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One of the mysteries of the English language finally explained.
Feeling or perception of something before it exists, occurs, or manifests itself; foreknowledge, foresight; a presage, a presentiment.
Mid 17th century; earliest use found in Henry More (1614–1687), philosopher, poet, and theologian. From pre- + sensation.
In this article we explore how to impress employers with a spot-on CV. | <urn:uuid:497c19ec-4e5a-4cd1-8972-523a8f923127> | {
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Exposure to Bt sprays may lead to allergic skin sensitization and induction of IgE and IgG antibodies, or both based on recent scientific studies. Although health risks to pesticides containing Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) have been minimal, the potential allergenicity of these organisms has not been evaluated. Today large acreage of US crops like soy, corn, canola and others are genetically engineered (GE) to contain Bt in every plant cell and USDA has failed to evaluate the adverse health effects of large-scale Btk [Bt kurstaki, a strain of Bt toxin] spraying on a population where people are likely consuming GE food crops and may be developing skin sensitization and immune reactions to Bt. To date, USDA has egregiously failed to mention the likelihood of skin sensitization and immune reactions to the Btk pesticide spray in GE food consumers.
A health survey was conducted in farm workers before and after exposure to Bt pesticides. The investigation included questionnaires, nasal/mouth lavages, ventilatory function assessment, and skin tests to indigenous aeroallergens and to a variety of Bt spore and vegetative preparations. To authenticate exposure to the organism present in the commercial preparation, isolates from lavage specimens were tested for Bt genes by DNA-DNA hybridization.
Please read more on the adverse health effects of widespread Bt use in food crops in the following excerpt from a 1999 study in the Journal of Environmental Health Perspectives.
Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 107, Number 7, July 1999 Immune Responses in Farm Workers after Exposure to Bacillus Thuringiensis Pesticides http://www.ehponline.org/members/1999/107p575-582bernstein/bernstein-full.html
[details of authors at end]
“In addition to the implication that skin sensitization to Bt in pesticides could be a precursor of clinical IgE-mediated diseases, several aspects of this investigation may be relevant to other current health issues: immediate hypersensitivity induced by bacteria and transgenic foods engineered to incorporate pesticidal genes in their genomes. First, because skin sensitivity to spore and vegetative components of a nonpathogenic species of Bacillus was clearly demonstrated, future awareness about the allergenic potential of environmental bacteria should be increased, even though this phenomenon has been recognized for relatively few such organisms (e.g., Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and Moraxella catarrhalis) (19,20). There is presently strong evidence of a close molecular genetic relatedness between Bt subspecies and the B. cereus food pathogen that would support this call for caution (21,22).
Further, in the case of the Bacillus genus, the possibility of cross-allergenic epitopes in an unrelated species such as B. subtilis should be appreciated because this organism or its products may occur in both occupational and nonoccupational environments (23,24).
Conversely, results of this investigation should partially allay recent concerns about the occurrence of possible adverse health effects in consumers after exposure to transgenic foods (25,26). Because reactivity to the Btk pro-delta-endotoxin was only encountered in 2 of 123 workers sensitized by the respiratory route, it is unlikely that consumers would develop allergic sensitivity after oral exposure to transgenic foods (e.g., tomatoes, potatoes) that currently contain the gene encoding this protein. However, future clinical assessment of this possibility is now feasible because of the availability of reliable Bt skin and serologic reagents developed during the course of this investigation.”
19. Leung DY, Harbeck R, Bina P, et al. Presence of IgE antibodies to staphylococcal exotoxins on the skin of patients with atopic dermatitis. Evidence for a new group of allergens. J Clin Invest 92(3):1374-1380 (1993). 20. Brarda OA, Vanella LM, Boudet RV. Anti-Staphylococcus aureus, anti-Streptococcus pneumoniae and anti-Moraxella catarrhalis specific IgE in asthmatic children. J Investig Allergol Clin Immunol 6(4):266-269 (1996). 21. Carlson CR, Johansen T, Lecadet M-M, Kolsto A-B. Genomic organization of entomopathogenic bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. berliner 1715. Microbiology 142:1625-1634 (1996). 22. Damgaard PH, Larsen HD, Hansen BM, Bresciani J, Jorgensen K. Enterotoxin-producing strains of B. thuringiensis isolated from food. Lett Appl Microbiol 23:146-150 (1996). 23. Johnson CL, Bernstein IL, Gallagher JL, Bonventre PF, Brooks SM. Familial hypersensitivity pneumonitis induced by Bacillus subtilis. Am Rev Respir Dis 122:339-348 (1980). 24. Bernstein IL. Enzyme allergy in populations exposed to long-term, low-level concentrations of household laundry products. J Allergy Clin Immunol 49:219-237 (1972). 25. Goodman RM, Hauptli H, Crossway A, Knauf VC. Gene transfer in crop improvement. Science 234:48-54 (1987). 26. Introduction of Recombinant DNA-Engineered Organisms into the
Environment: Key Issues. Washington, DC:National Academy Press, 1987.
USDA has egregiously failed to mention the likelihood of skin sensitization and immune reactions to the Btk pesticide spray in GE food consumers.
It’s highly disconcerting that USDA has grossly failed to inform the public, inside and outside the spray zone, that a number of exposed children, pregnant women, persons with pre-existing illnesses, senior citizens, chemically sensitive persons, and healthy adults may suffer adverse health effects such as skin sensitization and immune reactions from the large number of Bacteria in the Btk pesticide spray.
Will the USDA pay for medical expenses and health care costs if people are injured? No. The USDA will deny health effects just like they have at other locations in Oregon, Washington state and other places.
NEIL J. CARMAN, PH.D.
NEIL J. CARMAN, PH.D. | <urn:uuid:17430dfc-1cae-40dc-ba09-629094ef4c9a> | {
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A) B)C) D)1. Which graph most likely illustrates a cyclic change?2. The graph below shows the amount of noise pollutioncaused by factory machinery during a one-week period.A) The machinery ran 24 hours a day.B) The machinery was turned off on Saturday andSunday.C) The level of pollution remained constant duringworking hours.D) The noise volume reached a peak on Friday.Which inference is best supported by the graph?3. Base your answer to the following question on The graphbelow shows world population beginning in the year1800 and projected to the year 2000.A) 1825 and 1850 B) 1875 and 1900C) 1925 and 1950 D) 1975 and 2000The graph shows the greatest increase in populationbetween
4. Base your answer to the following question on the diagrams below which represents the same rock materialat five stages of development. The graph below shows the temperature and depth of burial at which stages Athrough D develop Stage E has intentionally been omitted from the graph.A) 10 km B) 7 km C) 3 km D) 0 kmAccording to the graph, gneiss is formed at a depth of approximately
5. Base your answer to the following question on the graph below, which shows the water levels of ocean tidesmeasured in Boston, Massachusetts, for a 2-day period.A) 3.5 hours B) 6.0 hours C) 12.5 hours D) 16.0 hoursThe graph shows that high tides at Boston occur approximately every
6. The graph below indicates the average number ofdaylight hours and the average surface air temperatureover a 12-month period at a specific location on theEarth.A) on June 21B) between June 21 and September 23C) on December 21D) between December 21 and March 21Based on the graph, the highest average surface airtemperature occursA) B)C) D)7. Which graph best represents human population growth?8. The graph below represents the relationship between theintensity and wavelength of the Suns electromagneticradiation.A) The infrared radiation given off by the Sun occurs ata wavelength of 2,000 angstroms.B) The maximum intensity of radiation given off by theSun occurs in the visible region.C) The infrared radiation given off by the Sun has ashorter wavelength than ultraviolet radiation.D) The electromagnetic energy given off by the Sunconsists of a single wavelength.Which statement is best supported by the graph?
9. Base your answer to the following question on the graphbelow which shows the amount of heat energy (calories)needed to raise the temperature of 1-gram samples offour different materials.A) The same amount of heat energy is required to raisethe temperature of each material by 10 Celsiusdegrees.B) The temperature of a material with a high specificheat is raised faster than that of a material with alow specific heat.C) Three of the four materials have the same specificheat.D) The amount of heat energy needed to produce anequal temperature change varies with the materialsheated.Which statement is best supported by the graph?10. Base your answer to the following question on thegraph below. The graph shows temperature data takenat four different depths in the soil at one location onLong Island, New York, for one year.A) decreases B) increasesC) remains the sameThe graph shows that as depth increases, the annualtemperature range
11. Base your answer to the following question on the graph below, which shows changes in the Sun’smagnetic activity and changes in the number of sunspots over a period of approximately 100 years.Sunspots are dark, cooler areas within the Sun’s photosphere that can be seen from Earth.A) randomly and unpredictablyB) precisely at the beginning of each decadeC) in a cyclic pattern, repeating approximately every 6 yearsD) in a cyclic pattern, repeating approximately every 11 yearsThe graph indicates that years having the greatest number of sunspots occur12. Base your answer to the following question on the graph below, which shows the amount of insolationduring one year at four different latitudes on Earth’s surface.A) latitude and time of day B) latitude and time of yearC) longitude and time of day D) longitude and time of yearThis graph shows that insolation varies with
13. Base your answer to the following question on the weather map provided below, which shows surfaceair-pressure readings, in millibars, at various locations in the United States and Canada. The 1020-millibarisobars have been drawn and labeled.Draw the 1024- and 1028-millibar isobars on the weather map provided above.
14. Base your answer to the following question on the two maps and on your knowledge of Earth science. Bothmaps show data from a December snowstorm. Map 1 shows the snowfall, measured in inches, at variouslocations in New York State, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Map 2 shows weather conditions in NewYork State and the surrounding region during the storm. Letter L represents the center of the low-pressuresystem that produced the snowstorm. Isobars show air pressure, in millibars.Toward which compass direction would this low-pressure center most likely have moved if this systemfollowed a normal storm track?
15. Base your answer to the following question on the field map provided below. The field map shows airtemperature at specific locations in an area near a school in Maine. Part of this area is a blacktop parkinglot. Accurate temperature readings were taken by Earth science students at 10 a.m. on June 1. Tworeference points, A and B, are shown.On the field map provided, draw only the 15°C and the 20°C isotherms. Isotherms must be extended to theedge of the map.
16. Base your answer to the following question on the temperature field map below. The map showstemperature readings (°C) recorded by students in a science classroom. The readings were taken at thesame time at floor level. Temperature readings for points A and B are labeled on the map.On the temperature field map, use solid lines to draw the 18°C, 20°C, and 22°C isotherms. Isotherms mustextend to the boundary of the map. Label each isotherm to indicate its temperature.
17. Base your answer to the following question onthe weather map provided, which shows partialweather-station data for several cities in eastern NorthAmerica.On the weather map provided, draw isotherms every10°F, starting with 40°F and ending with 70°F.Isotherms must extend to the edges of the map.
18. Base your answer to the following question on the field map below. The field map shows temperatures, indegrees Fahrenheit, taken at several locations on a blacktop parking lot in New York State. Thetemperatures were recorded at 11:00 a.m. in early June.On the field map above, draw the 70°F and 80°F isotherms. The isotherms should be extended to the edgesof the map.19. Base your answer to the following question on the weather map below, which shows temperature readingsat weather stations in the continental United States.On the weather map provided on your answer paper, draw three isotherms: the 40°F isotherm, the 50°Fisotherm, and the 60°F isotherm.
20. Base your answer to the following question on the temperature field map below. the map shows 25measurements (in °C) that were made in a temperature field and recorded as shown. The dots represent theexact location of the measurements. A and B are locations within the field.On the temperature field map above, draw threee isotherms: the 23°C isotherm, the 24°C isotherm, and the25°C isotherm.
21. Base your answer to the following question on thetemperature field map below. The map shows airtemperatures, in degrees Fahrenheit, recorded at thesame time at weather stations across North America.The air temperature at location A has been deliberatelyleft blank.a On the map provided,use smooth, curved solid linesto draw the 30°F, 40°F, and 50°F isotherms.b What is the most probable air temperature at locationA?
22. Base your answer to the following question on the map below, which shows one method of classifyingEarths surface into latitudinal climate belts. In the tropical climate belt, the average monthly temperaturesnever drop below 18°C. In the polar climate belts, the average monthly temperatures never rise above10°C. The isotherms show the average monthly temperature of the coolest and warmest months. Effects ofelevation have been omitted.According to the isotherms on the map, locations in the mid-latitude climate belts have average monthlytemperatures between what values? | <urn:uuid:37e0edcc-f4f3-46c2-8540-7d3eef435392> | {
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Allan P Mckinnon
Found 10 Records, 10 Photos and 313,203 Family Trees
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Surname meaning for "Mckinnon"
Scottish: Anglicized form of Gaelic, a patronymic from a Gaelic personal name meaning ‘fair born’ or ‘fair son’. It is also translated as | <urn:uuid:a0d65e72-524e-45cf-b978-7fae9d783bfa> | {
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Gebbers Farm harnesses the ground’s energy to produce fresher fruit and a greener planet
Keeping apples fresh and cool is a challenge for many farms, but it is one that Gebbers Farms solved in a unique way.
At its 9,290 square-meter facility on the Eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountain Range in Washington, USA, Gebbers sorts, processes and pre-sizes thousands of apples daily. The company revolutionised its field-to-table process in 2008 when 35-year HVAC veteran Doug Lockhart of Lockhart Industries installed a Geoexchange system.
A greener way forward
The system takes advantage of the earth’s naturally stable temperatures to cool the water and rooms used at the Gebbers facility. Geoexchange heat pumps are hooked up to a series of pipes in loops, which run through a large holding pond built at the site. Excess heat is transferred into the pond in summer and pulled from the pond in winter. In essence, it is the same heat-exchanging process used by a household heat pump.
“Gebbers Farms believes in taking a proactive approach to the responsible use of scarce natural resources,” says Bob Grandy, Gebbers’ spokesman and food safety engineer. “In our business, we use large quantities of water and electricity to process fruit. Fortunately, by being located where we are in North-Central Washington, we are blessed with both. Truthfully, it would have been easier and less expensive to go with a ‘conventional refrigeration system’ in the pre-size facility that we built in 2009, Instead, Gebbers chose Geoexchange.”
Bob Grandy explains that Gebbers actively seeks out new technologies for its production line, an example of which is its use of geothermal technology.
“We don’t have the luxury to have downtime. We need things to work.”
Bob Grandy, Gebbers Farms
A three-story streamlined mass of pumps, valves, HDPE pipes and gleaming metal refrigerant condensing units form the “brains” of the facility. Together, these elements run a Geoexchange energy process that may be the first of its kind in the fruit-processing industry.
Inside the apple pre-size processing plant, forklifts deliver wooden bins of unsorted apples to a dunk tank, where the apples are cleaned and sanitized, and then the fruit is inspected for defects first electronically and then by human hands.
The water used throughout the facility is cooled by the Geoexchange system brine. The cooled water then flows into a cool-shower and flumes at minus 1.7 degrees Celsius. The water recirculates for a week through a closed system.
Chilled water preserves the fruits’ crisp, bright state, as if just plucked from the tree. In contrast, using room-temperature water hastens the ripening process, says Doug Lockhart.
The Geoexchange cooling system at Gebbers may be the first of its kind in the fruit processing industry, according to Doug Lockhart of Lockhart Industries, the system’s supplier.
Wal-Mart sent representatives to view the new green initiative that produced better apples, economic savings and a sustainable processing approach.
“With little more than some innovative refrigeration equipment, pumping and controls, we were able to increase the quality,” he says. Less water is used as well, says Bob Grandy, and it is used more efficiently.
After being sorted, the apples are packed into bins and transferred into the cold-storage room, which the Geoexchange system also cools to minus 1.7 degrees Celsius.
“A real benefit of the system is that it cools rooms and water quickly,” he says. “And Grundfos pumps are instrumental in that process, by powering the heat exchange required for cooling the water.”
Eventually, the Geoexchange system could potentially be used in the underfloor heating or become part of the water treatment bio-system. Gebbers plans to integrate the Geoexchange in phases.
Grundfos CR pumps were extensively used due to their wide application to both available pressure and flow dynamics.
“They’re quite efficient and flexible with speed control,” Doug Lockhart says. “When CR pumps were coupled with the matched CUE frequency converter (Variable Frequency Drive), the Direct Digital Control system could control the flow tailored to the need.”
“Gebbers technicians have indicated that the Grundfos pumps work well, are efficient, and do the job,” says Bob Grandy. He emphasizes that the maintenance crew is happy with pump performance. “We don’t have the luxury to have downtime. We need things to work.”
Customers are happier too. Several of Gebbers’ top clients have sent representatives to view the new green initiative that produces higher-quality apples, economic savings and a sustainable processing approach.
“Although the new system was more expensive than a conventional system, we have found its accuracy, serviceability and overall performance to meet or exceed our expectations,” says Bob Grandy. “Once all of the features are fully implemented, we believe the system will provide further economical and environmentally sustainable results for our company.”
- Story and photos by Lora Shinn
Grundfos CR pumps and CUE frequency converters are installed for the main heat exchange in the large cooler, the condenser and pond.
• The flume chiller pumps are Grundfos LM body; with relatively short pumping requirements.
• Grundfos TP volute pumps are used in the flume condenser.
• Grundfos UPS pumps are employed in both the boiler and also the in-floor circulation to minimize equipment overhead; they could withstand the Geoexchange water temperatures and the back-up boiler temperatures.
Created in 1909.
Located in Brewster, Washington.
Over 2,000 employees during peak season (July/October).
Operates mulitple work shifts/7days during peak season.
Manages more than 5,500 apple acres and 2,000 cherry acres.
Produces more than 225,000 bins of apples and more than 20,000 tons of cherries a year.
The Geoexchange system in use at Gebbers relies on heat pumps and a network of durable plastic pipes that circulate into a holding pond. The pipes, filled with an antifreeze-water solution, act as a heat exchanger, extracting or releasing heat in the water, depending upon the season or building’s needs.
Much like a household refrigerator, the Geoexchange heat pump moves energy (the first law of thermodynamics), thus the heat pump create zones of high energy where you need heat and consequently, zones of low energy where you need cooling. Inside Gebbers, the interior water pipes distribute cooled water through the apple flumes.
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, Geoexchange systems are the most energy efficient, environmentally clean, and cost effective space conditioning systems available. | <urn:uuid:83cbfe61-c5da-4134-b5cf-368316cc4506> | {
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Dr. Mark Dowell urges flu shots despite mutated H3N2 strain
By Kristy Bleizeffer Dec 8, 2014
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the 2014-2015 flu vaccine is not as protective as hoped for the seasonal influenza A H3N2 virus, a strain found to be most common so far this year. About half of the H3N2 viruses tested are “drift variants,” meaning they’ve mutated to a form not protected by the vaccine, the CDC said.
That doesn’t mean you should not get your flu shot if you haven’t already, and it doesn’t mean the vaccination you did get was a waste of time and money.
To wade through the viral soup that is the approaching flu season, the Pulse sat down with Dr. Mark Dowell, infectious disease specialist with Rocky Mountain Infectious Diseases. Here’s what you need to know.
What flu strains are included in this year’s vaccine?
The Influenza virus has many components, two of which are called the H and the N. Variations of these two components brought the H1N1 flu strain that caused so many problems in 2009-2010, and the H3N2 strain with the potential to cause headaches (and muscle aches) this year.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention selects three flu strains each year that are most likely to cause illness in the coming season. They look at what strains are popping up in animals and in people around the world and try to match them with the strains most likely to cause infections. This year’s predominant strains selected for the vaccine included Influenza A (H1N1) viruses, influenza A (H3N2) viruses and influenza B viruses.
“It’s an inexact science, but it’s really quite good. Most of the time, it matches around 70 percent or maybe 80 percent of flu strains for that season,” Dowell said.
“What you can’t predict are changes in the virus over a few months. What the predominant strain did this year, which is the H3N2, is it drifted a little bit. It’s called antigenic drift, which means the virus mutated over time and changed its structure just a little.”
How does this affect the vaccine’s effectiveness?
Typically, the flu vaccine is about 70 percent protective in the typical adult population. In older adults – those 65 and older – the vaccine is 40 to 50 percent protective.
“But this year, across the board, the vaccine is probably around 50 percent protective. It could not have been predicted. The virus played its own game and changed a little. This is our battle against nature every year,” Dowell said.
“We’re not as protected as we’d like to be, but it’s a lot better than nothing. It’s still going to protect those at highest risk against death and probably severe illness with hospitalization.”
Have we been seeing more flu cases because of this mutated strain?
No. We usually have a 4- to 6-week period in which the flu season peaks, and Wyoming has not yet entered that period – and neither has the rest of the country. (Click here to see why Wyoming’s flu season typically starts later than other areas.)
“We are seeing some straggling cases, which is typical for this time of year,” Dowell said. “We will have to see over time how this plays out and how much protection the population has. We do know as a baseline that on any given year, we have about 50,000 flu-related deaths in the United States. We’ll see if that goes higher this year. I doubt it will be significantly higher, but that’s a speculation.”
If antigenic drift is a thing, is it worth getting the flu shot at all?
“It absolutely is because it’s better to have some protection than none,” Dowell said.
Is it too late to get this year’s vaccine?
No. The important thing is that you get it, no matter how late. The shot lasts four to six months but is strongest after two to four weeks. So, you will likely be protected when the Natrona County season peaks in the next month or so.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’ve given them as late as February. In every flu season, there are stragglers. If we have a flu outbreak in January, there are still cases that go on into April,” Dowell said.
Can we adjust this year’s vaccine to protect against the shifted H3N2 strain?
No. It could never be changed, manufactured and distributed in time to protect people this flu season. This antigenic shift will be taken into account – along with what’s going on around the world – for creation of next year’s vaccine.
The bottom line this year is to get seen by your physician or health provider as soon as possible if you develop true flu-like symptoms, Dowell said. “The virus is going to respond to medications like Tamiflu if started 24 to 48 hours into the illness. Beyond that, the medication is probably not helpful.”
What are the symptoms of flu?
“Sicker than you probably ever been, 101 fever, severe muscle aches like I almost can’t describe, feeling like you’ve been run over like a truck,” Dowell said.
“We have to understand the public uses the term flu very loosely. The flu, you don’t forget. It’s not the stomach flu with nausea and vomiting and diarrhea. That is a completely different virus. There are millions of different viruses out there. This is the influenza virus that makes you very, very sick.”
How can you prevent getting the virus in the first place?
Practice good hand washing and use antiviral hand gel.
“If you’re that sick, you should not be at work,” Dowell said. “Here at Wyoming Medical Center, we vaccinated more than 99 percent of anyone who works here – staff, volunteers, physicians. My message has always been, I do not want employees bringing in influenza, if possible, into a facility where you have the sickest people in the state of Wyoming. All of us share that responsibility and the employees here have done a phenomenal job with it.”
Also, keep sick kids at home. “Kids are the vectors. They carry the most viruses. I call my kids the cesspools because they spread it amongst each other and they are the ones who spread it to the adults.”
Dr. Dowell is an infectious disease specialist with Wyoming Medical Center and Rocky Mountain Infectious Diseases (RMID), 1450 E. A St. He is the Natrona County health officer and is board certified in infectious disease and internal medicine. RMID offers a full-breadth of outpatient infectious disease care and is looking to expand its outreach clinics. It has three full-time physicians, a half-time physician and a full-time nurse practitioner. For more information, appointments or referrals, call RMID at (307) 234-8700. | <urn:uuid:20c3c80a-8485-4faa-97a7-b2dcf7be1d91> | {
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KENTUCKY (11/26/13) - Several weeks ago I received a packet of information from Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday’s office about the state’s latest core content standards for Kentucky schools. Included in the packet was a letter from Holliday, some history of Kentucky’s Core Academic Standards, and a “myth vs. fact” sheet from the state Department of Education about the new standards versus the old.
Now, no doubt, there has been quite a bit of discussion (some might even say controversy) about the standards, where they got their start, if the federal government was involved in the process, and what their effect has been to date. So, I think it would be helpful to go over how the whole process of revamping Kentucky’s school content standards took shape.
The process began in 2009 with the Kentucky General Assembly’s passage of legislation (Senate Bill 1) which required the state Department of Education (KDE) to work with the state’s Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE) to implement a means of revising the content standards in core areas: reading, language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, arts and humanities, and career studies, to be exact.
Once SB 1 was law, the task fell to a steering committee to implement it. That led to Kentucky’s collaboration with other states through the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers to produce common core standards in math and English/language arts in grades K through 12. According to Holliday’s letter, Kentucky and 47 other states in 2009 signed an agreement to develop what is known as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) initiative. It was considered the best route to take for Kentucky, which was expected to meet a strict timetable for implementation with no money allocated to create high-quality standards on its own.
Many thought, and still believe, that the Kentucky Core Academic Standards—adopted by the Kentucky Board of Education in 2010 and first tested in the 2011-12 Kentucky school year— were dictated by the federal government, and that the standards are a curriculum. Neither is true. The federal government was not involved in the development of the standards, Holliday has said emphatically. Development was the responsibility of the states and their teachers, administrators, higher education faculty, and business representatives.
Secondly, the standards are not a curriculum, since a curriculum determines “how” something will be learned, not “what” will be learned, Holliday explained. This further excludes the federal government, which Holliday wrote “is barred by law from dictating a national curriculum,” as are the state Board of Education and the KDE in the Commonwealth. In Kentucky, standards are set by the state; curriculum is set locally.
Basically, SB 1 has successfully improved the quality of public education in Kentucky by raising our expectations, Holliday explained. Here are some clear-cut results, according to Holliday:
-- College and career readiness of Kentucky students has increased from 34 to nearly 48 percent over the past four years.
-- The state’s high school freshmen graduation rate has increased from 75.1 percent to a 78.8 percent average.
--The number of college-bound students who meet CPE benchmarks on the ACT college admissions exam increased by over 6 percent between 2012 and 2013, said Holliday. (The CPE benchmarks show how likely it is that a student will be successful in “credit-bearing, entry-level college courses,” Holliday wrote in his letter.)
I’ll make a final point on SB 1. The world is big on rankings, and education rankings are an area in which Kentucky has historically fallen short. But that is really changing under SB 1. According to Education Week’s “Quality Counts” report which grades state education efforts nationwide, Kentucky ranks 10th in those efforts and outcomes for 2013; in 2011, the Commonwealth ranked a dismal 34th.
So, kudos to our students, our schools, our teachers, and our administrators for their work in changing the face of education in Kentucky. And, let’s all keep up the good work!
You might recall that I promised in a prior column to give a final word on the “2012 Kentucky Equine Survey” on which I reported a few weeks ago, so let me do that briefly. A survey mailed to over 8,000 homes in Kentucky in 2013 showed a large majority of survey respondents want to protect Kentucky’s rural land, including equine operations, from being developed. I found that interesting, and would be interested in hearing your viewpoint on that matter in coming months.
Have a very Happy Thanksgiving.
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|< Prev||Next >| | <urn:uuid:883e1eb6-ca52-499b-8d71-9f5d402eec09> | {
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Herbert Beerbohm Tree's Shakespearean productions carried on the traditions of Charles Kean and Henry Irving in stressing spectacle. His 1910 production of Shakespeare's Henry VIII, in which he played Cardinal Wolsey, was particularly sumptuous. There were nearly a hundred exquisitely detailed costumes designed by Percy Macquoid. The crimson coronation dress for Anne Boleyn was richly pearled and trimmed with ermine. Henry VIII was arrayed in green with gold brocade, and had a gold dagger enamelled in green. Wolsey wore the red robes of his office, but the addition of the golden pomander (which you can see in the picture) was Tree's idea. It was there to reflect the Cardinal's addiction to luxury, crucial to Tree's interpretation of the role. He cut the text heavily, focussing on the domestic plot and the conflict between Henry and his Cardinal. The reviews he received in a later New York revival were ecstatically enthusiastic: 'The character lives and breathes … a creation vital, impressive, profoundly moving and sympathetic'. | <urn:uuid:e9a46b22-49ee-4256-822a-05429d9278d5> | {
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Hanukkah arrives this evening and with it the thought of miracles. A great miracle happened there, we proclaim. Nes gadol haya sham.
A miracle? “When Mattathias had finished speaking these words, a Jew came forward in the sight of all to offer sacrifice upon the altar in Modiin, according to the king’s command. When Mattathias saw it, he burned with zeal and his heart was stirred. He gave vent to righteous anger; he ran and killed him upon the altar. At the same time he killed the king’s officer who was forcing them to sacrifice, and he tore down the altar.” (I Maccabees 2:23-26) The war was not only against Antiochus Epiphanies but the Jews who supported him. The first battle was in fact Jew against Jew.
How is it that a story of the Maccabees fighting against the Syrian-Greeks, and against the Jews who welcomed their culture, became a story of miracles? It is because the rabbis, living centuries after the Maccabees and the corruption to which their rule gave rise, and following the disastrous revolt against Rome in their own day, reimagined the Hanukkah struggle. It was no longer a story about war, and most especially the civil war that it in fact was, but instead a tale about God’s power and majesty. In the rabbinic imagination Hanukkah becomes not the victorious war story, filled with the battle scarred heroism of Mattathias and his sons, but instead a tale about God’s miracles. Nes gadol haya sham. God’s light brightens a darkened story.
It was the birth of Zionism and the State of Israel that upended the rabbis’ retelling and their philosophy....
Rabbi Steven Moskowitz | <urn:uuid:384c3fdd-3003-4a3d-8c08-b24c13c2d684> | {
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What is an LMS (Learning Management System)?
People working at internet companies seem to like their abbreviations. They just sound so professional: Saas, Cloud, ERP, LMS. What is that "LMS" that people keep bringing up in business meetings? What does LMS mean? What is the definition and meaning of learning management systems? Good questions, thanks for asking :)
In this article we're going to explain what LMS means.
What is the defintion of an LMS software? LMS stands for Learning Management System. Now you know a lot more, right? We'll explain some more.
Learning: You use an LMS to deliver online courses and training material to the participants in your class or training.
Management: An LMS helps you organize and manage your online courses, your participants, their results and the effectiveness of your courses.
System: System is just another fancy word for software, so it sounds bigger, and more expensive.
Who uses an LMS?
Who typically uses an LMS? Every organisation should have a focus on learning and development of the employers to stay alive in this fiercy competitive world. Regardsless if you're working in a small business or if you're responsible for corporate learning within a big organisation, everyone benefits of an LMS. An LMS helps you to organize your learning, cuts on the time needed to create courses and distribute your courses to your colleagues.
For schools it's obvious to use some sort of system to track their students. But a lot of schools still use books to get the stuff kids have to learn in their heads. Why not use a computer, tablet or mobile to get your kids learning. That's what an LMS can help with. Don't get the kids to the books, get the learning to the kid on his or her own device. That's the true meaning of an LMS.
What are typical features of an LMS
In our opinion is an LMS foremost to create beautiful courses and track the progress of your students. But that's just the basics. More advanced features like exporting your results, inviting users, hand out certificates and make integrations with third parties are making your life easier. Check out our full LMS features list.
The future of LMS systems
Now you know what LMS stands for, let's talk about the future of LMS systems. The LMS market is a young one. And new LMS vendors are entering the market with new and innovative ideas. We strongly believe that an LMS should create an engaging and distraction free learning environment. And in the future more and more LMS systems will add functionality to enhance the learning capacities of their students. There's tons of studies on the best way to learn, but few, if any LMS systems use that knowledge in their product. We aim to start using and testing that knowledge in the near future. Now you know about the future of LMS systems, you may want to read more about the history of LMS systems.
More about our Easy LMS
Now you know what learning management systems are, let's talk about Easy LMS. Our LMS helps you to create beautiful and engaging courses, manage them and send them to your users. The users get a beautiful and distraction-free learning experience. Afterwards you can look at their results or send them a PDF certificate. All completely automated. How nice is that?
Though we have a fancy system, our LMS is fairly priced compared to our competitors. We have a free version and our paid plans start at $20 per month. If you want to learn more, just ask us for an LMS demo, we're happy to show you around.
Now we're at it, maybe you have another question: why use a learning management system? | <urn:uuid:ddbba946-9e2f-46a4-b8a1-d44d31ebd2a8> | {
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The fluffy yellow balls that are the flowers of the Wattle are the stuff of great sentiment to many Australians, so much so that during World War I, it was a common practice to place a sprig of Wattle inside letters to soldiers to remind them of home. Today, Golden Wattle (Acacia pycnantha) is the official floral emblem of Australia, and Wattle Day is celebrated on the 1st September each year.
Wattles are part of the Acacia genus, which belongs to the Mimosaceae family. Approximately 1350 species of Acacia can be found in the southern hemisphere, and of these, almost 1000 can be found in Australia, most of which are endemic, or native to Australia.
Wattle flowers form as either globular inflorescent - that is, they have many small flowers that look like one flower or cylindrical inflorescent forms. They mostly range from pale, creamy yellow to bright yellow, although more rarely, they can be purple (Purple-Flowered Wattle, or Acacia purpureapetala) or even blood red. This latter variation of Cinnamon Wattle (Acacia leprosa), known as 'Scarlet Blaze' was only discovered by bushwalkers in 1995, and needs to be propagated by cuttings rather than seeds to ensure its flowers stay scarlet, otherwise they bloom the usual yellow. It is native to woodlands in New South Wales and Victoria, and has been cultivated commercially since 2001. It also became the official floral emblem of Victoria's Centenary of Federation in the same year.
The perfume of wattles can vary from one species to the next, but those that do, such as Golden Wattle, have been also used in perfume making. As cut flowers, they only last 5-7 days, so it's best to choose a bunch that has only one third of half of the flowers open and buds that are generally yellow in colour. Avoid bunches that have wilted leaves or have any brown flowers. Commercially, wattles are available for most of the year, from January right through to the end of November.
Because there are so many varieties of wattle, it's good to choose a species that is native to your area if you want to grow them successfully in your own garden. This will ensure it is suited to your soil type and climate conditions. Size is also a factor. The tallest known species, White Marblewood (Acacia bakeri) has been known to grow to almost 50 metres in height, while the Snake Wattle (Acacia aculeatissima) only reaches a few centimetres. Most reach a shrub size of 3-4 metres, but care should be taken with some species, such as the Cootamundra Wattle (Acacia baileyana), which is becoming a pest in the outer Sydney area, where it can become quite large and invasive.
In their natural habitat, most wattles bloom during winter, bringing a burst of colour to the bush. Contrary to popular opinion, their heavy pollen-laden flowers are not a big risk to those who suffer from hay fever.
Our delivery times differ depending on whether it is a weekday, weekend, or public holiday.
Register as a Flowers Fan & start saving! Receive 10% off online purchases as well as fortnightly updates on seasonal promotions, specials & competitions.
Do you love flowers and gardening? Our beautiful blog is updated weekly with interesting flower trivia, gardening tips, craft ideas, competitions and creative inspiration. | <urn:uuid:ff2a649c-2d33-4157-af74-9377c5949e8d> | {
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Temperature coefficient of resistance
You might have noticed on the table for specific resistances that all figures were specified at a temperature of 20o Celsius. If you suspected that this meant specific resistance of a material may change with temperature, you were right!
Resistance values for conductors at any temperature other than the standard temperature (usually specified at 20 Celsius) on the specific resistance table must be determined through yet another formula:
The “alpha” (α) constant is known as the temperature coefficient of resistance, and symbolizes the resistance change factor per degree of temperature change. Just as all materials have a certain specific resistance (at 20o C), they also change resistance according to temperature by certain amounts. For pure metals, this coefficient is a positive number, meaning that resistance increases with increasing temperature. For the elements carbon, silicon, and germanium, this coefficient is a negative number, meaning that resistance decreases with increasing temperature. For some metal alloys, the temperature coefficient of resistance is very close to zero, meaning that the resistance hardly changes at all with variations in temperature (a good property if you want to build a precision resistor out of metal wire!). The following table gives the temperature coefficients of resistance for several common metals, both pure and alloy:
TEMPERATURE COEFFICIENTS OF RESISTANCE, AT 20 DEGREES C
Material Element/Alloy “alpha” per degree Celsius
Nickel ——– Element ————— 0.005866
Iron ———- Element ————— 0.005671
Molybdenum —- Element ————— 0.004579
Tungsten —— Element ————— 0.004403
Aluminum —— Element ————— 0.004308
Copper ——– Element ————— 0.004041
Silver ——– Element ————— 0.003819
Platinum —— Element ————— 0.003729
Gold ———- Element ————— 0.003715
Zinc ———- Element ————— 0.003847
Steel* ——— Alloy —————- 0.003
Nichrome ——- Alloy —————- 0.00017
Nic rome V —– Alloy —————- 0.00013
Manganin ——- Alloy ———— +/- 0.000015
Constantan —– Alloy ————— -0.000074
* = Steel alloy at 99.5 percent iron, 0.5 percent carbon
Let’s take a look at an example circuit to see how temperature can affect wire resistance, and consequently circuit performance:
This circuit has a total wire resistance (wire 1 + wire 2) of 30 Ω at standard temperature. Setting up a table of voltage, current, and resistance values we get:
At 20o Celsius, we get 12.5 volts across the load and a total of 1.5 volts (0.75 + 0.75) dropped across the wire resistance. If the temperature were to rise to 35o Celsius, we could easily determine the change of resistance for each piece of wire. Assuming the use of copper wire (α = 0.004041) we get:
Recalculating our circuit values, we see what changes this increase in temperature will bring:
As you can see, voltage across the load went down (from 12.5 volts to 12.42 volts) and voltage drop across the wires went up (from 0.75 volts to 0.79 volts) as a result of the temperature increasing. Though the changes may seem small, they can be significant for power lines stretching miles between power plants and substations, substations and loads. In fact, power utility companies often have to take line resistance changes resulting from seasonal temperature variations into account when calculating allowable system loading.
- Most conductive materials change specific resistance with changes in temperature. This is why figures of specific resistance are always specified at a standard temperature (usually 20o or 25o Celsius).
- The resistance-change factor per degree Celsius of temperature change is called the temperature coefficient of resistance. This factor is represented by the Greek lower-case letter “alpha” (α).
- A positive coefficient for a material means that its resistance increases with an increase in temperature. Pure metals typically have positive temperature coefficients of resistance. Coefficients approaching zero can be obtained by alloying certain metals.
- A negative coefficient for a material means that its resistance decreases with an increase in temperature. Semiconductor materials (carbon, silicon, germanium) typically have negative temperature coefficients of resistance.
- The formula used to determine the resistance of a conductor at some temperature other than what is specified in a resistance table is as follows: | <urn:uuid:61f1dd67-b469-455f-b758-295f391cac9c> | {
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There are many reasons skin infections could occur on a dog’s tail, including allergies or infections related to cuts and scrapes that come from trauma.
“We see many infections from allergies, which cause the pet to chew and itch at their tail,” says Dr. Duffy Jones, DVM of Peachtree Hills Animal Hospital in Georgia. “Because the tail typically has very little extra skin, once the skin is broken into an open wound it can be very hard to get it to heal.”
Treatment for skin infections is difficult, Jones says, because while the dog can be placed in an Elizabethan collar to prevent them from licking the tail, the dog will likely still wag the tail, irritating the wound.
“Many times they are going to need to be on oral antibiotics,” he says. “Sometimes we also add in topical medications but those can be difficult because it might cause the dog to want to lick more.” | <urn:uuid:9cfa338c-a796-45b8-9aaf-c23961174c19> | {
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Fifty years ago, in August 1952, Josef Stalin gave the order to shoot several dozen Jewish intellectuals for reasons still unknown and that will probably never be known. The excuse given was full of false arguments. They were accused of trying to separate Crimea from the Soviet Union and -with the complicity of the American secret service- to establish a bourgeois and Zionist Jewish republic.
These paranoid fantasies were crass excuses to sow panic and they had their correlation on the other side of the political and geographic map. In Argentina notorious nationalists denounced a Jewish conspiracy called the ”Andinia Plan” with the alleged aim of founding a Jewish-Marxist state in Patagonia.
So, while in Russia the Jews were accused of conspiring with international capitalism to destroy Marxism, in South America they were accused of being Marxist agents hell-bent on destroying capitalism. The truth, needless to say, is that the Republics of Crimea and Andinia only existed as part of the most visceral anti-Semitism that united soviets and fascists.
Stalin, as well as Lenin, hoped that the Soviet Jews would gradually disappear as the regime offered the carrot of modernisation together with the stick of forced assimilation. But by the end of his life he could not dominate his virulent anti-Semitism and started a systematic assault on the leaders of Yiddish culture. This campaign ended up with the multiple executions that took place in the basement of the Lubyanka prison, sadly famous because the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who was kidnapped by the Soviet Army in 1945, was also held captive there. Wallenberg – for causes that we do not know either and that we hope to reveal someday – became the first disappeared person of modern times.
Both stories, the one of the Jewish poets and that of Wallenberg, are sadly linked to each other in the absolute disregard for life and the subjugation of individual freedoms suffered under totalitarian regimes. When democratic institutions start disappearing, the doors of arbitrariness are left open.
The case of the Jewish writers is highly significant: they were Jews but they were also pro Soviet -proselytes of the Stalinist Marxism, ferocious anti-Zionists and bitter opponents to the Hebrew Language -to the point of opposing to the Renaissance Hebrew movement- when, ironically, some of them had initiated their literary activities by writing in the sacred language.
In the years that followed the revolution, the Communist Party kept up a hostile attitude towards the Hebrew language and culture, but it officially supported Yiddish, the ”language of the proletariat”. The movement wanted to conquer the ”Jewish masses” for the cause of the revolution once it justified the destruction of the true values of the Jewish people.
Many people, including numerous important people, fell into this divisive trap. With the excuse of working for a ”productive and anti-oligarchic” culture against religion and ”the opium of people”, they became collaborationists of the regime, against the Jews who fought for a pluralist society based mainly on freedom.
David Bergelson, Itzik Fefer (apparently an infiltrated agent, according to the documents revealed later), Der Nister, Isaac Nusinov, Biniamin Zuskin and Shlomo Mijoels, among many other spokesmen of Yiddish literature in the Soviet Union, spread propaganda in favour of the regime, they lived thanks to the facilities provided by the system and they even wrote lullabies praising communism and worshipped Stalin’s personality. Fefer’s verses in his poem ”Lullaby for a Jewish child in Birovillan” speak for themselves:
Shlof main kind, farmaj di oign
Sleep my child, close your eyes.
Bizn Kreml geien grisn
To the Kremlin reached the news
Vegn dir main kind
About you, my child.
Zol der javer Stalin visn
So that comrade Stalin knows
Az du schlofst atzind.
That you are already sleeping.
The verses of his poem dedicated to Stalin are also eloquent:
Zog ij Stalin, mein ij shein
When I say Stalin I say beautiful.
Mein ij eibik gliklej zain
I want to say eternal happiness.
Mein ij kein mol schoin nit visn.
I want to say that I will never know
Schoin nit visn fun kein pein.
I will not know of any pain.
Stalin’s only interest was to keep and increase his power by using everything in his reach, which was of absolute control over the State.
