readers established FMCs during the first encounter with a new word but also during subsequent encounters. Thereby, the investigation assessed the effect of exposure frequency on strengthening of FMCs. Finally, the current study sought to determine the effect of word interventions on text comprehension. Ideally, word interventions not only promote word learning but also text comprehension, or at least they should not interfere with the comprehension process.
The present study addressed the following questions about word processing strategies triggered through multiple-choice glosses (MCGs) and single-translation glosses (STGs) during L2 reading:
Qualitative characteristics were determined by recording the type of cognitive processing strategies and resources (e.g., semantic, linguistic, and background knowledge) participants used to make meaning of the TW. Quantity of interaction with the TW was determined by the number of processing strategies and resources used to make meaning of the word during each encounter. For further details see the "analysis and scoring" section below.
The participants were 10 native speakers of English learning German as a foreign language. Learners were enrolled in an intensive combined third and fourth semester class during the summer semester at a large, public university in the Midwest of the United States. All students had taken their first and second semester of language study during regular semesters in the same program. The regular class instructor informed the researcher that the volunteers were indeed motivated but not equally successful students. Based on their last exams, grades ranged between A and C. No standardized German language test was available to stratify participants further.
The input passage was an adaptation of Shade for Sale: A Chinese Tale (Dresser, 1994; see Appendix A). The tale was adopted for the study for the following reasons: a) it provided a clearly developed story line which was easy to follow; b) the story was culturally neutral – text comprehension would not depend on culturally specific knowledge; and c) the text length (535 words) was appropriate for third semester learners. Some modifications were made: several passive voice instances were changed to active voice, the main characters were given names in order to clearly distinguish between them, and some words were changed to accommodate four repetitions of the TWs. To further ensure comprehension, seven words (besides the TWs) were glossed. A native speaker translated the text into German.
Each TW occurred four times in the passage.4 Four encounters allowed analyzing how the intervention tasks (see below) influenced the processing of subsequent TW encounters. More occurrences would have been unnatural for the size of the input passage. The TWs were the following concrete nouns: Kaff5 (village), Eiche (oak tree), Laken (sheet), Vieh (livestock). Low frequency items and colloquialisms were chosen to increase the likelihood that the TWs were completely unknown for the participants.
The TWs were part of the main ideas, and pertinent for overall text comprehension. However, not every encounter of each TW was of equal importance to the overall story line. Modifying the text so that contexts with the TWs would have been of equal importance would have disturbed the natural flow of textual propositions. While the context of the first occurrence of each TW did not provide explicit clues to its meaning, contexts two, three, and four provided contextual clues. For example the first context of the TW "Eiche" (oak tree) simply describes that the rich man built a villa next to a big oak tree. In the following three contexts the reader finds out that the rich man waters the oak tree, that it gives shade, and that people rest in the shade under the tree.
Independent Variables. All participants read the same text and were randomly assigned to one of the two treatment conditions:
1. Multiple-choice gloss (MCG) condition.
2. Single-translation gloss (STG) condition.
Dependent variables. Word gain. To assess immediate word knowledge gain and retention (four weeks later), two vocabulary tests were administered each time. Learners first completed a Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) (Table 1) adapted from Wesche and Paribakht (1996). Minor changes were made from the original wording.6 "The scale ratings range from complete unfamiliarity, through recognition of the word and some idea of its meaning, to the ability to use the word with grammatical and semantic accuracy in a sentence" (Wesche and Paribakht, 1996: 29). In addition, to develop a clearer picture about receptive word knowledge gain, learners received a word recognition test (WRT) that presented the TW and multiple choices of word meanings. This included the correct TW meaning, two distracters that were semantically distinct from the TW, and a "don't know" option (Appendix B). This last option was added to minimize the chance of random correct responses. The distracters were the same as those used for the MCGs in the treatment passage.
Table 1: Adapted Version of the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale
Text comprehension. Before starting the reading treatment, participants were informed that after completing reading the text they would have to retell, in writing, the content of the passage in as much detail as possible. This was done to ensure that the students focused on processing the text for meaning during the task. Comprehension was assessed in their L1 (English) so that their limited L2 production skills would not interfere with demonstrating text comprehension (e.g., Lee, 1986).
Strategy use. In order to assess participants' cognitive mechanisms that lead to establish FMCs and to strengthen these FMCs, the readers' use of processing strategies was recorded. Think-aloud protocols do not provide direct access to cognitive mechanisms, but the interpretation of participants' word processing strategies offers indirect insights into their mental activities. Therefore, strategy categories and criteria for analysis were established (see "analysis and scoring" below). Cognitive mechanisms and processing strategies are used interchangeably in this study.
Analysis and scoring. All think-aloud protocols were transcribed and analyzed for qualitative and quantitative processing behavior. For each reader a strategy profile was created based on the following categories:
a) Qualitative analysis: Participants' processing characteristics were recorded as they established initial FMCs during the first glossed encounter and as they (potentially) strengthened the connections during subsequent processing. For the analysis Laufer and Hulsijn's (2001) motivational and cognitive information processing mechanisms were used: need, search and evaluation. "Need" referred to the L2 readers' motivation to comprehend the TW. "Search" referred to the readers' attempt to assign a meaning to the TW. "Evaluation", in turn, entailed the readers' decision process whether a chosen word meaning made sense in a given context. That is, readers confirmed or disconfirmed a meaning. As suggested by Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) it was assumed that tasks that stimulate all three cognitive processes have a higher "involvement load" and are more likely to lead to the establishment and retention of FMCs than tasks with a lower involvement load. Additionally, since the TWs were encountered in a text, knowledge sources, which readers used to process the TWs, were recorded. As a starting point, word inferencing and reading strategy categories from previous studies (e.g., Block, 1986; Carrell, 1989; Lee and Wolf, 1997; Rott, 2000; Young and Oxford, 1997) were used. Reading strategy research makes a distinction between text-based strategies which focus on reading as a decoding process (local strategies, such as breaking lexical items into parts, use of cognates, referring to gloss) and learner-based strategies which focus on reading as a meaning-getting process (global strategies, such as using background knowledge, anticipating content, recognizing text structure, integrating information, reading ahead). These categories seemed useful to determine whether and how learners dealt with the TWs.
b) Quantitative analysis: To assess the effect of frequency of interaction between the reader and each TW the number of strategies each reader used to process the TWs were tallied. This scoring procedure was based on the following position: more strategy use was related to processing multiple word aspects, thereby resulting in richer word encoding and strengthening of the FMC. Likewise, the processing of multiple word aspects potentially resulted in a higher involvement load. Unfortunately, the length of interaction with a TW could not be measured.
c) Attention to non-glossed TWs: To assess whether readers noticed the reoccurrence of the TW after the first glossed encounter, the transcripts were coded as follows: (a) for the attempt to provide an English equivalent, (b) for a comment about comprehension or miscomprehension of the TW, or (c) when learners noticed the importance of the TW for the passage by rereading it or making a comment about its reoccurrence.
Word gain. The individual categories (a-e) of the VKS were added up separately. A correct response received one point; an incorrect response received a score of 0. Scoring the WRT was done as follows: correct answers received a score of 1, incorrect answers received a sore of 0.
Text comprehension. L2 readers' text comprehension was measured with an L1 recall task. The first goal was to determine whether participants had comprehended the basic event structure of the story. For that reason 20 native speakers of English were asked to retell the story in writing. The analysis of the retells resulted in a set of 14 chronologically ordered propositions (Appendix C). Interrater reliability in coding these propositions was 100%. The second goal was to determine how many supporting details readers comprehended. Therefore, the researcher established another set of eight propositions (Appendix C). A correctly recalled proposition was awarded one point, incorrectly rewarded propositions 0. The scores for main ideas and supporting ideas were added up separately. Two raters scored the recall protocols gaining an interrater reliability of 96% for main ideas, and 97% for supporting ideas.
Instrumentation. To elicit L2 readers' processing behavior a concurrent, unobtrusive think-aloud procedure (Ericsson and Simon, 1993) was used. Participants were asked to verbalize everything that was going through their mind while making sense of the passage. Only when students paused in verbalizing their thoughts did the researcher intervene and request the participants to continue to say everything aloud. This happened only four times with two different participants. The entire session was tape-recorded. Even though introspection may interfere with learners' usual reading behavior, it is one of very few methods available for collecting data on mental processing strategies (Jourdenais, 2001). The current study followed the suggestion that a training session on how to "think aloud" may improve the reliability and validity of this method (Wesche and Paribakht, 2000).
Phase 1: During the third week of the semester volunteers signed the participation agreement and completed the vocabulary checklist test. To ensure that the chosen TWs were unfamiliar to all participants, a vocabulary pretest was administered. Students received a list of 20 lexical items including the four TWs and 16 distracters. Students were asked to explain what each word meant, even if they had only a vague idea, and to skip only the words that they did not know at all. None of the participants claimed any knowledge of the TWs.
Phase 2: One week later participants engaged in the treatment: first, learners received the treatment passage without glosses and were asked to read the text silently. This allowed participants to focus their uninterrupted attention on the content of the passage. Next, the researcher demonstrated what it means to think aloud by thinking aloud while performing a mathematical multiplication task. This was followed by a short practice passage for the participants. Then, learners received the treatment passage with the glosses and engaged in a think-aloud procedure. To ensure that students read the text for meaning, they were informed that they would have to retell the content of the text after the think-aloud. Students did not know that they would receive two vocabulary tests (VKS and WRT) immediately after the recall. Alternating the administration of multiple-choice and translation gloss texts randomized the treatment.
Phase 3: Four weeks after the treatment the same vocabulary tests were administered unannounced.
Analysis and results
A detailed summary of MCG and STG readers' word processing strategies is presented in Table 2. Each participant's strategies for all 16 TW encounters were tallied. The think-aloud protocols revealed that participants used only a small variety of strategies. Especially readers who encountered the first TW with a STG used strategies only minimally. The word processing strategies fell into two categories: meta-cognitive word processing behavior (MP) and semantic elaboration (SE).
Meta-cognitive processing included strategies that indicated noticing of the occurrence of the lexical form and monitoring of word comprehension. It did not involve any meaning making or word inferencing processes. Readers used three meta-cognitive processing strategies: the glosses, monitor, and verbalization. Referring to the glosses in the margin of the text was counted as a meta-cognitive strategy during the first glossed TW encounter only. This was done because the need for the TW was imposed externally through the bolded TW as compared to an intrinsically perceived need to comprehend the TW during a non-glossed encounter (see semantic-elaborative processing strategies). Readers monitored their comprehension of the TW by mentioning that they were unsure of its meaning saying "I am not sure", for example. Few readers verbalized the TW in German by inserting it in a mostly English reconstruction of the text. They did not attempt to provide an English equivalent, such as "I come from the … a … Kaff from the other side of the mountain." Both, monitoring and verbalizing, strategies required at least the processing of orthographic aspects of the TWs.
Semantic elaboration strategies included accessing and retrieving existing knowledge sources in order to assign a meaning to the TW, such as the use of the context, a synonym, and background knowledge. Likewise, referring to the gloss during the non-glossed encounters (occurrence 2, 3, and 4) was counted as semantic-elaborative processing because it showed the readers' intrinsic need and subsequent search for the meaning of the TW. When searching for meaning in the context of the TW, readers identified and utilized words in the immediate environment, looked at a previous sentence for semantic clues, or used clues from the subsequent TW encounter. One reader, for example, inferred the correct meaning of the TW "Kaff" (village) during the third encounter verbalizing "he thought about moving into a different shack. OK, I think this is a village. Oh, so can I change the gloss up here?" A few times readers accessed their existing knowledge sources retrieving a synonym of the English gloss. For example, one reader used blanket during the third encounter of the TW "Laken" instead of sheet, which was the translation provided in the gloss. Some readers also accessed their background knowledge to make meaning of the TW and the textual proposition. The following reader used context clues and her background knowledge about taking care of a tree to disambiguate between the possible meanings provided through the MCG.
This is my Eiche. I guess that would be river or wall oh no water so that makes sense river. I ... I care for it myself. I give it water. Oh tree, its tree. Ok, so I sit under it. Ok, then gehört mir auch Schatten oh shade.
Yet, in some instances the use of background knowledge led readers to misinterpret the proposition and choose the incorrect gloss option. The following reader chose relatives for the TW "Vieh" (livestock) because it fit into the context of family in her discourse model. She explained:
Oh, before the poor man was alone but after some time he made friends and sogar deren Vieh. I don't know. Well, perhaps relatives because he became like family. They all come in the place of the poor man and rest.
From the above samples it becomes clear that the need, search, and evaluation strategies of semantic-elaborative processing led to more elaborative word processing and therefore a higher involvement load (Laufer and Hulstijn, 2001) than meta-cognitive processing.
Additionally, Table 2 presents the number of times readers skipped TWs and the number of times they simply verbalized the English equivalent of the TW without any hesitation. That is, when they transferred the word meaning they had gained during a previous encounter to the current context.
Table 2: Strategy use of MCG Readers and STG Readers Across the Four TW Encounters
What are the qualitative word processing characteristics triggered through multiple-choice and the single-translation glosses?
Research question one sought to record the characteristics (quality) of readers' processing mechanisms triggered by MCGs and STGs. This allowed further insights into the process of establishing initial FMCs through such glosses. The data analysis revealed that MCG readers processed the TWs in a qualitatively different way than STG readers in that they integrated meta-cognitive (58%) and semantic-elaborative (42%) knowledge sources (Table 3) to establish a FMC. MCGs clearly triggered readers to rigorously evaluate the provided gloss choices by using background knowledge, context and hypothesis-testing strategies – a notion predicted for MCGs by Hulstijn (1992). Some readers chose a gloss option after testing several meanings in the context. For example, one reader tried out two meanings of the TW provided in the MCG, used the immediate context to disconfirm and then to confirm her initial hypothesis about the TW meaning:
There lived rich man in a village. I think that might be shack. Er baut a villa so not shack. Yeah village.
In turn, STG readers established initial FMCs using meta-cognitive strategies only. They briefly glanced at the gloss and integrated the meaning in their reconstruction of the proposition (100%).
