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Formats and tools
- Unit Description
- Reconstruct the unit from the xml and display it as an HTML page.
- Assessment Tool
- an assessor resource that builds a framework for writing an assessment tool
- Assessment Template
- generate a spreadsheet for marking this unit in a classroom environment. Put student names in the top row and check them off as they demonstrate competenece for each of the unit's elements and performance criteria.
- Assessment Matrix
- a slightly different format than the assessment template. A spreadsheet with unit names, elements and performance criteria in separate columns. Put assessment names in column headings to track which performance criteria each one covers. Good for ensuring that you've covered every one of the performance criteria with your assessment instrument (all assessement tools together).
- Wiki Markup
- mark up the unit in a wiki markup codes, ready to copy and paste into a wiki page. The output will work in most wikis but is designed to work particularly well as a Wikiversity learning project.
- Evidence Guide
- create an evidence guide for workplace assessment and RPL applicants
- Competency Mapping Template
- Unit of Competency Mapping – Information for Teachers/Assessors – Information for Learners. A template for developing assessments for a unit, which will help you to create valid, fair and reliable assessments for the unit, ready to give to trainers and students
- Observation Checklist
- create an observation checklist for workplace assessment and RPL applicants. This is similar to the evidence guide above, but a little shorter and friendlier on your printer. You will also need to create a seperate Assessor Marking Guide for guidelines on gathering evidence and a list of key points for each activity observed using the unit's range statement, required skills and evidence required (see the unit's html page for details)
- Self Assessment Survey
- A form for students to assess thier current skill levels against each of the unit's performance criteria. Cut and paste into a web document or print and distribute in hard copy.
- Moodle Outcomes
- Create a csv file of the unit's performance criteria to import into a moodle course as outcomes, ready to associate with each of your assignments. Here's a quick 'how to' for importing these into moodle 2.x
- Registered Training Organisations
- Trying to find someone to train or assess you? This link lists all the RTOs that are currently registered to deliver CPCCBC5004A, 'Supervise and apply quality standards to the selection of building and construction materials'.
- Google Links
- links to google searches, with filtering in place to maximise the usefulness of the returned results
- Reference books for 'Supervise and apply quality standards to the selection of building and construction materials' on fishpond.com.au. This online store has a huge range of books, pretty reasonable prices, free delivery in Australia *and* they give a small commission to ntisthis.com for every purchase, so go nuts :)
Elements and Performance Criteria
1. Identify and describe the properties of building materials.
1.1. Suitability of materials commonly used in the region is identified for a given building system.
1.2. Properties of materials, their standards of quality and the compatibility and non-compatibility of different materials are identified.
1.3. Environmental impacts of different materials are identified.
1.4. Impact of allowable tolerances on the conversion of naturally occurring materials is identified.
1.5. Tolerances for installing and assembling materials are identified and checked in regard to the nature of the work being performed and the requirements of Australian standards.
2. Ensure suitable building materials are selected for application.
2.1. Selection of building materials is conducted with reference to structural requirements and suitability for the building system specified in the contract.
2.2. Materials are selected for their safety, required fire resistance rating, serviceability and cost effectiveness.
2.3. Short and long-term degradation of materials is considered in relation to the proposed life cycle of the building.
2.4. Alternative materials are selected if specified materials are unavailable or unsuitable.
3. Supervise the acceptance, safe handling and storage of materials on site.
3.1. Organisational procedures for the acceptance, safe handling and storage of materials on site are identified and communicated.
3.2. Limitations and effects of transportation on materials and components are determined and action is taken in the case of potentially damaging circumstances.
3.3. Materials are handled correctly and safely on site using appropriate equipment and safe work practices.
3.4. Materials are stored in accordance with manufacturer specifications and in compliance with the relevant Australian standards.
3.5. Systems are implemented for inspecting all materials delivered on site for naturally occurring and/or manufactured defects before installation.
3.6. Personnel are aware of actions to be taken in the case of defects caused by incorrect installation, application or placement.
3.7. Timber is preserved and ferrous and non-ferrous metals used in the construction process are protected using established methods.
4. Supervise testing of materials on site for suitability and fitness for purpose.
4.1. Testing of materials, including soil, filling, compacting, surfacing, concreting and welding, is carried out to specifications and results are analysed on-site before and during installation.
4.2. Samples of materials taken during placement or installation are accurately identified and sent for laboratory testing.
4.3. Materials are given visual checks for suitability before building in, with materials sent off-site for testing if required.
4.4. Processes are implemented to ensure defective materials are identified and remedial action is recorded.
5. Establish records of materials testing and report on testing process conformance or otherwise.
5.1. Records of tests and testing procedures are established and maintained by the organisation in accordance with its quality management obligations.
5.2. Test results and reports are periodically evaluated to maintain integrity of organisational quality standards.
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The American Plains Indians are among the best known of all Native Americans. There Indians played a significant role in shaping the history of the West. Some of the more noteworthy Plains Indians were Big Foot, Black Kettle, Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, and Spotted Tail. Big Foot
Big Foot (? 1825-1890) was also known as Spotted Elk. Born in the Great Plains he eventually became a Minneconjou Teton Sioux chief. He was part of a tribal delegation that traveled to Washington, D.C., and worked to establish school throughout the Sioux Territory. He was one of those massacred at Wounded Knee in December 1890. (Bowman, 1995, 63) Black Kettle
Black Kettle (? 1803-1868) was born near the Black Hills in present-day South Dakota. He was recognized as Southern Cheyenne peace chief for his efforts to bring peace to the region. However, his attempts at accommodation were not successful, and his band was massacred at Sand Creek in 1864. Even though he continued to seek peace, he was killed with the remainder of his tribe in the Wichita Valley of Oklahoma in 1868. Red Cloud
Red Cloud (1822-1909) was born near the Platte River in present-day Nebraska. Because of his intelligence, strength, and bravery, he became the chief of the Oglala Sioux. “Red Cloud’s War” took place between 1865 and 1868. These battles forced the closing of the Bozeman Trail and the signing of the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1868. Sitting Bull
Sitting Bull (? 1831-1890) was born on the Grand River in South Dakota. He was known among the Sioux as a warrior even during his youth. He was bitterly opposed to white encroachment, but made peace in 1868 when the U.S. government guaranteed him a large reservation free of white settlers. When gold was discovered in the Black Hills, he joined the Arapaho to fight the invaders. Spotted Tail
Spotted Tail (? 1833-1881) was born along the White River either in present-day South Dakota or near present-day Laramie, Wyoming. He became the leader of the... | <urn:uuid:668b256a-8299-42dd-bc78-b06f5dfc5b93> | {
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This editor-recommended interactive tutorial from The Physics Classroom discusses why free falling objects fall with an acceleration of 9.8 m/s/s and explains the effect of air resistance of a falling object. It also explores why objects that encounter air resistance ultimately reach a terminal velocity. Students will be engaged by the simple language, informative graphics and interactive widgets. Several animations are linked to from this page.
See Related Materials for a link to an interactive Java simulation that will help students visualize what happens to free falling objects with and without the influence of air resistance.
Metadata instance created
March 28, 2011
by Tom Henderson
July 13, 2012
by Gnana Subramaniam
Last Update when Cataloged:
July 1, 2011
AAAS Benchmark Alignments (2008 Version)
4. The Physical Setting
6-8: 4F/M3a. An unbalanced force acting on an object changes its speed or direction of motion, or both.
9-12: 4F/H8. Any object maintains a constant speed and direction of motion unless an unbalanced outside force acts on it.
4G. Forces of Nature
6-8: 4G/M1. Every object exerts gravitational force on every other object. The force depends on how much mass the objects have and on how far apart they are. The force is hard to detect unless at least one of the objects has a lot of mass.
11. Common Themes
6-8: 11B/M1. Models are often used to think about processes that happen too slowly, too quickly, or on too small a scale to observe directly. They are also used for processes that are too vast, too complex, or too dangerous to study.
6-8: 11B/M5. The usefulness of a model depends on how closely its behavior matches key aspects of what is being modeled. The only way to determine the usefulness of a model is to compare its behavior to the behavior of the real-world object, event, or process being modeled.
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Search and Rescue
the Arctic Council. It aimed for the coordination of the international search and rescue operations.The Agreement on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue (SAR) in the Arctic, hence Arctic Search and Rescue Agreement, was concluded and implemented internationally under the auspices of
It also established the areas of SAR responsibility of each state party to the Agreement. The document states that: "the delimitation of search and rescue regions is not related to and shall not prejudice the delimitation of any boundary between States or their sovereignty, sovereign rights or jurisdiction."
It is the first binding Agreement to reflect the Arctic Region´s increasing importance as a result of its growing accessibility which occurs due to the climate change and decreasing level of the Arctic ice cap.
Following the signature of the Agreement, each Arctic Council member state would undertake the necessary national procedures required for its entry into force. Canada was decided to serve as a Depositary of the Agreement.
It will also be organizing the table top exercise among all search and rescue agencies of the AC member states as a first step toward the implementation.
The mission of the Arctic states coast guard, according to the document, is to protect and save living and non – living resources of marine environment.
Search and rescue includes monitoring marine SAR areas for signals of distress, coordinating the response when the marine distress incident occurs and providing strategically located vessels to support the SAR operations.
The marine search and rescue activities in the Arctic include commercial shipping traffic, tour boat operations, cargo traffic as well as significant over – water aircraft traffic.
It is stressed out in the Agreement that all the vessels might be required to respond a SAR incident. The marine vessels might be required to be supported by aircraft and helicopters.
Current development of the Arctic accessibility might lead to the need for enhanced search and rescue capabilities and environmental protection. Earth observation, modern remote sensing technologies, improvement of commercial and local safeguarding activities in the particular regions is now the main objectives for the Arctic states.
Source: Arctic Search and Rescue Agreement | <urn:uuid:8bdc1c78-fc3f-4c8a-883c-2639d3ca6c7e> | {
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Lung cancer is the most common fatal malignant neoplasm of both men and women. It is usually caused by tobacco smoke. However, at present there is no systematic approach to early diagnosis. The diagnosis of lung cancer is usually made by standard chest roentgenograms and biopsy by bronchoscopy or surgery. Survival rates at 5 years have remained 10% to 15% fo the past 30 years with this conventional approach to diagnosis.
Fifty-one men and women, aged 46 to 81 years (mean age, 64.2 years), with roentgenographically occult cancer were identified in one community hospital by means of sputum cytologic testing. Cancers were diagnosed by means of one or more standard light fiberoptic bronchoscopic procedures with biopsies.
Forty-four squamous cell carcinomas, three adenocarcinomas, two large-cell carcinomas, and two undifferentiated carcinomas were found. Forty-five (86%) were stage 0 or I. Surgical cure was attempted in 27 patients, and there were three actuarial cancer deaths at 5 years and a total of nine deaths. Additionally, 19 patients received attempts at curative radiation therapy for various reasons, which were usually poor pulmonary or cardiac function or advanced age. Of both the 27 patients who underwent surgery and the 19 who were treated with radiation therapy (total, 46), the actuarial results by the life-table method included nine lung cancer deaths in 5 years and 21 deaths from all causes, giving an actuarial survival, including deaths from all causes, of 55%.
Roentgenographically occult lung cancer can be found by sputum cytologic testing followed by fiberoptic bronchoscopy and biopsy at a time when cure is more likely than when it is diagnosed by conventional roentgenographic techniques (ie, 55% survival vs 10% to 15% survival). Sputum cytologic testing should be used as a case-finding tool, particularly in heavy smokers and those with occupational risks. This diagnostic approach to earlier diagnosis and intervention can be successful in a small community hospital.(Arch Intern Med. 1994;154:975-980) | <urn:uuid:b76a507f-650c-4133-951f-296c36223b81> | {
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Fossils are of interest to most everyone, even to those of us slowly becoming fossils.
The easiest place to see fossils in Southern Oregon is in the cliffs along Interstate 5 behind a long line of cement barriers north of the Siskiyou Summit. If you are curious enough to go looking, park safely off the road and walk back about 100 feet behind the barriers. And please don't collect fossils; leave them for others to observe and study.
Some fossils can be seen in fallen rocks, although if you look carefully at the steep cliffs you'll see thin whitish bands in the Hornbrook Formation's greenish sandstone. These thin channels with fossil-rich sands were carved into underlying sandstone during ancient ocean storms. Fossils lie at the base of those channels.
These fossils belong to a "thanotoceonosis," or death assemblage, named after Thanatos, the Greek god of death. Indeed, these once "happy as a clam" organisms were rudely torn from the beach during huge storms, washed out to sea and deposited.
Most fossils fracture when the rock breaks, showing only profiles unless the rock breaks around the shells to reveal familiar clam shapes. You'll find off-white to light brown, spiky-looking fossil clam shells of Pterotrigonia Klamathensis and Calva regina Popenoe that look like today's "butter clam."
However, 90-million-year-old clams aren't good to eat, no matter how long they're steamed. There are coiled snails (16 species), scaphopods (shaped like tiny horns of plenty), rare shark teeth and, if you're lucky, a sea urchin, oyster, starfish or coral.
Some of the pale green sandstone weathers to a brownish cast. In such rock, material forming the fossil is gone, leaving only a mold of the fossil. In some sandstone, Callianasid shrimp ("ghost shrimp") hunkered down in their burrows are preserved. However, it's likely all you'll find are their large claws, similar to an index finger raised in the "We're No. 1" fist seen at modern sporting events.
Rare ammonites (like bumpy, coiled nautiloids), flattened during burial into small "paleo-Frisbee" shapes, are found in gray shale.
The most abundant fossils are microfossils, studied by micropaleontologists (I'll skip the obvious joke about tiny scientists), which formed the base of the oceanic food chain. These easily overlooked fossils are found most commonly in gray shale or mudstone. They're the size of a fat pinhead (the fossils, not the micropaleontologists). Using a magnifier you might see them as roundish gray spots showing subtle ribbing. Don't be discouraged if you can't find any: most dissolve under pressure and truly take a trained eye to find.
Mea culpa: In my last column, I should have wrote that the contact between the Western and High Cascades near Lost Creek Reservoir is found along Highway 62, not 140. Even professors make misteaks.
Jad D'Allura is emeritus professor of the former Southern Oregon University Geology Department. Reach him at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:37d844d1-3d84-4c0b-9052-216c41ad8c6e> | {
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Submitted to: Journal of Food Science
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: May 22, 2007
Publication Date: October 1, 2007
Repository URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1750-3841.2007.00425.x/pdf
Citation: Ishida, B.K., Roberts, J.S., Chapman, M.H., Burri, B.J. 2007. PROCESSING TANGERINE TOMATOES: EFFECTS ON LYCOPENE-ISOMER CONCENTRATION AND PROFILE. Journal of Food Science. Vol.72, Nr.6; C307-C312, 2007. Interpretive Summary: Tangerine tomatoes are an heirloom variety of tomato. They are similar to Beefsteak tomatoes in size and shape, but have a bright orange color. Raw Tangerine tomatoes are an excellent food source of a form of lycopene that is easily absorbed by the human body. Lycopene may help prevent prostate cancer and other degenerative diseases. We describe a method for preserving and canning Tangerine tomatoes. Unfortunately, we found that the form of lycopene found in Tangerine tomatoes is less stable than the form found in red tomatoes. Most (80%) of the absorbable lycopene was destroyed during canning. Most of the loss occurred at the first heating step of food preparation. Even so, canned Tangerine tomatoes appear to be a good source of absorbable lycopene. Therefore, further work should be done to improve food processing methods for Tangerine tomatoes.
Technical Abstract: Because lycopene is a powerful biological antioxidant, its delivery to humans is of major concern. cis-lycopene isomers are more bioavailable than the all-trans isomers and thus more efficiently absorbed. Tangerine tomatoes, whose lycopene isomeric content is almost all tetra-cis, provide a useful food source for comparing cis- and trans-isomer absorption. Tangerine tomatoes were processed into sauce in the Univ. of California, Davis Pilot Plant for subsequent use in a human feeding study described in another publication. Samples were taken at several stages during processing and carotenoids extracted and analyzed for carotenoid-isomer profiles and concentrations. Analyses showed that total lycopene concnetration decreased considerably during the 1st step of processing, which included heating and juicing operation. Processing resulted in a large decrease in tetra-cis lycopene concentration accompanied by increases in trans-and other cis-lycopene isomers. | <urn:uuid:48140434-136c-4e2f-bbac-f7dabf9760b4> | {
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by Ashley Cowie
The first article in this series demonstrated how the builders of Angkor Wat created a vast religious complex to serve a greater purpose than the worship of deities. The religious symbolism associated with mythological and cosmic order is reflected in the orientations of ancient buildings worldwide (e.g. Magli 2015), and Angkor Wat is no exception. Its structure, orientation and alignment is a perfect expression of greater cosmic order, the passage of time, the ever moving rays of the sun and their influence on agricultural. Now we will see how Angkor Wat ‘works’ in the greater landscape.
THE GEODESY OF ANGKOR WAT
According to art-historian Alice Boner, speaking of Khmer temples, “The temple must, in its space-directions, be established in relation to the motion of the heavenly bodies. But in as much as it incorporates in a single synthesis the unequal courses of the sun, the moon and the planets, it also symbolises all recurrent time sequences: the day, the month, the year and the wider cycles marked by the recurrence of a complete cycle of eclipses, when the sun and the moon are readjusted in their original positions, a new cycle of creation begins.”
Among the approved methods/disciplines of modern Archaeaostronomy (Ruggles 2015, Magli 2015) a particular form of sacred geography called geodesy has its basis in a branch of applied mathematics which studies the size and form of the Earth and the location of points upon its surface. In the first two articles we learned how Khmer architects converted sacred/special numbers into building lengths. Within the measurements of the architecture of the central tower at Angkor Wat, geographical information pertaining to its location between the poles and the equator has was recorded.
Eleanor Mannikka of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania is a scholar of Southeast Asian Studies and best-known for her 2002 work, Angkor Wat: Time, Space and Kingship. Mannikka observed that the north-south axis of the central tower’s chamber is 13.43 cubits long and Angkor Wat is located at 13.41 degrees north latitude. This, Mannikka believes, is not an accident and supporting her observation she noted “In the central sanctuary, Vishnu is not only placed at the latitude of Angkor Wat, he is also placed along the axis of the earth.”