Any other consideration, not having to do with Stalin’s accumulation of political power, was circumstantial and thus disposable. Disposable were, among many others, the Jewish intellectuals who, at some point, believed that their presence, their prose and intelligence was worth something in itself.
As important as paying tribute to the victims of Stalinist barbarism, is to not forget the tragic metamorphosis of the intellectuals, who helped fuel the fire which later consumed them when they abandoned -not only their identity- but also their dignity. This is very different to Wallenberg, who was a victim of terror, but as a result of having fought in favour of life and freedom, values that were totally disregarded by the Soviet Communism and its followers.
In August we celebrate the 90th anniversary of Raoul Wallenberg’s birthday. Also during this month we cry over the tragedy of the Jewish writers and Stalin’s crimes.
* Baruch Tenembaum is Founder of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation | <urn:uuid:73604937-4bec-4b8e-9069-cde38edc551b> | {
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This Briefing Paper further explores the racial and ethnic variation in the employment situation for recent high school and college graduates.
By race, all groups of recent high school graduates have seen a large increase in their unemployment rate. Immediately prior to the recession, Hispanic and Asian American high school graduates had lower unemployment rates than white high school graduates. The large increases in unemployment among Hispanic and Asian American youth, however, have eliminated their unemployment rate advantage relative to whites.
Although recent college graduates have lower unemployment rates than high school graduates, they have nonetheless seen a significant increase in their unemployment rate over the recession. All of the nonwhite groups of college graduates showed a much stronger increase than white college graduates in unemployment over the recession.
Recent black high school and college graduates face a considerable disadvantage. Black high school graduates were much less likely than their nonblack peers to find work. Black college graduates experienced the double whammy of the highest unemployment rates and the highest student loan debt levels. | <urn:uuid:a98c4f9b-83f0-48b6-9088-5a44a5fe0b0e> | {
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While many types of flowering trees are ornamental species, some are fruit trees that grow both in the wild and in cultivation. Other flowering trees grow naturally throughout the woodlands and forests of North America. The identification of these flowering trees comes from considering such aspects of their appearance as height, leaves, habitat and the flowers themselves.
Assess the height of a flowering tree you encounter. Some, such as the yellow poplar, can grow to be very tall, from 100 to 150 feet. Others will be much smaller, like the flowering dogwood, which is often only 15 to 20 feet tall. Take the overall shape of the tree into account as well. Decide if the tree has a spreading rounded crown, a more conical shape, or if it has an irregular silhouette.
Look at the leaves to try to determine the species of flowering tree. Northern catalpa, for instance, has such distinctive leaves that the foliage alone will enable you to recognize this species. The catalpa has large leaves shaped like an elephant's ear. Other flowering trees will not have leaves that make this process so easy. Measure the length and width of the leaves and consider their colors. Categorize the foliage by shape and by how the leaves grow on the twigs.
Search for trees that flower before their foliage develops. In the spring, species such as the redbud and the American plum will have flowers well before they have leaves. This fact will help you to make quick identifications of such species.
Inspect the flowers of trees carefully. Count the number of petals the flowers have. Check the colors on the outer part of the flowers and on the inside as well. Measure the flower's width and count how many exist in any clusters you find on the branches. Using all of this data, try to ascertain the identity of the tree. For example, the flowers of the American crabapple are pinkish-white, according to the "Trees of North America" guide, and are about an inch and a half wide. These flowers grow in groups of between three and six blossoms.
Check a flowering tree for any other features that might give you a clue as to the tree's species. Many hawthorn and plum trees possess sharp spines on their branches. The flowers of honeylocust change into long brown seedpods. The bark of a pawpaw tree is rough-grained and warty. Always check for something that stands out as being different from most trees.
Look at the habitat of a flowering tree and consider where you live in the United States. For instance, the southern magnolia is native to the Deep South and this tree will not grow naturally in cold climate states such as Minnesota and Montana. The persimmon, a flowering tree of the eastern states, will not grow in wet soil, so you would not expect to find one in a swamp. | <urn:uuid:a5eae31a-e77c-4447-8cac-4b4ec85ad017> | {
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For those interested in Anglo-Saxon items 🐵
The best Anglo-Saxon books and poems
What are the finest works of Anglo-Saxon literature? We’ve restricted our choices to works of literature written in Anglo-Saxon or Old English, so that rules out Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, which, as the title suggests, was written in Latin. But there’s a wealth of great literature written in Old English, as the following pick of ten of the best testifies (we hope).
Anonymous, The Exeter Book riddles. Here’s a riddle for you: what hangs down by the thigh of a man, under his cloak, yet is stiff and hard? When the man pulls up his robe, he puts the head of this hanging thing into that familiar hole of matching length which he has filled many times before. Got it? A key, of course! This is one of a number of riddles found in the Exeter Book, one of the…
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The aircraft's response to momentary disturbance is associated with its
inherent degree of stability built in by the designer, in each of the three axes,
and occurring without any reaction from the pilot.
There is another condition affecting flight, which is the aircraft's state of trim
or equilibrium (where the net sum of all forces equals zero).
Some aircraft can be trimmed by the pilot to fly 'hands off' for straight and
level flight, for climb or for descent.
Free flight models generally have to rely on the state of trim built in by the
designer and adjusted by the rigger, while the remote controlled models have
some form of trim devices which are adjustable during the flight.
An aircraft's stability is expressed in relation to each axis:
lateral stability (stability in roll), directional stability (stability in yaw)
and longitudinal stability (stability in pitch).
Lateral and directional stability are inter-dependent.
Stability may be defined as follows:
- Positive stability - tends to return to original condition after a disturbance.
- Negative stability - tends to increase the disturbance.
- Neutral stability - remains at the new condition.
- Static stability - refers to the aircraft's initial response to a disturbance.
- Dynamic stability - refers to the aircraft's ability to damp out oscillations,
which depends on how fast or how slow it responds to a disturbance.
So, a static stable aircraft may be dynamically unstable.
Dynamic instability may be prevented by an even distribution of weight inside the
fuselage, avoiding too much weight concentration at the extremities or at the CG.
Also, control surfaces' max throws may affect the flight stability, since a too much
control throw may cause dynamic instability, e.g. Pilot Induced Oscillations (PIO).
Static stability is proportional to the stabiliser area and the tail moment.
You get double static stability if you double the tail area or double the tail moment.
Dynamic stability is also proportional to the stabiliser area but increases with the
square of the tail moment, which means that you get four times the dynamic stability
if you double the tail arm length.
However, making the tail arm longer or encreasing the stabiliser area will move
the mass of the aircraft towards the rear, which may also mean the need to make
the nose longer in order to minimize the weight required to balance the aircraft...
A totally stable aircraft will return, more or less immediately, to its trimmed state
without pilot intervention.
However, such an aircraft is rare and not much desirable. We usually want an
aircraft just to be reasonably stable so it is easy to fly.
If it is too stable, it tends to be sluggish in manoeuvring, exhibiting too slow
response on the controls.
Too much instability is also an undesirable characteristic, except where an
extremely manoeuvrable aircraft is needed and the instability can be continually
corrected by on-board 'fly-by-wire' computers rather than the pilot, such as a
supersonic air superiority fighter.
Lateral stability is achieved through dihedral, sweepback, keel effect and
proper distribution of weight.
The dihedral angle is the angle that each wing makes with the horizontal (see
If a disturbance causes one wing to drop, the lower wing will receive more lift
and the aircraft will roll back into the horizontal level.
A sweptback wing is one in which the leading edge slopes backward.
When a disturbance causes an aircraft with sweepback to slip or drop a wing,
the low wing presents its leading edge at an angle more perpendicular to the
relative airflow. As a result, the low wing acquires more lift and rises, restoring
the aircraft to its original flight attitude.
The keel effect occurs with high wing aircraft. These are laterally stable simply
because the wings are attached in a high position on the fuselage, making the
fuselage behave like a keel.
When the aircraft is disturbed and one wing dips, the fuselage weight acts like
a pendulum returning the aircraft to the horizontal level.
The tail fin determines the directional stability.
If a gust of wind strikes the aircraft from the right it will be in a slip and the fin
will get an angle of attack causing the aircraft to yaw until the slip is eliminated.
Longitudinal stability depends on the location of the centre of gravity, the
stabiliser area and how far the stabiliser is placed from the main wing.
Most aircraft would be completely unstable without the horizontal stabiliser.
Non-symmetrical cambered airfoils have a higher lift coefficient, but they also
have a negative pitching moment (Cm) tending to pitch nose-down, and thus
being statically unstable, which requires the counter moment produced by the
horizontal stabiliser to get adequate longitudinal stability.
The stabiliser provides the same function in longitudinal stability as the fin does
in directional stability.
Symmetrical (zero camber) airfoils have normally a zero pitching moment,
resulting in neutral stability, which means the aircraft goes wherever you point it.
Reflexed airfoils (with trailing edge bent up) have a positive pitching moment
making them naturally stable, they are often used with flying wings (without the
It is of crucial importance that the aircraft's Centre of Gravity (CG) is located
at the right point, so that a stable and controllable flight can be achieved.
In order to achieve a good longitudinal stability, the CG should be ahead of the
Neutral Point (NP), which is the Aerodynamic Centre of the whole aircraft.
NP is the position through which all the net lift increments act for a change in
angle of attack.
The major contributors are the main wing, stabiliser surfaces and fuselage.
The bigger the stabiliser area in relationship to the wing area and the longer
the tail moment arm relative to the wing chord, the farther aft the NP will be and
the farther aft the CG may be, provided it's kept ahead of the NP for stability.
The angle of the fuselage to the direction of flight affects its drag, but has little
effect on the pitch trim unless both the projected area of the fuselage and its
angle to the direction of flight are quite large.
A tail-heavy aircraft will be more unstable and susceptible to stall at low speed
e. g. during the landing approach.
A nose-heavy aircraft will be more difficult to takeoff from the ground and to
gain altitude and will tend to drop its nose when the throttle is reduced. It also
requires higher speed in order to land safely.
The angle between the wing chord line and the stabiliser chord line is called
the Longitudinal Dihedral (LD) or decalage.
For a given centre of gravity, there is a LD angle that results in a certain
trimmed flight speed and pitch attitude.
If the LD angle is increased the plane will take on a more nose up pitch attitude,
whereas with a decreased LD angle the plane will take on a more nose down
There is also the Angle of Incidence, which is the angle of a flying surface
related to a common reference line drawn by the designer along the fuselage.
The designer might want this reference line to be level when the plane is flying
at level flight or when the fuselage is in it's lowest drag position.
The purpose of the reference line is to make it easier to set up the relationships
among the thrust, the wing and the stabiliser incidence angles.
Thus, the Longitudinal Dihedral and the Angle of Incidence are interdependent.
Longitudinal stability is also improved if the stabiliser is situated so that it lies
outside the influence of the main wing downwash.
Stabilisers are therefore often staggered and mounted at a different height in
order to improve their stabilising effectiveness.
It has been found both experimentally and theoretically that, if the aerodynamic
force is applied at a location 1/4 from the leading edge of a rectangular wing
at subsonic speed, the magnitude of the aerodynamic moment remains nearly
constant even when the angle of attack changes.
This location is called the wing's Aerodynamic Centre AC.
(At supersonic speed, the aerodynamic centre is near 1/2 of the chord).
In order to obtain a good Longitudinal Stability the Centre of Gravity CG
should be close to the main wings' Aerodynamic Centre AC.
For wings with other than rectangular form (such as triangular, trapezoidal,
compound, etc.) we have to find the Mean Aerodynamic Chord - MAC,
which is the average for the whole wing.
The MAC calculation requires rather complicated mathematics, so a simpler
method called 'Geometric Mean Chord' GMC or 'Standard Mean Chord' SMC
may be used as shown on the drawings below.
MAC is only slightly bigger than GMC except for sharply tapered wings.
Taper ratio = tip chord/root chord.
To calculate MAC of a tapered wing, the following simplified equation
may be used:
MAC = root chord * 2/3 * ((1+T+T2)/(1+T))
Where T is the wing's taper ratio.
The MAC distance from the center line may be calculated as follows:
distance = half span * (1+2*T)/(3*(1+T))
For a delta wing the CG should be located 10% ahead of the geometrically
calculated AC point as shown above.
The MAC of an elliptical wing is 85% of the root chord and is located at 42.4% of
the half wingspan from the root chord.
Elliptical wing's area = pi * wingspan * root chord/4
The AC location for biplanes with positive stagger (top wing ahead of the bottom
wing), is found according to the drawing below.
For conventional designs (with main wing and horizontal stab) the CG location
range is usually between 28% and 33% from the leading edge of the main
wing's MAC, which means between about 5% and 15% ahead of the aircraft's
Neutral Point NP.
This is called the Static Margin, which is expressed as a percentage of MAC.
When the static margin is zero (CG coincident with NP) the aircraft is considered
However, for conventional designs the static margin should be between 5% and
15% of the MAC ahead of the NP.
The CG location as described above is pretty close to the wing's Aerodynamic
Center AC because the lift due to the horizontal stab has only a slightly effect on
the conventional R/C models.
However, those figures may vary with other designs, as the NP location depends
on the size of the main wing vs. the stab size and the distance between the main
wing's AC and the stab's AC.
The simplest way of locating the aircraft's NP is by using the areas of the two
horizontal lifting surfaces (main wing and stab) and locate the NP proportionately
along the distance between the main wing's AC point and the stab's AC point.
For example, the NP distance to the main wing's AC point would be:
D = L · (stab area) / (main wing area + stab area) as shown on the picture below:
There are other factors, however, that make the simple formula above inaccurate.
In case the two wings have different aspect ratios (different dCL/d-alpha) the NP
will be closer to the one that has higher aspect ratio.
Also, since the stab operates in disturbed air, the NP will be more forward than
the simple formula predicts.
The figure below shows a somewhat more complex formula to locate the NP but
would give a more accurate result using the so called Tail Volume Ratio, Vbar.
This formula gives the NP position as a percentage (%) of the wing's MAC aft of
the wing's AC point.
For those who are not so keen on formulas and calculations there is the
Aircraft Center of Gravity Calculator, which automatically calculates the CG
location as well as other usuful parameters based on the formula above.
For Canards check the link below:
Canard Center of Gravity Calculator | <urn:uuid:d51fbc39-0c04-4f9e-b4bf-ae33b0c34052> | {
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Crinoids are known as sea lilies because they live on a stem and have a flower-like body. They are analogous to starfish with a stem. Although still existing but uncommon in the oceans today, they were very abundant in shallow tropical seas during the Paleozoic. Some Mississippian rocks contain so many broken-up fossil crinoids that the Mississippian became known as the Age of Crinoids. The most common crinoid fossils are the individual button-like plates that made up the stem. Crinoid fossils can be found in the Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Mississippian, and Pennsylvanian rocks of Kentucky.
The Mississippian crinoid Taxocrinus
Pterotocrinus from the Mississippian of Kentucky. The five large projections are spines that protected the crinoid from being eaten by fish. The smaller projections were arms that helped gather food particles floating in the water. The column would have been attached to the small circular scar at the center of the photo.
Coiled crinoid stem from Mississippian strata of south-central Kentucky. This may be Gilbertsocrinus according to Alan Goldstein.
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Madonna and Bon Jovi are no match for Hawaiian flies when it comes to karaoke hits at the University of Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln. In a popular exhibit activity, visitors attempt to mimic the unique courtship calls of different species of Hawaiian Drosophila, a group of 800 different flies that may have evolved from a single species.
Fly karaoke is part of "Explore Evolution," a permanent exhibit currently at Nebraska and five other museums in the Midwest and Southwest (the Science Museum of Minnesota, the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, the Exhibit Museum of Natural History at the University of Michigan and the University of Kansas Natural History Museum & Biodiversity Research Center, plus an October opening at the Texas Memorial Museum) that explores evolutionary concepts in new ways. Such an activity is a far cry from the traditional way science museums have presented evolution, which usually included charts called phylogenies depicting ancestral relationships or a static set of fossils arranged chronologically. "Explore Evolution'' has those, too—and then some, because museum curators came to realize that they needed better ways to counter growing attacks on their integrity.
The theory of evolution has always been denounced by creationists, who contend that the biblical story of "Genesis" is an accurate account of Earth's geologic and paleontological history and that The Origin of Species is blasphemous. The intelligent design (ID) movement that sprang from creationism in the 1990s gives an even more vague but equally unscientific explanation for natural history, claiming that nature is so complex that only an intelligent being or force could have been responsible for creating it. They, like creationists, argue that humans were never apelike and that children should learn about alternatives to evolution like ID in public school science classes. (No matter that their claims have no scientific basis or that the U.S. Constitution mandates a separation of church and state.)
Under pressure from these kinds of groups, the Kansas State Board of Education in 2005 approved a curriculum that allowed the public schools to include completely unfounded challenges to the theory of evolution.
In an effort to make their case to the public, creationists raised $26 million in private donations to build the 50,000-square-foot Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., which opened in late May. The institution presents the biblical history of the universe. Visitors learn that biblically, dinosaurs are best explained as creatures that roamed Earth with humans. In its first month of existence, the museum drew over 49,000 visitors, according to its Web site.
"Explore Evolution," funded by a $2.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation, is one of many recent efforts by science museums to counter such resistance to evolution. Curators like Judy Diamond, a professor and curator at the University of Nebraska State Museum, decided the traditional methods of presenting scientific evidence were not working to convince the public of evolution¿s validity, and came up with a new plan to lure visitors: interactive activities about evolution and lessons on how scientists ply their trade.
"The idea was to teach evolution by meeting real scientists, getting to understand what they do in their work, and then being introduced to evolution through the process of understanding their research," says Diamond, who designed the "Explore Evolution'' exhibit.
Each of the exhibit's seven displays focuses on a specific organism, relates it to evolution, and introduces the scientists who researched them. A giant wall of nucleotides compares the DNA of humans with that of their closer relatives, chimpanzees. And, in a Where's Waldo–type game, visitors are challenged to find small figures representing famous evolutionary scientist Svante Pääbo, director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, to illustrate the 1 percent difference between human and chimp genomes.
Diamond and E. Margaret Evans, assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, surveyed visitors on their views of evolution and found that they seemed to think through problems in more evolutionary terms after viewing the exhibit—even if they were self-identified Creationists. "Whenever someone starts, they move a little bit along the continuum. That's the best anyone can hope for in an exhibit," Diamond says.
Evans is also collaborating with other scientists on a new project called "Life Changes." Funded by a $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the exhibit is set to open as a traveling exhibition some time in 2009, with stops at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, the Miami Science Museum, the North Museum of Natural History & Science in Lancaster, Pa., and the Exhibit Museum of Natural History at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich.
"Life Changes" is mainly directed at children and will feature actors, who will tell stories about different birds to convey evolutionary principles. For example, an actor will describe the evolution of the kiwi, which burrows underground like a badger rather than flying, yet still belongs to the bird family. There will also be other interactive activities about bird evolution and perhaps even live birds, says cellular biochemist Martin Weiss, vice president, science at the Hall of Science. Weiss also envisions Internet discussion groups and online courses on evolution.
Although this project did not start out as a counterpoint to the Creation Museum, Weiss has come to view it that way. "In the sense that if it bolsters our understanding of the natural world, and how to look at the natural world and how to understand it," he says, "then yes, that's its purpose."
Scientists say that, among other things, an understanding of evolution is crucial when it comes to medicine and health—and an upcoming exhibit called "Surviving: The Body of Evidence" will explain why. The exhibit, set to open in April at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, will teach visitors how certain contemporary problems such as obesity may have evolved by comparing the eating habits of modern humans with their ancestors. It will point out, for example, that milk was not part of the human diet until animals were domesticated several thousand years ago, which may explain the prevalence of lactose intolerance today. The exhibit will wrap up with a film that juxtaposes scientists and children speculating on the future of human evolution.
Unlike some human evolution displays, "Surviving" will classify our ancestors according to "early," "middle" and "latest" forms, rather than by drawing treelike relationships between specific skeletons. This is meant to prevent confusion when new fossils are found and added to the display, says Janet Monge, exhibit designer and a professor of anthropology at Penn and Princeton University. "In evolution you can't necessarily draw these ancestor-descendent relationship lines, because people are always in the process of discovering new things."
Another new approach for teaching evolution is to focus on the man who made the idea famous: Charles Darwin. An exhibit dubbed "Darwin," currently showing at The Field Museum in Chicago, explores evolution through Darwin's eyes, taking viewers through his research and reasoning. It discusses some of the challenges he encountered when he first proposed his theory of evolution and displays personal artifacts such as his walking stick, geologic hammers and his Bible—the latter in an attempt to quietly bring home the fact that religion and science can coexist.
There is also a video of scientists discussing why creationism is not a viable alternative to the theory of evolution.
The exhibit originated at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in 2005, just weeks after 11 parents in Dover, Pa., successfully sued to bar biology teachers in public schools there from reading a four-paragraph statement about ID in class.
"Darwin" curator Niles Eldredge views the exhibit and verdict to be a "one-two punch" against creationism. "We just happened to be there as one of the first things you could point to and say, 'hey people, we're not going to take this lying down and we're going to fight back,'" he says.
In February the Natural History museum reopened its 13-year-old Hall of Human Origins, which had been updated to include interactive displays and other new information such as DNA samples to help tell the story of human evolution, curator Ian Tattersall says.
Through DNA evidence, for example, scientists now know that Neandertals are a distinct kind of hominid with their own identity. Visitors can view a vial of actual 40,000-year-old Neandertal DNA alongside vials of human and chimp DNA and learn about how, say, Homo sapiens migrated out of eastern Africa 70,000 years ago. Fossils alone have not been able to tell this story, because of gaps in the fossil record, Tattersall says.
He denounced the Creation Museum as "a waste of human talent" and energy to promote a bogus idea. "I do not see that anybody's religious beliefs are threatened by evolution, which is simply the only plausible thesis we have for explaining what we see in nature today," he says.
Colin Purrington, a biology professor at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, says that institutions like science museums must not shy away from evolutionary topics, and should make the most of their exhibit spaces to educate the public. On his Web site (http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/evolk12/exhibits/intro.htm) he displays photos of various exhibit labels that misrepresent biological concepts and urged institutions displaying them to remove them. For instance, he implored the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., to take down a "stop" sign that warns visitors that its exhibit on chimpanzee-human relationships "contains some things you may agree with, some you may disagree with, and others that may even trouble you."
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How does the author use references from the Bible and biblical stories? Give examples from the story.
Answers 1Add Yours
In "The Sieve and the Sand", Faber reads the Book of Job, in order to encourage Montag to proceed with his desire to do right in the face of adversity.
Faber also alludes to Christ's first miracle when he compares himself and Montag to fire and water.
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Volume 5, Issue 2
Welcome to the ChildCare Education Institute February Newsletter!
This month, CCEI Discusses Stress Management for Childcare Providers.
You are working and playing with children. What could be more fun? You know in your heart that you are doing something rewarding and enjoyable (in what other job can you make play dough snakes and read Brown Bear, Brown Bear
, over and over?). Yet you often feel depleted and unappreciated at the end of the day. If this sounds familiar, you might be suffering from occupational stress!
Do these sources of stress resonate with you?
- Tension with parents, coworkers, and/or management
- Too much work, too little time to do it
- The noise level in the classroom gets on your nerves
- Unable to meet the individual needs of so many children
- Limited budget and resources
- Working with 'stressed' children
Job related stress affects you the caregiver as well as the quality of care you provide. In order to be successful, caregivers need to look after themselves by managing their stress and finding a sense of balance in their lives.
Some strategies for managing stress include:
- Good Nutrition. Eating healthy foods helps your immune system work properly and combats the toll that stress can take on your body.
Breathing techniques. Breathing practice helps sustain vital energy and can lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Breathe in for the count of four, hold for the count of four, and exhale for the count of four.
- Regular exercise. Regular exercise practiced at least three times per week can relax your body and mind. Try walking, swimming or Yoga.
- Short breaks. Periodic breaks where you stretch, breathe or just get a change of scenery can revive your body and lift your spirits.
- Calm classroom environment. Provide sensory experiences to help children diffuse the stress they may be carrying from the home environment or from being separated from their parents. When the children are calm and engaged in classroom activities, you are able to better provide the nurturing attention they need and ultimately you will feel a sense of peace.
This article was authored by Jody Martin
, Vice President of Education and Training at Crème de la Crème Early Learning Centers of Excellence. Jody was also a contributing author on SOC102: From Chaotic to Calm - Lessening the Stress in your Classroom
, just added to the CCEI course catalog.
Have you implemented a plan to manage both your stress and the stress of your students? Log in to the CCEI Discussion Thread and share how you've reduced the stress in your classroom. Or, learn from your peers and get ideas for implementing your own plan!
|Childhood Stress: How Adults Can Help
By: Carolyn Ross Tomlin
|A teacher of young children said, "Children share the same problems as adults. There are no small problems-only small people trying to solve the big things they can't understand. And problems produce stress." Childhood stress is common in all cultural and socio-economic groups. No one can escape it.|
The following anecdotes illustrate stressful situations where adults either helped allay the child's anxiety or exacerbated the problem.
Avoid Burn Out: Ways for Early Childhood Educators to Minimize Job-Related Stress
By: Carolina Stewart
Stress related burnout in early childhood teachers can leave them feeling physically and emotionally drained. When this happens, most of them choose to leave the industry in pursuit of occupations that are less stressful. This leads to high teacher turnover and causes a shortage of qualified early childhood educators which eventually interferes with the quality of care the children enrolled in early childhood programs receive.Read Article
Article Courtesy of Suite101.com
|ChildCare Education Institute Receives National Accreditation|
ChildCare Education Institute (CCEI), a distance training institution
dedicated exclusively to the child care industry, announces that it has
been Accredited by the Accrediting Commission of the Distance Education
and Training Council (DETC).
Click here to view the details!
February is National Children's Dental Health Month!
In February, National Children's Dental Health Month, ChildCare Education Institute (CCEI) offers child care professionals the opportunity to discover the importance of oral health in early childhood by completing CCEI116A: Early Childhood Oral Health
, at no cost.
This one-clock-hour online course provides early childhood professionals with information on the importance of early and consistent oral health care for young children (birth to age five). Students will learn classroom and home strategies for teaching children good oral health habits and the factors that contribute to tooth decay. Students completing the course will be awarded 0.1 IACET CEU and receive a certificate of completion.
To take advantage of this opportunity, good during the month of February, child care staff can log in to CCEI's learning management system at www.cceionline.com
and use the promotion code 020110 when prompted. It is easy to set up an account if you don't already have one. Click here
for detailed registration instructions and remember to use the promotion code when requested.
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Become a fan of CCEI on Facebook! Learn about promotions, new course announcements and other information to help you reach your professional development goals!
Join the CCEI Discussion Thread!
Each month, CCEI gives early child care professionals the opportunity to share experiences, information, and suggestions in the Online Learning Community. Joining is easy! Log in to your CCEI account and click 'Online Learning Community' to share your knowledge and learn strategies that have worked for other early childhood teachers! You can also view the posts from the CCEI homepage without logging in. Just click on the 'Online Learning Community' link.
Rebecca Hardy, Liberty Hill, Texas
|Rebecca is a recent graduate of CCEI's Online Self-Study CDA program. Rebecca's career in early childhood began when she volunteered at the school her children attended. Volunteering led Rebecca to an opportunity to substitute and then to a full-time job.
Rebecca enjoys both meal time and center time because the children are relaxed and in the mood to talk. She likes watching them grow and learn through play and socializing with others. For Rebecca, working in a Head Start program is extra rewarding because she works with the entire family to create a supportive and nurturing environment for children.
Rebecca is currently enrolled in a Bachelor's degree program and looks forward to continuing her career in early childhood education. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her husband of twenty years and their sons. She also likes to read novels.
Congratulations on your accomplishment, Rebecca! And thank you for the care and guidance you provide to the children and families in your Head Start program!
Annual, Unlimited Professional Development Subscriptions, Only $99!
CCEI offers over 100 online, IACET CEU awarded professional development courses that meet continuing education requirements. CCEI has course offerings in English and Spanish and courses are accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year from any computer with Internet access.
|CCEI has an articulation agreement with Ashford University, giving CCEI students the opportunity to articulate completed coursework to Ashford University for college credit. Fifteen (15) clock hours of completed CCEI professional development coursework translate to one (1) unit of elective credit at Ashford University.|
Directors: Center-Based Subscriptions are a great way to manage and administer continuing education for your staff. CCEI's Center-Based Subscriptions, available for 20 and 50 users, allow you to provide training for as little as $20 per teacher for the entire year!
For more information, contact Admissions at 800.499.9907 or click here
to enroll online.
|Complete CDA Coursework Online with CCEI! |
CCEI's Online CDA Certificate programs meet the clock-hour training requirement of The Council for Professional Recognition, which is needed in order to apply for the Child Development Associate (CDA) credential. CCEI's CDA Certificate programs focus on the six CDA Competency Standards established by The Council and contain the required hours in each of the eight specified content areas. Each hour of completed coursework is awarded 0.1 IACET CEU.
CCEI offers three CDA programs. The CCEI Online Self Study CDA is designed for students who are comfortable with an online learning environment and can successfully complete work independently. The Online Instructor Supported CDA Certificate, available in English and Spanish, provides students with extra support from a CCEI Education Coach (EC). Each EC is an early childhood specialist and has previous experience working in a child care center or school. Students seeking college credit should enroll in the College Credit Eligible CDA Certificate program for the opportunity to earn 26 quarter-hour credits at Kendall College.
Online Director's Certificate
CCEI offers an Online Director's Certificate
that provides professional recognition for early childhood professionals seeking to further their skills and knowledge in the management of a child care center. The program is composed of nine instructional units that focus on the core areas of competency required to manage a child care center. Each student in the Online Director's Certificate receives support from an Education Coach.
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This news is provided for informational purposes, and does not indicate endorsement of any kind. | <urn:uuid:9389e2b1-8708-488b-97a3-58aa256ffad5> | {
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It was more than three decades ago that a massive blizzard blew through the northeast and the Susquehanna Valley. The pictures in this slideshow show the Megapolitan storm that hit in 1983.
The megapolitan storm shut down schools, knocked out power and buried roads from Washington, D.C. to New York City.
The storm hit Feb. 11 and 12, in the Susquehanna Valley. Two feet of snow fell.
These pictures are from News 8's archival footage of the storm.
As usual, children took advantage of the snow day, building forts and having snowball fights.
Making your way along the snow-clogged roads was not fun.
Keep clicking through this slideshow for more photos of the Megapolitan snowstorm in 1983.
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Bees Abuzz Over Rapini
Popular in Italy but also grown in the United States, rapini (or broccoli raab) is a turnip-like vegetable that’s featured in the recipes of cable television’s top celebrity chefs. But foodies are not the only fans of rapini. Honey bees love it too—or more precisely, they love rapini’s bright-yellow, pollen-packed flowers.
Now, in the journal Apidologie, a team led by Agricultural Research Service entomologist Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman reports results of studies in which honey bees in managed colonies fared better on rapini pollen than on protein supplements. The team began the project in 2012 at the request of California’s almond industry, which relies on managed bee colonies to pollinate the state’s 800,000-acre nut crop, which starts flowering in February.
During the fall, more than a million bee colonies are transported to California by beekeepers from throughout the United States, according to DeGrandi-Hoffman, who leads ARS’s Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, Arizona. But the journey and the absence of natural food sources can take a heavy toll on the bees, especially nurse bees and brood (young). “The flow of nutrients through nurse bees affects colony size which, in turn, affects pollination and ultimately almond yields,” she explains.
One way beekeepers tide the colonies over until February when almonds bloom is to feed them specially formulated protein supplements. However, in the researchers’ 2-year study, the supplements didn’t supply all of the bees’ nutritional needs. What’s more, the protein in the supplements was not well digested; about 65 percent of it was excreted as waste. “With rapini pollen, only about 30 percent of the protein was lost,” DeGrandi-Hoffman reports.
In the supplement-fed colonies, the reduced protein digestion, combined with lower levels of certain essential amino acids, might have resulted in malnutrition and contributed to higher queen losses and greater incidence of disease, she says.
Other findings from the study, which ran from November to February at two different sites were:
• Identification of 20 amino acids in rapini pollen, including higher concentrations of cysteine and proline, which are building blocks of antimicrobial peptides in bees.
• More than twice as many Nosema spores in supplement-fed colonies than in those that foraged rapini pollen. There were also higher levels of black queen cell virus.
• The higher levels of Nosema also correlated strongly with the lower protein digestion observed in supplement-fed colonies.
• Computer modeling simulations indicate that bees from rapini-nourished colonies can do a better job pollinating almond flowers than those from supplement-fed colonies—with profits of $3,784 per acre versus $2,487 an acre, in one case.
The researchers investigated rapini because of its cold-hardiness, attractiveness to bees, and ability to flower 6 weeks after planting—characteristics that could not only benefit overwintering bees in California, but in other states as well.
“These side-by-side data comparisons haven’t been done before,” says DeGrandi-Hoffman of her team’s ongoing studies. “But they are already showing the value of providing bees with a natural forage.”—By Jan Suszkiw, Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.
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Your widgets are selling slow and steady. But the kids are demanding widgets with Wi-Fi. Should you bet the farm on a new product line or concentrate on incremental improvements in widget production?
Our brains have two basic problem-solving strategies. Exploitation means taking advantage of what you already know, concentrating deeply on a current task to optimize performance and efficiency. Exploration means taking a step back from the task at hand to allow your mind to roam flexibly among alternatives. Leadership in the age of flux calls for "ambidextrous" minds that can switch back and forth between the two strategies when called for. A new study from MIT suggests that one component of this ambidextrousness involves tapping your creative and logical sides at the same time.
Researchers from the neuroscience department and business school collaborated to scan the brains of 63 subjects, divided between self-described entrepreneurs and managers, when engaged in a game. The game involved virtual slot machines; to maximize returns you had to decide when to keep playing the same machine (an exploitative choice) or try a new one (an explorative choice).
The entrepreneurs in the study, perhaps surprisingly, weren't any more likely to engage in exploration. But when they did, they were more likely to activate both the right and left sides of their frontal cortex. Managers mainly stuck to the left side, which is associated with logic and structured thinking. The right side, on the other hand, is associated with creativity and emotion.
Successful decision-making isn't necessarily about doing more exploration than exploitation. It's in the timing—knowing when to shift between the two forms of thinking. A question for further research is whether entrepreneurs' brains function this way because of the kind of decisions they're used to making, or whether people with these more coherent brains are more likely to end up as entrepreneurs. "It’s a nature versus nurture question," said Professor Maurizio Zollo, the lead author of the study. | <urn:uuid:3f18e6a1-0b08-48eb-9c2e-7836278eb3bb> | {
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In this essay, James R. Stoner gives an introduction to natural law in the common law tradition. The common law is the body of customary, unwritten law of England, especially that which was derived over centuries from the rulings of court cases (not by legislative acts). Much of it was imported into the American legal system. The parts of common law that are most invoked in the United States are the procedural rules for administering justice, also called “due process”: trial by a jury of twelve peers, the right not to witness against oneself, and many others. Many of these procedures are required explicitly by the U.S. Constitution.
The common law tradition reflects the natural law tradition in three ways: it privileges individual liberty and the assent of the community and minimizes the role of the central political authority; its appeals courts use reason to relate novel cases to historical precedent; and it can limit or void written positive law if the law contradicts reason outright. (In the United States this last aspect gave rise to the doctrine of “judicial review.”)
In the twentieth century, when skepticism grew about appeals to reason and natural law, American legal theorists began to view common law as simply “judge-made” positive law, little different from laws created by legislatures.
William Blackstone was born in London on July 10, 1723. He studied at Pembroke College, Oxford, and afterwards practiced law, though his career was undistinguished until he began a lecture course on the history and principles of English common law in 1753. He was among the first thinkers to attempt a comprehensive understanding of the common law, and his Commentaries on the Laws of England became an essential text for lawyers both in England and in the American colonies, bringing their author fame and fortune, and laying the foundation for Blackstone’s successful political career as an MP and jurist. Blackstone died on February 14, 1780.
As the authoritative treatise on English common law, the Commentaries had a great influence on the American Founders’ understanding of law, and continued to inform this country’s fledgling legal system for many years.
To read more about William Blackstone's life and works, click here.
Sir Edward Coke (pronounced cook) was born in 1552 in Mileham, Norfolk. He attended Norwich Grammar School as a child and entered Trinity College in Cambridge in 1567. His academic excellence gained him acceptance to the Inner Temple, a distinguished college of the University of Law at Cambridge. Proceeding from student to barrister, he eventually became a senior member of the college.
Prior to the start of a long political career, Coke made two advantageous marriages: the first, to the wealthy Bridget Paston, with whom he had seven children; the second, shortly after Bridget’s death in 1589, to Elizabeth Hatton (though they later separated), the granddaughter of the chief minister to Elizabeth I. Though the second marriage ended in separation, the connection helped him become a member of Parliament. Three years later, in 1592, he was appointed Speaker of the House of Commons, and then promoted to the prestigious post of Attorney General of England. A loyal supporter of Elizabeth I, he spent his years as Attorney General prosecuting now-famous cases against Earls Henry Wriothesley and Robert Devereaux, Walter Raleigh, and the Gunpowder Plot conspirators.
Things changed for Coke after the ascension of the Stuarts to the throne because of his continued defense, as Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas and Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, of the English common law. In 1628, he played a key role in drafting the Petition of Right, which declared the supremacy of common law over older privileges for the aristocracy. The Petition of Right was a precursor to the English Bill of Rights and the Bill of Rights added to the American Constitution. Coke also authored the first comprehensive body of law accessible to the public, The Institutes of the Laws of England. His work inspired a number of early American leaders, including John Adams, James Otis Jr., and Patrick Henry.
To read more about Coke's life and works, please click here.
courts of equity:
separate courts established for circumstances where the operation of strict law was expected to bring about injustice.
a set of legal procedures governing a state’s administration of justice, considered especially as a means both to protect the rights of individuals and to promote fairness in civil and criminal proceedings. In American law, many of the settled requirements of due process are found in the Bills of Rights of the state and national constitutions.
(1689) an Act of the British Parliament that asserted that the people of England have certain rights before the king, including the right to free parliamentary elections, the right to petition for redress of grievances, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. The act was passed shortly after the accesion of the Protestants William and Mary, prince and princess of Orange, to the English throne after Mary’s father, the Catholic King James II, fled England in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The Act in great part responded to highly unpopular actions that James had taken during his reign. It is considered to be an important part of the common law tradition, and many of its elements were incorporated into the Bill of Rights of the American Constitution.
the “great” English charter issued in 1215 to limit the powers of King John, and to protect certain privileges of some of his subjects (namely, the English feudal barons). The document, and the civil and political liberties granted therein, is recognized as an important part of the common law tradition.
the authority of a court, in deciding a case properly before it, to declare void a legislative act or executive action if it is judged to be in conflict with the higher law of a constitution. In American jurisprudence, the opinion of Chief Justice John Marshall in the case of Marbury v. Madison famously affirmed judicial review as a necessary feature of the judicial power granted to federal courts in Article III of the U.S. Constitution.
the power of a court to hear and determine the subject matter in controversy between parties to a suit, that is, to adjudicate or exercise the judicial power over said parties.
laws that are the product of the will and reason of a legislator or legislature and are put in writing for promulgation to those who are subject to them; to be contrasted with common law and natural law, which are both unwritten forms of law. Positive law differs from natural law also in that the former is conventional or a product of human agreement, while the latter is understood to exist independently of human opinion, providing a standard for evaluating the justice of positive laws.
any ruling of a court, particularly when considered as a model that others courts should follow to decide similar cases in the future. Common law is in large part a body of such rulings that accumulated over time and gave rise to rules that have the force of law.
shorthand for several kinds of formal, written legal orders or prohibitions (“writs”), but especially the kind by which a court can demand access to a prisoner, if the prisoner so asks, in order to insure that he is imprisoned lawfully, that is, according to the requirements of due process. In such a proceeding, the court does not seek to determine whether the detainee is innocent or guilty of the crime for which he is in custody. Habeas corpus is Latin for “[in order that] you have the body.” See also DUE PROCESS.
I. Introduction: Defining Common Law
A. Common Law: The customary law of England as applied in the courts of law.
B. Dates back to 1189 at the latest.
C. When courts started to write down their decisions (the clearest statements of legal custom), these decisions were held to have the force of law based on the principle that similar (future) cases should be decided similarly.
D. Some elements of common law trials (These elements are also known as “due process”):
- In criminal trials:
- A formal accusation.
- Rights of the defendant: to call witnesses; not to witness against oneself; to help choose the jurors; presumption of innocence until proven guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt;” etc.
- A jury of “twelve good men and true” issues the verdict by a unanimous vote, based on the judge’s instructions on which laws govern the case.
- In civil trials:
- The standard of judgment is preponderance of evidence.
- Judgment awards monetary damages.
II. The Three Ways in Which Common Law Reflects Natural Law
A. Due process minimizes the state’s freedom to exercise its power, maximizes the community’s input in a court decision, and maximizes respect for individuals’ liberty.
- Through checks and balances:
- Judge and jury are distinct.
- The prosecution and the defense are distinct.
- The losing side has a right to appeal to a higher court.
- Through the centrality of the jury:
- Gives deference to common sense over elite theorizing and partisan will.
B. In the reasoning process of appellate courts:
- Favors adherence to precedent over novel solutions.
- But sometimes the natural law allows or even requires courts to create a novel solution if the circumstances for which a law was created no longer exist.
- Various measures prevent arbitrariness in judges’ decisions:
- The court may focus on only a precise issue.
- The court may settle only the case at hand.
C. If after a judge tries to reconcile apparent contradictions in a law the law still seems contrary to reason, he may limit or void it, because “Nothing that is against reason can be lawful.”
- Later English interpretation: Parliament is nevertheless supreme; no judge can override an act of Parliament on the basis of “reasonableness.”
- American interpretation: practice of “judicial review”: courts may strike down statutes or executive actions that contradict written constitutions.
- This practice is itself not prescribed in any constitution.
- Supporters claim that the practice is simply implied in the very notion of a written constitution.
- Serves to weed contradictions out of the law as a whole.
III. Limitations on Common Law Judgments
A. Judges can rule only on cases properly presented before them.
B. The remedies that judges may impose are limited by law.
C. Sometimes separate “courts of equity” have been established to deal with injustices created by law.
D. Separate specialty courts diffuse the power of judges by assigning different kinds of cases to different courts (example: military court).
E. Constitutional legal tradition.
IV. Change and Constancy in Common Law
A. Proponents of common law praise its ability to change as circumstances change while remaining constant in certain important respects:
- Many of the substantive rules of law from the common law tradition have changed radically over time.
- Analogy of the Argo: Greek mythical ship whose planks were replaced one-by-one while at sea.
B. In the 20th century, legal theorists like Oliver Wendell Holmes denied that there was any constancy in common law.
- They called it “judge-made law,” that is, simply positive law made by judges instead of legislators.
C. The rejection of the traditional notion of common law accompanied a rejection of the notion of natural law, which had formed an important part of the common law tradition.