With regard to establishing a correct FMC, STG readers were at a clear advantage as they all used the provided glosses. MCG readers were less successful with establishing correct FMCs. In five instances readers chose the wrong gloss option, one reader skipped one of the TWs altogether, and in three instances readers misinterpreted the context and inferred an incorrect word meaning (Table 2). This main drawback of MCGs has been mentioned repeatedly (e.g., Hulstijn, 1992). In fact, MCGs did not always trigger readers' evaluation of the provided gloss options to determine the correct word meaning. Occasionally, readers immediately perceived one particular meaning of the gloss options as plausible in a particular context, an observation also made by Frantzn (2003) and Rott and Williams (2003). One reader was instantly satisfied with her discourse model though her choices were all incorrect:
There once lived a righteous man in a small valley, I guess. He possessed a villa next to a big wall. In the summer one day in the summer he sat in this shade. On a particularly hot summer day came a man a strong man along the street and sat in a shaded place. He laid there his bag he laid the bag on the floor and laid himself next to it.
Table 3: Total Number of Strategies used by MCG and STG Readers
What are the qualitative word processing characteristics during subsequent TW encounters?
Research question two assessed whether readers noticed the reoccurrence of the TWs (three more times) and attended to the meanings. In cases where readers were not able to retrieve the TW meaning, did they perceive the need to search for and evaluate meaning? In other words, did they rehearse the TW meaning after an initial FMC was established during the first encounter and thereby strengthen the FMC?
Overall, readers in both conditions, STG and MCG, demonstrated that they noticed the reoccurrence of a majority of the TWs by retrieving its English equivalent, by verbalizing the TW in German, or by mentioning a lack of comprehension (Table 2). Thereby, readers minimally processed orthographic word aspects. Nevertheless, in some instances readers skipped a TW without verbalizing it or its meaning. While there seemed to be a decreasing trend of skipping for the MCG group across the three non-glossed encounters (3, 3, 1 respectively), the data indicated an increasing trend for the STG group (1, 5, 6 respectively). Likewise, the two conditions showed opposite tendencies regarding readers' access from memory and use (verbalization in English) of FMCs. This time, STG readers' retrieval and transfer of TW meanings decreased (14, 11, 9 respectively), while MCG readers' access and transfer increased (4, 13, 15 respectively) across the three encounters. That is, unlike the STG group, MCG readers seemed to perceive the need to assign a concrete meaning to the non-glossed TWs. Thereby, MCG readers allocated attentional resources to the TW and rehearsed its meaning. Accordingly, MCG readers displayed intratextual awareness of the reoccurrence of the TW by referring to the previous proposition containing the TW. One reader said aloud "Oh, what was that [up here]? Oh, these are livestock."
Moreover, readers in the MCG condition actively searched for TW meaning and reevaluated initial FMCs during consecutive encounters. Some instances indicate that readers had kept the multiple-choice options of the gloss in working memory as they processed subsequent encounters. One reader demonstrated intratextual awareness of the reoccurrence of the TW verbalizing "Laken … sheet, pillow, bag. I would say sheet again." Participants changed incorrect FMCs or filled in partial FMCs with additional semantic information. Particularly during the second and third encounter, they established or changed their initially wrong meaning assignments for nine out of 20 TWs (Table 4). One reader's discourse model further demonstrates the process of word learning for the TW "Vieh" (livestock). She had assigned the meaning "relatives" at the previous encounter. Multiple context clues pertaining to animals, though, made her change her understanding of the word:
Bringt kein Vieh in meine Villa. Don't bring relatives into villa, since there was Schwein this might be livestock so now he is saying don't bring livestock into my house, oh maybe not. Es macht alles schmutzig und frisst meine Möbel. Oh yes, it makes everything dirty.
During the fourth encounter MCG readers accessed 15 out of 20 TWs correctly (Table 2).
The think-aloud protocols of readers in the STG condition indicated the opposite word processing trend across the three additional encounters. Even though their use of semantic-elaborative strategies increased from 0 to 11% they continued using mainly meta-cognitive strategies. Their decreasing trend in access and transfer of TW meanings resulted in verbalizing only 9 out of 20 TWs during the fourth encounter (Table 2).
Table 4: Changes in TW Meaning Assignments Through Repeated Encounters
How many times do L2 readers interact with the TWs?
Research question three concerned the quantity of interaction with individual TWs in each gloss condition. More specifically the question assessed the number of times readers dealt with a TW and in so doing assessed the amount of time a TW remained in working memory (WM). It was assumed that the longer or more often a TW is active in WM the higher the chances for the word to become intake and be stored in the mental lexicon. To answer this question the number of strategies used by the STG or the MCG group were tallied. The baseline for this analysis was 80 instances for each group (4 TWs x 4 occurrences x 5 participants). A higher score indicated that participants used more than one strategy as they processed individual TWs, a below baseline score indicated that readers did not verbalize any interaction with some of the TWs. The protocols revealed that individual TWs were quantitatively more often processed in the MCG than in the STG condition. Unlike STG readers, who dealt with the TWs 68 times, MCG readers dealt with them 103 times (number of strategies used plus the number of transfers) as shown in Table 2. In particular, the quantity of interaction with the TWs differed during the first glossed encounter. The MCG group used almost twice as many strategies as the STG group, i.e., they used an average of two strategies to establish a FMC (38 versus 20, Table 2).
What is the effect of the gloss condition (multiple-choice or single-translation) on the robustness of entries in the mental lexicon?
Table 5 presents the individual MCG and STG readers' word acquisition and retention scores that were collected immediately after the reading treatment and four weeks later. Three levels of word gain are reported from the VKS: Category (b) responses indicated that readers recognized the word form but not its meaning; and Categories (c) and (d) indicated that the reader had gained receptive knowledge and could provide an English equivalent. Responses on these two categories were combined because most of the participants' answers were alike on both items. They did not make a distinction between their levels of certainty of word knowledge ("I think" versus "I know"). Responses on category (e) indicated that participants had gained additional syntactic knowledge about the TW by using it in a sentence in German. None of the participants checked category (a) indicating that they had not seen the word before. The second measure (WRT) further assessed receptive word gain providing retrieval cues in the form of multiple choices. In that way it demanded more word knowledge than category (b) on the VKS but less than category (c/d).
Regarding establishing initial FMCs, findings demonstrate that readers in both conditions performed very much alike on the immediate posttest (Table 5). For the majority of the TWs, readers had gained receptive word knowledge by producing a translation of the TW in English (VKS level c/d; 60% in the MCG and 55% in the STG condition) and demonstrated syntactic knowledge by using the word in a sentence (VKS level e; 55% in the MCG and 45% in the STG condition). With the additional provision of multiple meaning options readers reached a ceiling effect of 90% (MCG) and 95% (STG) of correct answers (WRT).
Retention scores, however, suggest a different effect of the two gloss conditions on developing robust entries in the mental lexicon. Those readers who had processed the TWs in the MCG condition retained more and more complete FMCs than those in the STG condition. A "more complete" FMC was operationalized as a higher score in categories (c/d) and (e) on the VKS. The VKS scores indicate that the FMCs established while processing STGs were less robust than those of the MCG group. STG participants' level of word knowledge decreased over four weeks: their ability to provide an English translation of the TW decreased notably (category c/d; from 55% to 20%) and they retained minimal syntactic knowledge (category e; a decrease from 45% to 10%). For most of the TWs STG readers were only able to indicate that they had seen that word before. Therefore, category (b) scores increased over four weeks. The decrease in word knowledge was less drastic in the MCG condition. The knowledge of syntactic word aspects dropped from 55 to 45%. Receptive abilities to produce a L1 translation of the TW dropped from 60% to 55%.
A similar trend of word knowledge retention was noticeable on the WRT measure, where multiple meaning options were available. While MCG readers' WRT scores were robust over four weeks (90%), STG readers' FMCs were weaker and dropped notably from 95% to 70%.
Table 5: Vocabulary Acquisition and Retention Scores for MCG and STG Readers
What is the effect of the gloss condition (multiple-choice or single translation) on text comprehension?
Research question five assessed the effect of the two word-focused interventions (STG and MCG) on text comprehension to determine whether either one of the glosses fostered or interfered with the comprehension process. Table 6 reports STG and MCG readers' comprehension scores of main ideas as well as supporting ideas. Overall, text comprehension was low for both groups. Participants in both conditions comprehended the main ideas of the input passage at around the same level (63% versus 57%). Regarding comprehension of supporting ideas, MCG readers clearly outperformed STG readers (70% versus 33% respectively).
Table 6: L1 Retell Scores for MCG and STG Readers
This differential effect of gloss type on readers' text processing behavior can be explained by analyzing case-study data. The following excerpts from the readers' text reconstructions further illustrate the relationship between the processing of the text and the type of gloss enhancement. Although each STG reader's approach to reconstructing the passage showed individual differences, one thing that emerged from the data is that readers applied minimal processing resources to comprehend the text and the TWs. These readers engaged in largely linear reading behavior and were satisfied with comprehending chunks of the text, in particular, the immediate context of the TWs. Participants frequently omitted details, such as the exact meaning of other verbs in the propositions containing the TWs (e.g., lived, built, sat), and information that did not pertain to the gloss, (e.g., sitting in the sun every day and seeing a shady place). The following STG reader was satisfied with understanding chunks:
In a small village. The village is by a large tree. In the summer one day em Schatten ok when summertime came a man in the street er legt dort sein sheet and lays it on the floor.
A salient characteristic of MCG readers' discourse models was that they consistently monitored their text comprehension by verbalizing "maybe" and "don't know". Monitoring and the uncertainty of correct gloss choice led these readers to interact more with the text than the STG group. MCG readers did not reconstruct the text in a linear word for word, sentence for sentence fashion. Instead, their discourse models show that they revisited propositions and changed their initial understanding of a proposition. One MCG reader focused first on the local context of the TW, vocalized that she expected to gain additional information by reading further, and then reconstructed the passage:
I am not sure about Kaff and Eiche yet. So, I will read a little further and see whether I can figure out what they mean. ok Laken perhaps sheet? A rich man ... oh once upon a time a rich man lived in a small village, maybe. Er baute eine Villa neben eine grosse Eiche. Maybe he lived in a small maybe village so maybe that was Kaff or valley next to a large river, maybe. In summer every day I am not sure about Schatten. Every day in summer he does something. And on one particularly hot summer day he comes up to a poor man in the street along ... I am not sure about that part. He is laying by the ground ein Laken maybe sheet.
Discussion and conclusion
The current study focused on the observable word learning characteristics of ten L2 readers who encountered unfamiliar words in a text that was either enhanced with STGs or MCGs. The think-aloud data recorded the quality as well as the quantity of learning mechanisms induced through the two lexical input enhancements as participants established an initial FMC. In particular, the study sought to identify the type of knowledge sources participants drew on to assign meaning to the same word during repeated encounters. That is, the aim of the qualitative data analysis was to develop further insights into the nature of processing mechanisms that fostered the strengthening of lexical FMCs and the assimilation into the mental lexicon. The starting point for the qualitative analysis was the motivational and cognitive factors, need, search, and evaluation, which Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) have described as indicators for long-term word learning. The quantitative analysis further explored the L2 readers' frequency of interaction with a word during individual encounters. Furthermore, the data analysis shed light on the intricate relationship between the processes and products of reading a text for meaning and word acquisition.
One main goal of the current investigation was to assess the effect of the two gloss interventions on word acquisition and retention and to link the results to the participants' word processing behavior. Both types of glosses triggered essential learning mechanisms. Readers' need for word meaning was triggered externally through the bolded TW in the text. As a result readers noticed (Schmidt, 2001) the orthographic representation of the word and selectively attended (Gass and Selinker, 2001) to its semantic meaning provided in the form of a gloss in the margin. Consequently, in both conditions participants established initial FMCs as measured immediately after the reading treatment – a finding also reported in Watanabe (1997) and Hulstijn (1992). However, unlike in Watanabe's study, results from the delayed posttest corroborated predictions based on the involvement load hypothesis (Laufer and Hulstijn, 2001). Readers who read the text enhanced with MCGs retained (four weeks after the treatment) notably more word knowledge than readers in the STG condition. That is, FMCs triggered through MCGs not only resulted in more robust entries in the mental lexicon but also in the encoding of more word aspects (the ability to use the word in a sentence, translate it into English, and recognize its meaning). In contrast, after processing a word in the STG condition, readers' ability to use the word in a sentence, supply the English equivalent, or recognize the meaning from multiple options decreased considerably over four weeks. This suggests that even though both gloss interventions triggered noticing and attention to meaning, MCGs triggered additional learning mechanisms that fostered word retention. The think-aloud data provided considerable evidence for distinct processing patterns in the two gloss conditions not only while readers processed the TWs during the glossed encounter but also during subsequent unenhanced encounters. These findings corroborate Laufer and Hulstijn's (2001) claim that different intervention tasks induce a different involvement with a new word.
The current data analysis exemplified how MCGs stimulated elaborative processing behavior, and expands our understanding of the evaluation function of the involvement load hypothesis. MCG readers engaged in inferencing and hypothesis-testing strategies referring to the gloss, using familiar words in the context of the TW and their background knowledge. This process of evaluating different meaning options strongly suggests that readers rigorously processed multiple word aspects, shifting attentional resources between the TW (orthographic and syntactic properties), the gloss (semantic meaning) and textual clues (comparing the semantic clues of other words and the TW). That means that words were processed elaboratively (Hulstijn, 2001). It seems likely that this process led readers to access and retrieve existing meanings from their German lexicon and related the new word to familiar words. Such a creation of associative links between existing knowledge sources and the form to be learned is generally considered conducive to the consolidation of a new lexical form in memory (e.g., Baddeley, 1997; Ellis, 2001; Wittrock, 1974). It can be said that this process constituted greater mental effort (Hulstijn, 1992) and a higher involvement load (Laufer and Hulstijn, (2001) than processing STGs. In addition, similarly as in Rott (2000), word retention may be linked to the integration of a variety of knowledge sources to establish associative links. The data-analysis revealed that MCG readers, who established more robust FMCs that were retained over four weeks, integrated meta-cognitive and semantic-elaborative processing strategies as they established a connection between the lexical form and its meaning. In contrast, readers in the STG condition, who established weaker connections that decreased over time, mainly used meta-cognitive strategies to process the glossed word.
The two gloss interventions seemed to induce different word processing behavior. Nevertheless, in order to better understand the differences in word retention the effect of frequency of word occurrences needs to be taken into consideration. In fact, the current findings suggest that the quality and quantity of word processing stimulated by a word intervention task may influence subsequent word processing. Thereby, these interventions may be a predictor for word retention. Three additional occurrences of each TW in the text allowed to further develop insights into how lexical FMCs were strengthened. Repeatedly allocating attentional resources to the TWs provided opportunities for strengthening the initial FMC and filling in additional semantic and syntactic word aspects. The data contained ample evidence that, unlike the STG readers, MCG readers continued to actively evaluate the initial meaning assignment and furthermore search for additional meaning clues. That way they rehearsed the TWs elaboratively. It seems this group of readers strongly benefited from the repeated hypothesis-testing effort in that FMCs developed from a weak, tentative meaning assignment to a more stable connection within four encounters. A similar search and evaluation process was reported by Rott and Williams (2003). Additionally, the evaluation of multiple meaning options seemed to stimulate the use of memory capabilities by keeping multiple word meanings in working memory. Several readers in the MCG condition recalled all three meaning options during non-glossed encounters. This rehearsal of word meaning plus an explicit decision on the most logical correct meaning may constitute processing strategies that further contributed to more robust FMCs.