The 13.41 cubit ‘latitudinal number’ is also found in the axial measurement of the second gallery, devoted to Brahma, who is situated in the temple so as to represent the north celestial pole. In the following articles we track ancient north-south meridians and learn of their importance within Hindu/Khmer cosmology.
THE ANGKORIAN SOLAR SPECTICLE
In 2016, Professor Giulio Magli of the School of Architecture, Urban Planning and Construction Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy, published a concise paper entitled Archaeoastronomy in the Khmer Heartland. Presenting Google Earth and GIS data he reconstructed the ancient Khmer sky with Stellarium; “investigating the relationships of astronomy with orientation and topography in a systematic fashion, following the methods of modern Archaeoastronomy and strictly keeping at a bay vague and/or esoteric proposals put forward by many authors in the past.”
Through clear example, Professor Magli establishes that Khmer temples were connected architecturally in that they were all oriented to the four cardinal points “a very clear pattern of cardinal orientation and alignment arises”. He noted that “almost all the Angkorian temples are orientated between 89 and 90 degrees east of north, facing the rising equinox sun in March and September.” He argued that the spring equinox is the beginning of the sun’s annual journey “which was significant to 12th-century Khmer people who depended on accurate lunar and solar calendars.”
To align temples accurately to the four cardinal points of the compass, Khmer architects applied the ancient geometrical skills of Vedic rope-measuring specialists. With a wooden staff marking the centre-point of the intended temple, the shadows caused by a gnomon on a circle “the Indian circle” were bisected. Using this method, astronomers and architects reached accuracies to less than .5° suggesting the slight deviations from 90° in the Angkorian temples were deliberate.
Unlike almost all other Khmer temple orientations the central tower at Angkor Wat faces west, a direction most often associated with death and the otherworld. It is generally assumed Suryavarman II intended for the temple to house his tomb, or that worshipers were made to face east towards Vishnu – the solar deity. However, in 1976 Professor Stencel published Astronomy and Cosmology at Angkor Wat in which he proposed a solution for this orientation, and for the .5° deviation in a perfect east-west alignment:
The azimuth of the temple is 270.5° so a person entering Angkor from the west gate walks at a 90.5° angle. “Looking from the west gate towards the temple at dawn at the equinoxes, the sun is seen to rise just above the central tower, “crowning” it almost vertically. The reason is that at the latitude of Angkor the trajectory of the sun is very steep, and therefore a small increase in azimuth leads to a strong increase in height; the “horizon height” of the central tower of Angkor Wat from the western entrance is ~5° and the centre of the sun reaches such an altitude at an azimuth of 90° 40′.”
Supporting Professor Stencel’s observation, the state temples Bakong, Phnom Bakheng and Bayon, all have an azimuth of 89.5° – “exactly” the same as Angkor Wat, but facing east. The alignments are therefore not orientated to the place on the horizon that the sun first appeared, but the builders had accounted for passing time. In the minutes just after sunrise, the structures visually integrated with the sun, so that it became a part of the architecture, a golden crown on the highest point of the temple. Thus, the Khmer temples were symbolically orientated, rather than astronomically. They were aligned to suit artistic tastes rather than to suit calendrical functions.
Watching the sun suspended in the sky above the highest-most point on a temple, just after the equinox sunrise, is a near perfect materialisation of the perceived connection between the temple and the heavens/gods. At this key moment, the sky and temple visually synchronise with the cardinal directions on earth, and most importantly, with the viewer/worshiper.
SACRED GEOGRAPHY OF THE KHMER KINGS
The term sacred geography is greatly overused and grossly misunderstood. Stripped of its pseudo-historical connotations, it refers to the situations, locations and orientations of sacred places, so that cosmological, astronomical, astrological, geodetic, mythological, symbolic and magic/shamanic factors were expressed within their displacement geometry.
The Book of Documents, or Shujing (??) composed between 550 and 200 BC records the methods of Chinese topographers who surveyed landscapes adhering to Taoist mythology and astrology as early as 2000 B.C.E. The Ming dynasty who ruled between 1368 and 1644 AD developed these ancient sacred geographies by undertaking great engineering projects which altered the shapes of rivers, mountain-tops and hills to enhance the movement of chi (flowing male and female energies).
Angkor Wat is located on latitude 13° 26′ N. From this line of latitude the sun’s rising azimuth (angle) on the June and December solstices is 65.5° and 114.5°, respectively. In their 1976 paper Astronomy and Cosmology at Angkor Wat researchers Stencel, Gifford and Moron explained how a key solstice alignment untied the temple at Angkor Wat with the 220 meter high Phnom Bok hill, 14kms to the north east.
Standing at Angkor Wat on the morning of the June solstice observers watched the sun rising from behind Phnom Bok hill.
Phnom Bok hill, is one of “three sacred hills” chosen by Yashovarman I in the 10th century around which he designed his sacred geographies. Yasovarman I was one of the great Angkorian kings of the cult of devaraja or God King – the ancient Cambodian state religion which associated kingship with the Hindu god Shiva. (Coedes, George and Walter F. Vella, (1968). On the summit of Phnom Bok hill is a temple of the same name and these three hill-top shrines held high religious value during the Angkorian rule when they formed part of an “architectural triad“.
Phnom Bok temple was aligned to the equinoxes and the winter and summer solar solstices could be observed from inside the western entrance of the temple, which was also known for the triple sanctuary dedicated to the Trimurti.
Long-distance alignments between sacred sites are generally ignored, or de-bunked, by academics because they hold no heritage, purpose or reason. This alignment however, ticks all three of these boxes. At the end of the 9th century Yasovarman I moved the ancient capital city from Hariharalaya to Yashodharapura, where all of the great and famous religious monuments were built, e.g. Angkor Wat. At the heart of this new landscape he built the Phnom Bok hill-top temple.
The temple on Phnom Bok hill existed for two and a half centuries before Angkor Wat was conceived by King Suryavarman II in the mid 12th century. It is evident that one of his fundamental considerations in locating his temple was to choose a spot where the June solstice sun was observed rising behind Phnom Bok hill, for if he had located Angkor Wat only +/- 1 kilometre north or south, this solar effect effect would not occur. This alignment not only expanded the sacred geographic plan of a previous Khmer king, but it perfectly reflected the core spiritual belief that god (the sun) resided on Mount Meru (Phnom Bok hill.)
Shiva’s divine essence was represented by the linga (or lingam), phallic idols housed in mountain temples like the Phnom Bok temple. Kings were installed in deeply mystical ceremonies controlled by high priests, in which the divine essence of kingship was conferred on the ruler through the linga. Safeguarding a linga became intricately woven with the security and prosperity of the kingdom and the great temple architecture of the Khmer period attests to the importance attached to this belief. (Britannica).
Phnom Bok hill may have been perceived as a powerful male linga, which at sunrise on the June solstice was perceived as inseminating the female waters of creation, in the great square moat surrounding Angkor Wat. Either way, this alignment is a beautiful example of sacred geography in its clearest, academically-safe, rawest form.
When considering Angkor Wat, come beyond the simplistic conclusion that “it was aligned to the sun” and question further the specifics of why and how when it was aligned to the sun. It is more than a functioning ‘calendar in stone’. The builders didn’t align to the extreme positions of the sun on the horizon’, as astronomers would, rather, they aimed to a carefully calculated place in the sky where in the minutes following the equinox sunrise, the suns blazing corona was seen perched atop the central temple and perceived as pumping powerful “creation energy” downwards, first into the temple, then the king, and outwards across the entire Khmer empire.
Albeit Angkor Wat is one of the most written about ancient buildings on our planet, little attention has been given to the underlying alignments which synthesise the temple with the surrounding landscape. In Part 5 we will use the primary solstice alignment between Angkor Wat and Phnom Bok hill-top temple as a tool to reverse engineer the Khmer sacred landscape, a revelatory project never before undertaken.
- Aveni, A. F., Hartung, H. (1988).Archaeoastronomy and dynastic history at Tikal. In Aveni, A. (ed.), New Directions in American Archaeoastronomy, BAR International Series 454, Oxford, pp. 1-11.
- Fletcher, R., Evans, D., Pottier, C, Rachna, C. Angkor Wat: an introduction. Antiquity 89 (2015): 1388–1401
- Kak, S. (1999) The solar numbers in Angkor Wat. Indian Journal of History of Science 34: 117–26..
- Magli, G. (2013) Architecture, Astronomy and Sacred Landscape in Ancient Egypt Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Mannikka, Eleanor (1996) Angkor Wat – Time, Space, and Kingship, University of Hawai’i Press
Copyright 2017 by Ashley Cowie
Presented with permission
Author’s Blog >>
Exploring the world making films, writing books and blogging about lost cultures and kingdoms, ancient crafts and arts, the origins of legends and myths, architecture, symbols, artefacts and treasures. | <urn:uuid:e5486f17-3dc8-479e-8f43-53d68aa0635a> | {
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Adolescent Literacy Glossary
Adequate Yearly Progress, Small Learning Communities, Explicit Instruction do you know what these phrases mean? Find these and other commonly used terms related to reading, literacy, and reading instruction in our glossary.
From the Center for Media Literacy , “Media Literacy is a 21st century approach to education. It provides a framework to access, analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a variety of forms, from print to video to the Internet. Media literacy builds an understanding of the role of media in society as well as essential skills of inquiry and self-expression necessary for citizens of a democracy.”
Metacognition is the process of thinking about thinking. For example, good readers use metacognition before reading when they clarify their purpose for reading and preview the text.
The smallest meaningful unit of language. A morpheme can be one syllable (book) or more than one syllable (seventeen). It can be a whole word or a part of a word such as a prefix or suffix. For example, the word ungrateful contains three morphemes: un, grate, and ful.
The study of how the aspects of language structure are related to the ways words are formed from prefixes, roots, and suffixes (e.g., mis-spell-ing), and how words are related to each other.
Using a word's letter patterns to help determine, in part, the meaning and pronunciation of a word. For example, the morpheme vis in words such as vision and visible is from the Latin root word that means to see; and the ay in stay is pronounced the same in the words gray and play.
A theory that suggests that the traditional notion of intelligence, based on IQ testing, is far too limited. Instead, it proposes eight different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults. These intelligences are: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist. | <urn:uuid:adad97aa-a906-4a9c-abd2-3b26c8c0bd22> | {
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How Does My Computer Work?
type a letter or hit a key on the keyboard, a signal is sent to the Central
Processing Unit (CPU). Each key on the keyboard has its own code
that identifies which key was pressed. This is called ASCII
CPU is located on the main board of the computer, the "mother board".
On the mother board are various daughter boards that perform various functions.
The most common for basic computer use are the controller board, which
controls the floppy and hard drives in your computer. Another necessary
board is the video board that makes it possible to view the output of your
computer. The computer memory is also located on the mother board.
Other boards are also used, depending on how the user has set up their
computer. One of the most common ones today is the sound card that
enables the user to listen to sounds generated by the computer. As
computers become more advanced, more of the daughter board functions are
integrated into the mother board, making for fewer boards in the computer
and for lower prices.
keyboard, mother board, CPU, memory and daughter boards are all interconnected
by what is called a "bus," a group of common electrical connections or
wires on the mother board. On the bus, data and signals are carried
to all the devices such as drives, monitors, sound cards, etc. These
signals and data streams are controlled by the CPU. Since all the
devices are common, to prevent, for example, a signal to the disk drive
from being sent to the monitor, a system of "interrupts" (IRQs) is used.
An interrupt is a timing system designed to prevent the wrong component
from getting the wrong signal. Every certain time interval, a different
interrupt passes data or a signal, and each device takes its turn.
All of this is controlled by the CPU from data via the Built In Operating
System (BIOS) and happens too fast for the user to notice.
you type a command or click your mouse to load software, the CPU accepts
the command through the BIOS on the mother board. The CPU then sends
a command to the disk drive via the controller card to load the software
into memory. Once the software is loaded, it tells the CPU what action
to take in response to your keyboard or mouse commands. The results
of these commands are seen on the monitor as they are generated by the
software as it controls the CPU. The video board changes the signal
to one that the monitor can use.
course, the whole process is more complex and would take more space than
we have here, but perhaps this brief explanation will help you gain a basic
understanding about what happens inside the computer.
to the PC Revolution Main Page
This page is copyright © 1999, C.T.
Evans and Harry Mack
This page designed by: Harry Mack
For information contact [email protected]
Last revision: 2/99 | <urn:uuid:958b96c2-bf2e-47e9-9ac5-d1d13c19c2ba> | {
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UNDATED (AP) - Just four years ago, the U.S. racked up more than 1,800 tornadoes during the course of the year. So far this year, there have been nearly 1,200.
While that number is likely to shrink when duplicate sightings are resolved, this year's twisters have been especially strong, killing 110 people so far.
For instance, last weekend's tornado in Parkersburg, Iowa, was an EF-5 storm, the most powerful on the scale, with winds above 200 miles an hour.
And, more than 20 tornadoes this year have been at the top end of the new Enhanced Fujita scale, rating a three or a four on the scale of one-to-five.
But why so many so early?
Experts can't say exactly, but if the number of storms continues at this pace, a new record will be set by year's end.
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Advent Devotion 9
Some time ago, I saw a friend from childhood. Our parents had been best friends. Our families spent lots of time together when we were children. When I saw my friend, as an adult, we were talking about our parents, who they were and what they did. We both agreed that what we and our siblings were doing paled in comparison. She referred to our parents as tall trees. “They were tall trees,” she said. We felt more like scrub shrubs.
Tall trees. This image comes up in the verses that were read from Isaiah in church on Sunday. “They will be known as trees of integrity, planted by Yahweh to display God’s glory.” Trees of integrity. What kind of image is this for people favored by God?
I think this is a very good image, especially considering the writer of the passage didn’t even know all that we know about trees today. But to call those who display God’s glory “trees of integrity” is actually quite fitting, even if it is likening a person to a plant. Think of all that trees do and provide. They provide shelter to people and animals. Their wood can be used to construct shelter and many other things. Trees provide homes to many creatures: bugs, beetles, bats, birds, apes, snakes, lizards, sloths, squirrels, and many other animals. What a welcoming, diverse environment trees provide!
Trees provide shade and comfort. They bear fruit, seeds, nuts, and berries which are a food source to many animals including humans. An apple, anyone? Trees provide broken branches which decompose and enrich the soil. Their roots hold the dirt in place and help to prevent erosion.
There are also things trees do that the people of the Isaiah’s day could not have known. Trees consume carbon dioxide and produce oxygen enabling animals to live on earth. Trees affect weather patterns and temperature and help to reduce global warming. Trees communicate with each other passing on helpful information for their survival. Whoever penned the line “trees of integrity,” in Hebrew, could never have known these important properties of trees.
The writer of Isaiah did know that trees provide beauty to the world. Beauty perhaps only appreciated by the human species.
“They will be known as trees of integrity.” Who are “they”? Who are those who are associated with such lofty function and importance? Those who are made poor, those with broken hearts, those who are captive, those in debt, those who are mourning. People who are suffering, weak, and disadvantaged. These are the people who are referred to as trees of integrity. These are the people chosen by God to display God’s glory.
This Advent season, may we spiritually prepare ourselves to be numbered in their ranks and to take our place as “trees of integrity” planted to display Divine glory.
Shelter, food, protection, community, beauty. All of these things are vital to flourishing life. May we offer these things to one another, to the human family, and to Creation. Amen. | <urn:uuid:87376cf3-6613-4095-a5a7-0f9da426c21c> | {
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(Medical Xpress)—Wake Forest University's Sean Hannah and a team of researchers have found measuring activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain can help assess that person's potential for leadership –which could have a big impact on how future leaders are tested and trained.
"This study represents a fusion of the leadership and neuroscience fields, and this fusion can revolutionize approaches to assessing and developing leaders," says Hannah, the Tylee Wilson Chair in business ethics and professor of management at the Wake Forest University School of Business. Hannah is lead author of the paper in the May 2013 Journal of Applied Psychology titled, "The Psychological and Neurological Bases of Leader Self-Complexity and Effects on Adaptive Decision-Making."
Hannah and four colleagues tested 103 young military leaders between the ranks of officer cadet and major at a U.S. Army base on the east coast. They administered psychological exams to assess the complexity of leaders' identities, and neurological exams to assess the complexity of soldiers' brain activity. For the brain tests, the researchers attached quantitative electroencephalogram (qEEG) electrodes to 19 areas of the soldier's scalp.
Hannah and his fellow researchers wanted to know if great leaders had more complex brains – measured by the electrodes which reported which parts of the brain were firing together at the same time. A low complex brain shows more areas of the brain operating at the same time at the same electrical amplitude and frequency – which suggests those areas converge to process the same task leaving fewer brain resources for other tasks and processes. It's a process called "phase lock."
But in high complex brains, the activity patterns are much more different and varied – which suggests more of the brains resources are available at any one time to handle other situations or tasks.
"Think of it as a single core versus a multicore computer's central processing unit (CPU)," Hannah says. "A multicore CPU can multitask because one core can process a task while the other CPU cores remain free to process new tasks. More complex brains are also more efficient in locking together only the brain resources needed to process a task and then efficiently releasing them when no longer needed."
The study showed the high complex brains of the great leaders had a different "landscape." The scans showed more differentiated activation patterns in the frontal and prefrontal lobes of leaders who demonstrated greater decisiveness, adaptive thinking and positive action orientation in the experiment.
"Further, individuals who have developed richer and more elaborate self-concepts as leaders were found to be more complex and adaptable," Hannah says. "These findings have important implications for identifying and developing leaders who can lead effectively in today's changing, dynamic, and often volatile organizational contexts."
The researcher team suggests that once they validate neurological profiles of leaders with high complex brains, they will be able to use established techniques like neuro-feedback to enhance these leadership skills in others. Neuro-feedback has been successfully used with elite athletes, concert musicians and financial traders in their training. These profiles can also be used to assess leaders and track their development over time.
These findings have relevance to the WFU Schools of Business' new student development framework, which focuses on developing practical wisdom, strategic thinking and critical thinking skills, along with the ability to embrace complexity and ambiguity.
Hannah's co-authors include Pierre Balthazard, dean of the School of Business at Saint Bonaventure University; David A. Waldman, professor of business at Arizona State University; Peter L. Jennings, of the Center for the Army Profession and Ethic at West Point; and Robert W. Thatcher of the University of South Florida.