I. Basic Interpretation
As you study the primary sources, keep in mind the following questions:
- What is the common law?
- How does the common law differ from the natural law?
- How do common-law judges use precedents, common sense, or natural law?
- What natural-law ends does the common law achieve?
- What role does the common law play in the American system?
II. Connection to Other Thinkers
Keep in mind the following questions as you consider how the common law tradition was informed by other sources of legal thought in the natural law and natural rights traditions, and what impact it had on the American system of jurisprudence:
- The common law requires judges to rely on established precedents. Is this a form of legal positivism? Or does it have a place within the natural law tradition? Compare to Aquinas’s view about the written law and the role of judges (see Aquinas's Question 95).
- Compare the common law with the ius gentium. From where does each get its authority?
- Given that the common law can change with time, is it appropriate to view it within a progressivist framework? How does common law develop?
- Locke argues that sovereignty rests in the consent of those governed. Does the common law encourage consent by representing traditional wisdom and ensuring stability? Or does its age undermine its legitimacy, because it appeals to ancient tradition rather than to contemporary consent?
- How did the American Founders legitimate their new system of government, if not by the common law? How did the Supreme Court continue the common law tradition even though America did not have its own established legal tradition? Did the Founding Fathers view their own efforts as legitimate within the English common law tradition, and thus think it possible to simply import the common law?
III. Critical Interpretation
With a basic understanding of the common law, let us examine the tradition more critically. Use the questions below as a guide:
- In the essay, Stoner writes: “There is much about common-law due process that is not strictly speaking a requirement of natural law: no one today would say that justice is impossible anywhere a jury is not composed of twelve, or if its verdicts are not unanimous, or even if some facts are found by a judge or a panel of judges rather than by a lay jury, and so on. Nevertheless, in at least three ways natural law seems particularly evident in common-law thinking.” Do the mechanisms described by Stoner actually ensure justice? By insisting on them is there a danger of confusing what the natural law actually requires with a system whose elements happen to uphold it?
- The common law proceeds on a basis of precedent, but sometimes a precedent is objectionable. What should judges do in such a case? Can they ignore it, on the grounds that an unjust law is no law at all? (Compare Aquinas quoting Augustine in Question 95.) Or does this open the door to judicial activism?
- Does a written constitution or a common law tradition better serve the natural law? Did the American founders successfully combine both?
- What is the source of the common law’s authority?
- The Magna Carta justifies itself in part with an appeal to the Church’s authority. If the Magna Carta received its authority from the Church, why did the Declaration of Independence, without recognizing the Church’s authority, criticize the English Crown for violating English laws that rested on the Magna Carta? Is the Declaration’s accusation a rhetorical one, or an accusation of hypocrisy? Does it matter from where the Magna Carta originally received its authority?
IV. Connections to Contemporary Concerns
The common law still plays an important role in contemporary legal debates. Let us now turn to some contemporary issues that may shed light on the common law tradition and its legacy in our society:
- There has recently been a movement towards more written international law. For instance, the European Union has its own laws (and courts), applicable to its member nations. To be effective, international laws require enforceability, which often relies on legitimacy. Does the absence of a shared common law tradition hinder the prospects of a legitimate international legal system? Is this a problem that the framers of the United States Constitution overcame?
- A common law marriage is one where, though no civil or ecclesiastical ceremony has occurred, a heterosexual couple who live together consensually as a married couple and hold themselves out to the world as husband and wife are legally recognized as married. In the United States, common law marriage was held to be a traditional feature of the common law in most states at the time of the Founding, but after a later movement to abolish common law marriage, only 11 states and the District of Columbia now recognize it. Does the traditional legal recognition of marriage suggest that the common law treated marriage as a natural reality recognized but not defined by the state, or as a purely conventional arrangement that is redefinable according to varying social convention? Does the fact that common law marriage was abolished in most states (nearly always by statute) suggest that the abolition of common law marriage is a corruption of the tradition itself? Or is the abolition of common law marriage an unproblematic development of that tradition?
- Today, there is increasing debate over how marriage should be defined, for instance, is marriage just a matter of whether two people, any two people, consent and intend to live together as married, or are there additional natural, biological requirements (e.g. sexual complementarity)? How does the history of common law marriage contribute to that debate? Should advocates of same-sex marriage embrace the common law for its ability to evolve? Should defenders of traditional marriage invoke common law as proof that marriage is not a creation of the state? Should common law have a role in the debate over same-sex marriage? Why or why not?
- Underlying the common law is a belief that stability serves justice and the common good. Is that still true today? Why or why not? People are increasingly able to relocate thanks to easier transportation. More generally, ways of life and forms of property are changing dramatically as technology progresses. Do these new realities disprove the value of common law?
- In the essay, Stoner writes: “There is much about common-law due process that is not strictly speaking a requirement of natural law.” How many of the established procedures in American "due process" do you think are required by the natural law? Discuss how this question might prove relevant in nation-building abroad. Which parts of our system could or should be added to other countries' constitutions? Which parts are helpful only for us? | <urn:uuid:bc66724f-fb6d-405a-b824-e94999c49a79> | {
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THERE ARE some unhappy men who, having striven by labour and study to produce work profitable to others which will keep their names in memory, are prevented by infirmity or death from bringing their work to perfection. And often it happens that their works left unfinished are appropriated by others, who seek thus to hide their ass's hide under the lion's skin. So it befell Piero della Francesca dal Borgo S. Sepolcro, a great master in perspective, arithmetic, and geometry, who was prevented by blindness in his old age from bringing to light the books he had written. And he who, having learnt all he knew from him, ought to have used all his powers to win for him glory and a great name, sought instead to conceal the name of Piero his preceptor, and to usurp his honour, by publishing the good old man's works under his own name, that of Fra Luca dal Borgo.
Piero was born in Borgo S. Sepolcro, now a city, but not so at that time, and he was called della Francesca after his mother, because his father was dead before he was born, and it was she who brought him up, and aided him to attain to the rank he reached. Piero studied mathematics in his youth, and although from the age of fifteen he became a painter, he never gave up his mathematical studies, and his productions brought him so much credit that he was employed by the Duke of Urbino, and left in that place many of his writings on geometry and perspective, which are inferior to none of his time.
Afterwards, being fetched to Rome by Nicholas V, he painted in his palace two pictures, which were afterwards destroyed by Pope Julius II, that Raffaello might paint there the imprisonment of S. Peter. Thence ~e went to Loreto, and painted there in company with Domenico Veneziano; but the plague breaking out, he left his work unfinished, and it was afterwards completed by Luca of Cortona his pupil. From Loreto he went to Arezzo, where he painted the whole history of the Cross, from the time when the sons of Adam, laying him in the tomb, placed under his tongue the seeds of the tree from which the cross sprang, to the exaltation of the Cross by the Emperor Heraclius.
Piero was, as we have said, most studious in his art, and had a good knowledge of Euclid, so that Maestro Luca dal Borgo, who wrote on geometry, was his pupil. Lorentino d'Angelo was also his pupil, and finished the works that he left incomplete at his death. There is a story told of this Lorentino that once when the carnival was near his children kept begging him to kill a pig, as the custom was in those parts. Then, remembering that he had no money, they said, "What will father do to buy the pig without money?" To which he replied "Some saint will help us." But when he had said this many times and no pig appeared, their hopes began to fail. But at last there came a countryman who, to fulfil a vow, wanted a S. Martin painted, but had nothing to give for the picture but a pig that was worth five lire. When Lorentino heard this he said he would paint the picture, and would take nothing but the pig for it. Lorentino painted the saint, and the countryman brought the pig, and so the saint provided the pig for the poor children.
Piero Perugino was also his pupil, but the one who did him most honour was Luca Signorelli of Cortona. For Luca Signorelli was in his time as famous a painter in Italy as any one has ever been. While he worked in Arezzo with Piero, dwelling in the house of Lazzaro Vasari his uncle, he imitated the manner of Piero his master, so that one could be hardly known from the other. His first works were in Arezzo, where he painted in many churches. There is a S. Michael weighing souls, which is admirable, and in which may be seen his power in painting the splendour of armour with all the reflections of light. Having come to Florence to see the works of the masters there, he painted on a canvas some of the old gods, which were much admired, and a picture of our Lady, and presented them both to Lorenzo, who would never be surpassed by any one in magnificent liberality.
In the principal church of Orvieto he completed the chapel begun by Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, painting the story of the end of the world with a strange and fantastical imagination; with angels, demons, earthquakes, fire, and ruin, together with many beautiful figures, and essaying to represent the terror of the last tremendous day. So that I do not marvel that Luca's works were always highly praised by Michael Angelo, nor that some things in his own divine Judgment were taken in part from Luca, such as angels, demons, the order of the heavens, and other things in which he imitated him, as any one can see.
It is told of him that when one of his sons whom he loved much was killed at Cortona, being very beautiful in face and form, Luca in the midst of his grief set himself with great constancy to paint his portrait, shedding no tears, nor giving way to grief, that he might always see through the work of his hands him whom nature had given to him and adverse fortune taken from him.
At last, having produced works for almost all the princes of Italy, he returned to Cortona, and in his last years worked rather for pleasure than anything else. Thus in his old age he painted a picture for the nuns of Santa Margherita in Arezzo, and another for the company of S. Girolamo, which was borne from Cortona to Arezzo on the shoulders of men of the company. Luca, old as he was, came to put it up, desiring again also to see his friends and relations. He lodged in the house of the Vasari; I was then a little boy of eight years old, and I remember how the good old man, who was very courteous and gracious, having heard from the master who gave me my first instruction that I attended to nothing at school but drawing figures, I remember, I say, how he turned to Antonio, my father, and said, "Antonio, let Giorgino learn to draw by all means, for even if later he takes to literature, drawing will still be of use and honour and profit to him, as it is to all men." Then turning to me, as I was standing in front of him, he said, "Study, little kinsman," adding many other things of which I will say nothing, because I know I have not confirmed the opinion which the good old man had of me. When he heard that I suffered from noscbleeding to such a degree that I was often left half dead, he with great tenderness hung a piece of jasper round my neck, and this remembrance of Luca is for ever fixed in my mind.
So having put the picture in its place, he returned to Cortona, accompanied for a great distance by many of the citizens and of his friends and relatives. | <urn:uuid:e0f0e442-da39-4f4b-88b4-444f622886c7> | {
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Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language, and a belief in democratic socialism.Considered perhaps the twentieth century's best chronicler of English culture, Orwell wrote fiction, polemical journalism, literary criticism and poetry. He is best known for the dystopian novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (published in 1949) and the satirical novella "Animal Farm" (1945)—they have together sold more copies than any two books by any other twentieth-century author. His 1938 book "Homage to Catalonia", an account of his experiences as a volunteer on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, together with numerous essays on politics, literature, language, and culture, are widely acclaimed.Orwell's influence on contemporary culture, popular and political, continues decades after his death. Several of his neologisms, along with the term "Orwellian" — now a byword for any oppressive or manipulative social phenomenon opposed to a free society — have entered the vernacular. | <urn:uuid:d4691f2b-2bb2-4910-9fd4-a9a1e0be4f7b> | {
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Pollinator Week Emphasizes Need for Collective Effort to Safeguard Important SpeciesNPMA Staff
Monday, June 16, 2014
The National Pest Management Association encourages homeowners
to plant pollinator-friendly gardens
FAIRFAX, Va. - The National Pest Management Association (NPMA)
joins government agencies, private companies, non-governmental
organizations and foundations in calling attention to the
importance of pollinator
health during National Pollinator Week (June 16-22) and beyond.
Pollinators include bees, such as honey bees and bumble bees,
birds, butterflies, bats and beetles, with bees playing one of the
most integral roles in the nation's food supply chain.
"Many people may know that bees and other pollinators are
important to crops, but may not know that these essential species
are under threat from a number of sources, such as lack of
available nectar and pollen sources due to increased urbanization
and problems caused from diseases and parasites," said Dr. Richard
Fell, pollinator health advisor for the NPMA and Professor Emeritus
in the Department of Entomology at Virginia Tech. "Simply put,
without bees to spread pollen, a large number of fruits and
vegetables will not be able to form and grow, severely impacting
farmers and consumers alike."
"While we have yet to determine the causes of bee colony
decline, we do know that there are a number of factors involved. As
the research continues, it is important that the public gain an
understanding of the small steps they can take to help pollinators
in their communities." added Fell.
The NPMA suggests the following ways the public can help
- Create a pollinator-friendly garden with flowering plants,
herbs and vegetables, including wildflowers, lavender, sunflowers,
golden rod, honey suckle, chives, oregano and thyme to help them
thrive. Because stinging insects can pose health threats, to keep
family members and pets safe, these gardens should be planted away
from the home or outdoor seating areas.
- Buy local honey and support community beekeepers.
- Do not attempt to remove or eliminate nests and hives - instead
contact a pest professional or beekeeper who can do so safely while
preserving the bees.
The NPMA, a non-profit
organization with more than 7,000 members, was established in 1933
to support the pest management industry's commitment to the
protection of public health, food and property. For more
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AIT Improves the Lives and
Learning of those with Autism, ADHD, Hyperacute Hearing, Speech Delays and
more...in 10 Days. The
AIT Institute is the #1 Provider of
At Home Services
globally and is the largest AIT resource website in the world.
The Vagus Nerve and Stress:
Understanding The Vagus Nerve and Stress
What Is The Vagus Nerve? The Vagus nerve is the the longest of the cranial
nerves. It “wanders” like a vagabond, sending out fibers from your brainstem to
the organs. The vagus nerve is the leader of your inner nerve
center the home the parasympathetic nervous system. It's function is to overseeing a
crucial functions, communicating nerve impulses to every organ in your body. New
research has revealed that it may also be the missing link to treating chronic
inflammation, and the beginning of an exciting new field of treatment that
leaves medications behind. Here are nine facts about this powerful nerve
What Does the Vagus Nerve Do?
The vagus nerve recognizes inflammation cytokines or
the inflammatory substance tumor necrosis factor (TNF). Then it
alerts the brain and starts anti-inflammatory neurotransmitters via the
cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway. A certain amount of inflammation
after injury or illness is normal. Too much inflammation is linked to many
diseases and conditions, including autoimmune conditions.
Helps you make memories.
The vagus nerve improves memory. When stimulated
it releases the neurotransmitter norepinephrine into the amygdala and
this helps consolidating memories.
Helps you breathe.
The neurotransmitter acetylcholine, elicited by
the vagus nerve, gives you the breath of life by telling your lungs to
breathe. You can also manually stimulate your vagus nerve by doing abdominal
breathing or holding your breath for four to eight counts.
Closely involved with your
heart. The vagus nerve is responsible for
controlling the heart rate via electrical impulses to the sinoatrial node
of the heart, where acetylcholine release slows the pulse. The way
medical tests determine the “tone” or “strength” of your vagus nerve (and
your cardiac health) is by measuring the time between your individual heart
beats and then plotting this on a chart over time. This is known as your
“heart rate variability.”
your body’s relaxation response. When your always
alert sympathetic nervous system revs up the "fight or flight responses" it
pours out the stress hormones called cortisol and adrenaline into
your body. The vagus nerve tells your body to slow down and try to
relax, by releasing acetylcholine. The vagus nerve has tendrils that
extend to many organs. These send instructions to release enzymes
and proteins like prolactin, vasopressin, and oxytocin, which are
the enzymes that calm you down.People with a stronger vagus response
may be more likely to recover more quickly after stress, injury or illness.Those with a weaker vagus response will likely take more time to
Translates between your
gut and your brain. Your gut uses the vagus nerve
to tell your brain how you’re feeling via electric impulses which are called
action potentials. This means that your "gut feelings" are actually very
Overstimulation of the
vagus nerve is the most common cause of fainting.
If you tremble or get queasy at the sight of blood or needles, you’re not
weak; you’re experiencing what is know a vagal syncope. Your body is
responding to stress and this over stimulates the vagus nerve, causing your
blood pressure and heart rate to drop. During extreme vagal syncope, blood
flow is restricted to your brain and you can lose consciousness. But most of
the time you just have to sit or lie down for the symptoms to subside.
Electric stimulation of
the vagus nerve reduces inflammation and may inhibit it altogether. It
has been proven that stimulating the vagus nerve can significantly reduce
inflammation. In experiments that involved implants to stimulate the vagus
nerve via electronic implants showed a drastic reduction, and even
remission, in rheumatoid arthritis. This is significant because
rheumatoid arthritis is often treated with the toxic cancer drug
methotraxate, which results in —hemorrhagic shock and other serious
Vagus nerve stimulation
has created a new field of medicine. The field of “bioelectronics”
involved using of vagal nerve stimulation to treat inflammation and
epilepsy. Some believe it may be the future of medicine. Bioelectronic
implants that will deliver electric impulses to various body parts will
stimulate healing to treat illness with fewer medications and fewer side
effects....the a similar way to how we use homeopathy for gentle,
Diagram of the Parasympathic
System and the Vagus Nerve's connection to other organs.
Dr. Stephen Porges - Human Nature and Early Experience
Understanding The Vagus Nerve and Stress (46:38 minutes) | <urn:uuid:b842642a-b4cb-42d9-ac22-8635365523d1> | {
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How much warmer is it now?
26 November, 2014
The IPCC appears to be strongly downplaying the amount of global warming that has already occurred and that looks set to eventuate over the next decade or so, according to a leaked draft of the IPCC 'Special Report on 1.5°C above pre-industrial'. The 'First Order Draft of the Summary for Policy Makers' estimates that the global mean temperature reached approximately 1°C above pre-industrial levels around 2017/2018.
Let's go over the numbers step by step, by following the image below line by line (click on the image to enlarge it).
NASA's data for the two most recent years for which data are available (2016/2017) show a warming of 0.95°C when using a baseline of 1951-1980 and a warming of 1.23°C when using a baseline of 1890-1910 (left map on image below). In other words, using this earlier baseline results in an additional 0.28°C rise. When using an even earlier baseline, i.e. 1750 or preindustrial, it could be 1.53°C warmer, as discussed in an earlier post.
In other words, merely changing the baseline to preindustrial, as agreed to at the Paris Agreement, can show that we're already above the 1.5°C guardrail that the Paris Agreement had pledged we should not cross.
There's more! As a recent publication points out, most methods that calculate the global temperature use sea surface temperatures. However, doesn't it make more sense to calculate the temperature of the air just above the sea surface?
Measuring air temperature at the surface is done in the case of temperatures over land, where one doesn't measure the temperature of the soil or rocks when telling people how warm it is. Since air surface temperatures are slightly higher than sea surface temperatures, the result of looking at air surface temperatures across the globe would be a temperature that is approximately 0.1°C warmer. Furthermore, many areas in the Arctic may not have been adequately reflected in the global temperature, e.g. because insufficient data were available. Since the Arctic has been warming much faster than the rest of the world, inclusion of those areas would add another 0.1°C to the rise. Adding this to the above 1.53°C rise makes that it's already 1.73°C (or 3.11°F) warmer than preindustrial.
Another question is over what period measurements should be taken when assessing whether thresholds have been crossed. When focusing on temperatures during specific months, the rise could be much higher than the annual average. So, does it make more sense to look at a monthly peak rather than at a long-term average?
When building a bridge and when calculating what load the bridge should be able to handle, it makes sense to look at peak traffic and at times when a lot of heavy trucks happen to be on the bridge. That makes a lot more sense than only looking at the average weight of cars driving over the bridge during a period of - say - one, two or thirty years.
Accordingly, the right panel of the top image shows numbers for February 2016 when temperature anomalies were particularly high. When looking at this monthly anomaly, we are already 2.37°C (or 4.27°F) above preindustrial, i.e. well above the 2°C guardrail that the Paris Agreement had pledged we should definitely not cross.
Should the temperature rise be calculated using a longer period? The IPCC appears to have arrived at its temperature rise estimate by using an extrapolation or near term predictions of future warming so that the level of anthropogenic warming is reported for a 30 year period centered on today.
The image below, from an earlier post, shows global warming for a 30-year period centered on January 2018, using NASA 2003 to January 2018 LOTI anomalies from 1951-1980, adjusted by 0.59°C to cater for the rise from preindustrial to 1951-1980, and with a polynomial trend added.
Above image illustrates the importance of what's going to happen next. The temperature rise up until now may well be dwarfed by what's yet to come and the outlook may well be even worse than what the above trend suggests. The image below, from an earlier post, shows how the rise from 2016 to 2026 could take place twice as fast as above trend, due to the combined impact of the warming elements listed in the left box of the image below.
Meanwhile, the rise in carbon dioxide levels appears to be accelerating, as illustrated by the images below.
Indeed, despite pledges made at the Paris Agreement to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial, the rise in CO₂ since preindustrial, i.e. 1750, still appears to be accelerating.
On March 18, 2018, the sea surface temperature near Svalbard (at the green circle) was 16.7°C or 62.1°F, i.e. 14.7°C or 26.4°F warmer than the daily average during the years 1981-2011.
On March 30, 2018, methane levels as high as 2624 parts per billion were recorded.
The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as described in the Climate Plan.
• Climate Plan
• How much warming have humans caused?
• IPCC seeks to downplay global warming
• 2016 well above 1.5°C
• Interpretations of the Paris climate target, by Andrew Schurer et al. | <urn:uuid:d079cda3-e84f-4f4c-865c-094bd9c3f244> | {
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Jacopone da Todi (yäkōpôˈnā dä tôˈdē) [key], 1230?–1306, Italian religious poet, whose name was originally Jacopo Benedetti. After the sudden death of his wife, he renounced (c.1268) his career as an advocate, gave his goods to the poor, and after 10 years of penance became a Franciscan tertiary. Jacopone was excommunicated and imprisoned (1298) for signing a manifesto against Pope Boniface VIII. After his release, he retired to a hermitage. He wrote many ardent, mystical poems and is probably the author of the hymn Stabat Mater Dolorosa. The spiritual value of poverty is frequently the theme of his poetry.
See E. Underhill, Jacopone da Todi, Poet and Mystic (with selections, 1919); H. White, A Watch in the Night (1933).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:99929474-d73c-4a9f-81bd-a6108202ed6f> | {
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A series of DNA tests showed Australian Aboriginal civilization to be the oldest in the world.
The fact that indigenous Australian civilization is the oldest on the face of the globe is now being corroborated by DNA evidence. The Australian Aboroginal community is probably more than 50,000 years old in its origins.
Don't Miss: Latest Science and Medical Discoveries
Scientists searched through the clues found regarding ancient human beings. The DNA of their modern counterparts in Papua New Guinea and Australia was a big help in it all.
These were most probably the most ancient of humans and they crossed the ocean to reach Australia. They even had common links with a radically different hominin cousin the exact nature of which remains unknown.
This narrative has been missing in science since a long time. The precarious journey undertaken by these early humans was a one of a kind voyage that landed them in Australia.
The study was published in the journal Nature. It showed how the first humans migrated out of Africa and reached Australia after crossing an entire ocean.
83 Australian Aborigines and 25 Papuans were studied. About 50,000 years ago, an entire stock of human beings ventured to Australia and they have been there in relative isolation since the past 4000 years.
This group is probably the most ancient sample of human beings to constitute a civilization in the proper sense of the word. An unknown hominin species probably contributed about 4% to the genes of the Australian Aborigines.
Scientists have also discovered that prehistoric miscegenation may have led to all non-African humans to carry 1%-6% of the genes found in Neanderthals. The genome record contains evidence in the form of traces of every human ancestor that modern human beings possess.
Bushmen and Pygmies appear to have split from the stock earlier than usual. Thus cultural change did not necessarily have any biological mutation behind it.
There was no magical transformation that resulted in advanced culture with all its concomitant arts, traditions, tools and rituals. The Aboriginal population has been a part of the heritage of Australia for the past tens of thousands of years.
They have left their signs and signatures across the Australian landscape and mindscape. As far as their civilization is concerned, it is the oldest, as has been confirmed recently. | <urn:uuid:ce9e8625-b79e-4b5f-850f-7a604de67c32> | {
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Rich biodiversity depends on the ability of species to coexist. And yet, ecologists are still grappling with the requisite mechanisms. Recent findings published in Nature suggest that predators might not be as helpful a driver of species coexistence as previously thought.
“These results should serve as a warning that introducing new predators to a system can increase diversity of their prey but can also decrease diversity,” says Pacifica Sommers, an ecologist at University of Colorado in Boulder who was not involved in the study.
Many ecologists think that predators can boost biodiversity by hunting just enough of one prey species to make room in the ecosystem for another competing prey species to coexist. But predators can also harm biodiversity by hunting prey species to extinction.
Looking to test how predators affect the coexistence of prey species, study coauthor and Princeton University ecologist Robert Pringle carried out an experiment on 16 small islands in the Bahamas that are widely populated with semiterrestrial brown anole lizards (Anolis sagrei). On eight of the islands the team introduced between five and seven curly tailed lizards (Leiocephalus carinatus)—a ground-dwelling predator of brown anoles and the arboreal green anoles (Anolis smaragdinus). On four islands, they also added 10 to 11 of the green anoles, a competitor to A. sagrei. On another four islands, they introduced just the green anoles. The remaining four islands were left untouched to serve as a control.
In 2011 and in each subsequent year up to 2016, the team conducted a baseline population count for the brown anole; they assessed the population sizes, habitat use, diet, and trophic position of all three lizard species. Over the five-year experiment, the curly tailed lizard population grew by more than fivefold to an average of 30 individuals across all experimental islands. On islands where only green anoles were introduced, the arboreal lizard’s population grew on average by eightfold (up to 161 individuals per island by 2016).
But on islands where both the curly tailed predators and green anoles were introduced, the latter mostly fared poorly—two populations went extinct, another remained stable, and one grew by 50 individuals, or threefold. The results show that predators hinder rather than help the prey species to coexist. “We found that the presence of top predators destabilizes coexistence of prey species,” says Pringle.
Observations suggested that the green anole populations did not dwindle because they served as food for the predatory curly tailed lizards. Rather, they died out because the curly tailed predator managed to outcompete them in their niche; the land-dwelling brown anoles retreated to the trees in the presence of the curly tailed predator. A molecular analysis of the lizards’ diets backed up the team’s observations, suggesting in part that the consumption of green anoles was rare and that brown anoles moved away from a diet of ground dwelling insects.
“In the absence [of] the predator, the two prey occupy different ecological niches,” Pringle explains. “When the predator is present, both prey species are forced into a hiding place where they compete much more intensely to the point that they are not able to coexist.”
Pringle says the brown anoles likely got the upper hand because they started out with more individuals per island—between 100 and 300—compared to green anoles with around 11 individuals. “The identity of the winner and loser may depend on initial conditions,” he says. Pringle speculates that the population of green anoles that did manage to flourish was helped along because brown anole numbers on that island fell to very low levels due to predation, and this eased the competitive pressure.
Sommers says the study “is a nice illustration of the fact that predators do not have only one type of effect on ecosystems.” She urges conservationists to consider these results before introducing predators with the aim of boosting biodiversity. Pringle says that in future studies he plans to investigate further what drives one prey species to get the upper hand over another. | <urn:uuid:012d6ce6-7c31-4f87-81d3-adb371fff88d> | {
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Commentary: How Killer Black Holes Saved Astronomy
As a physics professor at a small college, I teach a variety of courses to a student body that is diverse in both preparedness and interests. My courses range from general-education physics and astronomy to upper-level courses on advanced physics topics. In each setting, I have found that integrating popular and historical readings into the curriculum has a substantive and positive effect on the student learning experience.
When I started my career, I quickly realized that curriculum design should be much more thoughtful and nuanced than simply choosing a textbook. Despite the time and effort publishers spend to produce accessible and engaging astronomy textbooks, I found that my students struggled with the voluminous texts and their formal tone.
Evidence of that struggle emerged when I assigned open-book quizzes that consisted of basic questions addressed in the text—from simple definitions to foundational concepts in physics and astronomy. The majority of my students have performed poorly on those quizzes, with class averages typically in the C range, even though all the answers came directly from the textbook. Whether students weren’t reading or they were reading without any substantive comprehension, the reality was that they arrived in class without the necessary background to review examples, collaborate in groups, or contribute to class discussions. If I didn’t find a way to engage and motivate my students, the astronomy course was destined to become an experience that neither instructor nor students enjoyed.
While researching different textbook options, I came to realize that the majority of introductory astronomy textbooks have similar writing, content, and design elements. Therefore, adopting a new textbook would not solve the problems my students were having. My experience in teaching the general astronomy course was what first motivated me to explore and develop my curriculum.
After several years of exploration, I have arrived at an approach that allows for the technical treatment of physics and astronomy topics within their historical, cultural, and social contexts. I complement the technical content of a textbook with reading and writing assignments derived from popular and historical science publications. I have found that approach to be successful at engaging students regardless of grade level, major, or interests.
I had read Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Death by Black Hole1 and had noted its breadth of topics. A compilation of short essays written for Natural History magazine, it spans subjects from science and numerical literacy to the history and fundamental physics of various astronomy phenomena. I decided to use it in my general-education astronomy course to complement the technical assignments of a standard textbook. I emphasized reading and writing assignments. The idea wasn’t to replace the textbook but to drive student interest and motivate learning. The textbook, then, would be a resource that expands on topics covered in the readings.
My astronomy course meets for three 50-minute lectures and one 3-hour lab each week. Students typically read two chapters—roughly 20 pages—from Death by Black Hole each week and write a 1- or 2-page response. I set aside 20 minutes of weekly class time to discuss the reading and the students’ responses. It is important that they not simply summarize a reading; a thoughtful response allows the student to consider what the reading means and to connect it to personal experiences and anecdotes. In the lab, we expand on problem solving and the quantitative aspects of the course. Without such an arrangement, adopting the reading-and-writing approach may require a reduction in course topics or content.
In Tyson’s broad-ranging book I have found appropriate reading assignments to complement every textbook chapter covered throughout the semester. For example, in the chapter that gives the book its title, Tyson describes what would happen as you fall into a black hole (he uses the term “spaghettification”). Students read this chapter as the course begins to explore extreme environments in the universe, including black holes, quasars, and gamma-ray bursts.
I implemented this approach in my astronomy course in 2013, and since 2015 I have included a question on the midterm exam that asks students to discuss the value of reading Death by Black Hole and whether they would recommend the book to a friend interested in learning about astronomy. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and the learning environment and level of student engagement are the healthiest I have ever experienced.
I have used the same approach with much success in my advanced courses. Mark Kidger’s Cosmological Enigmas2 and Death by Black Hole have made wonderful companion texts in a mid-level astrophysics course. The approach works well for exploring the people behind paradigm shifts throughout the history of physics. In that context, I use Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field by Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon3 in my upper-level electricity and magnetism course, and I use Thirty Years That Shook Physics by George Gamow4 and Quantum by Manjit Kumar5 in my modern physics course to enhance a learning experience that is often focused on technical and abstract content.
I highly recommend the above titles for your courses, but I am nearly convinced that the specific readings used are irrelevant. I am constantly searching for new books and texts to incorporate into my reading lists and am working to expand the courses for which I use this curriculum design. What makes this approach so compelling for students is the opportunity to explore the historical, cultural, and social contexts of the subjects found in textbooks. If your readings address those topics, I am confident they will have the same effect on your courses.
Perhaps it is hyperbole to say killer black holes saved my astronomy course, but the reality is difficult to ignore. By using popular and historical readings to complement technical content, I have seen dramatic improvement in student participation and learning in all my courses. I highly recommend using popular and historical science writings in the ways I’ve outlined here.
- 1. N. D. Tyson, Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries, W. W. Norton (2007).
- 2. M. Kidger, Cosmological Enigmas: Pulsars, Quasars & Other Deep-Space Questions, Johns Hopkins U. Press (2007).
- 3. N. Forbes, B. Mahon, Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics, Prometheus Books (2014).
- 4. G. Gamow, Thirty Years That Shook Physics: The Story of Quantum Theory, Doubleday (1966).
- 5. M. Kumar, Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality, W. W. Norton (2008).
- © 2017 American Institute of Physics.
By Joseph Ribaudo, “How Killer Black Holes Saved Astronomy,” Physics Today (70, 7, July 2017, pp. 10-11). Joseph Ribaudo is at Utica College, Utica, New York ([email protected]). doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3609 | <urn:uuid:2dc62a03-b2f9-47c7-8e88-5ee9c8d702ad> | {
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Anne Henrietta Martin (1875-1951)
Anne Henrietta Martin believed women should have equal access to all levels of political participation. As an organizer of the vote in Nevada in 1914, she struggled to give women a political voice independent of men. Martin continued this desire in her bids for Senator in 1918 and 1920 and in her peace work following World War I.Martin was an academic and athlete before discovering her interest in suffrage in 1909 while studying in London. Returning from her experiences with British suffrage, she organized Nevada and then worked for the National Woman’s Party in many positions. She ran for Senate as an independent to escape the male dominated political parties. Although she had two unsuccessful bids for Congress, she pioneered an active political role for women and an opportunity for women to use their votes and their political skills in their own interests. In the 1920s she switched her focus to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) while continuing her emphasis on women’s ability to develop their own political voice. Martin lived by her belief that “equality for women is a passion for me.”
Reprinted from NWHM Cyber Exhibit "Rights for Women"
Author Kristina Gupta
- PHOTO: Anne Henrietta Martin, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division (mnwp 275006) | <urn:uuid:b2af9046-16b0-4279-a63d-b0bd25497a7c> | {
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What is a cataract?
A cataract is a clouding or opaque area over the lens of the eye - an area that is normally transparent. As this thickening occurs, it prevents light rays from passing through the lens and focusing on the retina - the light sensitive tissue lining located in the back of the eye. With some cataracts, this clouding is caused when some of the protein which makes up the lens begins to clump together and interferes with vision. Cataracts occur in about 0.4 percent of children. They can affect either one eye (unilateral) or both eyes (bilateral).
The word "cataract" literally means "waterfall." For persons with an advanced cataract that covers a large portion of the eye lens, vision can be described as trying to see through a waterfall.
Some cataracts are small and do not cause any visual symptoms. However, other, more progressive cataracts can cause visual problems in children. Cataracts in children are uncommon.
What causes cataracts?
A child may be born with the disease (congenital), or it may develop later in life (acquired). Possible causes of cataracts include the following:
- Steroid use
- Other childhood diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis
- Complications from other eye diseases, such as glaucoma
The majority of congenital cataracts (those present at birth) are present in children who also have other eye problems or other health problems. In approximately 25 percent of children born with congenital cataracts, the condition is due to a genetic cause such as a metabolic disorder (caused by an inherited enzyme deficiency) or a chromosome abnormality (i.e., Down syndrome).
What are the symptoms of cataracts?
The following are the most common symptoms of cataracts. However, each child may experience symptoms differently. Symptoms may include:
- White pupil upon flashlight examination
- Misaligned eyes
- Involuntary rhythmic movements of the eyes back and forth, up and down, around or mixed (nystagmus)
- Cloudy or blurry vision
- Decreased vision
- Lights appear too bright and/or present a glare or a surrounding halo
The symptoms of cataracts may resemble other eye conditions. Always consult your child's physician for a diagnosis.
What are the different types of cataracts?
According to the National Eye Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, cataract types are subdivided accordingly:
- Congenital cataracts - Some babies are born with cataracts or develop them in childhood, often in both eyes. Some congenital cataracts do not affect vision, but others do and need to be removed.
- Secondary cataracts - Secondary cataracts develop primarily as a result of another disease occurrence in the body (i.e., juvenile diabetes or another ocular problem). Secondary cataract development has also been linked to some medications (i.e., steroids).
- Traumatic cataracts - Eye(s) that have sustained an injury may develop a traumatic cataract either immediately following the incident, or several years later.
- Age-related cataracts - The majority of cataracts are related to aging.
How are cataracts diagnosed?
In addition to a complete medical history and eye examination of your child, diagnostic procedures for cataracts may include:
- Visual acuity test - The common eye chart test, which measures vision ability at various distances.
- Pupil dilation - The pupil is widened with eyedrops to allow a close-up examination of the eye's retina and lens.
In addition, other tests may also be performed to help learn more about the health and structure of your child's eyes.
Treatment for cataracts:
Specific treatment for cataracts will be determined by your child's physician based on:
- Your child's age, overall health and medical history
- Extent of the disease
- Your child's tolerance for specific medications, procedures or therapies
- Expectations for the course of the disease
- Your opinion or preference
Treatment is tailored to the child and the type of cataract he/she has. In some cases, vision loss caused by a cataract may be aided by eyeglasses or contact lenses. However, surgical removal of cataracts is often recommended in infants and children. | <urn:uuid:77f7d516-7d16-4074-ab83-dde2acd4dbb4> | {
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As we move from the Monumental to the Aural strand of the ‘Post-War’ Series, we enter exciting new territory. We don’t have an academic musician on the research team, though we have varying degrees of amateur expertise (Catherine does choral singing, for instance)—and, of course, this term is not just about music but about every kind of sound and its absence. In our brainstorming session, we tried to think of as many commemorative sounds as we could. Our idiosyncratic list was as follows:
trumpets/bugles, the Last Post, hymns, drums, bagpipes, gun salutes, silence, reading out names, testimonials, prayers and rituals, poems read aloud, bells, musical compositions, requiems, pop concerts, running water/the sea, people crying, military bands
You can see how our minds were working. We then began to think about the questions and issues surrounding aural commemoration. Here are our first ideas:
- music has a unique impact on our senses;
- the audience plays a big role;
- music needs human beings to listen to it;
- it also needs performers;
- sound might be able to commemorate in a more embodied way than texts and monuments;
- it also might be able to commemorate in a more communal way;
- sound is ephemeral (unless recorded) and so thinking about the aural sheds different light on longevity of commemoration;
- sounds, and music more specifically, can be related to a place (e.g. by a fountain, a river), so we might ask if commemorative sound is translatable from that place;
- sound can give more peace than texts and monuments;
- the aural can be monumental;
- in what sense are sounds patriotic?;
- what is the role of euphoria / intoxication?;
- sound/music produces an immediate emotional response;
- sound/music is ineffable;
- music can be politically manipulated;
- what is the effect of rhythm, melody, harmony and musical structure on the experience of commemoration?
We honed these down to some more specific questions which we will feed in to our discussions over the term:
- what is the relationship between a sound and the place where it is heard/played? Is commemorative sound translatable to other contexts?
- is there a risk that commemorative musical works can lead us to forget precise circumstances?
- what are the limitations of access to commemorative sounds (eg not knowing languages; not having perfect pitch)?
- how do music and text work together?
- can we understand sound, or is our response in another mode?
To end on a personal note: I was lucky enough to be invited to the service in Westminster Abbey commemorating the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War on 4 August 2014. The violinist Jennifer Pike played Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, composed in 1914. As the high notes of the violin floated upwards into the roof of the Abbey, I felt a sadness that I’ve rarely experienced when reading First World War poetry. If I tried to tell you what the sounds encapsulated, I wouldn’t be able to find the words. Come along and hear the piece for yourselves, performed by the New Zealand violinist Annabel Drummond in Remembrance, the free concert in Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre that concludes our Series on 2 June 2018.
Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford | <urn:uuid:ac5470f7-462d-45c1-9f48-a5bae51c15f8> | {
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The bombings in Boston turned average citizens into first responders delivering lifesaving first aid.
Would you be able to do the same? If you're confronted by a medical emergency, officials said you should remain calm, make sure you are safe and call 911 immediately.
But there are things bystanders can do to save a life before medical personnel arrive.
"How to do compression-only CPR, knowing how to treat shock and then basic controlled bleeding," said James Boyle, a local emergency medical technician and the owner of Breath of Life CPR.
Boyle said the three lifesaving techniques can be learned in minutes.
Compression-only CPR is used when a person is unconscious and not breathing.
"Start compression by placing the heel of one hand on the chest, on the flat, bony part. The idea is to go a third to a half of their chest depth," said Boyle.
The compression, Boyle said, should be done until help arrives.
Someone in shock will be cold, clammy and will lose color. Boyle said to have them lie down and cover them with a blanket. If you can, elevate their feet.
"For bleeding, the most important thing is direct pressure," said Boyle. "If you don't have gloves then we are going to recommend to try to find a plastic bag."
A tourniquet is something you can do relatively quickly that can save a life. You want to put it above the injury. You can use a scarf or a belt. You want to tie a knot, put something like a pencil or a stick, and then all you have to do is turn it until the bleeding stops.
Learning the basics is a start, but it doesn't replace a first aid class. You can contact the American Heart Association to learn more.
Pennsylvania chapters are trying to teach 250,000 residents bystander CPR before May 26, and the American Red Cross holds first aid classes on a regular basis. | <urn:uuid:a130d0dc-4a1e-4fcc-a7d6-3ecd7d626b9c> | {
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The Queen’s Speech is due to take place on Monday 14 October, giving the government an opportunity to highlight its forthcoming priorities.
The decision to hold one – just two weeks before the Brexit deadline – caused a lot of controversy and comes with risks.
Traditionally, losing the vote that follows the Queen’s Speech has been seen as the equivalent of being defeated in a no-confidence vote.
So, what exactly is it and could MPs vote it down?
What is it?
The Queen’s Speech forms part of the State Opening of Parliament ceremony, which marks the start of the parliamentary year.
The ceremony begins with a procession, where the Queen travels from Buckingham Palace to Westminster by carriage.
MPs are summoned by a House of Lords official, known as Black Rod. Before entering the Commons, Black Rod has the doors shut in their face, symbolising the chamber’s independence from the monarchy.
During the speech, the Queen sets out the laws the government wants Parliament to approve. By convention, it is announced by the monarch in the presence of MPs, peers and other dignitaries in the House of Lords.
Normally a Queen’s Speech happens once a year, but there has not been one since 21 June 2017 because the previous prime minister, Theresa May, wanted a two-year parliamentary session to focus on Brexit.
Why does Boris Johnson’s government want one?
Boris Johnson says a Queen’s Speech is needed to bring forward a new “bold and ambitious domestic legislative agenda”.
But his decision to prorogue Parliament, which happens before every Queen’s Speech, caused controversy.
Who writes the Queen’s Speech?
It is written by ministers but it is delivered by the Queen from the throne of the House of Lords.
Its length depends on the number of proposed laws and other announcements – such as foreign policy objectives – but it normally takes about 10 minutes.
Can anyone else deliver the Queen’s Speech?
The Queen has delivered the speech 64 times but was absent in 1959 and 1963, when she was pregnant.
On those occasions, the speech was read by the Lord Chancellor.
Is there a vote on it?
A couple of hours afterwards, MPs reassemble in the House of Commons and begin debating the speech’s contents.
After introductory speeches by two MPs, the prime minister will “sell” the speech to the Commons, setting out their vision for the country.
The leader of the opposition then gets their chance to respond, before other MPs are allowed to contribute.
The debate on what is known as the “Humble Address” normally lasts about five days.
At the end of the debate there is a vote, usually just one. It’s normally seen as symbolic, as it is extremely rare for a government to lose it.
While no date has been formally announced, this Queen’s Speech vote could take place on 21 or 22 October.