Using context clues as a primary strategy to evaluate the FMC during subsequent encounters, MCG readers were to a large extent able to establish a correct FMC for the majority of the TWs. Interestingly, as in Frantzn (2003), context clues were not equally helpful for each reader. Some readers were able to assign the correct meaning during the second, others during the third or even fourth encounter. Excerpts from the think-alouds revealed that repeated encounters were essential to readers' understanding of the meaning of the TWs. The accumulation of additional textual clues allowed readers to disambiguate between the different MCG options, refine their word knowledge, or change the initial wrong meaning assignment. Nevertheless, in some instances some readers could not make use of the context clues for some TWs at all. They transferred and strengthened an incorrect word meaning especially when it appeared plausible in their discourse model. When readers were satisfied with their meaning assignment, they started transferring the gained meaning to the next encounter(s). At the same time, strategy use decreased because there was no further need to evaluate the meaning assignment. The inverse relationship between strategy use and transfer of word meanings indicates how filling in semantic information and strengthening FMCs happened across the four TW encounters (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Context, Gloss, and Transfer Strategy Use by MCG Readers
In contrast, readers in the STG condition did not experience this same search and evaluation process. It seems that STGs did not stimulate an active engagement with the TWs during non-glossed encounters. Figure 2 shows that the skipping of TWs increased as the transfer of the initial FMC decreased. This observation strongly suggests that the memory trace of the initial FMC did not strengthen across the three additional occurrences. Yet, it cannot be concluded from the transcripts that these readers did not notice the TW or that they were not able to retrieve the meaning in these instances. Nonetheless, an increase in verbalizing the TWs in German without attempting to infer the meaning indicates a lack of perceived need to assign the TWs a concrete meaning. As a result, these readers missed the opportunity to fill in additional semantic and syntactic word aspects and consolidate these aspects in the mental lexicon.
Figure 2: Skip and Transfer Strategies by STG Readers Across TW Encounters 2, 3, and 4.
This study also sought to gain further insights into the effect of frequency. SLA research, to date, has only assessed the effect of the frequency of word occurrence in a text. None of the previous lexical intervention studies have looked at the frequency of processing and interaction with an unfamiliar word in one context. Logically, if L2 readers interact with one word repeatedly in the same context, they potentially process the same range of word aspects as during word encounters in different contexts. Processing multiple word aspects in the same context has the advantage that learning may happen with fewer encounters. On the other hand, the possible disadvantage is that readers may not be able to make use of clues in one specific context. The present data revealed that readers who processed the TWs more often through search and evaluation strategies, developed more robust word encodings. Another processing feature that clearly distinguished readers in the two gloss conditions was the total number of strategies applied when dealing with the TWs. MCGs triggered the use of noticeably more strategies than the STGs. This finding further corroborates findings from Lawson and Hogben (1996). They found a strong tendency for students using more word learning strategies to recall more words than those students employing fewer strategies. Accordingly, findings suggest that the type of word intervention had a strong impact on how many times participants processed and interacted with the TWs.
Finally, the current investigation expanded our understanding of the effect of word interventions on text comprehension. This relationship has been neglected in lexical studies. A particular concern in this line of research is whether text comprehension and word learning involve complementary or conflicting cognitive mechanisms. Numerous researchers have proposed that the working memory capacity of L2 learners is limited (e.g., Barcroft, 2001; Ellis, 2001; VanPatten, 1996). Therefore, constraints may exist in the maximum amount of activation a L2 reader has available for comprehending a text and encoding new words. To the contrary, the current investigation found that participants who comprehended more details of the text also retained more words; i.e., hypothesis-testing triggered through MCGs contributed positively to both, text comprehension and word learning. In turn, STGs fostered less word gain and less comprehension of propositional details. Moreover, overall protocols of both gloss conditions showed that readers focused on reconstructing propositions containing a gloss or an initially glossed TW. That is, glossed propositions received more attention and may therefore be useful in directing readers' attention to key ideas of a text.
Summary of findings
Even though the data analysis revealed strong patterns of processing behavior, the following list of findings is merely tentative because results are based on only 10 participants.
1. A word intervention task may induce specific word processing strategies and may effect how consecutive encounters with the same word are processed.
2. Readers' perceived need to assign a concrete meaning to a new word, their search for meaning by using context and background information and the evaluation of semantic fit in the textual proposition seem to be linked to retaining more words and more word aspects. These processes may be induced by a specific lexical intervention task.
3. Search and evaluation processes seem to trigger elaborative rehearsal of multiple information sources (word, text, and learner) that may be linked to more robust word encoding in the mental lexicon.
4. Search and evaluation processes seem to also trigger the use of multiple word processing strategies during one encounter with an unfamiliar word, which, in turn, may again be linked to more robust word encoding in the mental lexicon.
5. Lexical intervention tasks may direct readers' processing of main and supporting ideas and thereby affect text comprehension. Better text comprehension may be linked to recursive reading behavior as compared to linear text processing.
Limitations and future research
The current study has also a number of limitations. First of all, regarding word processing behavior, it lacks generalizable power and only provides trends because of the small pool of participants. Second, participants read only one text and word acquisition of only four nouns was assessed. Therefore, findings cannot be extrapolated to other text types and other word classes. Third, more refined word knowledge measures need to be developed in order to gain a better understanding of partial and cumulative word gain through reading. In addition, future research needs to assess the effect of search and evaluation mechanisms on productive word knowledge gain. Likewise, more refined tests may provide further insights into the acquisition of lexical form versus the acquisition of meaning. Fourth, the study did not isolate the potential effect of exposure frequency from the effect of gloss type. Future research needs to isolate these variables and extend the subject pool to gain further insights into the effect of mental effort for word learning and retention. In particular, future research needs to compare the use of processing strategies of readers of different proficiency levels. Qian (2005), for example, found that advanced L2 readers behaved differently in their lexical inferencing task from less advanced learners. Fifth, future research needs to engage in a word item analysis to further understand the intricate relationship between the reader, the text and individual unfamiliar words. Finally, the study did not account for time on task. Participants in the multiple-choice condition spent overall more time on reading the text than participants in the STG condition. The question that arises is whether the time spend on using multiple strategies to assign a correct meaning to unknown words would be better spend by reading a unenhanced text and subsequently completing specific exercises to rehearse targeted words (Mondria, 2003).
I would like to thank my colleague Jessica Williams and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and insights.
1. Prince's (1996) claim refers to a learning stage in which a specific meaning is assigned to a particular word form as opposed to processing a word for text comprehension only. This is how he explains superior word learning of the group who learned words in isolation as compared to L2 learners who encountered the words in context. This finding though does not diminish the importance of processing words in context for developing a functional L2 lexicon.
2. Nevertheless, there is a possibility that L2 readers choose the wrong meaning, which is a major criticism of this task for word learning.
3. Elaborative rehearsal involves the formation of connections between new and already known information. This claim is based on Baddeley's (1997) research (Hulstijn, 2001: 278).
4. Only a few studies that investigated lexical interventions during reading have accounted for the frequency of TW occurrence. In general, processing a new word repeatedly in one or multiple texts has been found to be conducive to incidental word learning (for a review, see Horst, Cobb and Meara, 1998; Paribakht and Wesche, 1999; Rott, 1999; Waring and Takaki, 2003; Zahar, Cobb and Spada, 2001). Studies found a relationship between frequency of exposure and acquisition, in particular for beginning learners (Zahar et al., 2001), with sizable learning gains for words that appeared at least eight (Horst et al., 1998) or more times in a text. Four TW occurrences were chosen for this study because four naturally fit the text.
5. The TW Kaff has a negative connotation (very small village whose inhabitants are small-minded). This was neither clear from the passage nor were participants expected to gain this aspect of the meaning.
6. To adapt the VKS for the current student population category 'e' asked participants to write a sentence in their L2, which was German. The original version by Wesche and Paribakht (1996) asked participants to write a sentence in English.
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TWs were bolded only during the first glossed occurrence.
Einst lebte ein reicher Mann, Hans, in einem kleinen Kaff. Er baute eine Villa neben eine große Eiche. Im Sommer saß er jeden Tag in ihrem Schatten. An einem besonders heißen Sommertag, kam ein armer Mann, Klaus, die Straße entlang und sah den schattigen Platz Er legte sich in den Schatten und war fast eingeschlafen, als der reiche Hans rief: "Hey, hau ab! Du kannst hier nicht schlafen. Geh weiter!"
"Warum kann ich hier nicht schlafen? Ich bin sehr müde und will mich nur im Schatten ausruhen. Ich komme aus dem Kaff auf der anderen Seite des Berges und es ist zu weit, um zurückzulaufen", antwortete der arme Klaus.
"Dies ist meine Eiche. Ich kümmere mich um sie. Ich gebe ihr Wasser. Ich sitzte unter ihr. Deshalb gehört mir auch ihr Schatten", antwortete der reiche Hans.
"Also gut. Warum verkaufst du mir nicht den Schatten und behälst die Eiche", sagte der arme Klaus. "Ich habe Geld bei mir."
Als der reiche Hans das Wort "Geld" hörte, wurde er neugierig. Die beiden Männer sprachen über den Preis und einigten sich. Am Ende waren beide glücklich. Der arme Klaus wollte den ganzen Sommer im Kaff bleiben.
Jeden Tag kam der arme Klaus und ruhte sich in dem Schatten, der ihm gehörte, aus. Manchmal fiel der Schatten in den Garten des reichen Hans, und so ruhte sich der arme Klaus dort aus. Manchmal fiel der Schatten in die Stube des reichen Hans, und so ruhte sich der arme Klaus dort aus.
Anfänglich war der arme Klaus alleine, aber nach einiger Zeit brachte er Freunde und sogar deren Vieh mit. Oft kamen sie in die Stube des reichen Hans, um sich im Schatten des armen Klaus auszuruhen. Die Freunde legten sich auf das Sofa und schliefen. Die Hühner saßen unter dem Tisch, die Kühe standen in einer Ecke und die Schweine saßen vor dem Sofa. Der reiche Hans wurde sehr wütend: "Du darfst deine Freunde nicht in meine Stube mitbringen. Und bringt auch kein Vieh in meine Villa. Es macht alles schmutzig und frißt meine Möbel. Dies ist meine Villa, und ihr habt kein Recht hier zu sein!"
Der arme Klaus hörte höflich zu. Aber er erinnerte den reichen Hans daran, daß der Schatten ihm gehöre. "Ich folge meinem Schatten woauchimmer er hinfällt, sogar in deine Villa", sagte der arme Klaus.
Was sollte der reiche Hans machen? Er hatte den Schatten verkauft ohne an die Konsequenzen zu denken.
Bald darauf, als der reiche Hans mit guten Freunden zu Mittag aß, kam der arme Klaus mit zwei Freunden und deren Vieh in die Villa. Sie legten sich hin und schliefen. Die Freunde des reichen Hans waren überrascht Vieh in der Stube zu sehen. Der reiche Hans erklärte seinen Freunden, daß der arme Klaus den Schatten gekauft hatte. Die Freunde lachten über den reichen Hans und sagten, daß er dumm sei. Der reiche Hans schämte sich sehr vor seinen Freunden und dachte daran in ein anderes Kaff zu ziehen.
Nachdem der reiche Hans weggezogen war, zog der arme Klaus in die Villa. Er lebte dort viele Jahre. Alle Leute durften sich im Schatten unter der Eiche ausruhen.
Main propositions in the input passage
1. Rich man owns a tree.
1. Rich man lives in a village next to a tree.
Word Recognition Test (WRT)
Please choose the correct meaning of the following words in boldface:
About the Author
Susanne Rott teaches courses in applied linguistics and teacher education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has published studies on lexical development through reading and German grammar acquisition. | <urn:uuid:7ec21496-b5ae-4b45-a7c4-8b169c33fd49> | {
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September 29, 2017
Nanjing Vertical Forest, designed by Stefano Boeri Architetti, will be the first Vertical Forest in Asia. The two towers that make up the structure will be characterized by the alternation of balconies and green tanks, on the model of the Vertical Forest in Milan. Along the facades, 600 tall trees, 500 medium-sized trees (for a total amount of 1,100 trees from 23 local species) and 2,500 cascading plants and shrubs will cover a 6,000 sqm area. A real vertical forest, contributing to regenerate local biodiversity, that will provide a 25 tons of CO2 absorption each year and will produce about 60 kg of Oxygen per day. Nanjing Vertical Forest is a testimony of the economic and urban success of Stefano Boeri Architetti in China. Located in an area to guide the modernization process of south Jiangsu and the development of the Yangtze River area. Another sign of this increase is the project of Liuzhou Forest City, a city that fights atmospheric pollution, the first Chinese forest city. | <urn:uuid:cee114ee-e7ff-4bbc-aa3d-b8300747b9ab> | {
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Chapter II. The Epistemological Problems of the Sciences of Human Action
7. The Scope and the Specific Method of History
The study of all the data of experience concerning human action is the scope of history. The historian collects and critically sifts all available documents. On the ground of this evidence he approaches his genuine task.
It has been asserted that the task of history is to show how events actually happened, without imposing presuppositions and values (wertfrei, i.e., neutral with regard to all value judgments). The historian's report should be a faithful image of the past, an intellectual photograph, as it were, giving a complete and unbiased description of all facts. It should reproduce before our intellectual eye the past with all its features.
Now, a real reproduction of the past would require a duplication not humanly possible. History is not an intellectual reproduction, but a condensed representation of the past in conceptual terms. The historian does not simply let the events speak for themselves. He arranges them from the aspect of the ideas underlying the formation of the general notions he uses in their presentation. He does not report facts as they happened, but only relevant facts. He does not approach [p. 48] the documents without presuppositions, but equipped with the whole apparatus of his age's scientific knowledge, that is, with all the teachings of contemporary logic, mathematics, praxeology, and natural science.