This research team is at the forefront of applying neuroscience to study effective leadership. The team previously published a 2012 paper in the Leadership Quarterly, which identified unique brain functioning in leaders who are seen by their followers as highly inspirational and charismatic.
Explore further: Adaptable leaders may have best brains for the job, study finds | <urn:uuid:e93c3da6-9646-4d43-a20f-9e1f790c837e> | {
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Black: The [Absence of] Color
Is black a color? The official definition of black is the absence of color, but the question really isn’t that simple. Think of the little black dress or black tie worn on special occasions. Black lace is sexy and seductive; black sackcloth is for mourning. If the black sheep of the family wants to join an exclusive club s/he might well be blackballed. Black ops are secret military operations; black magic is practiced by evil witches.
Here is a small samping of the many black animals to be found: horse, Javanese Ayam Cemani chicken, swan, butterfly, jaguar, zebras.
- BLACKBALL: Vote against; deny membership
- BLACK OPS: Covert operation
- BLACK MAGIC: Dark or evil magic
- BLACK HOLE: Empty [outer] space
- BLACK COMEDY: The humor found in dark topics
- BLACKMAIL: Extort money to keep secrets
- BLACK BELT: Expert status in martial arts
- BLACK-HEARTED: Evil
- BLACK SHEEP: Odd person out (often: disreputable)
Tasty black foods: licorice, black tagliatelle pasta, caviar, blackberries, truffles, mussels, garlic, olives, grapes.
While black flowers are not common there are a few, although technically they are very deep purple. Shown here: taca (aka bat flowerO, rose, and iris.
Naturally-occurring black gems and minerals are mysterious and often breathtakingly beautiful. Here are a few examples. I confess that I had to add a couple of less showy examples that I really like: a chunk of black lava and a small grouping of black rocks from my favorite San Diego beach.
Yellow: The Color | <urn:uuid:908f6b8d-3cb9-427a-8a13-dc86ffae258b> | {
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(NaturalNews) There are 14 billion hamburgers consumed each year in the United States alone. The people who eat those burgers, though, have little knowledge of what's actually in them. Current USDA regulations, for example, openly allow beef contaminated with E. coli to be repackaged, cooked and sold as ready-to-eat hamburgers.
This simple fact would shock most consumers if they knew about it. People assume that beef found to be contaminated with E. coli must be thrown out or destroyed (or even recalled), but in reality, it's often just pressed into hamburger patties, cooked, and sold to consumers. This practice is openly endorsed by the USDA.
But E. coli may not be the worst thing in your burger: USDA regulations also allow chicken feces to be used as feed for cows, meaning your hamburger beef may be made of second-hand chicken poop, recycled through the stomachs of cows.
Chicken poop in your burgers?
I remember writing about this two years ago. People sent accusatory hate mails to NaturalNews, saying things like, "Stop making things up and scaring people!" Few people believed that chicken feces was being widely used as cattle feed.
According to the FDA, farmers feed their cattle anywhere from 1 million to 2 million tons of chicken feces each year. This cross-species crap-as-food practice worries critics who are concerned it may lead to increased risk of mad cow disease contaminating beef products. So they want to ban the practice and disallow the feeding of chicken litter to cows.
Believe it or not, McDonald's has joined the fight seeking to ban the practice, saying "We do not condone the feeding of poultry litter to cattle." Apparently, even they don't want their customers looking at a Big Mac and thinking, "Wow, this is made out of second-hand chicken crap."
CSPI and the Consumers Union have also joined the fight, petitioning the FDA to ban the practice.
Now, you might wonder how chicken feces could pose a mad cow infection risk to cows. And if you're not already grossed out by what you've read so far, you will be when you read the answer to this question: It's because chickens are fed ground up parts of other animals such as cows, sheep and other animals. Some of that chicken feed spills out and gets swept up as chicken litter, then fed to cows.
So now we have a bizarre experiment in animal feed where dead cows, sheep and other animals are fed to chickens, and then chicken feed spills onto the floor where, combined with chicken poop, it gets swept up and fed to cows. Some of those cows, in turn, may eventually be ground up and fed back to the chickens.
Do you see how this might be a problem?
Do not feed animals to each other
First off, in the real world cows are vegetarians. They don't eat other cows, or chickens, or poop from any creature. Chickens don't eat cows in the real world, either. If given free range, they live primarily on a diet of bugs and weeds.
But through the magic of horrific factory food production practices in the USA, dead cows are fed to chickens, and chicken poop is fed to cows. This is precisely how mad cow disease could contaminate this unnatural food cycle and end up contaminating U.S. cattle with mad cow prions.
Some say this has already happened, and it's only a matter of time before mad cow disease starts appearing in the U.S. population. It takes approximately 5 - 7 years after eating an infected burger for mad cow disease to destroy the brain of a consumer, and cooking a burger does not destroy the mad cow disease prions. That means even burgers that are fully cooked and handled according to federal safety standards can infect consumers with mad cow disease, causing their brains to turn to mush within 7 years.
The beef industry doesn't see a problem with any of this. And that's why this industry deserves what's coming: A massive culling of cattle and a complete economic wipeout of cattle ranchers one day after mad cow disease is revealed in U.S. cattle herds. Rather than trying to protect the integrity of their cows, the U.S. beef industry chooses to pretend that there's nothing wrong with practice of feeding corpses to chickens, and feces to cows. Is there anything too gross, inhumane or horrific for the beef industry to stomach? Seems not.
Remember, too, that the USDA has banned farmers from testing their own cattle for mad cow disease. So instead of allowing cattle ranchers to protect the safety of their herds, the USDA has a policy of covering their eyes and pretending not to see the very real risks that exist. When it comes to infectious disease, this is a sure recipe for disaster.
The perfect storm for mass infections
It all adds up to a "perfect storm" for the mass infection of the beef-eating population with mad cow disease. And remember: Cooking meat does not destroy prions, so if the beef supply becomes contaminated with mad cow disease, it's only a matter of time before humans start to be stricken with the disease.
That takes 5-7 years, as I mentioned previously. It's important to note because it means there could be a five-year gap between the time mad cow disease is present in the beef supply and the time health authorities start to notice a problem. But by that time, most of the population will have already eaten infected beef, and it will be too late to stop the mass human deaths sure to follow.
Dying from mad cow disease isn't pretty, painless or quick. It's ugly. Your brain cells start to turn to mush, slowly shutting down cognitive function little by little like some strange, aggressive form of Alzheimer's disease. First you lose concentration ability, then your speech goes, and eventually all brain function stops altogether. It's a horrifying way to waste away.
Is the risk of that really worth eating burgers?
Remember: Right now, the practice of feeding chicken feces to cow herds continues. So there is a risk of mad cow disease infection in U.S. beef right now. Very little testing is currently being conducted for mad cow disease, meaning an infection could very easily go undetected for years. Meanwhile, the average hamburger contains beef parts from as many as 1,000 different cows.
Do the math. Unless cattle feeding practices are significantly reformed, eating beef products of any kind -- hot dogs, hamburgers, steaks -- is like playing Russian Roulette with your brain cells.
In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.
With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource now featuring over 10 million scientific studies. | <urn:uuid:8dceb5ae-4325-4965-83e8-92f5b9eb6dd6> | {
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How do motion-sensing video game controllers (like DEC 18 2006
How do motion-sensing video game controllers (like the Wii remote) work? "The accelerometers used in the Nintendo controller are thinner than a penny, small enough to fit twelve on a postage stamp, and sell for under $6 a piece. They can accurately measure forces more than three times stronger than the pull of gravity in three directions - up and down, side to side, and forward and back."
Update: The folks at Spark Fun Electronics took the Wii remote apart to see how it worked. (thx, david) | <urn:uuid:04ef0b92-2e53-404b-ab39-737c11372d06> | {
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|Society & Animals Journal of Human-Animal Studies |
Volume 1, Number 1
The Symbolic Role of Animals in the Plains Indian Sun Dance
Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence 1
For many tribes of Plains Indians whose buffalo-hunting culture flowered during the 18th and 19th centuries, the sun dance was the major communal religious ceremony. Although details of the event differed in various groups, certain elements were common to most tribal traditions. Generally, the annual ceremony was held in late spring or early summer when people from different bands gathered together again following the dispersal that customarily took place in winter. The sun dance, a ritual of sacrifice performed by virtually all of the High Plains peoples, has been described among the Arapaho, Arikara, Assiniboin, Bannock, Blackfeet, Blood, Cheyenne, Plains Cree, Crow, Gros Ventre, Hidatsa, Kiowa, Mandans, Ojibway, Omaha, Ponca, Sarsi, Shoshone, Sioux (Dakota), and Ute (Spier, 1921, p. 459; Liberty, 1980, pp. 165-66). Today many of these tribes still carry out the sun dance, sometimes in altered form. The overall significance of the sun dance involves renewal the spiritual renewal of participants and their relatives as well as the renewal of the living earth and all its components. In its broadest aspects, kinships within both the social and natural realms are reaffirmed. This regenerative theme is evidenced by the Cheyenne, for example, through naming the structure in which the ritual takes place the New-Life-Lodge. This term expresses the idea that the sun dance is supposed to "re-create, to re-form, to reanimate the earth, vegetation, [and] animal life" and hence is a "ceremony of rebirth or renaissance" (Dorsey, 1905a, p. 57).
Specific reasons for participation vary among individuals and tribes. Motivations for the sacrifice include thankfulness for blessings received, the fulfillment of a vow previously made in return for the beneficial outcome of a certain crisis, and the desire to insure the safety of a person in the armed forces or to obtain a cure for a sick relative. Less specifically, the ordeal may be undertaken to promote the general welfare of the dancers people. Historically, Crows held the dance to seek aid in obtaining vengeance for kin killed in warfare (Lowie, 1935, p. 297). Some tribal traditions include the transfer of sacred medicine bundles in the context of the ceremony.
Generally, each sun dance has a sponsor or pledger, usually the main dancer, who bears the expenses of the ceremony. The event ordinarily involves about a week or more of activity consisting of an early private period, during which preparations are made and instruction and prayer take place, followed by the public phase of dancing. Construction of the sun dance lodge is accompanied by complex rituals in which a special tree is cut for use as a center pole, with the dance enclosure erected around it. The entrance faces east, and in some tribes sunrise ceremonies mark each days dawn during the dance. Inside, an altar is constructed, usually featuring a decorated buffalo skull. Dancers fast and abstain from drinking during the three or four days of dancing. While special songs are chanted by drummers near the lodge entrance, each participant moves rhythmically back and forth from the periphery of the lodge to the center pole. Dancers continuously blow on eagle- bone whistles, fixing their eyes on the crotch in the center pole that is typically known as the Thunderbirds Nest or eagles nest. Periods of rest alternate with intervals of dancing. At the end of the sun dance, purification rites are held and the participants may drink water and break their fast. The lodge is then abandoned, its components remaining briefly as a reminder of the ceremony before returning to the elements.
In former times, voluntary torture was part of the climax of the sun dance in certain tribes such as the Sioux and Cheyenne. In those cases, the dancers were pierced through the breast or shoulder muscles by skewers which were tied to the center pole, and they danced by pulling back until their flesh tore away. Sometimes the thongs inserted in the sufferers bodies were attached to a varying number of buffalo skulls rather than to the center pole (Spier, 1921, pp. 474-75; Walker, 1917, pp. 116-19; Laubin, 1977, pp. 291- 92).
Sun dance participants strive to obtain supernatural aid and personal power through their sacrifice which will not only assure the accomplishment of desired outcomes but which will bring them a richer and more meaningful life as a member of their society. The sacred ritual reaffirms tribal membership and cultural identity and ensures that the people will prosper for another year. Following the sun dance, there is a renewed feeling of social harmony. And because of a world view that includes nature and all living beings within the realm of kinship, that sense of harmony extends beyond human relationships to include the entire creation. As one contemporary native American explains, the sun dance "is the ritual reenactment of the relationship the Plains people see between consecration of the human spirit and Wakan Tanka [God] as manifested as Sun, or Light, and Life-Bestower. Through purification, participation, sacrifice, and supplication, the participants act as instruments or transmitters of increased power and wholeness . . . from Wakan Tanka." The purpose of the ceremony is "to integrate: to fuse the individual with his or her fellows, the community of people with that of the other kingdoms, and this larger communal group with the worlds beyond this one. . . The person sheds the isolated, individual personality and is restored to conscious harmony with the universe." The community "is the bedrock of tribal life" and it "necessarily includes all beings that inhabit the tribe's universe" (Allen, 1986, pp. 61-63).
Although many in-depth studies of the sun dance have been made by anthropologists, the inclusion of symbolic animals in the ceremony has received only passing mention. I first became interested in the role of animals in the ritual when attending a Crow Indian sun dance during my field research on the Crow Reservation in June 1980. During that ceremony, everyone in attendance was requested not to kill any animals or birds on or near the grounds where the sun lodge had been erected for the duration of the sun dance. This prohibition was part of the effort to maintain a sense of harmony between people and nature essential to the promotion of healing and regeneration of life that is the central focus of the ceremony.
Integration with the rest of creation is expressed throughout the sun dance by symbolic objects that represent attributes of various animal kin. For example, Sioux participants may wear the skins of rabbits on their arms and legs, for "the rabbit represents humility, because he is quiet and soft and not self-asserting a quality we must all possess when we go to the center of the world" (Brown, 1967, p. 85). The wearing of strips of rabbit fur by the Cheyennes who build the sun dance lodge may refer back to the time when the tribe lived in the north and subsisted chiefly on rabbits (Grinnell, 1923, vol. 2, p. 218). The Arapaho sun dance involves a rabbit-tip), whose name originated from the myth in which rabbits conducted the secret ceremonies of the sun dance lodge. Those who still perform the rites are called Rabbit-men (Dorsey, 1903, p. 37). Weasel and otter hides, because they come from "tough little animals", are linked to the Crow sun dance (Vogel, 1984, p. 253), probably conferring endurance. For the Lakota, these two animals are especially "wakan"' meaning akin to sacred (Walker, 1980, pp. 101, 168).
The eagle, a highly important sacred animal in Plains belief, plays a major role in the sun dance. Most obviously, the bird partakes of the ritual by having his nest represented at the fork of the lodge. In Arapaho mythology, this nest symbolizes the thunderbird, or eagle, who built his nest in a cottonwood tree. "Just as [these] birds fly about overlooking the earth, so does the Father. He is in the form of a bird" (Dorsey, 1903, p. 114). Some tribes, notably the Crow and Shoshone, fasten an actual mounted golden eagle to the rafter over the entrance or near the nest. Considered "chief of all the creatures of the air," and "powerful in battle," the bird acts as "guardian protecting the people from evil." The eagle is admired for courage, swiftness, and strength. Sometimes identified as the thunderbird, he is distinguished by his extraordinarily high flight, bringing him nearer to the sun and in closer proximity to the Great Mystery than any other creature (Laubin, 1977,pp.279,315;Grinnell,1923,vol. 1, p. 188). "Eagle is the primary servant of the Sun and in his spiritual manifestation takes the form of Thunderbird." Eagle is a bearer of messages from spirit to man, and from man to spirit" (Vogel, 1984, pp. 307-308). Thus, in the sun dance the eagle exerts his power as a facilitator of communication between people and the supernatural forces. Crows shed light on the eagle's symbolic role in the sun dance ritual, explaining: "Thunderbird in his earthly manifestation of eagle epitomizes the dynamism of thunder and lightning. He is the awakener of earth and of its greening; he is the servant of the Sun, the giver of heat and light." The eagle is associated with success, for "prosperity and wealth follow the eagle, who may bestow the gift of curing" (Vogel, 1984, p. 312). Eagles "have sharp eyes and know everything" (Brown, 1967, p. 77). As expressed by a contemporary Sioux medicine man, "in an eagle there is all the wisdom of the world" (Lame Deer and Erdoes, 1972, p. 136).
A Crow who is dancing intensely may focus on the eagle at the top of the pole. The eagle may "finally move and show itself to the person," and "may begin to dance alongside one as he 'charges' and dances back from the center pole." The eagle may then accompany that person in a vision, dancing beside him and instructing him about the medicine acquired through the vision. On the second day of the dance, a participant may see the eagle soaring above the lodge. "The eagle is alive with a beauty and strength unmatched anywhere, having been endowed with keen eyesight as well as foresight." The bird carries the Creator's messages and symbolizes forthcoming blessings (Frey, 1987, pp. 108-109, 118). In unison, each dancer constantly blows upon a whistle fashioned from an eagle's wing bone, making sounds like the cry of an eagle, keeping time with the drum. This activity symbolizes the force of prayers which rise high like eagles to reach the Great Mystery. According to Black Elk, the sound made by the whistle "is the voice of the Spotted Eagle; our Grandfather, Wakan-Tanka, always hears this, for ... it is really His own voice" (Brown, 1967, p. 71). The whistle is painted with colored dots and lines to represent the remarkable perception of the eagle. The fluffy down feather at the end of the whistle is blown back and forth, representing breath and life (Mails, 1972, pp. 165, 167; Laubin, 1977, p. 279). The plume is "taken from the breast of the eagle, for this is the place which is nearest to the heart and center of the sacred bird" (Brown, 1967, p. 71). Under certain conditions, when a dancer suffers greatly from thirst, water may come to the eagle-bone whistle (Frey, 1987, p. 140).
Because of the eagle's special capacities, his feathers have supernatural and curative functions. An observer recorded that once when the thirst of some Arapaho dancers became intense, a participant used an eagle feather to bring a refreshing rain (Shimkin, 1953, pp. 449-50). During the sun dance, a medicine man may direct his eagle-feather fan toward the bodies of people who seek healing. The feathers are first touched to the center pole and then to the patient, transmitting power from the pole to the sufferer. The sun dance leader brushes away illness with a feather. Fanning motions directed to the body may withdraw and whip away causes of sickness. Feathers are held upward toward the sky to reach the eagle so that the bird may bear the prayers for curing upward to the Creator (Frey, 1987, p. 134; Shimkin, 1953, p. 448; Voget, 1984, p. 240).