What happens if the government loses?
By losing a Queen’s Speech vote, MPs are effectively saying that they reject the government’s plan to bring in new laws.
Mr Johnson has already lost six consecutive House of Commons votes since becoming prime minister. This is scheduled to be the next vote to take place..
But even though Mr Johnson would be under immense political pressure to resign if he lost again, he might not feel forced to do so.
If the government did lose, Labour could respond by proposing a motion of no confidence, leaving all MPs to vote on the matter.
A government defeat, under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (FTPA), would give opposition parties 14 days to form an alternative government.
If nothing is resolved, a general election would be automatically called. At this point Mr Johnson would still not be forced to resign, and could continue on as prime minister during a campaign.
Alternatively, according to Catherine Haddon, from the Institute for Government think tank, the opposition could write its own no-confidence motion in different words to the FTPA.
“This would allow the opposition to be explicit about what should happen, like the steps the government would need to take, or, say, if there was a Commons majority to form an alternative government,” she says.
Ms Haddon says that convention would dictate that if any motion of no confidence is passed and there is a clear alternative government the government would have to stand aside.
When did a government last lose a Queen’s Speech?
The last time this happened was in January 1924 to Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin after he proceeded with a King’s Speech, under George V, despite having lost his majority in the previous month’s general election.
Mr Baldwin subsequently resigned and a minority Labour government took over. | <urn:uuid:403a6f2d-e967-4a23-969b-6fae9f85cdc6> | {
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SMA confirms proto-planetary systems are common in the galaxyUniversity of Hawaiʻi
HONOLULU - Astronomers using Mauna Kea's newest telescope -- the Submillimeter Array (SMA) -- confirmed for the first time that many young stars in the Orion Nebula are surrounded by enough orbiting material to form new planetary systems like our own.
"The SMA is the only telescope that can measure the dust around these stars, and thereby assess their true potential for forming planets. This is critical to our understanding of how solar systems form in hostile regions of space," said Jonathan Williams of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, lead author on a paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal in collaboration with David Wilner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The objects were first seen by the Hubble Space Telescope back in the early 1990s as misshapen silhouettes against the nebular background. They were given the name "proplyds," standing for "protoplanetary disks," on the assumption that they consisted of a newly formed star surrounded by a disk of matter out of which new planets are forming. They are found in the "Trapezium" star cluster of the Orion Nebula, a group of more than 1,000 stars crowded into a space only 4 light-years in diameter. They are among the youngest stars in the Galaxy, having been born out of the original cold, dark cloud of gas about a million years ago.
"The Hubble telescope showed us the size of the disks, but not how much material they contained," said University of Hawaii graduate student and co-author Sean Andrews. Within the Orion Nebula, where stellar winds can reach a staggering two million miles per hour and temperatures exceed a searing 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the question remained: Would enough material endure to form a new solar system, or would it be eroded away into space like wind and sand eroding away desert cliffs? It now appears that these protoplanetary disks are quite tenacious, bringing new grounds for optimism in the search for planetary systems.
Since some of the disks appear to be comparable in size and mass to our own solar system, this strengthens the connection between the Orion proplyds and our origins.
Since most Sun-like stars in our Milky Way galaxy eventually form in environments like the Orion Nebula, the SMA results suggest that the formation of solar systems like our own is common and a continuing event in the Galaxy.
"The exceptional skies and the unique, cutting-edge telescopes of Mauna Kea made these observations possible, and allow us to continue the quest to understand our origins," added Williams.
For more information, visit the following websites:
- Submillimeter Array: http://sma-www.harvard.edu/
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/
- More about "Proplyds" (from Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute): http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2001/13/
- Preprint of scientific paper submitted to Astrophysical Journal: http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph?0506225
About the University of Hawaii
Established in 1907 and fully accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, the University of Hawaii is the state‘s sole public system of higher education. The UH System provides an array of undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees and community programs on 10 campuses and through educational, training, and research centers across the state. UH enrolls more than 50,000 students from Hawaiʻi, the U.S. mainland, and around the world. For more information, visit www.hawaii.edu.
For more information, visit: http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu | <urn:uuid:8d6644f3-dccb-43a7-b9ae-4f88e36bd1e5> | {
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Digital libraries for the developing world
Witten, I.H. (2001). Digital libraries for the developing world. Interactions, 13(4), 20-21.
Permanent Research Commons link: https://hdl.handle.net/10289/1357
Digital libraries (DLs) are the killer app for information technology in developing countries. Priorities here include health, agriculture, nutrition, hygiene, sanitation, and safe drinking water. Computers are not a priority, but simple, reliable access to targeted information meeting these basic needs certainly is. DLs can assist human development by providing a non-commercial mechanism for distributing humanitarian information on topics such as health, agriculture, nutrition, hygiene, sanitation, and water supply. Many other areas, ranging from disaster relief to medical education, from the preservation and propagation of indigenous culture to educational material that addresses specific community problems, also benefit from new methods of information distribution.
This is an author’s version of an article published in the journal: Interactions. Copyright © 2008 ACM. | <urn:uuid:b6de17e4-e690-4fc6-8446-e3c53a8c5c42> | {
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After the successful conclusion of the Munich Agreement, many international
leaders harbored the hope that Hitler was a statesman with whom they could
continue to negotiate. But on the night of November 9, 1938, an event occurred
which revealed the true nature of Hitler's regime to the world and also
marked the beginning of deadly radicalization of Nazi policy concerning
For some months now, moderate anti-Semites within the Nazi hierarchy
had been losing ground to those favoring extreme measures such as the immediate
removal of Jews from Germany. The subsequent removal of the first big group of Jews
in late October 1938 sparked a chain of events resulting in the Night of
Broken Glass, a massive, coordinated attack on Jews throughout Greater
On October 27th, about 17,000 Jews of Polish origin, including over 2,000
children, were abruptly expelled from Germany on orders of Reinhard Heydrich,
second-in-command of the SS. The Grynszpan family from the city of Hanover
were among the Jews forcibly transported in railroad cars then dumped at
the Polish border as unwanted persons. Polish border authorities at first
denied them permission to enter. The Jews thus ended up in a kind of no-man's-land
between the German and Polish borders.
The Grynszpan family had not taken along their 17-year-old son Herschel.
He had gone to Paris for safekeeping at the age of 15 to stay with his
uncle who worked there as a tailor. Young Herschel was a sensitive, somewhat
sickly youth who stood just over five feet tall and weighed about 100 pounds.
He was devoutly Orthodox, attended temple regularly, and strictly observed
the various rules of his faith.
Proud of his Jewish heritage, Herschel had a keen interest in the plight
of his family and the half-million Jews still living in Greater Germany.
During his years in Paris he regularly read the Yiddish newspapers his
uncle brought home which chronicled the downward spiral of "his people"
under Nazi control in Germany, Austria and the newly acquired Sudetenland.
The papers also reported the mass expulsion of the Polish Jews from Germany.
Just before that expulsion, Herschel suffered a major setback of his
own. His request for permanent residency in France was rejected by local
French officials, followed by a decree of expulsion to take effect on August
15, 1938. Herschel ignored the expulsion decree and remained in Paris illegally
for the time being until he could figure out where to go.
He had become, like his family, a man without a country, unwanted anywhere
because of his Jewish ancestry. Herschel sank into deep depression at this
turn of events and even considered suicide. Making matters worse, he then
received a letter from his family describing the ordeal of their expulsion
His 22-year-old sister, Esther, wrote: "You undoubtedly heard of
our great misfortune. I will describe to you what happened...On Thursday
evening at 9 o'clock a Sipo [Nazi security policeman] came to us and informed
us that we had to go to police headquarters and bring along our passports...We
were not told what it was all about, but we saw that everything was finished
for us. Each of us had an extradition order pressed into his hand, and
one had to leave Germany before the 29th. They didn't permit us to return
home anymore. I asked to be allowed to go home to get at least a few things.
I went, accompanied by a Sipo, and packed the necessary clothes in a suitcase.
And that is all I saved. We don't have a penny..."
His father had spent the past 28 years building up a modest tailoring
business in Hanover.
Driven half-mad with sorrow and anger over all that was happening, Herschel
decided to commit a radical act of violence to draw the world's attention
to the plight of the Jews.
On Monday morning, November 7, he walked into a Paris gun shop and purchased
a 6.35-caliber revolver along with a box of 25 bullets. When the shop owner
asked why he wanted the gun, Herschel answered that he sometimes carried
large amounts of money for his father and needed the protection.
After buying the gun, Herschel walked to a nearby café,
entered the restroom there and loaded it, then put the gun in his left
coat pocket. He took the Paris subway to the German embassy, arriving at
9:35 a.m. He entered the building and asked the first person he encountered,
the wife of the concierge, if he could see an embassy official concerning
some important papers he wanted to submit. He was pointed toward a flight
of stairs and told to see a Herr Nagorka, the clerk-receptionist, up there.
Upstairs, Herschel told Nagorka he had an important document he wanted
to hand-deliver to an embassy official. Nagorka offered to deliver the
document for him, but Herschel insisted he had to deliver it himself because
of its importance. This is how he wound up in the office of 29-year-old
Secretary of Legation, Ernst vom Rath, who was the most junior embassy
official on duty that morning.
Vom Rath seated Herschel, took his own seat nearby, then asked to see
the document. Herschel responded to his request by shouting: "You're
a filthy Kraut and in the name of the twelve-thousand persecuted Jews,
here is the document!"
Herschel reached into his coat pocket, took out the gun, and blasted
away at vom Rath, shooting five shots wildly, striking vom Rath twice as
he stood up. The first bullet lodged in vom Rath's left shoulder and did
little damage. The second bullet struck him in the lower left side, causing
severe internal damage.
Herschel dropped the empty gun to the floor. The wounded vom Rath gave
Herschel a quick smack with his fist, then dashed toward the door, clutching
his abdomen and calling out for help. Herschel never left the office but
just waited to be arrested. He was taken into custody by Nagorka and another
embassy worker. At Herschel's request he was then handed over to the French
Vom Rath was rushed to the hospital where he underwent emergency surgery
to remove his ruptured spleen, and to repair damage to his stomach and
pancreas. Despite the surgery and massive blood transfusions, vom Rath
suffered from a very high fever and gradually weakened until he expired
at 4:25 p.m., Wednesday, November 9th.
While this was occurring, Adolf Hitler and most of the highest ranking
Nazis were in Munich for the annual re-enactment of the Beer Hall Putsch.
Every year on November 9, veterans of the 1923 Putsch gathered to retrace
the same steps they had taken in their failed attempt to overthrow Germany's
democratic government. The day was also a national holiday known as the
Day of the Movement with Germans enjoying a day off from work and kids
staying home from school.
Upon first hearing of the shooting incident, Hitler had sent his own
personal physician to Paris to aid vom Rath. Propaganda Minister Joseph
Goebbels, meanwhile, instantly recognized the shooting as a golden opportunity.
Goebbels was by now the most powerful anti-Semite in the Nazi hierarchy,
second only to Hitler. The little man with the club foot, who had been
teased about his own so-called Jewish looks as a youth, harbored a life-long,
deep-seated hatred for Jews. For five years now, Goebbels' propaganda machine
had been spewing out a never-ending stream of messages portraying Jews
as the mortal enemy of the German people. For Goebbels, the shooting in
Paris was a chance to incite the German people to "rise in bloody
vengeance against the Jews."
Goebbels, of course, wouldn't do anything without his Führer's
approval. In the early evening hours of November 9, a messenger arrived
bearing news of vom Rath's death just as Hitler and his old cronies were
about to sit down to a festive dinner at Old City Hall in Munich, following
a long day of self-congratulations, pomp and Nazi pageantry. Upon being
told of vom Rath's demise, an angry looking Hitler took Goebbels aside
and conferred privately for several minutes, finally telling Goebbels the
SA storm troopers should have a "fling" at the expense of the
After dinner, Hitler left the hall without making a speech, leaving
Goebbels to deliver the actual marching orders to the assembled Nazi leadership.
Goebbels first announced vom Rath's death, then launched into an anti-Semitic
diatribe, prompting the SA and Nazi Party leaders to incite a popular uprising
against Jews throughout Greater Germany without making it look like the
Nazi Party was the actual instigator.
When Goebbels finished his remarks, most of the assembled leaders headed
for the nearest telephone to call their local SA and Party offices to deliver
the appropriate instructions. However, the nuance of Goebbels message somehow
got lost amid all of the telephone conversations. As a result, uniformed
Brownshirts and Party activists carrying swastika banners took to the streets
instead of nondescript civilians.
In fact, the popular uprising Hitler and Goebbels hoped to ignite never
materialized. Most civilians either pulled down their window shades and
stayed inside or stood silently on the sidewalk along with the regular
German police and watched as storm troopers, SS men and Hitler Youth, accompanied
by miscellaneous street punks, broke into Jewish homes, beat up and murdered
Jewish men and terrorized Jewish women and children.
All over Germany and Austria that evening, Jewish shops and department
stores had their windows smashed and contents wrecked. Synagogues were
especially targeted for vandalism, including desecration of sacred Torah
scrolls which were unraveled and tossed into a pile then burned.
Hundreds of synagogues went up in flames while fire fighters stood by
watching or simply hosed down surrounding buildings to prevent the fire
from spreading. Nearly all Jewish cemeteries near the synagogues were also
About 25,000 Jewish men were hauled off to Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen
concentration camps where they were brutalized by SS guards and in some
cases randomly chosen to be beaten to death. In all, it is estimated that
up to 2,500 Jews perished from beatings on the street, incarceration in
the camps, and from the numerous suicides that occurred, including entire
many thousands of broken plate-glass windows resulted in the term Kristallnacht
or Night of Broken Glass to describe the events of November 9th lasting into
the early morning hours of the 10th. Although the Nazis didn't get the
popular uprising they had hoped for, they did notice that the overall population
of some 60 million Germans showed remarkable indifference toward this first
mass persecution of the Jews. Those who were shocked or outraged knew enough
to keep their thoughts to themselves or risk being sent to a concentration
Outside of Germany, however, the shock and outrage were not silenced.
Radio commentators and newspaper writers in the United States declared that Germany
had descended to a level of barbarism unseen since the pogroms of the Middle
The storm of negative worldwide publicity served to isolate Hitler's
Germany from the civilized nations of the West and weakened any pro-Nazi
sentiments in those countries. Before Kristallnacht, small pro-Hitler movements
existed in both Britain and the U.S. After Kristallnacht, sympathy for
the Hitler regime gradually evaporated. The United States also permanently
recalled its ambassador from Germany.
However, radical anti-Semites within the Nazi hierarchy didn't care
what the world thought. A few days after Kristallnacht, on November 12th,
a dozen top Nazis including Joseph Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, and Hermann
Göring, gathered to discuss what happened and to decide on further
Heydrich reported 7,500 Jewish businesses destroyed, 267 synagogues
burned (with 177 totally destroyed) and 91 Jews murdered during Kristallnacht.
Heydrich then requested new decrees forbidding Jews from having any social
contact with Germans by excluding them from public transportation, schools,
and hospitals, essentially forcing them into ghettos or out of the country.
Goebbels said the Jews would be made to clean out the debris from burned-out
synagogues which would then be demolished and turned into parking lots.
At this meeting there was a general agreement to eliminate Jews entirely
from economic life in the Reich by transferring all Jewish property and
enterprises to non-Jews, with minor compensation to be given to the Jews
in the form of German bonds.
Regarding the economic damage from Kristallnacht and the resulting massive
insurance claims, Göring declared the Jews themselves should be billed
for the damage and that any insurance money payable to them should be confiscated
by the Government.
"I shall close the meeting with these words," said Göring,
"German Jewry shall, as punishment for their abominable crimes, et
cetera, have to make a contribution for one billion marks. That will work.
The swine won't commit another murder. Incidentally, I would like to say
that I would not like to be a Jew in Germany."
As for Herschel Grynszpan, he was interrogated by the French police
and declared: "It was not with hatred or for vengeance against any
particular person that I acted, but because of love for my parents and
for my people who were unjustly subjected to outrageous treatment. Nevertheless,
this act was distasteful to me and I deeply regret it. However, I had no
other means of demonstrating my feelings...It is not, after all, a crime
to be Jewish. I am not a dog. I have the right to live. My people have
a right to exist on this earth. And yet everywhere they are hunted down
Herschel eventually wound up in the clutches of the Gestapo and spent
time in various Nazi prisons and concentration camps, and vanished without | <urn:uuid:aa11ab32-e033-48b0-bec0-c072191819dd> | {
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Our fascination with Ancient Rome has inspired a glut of books, documentaries, movies and even games. But, writer Jem Duducu points out, our focus tends primarily to centre on just one period – the era from Julius Caesar to (roughly) Constantine the Great. Here, Jem brings you seven lesser-known facts about the fascinating years before Nero or Hadrian, and about the era of Roman decline…
1) The Roman’s couldn’t decide on their origins
The legend of Romulus and Remus tells the story of twin brothers raised by wolves who become the founding fathers of Rome.
The boys’ mother, Rhea Silvia, had been forced into becoming a Vestal Virgin (priestesses who attended to the sacred fire of Vesta) by the usurper Amulius. Rhea Silvia then had a miraculous conception, either by the god Mars or by Hercules (there are variations on the myth). When Amulius heard of this, he ordered the infant twins to be taken to the river Tiber where they were left to die.
In the event they were saved and nourished by a she-wolf and later taken in by a shepherd and his family until they grew to manhood, unaware of their origins. Eventually they heard the story of the treachery of Amulius, after which they confronted and killed the tyrant. Then, because Romulus wanted to found their new city on the Palatine Hill and Remus preferred the Aventine Hill, they agreed to see a soothsayer. However, each brother interpreted the results in his own favour. This led to a fight in which Romulus killed Remus, and that founded the new city of Rome in 753 BC.
What’s stranger still is that there was a later ‘founding of Rome’ story. Written around the 8th century BC, Homer’s Iliad recalls the story of the Trojan War but Rome’s origins are linked to the second telling of this same story by another giant of ancient writing, Virgil, in his book The Aeneid. As well as enhancing Homer’s earlier story, The Aeneidalso postdates the tale of Romulus and Remus. This is important because, according to Virgil, Troy’s population wasn’t completely destroyed. Instead, a prince called Aeneas escaped with a small group of Trojans and sailed the Mediterranean until he found an area he liked the look of. So this ancient and noble civilisation transplanted itself in Italy and founded Rome.
Both tales are revealing. The first shows us that the Romans were explaining where their predatory and argumentative attitudes came from: they are all the children of wolves. The second story was created at the time of emperors, so there is a demand for respectability and heritage. The Trojan War was as famous then as now, so why not connect this new empire to a very old and familiar tale?
A stone plate of Rome’s founders, Romulus and Remus, suckled by a female wolf, seen at the National Historical Museum, Sofia, Bulgaria, in April 2011. (Photo by Nikolay Doychinov/AFP/Getty Images)
2) Rome was a bad neighbour
By the 5th century BC, Rome was one of many tiny states on the Italian peninsula. If you were a gambler in 480 BC you would probably have put your money on an eventual Etruscan empire. The Etruscsns were after all the biggest power on the Italian peninsula at that time. Over the centuries the realm had grown substantially, and while Rome’s central and southern towns had thrown off Etruscan dominance, it was still the largest power in an area populated by numerous other Italic peoples, many of their names barely remembered by history.
It’s a forgotten fact that the Romans had to conquer the rest of Italy, and one of the first tribes to fall was the Sabines. According to a famous legend, oft repeated in ancient texts (and a popular subject with Renaissance artists), the Romans abducted the Sabine women for breeding purposes, in order to increase the population of Rome. Whether this was true or not is impossible to say, but the Romans were consistently avid slavers, and what is uncontested is that by the dawn of the 4th century BC the Sabine kingdom had been absorbed into Roman lands.
Romans and Italians were never the same thing. It’s just that the Roman city state was more aggressive, with a better army, or luckier than the other kingdoms of Italy. It wouldn’t have taken much to snuff out Rome at this time, in which case this article you are reading could have been about the empire of the Frentani, yet another Italic people then located on the east coast of the peninsula.
Although geographically close to each other, these realms were so diverse that they didn’t even speak the same language. Etruscan is still, frustratingly, one of the languages that has yet to be satisfactorily translated. The Sabines, similarly, were not Latin speakers. The Hellenic colonies in the toe of Italy spoke Greek. To these people the Romans were not fellow countrymen carrying out a hostile takeover that was always inevitable and perhaps a tiny bit yearned for. Instead, this was an invasion by a foreign nation of terrifying men who spoke an alien tongue.
3) The first sacking of Rome nearly finished the city
The traditional date for the first sacking of Rome is 390 BC, but modern historians agree that a date of 387 BC is more likely. When a tribe of Gauls, called the Senones, came over the Alps into Italy in search of lands to settle, the first people they met were the Etruscans. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t want to cede any of their lands to these foreigners, so they asked for military assistance from the rising military power of Rome.
Rome gathered together a large army and sent it north to help its neighbour fight this alien threat. Meanwhile, the diplomacy wasn’t going well. Even in this ancient era there was a general rule that ambassadors and messengers were to be left unharmed, but one of the Roman diplomats killed one of the Gaulish chieftains. The Gauls (not unreasonably) demanded that the perpetrators be brought to justice, and some in Rome agreed. However, the Roman masses did not, and this provocation led to the meeting of both sides at the Allia River, both ready for battle.
The Romans had amassed a mighty army; the Senones had an army of about half the size. However, as battle ensued, the Gauls shattered the two flanks of the Roman army and surrounded the elite central force. Now outmanoeuvred and tired from fighting, this Roman army was completely annihilated. The road to Rome was open to the Gauls, who were led by the terrifying figure of Brennus.
What happened next is described in a series of fables and legends, none of which dispute that the Gauls fell on Rome and destroyed much of it. Indeed, they did such a good job that contemporary histories of Rome prior to and during this period are sketchy because of the scale of destruction.
Why the Gauls didn’t settle in the conquered city is unknown. One Roman source claims they were chased away by another Roman army, but this was most likely an explanation created to give the Romans something of a face-saving ending to an otherwise total defeat. What is more probable is that like many northern armies that had tried to settle around Rome, the Gauls found the climate distinctly unhealthy, and it’s probable that disease spread through Brennus’ men. Either way, the Gauls retreated into the mists of legend and hearsay.
Rome was so completely destroyed that there was serious debate about re-founding the capital in the nearby (and completely forgotten town) of Veii. Instead, the Senate decided to stay and authorised the building of the first major stone walls to defend the city.
Battle between Romans and Gauls. (Photo by Leemage/UIG via Getty Images)
4) The battle of Adrianople was the beginning of the end
By the 4th century AD, Germanic invasions were starting to become a serious problem for the Roman empire. It was during this period that a number of new groups began to appear in the Roman hinterlands. Some of these people were known as the Goths.
Initially the Goths agreed to join the empire, settle as farmers and, in essence, merge with the local population. But the Goths were hardly welcomed with open arms, and heavy-handedness by local Roman governors led to Goth resentments and uprisings. Exactly who was to blame for the resulting conflict is hard to say.
The Gothic War lasted from AD 376 to 382. This new wave of barbarians was running amok, and there were frequent clashes with the forces of the western Roman emperor Gratian. However, it was the eastern Roman emperor Valens who went personally to deal with them.
The two sides met near Adrianople (modern day Edirne in Turkey). The Roman writer Ammianus Marcellinus claims that Valens had around 25,000 men against a horde of 80,000 (as is often the case with ancient texts, these numbers are probably exaggerated).
The Romans had marched for seven or eight hours over rough terrain; they were tired and out of formation when they arrived in front of the Gothic army. The 4thcentury legions were, by now, clad in mail armour and had large round shields, all of which were an added burden under the hot August sun. Some of the Roman army attacked without orders and were easily pushed back. The Roman soldier’s rash actions meant he had no option but to engage in battle.
The Gothic force’s centre was a defensive circle of wagons, which the Romans failed to penetrate. However, while the Romans were busy attacking this defensive position, the Goth cavalry crept in from the sides and outflanked Valens’ forces. The heavily armoured Romans were not as nimble or agile as the Goths, and while they managed to break out from the enveloping moves by the Goth cavalry, they were now fighting in small groups and not as a unified army. In the ensuing chaos most of the Roman troops were slaughtered, including the emperor, Valens.
Valens’ successor, Theodosius, was forced to turn the Goths from enemies into allies, but at the cost of land. This was a turning point from which the Roman empire never recovered.
5) The capital of the late Roman empire wasn’t Rome
The Roman empire got its name from its founding city. Therefore, when Rome finally fell forever from the power of the emperors, the change in circumstances must mark the end of the Roman empire, right?
However, while it is often recognised that in the late Roman era Constantinople was the more important city, what almost nobody realises is that by the early 5th century AD, the western Roman emperors had moved the capital from the ancient and illustrious city of Rome.
By AD 402 the terrible emperor Honorius felt that Rome was no longer defensible and decided to move the capital to Ravenna. This was a large town with a population of around 50,000, and had been part of the empire since the 2nd century BC. Despite receiving regular investment funds (emperor Trajan built a massive aqueduct), it was never one of the most important urban areas of the empire and had been in decline in recent times. However, Ravenna had a large and easily defendable port and became the base for Rome’s naval fleet in the Adriatic Sea. As it was also surrounded by marshland, it was regarded as a place of safety, with guaranteed connections to the stronger eastern empire.
The move to Ravenna was an admission by Honorius that Rome could no longer hold back the barbarian invasions. It remained the capital of the empire until its eventual fall in AD 476. It was recaptured by the eastern Roman empire in AD 584 and was part of those lands until 751.
6) The last western emperor shared a name with the founder of Rome
Romulus Augustus, better known as Romulus Augustulus, ‘little Augustus’, was a boy who ‘ruled’ for about 10 months from AD 475–476. He was little more than a figurehead for his father Orestes, a Roman aristocrat (of Germanic ancestry), who had manoeuvred his way into a position of power in the court in Ravenna.
By now the title of western Roman emperor was virtually meaningless. The only remaining areas of the empire were the Italian peninsula, along with some fragmentary lands in Gaul, Spain and Croatia. Barbarian groups had already sacked Rome twice, and any real power was held by these tribes and not by the Roman court in Ravenna.
Little is known about the teenage Romulus Augustulus. Coins were minted with his face, but he led no armies and no monuments were built for him. He was an irrelevance.
The Germanic leader Odoacer knew this and, in AD 476, marched on Ravenna. Odoacer had been leading the foederati, the barbarian contingents that by now made up almost the entire ‘Roman’ army. He had all the real power and he knew it.
On arriving in Ravenna and finding no resistance, Odoacer met face-to-face with the so-called emperor, Romulus Augustus. However, the chronicles then say that Odoacer, “taking pity on his youth”, spared Romulus’ life. Odoacer carried out no bloody coup, nor did he take the imperial title, because he knew that it had ceased to have any significance. Instead, he recast himself as the first king of Italy, after which he granted Romulus an annual pension and sent him to live with relatives in southern Italy.
Odoacer then got on with reshaping Italy, not in the mould of the old empire, but in the form of a new kingdom. The transformation was long overdue, and as a result, Odoacer was able to bring more stability to the time of his reign than the previous emperors had managed during the past 80 years.
The last western Roman emperor did not go down in a battle, nor did he commit suicide. He was deposed and sent home like a naughty schoolboy. This was final humiliation for a title that, from Scotland to Iraq, had once put fear in men’s hearts.
c475 AD, last Roman emperor of the west, Romulus Augustulus. (Photo by Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)
7) When the Roman empire ended is up for debate
What determines the final demise of the empire is notoriously difficult. The easiest date to use is the fall of Rome… but which one? 410 doesn’t mark the end of the list of western Roman emperors, nor does 455. The other problem is that while Rome was the cradle of the empire, by the 5th century it was neither the most important city (Constantinople), nor the capital of the Western Roman Empire (Ravenna).
The second date that could be used is 476, when Romulus Augutulus was deposed. Again, this doesn’t work because the eastern Roman emperor was still the most powerful person in the world (except for the emperor of China). His empire might have become known as the Byzantine empire, and its inhabitants might have begun speaking Greek, but they considered themselves to be as Roman as Julius Caesar – right up until the bitter end – an ending that happened twice.
The Byzantine empire was the victim of the Fourth Crusade and was conquered in 1204. This was the end of the empire then, surely?
However, just a couple of generations later, it threw off its western overlords, and the emperors returned. These were to last until the Ottoman conquest of 1453 (where the last eastern Roman emperor, unlike the last western one, did go down in a blaze of glory on the city’s battlements).
So does 1453 count as the end of the empire? This is an even harder date to use because the 15th-century world was very different to that of the Roman empire at its peak. Worse still, since Charlemagne was crowned emperor of the Romans in 800, there had been a number of Germanic rulers who would, by the Middle Ages, claim to be ‘holy Roman emperors’. They were no such thing, but the title was still in play.
And yet, still later dates could be used: when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, two very different dynasties took up the title of Roman emperor and Caesar. Firstly the Ottoman sultan took the title because he had just conquered the old eastern capital. Secondly, as Constantinople had been the capital of Orthodox Christianity, the Russian rulers, as defenders of the Orthodox faith, took the title Caesar (‘tsar’ in Russian).
None of these dates are satisfactory, so the last fact is really a question. Which date would you choose? | <urn:uuid:4fa1528e-2fc6-40f6-a478-9ae31f9f4c75> | {
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The aim of the game is to slide the green square from the top right
hand corner to the bottom left hand corner in the least number of
To avoid losing think of another very well known game where the
patterns of play are similar.
Place a red counter in the top left corner of a 4x4 array, which is
covered by 14 other smaller counters, leaving a gap in the bottom
right hand corner (HOME). What is the smallest number of moves. . . .
Can you discover whether this is a fair game?
On the 3D grid a strange (and deadly) animal is lurking. Using the tracking system can you locate this creature as quickly as possible?
Start with any number of counters in any number of piles. 2 players
take it in turns to remove any number of counters from a single
pile. The winner is the player to take the last counter.
A right-angled isosceles triangle is rotated about the centre point
of a square. What can you say about the area of the part of the
square covered by the triangle as it rotates?
P is a point on the circumference of a circle radius r which rolls,
without slipping, inside a circle of radius 2r. What is the locus
Players take it in turns to choose a dot on the grid. The winner is the first to have four dots that can be joined to form a square.
This is an interactive net of a Rubik's cube. Twists of the 3D cube become mixes of the squares on the 2D net. Have a play and see how many scrambles you can undo!
There are 27 small cubes in a 3 x 3 x 3 cube, 54 faces being
visible at any one time. Is it possible to reorganise these cubes
so that by dipping the large cube into a pot of paint three times
you. . . .
Square It game for an adult and child. Can you come up with a way of always winning this game?
Match pairs of cards so that they have equivalent ratios.
Help the bee to build a stack of blocks far enough to save his
friend trapped in the tower.
Show that for any triangle it is always possible to construct 3
touching circles with centres at the vertices. Is it possible to
construct touching circles centred at the vertices of any polygon?
Match the cards of the same value.
Given the nets of 4 cubes with the faces coloured in 4 colours, build a tower so that on each vertical wall no colour is repeated, that is all 4 colours appear.
Rotate a copy of the trapezium about the centre of the longest side
of the blue triangle to make a square. Find the area of the square
and then derive a formula for the area of the trapezium.
Find the vertices of a pentagon given the midpoints of its sides.
We can show that (x + 1)² = x² + 2x + 1 by considering
the area of an (x + 1) by (x + 1) square. Show in a similar way
that (x + 2)² = x² + 4x + 4
This resource contains interactive problems to support work on
number sequences at Key Stage 4.
Can you beat Piggy in this simple dice game? Can you figure out
Piggy's strategy, and is there a better one?
Can you be the first to complete a row of three?
Can you beat the computer in the challenging strategy game?
Can you find all the 4-ball shuffles?
This resource contains a range of problems and interactivities on
the theme of coordinates in two and three dimensions.
A circle rolls around the outside edge of a square so that its circumference always touches the edge of the square. Can you describe the locus of the centre of the circle?
A game for 2 players. Can be played online. One player has 1 red
counter, the other has 4 blue. The red counter needs to reach the
other side, and the blue needs to trap the red.
The interactive diagram has two labelled points, A and B. It is
designed to be used with the problem "Cushion Ball"
Do you know how to find the area of a triangle? You can count the
squares. What happens if we turn the triangle on end? Press the
button and see. Try counting the number of units in the triangle
now. . . .
A and B are two interlocking cogwheels having p teeth and q teeth respectively. One tooth on B is painted red. Find the values of p and q for which the red tooth on B contacts every gap on the. . . .
What are the areas of these triangles? What do you notice? Can you generalise to other "families" of triangles?
in how many ways can you place the numbers 1, 2, 3 … 9 in the
nine regions of the Olympic Emblem (5 overlapping circles) so that
the amount in each ring is the same?
These formulae are often quoted, but rarely proved. In this article, we derive the formulae for the volumes of a square-based pyramid and a cone, using relatively simple mathematical concepts.
Use Excel to explore multiplication of fractions.
The opposite vertices of a square have coordinates (a,b) and (c,d). What are the coordinates of the other vertices?
You can move the 4 pieces of the jigsaw and fit them into both
outlines. Explain what has happened to the missing one unit of
Triangle numbers can be represented by a triangular array of squares. What do you notice about the sum of identical triangle numbers?
Can you give the coordinates of the vertices of the fifth point in
the patterm on this 3D grid?
Can you put the 25 coloured tiles into the 5 x 5 square so that no column, no row and no diagonal line have tiles of the same colour in them?
Discover a handy way to describe reorderings and solve our anagram
in the process.
A tilted square is a square with no horizontal sides. Can you
devise a general instruction for the construction of a square when
you are given just one of its sides?
There are thirteen axes of rotational symmetry of a unit cube. Describe them all. What is the average length of the parts of the axes of symmetry which lie inside the cube?
This set of resources for teachers offers interactive environments
to support work on loci at Key Stage 4.
Can you make a right-angled triangle on this peg-board by joining
up three points round the edge?
Try entering different sets of numbers in the number pyramids. How does the total at the top change?
An environment that enables you to investigate tessellations of
How good are you at finding the formula for a number pattern ?
The idea of this game is to add or subtract the two numbers on the dice and cover the result on the grid, trying to get a line of three. Are there some numbers that are good to aim for?
Here is a solitaire type environment for you to experiment with. Which targets can you reach? | <urn:uuid:60c17c86-600f-4310-ab0a-ab503593c506> | {
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Tissues such as skin, fat or cuticle are non-transparent because inhomogeneities in the tissue scatter light. We demonstrate experimentally that light can be focused through turbid layers of living tissue, in spite of scattering. Our method is based on the fact that coherent light forms an interference pattern, even after hundreds of scattering events. By spatially shaping the wavefront of the incident laser beam, this interference pattern was modified to make the scattered light converge to a focus. In contrast to earlier experiments, where light was focused through solid objects, we focused light through living pupae of Drosophila melanogaster. We discuss a dynamic wavefront shaping algorithm that follows changes due to microscopic movements of scattering particles in real time. We relate the performance of the algorithm to the measured timescale of the changes in the speckle pattern and analyze our experiment in the light of Laser Doppler flowmetry. Applications in particle tracking, imaging, and optical manipulation are discussed. | <urn:uuid:9ab8abc9-920f-47b3-ba75-577301eef6a6> | {
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Green/Sustainability Knowledge and Skill Statements
Environmental awareness is an important asset needed to engage in a broad range of industries. Green/sustainability knowledge and skills, therefore, are a vital component of preparing students to thrive in the marketplace of the 21st century. CTE courses and programs have a major responsibility for helping students gain such knowledge and skills. To assist in this effort, MPR Associates, Inc., with funding from the U.S. Department of Education and in collaboration with the National Career Technical Education Foundation (NCTEF) and Vivayic, Inc., led the Green/Sustainability Knowledge and Skills project. It provides supplemental standards that complement the Career Clusters Knowledge and Skills Statements for the 16 Career Clusters.
These supplemental statements help states and local programs incorporate a set of green/sustainability standards into all career clusters to prepare students for green occupations. In addition, the initiative developed industry-specific, additional standards for the six Career Clusters that are expected to experience the greatest need for green workers.
These six Career Clusters are: Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources; Architecture & Construction; Information Technology; Manufacturing; Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics; and Transportation, Distribution and Logistics. The standards also include definitions of many of the commonly used terms found in each of the six specific clusters. Development of these standards was informed by technical working groups of industry experts representing the six clusters. These standards are designed to assist teachers in their CTE programs and classes in providing students the knowledge and skills needed to work with green-industry components in their various fields.
On Thursday, Aug. 16, at 3 p.m. (EDT) a webinar will provide an overview and details of the process and resources associated with the development of the Green and Sustainability Knowledge and Skill Statements for the six career clusters. Participants in the webinar will also hear about strategies for implementing the standards.
The standards are available at http://cte.ed.gov/nationalinitiatives/twg/Green_Sustainability_KS_Statements.pdf/. To register for the webinar “Green and Sustainability Knowledge and Skills Statements: Connecting to the Curriculum,” go to http://www.careertech.org/resources/webinars.html.
OVAE is recruiting a GS-13 Education Program Specialist for DATE’s College and Career Transition Branch. The deadline is Aug. 22, 2012. To apply, visit http://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/323617800.
U.S. Department of State Announces Community College Cooperative Agreement Opportunity
The State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs recently announced a cooperative agreement opportunity as part of the Community College Initiative Program (CCI). The bureau intends to award between one and six cooperative agreements for one base year and, pending the availability of funds, two option years. The cooperative agreement for the base year should begin on or about Feb. 1, 2013, and end on or about Dec. 31, 2015, assuming that the two options are exercised. Applications are due by Oct. 15, 2012.
The bureau is seeking scholarship participants from developing countries who represent the diversity of their home countries and who can have a positive impact on their country’s future development. The CCI program will support their undergraduate studies at accredited U.S. community colleges. The intent is to provide quality educational programs, leadership and professional skills development, practical professional experience, community engagement, and programming that build mutual understanding and knowledge about American society and culture to underserved, non-elite international students, particularly women. The Fulbright commissions and/or public affairs sections of U.S. embassies in sending countries are responsible for recruiting and nominating candidates for this program.
Public and private non-profit organizations representing consortia of accredited U.S. community colleges, or combinations of accredited community college campuses, may submit proposals to cooperate with the bureau in administering and implementing the FY 2013 CCI program. The bureau anticipates hosting students from Brazil, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and South Africa for the 2013–14 academic year. Applicants may apply to administer the entire program or a portion of it. Proposals should describe placement strategies so that each cohort consists of no more than 16 participants, with a goal of having no more than four citizens of the same country at the same U.S. host community college. The recipient will place students in fields that may include agriculture, applied engineering, business management and administration, early childhood education, information technology, media, and tourism and hospitality management in programs lasting approximately one academic year and not to exceed one calendar year. Programs of study should lead to a professional certificate.
Please visit the bureau's Request for Grant Proposals (RFGP) webpage to access detailed information on CCI's objectives, goals, and implementation, as well as instructions and mandatory application forms. | <urn:uuid:1729b7a8-a6c7-4182-ba1a-a8ce2cdbc926> | {
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Five stages comprise the consumer buying decision process: problem recognition, information search, alternative evaluation, purchase decision and post-purchase behavior. Each of these stages can be a deliberate action such as researching product options or a subconscious thought like recognizing the juice in the refrigerator has almost run out. A merchant or business must understand the steps a customer goes through to make a purchase. A merchant can influence a customer's purchase by providing targeted information, advertisements or guidance.
Thus, by studying the consumer behavior before and during purchase helps in production scheduling, designing, pricing, positioning, segmentation, advertising and other promotional activities.
One potential benefit of online surveys is the use of “conditional branching.” In conventional paper and pencil surveys, one question might ask if the respondent has shopped for a new car during the last eight months. If the respondent answers “no,” he or she will be asked to skip ahead several questions—., going straight to question 17 instead of proceeding to number 9. If the respondent answered “yes,” he or she would be instructed to go to the next question which, along with the next several ones, would address issues related to this shopping experience. Conditional branching allows the computer to skip directly to the appropriate question. If a respondent is asked which brands he or she considered, it is also possible to customize brand comparison questions to those listed. Suppose, for example, that the respondent considered Ford, Toyota, and Hyundai, it would be possible to ask the subject questions about his or her view of the relative quality of each respective pair—in this case, Ford vs. Toyota, Ford vs. Hyundai, and Toyota vs. Hyundai. | <urn:uuid:042830c2-4a25-4076-91e3-b0b701078fab> | {
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Are humans alone in the universe? A majority of people, particularly guys, in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany say they believe that intelligent life is out there.
Fifty-six percent of Germans, 54 percent of Americans and 52 percent of people from the United Kingdom believe that alien life capable of communication lives somewhere among the stars, according to a new survey by the marketing research firm YouGov.
However, in the United Kingdom at least, people are slightly cautious about whether humans should reach out to E.T. Among U.K. respondents, 46 percent said a digital message should be sent into space in the hopes that it reaches intelligent aliens. Another 33 percent said no message should be sent, and 21 percent said they weren't sure. [7 Things Most Often Mistaken for UFOs]
Searching for E.T.
Humanity has long wondered whether it is alone in the universe, and the search is on to find the answer. The SETI Institute in California, for example, uses radio telescopes to hunt for signals from alien civilizations.
In July, physicist Stephen Hawking backed two new projects for the search. The Breakthrough Listen project aims to use the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the Parkes Observatory in Australia to listen for alien radio signals. The Lick Telescope in California will be on the lookout for light signals from lasers as part of that project. (Lasers are directed light beams that can travel relatively far, so there's a chance aliens might use them to get in touch.)
The second project is called Breakthrough Message and is an international competition to draft a digital message to send to the stars. (The message won't necessarily be sent, but researchers say they hope the entries will spur thought and debate about how to communicate with aliens.)
Between those who say they believe in alien intelligence and those who say they aren't sure whether it exists, the alien nonbelievers are in the minority, according to the new YouGov survey. Only 12 percent of Germans, 22 percent of Americans and 20 percent of people from the United Kingdom said they do not believe intelligent aliens exist.
The survey also asked E.T. believers why they thought aliens had not yet made contact. More than half (58 percent) said intelligent aliens are too far away to contact Earth. Fifty-seven percent agreed with the notion that human technology isn't advanced enough for people to reach out to E.T.
Of the E.T. believers, 24 percent said that extraterrestrial life knows about Earthlings but chooses not to reach out. Seventeen percent said alien intelligence has already reached out, but governments have covered it up.
Men are more likely to believe in intelligent aliens than are women, and also more likely to say humanity should reach out. A majority of men (54 percent) said humans should try to contact aliens, while only 40 percent of women agreed. | <urn:uuid:974bc745-0f03-4244-bca3-2cb63b95ddaf> | {
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Many people determine the quality of the water they consume by how it smells, tastes or looks. Although these are important criteria, they are primarily aesthetic properties of the water. A glass of water may not look, smell or taste good, but it could still be suitable to drink from a health standpoint. If you are concerned about your water—you really need to have it tested.