It is obvious that the historian must not be biased by any prejudices and party tenets. Those writers who consider historical events as an arsenal of weapons for the conduct of their party feuds are not historians but propagandists and apologists. They are not eager to acquire knowledge but to justify the program of their parties. They are fighting for the dogmas of a metaphysical, religious, national, political or social doctrine. They usurp the name of history for their writings as a blind in order to deceive the credulous. A historian must first of all aim at cognition. He must free himself from any partiality. He must in this sense be neutral with regard to any value judgments.
This postulate of Wertfreiheit can easily be satisfied in the field of the aprioristic science?-logic, mathematics, and praxeology?-and in the field of the experimental natural sciences. It is logically not difficult to draw a sharp line between a scientific, unbiased treatment of these disciplines and a treatment distorted by superstition, preconceived ideas, and passion. It is much more difficult to comply with the requirement of valuational neutrality in history. For the subject matter of history, the concrete accidental and environmental content of human action, is value judgments and their projection into the reality of change. At every step of his activities the historian is concerned with value judgments. The value judgments of the men whose actions he reports are the substratum of his investigations.
It has been asserted that the historian himself cannot avoid judgments of value. No historian?--not even the naive chronicler or newspaper reporter?--registers all facts as they happen. He must discriminate, he must select some events which he deems worthy of being registered and pass over in silence other events. This choice, it is said, implies in itself a value judgment. It is necessarily conditioned by the historian's world view and thus not impartial but an outcome of preconceived ideas. History can never be anything else than distortion of facts; it can never be really scientific, that is neutral with regard to values and intent only upon discovering truth.
There is, of course, no doubt that the discretion which the selection of facts places in the hands of the historian can be abused. It can and does happen that the historian's choice is guided by party bias. However, the problems involved are much more intricate than this popular doctrine would have us believe. Their solution must be sought on [p. 49] the ground of a much more thorough scrutiny of the methods of history.
In dealing with a historical problem the historian makes use of all the knowledge provided by logic, mathematics, the natural sciences, and especially by praxeology. However, the mental tools of these nonhistorical disciplines do not suffice for his task. They are indispensable auxiliaries for him, but in themselves they do not make it possible to answer those questions he has to deal with.
The course of history is determined by the actions of individuals and by the effects of these actions. The actions are determined by the value judgments of the acting individuals, i.e., the ends which they were eager to attain, and by the means which they applied for the attainment of these ends. The choice of the means is an outcome of the whole body of technological knowledge of the acting individuals. It is in many instances possible to appreciate the effects of the means applied from the point of view of praxeology or of the natural sciences. But there remain a great many things for the elucidation of which no such help is available.
The specific task of history for which it uses a specific method is the study of these value judgments and of the effects of the actions as far as they cannot be analyzed by the teachings of all other branches of knowledge. The historian's genuine problem is always to interpret things as they happened. But he cannot solve this problem on the ground of the theorems provided by all other sciences alone. There always remains at the bottom of each of his problems something which resists analysis at the hand of these teachings of other sciences. It is these individual and unique characteristics of each event which are studied by the understanding.
The uniqueness or individuality which remains at the bottom of every historical fact, when all the means for its interpretation provided by logic, mathematics, praxeology, and the natural sciences have been exhausted, is an ultimate datum. But whereas the natural sciences cannot say anything about their ultimate data than that they are such, history can try to make its ultimate data intelligible. Although it is impossible to reduce them to their causes?--they would not be ultimate data if such a reduction were possible?--the historian can understand them because he is himself a human being. In the philosophy of Bergson this understanding is called an intuition, viz., "la sympathie par laquelle on se transporte a l'interieur d'un objet pour co?ncider avec ce qu'il a d'unique et par consequent d'inexprimable." German epistemology calls this act das spezifische Verstehen der [p. 50] Geisteswissenschaften or simply Verstehen. It is the method which all historians and all other people always apply in commenting upon human events of the past and in forecasting future events. The discovery and the delimitation of understanding was one of the most important contributions of modern epistemology. It is, to be sure, neither a project for a new science which does not yet exist and is to be founded nor the recommendation of a new method of procedure for any of the already existing sciences.
The understanding must not be confused with approval, be it only conditional and circumstantial. The historian, the ethnologist, and the psychologist sometimes register actions which are for their feelings simply repulsive and disgusting; they understand them only as actions, i.e., in establishing the underlying aims and the technological and praxeological methods applied for their execution. To understand an individual case does not mean to justify or to excuse it.
Neither must understanding be confused with the act of aesthetic enjoyment of a phenomenon. Empathy (Einf?hlung) and understanding are two radically different attitudes. It is a different thing, on the one hand, to understand a work of art historically, to determine its place, its meaning, and its importance in the flux of events, and, on the other hand, to appreciate it emotionally as a work of art. One can look at a cathedral with the eyes of a historian. But one can look at the same cathedral either as an enthusiastic admirer or as an unaffected and indifferent sightseer. The same individuals are capable of both modes of reaction, of the aesthetic appreciation and of the scientific grasp of understanding.
The understanding establishes the fact that an individual or a group of individuals have engaged in a definite action emanating from definite value judgments and choices and aiming at definite ends, and that they have applied for the attainment of these ends definite means suggested by definite technological, therapeutical, and praxeological doctrines. It furthermore tries to appreciate the effects and the intensity of the effects brought about by an action; it tries to assign to every action its relevance, i.e., its bearing upon the course of events.
The scope of understanding is the mental grasp of phenomena which cannot be totally elucidated by logic, mathematics, praxeology, and the natural sciences to the extent that they cannot be cleared up by all these sciences. It must never contradict the teachings of these other branches of knowledge. The real corporeal existence of the [p. 51] devil is attested by innumerable historical documents which are rather reliable in all other regards. Many tribunals in due process of law have on the basis of the testimony of witnesses and the confessions of defendants established the fact that the devil had carnal intercourse with witches. However, no appeal to understanding could justify a historian's attempt to maintain that the devil really existed and interfered with human events otherwise than in the visions of an excited human brain.
While this is generally admitted with regard to the natural sciences, there are some historians who adopt another attitude with regard to economic theory. They try to oppose to the theorems of economics an appeal to documents allegedly proving things incompatible with these theorems. They do not realize that complex phenomena can neither prove nor disprove any theorem and therefore cannot bear witness against any statement of a theory. Economic history is possible only because there is an economic theory capable of throwing light upon economic actions. If there were no economic theory, reports concerning economic facts would be nothing more than a collection of unconnected data open to any arbitrary interpretation.----------
Henri Bergson, La Pense? et le mouvant (4th ed. Paris, 1934), p. 205.
Cf. Ch. V. Langlois and Ch. Seignobos, Introduction to the Study of History, trans. by G.G. Berry (London, 1925), pp. 205-208. | <urn:uuid:7f6c15a0-a56d-4446-bba0-a3ded56c2126> | {
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Anne Calvert, Baroness Baltimore, née Arundell (1615–1649), was an English noblewoman, daughter of Thomas Arundell, 1st Baron Arundell of Wardour, and wife of Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, the founder of the Province of Maryland colony. Anne Arundel County in Maryland, USA, was named for her.
Her marriage to Lord Baltimore was in 1628, when she was 13 years old. Of the nine children the couple had, only three survived to adulthood, including Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore.
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In 1998, the Senate voted to reject a $1 increase in the federal hourly minimum wage. The vote fell along party lines, with Democrats voting in favor of the proposal and Republicans voting against it. Interview your classmates to find arguments for and against.
Last week the Senate voted to reject a $1 increase in the federal hourly minimum wage. The vote fell along party lines, with Democrats voting in favor of the proposal and Republicans voting against it. Interview your classmates to find arguments for and against the proposed increase in the minimum wage.
According to an MSNBC article Senator Kennedy, the originator of the proposal said, "Giving low-wage workers an additional 50 cents an hour can make all the difference. It can help to buy groceries or pay the rent or defray the cost of job-training courses at the local community college. The need is real. Raising the minimum wage can keep families out of soup kitchens and homeless shelters."
Opponents said an increase would hurt small businesses and cause unemployment.They said that increasing the minimum wage, "could actually have an adverse impact upon our economy" and could cause unemployment "that hurts the low-income workers the hardest." -Sen. Rod Grams, R-Minn., said before the vote.
- Wage and Hour Division: This U.S. Department of Labor page provides historical data on the value of the Federal Minimum wage (adjusted for inflation.
Take a look at some historical data on the value of the Federal Minimum wage (adjusted for inflation) at the U.S. Department of Labor page named "Wage and Hour Division ."
What has the trend been for the last several years?
In what year was the real minimum wage the highest?
1. What is the issue?
[The issue is whether to increase the minimum wage.]
2. Draw a supply and demand graph that illustrates the situation when a minimum wages is involved. Does the situation involve a price floor, a price ceiling, or neither?
[A price floor.]
3. What broad social goals should you consider as you decide how to vote on this issue?
[Some relevant broad social goals are full employment for teenagers, full employment for others, economic freedom, economic fairness, and economic equity.]
4. What are some alternate means of achieving these goals?
[Some alternatives are to raise the minimum wage, to keep the minimum wage the same, to eliminate the minimum wage, or to eliminate the minimum wage for teenagers.]
5. What are some advantages and disadvantages of each alternative? Be sure to consider who gains and who loses by each alternative.
[Minimum wages affect labor markets only when the mandated minimum wage is above the equilibrium wage. When the minimum wage is above the equilibrium wage, more people will want to work and employers will want to hire fewer workers. This causes unemployment. You can illustrate this with a supply and demand graph. Under these circumstances, teenage unemployment increases the most because employers would rather hire skilled adults than the less skilled teens when the price of labor in each case is the same or nearly the same. In general the minimum wage tends to make the broad social goal of full employment more difficult to meet. According to those who support it, the minimum wage reduces freedom but promotes fairness and equity.]
6. Would you vote to raise the minimum wage?
[People who think that they can get a job will probably favor raising the minimum wage. People who anticipate the higher minimum wage will prevent them from getting a job will probably oppose it.]
Based upon what you see in the chart:
Is an increase in the minimum wage justified? Explain.
[Answers vary. The real value of the minimum wage is significantly lower now than in past decades, so one might feel inclined to boost the wage to make its current value comparable to its value in earlier years. Another argument may be that the decision to raise the wage is always a political one, not determined by markets, thus historical data may not provide a valid basis for setting an appropriate level. The value of the minimum wage now, according to this argument, might be high, according to market standards, even if it is low in comparison with past rates.]
Imagine that you are a U.S. senator:
How would you have voted? Why?
Be the first to review this lesson!Add a Review | <urn:uuid:29650286-7047-40f2-9172-ddc032e6da8b> | {
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Insomnia is difficulty getting enough sleep or trouble sleeping without interruption. You may have difficulty falling asleep, may wake up too early, or may wake up periodically during the night. Insomnia of any kind can keep you from feeling rested and refreshed during the day. Almost all of us have episodes of insomnia at some time, but insomnia is not a short-term problem for everyone. Insomnia is classified as chronic when it happens almost every night for at least one month. Insomnia can be related to a medical or psychiatric illness, can be caused by mental stress or excitement, or can be caused by your daytime and bedtime habits.
Your habits and surroundings are the usual causes of short-term insomnia problems. Factors that contribute to insomnia can include:
- Stress or anxiety
- A change in sleeping environment (being a guest at a hotel or a relative's home)
- An uncomfortable sleeping environment (too hot, too cold, too bright, too noisy)
- An uncomfortable mattress
- Pajamas that are too tight
- Having a bed partner who snores or has disruptive sleep patterns
- Watching television, reading a book or problem-solving in your bed, so your brain associates lying down in bed without activities other than sleeping
- Eating a heavy meal before bedtime
- Taking a prescription medication that has insomnia as a side effect
- Drinking alcoholic beverages before bedtime
- Having a high intake of beverages containing caffeine (coffee, tea, cola) during the day
- Cigarette smoking
- Exercising immediately before bedtime
- Not exercising enough during the day, so you have energy to spare
- Taking a hot bath or shower before bed
- Traveling to a different time zone
- Traveling to a much higher altitude
- Shift work
Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to insomnia. Women who are pregnant may have insomnia because of hormone changes, heartburn, leg cramps or a need to urinate more frequently. In addition, the unborn baby's increasing size often makes it harder for the mother to find a comfortable sleeping position.
Chronic insomnia may be caused by a medical or psychiatric problem. Some common causes of chronic insomnia include:
- Taking a prescription medicine that has insomnia as a side effect
- Restless legs syndrome -- This disorder causes uncomfortable sensations in the legs. Symptoms can include twitching of the legs, a habit of repetitive leg movements, and leg cramps.
- Obstructive sleep apnea
Sleep apnea is a common condition. However, often the people that have this problem don't realize it. Snorers or people who are overweight may have repeated episodes in which breathing stops for 10 seconds to 30 seconds during sleep, just when the person is relaxing into deep sleep.
Sleep apnea is caused most often by relaxing the tongue and throat tissues, which can settle into a position that closes your airway. Your body reacts to sleep apnea by releasing adrenaline-like "alarm" hormones so you will awaken and resume breathing. These hormones keep you awake for periods of the night.
Symptoms of insomnia can include:
- Difficulty falling asleep
- Waking up periodically during the night
- Waking up in the early morning, but not feeling rested
- Feeling tired and irritable during the day
- Having trouble concentrating
Your doctor often can determine the cause of your insomnia by asking about your habits and sleep environment, by reviewing your symptoms, and by examining you. Your doctor may suggest that you keep a sleep diary (a log of your sleep patterns) to provide an exact record of how many hours you sleep, whether symptoms may be your trigger for awakenings, and at what times you wake up. If your doctor suspects that a medical illness is causing your insomnia, you may need additional tests. In some patients, an overnight sleep study at a sleep clinic may be necessary. During a sleep study, your brain waves, breathing pattern and oxygen levels can be monitored, and your body movements can be observed.
Insomnia may last only one or two nights, or it may continue for weeks, months or years. How long insomnia lasts depends on its cause, and on the success of lifestyle changes and treatment.
It helps to have habits that promote healthy sleep:
- Follow a regular sleep schedule. Have a routine bedtime and wake up at roughly the same hour each morning.
- Sleep in loose, comfortable clothes in a comfortable bed.
- Eliminate any sources of noise or bright lights that prevent or disrupt sleep. If noise from outside your bedroom can't be eliminated, it might help if you drown out that noise by creating a monotonous noise of your own. Use a fan, a channel with static noise on your radio, or a recording of ocean waves to make a noise that can lull you to sleep.