It is the buffalo, however, as the very source of life for the Plains tribes, who occupies the central role in the sun dance. From that animal, Plains people once derived not only meat for sustenance, but skins for tipis, fur for robes, and virtually all materials for the tools and objects necessary for everyday living. Crows still commemorate the buffalo's fulfillment of their needs in former times. "Even today, Crows view the buffalo as a provider of good things for living. 'It represents plenty to eat, plenty to wear, and a peaceful wholesome life.'" The buffalo symbolizes the "necessities without which life would be hazardous and wearisome," and "also bestows great curing powers." In the contemporary sun dance, it still "radiates power" (Vogel, 1984, pp. 307, 312).
Proximity of buffalo herds as influenced by their migrations indeed determined the time and locality chosen for the great ceremonial (Roe, 1970, p. 664). The preeminent status of the buffalo is illustrated by the fact that in certain tribes, the origin of the sun dance is traced to the buffalo. The inception of the ceremonial involves a visionary encounter between a person and a buffalo emissary with supernatural power. Ute and Shoshone myths, for example, reveal that the buffalo helped the individual who began the tradition, giving him instructions as to how to carry out the dance and revealing the benefits that would follow from proper performance of the ritual (Jorgensen, 1972, p. 26). For the Lakota, it was a deity in the form of a White Buffalo who brought the Sacred Pipe through which all ceremonies and rituals are empowered (Allen, 1986, p. 16). The Cheyenne sun dance was taught by the Creator to a medicine man, later known as Erect-Horns because of the buffalo horn cap he wore. He journeyed to a high peak in the company of a woman and when the couple came forth from the mountain to return home, "the whole earth seemed to become new, and there came forth buffalo that followed them" (Dorsey, 1905, p. 48).
Themes relating to the buffalo consistently occur throughout the sun dance. Historically, various ceremonies relating to the animal have taken place as a preliminary to the climactic dancing. A sacred song of the Oglala Sioux that followed certain rituals pertaining to the buffalo skull expresses the participants' desire for blessings and its association with the buffalo's power:
As the Cheyenne sun dance progresses, buffalo songs change in tempo. "The rattle beat becomes slow and ponderous, as if a great herd of buffalo was moving across the prairie." A Cheyenne who was present the first time these buffalo songs were sung in the sun dance lodge related that "as they were chanted, a herd of buffalo bulls ran over the hill and down into the camp" (Powell, 1969, vol. 2, p. 658).
Buffalo ceremonies, buffalo dances, and feasts of buffalo flesh were sometimes included as preliminaries to prayers that the Great Mystery would "heed the words of the Buffalo which He will speak that night in commendation of the people." A Sioux shaman dedicated food to "the God of generosity, the Buffalo God." In buffalo dances, participants "imitate the pawing of a buffalo bull in rage or defiance and ... manifest a defiant bravery of the dancers equal to that of the buffalo bull." While dancing, they "gaze continually at the ornamented buffalo head." Those who complete "four periods of this dance become buffalo men" (Walker, 1917, pp. 104, 115). After the tree to be used as the center pole had been chosen, Sioux Buffalo Cult members carried out a ceremony to honor the buffalo and bring his spirit to the dance (Laubin, 1977, p. 279).
Flesh of the animal was utilized in various ways. Prior to inserting the center pole into the ground, the Sioux placed buffalo fat into the hole. Before the dancing began, the sacred sun dance pipe was filled and sealed with fat from a buffalo's heart. A buckskin bag containing a piece of buffalo hump, the choicest of all parts, was suspended from the bundle of branches above the pole. A feast of buffalo flesh often followed the termination of the sun dance. Buffalo tongues, as "the most sacred part of the most sacred animal"' were an important feature of the sun dance in many tribes. In preparation for the Blackfoot sun dance, one-hundred tongues were gathered and prepared according to proscribed rituals and consumed as sacramental food during the ceremony. The tongues were "prayed and sung over" and were consecrated to the sun. A feast of buffalo tongues preceded the onset of the dancers fasting among the Lakota and Blackfoot (Laubin, 1977, pp. 278, 282, 283; Frey, 1987, p. 121; Melody, 1976; Harrod, 1987, p. 125; Wissler, 1918, pp. 235-39; McClintock, 1910, p. 305).
Formerly the Hidatsas, Arikaras, and Shoshones prepared the head of a buffalo killed in a special hunt so that it looked alive during the sun dance. Today the Shoshones and Crows use a mounted head that is kept from year to year for that purpose. The stuffed buffalo head is tied near the fork of the center pole during the ceremony. Representing the great herds upon which the tribes once depended, it remains as a symbol of abundance (Frey, 1987, p. 105; Laubin, 1977, pp. 313-14). In earlier times, some form of a buffalo calf or its hide was placed at the top of the center pole. The initiator of a Sisseton Sioux sun dance would prepare a life-like stuffed calf or yearling for this purpose which in later years was replaced by a small rawhide buffalo effigy (Skinner, 1919:383). While placing the skin of a young buffalo at the top of the tree, the Oglala pledger would say
It is from this buffalo person that our people live; he gives to us our homes, our clothing, our food, everything we need. O buffalo calf, I now give to you a sacred place upon the tip of the tree. This tree will hold you in his hand and will raise you up to Wakan-Tanka. Behold what I am about to do! Through this, all things that move and fly upon the earth and in the heavens will be happy! (Brown, 1967, pp. 78-79)
In some tribal sun dances, a pair of rawhide effigies, one in the shape of a buffalo and one in the shape of a man, were suspended from the center pole under its fork. The Oglala offered these figures to the six directions with a prayer stating that the buffalo which had been provided is "the chief of all the four-leggeds upon our sacred Mother; from him the people live, and with him they walk the sacred path. Behold, too, this two-legged, who represents all the people.,' Wakan-Tanka was asked to bestow upon "these two chiefs ... all the favours that they ask for" (Brown, 1967, p. 79). In the ceremony the buffalo represents the people and the universe and should always be treated with respect, for was he not here before the two-legged peoples, and is he not generous in that he gives us our homes and our food? The buffalo is wise in many things, and, thus, we should learn from him and should always be as a relative with him. (Brown, 1967, p. 72)
Charles Eastman, a Sioux, states that the man was painted red and the buffalo black. "The paint indicated that the man who was about to give thanks publicly had been potentially dead, but was allowed to live by the mysterious favor and interference of the Giver of Life. The buffalo hung opposite the image of his own body in death, because it was the support of his physical self' (1970, pp. 59-60). In J. R. Walker's account, both the buffalo bull and the man were painted black and were depicted with exaggerated genitals. Incantations were made to impart potency to the figures (1917, p. 108). Formerly, as a preliminary to the Teton Sioux sun dance, warriors shot at the rawhide effigies to represent "the overcoming of enemies and the success of many buffalo hunts" (Laubin, 1977, p. 283).
Various parts and products of the buffalo are incorporated into the sun dance. The officiating Sioux priest wore buffalo horns upon his head. He might attach bands of buffalo skin with loosening hair to his ankles and wrists, and his robe came from a buffalo who was shedding. Special power was attributed to the shed hair of the all- important animal (Laubin, 1977, p. 286). The thongs used by the Sioux in the self-torture ritual were made of buffalo rawhide (Brown, 1967, p. 95). Among the Cheyenne "in earlier times, the buffalo rawhide was used as the drum throughout the ceremonies, thus continuing the principle that all essential sacred items in the sun dance are related to the buffalo" (Powell, 1969, vol. 2, p. 660). At a certain point in the Lakota ritual, a dried buffalo penis was placed against the center pole. This was done to "give increased virility to the dancers," so "they could get more children" (Walker, 1917, p. 110; 1980, p. 36). The center pole is viewed as a conductor of life, and therefore leaning the buffalo phallus against it confirms the pole's association with fertility and reinforces the symbolic meaning of the ceremony as a celebration of the generative power of the sun. The cottonwood pole, as "the conduit of life for the dancers and for the people" could be "understood to be the sun's phallus" (Melody, 1976, pp. 454-55). A rattle made of buffalo scrotum once played a role in the Shoshone sun dance ritual (Shimkin, 1953, p. 444). Sioux dancers undergoing the self-torture phase of the ceremony were given buffalo tails for use as fly brushes and fans (Laubin, 1977, p. 291).
Ritual burning of buffalo chips was also practiced. After the site for the sun dance lodge had been chosen, buffalo chips were lighted on the sacred spot where the holy tree was to be erected (Laubin, 1977, p. 280). Lakota belief held that smoke from the buffalo chips was "an incense to propitiate the Buffalo God." Pieces of dry buffalo excrement "have a wakanla, or spirit-like of themselves" and this spirit-like is released by burning, as the smoke, and this ascended to the Buffalo God as an intermediary." Prior to the dancing, a fire of buffalo chips on the altar (with sweetgrass incense) insures that "all will be harmonized with the potency of the Buffalo God that should prevail during the ceremony" (Walker, 1980, p. 37; 1917, pp. 101, 113-14).
Even objects that are sacred in themselves are molded into the image of the buffalo. On the second day of dancing, Sioux participants sometimes added to the wreathes of sage they wore on their heads "two eagle primary feathers inserted straight up in the wreathes, one on each side of the head." These looked "much like long horns, symbolizing the plenty of Buffaloes and buffalo power" (Laubin, 1977, p. 289). Horns made from the sacred sage adorned the head of a dancer who had vowed to drag four buffalo skulls, and the form of the buffalo was worn on his chest (Brown, 1967, p. 93).
The most dramatic representation of the buffalo in the sun dance is the animal's skull. Painted and decorated in various symbolic ways and resting on a bed of sage generally facing toward the east, it becomes a sacred altar during the ceremony. The Oglala directed prayers to Wakan-Tanka indicating the chief of all the four-leggeds is tatanka, the buffalo. Behold his dried skull here; by this we know that we, too, shall become skull and bones, and thus, together we shall all walk the sacred path back to Wakan-Tanka. Here on earth we live together with the buffalo, and we are grateful to him, for it is he who gives us our food, and who makes the people happy. For this reason I now give grass to our relative the buffalo. (Brown, 1967, p. 90) Offerings were then presented: balls of sacred sage were placed in the eye sockets, a bag of tobacco was tied on to one hoary, and a piece of deer hide attached to the other horn to represent a robe for the buffalo. The skull was painted with red lines, signifying "You, O buffalo, are the earth!" (Brown, 1967, pp. 90-91). Oglala belief held that the Buffalo God, or Relative God, resided in the skull (Walker, 1917, pp. 130-31).
Similarly, the Cheyenne stuffed the eyes and nasal cavity of the buffalo skull with grass which "represents the earth's vegetation, especially that which grows near the water. Its use continues the prayer that the plants, trees, and grasses will be plentiful, in order to supply the needs of both men and animals" (Powell, 1969, vol. 2, p. 636). Symbols were applied to the skull indicating the road to the spirit world, day and night, and the sun and moon. Offerings were made to the skull along with prayers for favor and protection (Dorsey, 1905a, pp. 96-97, 113-14). The Arapaho, too, saw the buffalo skull on the sun dance altar as "the dwelling-place, during the ceremony, of Man-Above." The "various black and red dots on the skull indicate prayers, while the grass knobs placed in the eye- sockets and in the nasal cavities were said to indicate the times when the Indians used grass garments, before the appearance of the buffalo." The grass balls also represent a deity who owns the rivers and creeks. His body is represented by the water grass, or flat grass, and when these balls of grass are inserted, "the buffalo is then complete, ie., the life is restored," for "the animal lives on grass" (Dorsey, 1903, pp. 118-19).
The pipe which was to be used in the Sioux sun dance was first placed upon the buffalo skull, "being careful to have its stem point toward the east." The prayer to Wakan-Tanka which followed linked the pipe with the powerful animal, for the sacred pipe would "soon go to the center of the universe, along with the buffalo, who has helped to make strong the bodies of the people" (Brown, 1967, p. 83).
The mentor of an Oglala sun dance candidate decorates the buffalo skull on the altar with "stripes of red paint, one across the forehead and one lengthwise on each side of the skull." At the same time, he paints a red stripe across the forehead of the Candidate. The stripes across the forehead indicate that the Buffalo God has adopted the Candidate as a hunka, or relative by ceremony. The red stripes on the sides of the skull indicate that the Buffalo God will give especial protection to the Candidate. The horns of the skull should be adorned with any ornaments that the Candidate may apply. Then the mentor should fill and light a pipe and he and the Candidate should smoke it in communion, alternately blowing the smoke into the nostril cavities of the skull, thus smoking in communion with the Buffalo God. This should be done in order that the potency of the pipe may harmonize all those communing. (Walker, 1917, pp. 69-70) The candidate must observe many rituals with regard to the altar because "it is a sacred place occupied by the potency of the God, the Buffalo, and should be reverenced as the God is reverenced" (Walker, 1917, p. 70).
At the end of the original Sioux sun dance, all objects such as fur, feathers, and wreaths and other symbols used in the ceremony were piled up in the center of the lodge. "These things were too sacred to be kept and should be resumed to the earth. Only the buffalo robes and the eagle-bone whistles were kept.... On top of the pile of sacred things the buffalo skull was placed, for this skull reminds us of death and also helps us to remember that a cycle has been completed" (Brown, 1967, pp. 98-99).
The buffalo skull served numerous functions. The Sioux dance leader, when resting, "threw himself prone on the ground, west of the sacred place, pressing his head against the sacred buffalo skull" (Laubin, 1977, p. 288). When a Crow dancer offered a portion of himself during the sun dance by slicing off the tip of a finger, he performed this sacrifice "steadied on a buffalo skull whenever possible" (Vogel, 1984, p. 307).
In a much more dramatic way, buffalo skulls were used to implement the supreme sacrifice of the sun dance that was made in the voluntary torture phenomenon enacted in some tribes. The practice resembles and may have originated from procedures in the
Mandan "O-Kee-pa" ceremony, as described by the artist, George Catlin, in 1832 (1967, pp. 39-100); it probably spread to the western tribes from that locus (Hultkrantz, 1973, p. 17). In the self-inflicted torture process, participants were suspended from the top of the lodge by thongs attached to skewers passing through back or chest muscles. Additionally, from incisions made in various areas of their bodies, buffalo skulls were hung from skewers. In another form of this sacrifice, instead of being suspended, a man would volunteer to "carry four of his relatives on his back, meaning he would drag four buffalo skulls." An Oglala who made that vow spoke of it as bearing "my closest relatives, the ancient buffalo" (Brown, 1967, pp. 86, 95). Two to eight skulls might be attached, and as the dancer moved, in addition to tearing his flesh by means of the skewers, the skull and especially the horns dug into his body.
Meaning of the Buffalo Skull
Eastman explains that the buffalo skull that is dragged after the dancer represents "the grave from which he had escaped" (1970, p. 60). It is relevant to the understanding of this practice that "among hunting peoples bones represent the final source of life, both human and animal, the source from which the species is reconstituted at will.... The 'soul, is presumed to reside in the bones and hence the resurrection of the individual from its bones can be expected." For hunters, "bone represents the very source of life. ... To reduce a living being to a skeleton is equivalent to re-entering the womb of this primordial life, that is, to a complete renewal, a mystical rebirth." The idea that "the inexhaustible matrix of life of the species" is found in the animal's bones is characteristic of the "mystical relations between man and his prey" that are "fundamental for hunting societies." Plains tribes such as the Dakota "believe that the bones of those bisons which they have slain and divested of flesh rise again clothed with renewed flesh, and quickened with life, and become fat, and fit for slaughter the succeeding June" (Eliade, 1974, pp. 63, 159, 160-61). Thus the theme of rebirth is expressed through the role of the buffalo skull in the sun dance and this concept of universal regeneration infuses with transcendent meaning the participants' suffering of ritual pain in association with the skull of the sacred animal.
The buffalo plays a significant role in the visionary experience that is sought in the sun dance. A Crow dancer may be guided by a buffalo during a vision. In the contemporary sun dance ceremony, "dancers challenge his [the buffalo's] attention by 'running at it,' suffering and praying that the Buffalo Person will take notice and 'run over them,' bringing a dancer what he desires and perhaps something more the gift of a power to cure" (Vogel, 1984, p. 307). A Crow who is dancing intently may see the buffalo on which he is focusing move. "The buffalo may 'chase' a dancer, knocking him down. When this happens, the dancer is said to have taken a 'hard fall.'" It has come about "with the force of the Buffalo." As a climax, "he realizes he has the ears and horns of the Buffalo; he's looking about through the Buffalo's eyes. He and the Buffalo are one." After relating these events to the medicine man, "he's told of the vision's significance, and cautioned 'never to eat of the buffalo"' (Frey, 1987, pp. 118-21, 125). Ute and Shoshone participants reach a point in the ceremony "where they believe that they are indeed 'knocked down' by Buffalo." When a dancer is unconscious for a short time, it is assumed that "he is afraid of Buffalo and has rejected his power." Elder shamans then shout encouragement, telling him "You can get what you're looking for.... If you want to be a doctor [shaman] you've got to work for it. You've got to take it away from that buffalo. He wants to give it to you, but it isn't going to be easy." The participant usually attempts to dance again, desiring to be one who "made it," who did not "collapse in front of Buffalo and then fail to muster the courage to get up to dance and again to meet Buffalo head on." It is believed that "Buffalo knocks down those who violate customs, or pursue power too fast, or who cannot withstand the hot-dry force." Those who get up and dance again after being knocked down show they "have the courage to withstand Buffalo's jolts of hot-dry power." Fellow participants may catch a falling dancer and "send him back to 'fight Buffalo"' (Jorgensen, 1974, pp. 213-14). Shoshones and Utes believe that
the buffalo snorts fire out of his nostrils, that his eyes roll, and that he becomes alive, just like an enraged bull in a bull ring. He challenges those who would accept his power to come and get it. If a person goes down and is knocked unconscious but does not receive a vision, it takes great courage to face Buffalo again. It is believed that, when a person receives his vision, he is "knocked down" as if he were hit by a thunderbolt from above, and it is a foregone conclusion that the dancer will not only dance again but that his dancing will be effortless. (Jorgensen, 1974, p. 214)
During a vision, the dancer is usually unconscious for several hours, and in that interval he "may learn new songs, new curing techniques, and a new dance step." He is in the company of the supernatural forces and may talk to the spirits and perhaps to Buffalo. He is instructed about his power and about new aspects and interpretations of the dance. Spectators may "see Buffalo's eyes roll and turn red" when the dancer has been "hit" (Jorgensen, 1974, pp. 214-15).