Yet, we know that you will still want to use the way water looks, smells and tastes to help determine what type of treatment is necessary to improve the quality of your water. The following guidelines will help you make some educated guesses about any problems with your water and what the most likely cause of those problems might be. You can confirm your guesses when your water is actually tested.
To perform this experiment, all you need is a clear container to take a water sample and then use your senses of sight, smell and taste.The Way Water Looks
- Water is clear when first drawn from the raw water tap then becomes yellow or reddish in appearance, but clears upon standing for 24 hours. Dissolved iron present.
- Water is yellow or reddish when first drawn from the raw water tap but clears upon standing for 24 hours. Undissolved iron present.
- Yellow or brownish cast to water even after softening and/or filtering and does not clear up after standing for 24 hours. Tannin (humic acid) in water. Comes from water passing through coal veins, peaty soils and decaying vegetation.
- Black cast to water that clears upon standing for 24 hours. Dissolved manganese present.
- Milky water. Excessive air in the water caused by the well pump sucking air (excessive drawdown) or a malfunctioning pressure tank. Also, can be caused by high amounts of bicarbonate precipitates resulting from an increase in pH.
- Blackening, tarnishing, or pitting of metal sinks, utensils, pipes, etc. High amounts of salt (chlorides and sulfates) or hydrogen sulfide gas.
- Green stains on sinks and other porcelain bathroom fixtures. Blue green cast to water. Acidic water (pH below 6.8) reacting with brass and copper pipes and fittings.
- Suspended matter in water. Caused by riled up water in a surface supply or sand pumping from a well.
- Soap curds and lime scum in wash basins and bathtubs. Whitish scale deposits in tea kettle and on the ends of plumbing fixtures (faucet, shower head, etc.). Hard Water caused by calcium and magnesium salts in the raw water supply.
- Stained aluminum cookware. High dissolved mineral content and high alkalinity in the raw water.
- Chlorine smell. Normal chlorination of public or private well sources.
- Fishy, musty or earthy smell. Generally harmless organic matter. Commonly associated with surface water supplies.
- Rotten egg odor from the raw water tap or directly from the well. Dissolved hydrogen sulfide gas in the raw water.
- Rotten egg odor only from the hot water tap. Sulfates present in the raw water reacting with the magnesium anode which causes hydrogen sulfide gas. Can be corrected by removing the anode or replacing it with an aluminum anode.
- Detergent odor and water foams when drawn. Also septic odor. Leakage from a sewer system is entering the water supply.
- Metallic taste. High concentration of manganese, or possibly other metals. | <urn:uuid:bcf97fff-93b9-4b64-89b1-7380b299109b> | {
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Census Bureau, citing a "slight" natural increase in the nation's population and "substantial" immigration, today said U.S. population on Jan. 1, 1988, was 245.11 million--up 2.3 million from the start of 1987.
The new estimate, the bureau said, was an increase of 18 million since the 1980 census.
The bureau said the new total, reflecting population growth in calendar year 1987, included "a slight increase" of 1.7 million in "natural growth"--3.8 million births minus 2.1 million deaths--and a net immigration of 600,000, including 200,000 illegal aliens.
Census Bureau population figures have included the 200,000 illegals as a standard component of its estimates since 1980.
"The absolute number of births in 1987--3.8 million--reflects a continuation of the gradual increase in births that has been occurring since the mid-1970s," the report said.
The bureau also reported that the nation's black population grew by 1.5% in 1987, compared with a growth of 0.7% for the white population--although rates of growth have declined substantially for both groups since 1960.
"Fueled by high levels of immigration, the population of other races continued to grow rapidly, increasing by 4.5% in 1987," the report said.
The proportion of immigrants from Europe has declined from 41.8% of the number of all legal alien immigrants in 1964 to 11.5% in 1986, the report said. The number of Asian legal immigrants grew from 7.5% of the total to 43% in 1986. | <urn:uuid:69191835-bc5a-46a9-b9c4-9e3dcacb1956> | {
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Facing judgment is a life skill that teachers can help their students learn, so they may deal with others' opinions—fair or not—with confidence.
Read Shannon Hayes' article with your students, then use our Note to Educators to help stimulate discussion and reflection.
On Facing Judgement
By Shannon Hayes
I thought I was emotionally prepared to publish Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture this spring. For three years, I endured more insomnia than somnolence as I fretted over my choice of language and confronted myth after myth that bound Americans tightly to an unsustainable way of life. My husband Bob would duck into my office with a cup of coffee in the morning, and I’d stare at him wide-eyed, frightened by some of the ideas that were flowing through my fingertips and onto the computer screen. It was OK to try to live by them. It was another matter altogether to collect them on paper, put them out for the world to read, and accept that perfect strangers would be able to peer in on our own home life, free to judge our choices.
By the time the book came out, I felt ready to stand behind the concepts it promoted, no matter how outlandish they seemed to the broad American public. After researching so many households, I was ready to talk about the ideas.
It turns out I was not ready for the Internet.
The vast majority of my life is lived off-line; thus, I didn’t fully understand that the Internet had become a 21st century high-speed public pillory. I have been e-decried for being naive, dangerous, anti-God, anti-public education, anti-feminist; for my reproductive choices, my food choices, my health care choices, my housing choices, furniture choices, livelihood choices. I thought the electronic world would be about debate and discussion. It is often more about judgment.
Admittedly, I’m sensitive to judgment. Like many writers, I have an ego that bruises more easily than an overripe banana. I have, however, discovered the true beauty of an electronic pillory: I can just turn it off when I’ve had enough.
Of course, then I have to face my own self-judgments. The garden has too many weeds, the blueberries seem sepulchral, my house is a mess, I’m behind on the new book, I haven’t inventoried my canning needs for the year, my fridge needs cleaning, I need more exercise, my bangs are too long, I’m not reading enough, I haven’t gone to visit my grandfather lately, I didn’t make jelly yet, I’m so disorganized I can’t find a clean pair of socks. Radical Homemaker? Ha. Try radical slob . Or radical procrastinator.
These past two weeks, I have an excuse. My daughters Saoirse and Ula are taking their annual swimming lessons at the town pool. Bob offers to take them, but each morning, I insist on doing it myself. In part, I am keeping away from the computer, offering myself a reprieve from cyber-judgment. The other reason is because I learn so much watching the girls in the pool.
This is the fourth year that Saoirse has taken these classes. In that time, we’ve graduated through only one swimming level. Swimming may not be her best subject, but she wants to learn. And that’s why I love to watch her. I don’t know if it is because she is not familiar with the protocols of formal schooling (she is homeschooled), or if it is just in her personality, but Saoirse seems completely oblivious to the idea of “keeping up with the class.”
Watching her, I can see she has a list of skills in her head that she wants to master. She stretches on her back and floats on the water until her face is completely immersed and she sinks to the bottom. Then she goes into a bob, and practices blowing bubbles from the floor of the pool. She comes up for air and talks to herself about what she needs to do differently, oblivious to the opinions of those around her, then tries again. She has not developed enough skills to go up another level. But she doesn’t care. She simply relishes the accomplishments that she is having on her own. She has mastered more swimming techniques this year than ever before, and she is truly (and justifiably) proud of herself.
I’m proud of her, too. I find myself inspired by her ability to tune out any judgment that may be swirling around her (She’s the tallest kid in the class! She’s talking to herself! Why doesn’t she stand still in line and wait like the other kids? How many more times is she going to repeat this class?). Instead, she tunes in to what her heart tells her she needs to do.
I think about all the judgment I hear in my own head about my daily failings, or the judgments that I read online about my personal life and work. I resolve to release it all from my mind, to go forward with a free heart, work toward what I feel is important, and disregard the rest.
Saoirse’s assiduousness and dedication pay off. Two days ago, her teacher noticed her off in her little world, blowing bubbles from the bottom of the pool. It was one of the skills the other kids needed to learn, so she called Saoirse in to the center of the group to demonstrate. I flushed with pride. However humble it may seem, it was still a moment of glory. I watched her smile privately when the teacher chose her, but she maintained her equanimity and concentration as she inhaled a giant gulp of air, stood up on her toes, then (without even holding her nose!), curled her long legs up under her and dropped to the floor of the pool as she blew a glorious stream of air to the surface for her classmates. Above the water, her teacher pointed to the bubbles haloing my daughter’s head and said, “See? That’s how it’s done.”
When she was out of air, Saoirse unwrapped her gloriously long legs and used them to propel herself in a single magnificent shot straight out of the water…
…And straight into the wall of the pool, which she hit with her mouth, slamming her brand new two front teeth (not all the way descended) right into her upper lip. My, how she did howl.
I can be such a clueless parent at moments like this. (Oops. There I go, judging myself again.) I gave her a wave to come join me outside the water, and assessed her lip. It wasn’t too bad. The brand new teeth held up to the accident, and there was only a small amount of blood. I tried to decide what to do. Do I tell her to be strong, toughen up, and re-join the class? Do I coddle her and let her quit for the day? She sniffled and tried to regain her composure, and I encouraged her to put some ice on it, then stay by the water and re-join her class when she was ready. I backed away from her, worried about being seen as an over-bearing parent. Her shoulders shrunk together as I moved back. Her spine seemed to wither within her. I watched her for a few moments, then brought her a towel, wrapped her up, and led her to the shade of a nearby tree farther from the pool, where we could sit and watch together. Her little sobs continued, interrupted only by the occasional blurting of “Mommy! It HURTS!” I tried to explain that the wound wasn’t really bad, that it would feel better by the next day. I encouraged her to pay attention to the class so that she wouldn’t miss anything. Saoirse tried to calm herself again and focus, but the sobs sporadically flowed forth, regardless. “It HUURRRTTTSSS!” she wailed again.
To hell with swimming lessons. There was nothing more to be gained from this. I wrapped my arms around my little girl and ushered her off to the empty changing room to get her warm and dry. Sniffling, she pulled off her bathing suit and handed it to me, her skinny bare chest sunken in sadness. I toweled her off again, then folded my arms around her. “Can I ask you something?”
“Are you worried what the other kids think?”
“Oh Mommy!” She crumbled into my arms and began to bawl. “Yes!”
I enveloped around her, making myself as large as I possibly could, in an effort to shield my little girl from any and all judgment that could possibly plague her in her life. We just remained there, dripping water that pooled up around my pants, soaking me through until it looked as though I’d had an accident. I didn’t care. I waited until her breathing slowed before I spoke.
“Can I tell you something?”
“I’m always worried what people think. And they don’t always think very nice things.”
“Sure. And you know what else? They get to write whatever they want. Up on the computer. Where anyone else can read it. It’s kind of like shouting it out in public.”
“Oh Mommy! That’s HORRIBLE!” And she threw her arms around my neck and resumed her crying, now, in part, for my benefit. Then she quieted a little and pulled away. “What do you do?”
“I do just like you. I get upset. Then I tell Daddy, or Grammie, or Pop Pop. They usually help me feel better. Or I cuddle with you and Ula.”
Slowly Saoirse released herself from my arms and began to pull on her clothes.
“So it hurts you, too?”
“Yup. Not for very long, though. Then I usually learn something from it, or I make a joke about it. Or tell a story about it. You will, too, about today.”
Dressed, she curled up in my arms once more, this time smiling just a little. I kissed the top of her head. “You know, I was really proud watching you today in the water.”
“Yeah, but then I felt really, really stupid.” She said the word with such emphasis, it practically took three-dimensional form as it pushed out of her bruised lips.
“It’ll pass,” I assured her, and we hugged some more.
Even my little girl, who seemed so liberated from judgment, was inflicting it on her own self. I thought about all those spiritual teachings I’ve read about, ways to release oneself from judgment. That’s a good idea, but hard as hell to do. I can certainly try. So can Saoirse. But it’ll probably happen again and again. And for that, I am thankful that we have each other, and Daddy, Ula, Grammie, and Pop Pop, and our friends. One of us is bound to hold the key that will unlock the other from the chains. Whatever bonds judgment can put on our souls, thankfully, unconditional love can usually break them.
Multiple-Choice Discussion Activity
There are many ways to look at how one faces judgment. Ask your students to choose which answer best reflects how they face judgment, and explain why they selected this option. You may do this electronically; have students sit in groups A through E, depending on their answer; or however you like to discuss.
When I face judgment, I:
A. Let it roll off my back
B. Seek the comfort and support of family or friends
C. Don’t put myself in situations where I can be criticized
D. Glean what's useful and turn it into something positive
E. Stand up to the critic and defend myself
To take the conversation to an even deeper level, let’s look at context. What are situations that might change how your students face judgment? Ask them how their response might change for each particular scenario:
A. Your dad tells you that you’re lazy and not trying hard enough in school.
B. Someone posts in your Facebook Honesty Box that you seem fake.
C. Your coach tells you that your jump shot (or other sports skill) needs more work.
Make the discussion active and have students “vote with your feet.” As you read each context or scenario, students move to the letter group (i.e. A is “let it roll off my back”) that reflects their preference. They should begin in their original groups (“When I face judgement, I ….). See how the five groups change with each scenario. | <urn:uuid:79f057f4-34ed-4cc6-aeae-f2eea4f7611e> | {
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As the professor, I am most effective with active engagement from the classroom community that builds knowledge through the exchange, synthesis, and articulation of ideas. While informative, lecturing about writing has limitations because the writing process of individual writers varies; therefore, a guiding principle is that writing courses are a place of practice. Whether practice means individual and group analysis of heuristic texts, small group and large group discussions, or student-led activities. Ideally, I believe and emphasize the centrality of the members of the class as knowledge-creators and inventive mediators of multiple modes for the appropriate rhetorical decision-making in the communication of critical thought and complex ideas.
(Created using Easel.ly)
Writing in the new media age means a degree of reliance upon the logic of the screen (a la Gunther Kress), and composing involves critical thinking about not only concepts and ideas, but also the appropriate selection of mediation for the given message (McLuhan). For me, critical thinking means rhetorically analyzing texts to find the purpose, audience and expectations of genre in real life and digital writing environments. Effective writing comes from invention and the composing process includes taking a part and re-assemblage of texts to reveal how power moves through the symbolic action of discourse—all of which is context and audience-dependent.
At Bread Loaf 2016, I put this infographic together as an example: | <urn:uuid:e6cd1bb2-344a-47f0-ba80-3801973ce346> | {
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I’ve mentioned the work of Kim Farris-Berg and teacher cooperatives here a few times (and she’s also appeared in fish porn). Today, Kim has a guest post with some of the ideas from her new book, Trusting Teachers with School Success: What Happens When Teachers Call the Shots:
Sometimes we become so accustomed to the way things are that we cannot imagine a different way of doing things. In 1927, for example, one of the Warner brothers made a famously wrong prediction: “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” When it comes to systems vital for our future, like K-12 public schools, this myopia can be disastrous.
Yet many of today’s education policy makers could end up as famously wrong as Warner. Their actions communicate, “Who the hell wants to let teachers teach?” These policy makers want “innovation,” but their approach to education policy doesn’t encourage it – at least not from teachers. It doesn’t occur to most that trusting teachers, not controlling them, could be the key to school success. Instead we are stuck on the idea that the best and only means to K-12 improvement is to get better at holding teachers accountable for the results of a prescriptive, one-size-fits-all formula for K-12 teaching.
Let’s look at my home state of California as an example. The California Department of Education gives school districts a very clear directive to make sure teachers keep a common pace with all other teachers in their subject areas and grade levels. As a result, districts have created pacing guides governing teachers’ daily activities by subject. Some guides tell teachers what pages in the textbook to cover and how many minutes to spend on which specific dates. What’s more, the textbooks come with a script that tells teachers exactly what to say when they teach each specific page.
This approach leaves little discretion to our teachers – the professionals who are closest to the students. Pacing guides are meant to ensure consistency and fairness, the Department of Education maintains on its website. All students will get the same content, regardless of which school they attend. Stay on pace, and all students should graduate on time. In other words, schools are best organized as assembly lines.
The trouble is our students aren’t widgets. They’re humans who vary in their readiness, aptitudes, interests, and rates of learning.
Advanced students can’t progress to their own next level of achievement under these “pacing” conditions. We hold these students back, even though our world faces serious problems that we will need them to solve. And while leaders loudly decry the public impact of school dropout rates, students who need more time for learning struggle with the growing gap between what they know and what the pacing guides expect them to know. At a certain point graduation appears impossible, and many students stop trying.
Designing effective strategies for K-12 improvement will first require recognizing that each student is different. Then, as a matter of policy and practice, we’ll need to create conditions that encourage the development of innovative approaches to school and schooling – approaches that can continuously adapt to students’ varying needs.
Some policy and education leaders already recognize this, and a good number are seeking innovation by tapping the collective wisdom of teachers. Alongside conventional improvement strategies, they’ve granted teachers in more than 50 district and chartered schools the authority to collectively make decisions influencing whole school success. These teacher groups are increasingly called teacher partnerships.
Early evidence shows “trusting teachers” can be a promising path forward. Teacher partnerships create management cultures that emulate those of high-performing organizations. They also profess their willingness to accept accountability for outcomes, because they are making the decisions.
With authority and accountability, teacher partnerships design stunningly different approaches to teaching and learning. Many forego grade levels, opting instead to place students in multi-aged groups based on skill level. Teachers move through curriculum at the pace appropriate for each group. Other teacher partnerships, recognizing the difficulties of individual progress in group settings, empower students to self-direct their learning using a mix of projects and seminars. To these teachers, equity isn’t about “sameness.” It’s about doing whatever it takes to help every student move to his or her personal next level of achievement.
Teachers could be the social entrepreneurs we need for K-12. So why not open the opportunity for interested teachers to show us how they would run schools? It is worth trying more than one strategy for innovation and improvement. Better that than sticking exclusively to a top-down management system and finding we were famously wrong.
Kim Farris-Berg is a Senior Associate with Education Evolving, a policy design shop based in St. Paul, Minnesota and an independent education policy strategist. She is lead author of Trusting Teachers with School Success: What Happens When Teachers Call the Shots (R&L Education 2012). www.trustingteachers.org. Her Twitter handle is @farrisberg. | <urn:uuid:7bbe0e19-93f5-491d-9967-ccc8d50ef687> | {
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WordNet 3.0 Copyright © 2006 by Princeton University.
- 1. recorder, recording equipment, recording machine, equipment
- usage: equipment for making records
- 2. registrar, record-keeper, recorder, official, functionary
- usage: someone responsible for keeping records
- 3. recorder, judge, justice, jurist
- usage: a barrister or solicitor who serves as part-time judge in towns or boroughs
- 4. fipple flute, fipple pipe, recorder, vertical flute, pipe
- usage: a tubular wind instrument with 8 finger holes and a fipple mouthpiece
All rights reserved.
See also: recorder (Dictionary) | <urn:uuid:928e38de-fc75-43a0-a791-ecd89b37ec84> | {
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"We begin with the sentence, because the sentence is the unit of discourse, because words can be classified only from their function in the sentence, and because the pupil should, from the outset, see that what determines the words in the sentence and the sentence itself is the thought."
Dublin Core Made Simple
Dublin Core as a Language. Dublin Core is often presented as a modern form of catalog card -- a set of elements (and now qualifiers) that describe resources in a complete package. Sometimes it is proposed as an exchange format for sharing records among multiple collections. The founding principle that "every element is optional and repeatable" reinforces the notion that a Dublin Core description is to be taken as a whole. This paper, in contrast, is based on a much different premise: Dublin Core is a language. More precisely, it is a small language for making a particular class of statements about resources. Like natural languages, it has a vocabulary of word-like terms, the two classes of which -- elements and qualifiers -- function within statements like nouns and adjectives ; and it has a syntax for arranging elements and qualifiers into statements according to a simple pattern .
A Pidgin for Digital Tourists. Whenever tourists order a meal or ask directions in an unfamiliar language, considerate native speakers will spontaneously limit themselves to basic words and simple sentence patterns along the lines of "I am so-and-so" or "This is such-and-such". Linguists call this pidginization. In such situations, a small phrase book or translated menu can be most helpful. By analogy, today's Web has been called an Internet Commons where users and information providers from a wide range of scientific, commercial, and social domains present their information in a variety of incompatible data models and description languages. In this context, Dublin Core presents itself as a metadata pidgin for digital tourists who must find their way in this linguistically diverse landscape. Its vocabulary is small enough to learn quickly, and its basic pattern is easily grasped. It is well-suited to serve as an auxiliary language for digital libraries.
This Grammar. This grammar starts by defining terms. It then follows a 200-year-old tradition of English grammar teaching by focusing on the structure of single statements (see the Reed and Kellogg quote above). It concludes by looking at the growing dictionary of Dublin Core vocabulary terms -- its registry, and at how statements can be used to build the metadata equivalent of paragraphs and compositions -- the application profile.
Elements and Qualifiers
Vocabulary terms in general. Strictly speaking, a Dublin Core element or qualifier is a unique identifier formed by a name (e.g., title) prefixed by the URI of the namespace in which it is defined, as in http://dublincore.org/2000/03/13-dces#title. In this context, a namespace is a vocabulary that has been formally published, usually on the Web; it describes elements and qualifiers with natural-language labels, definitions, and other relevant documentation. Currently there are two namespaces for Dublin Core: the Dublin Core element set and the Dublin Core Qualifiers, denoted here by the conventional abbreviations dc: and dcq: [DCMI 1999, DCMI 2000]. In this paper, as in many application environments, the elements and qualifiers are referred to in a machine-readable short form, such as dc:title.
Elements. The fifteen elements of the Dublin Core element set are the defining feature of Dublin Core as a language. In their short form, the elements are dc:title, dc:creator, dc:subject, dc:description, dc:publisher, dc:contributor, dc:date, dc:type, dc:format, dc:identifier, dc:source, dc:language, dc:relation, dc:coverage, and dc:rights. These correspond to fifteen broadly defined properties of resources that are generally useful for searching across repositories in multiple domains.
Qualifiers. Qualifiers modify the properties of Dublin Core statements by specifying, in the manner of natural-language adjectives, "what kind" of subject, date, or relation. Qualifiers currently fall into two classes. Encoding schemes are pointers to contextual information or parsing rules that aid in the interpretation of an element value. For example, dcq:lcsh qualifies dc:subject to specify that the keywords are a Library of Congress Subject Heading, and dcq:iso8601 qualifies dc:date to specify that the string "2000-06-13" is formatted according to an international standard. Element refinements make a property more specific without extending its meaning, such as dcq:revised as a modifier of dc:date (yielding "date revised"). In July 2000, a DCMI Usage Committee recommended a batch of fifty-two qualifiers to exemplify these principles of qualification, but the qualifiers for Dublin Core statements may also come from other namespaces, as in the example yans:author below (where yans: is a hypothetical YetAnotherNameSpace).
Elements and qualifiers defined in languages other than English. Strictly speaking, elements and qualifiers are represented by machine-readable tokens that stand for general concepts such as "title," "subject," and "date." The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative discusses and approves their definitions in English. In principle, however, they can be labelled and defined equally well in any other language, such as Dutch or Arabic or Thai. For example, dc:creator may be labeled "Creatore" in Italian, "Pencipta" in Bahasa Indonesian, or "Verfasser" in German [Baker 1998]. To date, the element set has been translated into twenty-six languages. Bear in mind as you read that although this grammar is written in English, a Japanese version could translate every English word here into Japanese -- all grammar terms and example sentences included -- except for the English-like names of the tokens themselves.
Dublin Core Statements
Diagramming statements. Since the 1870s, the grammar of sentences has been taught in (American) high schools using sentence diagrams [Reed and Kellogg 1886, House and Harman 1950, Warriner et al. 1973]. This style has a binary flavor -- the sentence baseline is intersected to divide the subject, "that of which something is said," from the predicate, that which is said of the subject. Within the predicate, a smaller line separates the object (in Dublin Core terms, the property) from the objective complement (in Dublin Core, the property value). This style is nicely expressive of Dublin Core because the qualifiers, hanging below the baseline on slanted lines, are visibly subordinate to the properties they modify (see Figures 1 and 2).
Parts of a Statement. Dublin Core is in effect a class of statements of the pattern "Resource has property X," where "resource" is the implied subject; followed by an implied verb ("has"); followed by one of fifteen properties from the Dublin Core element set; followed by a property value -- an appropriate literal such as a person's name, a date, some words, or a URL. For example: "Resource has dc:creator 'Tom Baker'," and "Resource has dc:date '2000-06-13'." Optional qualifiers may make the meaning of a property more definite, as in "Resource has dc:date dcq:revised '2000-06-13'."
Principles of Qualification. The qualification of Dublin Core properties is guided by a rule known colloquially as the Dumb-Down Principle. According to this rule, "a client should be able to ignore any qualifier and use the description as if it were unqualified. While this may result in some loss of specificity, the remaining element value (minus the qualifier) must continue to be generally correct and useful for discovery" [DCMI 2000]. Qualification is therefore supposed only to refine, not extend the semantic scope of a property. In borderline cases, qualification should not result in a literal that could be misleading.
Appropriate Literals. Whether a property value is "useful for discovery" is at the heart of the notion of appropriateness. A property value should be a string of an expected type -- usually, for example, some sort of name for dc:creator, dc:contributor, dc:publisher, or dc:title; a URL for dc:relation, dc:identifier, or dc:source; full-text sentences for dc:description; short text strings or keywords for dc:subject, dc:type, dc:format, and dc:language; and a recognizable combination of years, months, and days for dc:date. Both in theory and in practice, the range of expected data types varies from property to property; which types are appropriate for a given property is open to interpretation and debate (see below).
Evaluating Statements. To test whether a Dublin Core statement is conceptually solid, cover the qualifiers with your hand ("dumbing down"), read the statement above the line, and ask:
Does it make sense? Yes. Is it correct? Yes. Is the literal "appropriate"? Yes, a sequence of words is normal and expected for the property dc:title.Resource has dcq:iso8601 dcq:revised dc:date '2000-06-13.'
This means that a resource was revised on 6 June 2000. The statement dumbs down to "Resource has dc:date '2000-06-13'," which means that the date 6 June 2000 has something to do with the life-cycle of the resource. This is less specific than the qualified statement, but still correct.Resource has dcq:lcsh dc:subject 'Languages -- Grammar.'
This says that the resource is about the subject "grammar of languages," and that these words are a controlled term from the Library of Congress Subject Headings. The statement dumbs down to "Resource has dc:subject 'Languages -- Grammar'," which makes sense even if we do not know that the term comes from the Library of Congress.Resource has yans:cerif dc:subject 'H352 Grammar, semantics, semiotics, syntax.'
This literal includes a language-independent abbreviation, "H352," which will be useful for applications that understand yans:cerif. The string "H352" may confuse some users, but otherwise does no harm.Resource has yans:author dc:creator 'Tom Baker.'
Users of the yans: namespace will recognize that yans:author is being used here as an adjective modifying dc:creator (just as talk is an adjective modifying show in the phrase talk show). It is an awkward but correct way to say that Tom Baker is "the author sort of creator" -- i.e., the author -- of the resource. This statement dumbs down to "Resource has dc:creator 'Tom Baker'," -- less specific but still correct.Resource has dc:relation 'http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december98/12baker.html.'
The statement asserts that the resource is somehow related to an article in D-Lib Magazine (a URL is appropriate as a literal for dc:relation).
Some not-so-good examplesResource has dc:creator 'name.given:Thomas; name.family:Baker; employer:GMD; contact:Schloss Birlinghoven, D-53754 Sankt Augustin.'
A reader can see what this compound or structured value is saying. But a search engine would need to know how to parse out the components and suppress the tags in order to index this cleanly, lest a search for creators named "Augustin" should yield false hits. Generally speaking, things like affiliations and addresses -- properties of the creator of a resource -- do not belong in Dublin Core statements about the resource itself. Metadata providers that used such compound values within specific usage communities could "speak Dublin Core" to the rest of the world by exporting just the name ("Resource has dc:creator 'Thomas Baker'").Resource has yans:creator 'Tom Baker.'
This statement is useful for applications that recognize the yans: namespace, but it is not a "Dublin Core" statement per se. If the yans: and dc: definitions of Creator were compatible, either the metadata provider or an indexing application could use a crosswalk to translate this into the Dublin Core statement "Resource has dc:creator 'Tom Baker'."
Fifteen fuzzy buckets. The properties of Dublin Core are like fifteen big buckets, and the rules about which types of literals may be placed in those buckets are somewhat fuzzy. This fuzziness is intentional -- the Internet is a diverse and chaotic place where a more disciplined, top-down approach to standardization is unrealistic, especially for use across multiple domains and languages. If the rules of Dublin Core were more precise, people would inevitably bend them. In the jargon of computer science, then, Dublin Core is "weakly typed" as a language. A search engine may find a variety of information types in any given bucket -- from URLs to non-textual, alphanumeric strings to full text in any language.
The "appropriateness" of literals. Requirements for the appropriateness of a literal are in practice somewhat contradictory. Ideally, a literal should be useful for discovery, which means it should make sense "as is" to the average user. Yet it should also be processable in an expected way by search engines. Programmers need to be know, for example, when to index on strings separated by white space, minus punctuation and stop words, when to expect a URL, and when to expect an alphanumeric date string. Some elements are particularly ambiguous in this regard. Dc:rights, for example, can be free text or a URL. Dc:coverage can be a place name, the name of a time period, a numeric identifier for a place or time, or even a compound value -- in effect, a miniature schema with multiple sub-components separated by semicolons or XML tags. Where such a range of data types is permissible, should it be acceptable to relax the Dumb-Down Principle? Should qualifiers in effect modify the expected data type of the literal? Or should the presence of, say, XML angle brackets be expected to trigger, automatically, a change in parsing algorithms? Would such a complexification of a property compensate for the corresponding loss of Dublin Core's overall simplicity? Or can the need for complex description be resolved in a broader framework, outside Dublin Core per se?
Application profiles. One broader framework for such a resolution is the application profile. As currently defined, application profiles are the metadata equivalent of regional idioms or creoles (complexified pidgins). Implementors who need an application language more expressive than a pidgin may combine elements and qualifiers from Dublin Core with elements from other namespaces into a richer vocabulary or embed them into a syntactically more sophisticated data model. Such linguistic innovation is considered by many people to be reasonable as long as implementors respect a distinction between namespaces, where elements and qualifiers are given standard definitions, and profiles, where elements from multiple namespaces are (only) reused, combined, adapted, and constrained [Heery 2000]. The profile, then, is the natural locus for full descriptions -- the catalog card or metadata package taken as a whole.
For example, the Collection Description Schema of the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) in the UK uses dc:title -- officially defined as a "name given to the resource" -- but defines it more narrowly as a "name given to the collection." Alongside such Dublin Core elements, it uses elements from other namespaces, such as cld:accessConditions (for the hours of access and classes of permitted users) from a local "Collection Level Description" namespace. These elements are framed in a data model that specifies typical relationships between a collection, its individual items, a collector, an owner, a location, and the constituent parts of a collection -- each of which may be described with multiple attributes [RSLP]. An RSLP description does not talk just about information resources per se, but also about the people, organizations, and access frameworks related to those resources.
Developing profiles and coining new elements. Some working groups of DCMI are developing domain-specific profiles of Dublin Core, surveying the descriptive needs of domains such as education and government to determine an appropriate mix of Dublin Core elements and elements from other namespaces and perhaps to coin additional elements for concepts not covered in existing standards. These working groups need to consider that literals appropriate to domain specialists may not make much sense to general users, especially in statements that have been "dumbed down." As the example above makes clear, moreover, core elements are needed for classes of resources other than document-like objects, such as people and organizations (generically, agents) and spatially and temporally grounded events. Urgently required are data-model conventions for combining multiple entities within an application profile -- for example, to include an author's affiliation and address in the description for a resource -- and stable formats for the encoding of profiles as XML or RDF schemas.
Building a dictionary (registry) for Dublin Core. Historically, the standardization of national languages such as English has been helped by the compilation of dictionaries. Good dictionaries often strike a balance between prescribing guidelines for good style and describing a living language with examples of actual usage. Metadata languages like Dublin Core have hitherto been developed prescriptively, in standards committees, as there have been no convenient ways to track local innovations in usage and feed them back into the standardization process. However, several related developments are now enabling the collective construction of metadata dictionaries, or registries. The new Resource Description Framework (RDF) Schemas standard of the World Wide Web Consortium provides a format for publishing schemas that can be harvested by metadata search engines [W3C 2000]. Eric Miller has developed an open-source software toolkit for indexing a distributed corpus of RDF schemas as one huge database, with an interface for following hyperlinked cross-references between related terms in namespaces and profiles -- in effect, a metadata schema browser [EOR]. The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is using this toolkit to manage its namespace [Open Metadata Registry], and a working group is formulating technical and policy guidelines for its ongoing management [DC-Registry]. A European project, SCHEMAS, is promoting the use of RDF schemas to help harmonize metadata practice among EU-funded projects and is using RDF to build a layer of annotated pointers to namespaces, profiles, and metadata activities generally [SCHEMAS].
Does your application speak Dublin Core? Pidgins are inherently limited in what they can express, but they are easy to learn and enormously useful. In real life, we talk one way to our professional colleagues and another way to visitors from other cultures. Our digital library applications need to do this as well. Simplicity and complexity are both appropriate, depending on context. If Dublin Core is too simple or generic to use as the native idiom of a particular application, pidgin statements may be extracted or translated from richer idioms that exist for specialized domains. This output should also be filtered to keep the fifteen buckets clear of encoding debris and semantic silt. One should treat digital tourists with courtesy and hide from them the complexities of a local application vocabulary or grammar. However sophisticated its local idiom may be, an application might also speak a pidgin that general users and generic search engines will understand. Simple, semantically clean, computationally obvious values will help us negotiate our way through a splendidly diverse and heterogeneous Internet.
Appendix: Dublin Core and RDF grammar compared
Directed Labelled Graphs. The Resource Description Framework (RDF), a relatively new standard of the World Wide Web Consortium, is emerging as an information model and encoding format of choice for metadata and application profiles that use Dublin Core [W3C 1999, W3C 2000]. RDF is a grammar for expressing relationships among resources located or represented somewhere on the Internet. These relationships are depicted graphically with Directed Labelled Graphs (DLGs), which use arcs (predicates expressing properties) to establish a relationship between multiple nodes (resources). Nodes are seen as subjects or objects depending on the direction of the arrow.
RDF triples. In contrast to the binary flavor of the pedagogical English grammars cited above, the model of RDF statements is a tripartite one of subject, predicate, and object (see Figure 3). RDF statements, accordingly, are called "triples":
A property is a specific aspect, characteristic, attribute, or relation used to describe a resource. ... A specific resource together with the named property plus the value of that property for that resource is an RDF statement. These three individual parts of a statement are called, respectively, the subject, the predicate, and the object. The object of a statement (i.e., the property value) can be another resource or it can be a literal; i.e., a resource (specified by a URI) or a simple string or other primitive datatype defined by XML. In RDF terms, a literal may have content that is XML markup but is not further evaluated by the RDF processor [W3C 1999].
Figure 4 shows an RDF triple consisting of the subject "http://www.w3.org/Home/Lassila," predicate "has creator," and object "Ora Lassila."
Figure 4: Directed Labelled Graph of a triple
Subject of an RDF statement. The subject of an RDF statement is anything that can be named by a Universal Resource Identifier (URI). In principle, this is anything from a Web page or museum artifact to an abstract concept or event. The subject of a Dublin Core statement, in contrast, is an anonymous "information resource," perhaps a "document-like object" . In Dublin Core, the subject ("resource") is always implied, never named as in RDF. The RDF statement in Figure 4, then, would be expressed in Dublin Core as two statements: "Resource has dc:identifier 'http://www.w3.org/Home/Lassila'," and "Resource has dc:creator 'Ora Lassila'." As long as it is clear from the context that the two statements refer to the same resource -- for instance, they are both in the same record -- one can infer that Ora Lassila has created the Web page .
Figure 5: Grammar Terms Compared
Predicate of an RDF statement. The predicate of an RDF statement is an implied verb plus a property. This is more restricted than the standard definition of a predicate in high-school English grammar, which includes (in effect) "everything to the right of the vertical intersector in a sentence diagram" -- that is, everything within a clause that is said about a subject. However, since most people have only the vaguest recollection of predicates from high school, this grammar avoids using the term at all.
Property value of RDF statements. In RDF, these are called objects. But again, there is risk of confusion with English grammar. In the sentence "This paper has the title 'A Grammar of Dublin Core'," some high-school English grammars see 'A Grammar of Dublin Core' as an objective complement with respect to the object of the sentence, "title" (see Figure 5). Compounding the confusion, computer scientists are oriented to objects of a much different sort, and the "resource" of a Dublin Core statement might even be a physical object. This grammar avoids the term object altogether.
The lack of qualifiers in RDF. In Dublin Core, qualifiers depend on and modify one of Dublin Core's fifteen elements (properties). The basic RDF model does not express this type of dependency. Properties may relate to another as narrower to broader terms (using the relation "SubPropertyOf"), as "Author" relates to "Creator." In native RDF, however, both "Author" and "Creator" are full properties in their own right.
The compatibility of Dublin Core and RDF. The differences between Dublin Core and RDF outlined above are largely terminological; at issue is what the parts of a statement such as 'Resource has Property X' should be called. The difficulty of choosing the right words for this grammar should not obscure the basic compatibility and complementarity of Dublin Core and RDF. RDF offers a general model for statements, while Dublin Core offers a particular type of pidgin-like statement about information resources and privileges a small set of special words. RDF offers a specific encoding in XML for expressing its conceptual model, while Dublin Core is by design independent of any particular encoding format. RDF, then, is just one of the possible information models that can use tokens from Dublin Core, while Dublin Core is just one of the languages expressible in RDF.
It would be desirable to have a word for Dublin Core vocabulary terms in general -- elements and qualifiers as a whole -- just as natural-language nouns, verbs, adjectives, and conjunctions are all called words. Unfortunately, entities, concepts, and symbols are all too abstract and vague; words are associated too closely with natural language; and lexemes are too obscure. The first draft of this paper spoke generically of elements and distinguished between core elements and qualifiers, but veterans of Dublin Core found this confusing. The next draft introduced tokens, which conveys the notion that Dublin Core vocabulary terms stand for general concepts that are defined and labeled in many natural languages, but people also found this confusing. Vocabulary terms seems a bit cumbersome, so I avoid the term whenever possible and speak simply of elements and qualifiers.
Early in the workshop series, before it was formally called a Metadata Initiative, the Dublin Core effort was declared to be primarily about semantics in contrast to syntax, and the latter was declared to be out of scope. In that context, however, syntax referred to the encoding of metadata in HTML, database, and (later) XML or RDF formats; it involved questions such as which tags to place where, within what angle brackets or punctuation, and how to group or nest related elements. This grammar, in contrast, presents the syntax of Dublin Core statements in a linguistic sense, as the rules governing how the words of a sentence are related to each other -- which words modify other words, and which words are of central importance in the statement.
In practice, the reasoning behind this is circular: Dublin Core properties are appropriate for any entity that has such properties. This circularity has spared us a perhaps futile attempt to seek philosophical consensus on a universal ontology of entity classes and allowed us to get on with the task of describing whatever it is we are describing.
Dan Brickley points out that software tools could exploit additional information about entities and vocabularies to translate sequences of RDF-encoded Dublin Core statements into a natural-language style that flows more elegantly and reads less like a pidgin.
I have discussed this paper with many colleagues from both DCMI and other communities. Special thanks to Bill Arms, Jose Borbinha, Dan Brickley, David Bearman, Rachel Heery, Linda Hill, Diane Hillmann, Erik Jul, Carl Lagoze, Sigfrid Lundberg, Eric Miller, Paul Miller, Andy Powell, Shigeo Sugimoto, and Stuart Weibel for valuable comments on the drafts. Many thanks to Michael Kasper for advice regarding the literature on English grammar.
[DCMI 1999] Dublin Core Metadata Initiative,
"Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1,"
[House and Harman 1950] Homer C. House and Susan Emolyn Harman, Descriptive English Grammar, Second Edition, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
[Reed and Kellogg 1886] Alonso Reed and Brainerd Kellogg, Higher lessons in English, New York: Clark and Maynard, 1886 ; Delmar (New York): Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1987.
[Warriner et al. 1973] John E. Warriner et al., English Grammar and Composition, Third course, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
The following four changes and corrections were made at the request of the author, Thomas Baker, on 10/17/00): 1.) In the paragraph "Does your application speak Dublin Core?" one phrase was changed from: "its elements can be embedded in a richer local vocabulary from which pidgin statements can be generated or extracted as needed." to read "pidgin statements may be extracted or translated from richer idioms that exist for specialized domains." 2.) The name Linda Hill was added to the "Acknowledgements" section. 3.) In the paragraph "Vocabulary terms in general", "(e.g., Title)" was changed to "(e.g., title)." 4.) In the commentary of the first of the "Not-so-good examples," the sentence "Resource has dc:creator 'Tom Baker'" was changed to: "Resource has dc:creator 'Thomas Baker'".
Copyright© 2000 Thomas Baker | <urn:uuid:4797910b-6ff7-491d-8efe-7c49015235fb> | {
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Sometimes location data isn't neatly packaged in a SHP file, and it requires some massaging before it can be used in spatial queries. In this post I'll take a look at importing latitude and longitude data from a CSV file into our PostGIS database and transforming those coordinates into geometry data that can be spatially queried against.
Step 0 - Initial Starting Point
Get a CSV dataset. For this example I'll be using the Individual Landmarks dataset exported as CSV. You can get a copy of the CSV file that I am using for the example here. We already have the latitude and longitude and the extra location field isn't something that we'll use so I removed the location column prior to exporting the dataset. You can hide the column by selecting the arrows on the column heading in the table (shown here) or via the manage screen and deselecting the location column from the list of available columns (shown here).
A PostgreSQL database with PostGIS installed.
Step 1 - Create the table in the database
Use the following SQL to create a table to hold the landmark data.
Step 2 - Copy the CSV data into the database
To run the copy command, login to the database and execute the following command :
There are a couple of things to note with the copy command:
- The first argument passed to the copy command specifies the tablename (landmarks) and the columns which the CSV files map to. Our table includes a column gid that is an auto-incremented id which is used as a primary key as well as the_geom geometry column. The CSV does not include either of these columns in the data we are copying. If we don't specify the specific columns that the fields in the CSV map to, errors will occur when attempting to copy the data.
- The DELIMITERS argument specifies your delimiter.
- The CSV argument at the end lets PostgreSQL know that the file is CSV.
- The HEADER argument lets PostgreSQL know that the file includes the headers on the first line.
Here is a look at our data after the import. Note that the_geom has no data. We'll take care of that in the next step.
Step 3 - Translate latitude and longitude into POINT geometry
Now that we have the data imported, we need to convert the latitude and longitude columns to a PostGIS POINT geometry. The following SQL will update the_geom column in the landmarks table with a POINT geometry created from the row's latitude and longitude columns. In order to create the POINT, the ST_GeomFromText method is used. This method allows us to create a POINT, which is a PostGIS geometry type, textually with the latitude and longitude values being specified in the construction of the type.