- Maintain a comfortable temperature in your bedroom
- Cut down on beverages containing caffeine during the day, since the stimulating effects of caffeine can last for many hours
- Avoid heavy meals before bedtime
- Eliminate alcohol, since many people experience wakefulness as the effect of the alcohol wears off
- Exercise daily, preferably early in the day
- If you read before bed, do this in a chair or in another room
- Consider sleeping in a separate bed or separate room if your partner keeps you awake
If you have chronic insomnia because of chronic pain, medical illness or psychiatric problems, seek prompt treatment for your health problem. Don't assume that insomnia is an unavoidable part of your illness.
Changes in your bedtime surroundings and habits that can promote sleep are usually the most important way to manage insomnia.
Behavioral therapies also may be used to treat some patients with insomnia. These therapies include:
- Relaxation therapy. Special techniques to quiet the mind and relax the muscles
- Sleep restriction. A program that at first permits only a few hours of sleep per night, then gradually increases the nightly sleeping time
- Reconditioning. A program that teaches the patient to associate the bed only with sleeping (and sexual activity) by having the patient go to bed only when sleepy and avoid daytime naps
If insomnia is one of the symptoms of a medical disorder, treating the underlying problem may be all that you need. For example, treating restless legs syndrome with specific medication or sleep apnea with a special mask can markedly improve quality of sleep.
Your doctor may prescribe sleeping pills for short term or occasional use. Today there are a wide variety of medications to choose from. Some act quickly and are most helpful if you have trouble falling asleep. Others have a longer duration of action when the problem is staying asleep. Many of the medications are available as generics, which tend to be much less expensive. Older people should avoid the longer acting drugs because the sedation can last much longer than eight or nine hours.
Melatonin, a dietary supplement, works for some people and not others. It has a good safety profile when used in the doses directed on the label.
Call your doctor if you are worried about sleeping problems, especially if insufficient sleep or disturbed sleep is interfering with your ability to function normally during the day. Insomnia is an urgent medical problem if sleep problems are making it unsafe for you to drive a car or to perform potentially dangerous tasks at work.
In many people with insomnia, normal sleep patterns return within a few days, especially if a lifestyle issue (stress, a habit of heavy meals before bed, a change in time zones) disappears or is modified.
In people with chronic insomnia, the outlook depends on the underlying problem. In people with obstructive sleep apnea, most experience relief when they use a nighttime nose mask that provides modest continuous air pressure through the mouth and nose. This mask must be prescribed by a doctor.
National Center on Sleep Disorders Research
National Institutes of Health
6705 Rockledge Drive
One Rockledge Centre, Suite 6022
Bethesda, MD 20892-7993 | <urn:uuid:8032d330-684e-4490-ba75-d703c5d359ca> | {
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A 250-million-year-old jaw bone found in the UK was from a sea beast 26 metres long.
Experts say the ichthyosaur, was as big as blue whales, the largest animals ever.
Dean Lomax of Manchester University said the 2016 discovery in Lilstock, Somerset, was “25 per cent larger” than a 21-metre ichthyosaur jawbone found in 2004.
Mr Lomax said: “As the specimen is represented only by a large piece of jaw, it is difficult to provide a size estimate, but by using a simple scaling factor and comparing the same bone in Shonisaurus sikanniensis, the Lilstock specimen is about 25% larger.
“Other comparisons suggest the Lilstock ichthyosaur was at least 20 to 25 metres.
“Of course, such estimates are not entirely realistic because of differences between species.
“Nonetheless, simple scaling is commonly used to estimate size, especially when comparative material is scarce.”
- GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL [email protected] | <urn:uuid:89d18139-a3cc-49c9-8c33-a9baada2755e> | {
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“Everything has to do with geography.”
– Judy Martz
88% A*-C at GCSE and 88% A-C at A Level Geography.
Only taught by specialist Geography teachers.
Fieldwork opportunities for pupils in the UK and beyond.
Geography is our most popular option subject at GCSE.
The aim of the Geography department is to give every pupil an opportunity to make sense of the world in which they live, and to understand the problems faced by the world now and in the future.
Key Stage 3
The word Geography literally means ‘writings of the earth’ and the new Key Stage 3 Geography course tells a vivid, varied and detailed story of the planet on which we live.
The course closely mirrors the revised National Curriculum and takes the student on a journey through traditional and contemporary geographical issues and places. ‘Our Home’, ‘Our Region’ and ‘Our Planet’ are the three themes covered in Years 7 to 9.
- Plate tectonics
- Continental drift
- Structure of the Earth
- Map and Atlas skills
- Human Geography – settlement, development, globalisation and production
- Field trip: Lincoln
- Weather and climate
- Natural hazards – hurricanes
- Links between people, resources and development
- Landscape shaping processes
- Fieldwork: Castleton, Peak District
- Natural hazards – earthquakes and tsunamis
- Our planet – tourism, leisure and recreation
The Departments actively promotes cross-curricular links with areas including ICT, Citizenship and PSHE.
Geography at GCSE follows the AQA syllabus.
The course allows pupils to:
- Develop and extend their knowledge of locations, places, environments and processes, and of different scales including global; and of social, political and cultural contexts.
- Gain understanding of the interactions between people and environments, change in places and processes over space and time, and the interrelationship between geographical phenomena at different scales and in different contexts.
- Develop and extend their competence in a range of skills including those used in fieldwork, in using maps and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and in researching secondary evidence, including digital sources; and develop their competence in applying sound enquiry and investigative approaches to questions and hypotheses.
- Apply geographical knowledge, understanding, skills and approaches appropriately and creatively to real world contexts, including fieldwork, and to contemporary situations and issues; and develop well-evidenced arguments drawing on their geographical knowledge and understanding.
The six areas of Geography studied in GCSE Geography are:
1. Locational Knowledge
2. Developing competence in Maps, Fieldwork and Geographical Skill
3. Place: processes and relationships
4. Physical geography: processes and change
5. People and environment: processes and interactions
6. Human geography: processes and change
The new GCSE Geography has a specific focus on the geography of the UK. However, case studies include local, national and international locations.
Topics covered include:
- Tropical Rainforests
- Urban Issues & Challenges: Rio de Janeiro
- Tropical Storms
- Extreme Weather in the UK and Climate Change
- Coastal Landscapes in the UK
- Cold Environments & UK Glacial Landscapes
- Changing Economic World
- Tectonic Hazards
- Challenge of Resource Management
There is no controlled assessment (formally known as coursework) in the new Geography GCSE. However, fieldwork experiences will be assessed in a terminal written examination in the summer of Year 11.
Fieldwork will be undertaken in a minimum of 2 contrasting locations throughout the 2 year course and possible fieldwork locations include: The Holderness Coastline, Leicestershire, The Peak District and local visits in and around Lincoln and Lincolnshire. These are likely to be day visits although the opportunity to take part in the bi-annual residential Iceland visit will remain an optional fieldwork experience (GCSE students who do not visit Iceland will not be disadvantaged in any way).
Examination of the GCSE will be by terminal examination at the end of Year 11. Pupils will sit 3 Geography examinations; one testing fieldwork skills and findings and the remaining two focusing on the taught areas of the course.
A Level Geography
Geography is a wide-ranging subject, which brings together the study of people and their environment. It relates to the many social, economic and environmental problems of the contemporary world and allows consideration of different perspectives.
Previous study of GCSE Geography at higher tier (with grade B or above) is most preferable. Pupils who have achieved a grade A or A* at GCSE Geography are more likely to be able to access the highest grades at A level.
At A Level, Geography combines particularly well with Sociology, History, Biology, Information Communication Technology, Travel & Tourism and Languages and it also complements Mathematics, English, Home Economics and Physics. Geography is a facilitating A level subject for both arts and science degree courses.
Course content and methodology
Physical Geography tends to be a concrete factual subject whereas Human Geography gives scope for discussion, argument and even disagreement! Out of the classroom, pupils will need to be prepared to spend time reading and writing notes to build up your knowledge as well as putting this knowledge to the test by answering past examination questions.
Fieldwork is an integral part of Geography A level. Geographers have a minimum of 4 days fieldwork experience in both the collection, interpretation and evaluation of data. Within the subject, fieldwork may include an investigation of settlement patterns and characteristics within the local area, river and coastal visits within the UK, major city studies and visits along with optional international field trips to Iceland and possibly even further afield.
The possible study locations are as changing and varied as the course itself and will be built in to support the curriculum delivery wherever possible.
Topics covered include:
- Water and the carbon cycle
- Landscape systems (one of: drylands, coastal landscapes and glaciated landscapes)
- Global systems and global governance (trade, development, migration and management of global resources)
- Changing place, changing places (demography, culture and society behaviour)
- Geographical skills (qualitative and quantitative information, including GIS (Geographical Information Systems)
- Fieldwork (4 days minimum across the 2-year programme.
- Personal investigation on a Geographical issue (3000-4000 word study based on fieldwork undertaken during the course, involves data collection, methodology, presentation, analysis and conclusion)
The A level Geography course is under review (by both Government and the school). We are currently deciding which examination board to follow out of either AQA or EDUCAS/WJEC. The course aims to provide a natural progression from GCSE to GCE A Level, and ensure that there is development of content, for example ‘Rivers’ and ‘Population’ whilst also offering new challenges relevant to a modern society.
Supporting Advanced Performance
The Advanced Performance Team, led by our Director of Studies, seeks to advise staff on how we – as a teaching body – can identify, monitor and experientially enhance the educational opportunities of able, gifted and talented pupils at Lincoln Minster School.
How do we cater for AP students in Geography?
Geography is followed by all pupils in KS3 and is a very popular subject at key stages 4 and 5, with many of our AP students opting to follow these courses.
With a department of experienced Geography specialists AP students are able to benefit from very high standards of teaching. Teachers within the department all provide differentiated tasks for AP students and extend their knowledge and understanding with extension tasks and leading questions wherever necessary. AP Geography students also receive personal targets which are reviewed on a regular basis.
At KS3 pupils are challenged with longer extended projects and at KS4&5 AP pupils are given regular opportunities for individual case study research to enhance and extend their understanding of the issues being studied. ICT facilities are used wherever possible to aid students in their work.
The department tries to allow students to ‘experience’ Geography and regard fieldwork visits as a crucial part of this. The department tries to offer either a day or residential visit for each year group with locations allowing coverage of both human and physical courses. Urban fieldwork in Hull city Centre, local field work in the Lincoln area, physical fieldwork along the Holderness Coastline and in the Peak District National Park are all offered at KS3 and 4.
Encouraging Advanced Performance outside of lessons
The department offers weekly optional ‘drop in’ sessions in which Geography students are able to further extend their knowledge and understanding, whether this be in general terms or course related. For example, several A2 students have benefitted from tailored support on Geography undergraduate course applications; GCSE students have gained from workshop style revision classes including coaching for achievement of A* grades.
The department stocks a large range of current up-to-date Geographical publications which are available for students to borrow and study. On top of this students are given the opportunity to subscribe to the GCSE and A Level specific publications offered to support and enhance their courses. The department also has good links with external agencies from which AP students benefit from, including the Royal Geographical Society, Geographical Association, Ordnance Survey; the Head of Department works as the Subject Network Leader for the 42 schools within the United Learning group.
The department offers a bi-annual residential trip to Iceland to complement the curriculum covered in both GCSE and A level Geography. This is open to pupils in years 10-13. Students are able to witness first-hand the effects of the most recent volcanic eruptions on the planet, see spectacular geysers in action, climb to the top of fierce waterfalls and climb through lava tubes.
Beyond Lincoln Minster School
Geography A-level is an increasingly important qualification for many careers such as Tourism, Conservation, Management, Journalism and Marketing. You will develop skills that are of value both for further education courses and demanded by many employers.
Former geographers at Lincoln Minster School have gone on to a variety of degree courses including Geography at Cambridge, Oxford, Bristol and Durham, Land Management, Business Studies, Philosophy, History, Medicine and Law.
The travel and tourism industry is dynamic, wide-ranging and fast-growing, and it offers a huge variety of employment opportunities for young people. Past students have gone on to study higher education courses in a range of related courses including Hospitality and Hotel Management, Event Management, Stadium Management and International Tourism both in this country and overseas. | <urn:uuid:5d09b014-00b7-4bc8-ab8b-54c5661acdd3> | {
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Winter is a season when many people "secretly" suffer from piles. According to the report by the National Health Insurance Service (of Korea), about 750,000 people consulted doctors for piles in 2013. It also added that winter (especially January and February) had the highest record of pile patients around the country.
What is hemorrhoids or piles?National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases at National Institute of Healthdefines hemorrhoids as "swollen, inflamed veins around the anus or lower rectum." They are either inside the anus or under the skin around the anus." People who have experience of suffering from piles or have seen someone, you would know how painful and uncomfortable it is, as it makes you difficult to stay seated. The most common symptom of hemorrhoids inside the anus is bright red blood covering the stool, on toilet paper or in the toilet bowl.
Why do we get hemorrhoids in the first place? When one has hemorrhoids during winter, it could be that the blood may pool in an external hemorrhoid, which means it results from irregular circulation of blood. This is because when the temperature drops, the capillary vessels in the body contracts, thereby blocking the blood circulation and resulting in blood clotting.
Hemorrhoids also result from straining to have a bowel movement. Or, in other cases, it is as a result of factors such as pregnancy, aging and chronic constipation or diarrhea. Especially when the weather gets chilly, people tend to stay indoors more and exercise less and drink less water. When one suffers from chronic constipation, it can aggravate the hemorrhoids symptoms.
Treatment may include warm baths and a cream or other medicine. If you have large hemorrhoids, you may need surgery and other treatments. But when you are in the initial stage where you spot blood in your toilet, simply changing your lifestyles can help you prevent from the pain of piles. Don't let yourself experience the unnecessary pain of constipation and the worse, piles. Drink the recommended 8 glasses of Antioxidant Alkaline Water per day! The small water clusters in Biocera Antioxidant Alkaline Water will not only supply minerals to help metabolism, but most importantly, it will help dissolve and excrete bodily wastes from your body, therefore preventing constipation.
Original Source: Health Chosun
Edited and Translated by BIOCERA Staff in New York
1. Clean Air by BIOCERA Forest Oxygen Air Booster
2. Clean Water by BIOCERA Hydrogen Alkaline Water Filters-Jug, Stick
3. Clean Body by BIOCERA Happy Showerhead
5. Clean Body by BIOCERA Washing Laundry Ball | <urn:uuid:247d7d22-19e7-46e8-a6cc-b5e9e2c9ce1d> | {
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Mikhail Bakhtin 1895–1975
(Full name Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin; also transliterated as Bachtin and Baxtin; also published under the names P. N. Medvedev and V. N. Voloshinov) Russian critic, essayist, and literary theorist.
The following entry provides an overview of Bakhtin's career. See also Mikhail Bakhtin Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism.