Prophetic visions regarding buffalo may be granted to sun dancers. One Sioux related that he saw "a herd of buffalo heading north. He saw white people killing buffalo until they were all gone. So he knew what was coming, but the things foretold in a vision could not be prevented." Later, during the great drought of 1930, with its disastrous dust storms, a more optimistic vision indicated that "the buffalo had returned to 'hook up the ground"' (Laubin, 1977, p. 293).
Animals in the Plains Indian World View
Interactions with animals, particularly the eagle and the buffalo, are inextricably interwoven with the sun dance of the Plains Indians. The roles assigned to them relate to the animals place in the world view of the society in which this ritual is a major event, and reflect intimate human relationships with the natural world that differ from those typical of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The animals who share the Plains environment are viewed as wise and powerful. They possess most of the same capacities human beings have and in some ways exceed them. Beliefs about creation indicate that certain animals existed before people did, and were in communication with the Creator. They advised the Creator and helped in bringing humankind and even the earth itself into existence. Animals are intermediaries between human beings and the supernatural forces. All living creatures are part of a single interrelated community. Each one has its own part in this web of life, which is envisioned as a circle rather than as the linear hierarchy with humankind at the top that pervades western thought. Jamake Highwater, a writer of Blackfeet heritage, emphasizes the "sympathetic undertone" of the native Americans' relationship to the world around them, and explains their belief in the solidarity of life as an expression of kinship (1981, p. 69).
With this view of animals as relatives, a hunter/gatherer society that places strong valuation on obtaining animals for food generally possesses cultural resources for dealing with the inevitable inconsistencies between an attitude of mutuality and kinship with living beings and the antagonism involved in killing and eating them. In his recent study of Plains Indian religion and morality, Howard Harrod points out that the sun dance ritual is an important factor in the resolution of this conflict. Killing animals violates kinship relations, but the ceremonies of world renewal that focus on the buffalo serve to bring about a symbolic reconciliation. Through the process of elevating the buffalo to a sacred status that is not conferred upon any other animal and by showing it great respect and reverence in the sun dance ritual, the potentially disruptive practice of feeding upon its flesh is somehow mitigated. There is a resultant deepened sense of kinship that helps to restore harmony between people and the buffalo (1987, pp. 116, 133, 165, 171-72).
Members of traditional Plains Indian society define themselves not as separate entities, but as part of a whole. They see themselves primarily as partaking of a kinship network, emphasizing their membership in family, clan, and tribe. The contrast between this mode of viewing the self as subordinate to the whole and the strong individualism of modern Western society has been well established (see Leach, 1982, pp. 139-40). In the same way that Plains tribespeople experience their broad communal ties to other human beings, this ingrained way of relating is extended to the wider society, including non-humans (Hughes, 1983, pp. 16-17, 61). Thus land, essential to all life animal and human could not be imagined as individually owned.
A sense of reciprocity permeates Plains ideology. Dynamic interrelationships between people and nature require giving as well as taking. Hence the sun dance ritual includes all of nature in its scope, but places an emphasis on those creatures and forces that are most beneficially related to human welfare. The sun lodge represents the whole universe where the drama of cosmic renewal is played out, and all elements of nature including the sun, moon, and stars are praised. The strictly spiritual tie to the eagle is well represented and his ceremonial role is focused upon religious perceptions regarding his conscious awareness, his role as messenger, and his powers of flight.
Relationships with the buffalo are more complex and intricate. As the major animal represented in the sun dance, it has both spiritual and physical ties to humankind. It is, quite simply, acknowledged as necessary for bodily existence. Without it, there would be death, or at least an impoverished life. Since humankind has a spirit as well as a body, the buffalo is seen as answering all the needs of people those manifested by the spirit as well as the flesh. When it is stated that "all the good things of Cheyenne existence are fulfilled in the buffalo" (Powell, 1969, vol. 2, p. 635), this assertion includes the full range of human experience. It has been well established that the native ethos does not include a religion separate from other aspects of daily life as in the Western concept, but rather encompasses a world in which all of life is permeated by spiritual forces (Harrod, 1987, p. 6).
Through dependence upon the buffalo for food, the animal literally becomes "flesh of our flesh" for the consumers. In this sense, as in many other important ways, the great animal entered the Plains Indians, psyche. Lame Deer extols the power and wisdom of the buffalo and explains
We Sioux have a close relationship to the buffalo. He is our brother. We have many legends of buffalo changing themselves into men. And the Indians are built like buffalo, too big shoulders, narrow hips. According to our belief, the Buffalo Woman who brought us the peace pipe, which is at the center of our religion, was a beautiful maiden, and after she had taught our tribes how to worship with the pipe, she changed herself into a white buffalo calf. So the buffalo is very sacred to us. You can't understand about nature, about the feeling we have toward it, unless you understand how close we were to the buffalo. That animal was almost like a part of ourselves, part of our souls. (1972, p. 130)
He goes on to point out that without the buffalo, "we were nothing," enumerating the many ways its flesh, skin, horns, organs, and bones were used to benefit people. Further, "his mighty skull, with the pipe leaning against it, was our sacred altar. The name of the greatest Sioux was Tatanka Iyotake Sitting Bull. When you killed off the buffalo, you also killed the Indian the real, natural, 'wild' Indian." The natives, close identification with the buffalo is expressed by Lame Deer's praise of the animal as smart, playful, possessed of a sense of humor, hardy, and well suited to its harsh environment. The buffalo seems specially fashioned for the Indians, because Lame Deer says "White hunters used to call the buffalo stupid because they were easy to shoot, weren't afraid of a gun. But the buffalo was not designed to cope with modern weapons. He was designed to deal with an Indian's arrows" (1972, pp. 13-31). Regarding the buffalo as "the closest of all animals to human beings," Plains Indians saw parallels between the great beast and their own species. "The buffalo evidently had a religion, for they were seen to purify their 'children' by washing them and made 'offerings' of hair when they rubbed against trees" (Hughes, 1983, p. 325).
The Sun Dance: Sacrifice, Integration, Reciprocity, and Regeneration
A very important consideration in understanding the Indian's perception is that the buffalo is a highly social animal, innately gregarious. That is a trait with which the Plains people could identify, finding similarities to the broad allegiances and communal relationships characteristic of their own social organization. Unlike more solitary species, the buffalo, as a herd animal, is often referred to by the natives as a "tribe" or "nation." And, as mentioned, the movements and whereabouts of that "buffalo nation" influenced Plains Indian tribal structure and location at a given season. Generally, the Plains Indian interactions with buffaloes do not involve personal contact with individual animals, but rather the whole species or population. Calling the animal "Buffalo" always implies reference to the group or at least a member who represents that group. One specific buffalo is rarely, if ever, singled out or named as is often the case in many societies with any animal who is to be eaten. This practice helps in combating the revulsion that may accompany the consumption of flesh from a familiar individual being. Thus communal ritual reconciliation is made with the species as a whole: human society propitiates the buffalo nation.
Helping to relieve the guilt resulting from killing and eating sentient creatures, too, is the pervasive belief that animals willingly offer themselves to hunters. This idea is reflected in the observation that "the Plains Indians spoke of their hunt not as 'driving' the buffalo but as 'leading them'; not 'chasing,' but 'calling'" them. Certain men among the Cheyenne and Blackfeet possessed "the power of charming the buffalo into a corral or over a cliff." They accomplished this feat by disguising themselves in buffalo robes and imitating the animals' movements and sounds (Hughes, 1983, p. 30). The conviction that the buffalo voluntarily give themselves to be killed for the benefit of human beings is closely associated with Plains people's sense of identification with the animal and with the force of reciprocal obligations toward it. As expressed by members of one tribe, "Since buffalo allowed themselves to be used in order that the Crow people could live, it seemed fitting . . . to offer a part of themselves to the sun and other spiritual persons" (Vogel, 1984, p. 307).
Thus the sacrifice of the dancers through fasting, thirst, and self-inflicted pain reflects the desire to return something of themselves to nature, with special reference to the life- sustaining buffalo, in exchange for past and future benefits. It is relevant that, as mentioned, the Mandan O-kee-pa (Okipa) ceremony, from which elements of the Plains sun dance are almost certainly derived, features the self-torture of participants by means of buffalo skulls. In addition to that practice, there were certain animal-oriented rituals included within the O-kee-pa that shed light on the meaning of the sun dance. For example, Catlin described a bull-dance "to the strict observance of which they [the Mandans] attributed the coming of buffaloes to supply them with food." The colorful event was enacted by men dressed as buffaloes, wearing buffalo head masks, who imitated the motions and behavior of the animals (1967, pp. 54-57). The name Okee-pa means "look alike" and refers to the bull dancers, who were all of the same stature and who were identically dressed and painted (Bowers, 1950, p. 111).
Additionally, men disguised as other animals including grizzly bears, eagles, antelopes, swans, rattlesnakes, beavers, vultures, and wolves, imitated the sounds and behaviors of their respective species. In this spectacle, the players enacted interrelationships involving struggle between various forms of life. Animals growled and chased each other and meat-feeding scenarios took place (Catlin, 1967, pp. 54-57). This performance represents the expression of a theme dealing with predator-prey relationships. Evidently, the ambiguities of carnivorous behavior were being explored through ritual. Early in the twentieth century, as a preliminary to the Blackfoot sun dance, similar figures dressed to resemble wolves and grizzly bears interacted with dancers in the guise of buffaloes (McClintock, 1910, p. 300), indicating a preoccupation with the same theme. Such rituals provided an overt expression of the tensions involved in the dilemma of one form of life feeding upon another that underlie the sun dance ceremony.
To a greater or lesser degree depending upon the tribe, the sun dance includes the elements of sacrifice and pain on the part of participants. The ultimate gift is the offering of one's own body. In a deep sense, this phenomenon of undergoing physical agony relates the supplicants to the rest of nature; it is an atonement in the true meaning of "at onement," with reference to the unity of the cosmos. For all living creatures are subject to suffering and share a common capacity for pain. According to Oglala tradition, "This truth of the oneness of all things we understand a little better by participating in this rite, and by offering ourselves as a sacrifice" (Brown, 1967, p. 95).
Mircea Eliade explains the Mandan O-kee-pa as a rite of "initiatory torture" inflicted for the purpose of "spiritual transmutation of the victim." Death, represented by undergoing torture, signifies that the profane man has been killed and the participant has come to life regenerated in body and soul. The person must "die" through the ordeal of "being cut to pieces" in order to bring about his symbolic resurrection ( 1975, pp. 206, 207, 208). As Eastman analyzes the meaning of the cutting and bleeding of the Sioux dancer who is pierced, the pain that results is "the natural accompaniment of his figurative death" ( 1970, p. 61). The flesh that is tom away when the thong breaks loose "represents ignorance," which "should always be behind us as we face the light of truth which is before us" (Brown, 1967, p. 86). Thus the sun dancer is reborn, mentally and spiritually as well as physically, along with the renewal of the buffalo and the entire universe.
The great sun dance ritual establishes the tenet that there is no final death, for all living things can be renewed. Human beings, however, like all their fellow creatures, must cooperate in order to bring about universal regeneration. By feeding grass to the buffalo skull, the cycle of life is symbolically perpetuated. To appease the buffalo who gives so much to people, appreciation and good intentions must be shown, and deferential behavior is mandated. By significant acts like refraining from eating buffalo flesh after the animal has provided a vision, leaving some of the meat to propitiate the animal's spirit after a buffalo is slain, and planting a piece of sacred buffalo tongue back into the ground during the ceremonial feast (Frey, 1987, p. 121; Walker, 1917, p. 130; McClintock, 1910, p. 305), honor is given to the spiritual presence of the buffalo. Because the animal's spirit still remains when the buffalo is killed, death is not final; eternal return is assured for both buffalo and humankind through reciprocal actions that maintain the harmony of the natural world. Thus at the close of the Oglala sun dance, Wakan-Tanka is addressed: "You have taught us our relationship with all ... beings, and for this we give thanks... May we be continually aware of this relationship which exists between the four-leggeds, the two-leggeds, and the wingeds. May we all rejoice and live in peace!" (Brown, 1967, p. 98).
1. Direct all correspondence to the author at P.O. Box 35, Adamsville, RI 02801. The author is an anthropologist and veterinarian on the faculty of the Department of Environmental Studies, Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine.
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| September 10, 2013
The Birmingham Church Bombing
On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Church in Birmingham Alabama was bombed, killing four girls attending Sunday school. The crime shocked the nation and marked a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. Marking the 30th anniversary, NBC's Tom Brokaw and Bob Dotson report. | <urn:uuid:51ffc6d4-700d-4c8e-bc7a-5fe3ea88e136> | {
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The Future Is Here! Amazing Robots Already Doing Human Jobs/Actions, Replacing Humans!
So you think that in the not so new future robots will take over human jobs, doing actions that, at the time being, only humans do? Well think again! Cause robots are replacing humans faster than we think. In the near future, we’ll have robots teaching our kids, or taking the dog out for a walk, and pretty soon, some really important human jobs, will be simple robot tasks. Pretty amazing isn’t it? Some even claim that robots will even be able to think and make decisions instead of humans… now that’s already too spooky! Let’s see some really amazing robots which have already been invented, and who could very well replace humans in different fields of action.
Ok, so let’s have a look at some really amazing robotic creations which can now do human actions, some may look human, others might just be a simple robotic arm, but the bottom line is… they’re getting smarter and smarter with each model invented.
Humans create robots to help the work faster and more effectively, but has anyone stopped to give it a second thought? If robots slowly occupy their place in the working field, what will become of the workers who are replaced by robots? It all comes down to a choice… robots or humans? Which would you chose.
Here’s what they can do, you tell us if robots are ready to “take over the world”
1. Robot Teacher: Saya
We’re all aware of the fact that the Japanese are more advanced than us, but e never quite realize how big the gap is until we realize that they have a robot teaching class instead of a real live person… Saya was designed and created by Tokyo University of Science professor Hiroshi Kobayashi, and not only does she have a human-like appearance, but she also talks and is able to express surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness, sadness due to tiny motors which put her rubber skin into motion.
Due to her facial expressions, Saya can facilitate communication, but at the moment, all this life-like robot can do is shout “Be quiet!” and other “orders” or just call out the kids’ names. So, maybe a robot isn’t teaching Japanese kids yet… but Saya’s learning fast, so enjoy your human science teacher while you can, pretty soon, you might be having a robot checking to see if you did your homework, and they never fall for the “dog ate my homework” excuse.
2. Robotic Arm Whiskey Dispenser
Have a look at this pretty simple yet ingenious whiskey dispenser… isn’t it like uber-cool?
3. Wearable Robotics Suit: Raytheon XOS 2
No, this is not the Iron Man suit, but right now, it’s the closest thing we have. The wearable robotics suit has been created to enhance performances of soldiers in combat. The XOS 2 does the lifting for whoever is wearing it, making push-ups way easier. With this amazing piece of technology, just one person wearing such an exoskeleton suit can do the work of two to three soldiers. Just imagine all of the lives it could spare.
The suit is built from a combination of structures, sensors, actuators and controllers, and it is powered by high pressure hydraulics.
If you wanna see this robotic suit in action, have a look below:
4. Robots who play instruments:
This amazing robot was created by a team from Toyota, it has 17 joints in its hands and arms and its human-like dexterity made it wow the audience after it played a flawless rendition of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance. Have a listen below:
Also, Toyota invented some aids for this robot thus creating a Robot Quartet Band:
5. Maid Robot
It seems like the Japanese have a thing for humanoid robots cause they keep coming up with more and more interesting models. This robot was designed to be the perfect house maid; it can do laundry, serve your food, do the dishes and even prepare you a microwave oven dinner and after that, sweep the house clean! Neat isn’t she? Well don’t get your hopes up just yet, the team of experts who designed and built this extraordinary creature say that it we won’t see the robot maid in mass production for another 15 years. Till then, we can just look at the video below and hope 15 years pass faster.
6. EMA: the kissing robot
Have you been feeling lonely lately, missing that special someone in your life? What would you say to kissing a robot? Weird? Well it’s possible; meet EMA Short for Eternal, Maiden, Actualization. She is the first humanoid robot, and she was designed by Sega. Sadly, she’s just 38 cm tall, but size doesn’t matter when it comes to kissing, does it?
This cutie-pie can also hand out business cards, but does that even matter compared to the fact that she has a “love mode” in which she gives kisses to near-by heads, using infrared sensors and battery power.
7. The Three Tenors
These are probably the creepiest robots yet! These three mechanically controlled robotic heads proved that they have learned how to sing. Have a look at the video below to see if they nailed the concert. Can you believe someone actually invested $75.000 in making these spooky robotic hea
8. Geminoid Robots:
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have an identical twin? Well, now you can have one, a robot identical twin which will allow you to be in two places at the same time. The Geminoids can be remote controlled from anywhere, basically allowing its owner to be in more than one place at once. The lifelike robots were created by professors Hiroshi Ishiguro and Henrik Scharfe to be their look-alikes. Pretty neat huh?
9. The unicycle-riding robot: Murataseiko-chan
Murata Electronics developed a robot called the “Murata-seiko-chan” which is perfectly capable to ride a unicycle… not many humans can do that, so watch out for this one, she might run off with the circus someday.
10. SimMan 3G
Meet SimMan 3G… a robot which helps med students learn medicine, that’s quite an eccentric way to learn human medicine on a robot… but hey, as long as it helps cure lives, it’s ok in our book. The SimMan 3G is a robot that can cry, bleed, convulse, go into cardiac arrest and do any number of other things that humans do when their bodies are not working propperly.
Find more amazing stuff on our sister website CoolWeirdo
If you enjoyed this article please share it. | <urn:uuid:a6d8166b-a863-4721-9ab7-44feeff1f415> | {
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The most popular use of pumpkins is for decoration as jack-o-lanterns. When selecting a pumpkin for cooking, the best selection is a “pie pumpkin” or “sweet pumpkin.”
The most popular use of pumpkins is for decoration as jack-o-lanterns. When selecting a pumpkin for cooking, the best selection is a “pie pumpkin” or “sweet pumpkin.” These are smaller than the large jack-o-lantern pumpkins and the flesh is sweeter and less watery. However, you can substitute the jack-o-lantern variety with fairly good results.