Here is a look at the data with the the_geom column populated with POINT data.
Step 4 - Run some queries
Now that all the POINT geometries have been created for our landmark rows we can write some spatial queries against our data. Here are just a few of the types of queries we can run.
Using the ward geometry we have from a previous example, we can run a query that returns all the landmarks in the 43rd Ward.
This query returns the 5 closest landmarks to a given latitude and longitude : | <urn:uuid:65654ea4-9750-4aae-8783-8ce9c04ad79e> | {
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Free Software in Europe
European perspectives and work of the FSF Europe[PDF (English, a4); 81k]
Georg C. F. Greve <[email protected]>
"Public Service Review - European Union," 5th edition
Free Software — especially the GNU/Linux operating system — and the FSF Europe have recently become more visible on the political agenda. This article will seek to explain some of the larger economic, social and political benefits that Free Software offers the European countries and Europe as a whole. It will also give an insight into the work of the FSF Europe.
As a concept and paradigm, Free Software addresses some of the most fundamental needs of any society in its development towards the post-industrial information era. The most visible organisation in this field, the Free Software Foundation (FSF), was founded in 1985, a time when people had barely begun grasping the most basic principles of information technology.
With the first formal definition of Free Software and the creation of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), the FSF not only created (and still maintains) the two most popular licenses for Free Software in use today, but also invented the notion of "Copyleft," referring to Free Software protected against being stripped of its freedom.
Free Software itself is defined by four basic freedoms. The first freedom — sometimes referred to as freedom 0 — is the unlimited use of a program for any purpose. This means that a Free Software license must allow use for all commercial or non-commercial applications in order to fulfill this criterion.
The second freedom — freedom 1 in the Free Software definition — is the freedom to study a program to learn how it works and to adapt it to your own needs. The remaining two freedoms are the freedoms to redistribute unmodified copies and the freedom to release modified copies that improve the state of the art.
As these are freedoms, people are free to choose to exercise one or several of them, but they may also choose to exercise none.
Licenses providing these freedoms are referred to as Free Software licenses. A special case of Free Software license, the so-called "Copyleft" license, has already been mentioned above. These licenses give any user the freedoms described above, but they explicitly forbid a distributor to remove that freedom, which would make recipients of such freedom-deprived software dependent on that specific distributor.
Since access to the source code is a necessity to exercise these freedoms for programming languages with distinct source code, some people suggested using "Open Source" as a marketing term for Free Software in 1998; nowadays Free Software is sometimes referred to under this marketing term.
The good intention of making Free Software more widely known has unfortunately had the unexpected side effect of weakening the distinction between Free and proprietary/non-free software. Therefore the Free Software Foundation strongly recommends speaking about Free Software or the adequate term in the local language; as will be done in the remainder of this article.
Economic perspectives of Free Software
Despite the attempts of proprietary software vendors — especially those located in the United States holding a monopoly in their respective areas — to make it seem so, Free Software is not an attack directed at specific companies.
Free Software should be understood as a new paradigm, a new model of dealing with software based upon mature concepts. It is a model based upon keeping the markets open and freely accessible; as such it cannot be an attack on specific companies, since any company can participate in this new market.
In a Free Software economy, there will be market leaders, but the possibility of uncontrollable monopolies is much lower.
To current monopolies this may seem threatening. But as one of the most important — maybe even the most important — problems of the European IT industry is its dependence on foreign IT monopolies, weakening these monopolies has become necessary for Europe to prosper.
That current monopolistic situation is a logical consequence of the proprietary software model, which has a strong system-inherent tendency towards proprietary software. The reason being that proprietary software tends to only work properly with itself.
With such proprietary software, communication between two users requires that both use the same software. Given that all people in western countries supposedly know each other over no more than five others, this leads to a kind of "viral" effect, where one user forces the next to use the same software, creating a monopoly.
In theory, open standards would provide a way out of this vendor lock-in, but history has shown that no open standard was ever truly successful unless it was implemented in Free Software.
The possibility to enlarge and lock-in a user base by modification of an open standard — a process euphemistically described as "improving" a standard — that in consequence allows only migrating to a certain piece of software, but not away from it, has proven to be too much of a temptation for the major players in the field.
As the past has proven, it is ineffective to impose open standards on vendors of proprietary software because of the fast-paced development in this sector in combination with the intransparency of proprietary software and the comparably slow workings of the political decision process.
That is if the vendors accept such measures and do not excert their monopoly-based clout to stop such actions altogether, as recent anti-trust cases in the United States have shown.
Structure of a Free Software economy
The differences are much smaller than many people would make you believe. The financially most important sector today is software for business activities and most of the revenue is generated through service. This is unlikely to change.
It is true that license revenue will most likely go down, probably significantly. However this only affects a very small part of the software generated revenue; a part which generates a negative trade balance between Europe and the United States today.
The by orders of magnitude largest source of revenue today is service. This sector will be able to grow significantly in a Free Software economy.
In the current system, dominated by proprietary software, only those companies supported by the monopolies can offer services; usually only a small part of what would be possible. The remainder is either done by the monopolies themselves — generating another stream of revenue flowing out of Europe — or not at all.
Free Software offers greater independence of European businesses, allowing them to offer the full array of services if they wish or cooperate with others if this seems economically more useful.
Also they will be able to provide solutions for those services that are already in demand, or that they can create a demand for, which are currently impossible because businesses lack adequate access and control over the software these services depend on.
In a Free Software economy, the current revenue in the service sector will be redistributed more in favor of the European vendors and the sector as a whole can be expected to grow.
It also must be considered that currently the holders of monopolies have control over the European IT industry as they could drive most companies out of business by denying them access to their monopoly or by making access so difficult that the economics of the situation will possibly drive the company out of business.
To further worsen the situation, software monopolies can effectively be coupled with hardware monopolies. So a piece of monopolistic software will run only on a special kind of hardware and in return the vendor(s) of that hardware will only deliver their machines with this particular software.
The Free Software paradigm does not allow building this kind of coupled monopoly. In fact Free Software encourages platform independence and the Free Software systems (e.g. GNU/Linux and the BSD systems) run on more hardware platforms than any proprietary operating system.
Because the freedom to modify allows adding support for other hardware platforms, Free Software provides a stable fundament for innovative hardware initiatives that might even start on a local or regional level.
That way Free Software not only brings back competition into the software, but also furthers it in the hardware field.
Because the largest part of software development is putting together old and well-known principles, these get reimplemented at least once by every company, sometimes even once for every project.
In terms of national economy, proprietary software is waste of highly skilled labor. The proprietary software paradigm keeps software developers busy reinventing the wheel, slowing down innovation.
Free Software allows building upon these old and well-known building blocks, consequently reducing the market-entry barrier for new and innovative companies.
Also, the software industry is only one part of economy as a whole. As software is the glue that ties together a digitally networked economy, all sectors pay the price for the inefficiency of the proprietary software model.
Today, most non-IT companies use proprietary solutions. This makes them relying entirely on their vendors for crucial aspects of their own economic activity such as keeping stocks, writing and paying bills or communication with their customers, suppliers and/or competitors.
Forced updates are one result, the need to sometimes replace a whole IT solution, downtimes and new training of employees included, is another. Solutions based upon Free Software remove this dependency almost entirely.
As the company gains the freedoms described above, updates can be made according to the economic situation of the company. In case of problems with the vendor, the solution will still remain usable and another vendor can be found.
In the latter case, an investment for the new vendor to work itself into the solution is required, but that cost is significantly lower than the cost of an entirely new solution. Also the indirect costs in terms of customer dissatisfaction, training of employees and downtimes usually do not arise.
It can be expected that these effects will help revitalising economy as a whole. In essence, Europe can only win economically by furthering massive deployment of Free Software.
Access to software becomes increasingly important to participate in the cultural, social and economic exchange of mankind. For the individual this means that access to software determines ones ability to communicate, to study and to work. Studies from the United States indicate that the average person interacts about 150 times each day with software.
In consequence, software has to be understood as a form of cultural property, a cultural technique. As long as mankind exists, new cultural techniques have risen the question of who is given access to them. Free Software ensures all people retain equal access to the cultural property that software has become.
In terms of data security and protection, another issue arises. As computers are always opaque — it is not possible to tell by mechanical observation what a computer does — it becomes even more important that the software is entirely transparent. Otherwise people lose the ability to determine what their computers do and consequently have no control over their personal or other data.
Free Software is by nature entirely transparent, preserving the maximum of informational self-determination.
2001: The Free Software Foundation Europe
Networks tend to be more stable than single nodes and Europe is one of the leading — if not the leading — regions for Free Software. So in 2001, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSF Europe) was founded as a sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation in North America. Legally, financially and personally independent of each other, they are working together on all aspects of Free Software in a spirit of equal cooperation.
The FSF Europe itself encompasses the vision of a strong Europe united in cooperation and mutual understanding with currently four countries (France, Germany, Italy, Sweden) fully represented, three others associated (UK, Portugal, Austria) and several others involved through regular cooperation.
A main function of the FSF Europe is providing a European competence center for Free Software, offering advice to governments, commissions, companies, journalists and others.
In the scope of these activities, the FSF Europe was invited to provide an expert for the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights in London and presented Free Software at an OECD workshop in Tokyo on invitation of the German Ministry of Economics and Technology.
Other activities involve regular project work, for instance in AGNULA , a project funded in the scope of the 5th framework programme of the European Commission (IST-2001-34879).
For the 6th framework programme, the FSF Europe issued a recommendation supported by over 50 parties, in which the advantages of Free Software for Europe are addressed in how they refer to accepted European goals; concrete recommendations on how Europe can capitalise on them are given.
Also the FSF Europe is doing work to support the legal fundament of Free Software, for instance it helped a local institute for legal issues of Free Software, the ifross, with the amendment of a German copyright law revision and recently issued the Fiduciary Licence Agreement (FLA) , which will help upholding the legal maintainability of Free Software.
Capitalising on Free Software
Free Software offers unique opportunities for Europe as a region and the European states. In fact Europe is currently the region with the best position to gain the full advantages of Free Software and go into the information age with a head-start.
Possible advantages include greater independence, increased sustainability, freedom from foreign mono- and oligopolies, alternative hard- and software possibilities, a strengthened domestic market and better protection of civil rights.
For these to become reality, it becomes increasingly important to make clear statements and policies in favor of Free Software, such as the evaluation bonus for Free Software projects defined in the IST work programme or the policy statement by Liikanen in the European Parliament regarding Free Software in public administration.
In fact public administration happens to provide an excellent starting point for the transition towards Free Software for three reasons.
Firstly, a government using proprietary software creates a tendency to force its citizens to use the same software because of the aforementioned "viral" effect of proprietary software. As governments have the ethical obligation to be available to all its citizens, they can make a just case for Free Software based upon the consideration of not wanting to force their citizens into a harmful monopoly.
Secondly, public administration is always short of resources, but the majority of resources spent on IT get squandered by creating a separate solution for each ministry or region, while the problems addressed tend to be similar and massive cooperation would be possible.
And finally, use of Free Software in public administration will provide a role model, encouraging citizens and businesses to get out of unhealthy dependencies, getting accustomed to the new model and becoming economically and socially active in it.
Several European regions already have initiatives to make use of Free Software mandatory for public administration. The commission entrusted with this question for the French speaking part of the region of Brussels came out in favor of such a regulation on February 11th, 2003, for instance.
Public administrations in Europe should at least make sure to prefer Free Software over proprietary and require open standards for which a Free Software reference implementation exists.
Also wherever public money is spent, spending it on Free Software is making sure that it will benefit the public and economy. In the past, such money was usually spent on proprietary sofware, often benefitting only that proprietary vendor company directly at the cost of society and economy as a whole, or getting lost entirely.
For that migration period towards a more sustainable approach, especially the so-called "Copyleft" licenses — the GNU General Public License (GPL) being the most widely known — provide a sound basis for such projects.
These licenses will make sure that the results of resources spent will be available for all of economy and society equally, fostering a general increase of economic activity. They will resist having the results procured by any single company or person trying to restore old monopolistic situations.
Information Age aware governance
Like information technology permeates all of economy and society, governance decisions in one area can influence chances in the information age significantly. Given the European goal of becoming an information economy, it becomes necessary to be aware of these issues in all areas of governance.
There are several policies pending or in implementation that are about to inflict serious harm on the European competitiveness. These should be prevented or abolished if seeking to increase the European edge.
One policy endangering proprietary and Free Software alike are software patents. Patents are an entirely unsuitable concept for software as it has very different properties. Experience indicates the United States are already paying dearly for their software patent system with reduced innovation.
To quote Bill Gates from an internal memo: "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. ... The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors."
Another extraordinarily harmful law is the European Copyright Directive (EUCD). Its US counterpart, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is already being used successfully by groups such as Scientology to censor unwelcome web sites. Similar cases can be expected in Europe.
Economically, the EUCD is highly anti-competitive. As it makes it illegal to circumvent whatever is considered a protection measure, the company that created this technical measure is given ultimate control over who may or may not participate in the market based upon it or how these companies should behave.
Example is given by the recent case against the teenager Jon Johansen, in which the question whether buying a DVD in a store will entitle the customer to view that DVD on their computer has become the central issue. The EUCD also provides a serious impediment of the freedoms of speech, communication and choice of profession, giving it a somewhat anti-democratic air.
These two policies are either in the process of adoption or adopted already and should be abolished before they can do further harm to Europes competitive edge.
The current new initiative to reduce competition in the market further are Palladium and its hardware counterpart proposed by the TCPA. This initiative, which wishes to be known as increasing the trustworthyness of computers, is best described as "Treacherous Computing."
Under the pretense of trying to improve computer security, the TCPA apparently seeks to eliminate concepts and paradigms competing with the monopoly holders of the proprietary software model. Again, Europe would be on the losing side.
Free Software as a new paradigm offers a stable, lasting and sustainable approach with higher dynamics and increased efficiency. The first region to understand and adopt it on a larger scale is likely to become a leading force in the information age.
Currently it seems unlikely that Free Software will ever replace proprietary software completely, but by making Free Software the predominant model, Europe could relieve dependences on foreign monopolies, which currently create a highly unstable and unfavorable situation for the European information technologies industry.
Europe is right now in the unique situation of having a large supply of Free Software competence and growing network of smaller companies that are based upon or centered in Free Software. Also more of the old and traditional European IT companies have begun shifting at least partially towards Free Software.
If this is furthered now, Europe has the potential to become global leader in the information age.
In case of further questions, the FSF Europe will gladly be of assistance.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html http://fsfeurope.org/documents/whyfs.html http://www.iprcommission.org http://fsfeurope.org/campaigns/agnula/ http://fsfeurope.org/documents/fp6/recommendation.html http://fsfeurope.org/activities/ftf/ http://www3.europarl.eu.int/omk/omnsapir.so/cre?FILE=20021023r&LANGUE=EN&LEVEL=DOC&NUMINT=3-188&LEG=L5 http://swpat.ffii.org/archive/quotes/index.en.html http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/24533.html http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0208.html#1 http://fsfeurope.org | <urn:uuid:02f8f494-f808-4fdc-ae3e-f688a7709876> | {
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It happens to almost every parent at some point. Your child wakes with a sandy crust along the eyelashes, and you wipe it away only to find a bright pink eye. While pink eye can cause some itching or stinging, it’s likely your “Oh, no!” reaction will be the biggest source of discomfort for your child.
Pink eye isn’t really a big deal, and there’s no need to worry about it any more than you would a slight cold. Natural remedies for pink eye usually clear it up quickly while reducing your child’s pain and discomfort in the meantime.
What is pink eye?
Pink eye is conjunctivitis, and the contagious form that spreads through daycare centers and schools is usually caused by a bacterial or viral infection. It’s often transmitted through droplets of infected mucus spread by sneezing or coughing. Sometimes irritants like dust or allergens can cause non-contagious pink eye.
The most obvious symptom is the bright pink or red coloration of the normally white area of the eye. The redness is caused by an inflammation of the clear membrane that covers the white areas of the eye and the inside lining of the eyelids. Pink eye sometimes causes itchiness or minor burning or stinging, and discharge from the eye can result in a gritty or crusty deposit along the eyelashes.
Treatments and natural remedies for pink eye
Parents can use a variety of treatments and home remedies to treat pink eye. In general, pink eye can improve in as little as 24 hours and be cured in a week or less.
- Cold or warm compresses placed on the outside of closed eyelids several times a day will relieve discomfort. Use cold compresses for allergen-related pink eye, and warm compresses for infections.
- Herbal compresses can also provide relief from pink eye discomfort. Apply a cool, moist chamomile tea bag or an herbal compress made from chrysanthemum flower tea over the eyes for 10 minutes several times a day. A compress moistened with the herbal pink eye remedy Eyebright (Euphrasia officinalis) can be very soothing for pink eye. Just a teaspoon of the herb infused in a cup of hot water will make a tea you can cool and use as a compress.
- Clean the eye from the inside (near the nose) out with moist tissues and water, Eyebright, or Chamomile tea to remove drainage.
- Aloe – Rub a small amount from the inside of an aloe leaf on the inside of upper and lower lids to soothe pain and reduce redness.
- Promote healing by adding garlic and extra food sources of Vitamin C to your child’s diet. Strawberries, oranges, cantaloupe, kiwi fruit and broccoli are a few options many kids like to eat.
- Homeopathic remedies can safely be used to treat pink eye in children. Similasan Pink Eye Drops is a readily available homeopathic option. If you are using an individual remedy, the choice of homeopathic remedy depends on specific symptoms. Sulphur, may be used in cases where the eye is very red and irritated and symptoms include pain, burning and itching. Apis mellifica is an appropriate remedy for puffy, pink swollen eyes and sticking eyelids.
- Chinese medicine works great to treat pink eye. A practitioner will examine your child, make a diagnosis, and prepare an appropriate herbal remedy for treatment. Pink eye is usually viewed by TCM as a Wind heat syndrome, typified by redness, pain and swelling of the eye and possibly headache and fever. A combination of herbs may be used to treat your child’s pink eye. Ju Hua is an herb that’s often used to treat allergy-related pink eye. The more powerful form of Ju Hua known as Jue Ming Zi may be used when symptoms are more severe.
- Breastmilk can be a great solution for pink eye, blocked tear ducts, and other eye conditions- if you have some handy. If it’s challenging or awkward to squirt mama’s milk in your child’s eye, just use an breast pump to express a bit, then apply it with an eye dropper or soak a paper towel and wipe or squeeze into the eye.
Prevention is powerful
When it comes to pink eye, prevention is the best defense:
- Hygiene – Children should be encouraged to wash their hands frequently with warm water and soap, especially after using the toilet or playing in a communal setting.
- Keep an eye out – If you can teach your child to recognize pink eye, you can encourage him or her to avoid close contact with someone who has it.
- Don’t share – Teaching kids to cover their mouths with a tissue if sneezing or coughing can keep them from spreading pink eye if they have it.
What natural remedies for pink eye work best for your family?
Let us know in the comments! | <urn:uuid:738e603f-6b08-4a4b-8d08-d8f09976ce8e> | {
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Innovation Performance Measures
For Students’ and Researchers’ References
All Rights Reserved.
05 April 2017
Innovation is defined as the socially and economically successful introduction of a new technology or a new combination of existing technologies in converting or transforming input into output such that it creates a drastic or significant change in the use value and monetary value (price) relationship based on the perception of consumers and/or users (Fontana, 2009, 2010, 2011). Fontana & Musa (2016), Fontana in Aryanto, Fontana, Afiff (2015) and in Aryanto (2016), and then further developed Fontana et al. (2016) provide description and examination of innovation system performance measures based on the following systematic dimensions:
(i) Internal Aspect of Innovation Performance (Input Performance) measures the perceptual organizational innovativeness before, during and after an innovation process. This dimension measures the contribution of internal tangible and intangible resources (such as climate, culture, and resources) to innovation performance. It basically shows that an organization has been successful in fostering innovativeness, knowledge management and a climate for generating new ideas, selecting, developing, and diffusing products resulting from the process of innovation.
(ii) Technical Performance (Process Performance) refers to the organization ability to realize creative and innovative ideas into real products, goods and/or services. This dimension shows the capacity of an organization to manage the ideation, the selection and the development process of innovative products. The technical performance of innovation is an invention performance, that is a part of an innovation-process performance. At a minimum the product has been in the prototype stage at the time of the measurement. Technical performance can be viewed as measuring development process effectiveness, or the effectiveness of the innovation process.
(iii) Commercial Performance (Process-Output Performance) refers to the organization ability in diffusing or distributing the innovative products in the market. It basically indicates that the innovation process has produced goods and/or services that can be sold to the market. Commercially successful products do not necessarily mean successful economically. In this sense, the economic performance, in terms of profit, must be measured, as it is a proxy of a successful commercialization of a product.
(iv) Economic Performance (Output-Outcome Performance) deals with the financial performance of an innovative output that has passed the commercialization phase in particular or the diffusion phase in general. Economic performance is measured by the organization’s ability to create economic value added in terms of residual income or internal rates of returns that exceed the cost of capital. The economic performance of innovation must be measured after social performance.
(v) Social Performance (Outcome Performance) refers to the positive impact that an organization creates through their innovation input, process, and output not only to the pertinent stakeholders in particular but also to the community and society in general as part of their corporate social responsibility as well as their corporate-shared-values’ actions toward the community and society at large. The attainment of a social performance assumes that organizations have at least fulfilled their obligations to their stakeholders. It is assumed here that social performance is attained before economic performance. Organizations measure their economic performance, after having distributed the value created to relevant stakeholders.
Based on the innovation-performance dimensions afore-defined, Fontana further developed the measures (see in Aryanto, 2016; Fontana & Musa 2017; Fontana et al., 2016) in five-performance dimensions representing the input, process, output, and outcome aspects of the organization’s innovation systems.
Aryanto, R., Fontana, A., Afiff, A.Z. (2015). Strategic Human Resource Management, Innovation Capability and Performance: An Empirical Study in Indonesia Software Industry. Paper presented in the 2nd Global conference on business and Social Science-2015. GCBSS-2015, 17-18 September. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 211 (2015) 874-879.
Aryanto, R. (2016). Pengaruh Strategi Bisnis, Manajemen Pengetahuan, Manajemen Sumber Daya Manusia terhadap Kapabilitas dan Kinerja Inovasi: Studi Perusahaan Perangkat Lunak di Indonesia. Disertasi Doktoral. Fakultas Ekonomi dan Bisnis Universitas Indonesia. Tidak diterbitkan. Bab 4.
Fontana, A. (2009, 2010, 2011). Innovate We Can! Manajemen Inovasi dan Penciptaan Nilai. Jakarta: Gramedia Widiasarana Indonesia; Rev. Edition, Bekasi: Cipta Inovasi Sejahtera.
Fontana, A. (2011a). Innovate We Can! Manajemen Inovasi dan
Penciptaan Nilai. Bekasi: Cipta Inovasi Sejahtera.
Fontana, A. (2011b). The Practice & Art of Innovation. Workshop Material. CIS School of Innovation.
Fontana, A. (2015). Kuesioner Sistematika Inovasi. CIS School of Innovation. Tidak diterbitkan.
Fontana, A., & Musa, S. (2017). The Impact of Entrepreneurial Leadership on Innovation Management and Its Measurement Validation. The International Journal of Innovation Science, 9(1), 2-19.
Zubaedah, Y., & Fontana, A (Ed.). (2016). Building Agility: Firm Configuration for Innovation and Growth. UI Press. | <urn:uuid:95c4ba2b-9ef1-4962-b2e9-b4e8e140f85b> | {
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We’ve all heard this one before, haven’t we? Some friend of a friend somehow managed to catch genital herpes from a toilet seat in a public restroom. As much as this sounds like an urban legend, many people actually believe it, so let’s explore the plausibility of this scenario and confirm or debunk the myth once and for all.
How Is Herpes (Not) Transmitted?
Herpes is an STD, which means it’s spread through skin-to-skin contact, including vaginal, anal, and oral sex. Herpes is known to cause sores in the affected area and the fluids inside of them actually carry the virus. The infection spreads through immediate contact with those fluids. However, you can also contract the STD from a sexual partner without any visible sores. The virus usually enters the body through mucous membranes but also through damaged tissue, such as cuts, tears, and scrapes in the skin.
With all this in mind, contracting genital herpes from a toilet seat is extremely unlikely. Outside of the body, the virus dies very quickly, which is why the CDC goes as far as to say it’s even impossible to get this STD through toilet seats, towels, and other objects found in bathrooms and public restrooms. Needless to say, however, if you suspect recent exposure, you should perform a dedicated herpes test as soon as possible.
What Types Of Bacteria ARE On Toilet Seats?
Although you don’t have to worry about contracting herpes from a toilet seat, there are still a lot of bacteria and viruses you can pick up if you’re not careful. The most common “dispersal method” for toilet germs is the toilet’s intense flush. With every flush, a whole slew of microbial droplets is pushed outside the toilet, landing on nearby surfaces.
Here’s a list of viruses and bacteria that can be found in and around toilets:
- Streptococcus – This bacterium causes strep throat and necrotizing fasciitis.
- Shigella bacteria – This bacterium affects your digestive system and usually present itself with diarrhea.
- Staphylococcus – Better known as staff, this bacterium is easily passed from one person to the next. One of its types (MRSA) can live on surfaces for up to 3 months.
- Escherichia coli – Also known as E. coli, this bacterium usually inhabits the intestines.
- Norovirus – This is a common and highly contagious virus that can survive almost 2 weeks on outside surfaces.
- Influenza – Better known as the flu virus, it can live 2 or 3 days on nonporous surfaces. It can also survive on door handles, remote controls, phones, and many other everyday objects.
How To Protect Yourself From Toilet Germs?
If you want to avoid the most common toilet germs, especially when using public restrooms, we recommend following a couple of useful tips:
- Make sure the restroom features paper towel covers – Fecal spray pushed from the toilet can land on toilet paper and stay there throughout its entire lifespan, so look for stalls where plastic or metal guards completely cover paper towels.
- Use antiseptic wipes – Paper toilet seat covers might be convenient, but they’re definitely not very effective. Most germs are tiny enough to slip through the porous fibers anyway. On the other hand, one study proved that running an antiseptic wipe across the surface of the seat can reduce the number of germs by fiftyfold.
- Wash your hands – Although everybody claims they wash their hands after using the toilet, a recent survey discovered that only 83% of people actually do. Needless to say, do not take shortcuts when it comes to hand-washing techniques.
- Flush with your shoe – Get familiar with this technique and start using your foot to flush the toilet.
- Only touch surfaces with a paper towel – Once you’ve washed your hands, do not touch the faucet or door without a paper towel.
- Never touch dryer vents – We advise against using hot air dryers in the first place, but if you absolutely have to use them, at least turn on the machine with your elbow. | <urn:uuid:468ead51-b39b-491e-8c27-7c34cdee3fbe> | {
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Explore Teaching Examples
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Results 1 - 10 of 85 matches
Investigating Earthquakes: GIS Mapping and Analysis (College Level) part of Teaching with GIS:Examples
This is a college-level adaptation of a chapter from the Earth Exploration Toolbook. The students download global quake data over a time range and use GIS to interpret the tectonic context. -
The Sleeping Mountain part of Role Playing:Examples
In this role-playing scenario, students represent townspeople whose lives and livelihoods are endangered by an active volcano which may or may not erupt in the near future. -
See the activity page for details.
Florida River Project: Sedimentary and metamorphic rocks lab part of Cutting Edge:Courses:Introductory Courses:Activities
This fairly traditional rocks-in-boxes lab has been incorporated into a semester-long project. At the end of the lab, students apply their rock-identification skills to rocks from their study area.
Computerized Field Trip Preview of the Berkshire Mountains part of Cutting Edge:Courses:Introductory Courses:Activities
This is a computer (Windows, Macintosh) based exercise designed to take about two hours. Students use a 5 page short-answer study sheet with the Berkshire Field Trip Map, Guidebook and associated images of the ...
Using ArcGIS to Study the New Lakes in the Toshka Basin in Egypt and Evaluate Egypt's New Valley Project part of Cutting Edge:Courses:Introductory Courses:Activities
In this assignment, students use ArcGIS to analyze the new lakes that have formed in the Toshka Depression, Egypt as a result of overflow from Lake Nasser and use their analyses to evaluate the wisdom of the plan ...
Hometown Geology part of Cutting Edge:Courses:Introductory Courses:Activities
This is an extra credit assignment for students to learn details about the geology of their hometown.
Lost At Sea part of Cutting Edge:Courses:Introductory Courses:Activities
Students work as teams to "sail" around the North Atlantic using their knowledge of latitude, longitude, time, winds, and ocean currents to complete the voyage.
The Heat is On: Understanding Local Climate Change part of Cutting Edge:Enhance Your Teaching:Visualization:Examples
Students draw conclusions about the extent to which multiple decades of temperature data about Phoenix suggest that a shift in local climate is taking place as opposed to exhibiting nothing more than natural ...
Richmond's Urban Heat Island part of Cutting Edge:Enhance Your Teaching:Urban Geology:Activities
Students will be asked questions regarding the causes and impacts of the UHI. They will also be asked to apply this knowledge to two real-world settings and analyze data collected at both locations.
Topographic Maps part of Cutting Edge:Manage Your Career:Career Development:Pursuing an Academic Career 2010:Teaching Activities
This geology lab is designed to teach students the basic skills needed to read, construct, and interpret topographic maps. The goal of this lab is to help students build direct connections between the topography ... | <urn:uuid:34c1b968-a23e-4a82-8b86-3fb3fe6a61b7> | {
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(AP) -- Having an abortion does not increase the risk of mental health problems, but having a baby does, one of the largest studies to compare the aftermath of both decisions suggests.
The research by Danish scientists further debunks the notion that terminating a pregnancy can trigger mental illness and shows postpartum depression to be much more of a factor.
Abortion in Denmark has been legal since 1973 - the same year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade, which established a right to abortion.
The Danish study included 365,550 teenagers and women who had an abortion or first-time delivery between 1995 and 2007. None had a history of psychiatric problems that required hospitalization. Through various national registries, researchers were able to track mental health counseling at a hospital or outpatient facility before and after an abortion or delivery.
During the study period, 84,620 had an abortion while 280,930 gave birth.
Researchers compared the rate of mental health treatment among women before and after a first abortion. Within the first year after an abortion, 15 per 1,000 women needed psychiatric counseling - similar to the rate seeking help nine months before an abortion.
Researchers say women who seek abortions come from a demographic group more likely to have emotional problems to begin with. Statistics show that a large percentage struggle economically and they have above-average rates of unintended pregnancies.
While first-time mothers had a lower rate of mental problems overall, the proportion of those seeking help after giving birth was dramatically higher. About 7 per 1,000 women got mental health help within a year of giving birth compared with 4 per 1,000 women pre-delivery.
The most common problems among women in both the abortion and the delivery groups were debilitating anxiety, severe stress and depression.
"A woman should know that her risk of having a psychiatric episode is not increased" after an abortion, said Trine Munk-Olsen of Aarhus University, who led the study.
Results were published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. The study was funded by grants from the Danish Medical Research Council and the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, which supports abortion rights organizations and projects.
The study did not examine why a pregnancy was terminated. Researchers also only studied mental problems serious enough to warrant admission to a hospital or outpatient clinic and did not look into the role of mild depression and other lesser symptoms.
In a previous study, published in 2006, Munk-Olsen found new mothers faced increased risks for a host of mental problems, not just postpartum depression.
Changes in hormone levels, sleep deprivation and other demands associated with having a baby could trigger mental problems, experts say. By contrast, women who have an abortion don't experience similar changes.
"Anyone who's ever had a baby knows it's stressful. That stress doesn't go away in a week or two" after delivery, said Dr. Robert Blum, who heads the department of population, family and reproductive health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The latest findings echo an extensive review by the American Psychological Association in 2008 that found no evidence that ending an unwanted pregnancy threatens women's mental health.
A separate review by Blum and his colleagues found that the most rigorous research on the topic did not find a relationship between abortion and long-term mental health problems. Previous studies that suggested such a connection were often poorly designed, had dropout rates or did not control for factors that could affect the conclusion.
Though the latest study was done in Denmark, Blum said it's comparable to the U.S. Access to abortion is similar in both countries though Denmark tends to be more conservative.
Abortion rates are lower in Denmark - about 13 abortions per 1,000 women in 2008, compared to almost 20 per 1,000 U.S. women that same year, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive-rights issues.
Explore further: Study explores docs' roles in end-of-life hospitalizations
American Psychological Association: http://apa.org | <urn:uuid:1ecaa62a-d6f4-4b3a-b321-d16630410480> | {
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Companion parrots should not be in control of what they eat. The idea that they will instinctively eat what is good for them is a myth. There is some truth to the belief that wild parrots eat what is available to them seasonally and, therefore, consume certain nutrients during certain times of the year. However, companion parrots have to be exposed to healthy foods on a regular basis for them to be able to select what they need. We must be vigilant that the nutritious food we buy for our parrots actually get eaten.
For birds that are not eating healthily (such as those on a seed-only diet), you need to teach them how to eat the right foods. When it comes to vegetables and fruits, starchy and/ or sweet foods, such as corn, grapes and apples, are not the healthiest fresh foods, but seed-only eaters might learn to eat them more readily as a transition to broccoli, sweet potatoes, winter squash, carrots, collard greens and healthier fresh foods.
More than 30 years ago, I got my cockatiel to eat carrot tops by weaving them in and out of the bars of his cage. Put veggies and fruits on hanging kabobs. Make birdie bread with chopped veggies in them, mashes or a piece of food wrapped with another piece of food. Put a bit of mash in a small piece of whole-grain tortilla. Wrap a variety of nutritious greens around other foods that your parrots love. Place leaves of sopping wet greens — collards, turnip, mustard or kale — on the top of the cage. Many birds enjoy leaf bathing and eating the greens at the same time. | <urn:uuid:ec06697a-3e49-4c4f-a2d2-1275aa3c6512> | {
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5 ways to save your heart.
These five habits can save your heart — here's how
According to hard data, five harmful habits herald the coming of heart disease.
These five are smoking, being inactive, carrying too many pounds, eating poorly, and drinking too much alcohol.
Alone and together, they set the stage for artery-damaging atherosclerosis and spur it onward. They do this by deranging metabolism and changing how cells and tissues work.
They also disturb the markers of health we worry about so much: blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar.
All too often, the end result of these five habits is a heart attack, stroke, peripheral artery disease, valve problem, aortic aneurysm, or heart failure.
And the damage they cause isn’t limited to the cardiovascular system, but extends to the kidneys, bones, and brain.
What can making better choices do for health and longevity?
Consider this provocative finding from the Nurses’ Health Study.
Nonsmoking women with a healthy weight who exercised regularly, consumed a healthy diet, and had an alcoholic drink every other day were 83% less likely to have had a heart attack or to have died of heart disease over a 14-year period, compared with all the other women in the study.
The results were almost identical in a similar study in men. In these two studies, more than two-thirds of all cardiovascular events could be chalked up to smoking, excess weight, poor diet, and drinking too much.
Five strategies for change
Count on these five white knights to protect your heart, your arteries, and the rest of you.
They will make you look better and feel better.
And it’s never too late to start.
- Avoid tobacco. Smoke from cigarettes, cigars, and pipes is as bad for the heart and arteries as it is for the lungs. If you smoke, quitting is the biggest gift of health you can give yourself. Secondhand smoke is also toxic, so avoid it whenever possible.
- Be active. Exercise and physical activity are about the closest things you have to magic bullets against heart disease and other chronic conditions. Any amount of activity is better than none; at least 30 minutes a day is best.
- Aim for a healthy weight. Carrying extra pounds, especially around the belly, strains the heart and tips you toward diabetes. If you are overweight, losing just 5% to 10% of your starting weight can make a big difference in your blood pressure and blood sugar.
- Enliven your diet. Add fruits and vegetables, whole grains, unsaturated fat, good protein (from beans, nuts, fish, and poultry), and herbs and spices. Subtract processed foods, salt, rapidly digested carbohydrates (from white bread, white rice, potatoes, and the like), red meat, and soda or other sugar-sweetened beverages.
- Drink alcohol in moderation (if at all). If you drink alcohol, limit your intake — one to two drinks a day for men, no more than one a day for women.
If you have one or more habits that are working against you, now is as good a time as any to set a course for better health. How?
The American Heart Association recommends “cognitive behavioral strategies for promoting behavior change.”
They aim to help you think more positively about yourself as you make healthy changes.
Here are some of those strategies:
Having specific, achievable goals is a key strategy for successful change. Goals that involve behaviors (“I will eat three servings of whole grains a day”) tend to work better than physiological goals (“I will lower my cholesterol”).
Track your progress.
With all the things you have to remember each day, it’s hard to know whether you are meeting your daily goals. Data from dozens of studies show that self-monitoring is an important attribute of successful changers. You can track your exercise or pounds lost with a notebook, a computer, a smartphone, or an invention of your own.
Changing a habit or behavior is easier if you have a good reason for doing it. Motivation can be something big, like getting in shape for a walking trip with a grandchild, or small, like fitting into a slimmer suit for a wedding. The more personal the motivator, the better.
Starting a change isn’t nearly as challenging as sticking with it. Support from family, friends, a doctor, or someone else — even from an online community — can provide feedback and encouragement, especially when you are feeling low.
You don’t need to aim for a complete transformation all at once.
Small changes in diet, exercise, or weight can make a big difference in your health.
Setting goals you can realistically achieve, and then meeting them, can snow ball into even bigger improvements | <urn:uuid:05617a9e-73ea-479c-895e-a3e74ff58d87> | {
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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A devastating Sunday afternoon was brought on by the onset of 81 tornadoes which obliterated hundreds of homes and killed six throughout Illinois and Indiana with countless other counts of wind damage and large hail.
So what the heck happened? I mean November isn't necessarily a month you think about when you think of tornadoes. April and May, yes. But November?
According to Dr. Greg Forbes, tornado expert who worked along side famed researcher Ted Fujita who invented the F scale for tornadoes, "November is the second season for tornadoes."
The most notable of November tornado outbreaks occurred in 1992 when 94 tornadoes wiped out thousands of homes and killed 26 and injuring 641 people across 13 states stretching from southeast Texas all the way to Maryland.
Sunday's outbreak in Illinois and Indiana, while rare, isn't unheard of. However this outbreak is notable for producing Illinois' first EF 4 tornado on record in November.
The reason Dr. Forbes described this as "the second season" is because it really is the counterpart to the Spring. Anytime you have two colliding air masses, cold verses warm, you create an unstable environment that severe storms thrive in. According to NOAA (see at right), November is responsible for 52 tornadoes of the annual total. Clearly outbreaks this large are rare.
The atmosphere is currently being set up for the Winter months. So you have the cold air rushing in from Canada and you still have the warm, moist air feeding in from the gulf. The battle of the seasons is on and often times, this is the result: 81 tornadoes, 525 damaging wind and 42 large hail reports totaling 649 reports overall.
A big "atta boy" goes out to the National Weather Service and the Storm Prediction Center for their spot on prediction of such an enormous outbreak. At right, you can see the forecast versus the reality of what really happened.
The SPC categorizes threats of severe weather by using the designation of "slight", "moderate" and "high". Sunday's outbreak was given a very rare but dire "high risk". It is the most serious and ominous forecasting tool used by the SPC.
The high risk is so rare that some years pass without one being issued. For the year 2013, Sunday's high risk was only the second to be issued---the first being back in June.
Given forecast accuracy and ample warning, few people were killed in this event. The truth is this was a well forecast event in which the dire urgency of impending disaster went out over 24 hours in advance.
Sunday's outbreak produced a whopping 81 tornadoes---two of which are now being considered EF 4's (166-200 mph). The one that gutted Washington, IL is among them. It is likely that this number will be reduced once the duplicate reports are removed. As it stands now, this will go down as the 4th biggest November outbreak on record. However, I suspect that further reduction in that number will kick this outbreak out of the top 5.
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Picture property of Fernbank Science Center © Conditions
The song or call above is in .mp3 format. You will
need an mp3 player in order to listen. If you do not have an
mp3 player you can download one. Click on the picture below.
It's free and works great!
- Medium-sized woodpecker
- Black head traversed by white stripe behind eye extending down
- Red forehead
- Black back with faint white bars
- Black wings, with white barring on flight feathers and bold white
patch on wing coverts
- Yellow breast fades to whitish lower belly and vent, and is
streaked sparsely about the flanks
- White rump
Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers live in northern deciduous and mixed
coniferous forests in summer. During winter they live in forests and
various semi-open habitats.
A common winter resident in the metro Atlanta area. | <urn:uuid:41c42728-ef93-4bfa-9fca-7b69b7f40d69> | {
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Hello Cherubs World!
Hello Cherubs World
Source References :
Hello Cherubs World, is an article about a type of supernatural being in the Bible. For winged babies in artwork, see putto.
For More info open holy books.. Hello Cherubs World,; (/ˈtʃɛrəb/; also pl. cherubim; Hebrew כְּרוּב, pl. כְּרוּבִים, English trans kərūv, pl. kərūvîm, dual kərūvāyim; Latin cherub, pl., cherubin, cherubim; Syris a winged angelic being who is considered to attend on the Abrahamic God in biblical tradition.
Hello Cherubs World, The concept is represented in ancient Middle Eastern art as a lion or bull with eagles’ wings and a human face, and regarded in traditional Christian angelology as an angel of the second highest order of the ninefold celestial hierarchy.
Cherubim are mentioned throughout the Hebrew Bible and once in the New Testament in reference to the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant (Hebrews 9:5).
Origins or Reality:
The Hebrew term cherubim is cognate with the Assyrian term karabu, Akkadian term kuribu, and Babylonian term karabu; the Assyrian term means ‘great, mighty’, but the Akkadian and Babylonian cognates mean ‘propitious, blessed’.
In some regions the Assyro-Babylonian term came to refer in particular to spirits which served the gods, in particular to the shedu (human-headed winged bulls); the Assyrians sometimes referred to these as kirubu, a term grammatically related to karabu.
Hello Cherubs World, They were originally a version of the shedu, protective deities sometimes found as pairs of colossal statues either side of objects to be protected, such as doorways.
However, while the shedu were popular in Mesopotamia, archaeological remains from the Levant suggest that they were quite rare in the immediate vicinity of the Israelites.
Hello Cherubs World, The related Lammasu (human-headed winged lions—to which the sphinx is similar in appearance), on the other hand, were the most popular winged-creature in Phoenician art, and so scholars suspect that cherubim were originally a form of Lammasu.
In particular, in a scene reminiscent of Ezekiel’s dream, the Megiddo Ivories—ivory carvings found at Megiddo (which became a major Israelite city)—depict an unknown king being carried on his throne by hybrid winged-creatures.