One of the most significant literary theorists of the twentieth century, Bakhtin is noted for his studies of the relationship between language, popular culture, and the history of the novel as a literary genre. Claiming that language is an evolving entity whose form and meaning are constantly molded by history and culture, Bakhtin rejected rigid systems of thought that could not account for what he termed "heteroglossia": the polyphony of languages and perspectives that make up modern society and are reflected in its art—most strikingly for Bakhtin in the novel.
Born in Orel, south of Moscow, Russia, Bakhtin grew up in Vilnius, Lithuania and the Russian port city Odessa. He attended Novorossia University and later transferred to Petersburg University, from which he graduated in 1918. Bakhtin began writing in Petrograd during the postrevolutionary regime of Joseph Stalin, publishing his early works, Formal'nyj metod v literaturovedenii (1928; The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship), Freidizm: Kriticheskii ocherk (1927; Freudianism: A Marxist Critique), and Marksizm i filosofija jazyka (1929; Marxism and the Philosophy of Language) under the names of his students Pavel Nikolaevich Medvedev and V. N. Voloshinov to avoid the censorship and possible exile or execution common to intellectuals during the Stalinist administration. Despite his precautions, Bakhtin fell into disfavor with the government and was arrested in 1929. Due to his poor health, he was exiled to the Russian territory Kazakh rather than sent to prison camp. Before leaving, however, Bakhtin published Problemy tvorčestva Dostoevskogo (1929; Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics) under his own name; the book was immediately suppressed by the government. Bakhtin lived in Kazakh from 1929 to 1936, preparing his dissertation on the works of François Rabelais. Completed in 1940, Tvorčestva Fransua Rable i narodnaja kul'tura srednevekov'ja i Renessansa (Rabelais and His World) was suppressed by officials until 1965. Bakhtin taught at the Mordovian Teachers' Training College until the beginning of World War II, when he took time off to work on another manuscript. He returned to the college after the war, where he remained until his retirement in 1961. In the 1960s and early 1970s, Bakhtin's reputation outside the Soviet Union grew with the publication of Vo-prosy literatury i estetiki (The Dialogic Imagination) in 1973, and with the increasing academic interest in deconstructionist and structuralist theory. He died in Moscow in 1975.
Bakhtin is credited with introducing several seminal concepts to the field of literary theory. Contemporary critics comment that in the earliest works Bakhtin's ideas proved to be precursors to much modern structuralist and poststructuralist theory. In The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship, Bakhtin criticized Russian Formalism's essentialist approach to literature, positing instead a sociological materialist method of study. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language outlines Bakhtin's sociohistorical theory of language, criticizing Ferdinand de Saussure's biophysiological linguistics. Freudianism: A Marxist Critique evaluates Freudian psychoanalysis from a Marxist materialist perspective. In his later works, Bakhtin expanded upon his sociohistorical focus—which he would eventually term "heteroglossia"—applying it to literature as well as linguistics. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics presents the ideas of polyphony and dialogism. Contending that Dostoevsky created a new kind of novel by giving each of his characters an individual voice unmarked by his own beliefs and opinions, Bakhtin believed that Dostoevsky's work proved that authors could escape their own reality in order to create another. The various voices of the novel together form what Bakhtin termed "dialogism"—the democratic and polyphonic intermingling of "high" and "low" forms of language and culture that reflects the heteroglot society at large. The concept of dialogism appears in most of Bakhtin's works and forms the basis of many of his literary and cultural theories. In Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin examined medieval and Renaissance European culture through an analysis of François Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel. Using the concepts of carnival and the culture of laughter—both of which helped the underclasses in medieval and Renaissance times to parody official languages and established notions of high culture, as in, according to Bakhtin, Rabelais's free display of the human body—Bakhtin asserted that the carnival liberated and empowered those in the lower strata of society. The collection of essays entitled The Dialogic Imagination outlines Bakhtin's theory of the novel and includes much of his language theory, particularly in the essay "Discourse in the Novel."
After decades of suppression in Soviet Russia, Bakhtinian theory emerged in the West in the early 1960s as a major force in modern linguistics. Characterized by an aversion to the more systematized theories of such thinkers as Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson, Bakhtin's concepts favored contextual openness and dialogue. Tzvetan Todorov and other critics have perceived this as evidence of an inherent lack of structure and therefore a major flaw in Bakhtin's work. Other critics such as Michael Holquist contend that Bakhtin's approach, while less structured than others, is not without order and reflects his conception of the novel: Bakhtin's "concept of language stands in relation to others … much as the novel stands in opposition to other, more formalized genres. That is, the novel—as Bakhtin more than anyone has taught us to see—does not lack its organizing principles, but they are of a different order from those regulating sonnets or odes." Controversy has also surrounded Bakhtin's theory of the carnival. Many scholars believe that the carnival primarily served not as a form of liberation and empowerment for the lower classes—as Bakhtin asserted—but as a practical method supported by the upper classes for defusing the frustrations of the underclasses, thus squelching real revolutionary fervor. Nonetheless, many critics have praised Bakhtin's attempts to "democratize" literature and theory, maintaining that his depiction of literature as a product and reflection of popular rather than high or elite culture is emblematic of humanistic social ideals. Stanley Aronowitz has written: "Bakhtin is the social theorist of difference, who, unlike Derrida and Foucault, gives top billing to historical agents and agency. For Bakhtin, there are no privileged protagonists, no final solutions, only a panoply of divergent voices which somehow make their own music."
Freidizm: Kriticheskii ocherk [as V. N. Voloshinov] (criticism) 1927
[Freudianism: A Marxist Critique 1976]
Formal'nyj metod v literaturovedenii [as P. N. Medvedev] (criticism) 1928
[The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship 1978]
Marksizm i filosofija jazyka [as V. N. Voloshinov] (criticism) 1929
[Marxism and the Philosophy of Language 1973]
Problemy tvorčestva Dostoevskogo (criticism) 1929
[Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, 1973]
Tvorčestva Fransua Rable i narodnaja kul'tura srednevekov'ja i Renessansa (criticism) 1965
[Rabelais and His World,...
(The entire section is 74 words.)
[In the following excerpt, Shukman surveys Bakhtin's major works and disputes the assumption that works published under the names Medvedev and Voloshinov are solely attributable to Bakhtin, due primarily to what she considers drastic stylistic differences between the three scholars.]
Outstanding among scholars who survived the decimation of the Leningrad intelligentsia in the late twenties and thirties is the literary historian, theorist and philosopher, Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin. By the time of his death at the age of eighty in 1975, Bakhtin's reputation as an original thinker in the semiotic-structuralist manner was rapidly growing, both abroad and in his native land. Eulogies from, among...
(The entire section is 4730 words.)
[A Bulgarian-born French critic, Todorov is a significant scholar in structuralist and post-structuralist theory. His writings include Littérature et signification (1967); Introduction à la littérature fantastique (1970; translated and published as The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, 1973); and Théories du symbole (1977). In the essay below, Todorov explores Bakhtin's theory of the utterance as rooted in social context.]
Bakhtin formulates his theory of the utterance on two occasions: once during the late twenties, in the texts signed by Medvedev and especially by Voloshinov; and in several works published at the end of the fifties, some...
(The entire section is 4721 words.)
[In the following essay, Wall discusses the importance of fictional characters to Bakhtin's theory of the novel, examining the notion that "heteroglossia," or "other-voicedness," is the defining characteristic of the genre.]
The present essay explores the nature of characters and narrators in the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin and his circle. Our project is a hazardous one because Bakhtin's texts do not provide us with a systematic discussion of this problem. As a consequence, it must be understood that the passages we have selected for discussion are taken out of a variety of contexts in his essays. As well, they come from all of his various intellectual periods. We have tried to systematize the...
(The entire section is 5062 words.)
[Anchor is an American historian and translator. In the following essay, he examines Bakhtin's interpretation of the carnival as a liberating experience in popular culture and shows the important role it plays in his theory of the novel.]
Mikhail M. Bakhtin is best known for his visionary conception of carnival—the carnivalesque, "carnival consciousness," "the culture of laughter"—as a model for the regeneration of time and the world and the emancipation of the human spirit: "This carnival spirit offers the chance to have a new outlook on the world, to realize the relative nature of all that exists, and to enter a completely new order of things" [Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World,...
(The entire section is 8138 words.)
[In the essay below, which was originally published in 1983, Stewart analyzes how Bakhtin's linguistic theories reject the abstract conception of language in favor of a purely social, "practical" one.]
During the period of the New Economic Policy, as Lenin sought, rather abashedly, to approach communism via a new form of "state capitalism," and as the concrete mode of peasant existence was being transformed into the abstractions of industrial labor, the contradictions between synchrony and diachrony, between "sincerity" and "irony," between insistences simultaneously upon meaning and "multivocality" were in full flower. The work of the Bakhtin school may be located within this milieu of...
(The entire section is 7442 words.)
[In the essay below, Jackson presents an overview of Bakhtin's texts and themes.]
Two citations from Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics by Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) are enough to suggest the difficulty involved in coming to any terms (in that phrase's sense of a unifying label and a temporal enclosure) with this increasingly important Russian writer. The first citation comes from his third chapter, "The Idea in Dostoevsky": "It is quite possible to imagine and postulate a unified truth that requires a plurality of consciousness, one that is, so to speak, by its very nature full of event potential and is born at a point of contact among various consciousnesses." Later, in...
(The entire section is 2957 words.)
[An American critic and educator, Emerson is the translator and editor, with Michael Holquist, of The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin (1981) and Speech Genres and Other Late Essays by Bakhtin (1987), as well as the author, with Gary Saul Morson, of Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (1990). Here, she explores problems in the application of Bakhtin's theories.]
Baxtin studies have come of age. For evidence of this one should look not at the exploding number of references, nor at the extraordinary seepage of his name into unlikely disciplines, nor even at the frequency of old themes now being newly reworked under the labels "dialogic" or...
(The entire section is 9062 words.)
[A Belgian-born American literary theorist, critic, and educator, de Man was a pioneer in establishing the theoretical movement known as "deconstruction," which he promoted in such works as Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (1971), Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust (1979), and The Resistance to Theory (1986). The discovery in 1987 of anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi articles written by de Man for a collaborationist newspaper in Belgium in the early 1940s complicated the controversy already surrounding deconstruction, with some critics noting what they considered the biased, political nature of the movement. In the essay...
(The entire section is 4177 words.)
[Holquist is an American critic, educator, and translator whose works include Dostoevsky and the Novel: The Wages of Biography (1977) and the biography Mikhail Bakhtin (1985, with Katerina Clark). In the following excerpt from his book Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World, Holquist traces fundamental issues in Bakhtin's theories of language and society.]
Mikhail Bakhtin made important contributions to several different areas of thought, each with its own history, its own language, and its own shared assumptions. As a result, literary scholars have perceived him as doing one sort of thing, linguists another, and anthropologists yet another. We lack a comprehensive term that is...
(The entire section is 10741 words.)
[In the following essay, Hoy applies Bakhtin's model of textual dialogism and the carnivalesque to an analysis of contemporary popular culture.]
Mikhail Bakhtin is acknowledged in increasingly wide circles as a sensitive observer of popular culture in its socio-historical context. His acute study of the folkloric rituals of carnival—from the phallophors of epic Saturnalia, whose role was to joke and cavort obscenely, to the rogue comedians at turn-of-the-century country fairs—uncovers a vast and fertile dialogue of heteroglossia. Not only at the carnival but pervading all levels of language, Bakhtin identifies infinitely shifting heteroglottal strata made up of loosely bound generic...
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World Water Day Visualization Challenge
Making Sense of Water Issues Through Data and Design
Fifty percent of the world’s population live in cities that hold over 10 million people. A mass migration from rural to urban areas is underway globally. Of all the challenges that influence this transition, none is more fundamental than water. Yet many of the world’s metropolitan centers lack planning, infrastructure and the water resources needed to support the new tide of urban residents. As these urban hotspots continue to grow at rapid rates, they seem to be outgrowing their urban water system. There is also evidence that water resources will be significantly affected by climate change, both in quantity and quality, particularly through the impact of floods, droughts, or extreme events.
In collaboration with Circle of Blue, the leading news organization reporting on global water issues, we would like to challenge the design community to visualize the provided water data and provide informative, clear, and cutting-edge visualizations that draw the connections between all or some of the following: the rapid growth of cities, the effect of climate change and natural disasters, and the urban water system. With a better understanding of this data, water institutes and those on the ground can propose effective solutions to the urban water problem.
For more information on urban water issues, visit Circle of Blue
Below are some links to relevant water data sets. For more data (trickling in through February 28th), visit Circle of Blue
Deadline for Submissions
- March 15, 2011 11:59PM EST
- Adam Bly, Seed
- Brian Collins, Collins: Transformative Design
- Heather Cooley, Water Program, Pacific Institute
- J. Carl Ganter, Circle of Blue
- Alon Halevy, Google Labs
- Russell Kennedy, Icograda
- Camille Kubie, GE
- Jennifer Palilonis, Ball State University
- Kimberly Ramalho, GE Water
- The winner will receive $5,000 provided by GE. Two runner-ups will get $500 each.
- The winner will be announced online on Visualizing.org and featured in a Winner's Q&A.
- Submission Deadline: March 15, 2011
- Winner Announced: March 22, 2011 (World Water Day)
ResultsThe winning visualization: What Is Your Water Footprint? by Joseph Bergeni, and Nickie Huang.
Read the recap to see the Honorable Mentions and see all of the entries.
- Any Questions? Just get in touch | <urn:uuid:e86aa8e1-bd17-48e7-b8f9-aa28cd56da3b> | {
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Dog owners are mentally healthier
Dog owners have been found to be both mentally and physically healthier than those who do not live with a four-legged companion.
According to the New Zealand Herald, Dr Matthew Reeves from Michigan State University, claims people who rely on companionship from man's best friend are 34 per cent more likely to hit exercise targets and are also more sociable.
He told the Journal of Physical Activity and Health that the presence of a dog encourages humans to talk to one another, with walking the animal proving to be a catalyst for such situations.
These findings follow studies carried out by Dr Deborah Wells, a Chartered Psychologist from Queen's University in Belfast, which found that dogs can be therapeutic for people. The full paper was published in the Society's British Journal of Health Psychology.
Dr Wells said that having a canine companion can fortify one's wellbeing and protect them from stress - one of the major risk factors associated with health problems.
She added that dog owners tend to have lower cholesterol and blood pressure compared to those who are petless.
You can read more from Dr Wells on this subject in our news story from March 2011.