Look for a pumpkin with one to two inches of stem left. If the stem is cut down too low, the pumpkin will decay quickly or may be decaying at the time of purchase. Avoid pumpkins with blemishes and soft spots. It should be heavy.
Shape is unimportant. A lopsided pumpkin is not necessarily a bad pumpkin. Figure one pound of raw, untrimmed pumpkin for each cup finished pumpkin puree.
Spread newspaper over your work surface. Start by removing the stem with a sharp knife. If you are planning to roast the pumpkin seeds, smash the pumpkin against a hard surface to break it open. If not, cut in half with a sharp knife.
In any case, remove the stem and scoop out the seeds and scrape away all of the stringy mass. A messy job, but it will pay off.
Boiling/steaming method: Cut the pumpkin into rather large chunks. Rinse in cold water. Place pieces in a large pot with about a cup of water. The water does not need to cover the pumpkin pieces.
Cover the pot and boil for 20 to 30 minutes or until tender, or steam for 10 to 12 minutes. Check for doneness by poking with a fork.
Drain the cooked pumpkin in a colander. Reserve the liquid to use as a base for soup. Then follow the procedure outlined below in preparing the puree.
Oven method: Cut pumpkin in half, scraping away stringy mass and seeds. Rinse under cold water.
Place pumpkin, cut side down, on a large cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees fahrenheit for one hour or until fork tender. Then follow the procedure outlined below in preparing the puree
Microwave method: Cut pumpkin in half, place cut side down on a microwave-safe plate or tray. Microwave on high for 15 minutes, check for doneness. If necessary, continue cooking at pne to two minute intervals until fork tender. Continue as outlined below in preparing the puree.
Preparing the puree: When the pumpkin is cool enough to handle, remove the peel using a small sharp knife and your fingers. Put the peeled pumpkin in a food processor and puree or use a food mill, ricer, strainer or potato masher to form a puree.
Pumpkin puree freezes well. To freeze, measure cooled puree into one cup portions and place in ridged freezer containers, leaving 1/2-inch headspace or pack into zip closure bags. Label, date and freeze for up to one year.
Use this puree in recipes or substitute in the same amount in any recipe calling for solid pack canned pumpkin.
Jana McKinney is a McPherson County Extension agent for family and consumer sciences. | <urn:uuid:a8b8cd1e-c896-4f61-ad8a-682bad8b8760> | {
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Astronomers find planets in strange places and wonder if they might support life. One such place would be in orbit around a white or brown dwarf. While neither is a star like the sun, both glow and so could be orbited by planets with the right ingredients for life.
No terrestrial, or Earth-like planets have yet been confirmed orbiting white or brown dwarfs, but there is no reason to assume they don’t exist. However, new research by Rory Barnes of the University of Washington and René Heller of Germany’s Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam hints that planets orbiting white or brown dwarfs will prove poor candidates for life.
White dwarfs are the hot cores of dead stars and brown dwarfs are failed stars, objects not massive enough to start nuclear burning as the sun does. In theory, both can be bright enough to theoretically support a habitable zone — that swath of space just right for an orbiting planet’s surface water to be in liquid form, thus giving life a chance.
The inner edge of that just-right zone is where a planet starts to become a runaway greenhouse, such as Venus. That heating phenomenon removes the planet’s surface water and all chance of life — of habitability — is forever lost.
White and brown dwarfs share a common characteristic that sets them apart from normal stars like the sun: They slowly cool and become less luminous over time. And as they cool, their habitable zones gradually shrink inward. Thus, a planet that is found in the center of the habitable zone today must previously have spent time near the zone’s deadly inner edge.
Because of their past, such planet would “face a difficult path to habitability,” Barnes said, even if they’re discovered right in that habitable zone. Call it a sort of cosmic background check, revealing that the worlds probably lost the means to host life long before they became habitable zone residents.
Sounds like great targets for...TERRAFORMING! Woo! | <urn:uuid:d7c2095b-32d1-4e5e-be78-5bdad2f848db> | {
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A brief history of geological studies in Afghanistan
Since ancient times Afghanistan has been famous as a source of precious and semi-precious stones and above all its lapis lazuli, which has been prized throughout history both for jewellery and as a pigment.
Despite its location astride historic trade routes and its importance as a source of gemstones, little is known about the ancient mines of the region and few written records exist. It was not until the 1800s that systematic attempts were made to assess the physiography and resources of the region, initially by British military expeditions, followed from time to time by surveys conducted under the auspices of the Geological Survey of India. From the 19th Century through to the mid-1900s the region various geological expeditions investigated areas along the main caravan routes and later along the arterial motor roads. The pioneers in these studies were C.L. Griesbach, E.W. Vredenburg and H.H. Rayden. They were notably followed by R. Furon and E. Trinkler (428); Mme Cizancourt and H. de Vautrin; K. Brueckl, J. Barthoux, F. Clapp, F. Rives, H. Kirh and A. Drat (292); D.West (440); Abdul-Khan and Hulyam-Ali Khan. These studies laid the foundations of the present day knowledge of Afghanistan's geology.
A new epoch in the study of Afghanistan's geology and mineral resources began when the Government of Afghanistan inaugurated the National Geological Survey in July 1955. This marked the initiation of systematic surveys of the geology and mineral resources of the country, which continued over the next 25 years. This period was characterised by extensive mapping operations and, subsequently, by geological surveys and prospecting of mineral occurrences and more detailed evaluation of selected prospects. The Afghanistan Geological Survey under the Ministry of Mines and Industries conducted this work in cooperation with German, Italian, French and Soviet geologists. During the first years of the existence of the Geological Survey some assistance was also received from the United Nations organisation.
A German geological mission and the German Geological Consultative Group conducted studies in Afghanistan from April 1959 until 1967 and concentrated their efforts on compiling geological maps. An Italian expedition in the early 1960s published a number of works on the geology of the Western Hindu Kush, Badakhshan and Wakhan. These provide data on igneous complexes, stratigraphy (with monographic description of the fauna and flora of the Mesozoic units), tectonics and the relationship between the structures of the Hindu Kush, Pamir, Karakorum and other areas. A French Geological Mission began work in 1958. This was led for many years by G. Mennessier and concentrated its work in the western Hindu Kush, Hazarajat, central Afghanistan, the Kabul area and Nuristan.
Between 1968 and 1978, a Soviet mission assisted the Afghan Government with a systematic geological mapping programme of the country and recorded and investigated over 1 254 mineral occurrences. This was undertaken at the Department of Geology and Mines until 1974 and later at the Department of Geological and Mineral Survey. This period constituted the most important phase of mineral exploration to date and resulted in the production of a large number of reports on mineral occurrences and prospects.
Geological investigations were severely curtailed with the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, when the country effectively became closed to western geologists. Prior to the invasion, the geology of Afghanistan was probably known in more detail than any other region of the Himalaya, but from that time onwards outside interests were suspended and the Afghan geological community became isolated.
Like other government institutions, the Afghanistan Geological Survey was severely weakened during more than two decades of military conflict, and suffered from a lack of investment and skills development, and an inability to perform an active work programme. During the fighting between Mujahideen factions following the withdrawal of the Soviets in 1989, the AGS office stood in the front line of firing and was severely damaged. Throughout this period of conflict and during the later rule by the Taliban, the staff of the AGS salvaged and protected documents, maps and samples, often at great personal risk to themselves and their families. After the Taleban left Kabul in December 2001 these precious data were returned to the Survey. Afghanistan owes a debt of gratitude to these dedicated staff.
Following the fall of the Taliban regime, the Government of the Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan, with the assistance of the World Bank, began to formulate a mining sector strategy and policy. Amongst many things, this recognised the need for the rehabilitation and restructuring of the Afghanistan Geological Survey in order for it to perform as a modern geological survey and implement a programme of geological mapping and resource assessment using modern concepts and methods.
In response to this need, the British Geological Survey and United States Geological Survey commenced collaborative projects with the Afghanistan Geological Survey and Ministry of Mines and Industries in 2004. These projects are funded respectively by the Governments of Britain and the United States of America and will implement a comprehensive programme of capacity-building, geological mapping, evaluation of mineral and hydrogeological resources, and the creation of geological and mineral databases and geographical information systems. A mining cadastre office will also be established. Throughout these programmes, comprehensive training of Afghan geologists will be provided. | <urn:uuid:acbeb568-b5f9-4cad-936c-0bf534dce3b6> | {
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Path to the Polls:Building a More Inclusive Democracy by Preregistering California's Youth
by Alana Miller, Frontier Group; Emily Rusch, CALPIRG Education Fund; Rosalind Gold and Ofelia Medina, NALEO Educational Fund
In the 2014 elections, California had dismally low voter turnout, especially among young people. Fewer than 16 percent of eligible 18- to 24-year olds cast their ballots in the election, and only about half even registered to vote. Among eligible youth, underrepresented population groups were the least likely to become registered voters, a serious problem for a state as diverse as California, where Latino, African American, Asian American/Pacific Islander and other non-White communities comprise a growing majority of the state’s youth population.
It will take new steps to ensure that the voices of all eligible young Californians are represented in the state’s democracy. Fortunately, California is already making strides toward engaging young voters. With the passage of Assembly Bill 30 (2009) and Senate Bill 113 (2014), and the implementation of the new VoteCAL voter database (which as of this writing, is anticipated in fall 2016), 16- and 17-year-olds will be allowed to “preregister” to vote, ensuring that they are listed on the voter rolls the moment they turn 18.
Voter preregistration provides California with an opportunity to improve young voter participation, but state and local officials must take proactive steps in order to make preregistration a success.
Preregistering young people to vote before they turn 18 boosts voter turnout and helps turn them into lifelong voters.
• Preregistration opens up new opportunities to register young people to vote—in high schools, in General Education Diploma (GED) programs, at community organizations or
locations, online through popular websites, and at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).
• Research shows allowing preregistration can increase young voter turnout by up to 13 percentage points.
• People who vote at an early age are more likely to stay engaged and vote in later elections.
Allowing preregistration is a critical first step towards engaging young people, but adopting policies that encourage preregistration is essential for making it effective. Conversations with state and local officials who have implemented voter preregistration in their jurisdictions reveal a common theme: close partnerships between elections officials, government institutions, schools, community organizations that are trusted by youth, parents and student volunteers are critical components of a successful preregistration program.
Several states with voter preregistration have implemented programs to help 16- and 17-year-olds take advantage of the ability to preregister.
• Florida: County Supervisors of Elections are required under state law to conduct outreach activities at every public high school and college campus and report voter education efforts to the Florida Office of the Secretary of State.
• Hawaii: The state Office of Elections runs a Young Voter Registration Program targeting juniors and seniors in high school. Youth engagement efforts have taken the form of school assemblies where music and popular culture are blended with voter registration instruction to engage with young people and encourage them to get involved.
• Louisiana: The state Office of Motor Vehicles is required to preregister 16- and 17-year-olds to vote when they apply for a driver’s license unless the applicant opts out of voter registration. While Louisiana just began preregistering 16-year-olds to vote in 2015, it has smoothly incorporated preregistration into this “motor voter” model.
States allowing voter preregistration also report a number of challenges when engaging young people.
• Many teens do not understand the preregistration process or what steps need to be taken in order to become a voter. This information is often absent from school civics curriculums.
• Many teens cannot be reached through schools or at the DMV, particularly populations that are already underrepresented in the electorate.
• Preregistered voters frequently move shortly after turning 18, and do not update their voter registration records with their new locations.
Organizations that work with youth to promote civic participation express concerns that preregistration, a process in which only U.S. citizens are eligible to participate, risks stigmatizing and alienating non-citizens. Because California is a very racially and ethnically diverse state, anticipating these challenges and developing careful plans to manage sensitive issues is critical.
California should learn from the experiences of other states and local youth leaders and develop its own set of “best practices” to maximize the positive impact of preregistration.
The state should implement practices that will make voter preregistration accessible to 16- and 17-year-olds. California should:
• Provide voter preregistration opportunities in the places 16- and 17-year-olds commonly go—from the DMV to high schools and GED programs.
• Include 16- and 17-year-olds in the implementation of California’s updated motor voter law. As of this writing, stakeholders are involved in discussions with the California Secretary of State and DMV about ensuring that opportunities for preregistration will be integrated into the new voter registration practices.
• Ensure that voter education and preregistration opportunities are offered beyond the traditional venues, including places such as community organizations that are trusted by youth, local government cultural and recreational programs, juvenile detention facilities and home schooling organizations. Youth services workers and community organizations can help involve hard-to-reach populations in programs such as Kids Voting to increase interest in and familiarity with elections. In addition, youth from traditionally under-represented groups should be reached in other settings where there is an emphasis on the value of civic participation, such as naturalization ceremonies.
• Make preregistration as digital-friendly as possible. Post prominent preregistration links online on webpages young people visit. Ensure easy access to mobile-optimized preregistration websites and mobile apps, which can provide election information and reminders about voting.
The state should work with schools to improve the voter education curriculum.
• The California State Board of Education should closely monitor the implementation of the California Department of Education’s History-Social Science Framework for curriculum, which was released in July 2016, to ensure that the opportunity for preregistration and voter registration are incorporated into classroom discussions of civic participation, including “Principles of American Democracy,” taught in grade 12. This should encompass information about how to properly fill out and submit the voter registration form, which may be paper or electronic, the eligibility requirements for registration and the benefits conferred by voting. Individual teachers should decide who should be responsible for presenting the information—students, community groups, elections officials or the teachers themselves.
• Comprehensive election education programs can increase youth interest in political issues and voting. The Secretary of State should encourage more schools to participate in the MyVote California Student Mock Election, where students can cast ballots for real candidates and practice voting. Mock elections should be preceded by classroom discussion of election topics. Ballot questions should mimic actual ballot items and may include additional questions of particular interest to California teens. Program participation rates and outcomes should be regularly assessed.
• The Secretary of State’s office should incorporate preregistration into annual High School Voter Education Weeks. In preparation for these events, elections staff should offer training for student volunteers to help run voter preregistration and registration drives on campus. To assess and improve program effectiveness, the office should regularly seek feedback from program administrators.
California should develop preregistration strategies that protect the privacy of non-eligible students, yet still provide ways for all students to become civically engaged. If schools decide to conduct preregistration activities within the classroom setting, it is critical that school administrators develop strategies to handle sensitive immigration status issues that protect the privacy of students who are not eligible to preregister. These strategies include ensuring that classroom presentations are conducted by educators, student leaders or representatives of community organizations who possess the cultural competency to discuss eligibility requirements in a manner that does not stigmatize non-citizen students. Presenters must clearly indicate that registering to vote is an option and is not required for any student. Schools can provide voter registration cards in the classroom, but students should have the opportunity to take the voter registration card home in case they have questions or need to check with their parents. Presenters must also emphasize that if students decide not to return completed registration forms, that information will not be shared with other students, school administration, or outside authorities. Finally, presenters should discuss the opportunity to register to vote in a context which emphasizes the full range of youth civic participation opportunities, including those available to non-citizens, such as volunteering as a poll worker.
The state should also take follow-up steps to increase the likelihood that preregistered voters will vote in the first election in which they are eligible to participate.
• Confirmation letters mailed to preregistered teens should explain in simple and welcoming language that they will be eligible to vote when they turn 18 and that it is their responsibility to keep their registration address information up to date. The letters should provide clear and simple instructions to preregistered teens about how to maintain their own records.
• Preregistered teens should receive follow-up emails and texts from officials at least three times:once immediately after their preregistration, again when they turn 18 to remind them that they are now eligible to cast a ballot, and a third time right before Election Day. The third email and text message should provide new voters with easy access to all information they need to know to cast their ballots.
All preregistration outreach and education efforts should be undertaken in a manner that recognizes the full diversity of California’s youth population. For example, the staff of schools or community programs that promote preregistration should reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of the youth the programs are trying to engage. These staff should be individuals who are viewed as “trusted messengers” by youth, who possess the cultural competency to effectively reach them. Institutions and organizations should consider using multiple approaches to preregistration outreach and education that take into account the diversity of the youth they serve. All preregistration materials and information should be accessible to youth with disabilities. In addition, election officials and administrators should reach out to organizations that conduct non-partisan voter registration and voter mobilization efforts among youth and encourage them to incorporate a preregistration component in their activities.
California should keep data on preregistration outcomes to help policymakers understand how well programs are working and which teens are not being reached.
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Ancient Trade Routes Develop
Written for the KidsKnowIt Network by:
As the ancient world began to settle into organized communities, people began to trade. At first, trading was made with nearby villages. Two things led to the growth and development of trade with people groups from farther away. The domestication (training and control) of animals such as camels, donkeys and other beasts of burden made it possible to travel longer distances. People also learned to portage watercraft. Portage of these vessels (carrying the craft and its cargo over dry land) expanded where merchants (traders) could travel through waterways. These two developments allowed people to travel to new and exciting places, bringing strange new products home to their families and villages.
Slowly, longer and longer trade routes were developed. Major routes had several smaller routes branching off of them, creating a network of roadways. Beginning in 1000 BC, several societies had established trade with other countries or areas. The earliest routes known to us at this point include Arabia, Southeast Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean.
The importance of some goods - such as frankincense and myrrh, only available in Arabia – made kingdoms strong. As their trade grew, so did their power in regions far beyond their boundaries. In the case of Arabia and their precious resins, not a temple or wealthy household existed in the ancient world that did not trade to gain frankincense and myrrh. Cyprus prospered from their production of copper, Egypt traded valuable papyrus and wool. Cedar and dyes produced by Phoenicia became important trade goods, and China gained power by their trade of jade, spices and silk. Even Britain, hundreds or thousands of miles from its trade partners, became important for their production of tin.
But areas rich in resources were not the only ones to grow rich. Merchants kept a great amount of the profit to cover the cost of their caravans and the danger they undertook along the way. Towns sprang up along the routes, providing these men with shelter and food for them and their pack animals. Cities and towns that did not participate in trading soon fell by the wayside and turned to ghost towns.