The Lammasu was originally depicted as having a king’s head, a bull’s body, and an eagle’s wings, but because of the artistic beauty of the wings, these rapidly became the most prominent part in imagery; wings later came to be bestowed on men, thus forming the stereotypical image of an angel.
The griffin—a similar creature but with an eagle’s head rather than that of a king—has also been proposed as an origin, arising in Israelite culture as a result of Hittite usage of griffins (rather than being depicted as aggressive beasts,
Hittite depictions show them seated calmly, as if guarding), and some have proposed that griffin may be cognate to cherubim, but Lammasu were significantly more important in Levantine culture, and thus more likely to be the origin.
Early Semitic tradition conceived the cherubim as guardians devoid of human feelings whose duty was to represent the gods and guard sanctuaries from intruders.
This conception is similar to an account found on Tablet 9 of the inscriptions found at Nimrud, in which the cherubim, like the shedu, depicted storm deities, particularly the storm winds.
Hello Cherubs World, It has been suggested that the image of cherubim as storm winds explains why they are described as being the chariot of the LORD in Ezekiel’s visions.
In the Books of Samuel, the parallel passages in the later Book of Chronicles, and passages in the early Psalms, “and he rode upon a cherub and did fly: and he was seen upon the wings of the wind” | <urn:uuid:4ec4cc2d-541b-4a1e-9f98-cba4e91da0e4> | {
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A new report argues developing countries will be left behind unless they master new Information and communication technology. Lisa Schlein reports from Geneva the report by the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development says technological innovation is a major engine for growth.
The report says globalization is here to stay and poor countries will not be able to fully benefit from it, unless they become adept at using the new information and communication technology (ICT).
It says the creative use of ICT can increase the productivity of enterprises. For example, in Thailand, UNCTAD has found that a 10 percent increase in the share of employees using computers was associated with 3.5 percent higher productivity.
Although the ICT industry has shown dynamic and positive results in several developing countries, mainly in Asia, the report says the digital divide between rich and poor countries remains great.
UNCTAD's Anh-Nga Tran-Nguyen says mobile phone subscribers are increasing rapidly in developing countries. She says they have almost tripled during the past five years and make up nearly 60 percent of mobile subscribers around the world.
"But, compared with the developed countries, this is still very low, because developed countries have reached saturation with over 100 percent in the rate of penetration of the mobile phone," she said. "And, this rate is similar to countries with economies in transition. With respect to Internet penetration rates, we estimate that in 2008, developed countries will have reached 65 percent, while developing countries remain at the very low level of 13 percent."
Tran-Nguyen says the situation is even worse in respect to broadband computer access where developed countries have a penetration rate of 28 percent compared to three percent in the poor countries.
The report says the rapid pace of innovation in the ICT sector has brought down the price of these products and is making them more accessible to poorer people.
Two examples of this are the establishment of telecenters, which are relatively cheap to use. And, it says the use of mobile telephones has been a boon to micro-businesses, which operate on a tiny budget.
UNCTAD says governments in developing countries must lead the way in educating and training their people to use the new information and communication technology.
The U.N. economists say industrialized nations have made major efficiency gains and significantly reduced costs by using these services. What works for the rich countries, they say can also work for the poor countries. | <urn:uuid:d789d79b-af72-4b76-b58a-7c4db2055294> | {
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"Can you help me understand why your son had so much trouble with this math problem?" a veteran first grade teacher asked my friend E at a recent parent-teacher conference.
The problem: "explain what this graph shows." The graph: a representation of the latest class survey results. Her son's answer: a sentence about one thing it showed.
E was happy to see that her son had actually written a whole sentence. To her, the source of his "trouble" was obvious: he hates writing. The only thing that surprised her was that a teacher was interpreting a six-year-old's verbal brevity as "trouble with math."
Such entanglement of grade school math with language arts dates back to the 1989 NCTM Standards, with its emphasis on communicating about math. NCTM is particularly zealous about this when the topic is representations (e.g., graphs).
So zealous that an intelligent, veteran teacher mistakes writing blocks for math deficiency. And assigns a report card grade of 2 (basic) on a 1-4 (4=advanced) scale to a child who is actually quite good at math--at least as measured by the ease with which he solves the non-writing-intensive math problems that E gives him at home. | <urn:uuid:88cad09c-8385-4123-b31f-f215b06cd6e5> | {
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Zulu Warriors, late 19th century, postcard, from Wikipedia.
Before motion pictures, there were lantern shows. But, for something with a bit more pizzazz (and prizes, just can’t forget the prizes) there were the mechanical diorama shows. These are best described by this site (complete with helpful image):
“The moving panorama, or diorama, consisted of a series of paintings on canvas which were then joined together to form one very long canvas sheet that was wound onto a vertical roller. From this roller the canvas was moved across the stage and wound up on a similar roller on the other side. The canvas could be illuminated from behind, from the front, or by a combination of both, using oil or gas lamps.”
One of the well known practitioners in the 1880s of the theatrical art of pulling ‘em in, making them watch art roll across a stage, then get prizes, was William Henry “Zulu” Thompson. He came by the sobriquet a little later in his career, but it seems he started out from America to the Australian colonies as a lecturer on the just-past American Civil War, around 1865. Lecturing, though, didn’t seem to grab the audience. It probably didn’t help that by the end of the 1860s, he wasn’t the only one at it on the circuit. Even high ranking officers (or so they said) of the American military made their way to Australasian shores to tell the colonials all about their war.
So, he decided to go one better, and went in for a mechanical diorama of his subject of choice. And there were prizes.
THOMPSON'S DIORAMA OF THEAMERICAN WAR.Since the great civil war between the Northern and Southern States of America, and which resulted in the abolition of slavery throughout the dominions of the great republic, we have had in Hobart Town several dioramic exhibitions of the leading incidents of the fearful struggle; but we remember none that was more largely patronised than was that of Thompson's Diorama of the battles which took place in the Southern States, presented last night for the first time at the Town Hall.
The hall, in every part, was crowded to excess, and when the curtain unveiled the first picture, a bird's eye view of New Orleans, a favourable impression of the ability of the artist was at once created, only to be enhanced as the more thrilling incidents of the war were unfolded, The scene representing the march of General Stewart's body of irregular cavalry on Richmond to oppose General McLellan's well-known attack upon that city at the head of a Federal detachment, afforded a graphic idea of the smartness of the cavalry, which the lecturer (Mr. Thompson, who, by the way, discharged his duties very efficiently), said had been described by the English press as " the finest body of regular cavalry in the world." Another equally effective picture was that representing the engagement of the 69th New York regiment under General Thomas Francis Meagher who, after a gallant resistance, retreated before Pittsburg, with a loss of 1,400 out of 1,000 men.
The battle between the famous Confederate cruiser the Alabama, and the Hattrass, off Galveston, was more than a picture, it was an excellent piece of mechanism, and the way in which the whole affair was worked proved highly interesting, particularly to the junior portion of the audience. The funeral procession of the great southern commander General Stonewall Jackson, whose death sealed the fate of the Confederate army, is a very elaborate piece of mechanism, the movements of the soldiery forming the cortege being regulated with wonderful precision, and drawing forth warm expressions of approval. In fact, the whole diorama proved a success; and though the music in some respects was not up to the mark, still it added much to the enjoyment of the evening.
At the close of the diorama Mr. Thompson proceeded to present the prizes to the holders of tickets, in accordance with the announcements in the show-bills. These consisted of some really valuable and, at the same time, useful articles, including tea and coffee service (4 pieces), two presentation cups, two sovereigns, large liqueur frames, two cruet stands, a couple of opera glasses, and an infinity of other things which we need not describe. One singular circumstance in connection with the prizes was that the great bulk of them went to the shilling part of the hall, thus doing away with any suspicion of favouritism. The exhibition will be on view again to-night.
Hobart Mercury, 26 September 1876
USS Hatteras in action with CSS Alabama, off Galveston, Texas, on 11 January 1863, from Wikipedia.
Evening Post 7 August 1877
Wanganui Herald 5 September 1877
This went down a treat, but by the end of the 1870s, the American Civil War probably seemed rather old hat. So, Thompson took steps to freshen up his act. Fortunately for him, I suppose, this was the age of the British Empire, and a colonial conflict out in the Darkest Continent came in time to rescue his fortunes.
Melbourne is to be instructed during the Exhibition in regard to most of the leading incidents which took place during the Zulu War. Mr W H Thompson, of American war diorama celebrity, on leaving Sydney made his way to South Africa, where he collected such information as will enable him to present to Australia a thoroughly reliable panoramic view of the war. The artists who have been employed upon it are Messrs Telbin, Gordon, Harper, Walter Harm, and H. Emden, of Drury Lane. Mr Thompson goes out by the Kaisar-i Hind to make the necessary preparations, so as to have everything ready by the time the Exhibition opens.
Otago Witness 24 July 1880
PANORAMA OF THE ZULU WAR.Thompson's Colossal Mirror of the Zulu War will open for a season of six nights at the Mechanics' Institute, this evening. The paintings of the various scenes in that dreadful struggle are from the brushes of several of the most celebrated London scenic artists, such as Telbin, Gordon (of the London Comedy Company), Harford, Lloyd, and others. The exhibition has been shown before crowded audiences throughout Australia, and is altogether superior to most of such entertainments that have visited the colonies. The views comprise pictures of the battle of Isandula; the defence of Rorke's Drift ; saving the colours; the wreck of a the troopship Clyde; and the diorama of 8000 moving figures, representing Lord Chelmsford's march to the relief of Ekowe, and the funeral procession of the Prince Imperial from Woolwich to Chislehurst, together with many other interesting and masterly portraits. At the conclusion of the exhibition a number of a valuable presents will be distributed among the audience. The descriptive lecturer is Mr W. H. Thompson, who some years since made two successful visits to this place.
Launceston Examiner 17 October 1881
The defence of Rorke's Drift 1879, from Wikipedia.
He toured around both Australia and New Zealand with the diorama, and it proved an enormous hit. But then, his business sense went awry. He bought another diorama when the Zulu War one seemed to be a little flat as far as audience attraction went – and that one turned out to be as old as the hills. And the cost of those prizes – even when the takings were slim, folks still expected their prizes, of course. Bankruptcy loomed, then crashed over “Zulu” Thompson, landing him in meetings with his creditors in Wellington.
The Troubles of a Showman." ZULU " THOMPSON AND HIS CREDITORS.The adjourned meeting of creditors in the estate of William Henry Thompson, proprietor of the Zulu War Diorama, was held to-day , the representatives of two creditors being present in addition to the Official Assignee and the debtor. Mr. Thompson made the following statement : — I am a married man and have two children. About three and a-half years ago I passed through here, and the Manager of the Bank of Australasia will tell you that I had £2500 to my credit in that Bank. It was on deposit at 2½ per cent. I then went to Sydney and bought 200 shares in the new theatre building in that city at £10 per share, and altogether I paid £600 in calls. I was advised to sell out, and did so for £250, thus dropping £350 on the shares.
I bought from Mr. George Gordon, of the Theatre Royal, Melbourne, for .£550 cash, the panorama of the Egyptian War, which I exhibited in Sydney. There I lost £750, owing to opposition and the show not being as successful as I expected. [It had been the fifth time the same show had gone through Melbourne]. I then went to Mauritius, taking a company of nine people with me. I paid £350 for passages alone. I paid £600 to Saber and Sons for goods, and got credit for £100 worth of goods in addition, and I had 660 sovereigns in my pocket. I arrived in Mauritius in the height of the summer, and consequently had a bad season, and Mrs. Thompson had to pawn her diamonds to pay our fares to get away, as I had lost all my cash. I had been six weeks in Mauritius, and spent about £200 a week expenses.
Then I went to Durban, South Africa, and was similarly unsuccessful in consequence of the depressed state of the country. I then performed at Capetown, and had £90 left out of the whole of my capital and goods— just sufficient to pay the fares of myself and wife to Melbourne. I was unsuccessful throughout the whole of my African tour.
I arrived in Melbourne with £5 and went to Sydney and reorganised the company, the Bank of Australasia lending me £200 on some land I had at the North Shore. I went up country with that money and lost it all. With £50 more which the Bank lent me I went to Melbourne and lost again, and had to sell my diamonds to pay my liabilities. Then I went to Ballarat, where the show was seized. I purchased it back with £100 my wife lent me out of her own private purse — money left her by will. Then I came to New Zealand, and in Dunedin I made £65 after paying all expenses. In Christchurch I did nothing, and that was the cause of all my trouble, as I lost everything. Then I went to Blenheim, the West Coast, and Wanganui and struggled through till 10 days ago the bailiffs took possession of the diorama on account of a debt owing to a Christchurch firm. Then I filed.
I have paid everybody in Wellington. Saber and son's books will show that for years I have paid them about £2000 a year for goods. I always paid the board of my company, and their wages were paid every Monday. I did not think it necessary to keep books. I had good houses here, but the Athenaeum Hall will only hold about £18 or £19 at my prices. The Zulu War Panorama cost me £2000. There being no quorum of creditors no resolution was passed, and the matter was left in the hands of the Official Assignee, who will call for tenders for the purchase of the two panoramas.
Evening Post 27 February 1886
Evening Post 10 April 1886
His Zulu War diorama was purchased by Alfred Eric Wyburd (d. 1900), himself a theatrical celebrity in his day.
Death of Mr Wyburd -Mr Alfred Wyburd, well known here and in South Africa as a theatrical agent and hotel keeper, died last evening at the Baden Baden Hotel, Coogee, of which he was the lessee. Mr Wyburd who was an energetic and popular man was, at the outset of his career, a professional cyclist, and for a long time he managed the Bondi Aquarium with success. As a boniface he was entirely connected with the Commercial Hotel, King street, which he left to conduct a long theatrical tour of the Cape This was interrupted by the outbreak of the war, and he then returned to Sydney, and died at Coogee, as noted above, whilst not much past the meridian of life.
Sydney Morning Herald 5 September 1900
Zulu Thompson's War Diorama, after a very good time in Wellington, has gone to the country districts under the management of that experienced showman, Mr. Alf. Wyburd, the "gifts" being, of course, the leading feature in the nightly programme. Possibly we may have an opportunity, in the sweet by-and-bye, of annexing some of the jewelled coffee-pots, gold-headed walking-sticks, and silver-plated meat choppers so lavishly scattered around.
Observer 7 May 1887
“Zulu” Thompson reinvented himself as host at Wellington’s Albion Hotel – but, it was all too late for him. Diabetes, in the days when it was a death sentence, claimed him.
We regret to have to record the death of Mr. W. H. Thompson, better known as " Zulu " Thompson, who breathed his last at his residence in Dixon-street last evening, at the age of 46. The deceased came out to Australia about 1860, and was a member of a dramatic company for some time. He then wont back to England, and returned as lecturer to a diorama of the American war, with which ho travelled all over the world. After being connected with the show for some time, he purchased it, and amassed a large amount of money, the receipts as a rule being very good. He subsequently acquired a diorama of the Zulu war, and exhibited it in different parts of the world with more or less success. The soubriquet of "Zulu" was gained through his connection with this show. About two years ago he settled down in Wellington, and was licensee of the Albion Hotel until his health gave way and compelled him to relinquish business. For five or six months prior to his demise he suffered severely from diabetes, and his death was due to that disease. Mr. Thompson was a genial, kind-hearted man, and was well-liked by all who knew him. He leaves a wife and daughter, the latter about 7 years of age.
Evening Post 27 December 1887
DEATH OF “ZULU” THOMPSONThousands of people throughout the colonies will remember the Diorama of the Zulu War, and its portly cicerone, Mr. Thompson. He had for some time past been host of an hotel at Te Aro, Wellington. A telegram, dated Wellington, December 28, says :-" ' Zulu ' Thompson was buried to-day, and his funeral was attended by a considerable number of members of the theatrical profession." From another source we learn that he had been suffering from diabetes for some months past. He was 40 years of age, and leaves a widow, formerly a Hobart resident, and one daughter, seven years of age. Mr Thompson first came out to the Australian colonies as lecturer to a panorama of the American War somewhere about 1865. He travelled all over the world with that and his succeeding show, the Zulu War, visiting Great Britain, Canada, the United States, South Africa, India, China, Japan, and the Australian colonies. In the "show" line few men were better known or more universally liked than poor " Zulu.” With a natural genial bonhomie he made friends wherever he travelled, and no call was ever made for his help in cases of brother professionals in need of assistance, but what a generous response was given. Mr. Thompson was a member of the Masonic fraternity.
Mercury (Hobart) 7 January 1888
Such was the Australasian career of “Zulu” Thompson. | <urn:uuid:e34c2768-75bf-49a4-8ccc-0bb44b400f77> | {
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Late Roman Gaul is often seen either from a classical Roman perspective as an imperial province in decay and under constant threat from barbarian invasion or settlement, or from the medieval one, as the cradle of modern France and Germany. Standard texts and "moments" have emerged and been canonized in the scholarship on the period, be it Gaul aflame in 407 or the much-disputed baptism of Clovis in 496/508. This volume avoids such stereotypes. It brings together state-of-the-art work in archaeology, literary, social, and religious history, philology, philosophy, epigraphy, and numismatics not only to examine under-used and new sources for the period, but also critically to reexamine a few of the old standards. This will provide a fresh view of various more unusual aspects of late Roman Gaul, and also, it is hoped, serve as a model for ways of interpreting the late Roman sources for other areas, times, and contexts.
'This is a useful volume that rewards its readers with a synopsis of how scholars interpret historical evidence to illuminate the history of fifth-century Gaul. While they vary greatly among themselves in their approach to the sources, the individual papers all demonstrate deep learning and insight.' Speculum 'Specialists in Late Antiquity will discover much meat in this well-produced collection, but those from other fields will also find this a rewarding glimpse into a cross-section of the continuum of Greco-Roman culture.' Ancient History
Contents: Introduction, Danuta Shanzer, Ralph W. Mathisen; From Roman to Barbarian Gaul: The Visigothic settlement in Aquitania: chronology and archaeology, Andreas Schwarcz; The Visigothic settlement in Aquitania: the Imperial perspective, Michael Kulikowski; Not the Theodosian Code: Euric’s Law and late 5th-century Gaul, Jill Harries; The Gallic Chronicle of 452: a new critical edition with a brief introduction, Richard Burgess; The Gallic Chronicle of 511: a new critical edition with a brief introduction, Richard Burgess; The letters of Ruricius of Limoges and the passage from Roman to Frankish Gaul, Ralph W. Mathisen; Childeric’s grave, Clovis’ succession and the origins of the Merovingian kingdom, Guy Halsall; The quasi-Imperial coinage and fiscal administration of Merovingian Provence, Kevin Uhalde; Religion and Society: Sacred topography: the impact of the Funerary Basilica in late antique Gaul, Bailey Young; Beyond hagiography: epigraphic commemoration and the cult of saints in late antique Trier, Mark A. Handley; Aristocracy and asceticism: the letters of Ennodius and the Gallic and Italian churches, Richard Bartlett; Bishops, letters, fast, food and feast in later Roman Gaul, Danuta Shanzer; Intellectual life: No place for a platonist soul in 5th-century Gaul?: the case of Mamertus Claudianus, Charles Brittain; Avitus of Vienne: the Augustinian poet, Ian N. Wood; The Epistula Rustici ad Eucherium: from the library of Imperial Classics to the library of the Fathers, Mark Vessey; Venantius’ Fortunatus’ elegy on the death of Galswintha (Carm. 6.5), Michael Roberts; Index. | <urn:uuid:07a0ac2a-9a6e-4dcb-a62c-2b36acee821c> | {
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Today is Friday, April 1, the 92nd day of 2016. There are 274 days left in the year. This is April Fool’s Day.
Today’s Highlights in History:
On April 1, 1976, Apple Computer was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. The federally created Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail for short) began operations in the northeastern U.S. (it was taken over in 1999 by CSX and Norfolk Southern).
On this date:
In 1789, the U.S. House of Representatives held its first full meeting in New York; Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania was elected the first House speaker.
In 1891, the Wrigley Co. was founded in Chicago by William Wrigley Jr. (Although the business initially sold soap and baking powder, it became known for its chewing gum.)
In 1924, Adolf Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. (Hitler was released in December 1924; during his time behind bars, he wrote his autobiographical screed, “Mein Kampf.”)
In 1933, Nazi Germany staged a daylong national boycott of Jewish-owned businesses.
In 1945, American forces launched the amphibious invasion of Okinawa during World War II. (U.S. forces succeeded in capturing the Japanese island on June 22.)
In 1954, the United States Air Force Academy was established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In 1962, the Katherine Anne Porter novel “Ship of Fools,” an allegory about the rise of Nazism in Germany, was published by Little, Brown & Co.
In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon signed a measure banning cigarette advertising on radio and television, to take effect after Jan. 1, 1971.
In 1972, the first Major League Baseball players’ strike began; it lasted 12 days.
In 1984, recording star Marvin Gaye was shot to death by his father, Marvin Gay (cq), Sr. in Los Angeles, the day before his 45th birthday. (The elder Gay pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, and received probation.)
In 1986, “New Kids on the Block,” the group’s debut album, was released by Columbia Records.
In 1992, the National Hockey League Players’ Association went on its first strike, which lasted 10 days.
Ten years ago: Former hostage Jill Carroll arrived in Germany, where the freelance American journalist strongly disavowed statements she had recorded during her captivity in Iraq and shortly after her release, saying she’d been repeatedly threatened. Two American pilots were killed when their Apache helicopter was shot down near Baghdad.
Five years ago: Afghans angry over the burning of a Quran at a small Florida church stormed a U.N. compound in northern Afghanistan, killing seven foreigners, including four Nepalese guards. Jimmer Fredette was named The Associated Press player of the year after leading the nation in scoring and BYU to one of its best basketball seasons; Notre Dame’s Mike Brey was named coach of the year.
One year ago: Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., was charged with accepting nearly $1 million worth of gifts and travel from a longtime friend in exchange for a stream of political favors on the donor’s behalf; a defiant Menendez, maintaining his innocence, declared he was “not going anywhere.” Eleven former Atlanta public school educators were convicted of racketeering for their role in a cheating scheme to inflate students’ scores on standardized exams. California Gov. Jerry Brown ordered officials to impose statewide mandatory water restrictions for the first time in history. Cynthia Lennon, the first wife of John Lennon, died at her home in Spain; she was 75.
Today’s Birthdays: Actress Jane Powell is 87. Actress Debbie Reynolds is 84. Actor Don Hastings is 82. Baseball Hall of Famer Phil Niekro is 77. Actress Ali MacGraw is 77. Rhythm-and-blues singer Rudolph Isley is 77. Baseball All-Star Rusty Staub is 72. Reggae singer Jimmy Cliff is 68. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is 66. Rock musician Billy Currie (Ultravox) is 66. Actress Annette O’Toole is 64. Movie director Barry Sonnenfeld is 63. Singer Susan Boyle is 55. Actor Jose Zuniga is 54. Country singer Woody Lee is 48. Actress Jessica Collins is 45. Rapper-actor Method Man is 45. Movie directors Allen and Albert Hughes are 44. Political commentator Rachel Maddow is 43. Tennis player Magdalena Maleeva is 41. Actor David Oyelowo (oh-YEL’-oh-woh) is 40. Actor JJ Field is 38. Singer Bijou Phillips is 36. Actor Sam Huntington is 34. Comedian-actor Taran Killam is 34. Actor Matt Lanter is 33. Actor Josh Zuckerman is 31. Country singer Hillary Scott (Lady Antebellum) is 30. Actor Asa Butterfield is 19.
Thought for Today: “Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.” — Attributed to President Abraham Lincoln.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Copyright 2016 Heavener Ledger. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Renewable resources are a requirement of today, with carbon emissions and climate change affecting each and every person on earth. The time for alternative fuel sources is upon us, and hemp has become a viable option. Hemp biofuel can replace other plant-derived biofuels that are compromising the planet and destroying resources. Not only does hemp grow faster and have a higher yield than other crops used for fuels, but it also burns cleaner and is the only alternative fuel option that actually benefits the engines it works with. Biofuels are a hot topic, but hemp is by far the strongest contender for a sustainable fuel source. Allow us to elaborate.
The Many Facets of Hemp Fuel
You probably already know at least a little bit about the promise that hemp holds. But for good measure, let’s go over a couple of Hemp’s many uses. Hemp is among the sturdiest fibers in the world, with hemp paper and clothing outlasting other materials and taking less time and resources to make. Hemp nutrition and hemp foods are rich in vital nutrients that we all need to survive. Hemp can be made into fire and pest resistant building materials, superior insulation, durable rope, and can even replace molded plastics. The hemp plant and its many parts can also be made into renewable and sustainable biofuel.
Hemp biodiesel is an ester-based oxygenated fuel derived from the oil of pressed hemp seeds. This fuel can be used in the same manner as other diesel fuels and requires no changes to the engine. Hemp biodiesel is safe to transport and handle, and is virtually non-toxic. Not to mention, when hemp fuel is burned it replaces poisonous fumes with the pleasant smell of hemp.
Hemp can also be turned into ethanol, which comes from the fermented stalk of the plant, and works in the same way as other ethanol fuels such as corn and soybean. However, when compared, hemp fully matures much faster than these other vegetables and requires far less equipment and fertilizer to grow efficiently. While corn and soybean farming are depleting the earth and destroying water sources due to run-off, hemp farming actually cleans and renews the soil, and hemp crops can thrive in low-nutrient growing conditions.
Saving the Planet?
Renewable resources are becoming a mandate by law, and hemp can provide a sustainable source of clean-burning energy. From start to finish, hemp is replenishing the world with the things we need most, offering safe and reliable options for every aspect of our lives. Hemp takes less time to grow, can grow in many climates, and leaves a remarkably smaller carbon footprint than other biofuel options. All parts of the hemp plant can be used along the way, making less waste and more provisions for all. That’s a promising plant indeed.
Maybe hemp fuels on their own can’t completely rescue the planet, but embracing hemp and all its uses will undeniably put us on the right path to harmony and sustainability.
What are your thoughts on hemp fuel? Are you ready to join the movement? Visit our Hemp Events page to join the movement in a city near you! | <urn:uuid:081394e3-ab83-4890-9cb6-4c13ddb8862f> | {
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METAL/NONMETAL MINE FATALITY -On September 7, 2011, a 30 year-old miner with 1 year of experience was killed at an underground gold mine. The victim was on a ramp waiting for a blast to be initiated. When the round was initiated, small rock and debris traveled through a 3-inch diameter diamond borehole, striking him.
Plug a diamond drill hole that intersects any opening and map the hole. During blasting operations, consider mine specific conditions, including diamond drill holes and rock strata, and establish mine policies and procedures to protect all persons. When developing a blasting plan, make sure all drilled holes and open passageways that intersect the area to be blasted are known and taken into consideration before initiating any blast. Use a central blasting system and schedule blasting between shifts or on off-shifts when no one is present. Train persons to identify hazards associated with blasting activity and take action to correct them. Never initiate a blast until the blast area has been determined to be safe and all persons have been evacuated from the designated blasting area. Take special precautions to ensure that all roadways and regularly traveled areas are blocked to prevent access when blasting is being conducted.
|Submit your own suggestion for a remedy to prevent this type of accident in the future.
Please specify if you wish your submission to be anonymous or whether your name may be used. Please include the year of the fatality and the fatality number.
This is the 8th fatality reported in calendar year 2011 in the metal and nonmetal mining industries. As of this date in 2010, there were 14 fatalities reported in these industries. This is the 1st Explosives fatality in 2011. There was 1 Explosives fatality in the same period in 2010.
The information provided in this notice is based on preliminary data ONLY and does not represent final determinations regarding the nature of the incident or conclusions regarding the cause of the fatality.
For more information:
MSHA's Fatal Accident Investigation Report | <urn:uuid:586e1ba4-5e33-431c-af24-a33f59f1ede4> | {
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- a) Introduction
- 0. Introduction
- 1. Working together promoting independence
- 2 . Using this kit
- b) Issues, goals, action
- 3. Identifying issues W
- 4. Setting goals W
- 5. Making goals happen W
- 6. Monitoring progress W
- c) Strategies Myself and my relationships
- 7. My behaviour's changed W
- 8. Thinking
- 9. Relationships W
- Managing memory, money and time
- 11. Remembering information and messages
- 12. Finances and handling money W
- 13. Managing time W
- Household tasks
- 14. Food and shopping W
- 15. Food and meals W
- 16. House keeping
- 17. Laundry
- Getting around
- 18. Public transport W
- 19. Accessing the community
- Life tasks
- 20. Self care
- 21. Fitness
- 22. Leisure
- 23. Employment
- 24. Continue learning
- 25. Health and well-being
- 26. Emergencies
Toolkit B: Working together: Promoting Independence
This is a resource for workers working with people with TBI.
The resources in the kit have been designed to be used by people with TBI.
The Kit contains practical information and tools the worker can use to assist an individual with a brain injury to:
- Identify issues and set priorities
- Set goals
- Develop strategies to achieve the goals
- Monitor progress.
The Kit includes tools and tips for practical strategies on everything from working with memory problems to doing the laundry.
All the tools, tips and worksheets can be printed to give to the person with the TBI.
The Kit has been designed to be relevant throughout the lifespan and the changes experienced in different life stages.
This Kit aims to increase the independence, control, decision making and responsibility taken by individuals who have a brain injury, in day to day activities.
Individuals who have a brain injury and who have trialed sections of the Kit stated:
"It helped me to work out the little differences and do something about them"
"I realised how I can now help myself and not rely on others"
"I now know where all my money is going"
"I wish I had this years ago- it helps with the little things. Like remembering where I put things, how to use my diary and calendar- everything!
"I only had to use the sections I needed to- getting out in the community and looking at getting back to work" . | <urn:uuid:37350535-ca71-4ab7-b339-107283024f3f> | {
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Searching Emily Geiger did no good. The important message she was carrying could not be found. It was not in writing and not on her person, unless you count her brain. She had memorized the important message.
All this came to be because in 1781, General Nathaniel Greene needed reinforcements, as the British were coming. When a messenger was needed, Emily stepped forward. She knew the countryside. At first, she was able to avoid the British. But, she was caught and questioned. The British needed her searched. Being polite gentlemen, they called for women to search her. Emily ate the secret message while she waited. She got the message through to General Thomas Sumter, who arrived in time to save the day. A paper meal saved her life, and the lives of many others. | <urn:uuid:b951004f-b597-45a1-a9aa-71f01bbe5045> | {
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By Amanda Gardner, HealthDay
A proportion of people who repeatedly bask under sun lamps meet standard criteria for addiction, while also reporting higher levels of anxiety and substance use, according to new research.
If this really is the case, addiction treatments might actually help prevent skin cancer, experts say.
TANNING: New taxes, restrictions hit industry
YOUR HEALTH: Short, intense sun blasts may spike cancer risk
"If, for some people, tanning is a way to cope with emotions, then there are obviously healthier ways to do so than going to tanning salons every week," said study co-author Catherine E. Mosher, a postdoctoral research fellow in department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York City. "Counseling could be a logical intervention for these people who have excessive visits to tanning salons."
She and co-author Sharon Danoff-Burg, of the University at Albany, State University of New York, published the findings in the April issue of the Archives of Dermatology.
Skin cancer is the most common malignancy, accounting for about half of all human cancers, Mosher said, and about 90% of all skin cancers are due to ultraviolet (UV) radiation. The disease can be disfiguring and sometimes fatal.
The risks of indoor tanning are concerning enough that U.S. health advisors in March recommended a potential ban — or at least stronger label warnings — on the use of tanning beds by people under the age of 18.
While other studies have also reported an addictive potential in tanning, none have focused specifically on indoor tanning, as this study does.
As part of their research, the study authors modified two standard measures of addiction to fit the context. Then, 421 students at SUNY Albany were asked to fill out questionnaires about their indoor tanning habits, substance use and any anxiety or depression they may have experienced.
Questions addressed such issues as whether the person had unsuccessfully tried to cut down on their indoor tanning sessions, irritation when people suggested they stop, guilt about the behavior and whether or not they thought about indoor tanning excessively.
Thirty to 40% of students met one of the two addiction criteria used here.
These same participants had about twice the level of anxiety and reported more use of alcohol, marijuana and other illicit substances than non-addicted tanners.
Those considered addicted to tanning lay in tanning beds up to 100 times a year, Mosher said. That's hardly as many times as a crack cocaine addict is likely to light a pipe but, she pointed out, addiction is not just about how often you engage in the behavior.
"It's what degree is this causing impairment or creating feelings of guilt, and also engaging in a behavior despite known risks," Mosher explained.
All of the individuals addicted to tanning in this study acknowledged that they knew the health risks of the habit, she added.
Why would indoor tanning turn into an addiction for some?
One theory has it that exposure to UV radiation increases the activity of the body's natural opioids, which can reinforce the behavior. "There's mixed scientific support for that theory," Mosher said.
"There's also the coping perspective," she noted. "There is some growing evidence now that people use tanning as a way to cope with stressors, as way to increase positive mood, decrease negative moods, cope with environmental demands. In that way it's similar to other addictive behaviors."
But another expert was less convinced that indoor tanning qualified as an addiction
"The hallmark of (addiction) is that people lose control over use of the substance which is manifested by using way more than you plan to use, spending much more time than they usually will spend on using the substance (and) neglecting their jobs, their families despite knowing that the use is going to hurt them," said Dr. Ihsan Salloum, chief of the division of drug and alcohol abuse treatment and research at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
"It's an interesting idea," he said, "but I wasn't convinced that the questions really were modified to the point where you could find out whether people really lost control."
Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more. | <urn:uuid:c1fece0a-b60d-4d5a-8c6f-fc41d7aa29f3> | {
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Omum Water/ Ayurvedic Ajwain Water
Omum or Ajwain is a common herb found in Indian household. Traditionally, it was used a lot for medicinal purposes. Even today, it is one of the important ingredients in Ayurvedic medicine.
Though we might have come a long way from using the conventional medicine, it is still practiced and used among the households of many in India. It is common to see our grandmothers or mother-in-laws handing out seeds of Omum while we get stomach ache or upset stomach.
Omum is also known as Carom seeds, Ajwain, or bishop’s weed. In western countries, it is known as oregano seeds.
How to make Omum Water:
Omum Seeds – 1/2 Kg
Water – 5 Litre
- Take the omum seeds and crush them well.
- Bundle them in a muslin cloth and put it for soaking in the 5 litre of water.
- Let the bundle get soaked in the water overnight.
- In the morning take it out, and Boil the mixture until it reduces to half the amount.
- Strain it and store it in a dry container.
Make sure that the container is tightly closed. Or else, it will lose its effects soon, due to exposure with air.
The thymol present in Omum acts as a anti-bacterial and anti-fungal agent and so relieves cough and asthma. You can mix it with jiggery and chew it to relieve from nasal congestion. You can also soak a clean cloth in Omum water and heat it over a warm pan. Place this warm cloth on chest for congestion.
To relieve from rheumatic or arthritic pain, you can soak the aching joints in a basin of warm water mixed with Omum water.
For relieving from acidity, you can mix Omum water with one teaspoon of jeera. Boil the mixture in a glass of water. The water helps to release the stomach acids and reduces the regurgitation of acids.
There are lots of benefits accompanied with these Omum seeds.
- It is a good digestive aid. The chemicals present in the seeds help effectively in releasing gastric juice in the stomach and speeds up digestion.
- It helps in flatulence, nausea, indigestion.
- Even for children or babies, it is a safer medicine as it helps in relieving colicky pain.
- For lactating moms, it improves digestion, as it has great curative and anti-inflammatory properties. It is also said to improve production of milk.
- For pregnant women, it wards off constipation. It also strengthens the uterus muscles. Even after pregnancy, it has healing properties that heal the body internally and reduces inflammation. It helps in maintaining good blood circulation. | <urn:uuid:ebb63919-7d5f-4dd2-977a-d04d8b538e53> | {
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Freyd speaks on Betrayal Trauma Theory, role of universities in reducing trauma| Nov 8, 2018
In a lecture Wednesday discussing gender and sexual harassment, University of Oregon psychologist Jennifer J. Freyd noted that suppression or loss of memories from childhood is often a “survival skill” of abused dependents.
Freyd spoke to University students about her development of Betrayal Trauma Theory (BTT) and her research concerning how institutions, specifically university campuses, can reduce the trauma level of sexual abuse victims.
Freyd said she was inspired to understand how and why some individuals remain unaware of or forget traumatic memories after finding many of the existing answers unsatisfactory. For example, she argued that the theory that humans forget memories on account of extreme pain fails from an evolutionary standpoint, as retaining the memory could lead to a safer future.
According to Freyd, two concepts of human nature helped her to develop BTT.
First, humans are “highly sensitive to betrayal, because we are social creatures, and betrayal is costly to us,” Freyd noted. Subsequently, abuse, a type of betrayal, is very impactful in any level of relationship and provokes either a confront or withdraw reaction, she explained.
Second, Freyd said that humans are “extremely dependent on one another” and babies are the most dependent humans. As a result, people and babies have evolved to become attached to each other.
In the case that the parent takes on the role of betrayer, “the two systems collide with each other,” Freyd said.
The core idea of BTT is that if a child acknowledges and displays awareness of abuse by their caregiver, they are risking further mistreatment and endangering the entire attachment relationship — and thus their well-being.
“When a betrayal happens in a dependent relationship, there is now a survival advantage to not seeing the betrayal,” explained Freyd.
Freyd described how she was able to apply the idea of BTT to institutions. She posited that since humans refer to institutions with the same attachment terms they use with other humans, they would also be vulnerable to betrayal from institutions in the same way they are with humans.
An “institutional betrayal” could be either an egregious violation of trust or “the failure to do what [institutions] can reasonably be expected to do.”
In her research on campus sexual assault, Freyd found that, of individuals who had experienced sexual assault, those who also experienced institutional betrayal from universities — such as denial, lack of action, or lack of punishment — showed signs of higher trauma. “Institutional betrayal exacerbates anxiety, dissociation, sexual problems, and sexual-abuse related symptoms,” Freyd said.
Regarding the impact of gender on traumatic experiences, Freyd found that women were more susceptible to high-level trauma from interpersonal violence. Men tended to be more vulnerable to low-level trauma from relatively distant sources, such as accidents or strangers. She noted that gender does not affect an individual’s response to the an incident, but that women are more likely to experience high-level trauma.
Freyd ended by sharing her reports on sexual harassment on campus and recommendations for institutions to increase the likelihood that victims report incidents to authorities. For example, she recommended rewarding and cherishing whistleblowers for raising awareness of institutional issues and educating leaders on sexual violence and the consequences of institutional betrayal.
The lecture took place in Aaron Burr Hall at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 7. | <urn:uuid:a92d9d0d-d469-42c0-b3e2-e34893dd58a7> | {
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The Upper Coastal Plain Research Station is the oldest of the state’s 18 research stations, established on a trial basis in 1902 on 201 acres of rented land eight miles southeast of Rocky Mount, on the Old Tarboro Road (now Noble’s Mill Pond Road). The option on the land was exercised in 1903 when the station officially became a state research facility. An adjacent tract of 240 acres was purchased in 1937, for a total of 441 acres. In 1990, the Fountain Farm on Highway 97, just east of Rocky Mount about 10 miles north of the station, was turned over to the station. More than 200 acres of cultivated land are used for research.
The station hosts an ECONET tower weather reporting station that feeds onsite data to the State Climate Office of North Carolina headquartered at the Raleigh campus of NC State University and to the National Weather Service offices in the region.
There are 28 structures on the station that provide for each area of research being conducted. Station facilities used to support crop research include crop drying and storage facilities, six tobacco curing barns, tobacco packhouse, fertilizer and pesticide storage buildings, maintenance shop, several storage sheds and buildings, carpenter’s shop, two dwellings, and an office.
For the last 100 years, research at the Upper Coastal Plain Research Station has continued to produce many advances in agricultural production technology for the growers in this region of the state, which has benefited all of our citizens throughout the state. The current research program at the UCPRS is centered around agronomic crops: corn, cotton, peanuts, soybeans and tobacco. These crops are of great economic importance to eastern North Carolina. Average cash receipts for North Carolina farmers in 2006 from these five agronomic crops totaled $1.31 billion, about 45 percent of all crop cash receipts. This station, with soils, climate and pest pressures representative of this region of the state, is ideally suited for experimental work with the agronomic crops. Tobacco and peanut soil-borne diseases are very prevalent here.
Long time tobacco black shank nurseries as well as CBR and microplot peanut disease nurseries provide excellent evaluation tools for development of resistance cultivars. Our tobacco black shank nursery is perhaps the best in the world, and without the continued breeding and screening research done here for
the development of black shank-resistant fluecured and burley tobacco varieties, the tobacco industry could be devastated. The location is close enough to NCSU for project leaders to closely monitor their research projects, apply treatments and collect data within a workday.
The UCPRS hosts many events tours each year depicting the latest research, including the Tobacco Variety Tour, Tobacco Tour, Weed Management Tour, Soil Classification Classes, Extension Agent Training, Insect Practicum (every 2 years). The station hosts the Cotton Field Day every 2 years. | <urn:uuid:43ceca12-27ac-4301-940b-608e38ff3680> | {
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The use of Biblical allusions and references is evident in Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country. Against the backdrop of South Africa's racial and cultural problems, massive enforced segregation, similarly enforced economic inequality, Alan Paton uses these references as way to preserve his faith for the struggling country. By incorporating Biblical references into his novel, one can see that Alan Paton is a religious man and feels that faith will give hope to his beloved country. Throughout the entire novel, Alan Paton continuously uses references to the bible and while some are not very apparent, most of them are considerable evident. Four apparent references that he uses are seen in Stephen Kumalo's character, Absalom's decisions to name his unborn child Peter, Stephen Kumalo questioning the ways of God, and Stephen finding his son.
At the start of the novel, Alan Paton introduces Stephen Kumalo, a native priest in the small village of Ndotsheni. The reader soon learns that he is the protagonist of the novel. He is a modest and good man, and has a deep reverence for the old customs, and he hates no one, even the white men who have oppressed his people. But as the novel progresses, he becomes more sensitive to racial injustice. When Stephen returns to Nodotsheni towards the end of the novel, things begin to change and improve for his people. Stephen is somewhat responsible indirectly for this change. His relationship with James Jarvis, and his conversations with the small white boy brought his town milk and better agriculture among other things. In the Bible, Stephen was chosen among six others to help restore a complaint towards a group of Jews, who neglected to give a daily distribution of food to their widows. "Now Stephen, a man full of God's grace and power, did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people" (Acts 6-8). In both instances, Stephen was seen as a man full of spirit and wisdom. In addition, they both resolved a predicament among their...
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The longest Space Shuttle flight in program history begins at 10:53:10
a.m. EDT with a flawless liftoff from launch Pad 39B. During the 14 day
flight of STS-58, a seven member crew will study extensively the adaptation
of the human body to the near-weightless environment of space.
credit: NASA GRIN Image # : 93PC-1374
Florida: Social Studies Resources for Students and Teachers
Produced by the Florida Center for Instructional
College of Education, University of South Florida © 2004. | <urn:uuid:6dddc2c0-fab6-450b-ae1c-422014290b24> | {
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WV Transportation System
Unique Aspects of West Virginia’s Transportation System:
• With roughly 36,000 miles of public highway mileage, West Virginia is one of only four states (Delaware, North Carolina, and Virginia are the others) in which there is no county and/or township ownership of highways.