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How to Read Labels to Find Green Clothes
Clothing labels tell you where clothes were made as well as what materials were used. The materials information can give you valuable clues as to how green the production process was. Look for natural fibers that come from plants and animals, such as cotton, hemp, and wool, and aim for those produced organically.
Avoid clothes with synthetic materials. Synthetic fabrics are produced using chemicals, including environmental pollutants, and take a long time to break down in landfill sites. The most popular synthetic materials — nylon and polyester — are made from petrochemicals. Processing petrochemicals into small fibers uses a large amount of oil and energy and emits greenhouse gases. Manufacturing polyester uses a large amount of water as well.
After years during which sustainable clothing materials were the territory of small, often hard-to-find specialty stores, their availability and accessibility is increasing. Purchase clothing made from the following materials:
Bamboo is essentially a grass that grows very quickly, so it’s one of the most renewable materials out there. One caveat, however, is that growers in some areas are replacing native vegetation with bamboo in order to meet the increasing demand.
Hemp is one of the greenest crops because it’s resistant to pests and therefore doesn’t need chemicals to maintain its quality. It’s easy to grow in large quantities and enriches the soil when in the ground, both of which are big bonuses.
Linen is made from flax, which is resistant to pests and grows more easily than cotton.
Organically grown cotton and wool isn’t genetically modified (in cotton’s case), and its cultivation uses natural fertilizers and pesticides and traditional farming practices.
Recycled materials are a green choice for clothing material even though some chemicals and energy likely went into their production. For example, clothes and shoes for outdoor use (especially in wet weather) can be made using recycled polyester, rubber, and even car tires.
Silk is made from the saliva produced by the larvae of several species of moth. (They’re commonly called silkworms, but they’re really caterpillars.) Larvae are a sustainable source of material, but it takes thousands of larvae to produce a silk tie, and some people prefer to avoid silk because it can’t be produced without the death of a living creature.
Soy isn’t just for eating and for candles; it also creates soft, silk-like fabrics when the leftovers from oil or tofu processing are processed and spun into fiber.
The U.S. EPA has linked one of the traditional chemicals used in dry cleaning (perchlorethylene, or PERC) to headaches, cancer, and environmental damage, so avoid dry-clean-only products if you can. Otherwise, look for a dry cleaner that uses environmentally friendlier processes — and definitely not PERC. | <urn:uuid:66d0ef53-c47c-4aff-a588-e6feef1e4368> | {
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Gambia lies within the tropical sub-humid eco-climatic zone with rainfall range between 800 and 1200 mm annually. The climate is characterized by two seasons, wet season (between June and October) and a dry season (November to April). The dry season is a 6-7 months of no rains. During the dry season, the climate is dominated by dry and dust-laden winds blow from the Sahara Desert in the northeast. These northeasterly winds are locally known as Hamattan. The early part of the dry season November through February is generally cooler with minimum temperatures of less than 20oF a common occurrence.
Table 1. Temperature (degrees Celsius) Relative humidity (%), and rainfall at selected stations.
Average temperatures in the Gambia range from 18 to 28 degrees Celsius (65 to 82 degrees Fahrenheit) in January to 23 to 36 degrees Celsius (75 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit) in June. Higher temperatures are recorded as one travels east with mean maximum in summer months reaching 43 degrees Celsius around Basse Santo Su. Highest temperature ever recorded in the Gambia was 45oC (113oF) and the lowest temperature recorded was 9oC (48oF).
Temperatures in Banjul and Kombo are moderated by Atlantic Ocean with less seasonal and daily variability in daytime temperatures. In an average year temperatures exceed 35oC (95oF) for only 34 days in Banjul compared to 112 days in Basse Santo Su. During the winter months, (December through March) temperatures fall below 18oC (65oF) for no more than 10 in Basse Santo Su compared to 56 days in Banjul and Kombo. Throughout the year temperature is high enough to permit plant growth although during the dry season, lack of water becomes an inhibiting factor.
Average mean, minimum and maximum monthly temperature in Banjul.
Figure 2. Mean, minimum and maximum monthly temperatures in Janjanbureh, 1960 to 1971.
Figure 3. Mean temperatures at Basse Santo Su 1980 -1984
The rainy season in the Gambia lasts 5 to 6 months with 98% of the rainfall occurring between June and October. August is the rainiest month in the ear with as much as 37% of the annual rainfall. The average annual rainfall has considerable spatial and temporal variation. Higher rainfall is received in the southwest part of the country with an estimated 1200 mm annually. The lowest annual rainfall is received in the north-northeast part of the country. Average number of rainy days range from 54 days in Banjul to 31 days in Basse Santo Su.
Figure 6. Mean annual rainfall in Banjul. Source: NOAA Baseline Climatological Dataset - Monthly Weather Station Temperature and Precipitation Data. Provided by http://ingrid.ldgo.columbia.edu/SOURCES/.NOAA/.NCDC/.GCPS/.MONTHLY/.STATION/
Figure 7. Mean annual rainfall in Janjanbureh. NOAA Baseline Climatological Dataset - Monthly Weather Station Temperature and Precipitation Data. Provided by http://ingrid.ldgo.columbia.edu/SOURCES/.NOAA/.NCDC/.GCPS/.MONTHLY/.STATION/
Figure 7. Mean annual rainfall in Basse Santo Su. NOAA Baseline Climatological Dataset - Monthly Weather Station Temperature and Precipitation Data. Provided by http://ingrid.ldgo.columbia.edu/SOURCES/.NOAA/.NCDC/.GCPS/.MONTHLY/.STATION/
Rainfall in the Gambia, like the rest of the Sahel region is highly variable from year to year. Rainfall data in Banjul between 1951 and 1985 show both a high annual variability in total annual rainfall and a downward trend in mean annual rainfall over the 35-year period. Mean annual rainfall between 1950 and 1966 was 1347 mm, compared to 853mm during the period 1967 to 1985.
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Sudan: The Land and the People presents the whole of Africa's largest country. Nearly one-third the size of the United States, Sudan sprawls over more than one million square miles. Here for more than a thousand years Arabs and Africans have collided and blended to produce people who share a turbulent history and rich cultural heritage. Arab and African alike divide into tribes. More than 350 unique languages, customs, and artistic traditions combine to form the ethnic patchwork of Africa's most diverse country. Internatonally renowned photographer Michael Freeman traveled the lenght and breadth of Sudan to capture these extraordinary photos of modern Sudan. Sudanese diversity begins with its geography. Deserts, salt-washed seacoast, riverine and forest lushness, rock and hill and dry wash, lake and stream, rapids and cascades all catch the eye and challenge human resource. Sudan's richness is not only in its water, minerals, and oil, but in its ethnic and cultural mixture. Its promise lies in a durable end to conflict through acceptance of its plurality and diveristy to realize prosperity for an entire region.
Arts-Photography, Photography-Video, Photojournalism-Essays, Photojournalism, | <urn:uuid:1c39c657-c0af-471d-a3e9-a1560b4f21e6> | {
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||This article needs additional citations for verification. (July 2007)
An image of a bridge position with straight legs. The body should be pushed over the shoulders to enable straight vertical arms and stretching the shoulders and upper body
Bridge is an exercise. Many variations of this exercise are employed throughout the world, most commonly the balancing of the body on the head and feet. Hands are occasionally used instead of or along with the head. It is effective in improving lower back strength. Examples of bridging in sportive or self-defense applications are seen in Kung Fu, Yoga, Judo, Brazilian jiu jitsu, Capoeira, mixed martial arts, and wrestling. The bridge can also be done starting in standing position, called a Backbend. | <urn:uuid:32a7a0ff-060d-44a3-b4b3-377dd0747bd3> | {
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Some Japanese cell phone users are photographing their meals and sending the image to nutritionists for analysis and recommendations. Public health insurance offices in Osaka prefecture in western Japan have launched the service on a trial basis. About 100 cardiac patients signed up in the first year, followed by diabetes and obesity patients in the second. Nutritionists can work with photos from one day's meals to several weeks' worth; results come back in three days. Participants can also log onto a Web site to get further dietary information and upload photos from digital cameras.
"Japanese have been getting fatter, especially men in their 20s and 30s, and there is concern over what they learned about nutrition when they were younger. We're hoping that this program can help us to get a handle on the problem," said Osaka official Satomi Onishi. Osaka is using a system developed by Asahi Kasei Corporation, a Tokyo-based chemical and medical equipment manufacturer. The system is operating at about 150 health care providers and local governments around the country, according to company official Naoki Yoshimura.
Japan is slowly losing its reputation for low-calorie fish-and-rice diets and slim waistlines. As Japanese have turned to bigger portions and more meat and fried foods, obesity and related illnesses such as high blood pressure have become a rising concern. The Health Ministry estimated last year that more than half of Japanese men and about one in five women between 40 and 70 years of age (nearly 20 million people) were at risk of metabolic syndrome, a term for a cluster of conditions associated with obesity, high cholesterol and increased risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
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What You Can See on May 15
Submitted by Ted Williams on Mon, 05/15/2006 - 06:04.
From Audubon’s Earth Almanac by Ted Williams and compiled in “Wild Moments,” edited by Connie Isbell, Illustrations by John Burgoyne, Storey Publishing, 174 pages. Gaudy Undertakers In spring our largest carrion-eating insect, the inch-and-a-half-long, black-and-orange American burying beetle, emerges from the earth, where it has spent the winter as a pupa, and starts scanning the countryside with antennae that can detect decaying flesh a mile away. A male will fly to a carcass at night, then emit powerful pheromones that attract females. Lying on its back and using its legs like a conveyer belt, a beetle can move a creature 200 times its weight. Working together, a mated pair buries the carcass, clips off fur or feathers, and injects it with preservatives. This done, the female excavates a nearby nursery in which she lays 10 to 30 eggs. Both adults attend the larvae, which rear up and beg for food, stroking their parents' jaws like wolf pups and thereby inducing them to regurgitate. Burying beetles, federally listed as endangered and benefiting from an aggressive recovery program, used to occur in at least 35 states but now are restricted to parts of Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Their decline may be linked to extinction of prime food sources -- the heath hen along the Atlantic coastal plain and elsewhere the passenger pigeon, thought to have been more numerous than all other North American birds combined. Currently they’re being depressed by a proliferation of competing scavengers such as skunks, raccoons and opossums. | <urn:uuid:6ccf039b-e0be-4240-aec2-32a29766078a> | {
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Keep fruits and vegetables safe for your family.
Wherever you buy produce, you can protect your investment by following a few important strategies: (1) Reduce food waste by buying only as much as you can eat (or prepare) until your next shopping trip. (2) Take food from market to home as quickly as possible. (3) Wash produce with clean hands when you are ready to eat it, NOT when you bring it home. (4) Refrigerate all cut-up fruit or veggies (fresh or cooked) within two hours. And, remember, different fruits and vegetables require different temperature and humidity levels for optimal shelf life and food safety.
Keep fruits and vegetables fresh on your counter tops.
Many fruits do best when they are ripened on the counter, then refrigerated once fully ripe. Items in this category include melons, peaches, plums, and nectarines, as well as avocados and tomatoes (which are fruit in the botanical sense). It also works for more tropical fruits, such as bananas, papayas, and mangoes. Do not leave fruit in plastic bags on counters. This can slow the ripening process and may lead to rotten spots; paper bags allow better airflow and are fine for most fruits.
Keep fruits and vegetables fresh in your refrigerator.
Most other fresh fruits/veggies are best stored in a clean refrigerator at 40 degrees F or below - in plastic bags with holes to allow for air flow. Use crisper drawers for whole produce, storing fruits separately from vegetables. Fruits give off a gas that can shorten the storage life of other items, while vegetables (like broccoli) give off odors that can affect the taste and quality of fruits. To avoid cross contamination, be sure to keep meat, poultry, and fish separate from produce items.
Keep fruits and vegetables fresh in your cupboards.
Some produce items are best stored in a clean, dry, well-ventilated space with no direct light - like in a cupboard. Included in this category are potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, and winter squash (acorn, butternut, Hubbard, etc.), as well as garlic and onions. When storing canned products in cupboards, use the FIFO rule: First In, First Out. Writing the month and year of purchase on top of the can or jar makes it easy to decide which products to use before others.
Keep fruits and vegetables fresh in the freezer.
Keep extra summer fruits and veggies in your freezer (where the FIFO rule also applies) with help from Montana State University Extension. Two online publications can help you with freezing decisions: one for Freezing Fruits and another for Freezing Vegetables. For more information about a large number of fruits and vegetables, the produce database at Fruits and Veggies More Matters allows you to search for detailed information on choosing and storing a long list of delicious produce choices. On the same site, you can also find recipes, nutrition information, and other helpful tips on increasing your family’s intake of nature’s fast food - fruits and vegetables. | <urn:uuid:83a1d024-b5d7-40cf-b0bc-1858c12be5bf> | {
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This is the fourth in a series of blog posts discussing the collaboration of the Collab Lab and our EG Ed Prep students. Hannah implemented a lesson based on the Spark Session presented by Rachel Barry. Please follow along on our journey using the hashtag #214EdPrep or clicking on the label #214EdPrep in the word cloud!
Last week Ms. Barry showed us different teaching methods that would help students learn. One idea that I really like was Mathketball. I felt like this would be such a fun activity for the 3rd graders that I'm currently working with in my internship. They're currently working on multiplication, division, and fractions. I wrote 5 problems for each section. Once I got to the classroom, I gave them all three sheets of paper and made sure to show them how to fold and rip so they had enough paper for each problem. I made them get into a circle and then I explained how to play this game.
When I heard that a student wanted to “skip” a problem I would quiet them down and show them a different method to figure out the problem. | <urn:uuid:241f61c1-ba2d-46e4-be3a-babe7d6f029a> | {
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a fortified position on the left bank of the Western Dvina River, at its bend northwest of the city of Drissa (now Verkhnedvinsk).
The Drissa camp was built early in the Patriotic War of 1812. According to the plan of the Prussian General Fuhl, who was the military adviser of Alexander I, the First Army, based on the Drissa camp, was to stop Napoleon’s army and the Second Army was to strike at Napoleon’s flank and rear. But since the enemy had superior forces and since there was a danger that each army would be defeated separately, the Russian command rejected this unrealistic plan. On July 2 the First Army left the Drissa camp and moved toward Polotsk. | <urn:uuid:9ce16d0d-6308-481a-8da8-d50799a2dfec> | {
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Scientists have developed a novel spray made from biomaterials that may help the heart heal without the need of sutures or glue.
Researchers from University of North Carolina in the US have demonstrated the effectiveness of a minimally invasive method to form a regenerative cardiac patch that promotes repair of damaged cardiac tissue in a mouse model of a heart attack.