Long-range trading was saved for expensive and unusual items. No one was willing to go to the time and expense of transporting goods that could be found locally. Because routes were created for trade with specific places to gain specific goods, the trade routes often had the name of the item they supplied. The Silk Route ran from China to Western Asia and the Mediterranean area. The Spice Route brought rare and wonderful spices form South Asia. Many of these routes became roads and allowed the spread of ideas, religions and culture. Armies also used these routes to conquer what started as trade partners.
Trading was not easy. Camels, the primary animal used to transport goods, average 25 miles (40km) per day at a leisurely walking speed. The Silk Road was 2485 miles (4000km) long. If a caravan was formed to travel from one end of the Silk Road to the other, it would take just over a year to complete the journey. Along the way, merchants faced bad weather, injury or illness and robbers. Even with all of the dangers, trading was worth it. It created a network of roads, spread culture and religion and created prosperous cities. Trade routes changed the face of the world forever. | <urn:uuid:5220ee49-f85e-49ba-bc3c-f7251107cea2> | {
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Weather Forecast & Reports - Long Range & Local. Welcome to Web Weather for Kids. Weather and Atmosphere. Weather Wiz Kids weather information for kids. Why do clouds form at different heights in the atmosphere?
The characteristics of clouds are dictated by the elements available, including the amount of water vapor, the temperatures at that height, the wind, and the interplay of other air masses. How is fog formed? There are many different types of fog, but fog is mostly formed when southerly winds bring warm, moist air into a region, possibly ending a cold outbreak. As the warm, moist air flows over much colder soil or snow, dense fog often forms. Warm, moist air is cooled from below as it flows over a colder surface. Online Activities: Weather Watch. Weather Maker By changing the Equatorward Temperature, Poleward Temperature, and Relative Humidity you can turn sunny skies into the perfect day for a snowstorm.
Interactive Weather Maker Directions: As you manipulate the weather, remember these two rules: The temperature towards the poles (either north or south) must always be less than the temperature towards the equator. The maximum difference in the two temperatures is 70 degrees. Investigate How Weather Is Made: Follow these steps to get extra insight into how weather works: Weather%20trivia. Weather%202. Weather1.
Weather Watch Home. Weather Activities - Temperature Converter - Kids Weather Activities. | <urn:uuid:d64b5c2e-a172-4ce5-baf8-433dfb3d467b> | {
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It’s getting nice outside. Time to start thinking about backyard science! Here’s one of our favorites, if you haven’t already tried it! We threw eggs on Kare11 Morning News last spring. It was pretty funny…and messy!
“Kids aren’t getting dirty these days. They’re not playing in the mud, not playing in rain puddles,” says Dr. Truglio, of Sesame Workshop in a Wall Street Journal article, about getting your kids outside.
Next to the kitchen table, my back yard (or front yard) is my favorite science laboratory. It has the added bonus of being easy to clean up. For this fun, messy experiment, a hose and a few paper towels do the trick. Make your kids clean up whatever mess they make!
My dad, who is a physicist, told me about this great demonstration. It teaches kids a little bit about motion and force while letting them do something that they are rarely, if ever, allowed to do- throw eggs! All you need is a sheet, some clothespins or string, raw eggs, and some paper. (You could use newspaper or easel paper. It is just to make cleaning up easier.) I also used a portable table turned on its side as a wall, but you could just use a wall or the side of a garage and have your child hose it off when you are finished.
Hang the sheet up from a tree, if you have one. If you don’t have a tree, you could hang it from anything else, or have two tall children or adults hold it. Then have two kids hold the bottom of the sheet up, or tie it to chairs so it makes a J shape when you view it from the side. The idea is to keep the eggs from hitting the ground and breaking.
An object in motion wants to remain in motion. To stop an egg moving through the air, you have to apply force to the egg. In this case, the force will be applied by a hanging sheet, or a wall.
Throw a raw egg at the sheet as hard as you can. It won’t break because the sheet slows the movement of the egg as it comes to a stop. The law of motion says that the faster you change the speed of an object, the greater the force applied to the object will be. When you change the speed of the egg slowly, like the sheet does, it lessens the force applied to the egg and the egg remains intact.
Now, put some paper on a wall (or table like we did.) Throw an egg at the wall. You’ll see what happens when something stops fast. Once again, the law of motion rules. When you change the speed of the egg quickly, it stops with a lot of force. SPLAT. This is my kids’ favorite part.
This is why they put airbags in cars. If a car is moving and hits something, causing it to stop very quickly, the airbag act like the sheet, slowing the person in the car down SLOWLY and greatly reducing the amount of force they might hit the dashboard with.
Record your results in your science notebook, if you want to. Finally, be sure to wash your hands when you’re finished experimenting and cleaning up. Raw eggs can have bacteria called Salmonella living in them and on them. Have fun! | <urn:uuid:e89dffbc-3dfb-4e2c-a6db-6a20b16e8512> | {
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Tip of the Week: Keep your child safe online
Technology and the Internet are great learning tools for students, but parents need to make sure their children are using them appropriately, safely and with supervision. Make sure that websites are free of excessive advertisements. Check the age-appropriateness of what they are using. Make sure your child is using their technology in a place where they can be supervised. Have conversations with your child about what to do if approached by a stranger online. Set up time limits for your child’s use of technology. Check out netsmartz.org/internetsafety for great ways to have these conversations with your child.
Amanda Schiesher, engineering technology teacher, Belvidere School District 100 | <urn:uuid:2f114d7a-0eb6-4168-b30d-a5b4d5ef027a> | {
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Copyright © University of Cambridge. All rights reserved.
'Multiples Grid' printed from http://nrich.maths.org/
Why do this problem?
is an interesting way of reinforcing understanding of factors and multiples.
To start with, ask children to talk in pairs about why the numbers in the first 100 square are shaded blue, pink and maroon. Invite them to share their ideas and encourage correct use of vocabulary.
Learners could continue to work in pairs, perhaps using this sheet
of the four parts of differently-shaded 100 squares. As they work on the problem, trying to find out which factors have been chosen in order to produce the shading, encourage them to justify their solutions to their partners, and perhaps then to the whole class. How
are they going about the task? It might be useful to discuss ways of working systematically so that no solutions are omitted.
,which shades the squares according to the chosen factors, can be used to check their hypotheses. In a plenary session, you could use the second sheet of the spreadsheet to pre-prepare some shaded sections of the 100 grid without numbers. If you tell them which multiples have been shaded, can the class work out where
the small part of the 100 grid is, i.e. which numbers it contains?
What do the numbers shaded blue have in common?
What do the pink numbers have in common?
Can you rule out some factors straight away? How?
How will you know you have found all the possible solutions?
Learners could explore the spreadsheet for themselves at a computer. Challenge them to make up their own questions to ask a friend.
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A listed building or listed structure, in the United Kingdom, is one that has been placed on the Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest. The statutory bodies maintaining the list are Historic England in England, Cadw in Wales, Historic Scotland in Scotland, the preferred term in Ireland is protected structure. In England and Wales, an amenity society must be notified of any work to a listed building which involves any element of demolition. Owners of listed buildings are, in circumstances, compelled to repair and maintain them. When alterations are permitted, or when listed buildings are repaired or maintained, slightly different systems operate in each area of the United Kingdom, though the basic principles of the listing remain the same. It was the damage to caused by German bombing during World War II that prompted the first listing of buildings that were deemed to be of particular architectural merit. The listings were used as a means of determining whether a building should be rebuilt if it was damaged by bombing.
Listing was first introduced into Northern Ireland under the Planning Order 1972, the listing process has since developed slightly differently in each part of the UK. In the UK, the process of protecting the historic environment is called ‘designation’. A heritage asset is a part of the environment that is valued because of its historic. Only some of these are judged to be important enough to have legal protection through designation. However, buildings that are not formally listed but still judged as being of heritage interest are still regarded as being a consideration in the planning process. Almost anything can be listed – it does not have to be a building and structures of special historic interest come in a wide variety of forms and types, ranging from telephone boxes and road signs, to castles. Historic England has created twenty broad categories of structures, and published selection guides for each one to aid with assessing buildings and these include historical overviews and describe the special considerations for listing each category.
Both Historic Scotland and Cadw produce guidance for owners, in England, to have a building considered for listing or delisting, the process is to apply to the secretary of state, this can be done by submitting an application form online to Historic England. The applicant does not need to be the owner of the building to apply for it to be listed, full information including application form guidance notes are on the Historic England website. Historic England assesses buildings put forward for listing or delisting and provides advice to the Secretary of State on the architectural, the Secretary of State, who may seek additional advice from others, decides whether or not to list or delist the building. In England and Wales the authority for listing is granted to the Secretary of State by the Planning Act 1990, Listed buildings in danger of decay are listed on the Historic England Heritage at Risk Register
Church of England
The Church of England is the state church of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the most senior cleric, although the monarch is the supreme governor, the Church of England is the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It dates its establishment as a church to the 6th-century Gregorian mission to Kent led by Augustine of Canterbury. The English church renounced papal authority when Henry VIII sought to secure an annulment from Catherine of Aragon in the 1530s, the English Reformation accelerated under Edward VIs regents before a brief restoration of papal authority under Queen Mary I and King Philip. This is expressed in its emphasis on the teachings of the early Church Fathers, as formalised in the Apostles, Nicene, in the earlier phase of the English Reformation there were both Catholic martyrs and radical Protestant martyrs. The phases saw the Penal Laws punish Roman Catholic and nonconforming Protestants, in the 17th century and religious disputes raised the Puritan and Presbyterian faction to control of the church, but this ended with the Restoration.
Papal recognition of George III in 1766 led to religious tolerance. Since the English Reformation, the Church of England has used a liturgy in English, the church contains several doctrinal strands, the main three known as Anglo-Catholic and Broad Church. Tensions between theological conservatives and progressives find expression in debates over the ordination of women and homosexuality, the church includes both liberal and conservative clergy and members. The governing structure of the church is based on dioceses, each presided over by a bishop, within each diocese are local parishes. The General Synod of the Church of England is the body for the church and comprises bishops, other clergy. Its measures must be approved by both Houses of Parliament, according to tradition, Christianity arrived in Britain in the 1st or 2nd century, during which time southern Britain became part of the Roman Empire. The earliest historical evidence of Christianity among the native Britons is found in the writings of such early Christian Fathers as Tertullian, three Romano-British bishops, including Restitutus, are known to have been present at the Council of Arles in 314.
Others attended the Council of Sardica in 347 and that of Ariminum in 360, Britain was the home of Pelagius, who opposed Augustine of Hippos doctrine of original sin. Consequently, in 597, Pope Gregory I sent the prior of the Abbey of St Andrews from Rome to evangelise the Angles and this event is known as the Gregorian mission and is the date the Church of England generally marks as the beginning of its formal history. A archbishop, the Greek Theodore of Tarsus, contributed to the organisation of Christianity in England, the Church of England has been in continuous existence since the days of St Augustine, with the Archbishop of Canterbury as its episcopal head. Despite the various disruptions of the Reformation and the English Civil War, while some Celtic Christian practices were changed at the Synod of Whitby, the Christian Church in the British Isles was under papal authority from earliest times. The Synod of Whitby established the Roman date for Easter and the Roman style of monastic tonsure in Britain and this meeting of the ecclesiastics with Roman customs with local bishops was summoned in 664 at Saint Hildas double monastery of Streonshalh, called Whitby Abbey
London Borough of Bexley
The London Borough of Bexley /ˈbɛksli/ is a London borough in south-east London, England. There is a border with Dartford borough to the east and Sevenoaks district to the south-east, the London Borough of Bexley is within the Thames Gateway, an area designated as a national priority for urban regeneration. The local authority is Bexley London Borough Council, Erith was a port on the River Thames until the 17th century, the opening of the sewage works at nearby Crossness in the late 19th century turned it into an industrial town. Todays settlement pattern is the result of the extension of the London influence. Until the 19th century it was an area with a few isolated buildings such as the Georgian Danson House, with the coming of the railways building began apace, although the area is still composed of many disconnected settlements, interspersed with area of open ground and parks. The town of Bexley, Ohio, a suburb of the city of Columbus, was named at the suggestion of a resident, Mr. Kilbourne, whose familys roots were in Bexley.
In addition, a suburb of Sydney, Australia bears the name of Bexley, the London Borough of Bexley itself derived its name from the village of Bexley. The village currently lies within the London Borough, the coat of arms of the borough includes symbols for the main rivers in the area, the industry and the border to Kent. The administrative centre of the Borough is in Bexleyheath, there are 21 wards represented on Bexley Council, each ward elects three councillors,63 in all. The wards are shown on the accompanying map and this high land, whose geology is the sand and pebbles of the Blackheath beds, and which results in heathland, provided the line on the old Roman road ran between Crayford and Welling. The land falls away to the north of the ground, across the Erith Marshes to the River Thames. There is further ridge of higher ground from the west terminating at Sidcup. The major centres of settlement can be considered in two parts, the older established erstwhile villages, and the areas of suburban houses and centres.
Among the former are Erith, in the 17th century a port on the Thames, by the earlier 20th century, both were created Urban District Councils, as was Foots Cray. Thamesmead, the new town built on what was the Erith Marshes, extends into the Borough, Crayford was mentioned in the Domesday Book, and its parish included the hamlets of North End and Slade Green. The map of Bexley shows that a proportion of its area comprises suburbia. Some named places, like Albany Park and Barnehurst, are given to developments engendered by the building of the railways. Some came into being when large estates and farmland were broken up for the purpose of suburban building
Fire services in the United Kingdom
The fire services in the United Kingdom operate under separate legislative and administrative arrangements in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. Emergency cover is provided by over fifty fire and rescue services, many FRS were previously known as brigades or county fire services, but almost all now use the standard terminology. They are distinct from and governed by an authority, which is the legislative and administrative body. Fire authorities in England and Wales, and therefore fire and rescue services and Northern Ireland have centralised fire and rescue services, and so their authorities are effectively committees of the devolved parliaments. The total budget for services in 2014-15 was £2.9 billion. The devolved government in Scotland has an agency, HMFSI Scotland. This Act provided for centralised co-ordination of fire brigades in Great Britain,1947, Fire Services Act 1947 This Act transferred the functions of the National Fire Service to local authorities. Now repealed entirely in England and Wales by Schedule 2 of the Fire,1959, Fire Services Act 1959 This Act amended the 1947 Act, it dealt with pensions, staffing arrangements and provision of services by other authorities.
It was repealed in England and Wales along with the 1947 Act,1999, Greater London Authority Act 1999 This act was necessary to allow for the formation of the Greater London Authority and in turn the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. In 2002, there was a series of fire strikes. In December 2002, the Independent Review of the Fire Service was published with the action still ongoing. Bains report ultimately led to a change in the relating to firefighting. 2002, Independent Review of the Fire Service published 2004, Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004, generally only applying to England and it came into force on 1 October 2006. The DfCLG has published a set of guides for non-domestic premises,2006, The Government of Wales Act 2006 gave the National Assembly for Wales powers to pass laws on Fire, promotion of fire safety otherwise than by prohibition or regulation. But does not prevent future legislation being passed by the UK government which applies to two or more constituent countries, There are further plans to modernise the fire service according to the Local Government Association.
The fire service in England and Wales is scrutinised by a House of Commons select committee, in June 2006, the fire and rescue service select committee, under the auspices of the Communities and Local Government Committee, published its latest report. For example, where FRSs were historically inspected by HMFSI, much of this work is now carried out by the National Audit Office, Fire Control On 8 February 2010 the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Select Committee heard evidence on the Fire Control project. Called to give evidence were Cllr Brian Coleman and Cllr James Pearson from the Local Government Association, giving evidence Matt Wrack from the Fire Brigades Union and John Bonney Chief Fire Officers Association
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Glasgow and Manchester.
The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index.
It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, military and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
The Anglo-Saxons are a people who have inhabited Great Britain from the 5th century. Historically, the Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period in Britain between about 450 and 1066, after their settlement and up until the Norman conquest. The early Anglo-Saxon period includes the creation of an English nation, with many of the aspects that survive today, including government of shires. During this period, Christianity was re-established and there was a flowering of literature and law were established. The term Anglo-Saxon is popularly used for the language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons in England, in scholarly use, it is more commonly called Old English. The history of the Anglo-Saxons is the history of a cultural identity and it developed from divergent groups in association with the peoples adoption of Christianity, and was integral to the establishment of various kingdoms. Threatened by extended Danish invasions and occupation of eastern England, this identity was re-established, the visible Anglo-Saxon culture can be seen in the material culture of buildings, dress styles, illuminated texts and grave goods.
Behind the symbolic nature of these emblems, there are strong elements of tribal. The elite declared themselves as kings who developed burhs, and identified their roles and peoples in Biblical terms, above all, as Helena Hamerow has observed and extended kin groups remained. the essential unit of production throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. Use of the term Anglo-Saxon assumes that the words Angles, Saxons or Anglo-Saxon have the meaning in all the sources. Assigning ethnic labels such as Anglo-Saxon is fraught with difficulties and this term began to be used only in the 8th century to distinguish the Germanic groups in Britain from those on the continent. The Old English ethnonym Angul-Seaxan comes from the Latin Angli-Saxones and became the name of the peoples Bede calls Anglorum, Anglo-Saxon is a term that was rarely used by Anglo-Saxons themselves, it is not an autonym. It is likely they identified as ængli, Seaxe or, more probably, the use of Anglo-Saxon disguises the extent to which people identified as Anglo-Scandinavian after the Viking age or the conquest of 1016, or as Anglo-Norman after the Norman conquest.
The earliest historical references using this term are from outside Britain, referring to piratical Germanic raiders, Saxones who attacked the shores of Britain, procopius states that Britain was settled by three races, the Angiloi and Britons. The term Angli Saxones seems to have first been used in writing of the 8th century. The name therefore seemed to mean English Saxons, the Christian church seems to have used the word Angli, for example in the story of Pope Gregory I and his remark, Non Angli sed angeli. The terms ænglisc and Angelcynn were used by West Saxon King Alfred to refer to the people, at other times he uses the term rex Anglorum, which presumably meant both Anglo-Saxons and Danes. Alfred the Great used Anglosaxonum Rex, the term Engla cyningc is used by Æthelred
Points of the compass
The points of the compass, specifically on the compass rose, mark divisions of a compass, such divisions may be referred to as winds or directions. A compass point allows reference to a heading in a general or colloquial fashion. A compass is primarily divided into the four cardinal points—north, south and these are often further subdivided by the addition of the four intercardinal directions—northeast between north and east, southeast and northwest —to indicate the eight principal winds. In meteorological usage, further intermediate points between cardinal and ordinal points, such as north-northeast between north and northeast, are added to give the sixteen points of a wind compass, for most applications, the fractional points have been superseded by degrees measured clockwise from North. In ancient China 24 points of the compass were used, measuring fifteen degrees between points. The names of the compass directions follow the 32-point wind compass rose follow these rules, The cardinal directions are north, south, the ordinal directions are northeast, southeast and northwest, formed by bisecting the angle of the cardinal winds.