• As a result, the WVDOH has statutory authority for the construction, improvement, and maintenance of nearly all public highway miles (approximately 36,000 or 93%) in the state, the 6th highest percentage in the nation.
• Furthermore, despite West Virginia’s relatively small size, the WVDOH is responsible for the sixth-largest state maintained highway network in the nation. (Source: W.Va. DOT STIP)
• Driving on rough roads costs West Virginia motorists a total of $400 million annually in extra vehicle operating costs. Costs include accelerated vehicle depreciation, unexpected expense repair costs, greater tire wear -- not to mention blown tires, damaged wheel rims, new brakes, worn out shocks, front-end alignments, increase fuel consumption…and aggravation.
• Driving on rough roads costs the average West Virginia motorist $333 annually.
• Many drivers are paying less in total gasoline taxes today that 10 or 20 years ago due to driving cars with much higher MPG capabilities…using fewer gallons of gasoline.
• An average driver in West Virginia uses 853 gallons of fuel (15,786 miles @18.5 miles per gallon). Each driver pays about $300 in state fuel taxes annually (853 gallons x 0.35.7 cents/gallon).
• Area Development magazine (2011) says good transportation (improved access, reduced transport costs and improved, safe highway accessibility) was ranked as the number one site selection factor.
• Every year, $49 billion in goods are shipped from sites in West Virginia and another $54 billion in goods are shipped to sites in West Virginia, mostly by trucks.
• West Virginia has one of the highest highway fatality rates in the nation.
• The fatality rate on West Virginia’s non-interstate rural roads is more than double the rate on all other roads in the state (2.54 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles of travel vs. 1.19). | <urn:uuid:d25cb422-2c67-408d-8b0a-27122555bda0> | {
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Using a simple algorithm, Belokurov et. al discovered this almost perfect Einstein-ring around a luminous red galaxy in the SDSS database:
They called it the Cosmic Horseshoe. The ring has a diameter of 10 arcseconds, which counts as large. The lensing galaxy has a mass of about 5 x 1012 solar mass - about ten times the mass of the Milky Way! For comparison, here's an other lens, also from the SDSS, discovered serendipitously, the "8 O'clock Arc":
This is less ring-shaped, it has 3 images of the same background galaxy on the top and a fourth on the bottom. It shows a similar size, but the lensing galaxy is estimated to have a mass of about 1/5 of that in the center of the Cosmic Horseshoe.
A news article.
The scientific article. | <urn:uuid:4812e8bb-6c3e-4b20-9dea-fdf47f61876d> | {
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An alphanumeric outline uses Roman numerals, capitalized letters, Arabic numerals and lowercase letters as prefix headings.
The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) uses the following outline format:
I. (Roman numeral)
A. (Capital letter)
a) (Lowercase letter followed by closing parenthesis)
(1) (Number enclosed in parenthesis)
(a) (Lowercase letter enclosed in parenthesis)
i) (Roman numeral with lowercase letters followed by a closing parenthesis)
The Modern Language Association (MLA) uses essentially the same method except the first lowercase letter is followed by a period instead of a closing parenthesis.
The decimal outline uses only numbers as prefix headings making it easier to see how every item relates within the hierarchy. It uses the following outline format:
Here is a sample decimal outline:
1.0 Choose Desired College
1.1 Visit and evaluate college campuses
1.2 Visit and evaluate college websites
1.2.1 Look for interesting classes
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1994 Diamond Ring Effect
The "diamong ring" effect occurs seconds before and after a total eclipse begins and ends.
Celestron 90 (f.l.=1000mm, f/11, 1/125 sec, ISO 100).
(click to read report)
How do you capture the amazing spectacle of a total eclipse with a camera? Photographing an eclipse really isn't very difficult. It doesn't even take a lot of fancy or expensive equipment. You can take a snapshot of an eclipse with a 35 mm camera loaded with fast film (ISO 400 or faster) if you can hold the camera steady or place it on a tripod.
The first step in eclipse photography is to decide what kind of pictures you want. Are you partial to scenes with people and trees in the foreground and a small but distinct eclipsed Sun overhead? Or do you prefer a close-up in which the flaring corona or vibrant prominences of the eclipsed Sun fill the frame? Your decision will determine what kind of equipment you need. Look at the photographs and captions throughout this book. They illustrate some of what can be done with a range of cameras, lenses, and telescopes, and of film and exposures.
New technologies in film, cameras, and electronics are making eclipse photography easier than ever before. Even beginners can take great eclipse photos with some careful planning. Planningis the key. The day of the eclipse is not the time to try out a new tripod or lens. You need to be completely familiar with your camera and equipment, and you need to rehearse with them weeks before the eclipse. A total eclipse grants you only a few precious minutes and everything must work perfectly. Nature does not provide instant replays.
Solor film comes in two basic types: print film (negatives) and slide film (transparencies). An advantage of print film is that it is very forgiving about exposure times. You can be off as many as three f-stops (or shutter speeds) from the best exposure and still produce an acceptable photograph. Slide film is less forgiving. If your exposure is off by more than one f-stop, your photograph is usually ruined. Slides are also less convenient to view than prints.
Slide film does have advantages, however. It requires just one processing step, which helps to retain accurate color. Slides can also be projected on a screen for large audiences.
If you were allowed only one roll of film to photograph an eclipse, it is hard to go wrong with the latest ISO 400 film from Agfa, Fuji, Kodak, and Konica. The ISO rating is a measure of the film's sensitivity: how fast it responds to light. Films with an ISO of 100 or less are "slow" and work best in bright light. Films with an ISO of 400 or more are "fast" and can work in dimmer light.
There is a trade-off between film speed (ISO rating) and resolution. As film speed increases, so does the graininess of the film. Fortunately, film technology is advancing by leaps and bounds. Today's ISO 400 films are finer grained than the best ISO 100 films were only a decade ago.
A greater threat to image sharpness, especially among beginners, is camera vibration caused by wind, flimsy tripods, and nervous photographers. ISO 400 films allow you to use faster shutter speeds, which can help minimize these bad vibrations.
In general, films that work well for everyday photography also work well for shooting eclipses.
Phases of the Annular Solar Eclipse of 1994 May 30
Celestron 90 (f.l.=1000mm, f/11, 1/125 sec, ISO 100).
(click to see more photos)
When viewing or photographing the partial phases of any solar eclipse, you must always use a solar filter. A solar filter is also needed for observing all phases of an annular eclipse, when the disk of the Moon does not block the entire face of the Sun. Even if 99% of the Sun is covered, the remaining crescent or ring is dangerously bright. It is like looking at a welder's torch; it will painlessly burn your eyes. Failure to use a solar filter can result in serious eye damage or permanent blindness. Do not look directly at the Sun without proper eye protection!
During totality, however, when the disk (photosphere) of the Sun is fully covered by the Moon, it is completely safe to look at this phase of the eclipse without any solar filter. In fact, you must remove the solar filter during totality or you will not be able to see or photograph the exquisite solar prominences and corona.
Solar filters for telescopes and cameras are usually made of metal-coated glass to provide the highest resolution, although aluminized Mylar can also be used. These filters vary in the wavelength (color) of light they transmit. Aluminized Mylar filters show a blue-gray Sun, while the more expensive metal-coated glass filters transmit a more realistic orange Sun. Materials and techniques that should not be used for solar filters include exposed color film, stacked neutral density filters, smoked glass, and crossed polaroid filters.
There are three types of solar filters: eyepiece, off-axis, and full-aperture. Eyepiece filters, furnished with some small telescopes, are not safe and should never be used for viewing the Sun. The tremendous heat generated at the eyepiece can easily shatter or crack the filter, allowing the full intensity of the Sun's light to be magnified and focused on your retina. Throw eyepiece filters away.
The only safe solar filters for telescopes and cameras are full-aperture and off-axis filters, both of which fit over the objective (front end) of the telescope or camera lens. A full-aperture solar filter is a cap with a solar filter mounted across its entire top. An off-axis solar filter is a cap with a hole off to one side into which the solar filter is mounted. Off-axis filters are cheaper than full-aperture filters.
If you use an off-axis solar filter with any catadioptric telephoto lens, the focus of the Sun will change significantly when you remove the filter to photograph totality. You must refocus. The optical field of a catadioptric system is not flat, and focusing with only the edge of the mirror is quite different from focusing with the whole mirror. In a full-aperture solar filter, the filter occupies the entire top of the cap and thus the focus is averaged over the entire surface of the mirror. No refocusing is needed when the filter is removed at the beginning of totality or when the filter is replaced at the end of totality. Full-aperture solar filters are preferred.
If your telescope has a finder scope, be sure to place a small Mylar solar filter over its objective lens to protect your eyes and to keep the finder cross-hairs from burning. If you don't have any Mylar, keep the lens cover on the finder scope.
Most telescope manufacturers and dealers offer glass solar filters for their products. Both types of solar filters are advertised in the major popular astronomy magazines (Astronomy, Astronomy Now, and Sky & Telescope). Solar filter retailers are also listed in Totality - Appendix C .
For more information, see:
Totality - Eclipses of the SunSecond Edition
by Mark Littmann, Ken Willcox and Fred Espenak
All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced, published, copied or transmitted in any form, including electronically on the Internet or World Wide Web, without written permission of the authors.
Contact Espenak (at MrEclipse) for more information.
All photographs, text and web pages are © Copyright 2007 by Fred Espenak, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. They may not be reproduced, published, copied or transmitted in any form, including electronically on the Internet or WWW, without written permission of the author. The photos have been digitally watermarked.
The photographs may be licensed for commercial, editorial, and educational use. Contact Espenak (at MrEclipse) for photo use in print, web, video, CD and all other media.
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The shown estimates of basic numeracy are based on the share of people who stated their age correctly. The shown "ABCC-index" is based on the finding that in population with lower numeracy skills "age heaping" occurs more frequently. "Age heaping" refers to the higher frequency of attractive numbers (i.e. rounded numbers which are multiples of five), which occurs in populations with lower numeracy skills.
Our World in Data is free and accessible for everyone.
Help us do this work by making a donation. | <urn:uuid:998be836-4ef7-4c9b-8290-3a6a462d5a48> | {
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Changes in the earth's magnetic field from normal polarity to reversed polarity or vice versa reversed polarity: Amino acid racemisation Archaeomagnetic dating Dendrochronology Ice core Incremental dating Lichenometry Paleomagnetism Radiometric dating Radiocarbon Uranium—lead Potassium—argon Tephrochronology Luminescence dating Thermoluminescence dating. Relative dating to determine the age of rocks and fossils. Using the overlapping age ranges of multiple fossils, it is possible to determine the relative age of the fossil species i. Every reversal looks the same in the rock record, so other lines of evidence are needed to correlate the site to the GPTS. Relative dating does not provide actual numerical dates for the rocks. Throughout the history of life, different organisms have appeared, flourished and become extinct.
Briana. i put emphasis on an effective communication from the very beginning whereas i make certain that we exchange all important information prior to each appointment so that there are no misunderstandings when we meet in person. if you decide to email me you can expect a quick, straight-to-the-point response (within the first 24 hrs) in which i also answer all your questions, whatever they might be. i am fair and treat everyone with respect.
There are a number of different types of intrusions, including stocks, laccolithsbatholithssills and dikes.
This content is currently under construction. C 12 and C 13 are stable. The study of strata is called stratigraphyand using a few basic principles, it is possible to work out the relative ages of rocks. As these changes have occurred, organisms have evolved, and remnants of some have been preserved as fossils. Snails and relatives; many living species. Find a rock layer that has at least one of the fossils you found in the oldest rock layer. | <urn:uuid:9d3ffaa6-6578-442e-9e6f-691d2978fbf2> | {
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7:44 AMThe Age of Comets
The Age of Comets
Photograph by Don Bartletti
Republished from the pages of National Geographic magazine
Whistling and moaning, a 50-mile-an-hour (80-kilometer-an-hour) wind whipped among the telescope domes atop Kitt Peak. Just a few feet below, turning gray in the dusk, slid a river of clouds that had been rising and dropping all day. And high above, comet Hale-Bopp hung suspended like a feathery fishing lure, its tail curving off a bit, as if blown to the side by the punishing wind.
One by one, stars winked on in a darkening sky. In each of the telescope domes, teams of astronomers prayed that the wind would drop below 40 miles per hour (64 kilometers an hour), the point at which they'd be able to open the sliding doors and get back to work.
The sky turned indigo. Then black. Viewed from the summit, 6,873 feet (2,095 meters) above Arizona's Sonoran Desert, Hale-Bopp's bright dust tail, along with a dimmer, all but transparent blue one, seemed to grow by degrees. Among the brightest comets ever seen, Hale-Bopp had been visible for months from midtown Manhattan, of all places. But here, on a moonless night in the mountains in the desert, the length of Hale-Bopp's tail became visible—a wispy, delicate veil.
Along with eclipses, comets have been the most feared and admired sky spectacles of all. But while astronomers have been able to predict eclipses for thousands of years, only in the 1700s was a comet's return correctly predicted, by Edmond Halley.
Some comets swing around the sun every few years. Others, like Hale-Bopp, may take thousands of years. Most can be seen only with a telescope. But every once in a while—a few times a century, perhaps—an impressive one is visible to the naked eye. And in the past two years the world has witnessed not one but two of them.
Hyakutake in 1996 had one of the longest tails on record, stretching more than halfway across the sky; Hale-Bopp in 1997 had one of the most brilliant heads, nearly as bright as the star Sirius. Add the Jupiter crash of comet Shoemaker-Levy in 1994, Halley's most recent visit in 1986, vivid comet West in 1976, and the scientifically signifiant—if visually disappointing—Kohoutek in 1973-74, and you could say that we are indeed living in the age of comets.
Hovering in the most fragile of gravitational balances, a fleet of dirty, lumpy snowballs numbering in the trillions is barely held in orbit by the pull of the sun. They are stored in the Oort cloud, a huge, diffuse sphere of cometary nuclei in the far reaches of the solar system. Close to the sun, yet still beyond Neptune, circle what may well be their brethren, in a great disk called the Kuiper belt.
Comets are leftovers, scraps of material that didn't make it to planethood in the events creating our solar system. Once, many astronomers believe, the solar system was full of comet nuclei, chunks of ice and dust left over from the formation of the sun. Most clumped together to form planets, leaving a relative handful—averaging perhaps a few miles wide, with temperatures as low as minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 240 degrees Celsius)—as time capsules of the early solar system.
They orbit in a perpetual deep freeze until some subtle gravitational nudge upsets the delicate balance. Then the great fall begins. Imperceptibly at first, a snowball drifts toward the sun and steadily accelerates. As solar radiation heats the comet, the ice within sublimates, escaping as gas from vents at the surface. Sometimes jets of sublimating ice whirl off the rotating comet nucleus like a fireworks pinwheel. Dust trapped in the ice breaks free. Pushed back by the pressure of the sun's radiation, the dust streams out behind the comet in what appears as a fiery tail.
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This lesson was developed as part of a Lesley University Masters in Technology Education. I currently teach 2nd grade at Longfellow Elementary in Sheboygan, WI.
This second grade Social Studies WebQuest engages students in learning more about landforms and human settlements through an array of activities. Students will investigate landforms through video, texts, and internet sites. Student's final project will be to create a 3-D or drawn map that demonstrates their knowledge of landforms and the importance of human resources.
This WebQuest is intended for second grade, but could also be adapted to third or fourth grade by adding a full report or having students create a more sophisticated final map.
This lesson is geared towards further developing student's map skills while gaining knowledge of general landforms. Participating students should have previous experiences in reading maps and should be familiar with some general map components: Compass rose, directions, map keys, symbols, and an understanding that maps are a view from above (helicopter view). Students will also have to have some prior knowledge about Pioneer travel during the 1800's.
Wisconsin Model Academic Standards Social Studies
A. Geography: People, Places, and Environments
Content Standard: Students in Wisconsin will learn about geography through the study of the relationships among people, places, and environments.
A.4.2 Locate on a map or globe physical features such as continents, oceans, mountain ranges, and land forms, natural features such as resources, flora, and fauna; and human features such as cities, states, and national borders.
A.4.4 Describe and give examples of ways in which people interact with the physical environment, including use of land, location of communities, methods of construction, and design of shelters.
Wisconsin Model Academic Standards English
Standard B: Writing Performance Standards
Content Standard: Students in Wisconsin will write clearly and effectively to share information and knowledge, to influence and persuade, to create and entertain.
B.4.1 Create or produce writing to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
- Write nonfiction and technical pieces (summaries, messages, informational essays, basic directions, instructions, simple reports) that convey essential details and facts and provide accurate representations of events and sequences.
Standard E: Media & Technology
Content Standard: Students in Wisconsin will use media and technology critically and creatively to obtain, organize, prepare and share information; to influence and persuade; and to entertain and be entertained.
E.4.1 Use computers to acquire, organize, analyze, and communicate information.
- Operate common computer hardware and software
- Use basic word-processing, graphics, and drawing programs
F.4.1 Conduct research and inquiry on self-selected or assigned topics, issues, or problems and use an appropriate form to communicate their findings.
You are a pioneer who has been traveling for five months and it is finally time to find a place to build your new home. You traveled to this destination to find better land and resources, so make sure you choose a good location to start your new life. You will work with a partner to research landforms and then create a 3-D or drawn map of your new settlement by using a sand table, the computer's Kid Pix draw program, or a paper drawing. You will then present your final project to the class. Your partner and you will also have to defend your settlements location by writing a paragraph that describes the surrounding landforms (3-5) and why you chose to live at this location. Remember that you have traveled a long way and so your new place to live should be just like you dreamed it when you left in your wagon train!
1. Your teacher will introduce you to the online WebQuest and show you how you will be using it. You will be given a partner to share a computer with and to help each other complete most of the activities. You will need to print out the "Activities Checklist" as an outline for the activities that you will be completing. Link to Activities Checklist
2. You will now have the chance to show what you already know about maps and landforms. Use crayons to complete a simple Land and Water map. You can print it our by clicking below or your teacher will provide you with a paper copy. Note to the teacher (worksheet was taken from Harcourt Social Studies series so it can not be duplicated via the Internet. Any simple map of where student can color land green and water blue will work for this pretest),
3. Today we will watch the video "All about Land Formations". Your teacher will stop the video as each new landform is shown so that you can write down definitions and draw pictures of the landforms. You can print off you note taking sheet by clicking on the link below. Link to All About Land Formations
4. It is now your job to learn more about landforms by using the internet sites provided below as well as the library books in your classroom. You will print out the "Landform Dictionary" worksheets (by clicking on the link below) to use to draw pictures and write words on for each landform listed. Please use the back of the sheets to find 5-7 other landforms that we have not learned about yet. Link to Landform Dictionary Work Page
5. Today you will take part in a class discussion to review why Pioneers traveled west. Please use the linked worksheet below to take notes on what landforms and resources you will want to include on your final project. You will need to print off the "Resources Notes" link below. Link to Resource Notes Work Page
6. It is time for you to create your final project! Please discuss the final project choices with your partner and choose one together. You can create your settlement using a 3-D sand table, with Kid Pix on the computer, or on drawing paper. When making your map, you will need to represent 3-5 different landforms and show were you would build you house as well. You will most likely want to use your worksheets as a guide. Do not be afraid to ask your teacher for any extra supplies that you want to complete your project.
7. After completing your final project you will need to get ready to present your map to your class. You will need to write one paragraph that describes the 3-5 landforms on your map and the surrounding resources that are needed to help you start your new life. You may also include a map key if it helps to explain your map.
The final project could be turned into a report for upper grades. A PowerPoint presentation could be created to show the development the student's new settlements. Instead of partners, students could be grouped in 3's or 4's and then each student could be responsible for completing one of the specific tasks.
Earth from Space - Search Earth Landscapes
*Allows students to look at satellite pictures of real landforms around the world. Students are also provided with an in-depth description of the landform and its location.
Landforms Face of the Earth
*Provides students with pictures and great information on seven basic landforms.
Landforms Glossary - EnchantedLearning.com
*This site contains definitions and drawings for over 50 landforms.
NASA - Students Activities Land Formations
*This website provides a drawing of a landscape with over ten landforms. Students can click on the landforms to learn more about them and see satellite pictures of each landform.
The Place to Discover World Landforms - Good Pictures
*This site has easy to read and short definition for over 50 landforms. Students can click on each landform and find pictures and U.S. examples.
Types of Land
*This website shows a map of the US and the basic landscapes and landforms of our countries regions. When students click on each landform they get more information and names of famous landforms.
- Computers: I will be using a set of 10 Ibooks that are linked to printers in my school. A stationary lab could be used instead.
- Software: KidPix and an Internet browser
- VCR and TV
- Teachers and Educational Assistants: While using computers with youngsters it is always helpful to have as many extra hands around as possible.
- Worksheets and printables: (PROVIDE SECOND LINKS FOR ALL WORKSHEETS HERE)
All about land formations. Series in Earth science for children ; [v.4].Wynnewood, PA: Schlessinger Media, c2000.
Summary: Examines various kinds of land formations including canyons, deserts, and mountains and the forces that helped to create them. Includes hands-on activities.
All about weathering & erosion. Series in Earth Science for Children.Wynnewood, PA: Schlessinger Media, 2000. Video
Summary: The surface of the Earth has undergone many changes over its history. Natural forces such as wind, rain, temperature and the activity of living things continually shape the visible landscape. In All about Weathering & Erosion, children will discover how these forces combine to form the Earth's features. Examine the different forms of physical and chemical weathering that affect the Earth, while touching on both the problems and benefits that erosion has on the people who inhabit the land.
Adams, George Finiel, 1907. Landforms. New York: Golden Press, 1971.
Arnold, Caroline. Land masses. New York: F. Watts, 1985.
Summary: An introduction to the fundamentals of geography with emphasis on the characteristics of the different kinds of land masses found on this earth. Includes instructions for related projects and activities.
Carlisle, Norman V., 1910. The true book of rivers. Chicago: Children's Press, 1967.
Summary: Discusses rivers by describing where they begin, how we use them, and how they change the land.
May, Julian. The land is disappearing. Mankato, Minn: Creative Educational Society, 1972.
Summary: Describes the shaping and erosion of land by natural forces.
O'Neill, Catherine, 1950. Natural wonders of North America. Series in Books for world explorers .Washington, D.C: National Geographic Society, c1984.
Using technology in a second grade classroom stimulates large amounts of student motivation. The use of this WebQuest will help to keep students on task as well as provide them with an organized layout of the activities. The format of this WebQuest allows students to work at their own pace. The websites that students will be accessing will extend their learning beyond basic landforms that are presented in our textbooks, videos, and school library books.
As I am only in my second year of teaching second grade, I owe much of my Social Studies knowledge bases and lesson plans to my second grade colleagues: Claire Provancher, Melissa Anderson, Lynette Pittner, Juli Shaw, and Tina Duwell. Claire Provancher created the "All About Landforms" worksheet to go along with the video. | <urn:uuid:351c46a5-ebf6-442c-a243-8b95dbbbee89> | {
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February 10, 2017 Credit: Steffen Thoma/Public Domain
New research by academics at the University of East Anglia (UEA), University of Kent and University of Lincoln, suggests that insights from behavioural science can help inform the design of road signs to bring about changes in driver behaviour.
Research in behavioural science has demonstrated how even very minimal cues or ‘nudges’ can sometimes have a powerful influence on human behaviour and decision-making. In this study, the researchers applied this approach to examine whether simple visual and written cues could be used to encourage drivers to switch off their engines while waiting at railway crossings.
By leaving their engines idling for long periods, drivers contribute to air pollution, waste fuel, and produce noise and fumes that harm the environment and public health. However, the researchers found that making simple changes to road signs which prompted drivers to consciously reflect on their behaviour doubled the rate of people turning off their engines.
The authors say the findings, published today in the journal Environment and Behavior, are relevant not just for railway crossings, but anywhere with congestion.
The study, which was led by Dr Rose Meleady, of UEA’s School of Psychology, Prof Dominic Abrams and Dr Tim Hopthrow at the University of Kent, and Dr Julie Van de Vyver at the University of Lincoln, comes amid continued concern about air pollution levels in cities across the UK and worldwide. Following a visit last month, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights and hazardous substances said air pollution “plagues” the UK, causing an estimated 30,000-40,000 premature deaths a year. Air pollution alerts were also issued last month for London, where it has been suggested that ‘no idling’ zones could be introduced around schools.
Lead author Dr Meleady said: “We wanted to know how to persuade drivers to switch off their ignition in a situation where collectively they would, potentially, substantially pollute the atmosphere of a large number of residents and pedestrians. The destructive behaviour examined in this study lasted for about two minutes, many times a day. Any reduction of this behaviour therefore has clear benefits for all.
“Planners at local and national levels use signs to encourage better driver behaviour. However, without clear evidence of whether and when these messages prompt action, their impact may be far less than could be achieved. We found that simple changes to the way we design road signs can make them much more effective. We should be using behavioural science to inform the design of such signs to encourage greater co-operation from drivers.”
Dr Meleady, a lecturer in psychology, added: “If similar interventions were to be implemented in comparable situations in other cities and countries, the potential contribution to reducing air pollution, improving short and long term health, and reducing effects of global warming could be substantial.”
The site chosen for the study was a busy railway level crossing in Canterbury, Kent. The local council had placed a sign at the crossing instructing drivers to switch off their engine when the barriers were down, which happened four times an hour. The message on the sign was not informed by any particular behavioural theory, and the researchers found it had limited impact, with only about 20 per cent of motorists routinely switching off their ignition while waiting for an average of two minutes.
Psychological research has shown that subtle cues that someone’s behaviour is being observed can increase their compliance with instructions. In this study, the researchers tested whether the addition of a picture of ‘watching eyes’ would increase drivers’ compliance with the instructions to turn off their engines while waiting at the level crossing. Watching eyes have previously been shown to successfully reduce theft from bicycle racks, reduce littering in public spaces, and increase donations to charity buckets. Here, the image was found to increase the rate of drivers turning off their engines to around 30 per cent.
Importantly however, a second test demonstrated that it was even more effective to encourage self-surveillance. Rather than suggesting behaviour was being monitored by others, a second sign aimed to encourage drivers to monitor their own behaviour and reflect on whether they were complying with the instruction. The sign simply instructed drivers to “Think of yourself: When barriers are down switch off your engine”. The results showed that combining the instruction with this self-surveillance prompt was highly effective, doubling the rate of drivers who switched off their engines to 50 per cent.
Dr Meleady said: “We found that the mere presence of an instructive sign had little effect on drivers’ behaviour. Rates of compliance increased when instructions were accompanied by subtle surveillance cues. These findings reinforce the importance of directing attention towards the individual when trying to encourage behaviour change, and beyond that, suggest it may sometimes be more effective to encourage self-surveillance rather than using cues suggesting public surveillance.”
The study ‘Surveillance or Self-Surveillance? Social Cues Can Increase the Rate of Drivers’ Pro-Environmental Behavior at a Long Wait Stop’, Rose Meleady, Dominic Abrams, Julie Van de Vyver, Tim Hopthrow, Lynsey Mahmood, Abigail Player, Ruth Lamont, and Ana C Leite is published in Environment and Behavior.
Explore further: Strange bedfellows: Dangerous link between driver distraction and sleepiness
More information: ‘Surveillance or Self-Surveillance? Social Cues Can Increase the Rate of Drivers’ Pro-Environmental Behavior at a Long Wait Stop’, Environment and Behavior, DOI: 10.1177/0013916517691324
Driver distraction combined with sleepiness creates a perfect storm when young people get behind the wheel, warns QUT road safety researcher Dr Chris Watling.
“Good” drivers turn bad when faced with poor driver etiquette, according to QUT research which has found many motorists are creating the problem they hate by responding aggressively to rudeness on the roads.
Road safety researchers at QUT are developing innovative in-vehicle technology to improve safety and save dollars at the petrol pump, and are looking to test it out on Brisbane drivers.
With mobile phone distracted driving a growing road safety issue, a QUT study reveals why some drivers slow down when using a mobile phone but others don’t.
Drivers are traveling about 10km/h faster than they think they should through roadwork zones, according to a new QUT study which compared the speed drivers think is safe to how fast they are actually going.
London’s mayor has issued air quality alerts across the capital for the first time because of high pollution levels.
A team of international researchers, led by Colorado State University’s Michael Gavin, have taken a first step in answering fundamental questions about human diversity.
Exceptionally well-preserved fossil communities are always exciting, but some are more interesting than others. Fossils from particularly important times or environments can tell palaeontologists much more than those from …
Changing environments and ecosystems were driving the evolution of horses over the past 20 million years. This is the
main conclusion of a new study published in Science by a team of palaeontologists from Spain and Argentina. …
A new study has revealed that gills originated much deeper in evolutionary history than previously believed. The findings support the idea that gills evolved before the last common ancestor of all vertebrates, helping facilitate …
Humans may have ritualistically “killed” objects to remove their symbolic power, some 5,000 years earlier than previously thought, a new international study of marine pebble tools from an Upper Paleolithic burial site in …
On a recent afternoon, a small group of students gathered around a large table in one of the rooms at the Stanford Archaeology Center.
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Study examines how behavioral science can help tackle problem of idling engines – Phys.Org | <urn:uuid:31b3f79d-f70c-4e63-9167-71afdb41b6e0> | {
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from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- v. Present participle of plan.
- n. action of the verb to plan
- n. the act of formulating of a course of action, or of drawing up plans
- n. the act of making contingency plans
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. an act of formulating a program for a definite course of action
- n. the act or process of drawing up plans or layouts for some project or enterprise
- n. the cognitive process of thinking about what you will do in the event of something happening
Sorry, no etymologies found.
The term planning is imbecilic; everything can change tomorrow.
Similarly, in certain literature of the public sector (so-called public planning), the term planning has been used as a virtual synonym for decision making and project management (see, for example, the various writings of Nutt e.g., 1983, 1984).
George Steiner, probably the most prolific of the business planning writers, noted that the word planning comes from the Latin planum, “meaning flat surface” 1969:5.
For Constellation this ruins planning assumptions, as one assumption in planning is "science will roll over and play dead".
This comment should probably apply to the planning school in general, which could avoid a good deal of confusion by insisting that the word planning be used only with an adjective—other than “strategic”!
In my part of the Tokyo area there are plans for no less than four lines to be made, some of those plans will happen others may change (demographics, budgets, etc.), but this type of long term planning is what makes it happen.
The only long-term planning is by Cheney, who hasn't shown great competence in anything but self-aggrandizement, and feeding at the trough.
BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, it really might not come as a surprise to an awful lot of people, but the Army now has what they call a planning scenario that would keep the current number of U.S. troops in Iraq through the year 2010.
Imagine Durban is a council-based initiative on integrated long-term planning, which is implemented together with sustainable cities including the Canadian non-government organisation and the Plus Network.
"Self-funding ensures independence, facilitates long-term planning and closes the resource gap between the agency and the entities we regulate," she said recently. | <urn:uuid:cc8243e8-5ab3-427a-9085-9f6254314454> | {
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About Learning Indonesian with Berlitz
Indonesian is the national language of Indonesia. When independence was declared in 1945, bahasa Indonesia (“Indonesian language”) was decreed as the country’s official language. It is actually the same language as Malay, spoken in Malaysia. Although Indonesian is the mother tongue of only about
25 million people out of a population of 225 million, it is estimated that as much as three-fourths of the population now understands it.
At independence the spelling systems of the two countries differed somewhat, as the Malay system was developed by the British, and the Indonesian by the Dutch. In 1972 the two were unified, with the Malay variant adopted in most cases. Indonesian j gave way to Malay y (kayu – wood), and dj to Malay j (gajah – elephant). The ch sound, which was ch in Malay but tj in Indonesian, is now rendered by the letter c (kucing – cat), while the sh sound, sh in Malay but sj in Indonesian, is now sy (syarat – condition).
A number of Indonesian words, however, have been adopted from Javanese, the country’s most widely spoken language, in preference to the Malay. For “city” Malay bandar is kota in Indonesian, “room” is bilik in Malay but kamar in Indonesian, and “shop” is kedai in Malay but toko in Indonesian. The Indonesian plural, like the Malay, is formed by merely repeating the word, as in angan-angan in the poem above, which means “fantasies.” | <urn:uuid:4a5119f5-983a-4957-a2e9-e90f1a369f64> | {
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There has been a fundamental change in the purpose of the mass education of children. The first “common schools” were developed to bring children into a common knowledge that would allow them to work effectively in factories. Its job was to teach what to think not how to think. We are no longer in the industrial age; we are in the knowledge age.
A century ago, most jobs required rote learning and rote work – in factories and farms. Today is a far, far different story. More than ever, working individuals need to be highly motivated and capable learners, able to find out what they need to know and figure out what to do with that information. They need to be able to think well and to judge complex situations using the latest technology. And they need to interact with people all over the world in the vast global markets. The fundamental ways of doing business – what a business is, produces, and needs has changed to its core.
When fortune 500 companies were polled as to what qualities they need in an employee in 2006:
1. Communication skills (written and verbal)
2. Honesty and integrity
3. Teamwork (formation and cooperation)
4. Strong work ethic
5. Analytical Skills
6. Flexibility and adaptability
7. Interpersonal skills
8. Motivation and initiative
9. Detail-oriented skills
10. Organizational skills
11. Leadership skills
12. Self confident
National Association of Colleges and Employers Survey of the Most Desirable Qualities in Prospective Employees
The ultimate service I can provide is to educate the child to be confident in life as an adult. The skills I encourage are the ones listed on the list. I pray for my children; I develop a learning environment; I nurture these “job” skills because I believe they are truly life skills. | <urn:uuid:094d7393-b577-4df9-94eb-d773875223b1> | {
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In 2015 California lawmakers approved a measure banning the sale of personal care products that contain plastic microbeads, such as facial scrubs, soaps and toothpaste. Companies producing products with microbeads will have until 2020 to phase them out.
Microbeads create pollution in the ocean, rivers and lakes. In addition, microbeads are not biodegradable and are harmful to fish and wildlife, if ingested.
Although Western is not currently having issues with microbeads, the District supports the state’s ban of microbeads in products in order to protect water quality. | <urn:uuid:3a128188-3583-49b0-bc77-ac6b21c69d59> | {
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By Jean-Benoît Nadeau & Julie Barlow
Spanish might be the last thing people in Calgary, Alberta, were thinking of while they celebrated their annual Stampede. Yet most of the vocabulary of ranching culture actually comes from Spanish. The word “stampede” itself is an Anglicization of the Spanish estampida (which means “suddenly,” or “in a rush”). Some ranching vocabulary is recognizably Spanish, like lasso, rodeo, bronco, and pinto. Other terms are less obvious, but Spanish nevertheless, like mustang, which come from mesteño (“wild,” or “untamed”), buckaroo, from vaquero (cowboy), chaps from chaparreras and jacket, from chaqueta.
The reason for the Spanish influence? Ranching itself comes from Spain. It started in the Middle Ages, when Castilians, Basques, Galicians, Aragonese and Leonese began free-range sheep and cattle grazing. At one point Spain organized these territories under an owners’ guild called a mesta. When Spain started colonizing the Americas, it implanted ranching techniques in the Americas, where they took root and developed.
Both the lasso and the cowboy saddle were developed in 16th century Mexico. Ranching arrived in what is today’s U.S. Southwest after Juan de Oñate, the “last conquistador,” forded the Río Bravo del Norte (Rio Grande) at El Paso, and opened all the northern territory as Nuevo Mexico for settlement.
Centuries later, when Americans arrived in Texas, they discovered a totally unfamiliar mode of agriculture. Free-range cattle raising simply didn’t exist in the East, where farmers raised small herds behind fences on mid-size farms. The Texas Longhorn itself was a new brand of cattle, a mix of two or three varieties of Andalusian cows.
When the conquest of the west was over at the end of the 19th century, cowboys moved north to Canada, and brought ranching culture with them. Incidentally, the “ten-gallon hats” that many Albertans sport at the Stampede comes from the Spanish term tan galán, meaning “how nice.” | <urn:uuid:089677f4-2cfa-483d-9934-dd2909bd2d98> | {
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|Colombian woolly monkey (Lagothrix lugens)
Range: Columbia and possibly Venezuela
Colombian woolly monkeys greet each other by kissing each other on the mouth and embracing. These critically endangered monkeys live in groups of 10 to 45 individuals, which peacefully share their territory with other troops. They are arboreal and use their powerful, prehensile tails to suspend their large bodies from branches (and sometimes as an extra hand). Woolly monkey infants, nursed by their mothers for as many as 20 months, can cling to their mother's fur immediately after birth. When they’ve matured, young female monkeys leave home to join a male in another troop, while young males stay in their birthplace.
Researchers have found that woolly monkey populations decline one year after El Niño events, which affect food availability for these fruit-eaters. Researchers have warned that the intensification of El Niño events due to climate change may further endanger this vulnerable primate. | <urn:uuid:685256ff-a3b7-49d1-b57e-9b204933aac7> | {
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Teleported by electronic circuit
ETH researchers cannot ”beam“ objects or humans of flesh and blood through space yet, a feat sometimes alluded to in science fiction movies. They managed, however, to teleport information from A to B – for the first time in an electronic circuit, similar to a computer chip.
Physicists at ETH Zurich have for the first time successfully teleported information in a so-called solid state system. The researchers did it by using a device similar to a conventional computer chip. The essential difference to a usual computer chip is that the information is not stored and processed based on the laws of classical physics, but on those of quantum physics. In a study, which is published in the current issue of the scientific journal Nature, the researchers were able to teleport information across a distance of about six millimetres, from one corner of a chip to the opposite one. This was shown to be possible without transporting the physical object carrying the information itself from the sender’s to the receiver’s corner.
”Usually, in telecommunication information is transmitted by electromagnetic pulses. In mobile communications, for example, microwave pulses are used, while in fibre connections it is optical pulses,“ explains Andreas Wallraff, Professor at the Department of Physics and head of the study. In contrast, quantum teleportation does not transport the information carrier itself, but only the information. This is possible due to the quantum mechanical properties of the system, in particular the entanglement established between the sender and the receiver. For non-physicists, entanglement constitutes a ”magic“ link between the two parties which exploits the laws of quantum physics.
As a prerequisite for quantum teleportation, an entangled state is created between the sender and the receiver. After that the two parties can be physically separated from each other while preserving their shared entangled state. In the present experiment the physicists program a bit of quantum information into their device at the sender. Because the two parties are entangled, this information can be read out at the receiver. ”Quantum teleportation is comparable to beaming as shown in the science fiction series Star Trek,“ says Wallraff. ”The information does not travel from point A to point B. Instead, it appears at point B and disappears at point A, when read out at point B.”
The scientists at ETH Zurich have shown that more information is transported from the sender to the receiver in their experiments than possible by classical means. In this way they could prove that the information was indeed relayed by quantum teleportation making use of the laws of quantum physics.
In the experiments of the ETH physicists, sender and receiver are realised as small superconducting circuits on a seven by seven millimetre sized chip. The scientists created the entanglement between the two parties using controlled pulses of microwave-photons. To access the quantum properties of the system, the scientists had to cool the chip to temperatures very close to the absolute zero using Helium.
High data rates
The distance of six millimetres over which the ETH Zurich researchers have teleported seems to be short in comparison with other teleportation experiments. A year ago, for example, Austrian scientists managed to teleport information by more than one hundred kilometres between the Canary Islands of La Palma and Tenerife. That and other similar experiments, however, were fundamentally different from the one performed at ETH Zurich, because they use visible light in an optical system for teleportation. The ETH researchers, however, managed to teleport information for the first time in a system which consists of electronic circuits. ”This is interesting, because such circuits are an important element for the construction of future quantum computers,“ says Wallraff.
Another advantage of the system of the ETH scientists: It is extremely fast and much faster than most previous teleportation systems. In this system approximately 10,000 quantum bits can be teleported per second. A quantum bit is a unit of quantum information.
Correct transfer of information, always
In addition, the researchers were able to find a solution for an obstacle of quantum information transfer: in teleportation sender and receiver can be entangled in four different ways – in four so-called Bell-states. Depending on the specific Bell-state the information transmitted to the receiver has to be read out in a specific manner. If that is not done, the correct information is read out correctly only in a single one of the four cases.
The device created by the ETH researchers can deal with this problem. After the information has been teleported from the sender to the receiver, the two parties exchange data about their shared entangled state. In this way the correct information can always be read out in all four possible cases.
“Key future technology”
In a next step, the researchers plan to increase the distance between the sender and receiver in their device. The scientists say, they will try to teleport information from one chip to another. And in the long term the goal will be to explore whether quantum communication can be realised over longer distances with electronic circuits, more comparable to those achieved today with optical systems.
”Teleportation is an important future technology in the field of quantum information processing,“ says Wallraff. For example, it may be possible to transmit information from one location to another one in a future quantum device or processor. Compared to today's information and communication technologies, which are based on classical physics, quantum information processing has the advantage that the information density is much higher: In quantum bits more information can be stored and more efficiently processed than in classical bits.
Steffen L, Salathe Y, Oppliger M, Kurpiers P, Baur M, Lang C, Eichler C, Puebla-Hellmann G, Fedorov A, Wallraff A: Deterministic quantum teleportation with feed-forward in a solid state system. Nature, 2013, 500: 319-322, doi: 10.1038/nature12422 | <urn:uuid:8b825f25-eea2-4695-9386-e3c84ede9155> | {
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A JAR file is a collection of class files and auxiliary resources
associated with applets and applications.
The Java Archive (JAR) file format enables to bundle multiple files into a single archive file.
Typically a JAR file format provides multiple benefits:
Decreased download time
Packaging for extensions
we are providing few java commands to work with the jar files
|Show help info||jar -h|
|Create JAR file||jar -cf jar_file_name input_files|
|Extract JAR file||jar -xf jar_file_name|
|Extract a file from a JAR file||jar -xf jar_file_name output_files|
|Get JAR file listing||jar -tf jar_file_name|
|Update a JAR file||jar -uf jar_file_name input_files|
|Execute a JAR file||java -jar jar_file_name|
In computing, a JAR file (or Java ARchive) is used for aggregating many files into one. It is generally used to distribute Java classes and associated metadata.
WAR (Web Application aRchive) files store XML files, java
classes, JavaServer Pages and other objects for Web Applications.
RAR (Resource Adapter aRchive) files store XML files, java classes and other objects for J2EE Connector Architecture (JCA) applications.
EAR (Enterprise ARchive) files stores XML files, java classes and other objects including JAR, WAR and RAR Java archive files for Enterprise Applications.
To know more about jar file, click at:
Posted on: November 12, 2009 If you enjoyed this post then why not add us on Google+? Add us to your Circles | <urn:uuid:5be60f98-6e17-4736-bb27-f8e8e0a0b5ae> | {
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