Biomaterials sprayed onto the heart formed a platelet fibrin gel, called a cardiac patch, that helps the heart heal without the need for sutures or glue, researchers said.
"The spray painting method is an excellent example of how tissue engineering has evolved since the 1990s," said John A Jansen of Radboud University Medical Centre in the Netherlands.
"The described delivery method is easy to apply in clinics and shows significant potential for patient treatment," he added.
The study was published in the journal Tissue Engineering, Part C. | <urn:uuid:4ce9d6d5-a7b5-47aa-9dee-dcd5d60fcea9> | {
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Goals for high school Instruction in Mathematics
by Jerome Dancis
Dept. of Mathematics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-4015
Telephone: 301 405 5120 FAX: 301 314 0827 e-mail: [email protected]
In macho style, the president has declared that mathematics education in American will become the best in the world. But, education is not a horse race. Also, this is an amorphous goal. Our students and schools should not be bent out of shape so that our president, at international meetings, can brag: "My students are smarter than your students".
Doing mathematics has been an important human activity for millennium, mainly because it is so useful for explaining all sorts of things from the mundane, (how much is a 15% tip) to very abstract physics and all sorts of useful technical and non-technical things in between. This article will articulate important goals, with reasons, for reshaping high school mathematics instruction 1. These goals are not profound, but achieving them are crucial for fully viable education programs. We need high school mathematics instruction, which will enable all students to comfortably and competently use mathematics, in courses from engineering to high school chemistry to college sociology and nutrition. Students need to be trained to think their way through problems -- not happening today.
In Oct. 1998, the professional society of school mathematics teachers, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, (NCTM) released its Proposed Principles and Standards (for the next decade). The goals listed below are not included therein. At the Nov. 1999 meeting of the National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21 st Century (appointed by Secretary of Education Riley), Chairman (and ex-astronaut), John Glenn raised the question: What should be the goals of school education in mathematics and science? The goals listed below were not discussed. Thus, these goals are not even on the agenda.
Goal: #1. Significantly increase the number of students comfortable with the Algebra and arithmetic aspects of college freshman social science courses.
Tax dollars are being used to teach college students how to do this problem in the elementary nutrition course on my college campus. We have selective admissions; not open admissions.
Problem 1: It is a fact that fat has 9 calories per gram and protein has 4 calories per gram. If a piece of meat consists of 100 grams of protein and 10 grams of fat, how many calories does it have? Answer: 490 calories. This is not a trick question.
Class time, used for this instruction, reduces time available for teaching nutrition.
In elementary sociology classes on my campus, students struggle with "percents" in problems like:
Problem 2. A school has 400 girls and 1000 boys. Suppose that 25% of the girls and 15% of the boys have blond hair. How many students have blond hair? Answer: 250; not a trick question.
A 1999 Department of Education statistical analysis by C. Adelman, showed that success in algebra in high school, is the best predictor of a college student earning a college degree.
#2. Significantly increase the number of students comfortable with the Algebra and arithmetic aspects of high school chemistry class. It should become the rule, rather than an exception, that high school students study both chemistry and physics. Indeed, this is a technological age. Lack of fluency in algebra channels many students away from high school science classes.
"When Grant Scott, a biology teacher, had to teach his chemistry students at Howard High School how to change centimeters to meters, he just told them to move the decimal two places -- rather than illustrating the concept. ... 'Forty-five minutes later, only three of them got it.' ", 2 The new (1999) California Standards require that students learn this in Grade 4; after all 100 centimeters make a meter, just like 100 cents make a dollar and 236 centimeters = 2.36 meters, just like 236 cents = $2.36.
#3. Significantly reduce the number of students needing remediation in mathematics in college.
Knowledge and understanding of high-school algebra is both useful and important for understanding the simple mathematics and other quantitative concepts that arise in a wide variety of college freshmen courses and lack of such student knowledge puts an unfair burden on both instructors and students. (For examples, see Problem 1 and 2 above.) There are massive numbers of college students retaking high school level mathematics courses.
The numbers of students required to take remedial courses in mathematics, has increased from one in four in 1989 to one in two in 1998, in the California State University System (CSU). And CSU admission is restricted to the top 30% of California high school graduates!
Elementary Algebra I (Math 001) was the largest single mathematics course on my campus in the 1990s. Half the students in Math 001, had received a grade of B or A in high school Algebra II3. Having to repeat two years of mathematics, already studied in high school, is not limited to the weak students, it extends to many strong students also. Dr. Frances Gulick (a lecturer in mathematics at my college), noted that about one third of the students in her precalculus class had already "completed" calculus in high school.
The number of students who pass Algebra I and the number of students taking advanced math courses are two items on a list of accountability measures for my local school system. The number of students who learn Algebra is not on this accountability list.
For the Montgomery County 4 Public Schools' Algebra 1 test, some high schools required a student to score only 30 points (out of 100) to pass and only 65 points for an A. (All the middle schools required 60 points for passing). Students, who scored only 50% will likely need remediation in college, but that is not the high school's problem.
#4. Significantly reduce the number of students who cannot have their first and second choices for a career or college major because their high school mathematics instruction was weak. Dr. Dr. Lucy Sells had observed that arriving in college with a weak mathematics background has forced many college women into the traditional female fields of teaching, social work and the humanities. Large numbers of college students have to switch out of engineering programs because of low grades in calculus courses. A major reason for their difficulties/failure is lack of fluency in high school mathematics.
"Although large numbers of US students entering the universities say they are interested in majoring in technical areas, very few actually get such degrees today. The total number of technical degrees awarded to US citizens recently is approximately 28,000 yearly, while there are currently about 100,000 new jobs in these areas each year"5 .
#5. Significantly reduce the prevalence of mathematics phobias, especially word problem phobias. It's only in America that adults and children say "I am not good at math." This is not said by educated people in the rest of the world. Outside of mathematics classes, virtually all mathematics problems are word problems. Learning mathematics skills are useless if a student cannot correctly translate word problems into equations. (Correctly solving the wrong equation is counterproductive.) Many students develop mathematics anxiety, which results in the students employing mathematics and science course avoidance strategies, thereby greatly limiting their educational and career choices.
#6. Remove the pedantic from mathematics classes.
Students' self confidence and self esteem are lowered and their mathematics phobias are raised, very inappropriately, by pedantic practices. Some examples from each level of school:
In elementary school, a student is left bewildered after receiving a grade of zero after having calculated 10 exercises correctly, but placed the dollar sign on the wrong side: 58$ + 23$ = 81$.6
The subject was factoring; a child factored all numerators correctly, factored all denominators correctly, but wrote her mathematically correct answer as 2x(3 ab). This problem was marked wrong -- no credit; the teacher's answer was 6ab. Upon appeal, 5 of 25 points were awarded.
Proving the obvious, in long complicated ways, is a good way to turn students off. In Algebra 2, students were presented with a fourteen step proof that (1/a) x 1/b = 1/ab. 7
#7. Raise the average score on the Math SATs from about 50% (30 correct answers out of 60 questions) to 83% (50 out of 60).
Students inability to do Math SAT type problems was the first deficiency noted as a reason for poor success of students in college freshmen geography courses8. Being able to do Math SAT type problems is essential for all courses with some quantitative aspects.
The Math S.A.T. problems are just elementary one minute problems, requiring 15 seconds of thought, precise reading and knowledge of algebraic concepts. But thinking about how to solve a problem is missing from traditional mathematics instruction; mostly, the students are programmed to solve "textbook problems". This is a major reason for low Math SAT scores.
Fluency in Algebra 1, including how to use it, corresponds to being able to solve 83% (or 50 out of 60) of the Math S.A.T. problems. But this corresponds to a S.A.T. score of about 700 (the 97th percentile). It is absurd that only 3% of students can do this well; this demands better instruction. Of course students should learn how to solve more sophisticated problems, but it will be a significant improvement if students become proficient at solving these one minute problems.
#8. Students should become fluent in deductive reasoning.
Until the 1960's, students studied Euclidean geometry in high school. Starting with a small number of axioms, they proved and watched the teacher prove many theorems. In this way they were provided with extensive training in deductive reasoning. Students learned that a statement in plane geometry was true because they had seen a proof of its validity. Since then, 100 theorems have been renamed axioms and their proofs (now being redundant) have disappeared from the textbooks. Now a statement is true in plane geometry because the book/teacher says it is so (It is an axiom.). Deductive proofs have been exiled to the last quarter of the textbook; not enough for students to learn this topic. The teaching of deductive proofs in plane geometry is banned in some school systems. Students now arrive in college with little or no training in deductive reasoning, an educational handicap.
Prof. Barry Simon, Chairman of the Mathematics Department at California Institute of Technology in, "A Plea in Defense of Euclidean Geometry "9 , "mourned this loss of what was a core part of education for centuries." ... as he noted "what is really important is the exposure to clear and rigorous arguments. ... "They can more readily see through the faulty reasoning so often presented in the media and by politicians". Also, they would have less difficulty adjusting to and understanding college courses.
Fortunately, the new (1999) California Standards bring back deductive proofs as the basis of high school Geometry, at least for California students.
#9. Raise the amount of mathematics taught back to the level of the 1950s.
My children (in the fast academic track) were taught one third less mathematics in high school than I was (in the standard academic track) in the 1950s.10 The solid geometry course and half of the 1950s Trig course have disappeared. Serious training in deductive proofs and word problems has disappeared.
Prof. Barry Simon (again): "The dumbing down of high school education in the United States, especially in mathematics and science, is a crime that must be laid at the doorstep of the educational establishment".
The verbose, 700 page NCTM proposed standards do not even consider the question of raising the content of the mathematics curriculum back to the levels of the 1950s.
"There are other hidden, but measurable, costs. Laurence Steinberg, a psychology professor at Temple University, noted last year that his institution's requirement for two semesters of psychological statistics for majors is not a cause to celebrate high standards. Rather, it is an admission that it now takes two semesters to learn what used to be done in one".11
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Describe and contrast how social learning approach and trait theory
explain personality differences between individuals. Also, discuss some examples of research relevant to these 2 approaches that show how differences in personality may influence behavior in the workplace.
response is 531 words
Trait theory is a major approach to the study of human personality. Trait theorists are mainly interested in the measure of traits. This perspective views traits as being fairly stable over time, differ among individuals and influence behavior. Psychologist Gordon Allport considered traits to be the building blocks of an individual's overall personality. He classifieed traits into three general categories:
* Cardinal traits: single large traits around which someone organizes his/her life.
* Central traits: traits that represent major characteristics of people.(Examples: honesty or optimism)
* Secondary traits: enduring personality traits that do not explain behavior in general. (Examples: personal styles and personal preferences.
Through research and experimentation Allport would eventually develop the "Big 5" Dimensions of Human Personality- the 5 categories into which he organized all our traits and ...
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I am back from vacation. We visited some colleges in Indiana for my daughter who will be a senior this year. She really liked Taylor University and Anderson University. We’ll see if the tuition exchange works out.
Now to blogging.
Scientists from Granada, Spain have patented a hew biomaterial that consists of activated carbon cloth that just happens to be able to support the growth of cells that have the ability to regenerate bone. These results came from experiments that were conducted outside any living animals, but they hope to confirm these results in a living animal in the near future.
This new biomaterial facilitates the growth of bone-making cells derived from umbilical cord stem cells. This activated carbon cloth acts as a scaffold for cells that differentiate into “osteoblasts,” which are bone-building cells. This activated carbon cloth gives the osteoblasts a proper surface upon which to promote the growth of new bone.
Bone loss as a result of cancer, trauma, or degenerative bone diseases requires replacement bone to heal to damaged bone. Making new bone in the laboratory that can be transplanted is an optimal strategy for treating these patients.
Even though this laboratory-made bone was not used in living laboratory animals to date, the laboratory results look quite impressive. In the future, such techniques could help manufacture medicines or other sources of material to repair bone or lost cartilage. Once such artificial bone has been made in the laboratory, the Spanish team hopes to transplant it into rats or rabbits to determine if it can regenerate bone in such creatures.
Presently, no materials exist to replace lost bone. The method used to make bone by the research team from Granada uses a three-dimensional support that facilitates the production of those cell types that regenerate bone without the need for additional growth factors.
The growth of these umbilical cord stem cells on activated carbon cloth produced a product that could produce organic bone, but also mineralize the organic bone matrix. This patent could have numerous clinical applications in regenerative medicine and the Granada group hopes to obtain funding to continue this work and achieve their ultimate objective: to regenerate bones by implanting biomaterial in patients with bone diseases. | <urn:uuid:552685d0-4bc7-4e9f-aae4-756b24a23b6b> | {
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A consistent theme of Whately’s is ‘evidences’. A couple of his books that I’ve come across are composed of annotations appended to what he considers seminal texts. Generally these annotations are chapter length reflections on the previous chapter of the mother text. Paley’s A View of the Evidences of Christianity is one and Bacon’s Essays is the other.
Evidences is the short form of ‘evidences for the truth of the Christian religion’ or a quasi-rational justification. Though he is represented as having been at odds with John Henry Newman even while the latter was in his Anglican phase I find that both of them really did not believe that there were knock-down demonstrative proofs available in the domain of religion. In the early working out of what later became the illative sense Newman spoke of implicit reasoning and they both would I think have recognised that a prior cultivation of the heart was necessary for the living reception of ‘evidences’. For Whately the fact of miracles was central for faith. Without miracles the establishment of the faith as a world-wide phenomenon would be impossible. Google have his Easy Lessons on Christian Evidences with several chapters on that theme. His amusing retorsion on/of/to Hume on miracles cf. Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte is quite serious in intent.
Men were not to become his disciples in consequence of their knowing and perceiving the truth of what He taught, but in consequence of their having sufficient candour to receive the evidence which his miracles afforded, and being so thoroughly of the Truth as to give themselves up to follow wherever that should lead, in opposition to any prejudices or inclinations of their own; and then knowledge of the truth was to be their reward. There is not necessarily any moral virtue in receiving truth; for it may happen that our interest, or our wishes, are in the same direction; or it may be forced upon us by evidence as irresistible as that of a mathematical demonstration. The virtue consists in being a sincere votary of Truth;—what our Lord calls being 'of the Truth,'—rejecting 'the hidden things of dishonesty,' and carefully guarding against every undue bias. Every one wishes to have Truth on his side; but it is not every one that sincerely wishes to he on the side of Truth.(from annotation to Bacon’s Essay Of Truth) | <urn:uuid:8fd14d05-bab9-425d-9b45-b33251a6963a> | {
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