The name is merely a combination of the cardinals it bisects, the eight principal winds are the cardinals and ordinals considered together, that is N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW. Each principal wind is 45° from its neighbour, the principal winds form the basic eight-wind compass rose. The eight half-winds are the points obtained by bisecting the angles between the principal winds, the half-winds are north-northeast, east-northeast, east-southeast, south-southeast, south-southwest, west-southwest, west-northwest and north-northwest. Notice that the name is constructed simply by combining the names of the winds to either side, with the cardinal wind coming first. The eight principal winds and the eight half-winds together yield a 16-wind compass rose, all of the above named points plus the sixteen quarter winds listed in the next paragraph define the 32 points of the wind compass rose. The sixteen quarter winds are the points obtained by bisecting the angles between the points on a 16-wind compass rose.
The name of a quarter-wind is X by Y, where X is a principal wind, so northeast by east means one quarter from NE towards E, southwest by south means one quarter from SW towards S. The eight principal winds, eight half-winds and sixteen quarter winds together yield a 32-wind compass rose, in the mariners exercise of boxing the compass, all thirty-two points of the compass are named in clockwise order. The title of the Alfred Hitchcock 1959 movie, North by Northwest, is not a direction point on the 32-wind compass. The traditional compass rose of eight winds was invented by seafarers in the Mediterranean Sea during the Middle Ages. This Italianate patois was used to designate the names of the winds on the compass rose found in mariner compasses. Tramutana, Grecho, Xaloc, Libezo, Mezzodi, Magistro, etc
London, or Greater London, is a region of England which forms the administrative boundaries of London. It is organised into 33 local government districts, the 32 London boroughs, the Greater London Authority, based in Southwark, is responsible for strategic local government across the region and consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. The county of Greater London was created on 1 April 1965 through the London Government Act 1963, Greater London was first established as a sui generis council area under the Greater London Council between 1963 and 1986. The area was re-established as a region in 1994, and the Greater London Authority formed in 2000, the region covers 1,572 km2 and had a population of 8,174,000 at the 2011 census. In 2012, it had the highest GVA per capita in the United Kingdom at £37,232, the Greater London Built-up Area—used in some national statistics—is a measure of the continuous urban area of London, and therefore includes areas outside of the administrative region.
The term Greater London has been and still is used to different areas in governance, history. In terms of ceremonial counties, London is divided into the small City of London, outside the limited boundaries of the City, a variety of arrangements has governed the wider area since 1855, culminating in the creation of the Greater London administrative area in 1965. The Greater London Arterial Road Programme was devised between 1913 and 1916, one of the larger early forms was the Greater London Planning Region, devised in 1927, which occupied 1,856 square miles and included 9 million people. The LCC pressed for an alteration in its boundaries soon after the end of the First World War, noting that within the Metropolitan, a Royal Commission on London Government was set up to consider the issue. The LCC proposed a vast new area for Greater London, with a boundary somewhere between the Metropolitan Police District and the home counties, protests were made at the possibility of including Windsor and Eton in the authority.
The Commission made its report in 1923, rejecting the LCCs scheme, two minority reports favoured change beyond the amalgamation of smaller urban districts, including both smaller borough councils and a central authority for strategic functions. The London Traffic Act 1924 was a result of the Commission, Greater London originally had a two-tier system of local government, with the Greater London Council sharing power with the City of London Corporation and the 32 London Borough councils. The GLC was abolished in 1986 by the Local Government Act 1985 and its functions were devolved to the City Corporation and the London Boroughs, with some functions transferred to central government and joint boards. Greater London was used to form the London region of England in 1994, a referendum held in 1998 established a public will to recreate an upper tier of government to cover the region. The Greater London Authority, London Assembly and the directly elected Mayor of London were created in 2000 by the Greater London Authority Act 1999, in 2000, the outer boundary of the Metropolitan Police District was re-aligned to the Greater London boundary.
The 2000 and 2004 mayoral elections were won by Ken Livingstone, the 2008 and 2012 elections were won by Boris Johnson. The 2016 election was won by Sadiq Khan, Greater London continues to include the most closely associated parts of the Greater London Urban Area and their historic buffers. Thus it includes, in five boroughs, significant parts of the Metropolitan Green Belt which protects designated greenfield land in a way to the citys parks
Postcodes in the United Kingdom
Postal codes used in the United Kingdom are known as postcodes. They are alphanumeric and were adopted nationally between 11 October 1959 and 1974, having been devised by the GPO, a full postcode is known as a postcode unit and designates an area with a number of addresses or a single major delivery point. For example, the postcode of the University of Roehampton in London is SW15 5PU, the postcode of GCHQ is GL51 0EX, where GL signifies the postal town of Gloucester. The postal town refers to an area and does not relate to a specific town. GL51 is one of the postcodes for the town of Cheltenham which is where GCHQ is located, the London post town covers 40% of Greater London. On inception it was divided into ten districts, EC, WC, N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W. The S and NE sectors were abolished and these divisions changed little, usually only changed for operational efficiency. Some older road signs in Hackney still indicate the North East sector/district, following the successful introduction of postal districts in London, the system was extended to other large towns and cities.
Liverpool was divided into Eastern, Northern and Western districts in 1864/65, in 1917 Dublin – still part of the United Kingdom – was divided into numbered postal districts. These continue in use in a form by An Post. In 1923 Glasgow was divided in a way to London. In January 1932 the Postmaster General approved the designation of some urban areas into numbered districts. In November 1934 the Post Office announced the introduction of numbered districts in every town in the United Kingdom large enough to justify it. Pamphlets were issued to each householder and business in ten areas notifying them of the number of the district in which their premises lay, the pamphlets included a map of the districts, and copies were made available at local head post offices. The public were invited to include the district number in the address at the head of letters. A publicity campaign in the following year encouraged the use of the district numbers, the slogan for the campaign was For speed and certainty always use a postal district number on your letters and notepaper. A poster was fixed to every box in the affected areas bearing the number of the district.
Every post office in the district was to display this information
It ended when metal tools became widespread. The Neolithic is a progression of behavioral and cultural characteristics and changes, including the use of wild and domestic crops, the beginning of the Neolithic culture is considered to be in the Levant about 10, 200–8800 BC. It developed directly from the Epipaleolithic Natufian culture in the region, whose people pioneered the use of wild cereals, which evolved into true farming. The Natufian period was between 12,000 and 10,200 BC, and the so-called proto-Neolithic is now included in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic between 10,200 and 8800 BC. By 10, 200–8800 BC, farming communities arose in the Levant and spread to Asia Minor, North Africa, Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. Early Neolithic farming was limited to a range of plants, both wild and domesticated, which included einkorn wheat and spelt, and the keeping of dogs, sheep. By about 6900–6400 BC, it included domesticated cattle and pigs, the establishment of permanently or seasonally inhabited settlements, not all of these cultural elements characteristic of the Neolithic appeared everywhere in the same order, the earliest farming societies in the Near East did not use pottery.
Early Japanese societies and other East Asian cultures used pottery before developing agriculture, unlike the Paleolithic, when more than one human species existed, only one human species reached the Neolithic. The term Neolithic derives from the Greek νέος néos, new and λίθος líthos, the term was invented by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system. In the Middle East, cultures identified as Neolithic began appearing in the 10th millennium BC, early development occurred in the Levant and from there spread eastwards and westwards. Neolithic cultures are attested in southeastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia by around 8000 BC. The total excavated area is more than 1,200 square yards, the Neolithic 1 period began roughly 10,000 years ago in the Levant. A temple area in southeastern Turkey at Göbekli Tepe dated around 9500 BC may be regarded as the beginning of the period. This site was developed by nomadic tribes, evidenced by the lack of permanent housing in the vicinity.
At least seven stone circles, covering 25 acres, contain limestone pillars carved with animals, Stone tools were used by perhaps as many as hundreds of people to create the pillars, which might have supported roofs. Other early PPNA sites dating to around 9500–9000 BC have been found in Jericho, Gilgal in the Jordan Valley, the start of Neolithic 1 overlaps the Tahunian and Heavy Neolithic periods to some degree. The major advance of Neolithic 1 was true farming, in the proto-Neolithic Natufian cultures, wild cereals were harvested, and perhaps early seed selection and re-seeding occurred. The grain was ground into flour, emmer wheat was domesticated, and animals were herded and domesticated
Dartford is the principal town in the Borough of Dartford, England. The town is situated on the border of Kent and Greater London and it borders the Borough of Thurrock, via the Dartford Crossing of the River Thames and Gravesham to its east. The town centre lies in a valley through which the River Darent flows, Dartford became a market town in medieval times and, although today it is principally a commuter town for Greater London, it has a long history of religious and cultural importance. It is an important rail hub, the main through-road now by-passes the town itself, Dartford is twinned with several other towns and cities abroad including Hanau in Germany, Gravelines in France and Namyangju in South Korea. In prehistoric times, the first people appeared in the Dartford area around 250,000 years ago, many other archaeological investigations have revealed a good picture of occupation of the district with important finds from the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. When the Romans engineered the Dover to London road, it was necessary to cross the River Darent by ford, roman villas were built along the Darent Valley, and at Noviomagus, close by.
The Saxons may have established the first settlement where Dartford now stands, Dartford manor is mentioned in the Domesday Book, compiled in 1086, after the Norman conquest. It was owned by the king, during the medieval period Dartford was an important waypoint for pilgrims and travellers en route to Canterbury and the Continent, and various religious orders established themselves in the area. In the 12th century the Knights Templar had possession of the manor of Dartford, in the 14th century, a priory was established here, and two groups of friars—the Dominicans and the Franciscans—built hospitals here for the care of the sick. At this time the town became a small but important market town, however, cannot claim a monopoly on public houses named after Tyler. Although lacking a leader, Kentishmen had assembled at Dartford around 5 June through a sense of county solidarity at the mistreatment of Robert Belling, a man claimed as a serf by Sir Simon Burley. Having left for Rochester and Canterbury on 5 June, the rebels passed back through Dartford, swollen in number, in the 15th century, two kings of England became part of the towns history.
In March 1452, Duke of York, camped at the Brent allegedly with ten thousand men, the Duke surrendered to the king in Dartford. The place of the camp is marked today by York Road, the 16th century saw significant changes to the hitherto agrarian basis of the market in Dartford, as new industries began to take shape. The priory was destroyed in 1538 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, many Protestants were executed during the reigns of Queen Mary and Philip and Mary, including Christopher Wade, a Dartford linen-weaver who was burnt at the stake on the Brent in 1555. The Martyrs Memorial on East Hill commemorates Wade and other Kentish Martyrs, in 1576 Dartford Grammar School was founded, part of the Tudor emphasis on education for ordinary people. The earliest industries were connected with agriculture, such as the brewing of traditional beers. Lime-burning and chalk-mining had their place, fulling was another, the cleansing of wool needed a great deal of water, which the river could provide
Thamesmead /ˈtɛmzmiːd/ is an area of Greater London, located in the London Boroughs of Greenwich and Bexley. Originally planned to have 60, 000-100,000 residents, it is now estimated to be on target for a population of around 50,000. Most of the area of Thamesmead previously formed about 1,000 acres of the old Royal Arsenal site that extended over Plumstead Marshes. After the Roman era, river levels rose again and the reverted to marshland. According to Hasted, some areas of this marshland were drained by 1279 by the monks of Lesnes Abbey, between 1812 and 1816, a canal was built by convicts to take materials such as timber from the River Thames to Woolwich Royal Arsenal. Much of this canal has been filled in, but part remains in Thamesmead West and is now called the Broadwater, a disused lock gate and swing bridge over the canal still exist beside the River Thames. Thamesmead as it is now was built at the end of the 1960s, efforts were made to solve the social problems that had already started to affect earlier estates.
These were believed to be the result of people being uprooted from close-knit working-class communities and sent to many miles away. The design of the estates meant that people would see their neighbours more rarely than they would have done in the housing that had been typical in working-class areas. The solution proposed was that once the residents had moved in. He used water as an influence on the residents. Thamesmead was designed around futuristic ideas, and indeed, looked impressive at first from a distance and it was provided walkways between its blocks of housing and between sections in North Thamesmead. The walkways quickly became littered and abused and they were not considered safe places to walk. Pathways set out for people to walk on were put in without regard to how people would wish to get about, much of Thamesmead was initially built by the Greater London Council for rent to families moving from overcrowded back-to-back Victorian housing in south eastern parts of Inner London.
The first residence was occupied in 1968, but already there were rain penetration problems, when the GLC was abolished in 1986, its housing assets and the remaining undeveloped land were vested in a non-profit organisation, Thamesmead Town Limited. TTL was a company with an unusual form of governance. Its nine executive directors were local residents, they submitted themselves to re-election. The main reason cited for this decision was that workers in Canary Wharf lived in Essex and could change from National Rail to the Jubilee line at Stratford, London | <urn:uuid:eb343252-2c99-4420-9eb8-157c8f80d2b1> | {
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Much of the information for the below comes from a story of the same title written by Marguerite Cottingham Dodge in 1930.
James Walden Lawton was born in 1860 in Wisconsin, a son of Isaac and Jane Lawton, formerly of Cattaraugus County in New York State. In 1883 he married Sarah Elizabeth born in 1864, daughter of Karl and Christina Saubert. Sarah had an older half-sister named Kathryn Saubert, born in 1842, who married Joshua Groves born in 1840. Josh Groves was one of the handlers of "Old Abe."
During the winter that began in 1860 the Flambeau Band of Chippewa Indians had excellent trapping results, and in the spring of '61 were on their way to sell their bounty to the white buyers. One evening while camped at the confluence of the Jump and Chippewa Rivers, an eagle's nest was spotted in the top of a tall tree. Ski, the son of Chief Thunder Eyes, shot the grown eagle from atop a nearby tree. He then commanded a young warrior to bring down the eaglets from the nesting tree. The Band continued on their way and camped next at Jim Falls, where lived a crippled white settler named McCan. The Flambeaus, after a long winter, were short on rations, and so were persuaded to turn over one of the eaglets for a sack of corn.
Later in the year McCan, hearing of Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers, brought the partially grown eaglet to Eau Claire, a small saw mill town, where Company C of the Eighth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment was forming. The men paid McCan's $2.80 hotel bill and thus the eagle became the Regiment mascot. Captain John Perkins named him Old Abe, and turned him over to James McGinnis the first Eagle-bearer in American history. He marched to the left of the flag bearer at the head of what came to be known as the Eagle Regiment.
While marching across Wisconsin, while stopped in LaCrosse, Captain Perkins was offered $200 for the eagle, but flatly turned it down with the statement the eagle couldn't be bought for any amount of money. From LaCrosse, Company C went on to Fort Randall where they passed the gate between rows of spectators. Here Old Abe caught a corner of the flag in his beak, and held on until they reached Colonel Murphy's headquarters.
On October 12, 1861 the Regiment under Colonel Murphy left Camp Randall. They arrived in Chicago and marched through the city with Old Abe beside the Stars and Stripes. Much enthusiasm was generated as Governor Randall led the marching troops. On October 14th the Regiment arrived in St Louis, where Old Abe broke his tether, flew over the crowd and soared to a rooftop. He was recaptured and returned to his Regiment, with an offer of $500 for him, but once more was told the bird was not for sale at any price.
On October 21, 1861 Old Abe saw his first battle. This was at Fredericksburg, Missouri. He was chained to the courthouse roof during the battle. All during the shouting, shooting, and shrieks of the wounded, Abe, wild with excitement, leapt, gnawed, and screeched, not calming until the battle was over.
When full grown he weighed 10 ½ pounds and had a wingspan of about 6 ½ feet. Carrying the eagle was no easy task, and McGinnis lasted but through one battle, as did most others of his bearers. It was said at the time that Old Abe changed bearers more often than did the soldiers their socks.
It was May 9th 1862, at Farmington, Mississippi; when a single brigade of Union men met General Beauregard with 2,500 Confederate soldiers. The Eagle Regiment, along side the Illinois 26th were sent to take the woods. Up rose the foe, but the two regiments held for a half-hour under intense fire. Anxious for the safety of Old Abe, Captain Perkins ordered Abe and his keeper to remain well to the rear. As the Confederate troops passed on, the Union men were ordered to lie down behind a knoll. The keeper laid the perch on the ground and crouched low with the rest of the men. Old Abe seemed to sense the danger, and crept to his keeper's side, remaining there until the bugle called for advance. He then flew to his upright perch and remained there until the battle ended. Captain Perkins was mortally wounded in that battle, and was succeeded by Lieutenant Victor Wolf, but Old Abe merely watched it all.
The men went into quarters at Clear Creek, where Old Abe was allowed to run at large, catching bugs in water puddles, fishing in the creek, running after thrown balls, and tearing up the soldiers clothes. A soldier on kitchen detail killed some chickens and left them out for a few minutes. Old Abe saw his opportunity, seized one, and flew to a treetop. The cook was furious, but could do nothing while Old Abe leisurely ate his meal. Abe loved the water and swam with the men in the creek. While doing that on one occasion a young Negro boy splashed water at him. Abe chased the lad from the camp, and forever after disliked colored people. He disliked dogs. If one appeared, there was an immediate cataclysm of yelps, barks, and flying fur.
On October 3, 1862 Rosecrans readied his troops to meet Confederate troops under General Price. Price, having heard of the mighty eagle, gave his orders to capture it with the words; "I'd rather capture that eagle than the whole brigade." They failed to do either. During the conflict Old Abe once more gave a mighty leap, broke his tether, and soared aloft above the battle. A hail of bullets buzzed around him, but he continued to survey the scene from high above. He ultimately spied his own Regimental Flag and settled near it. He had been slightly wounded, but fully recovered.
On the seventh of May of 1863, General Grant inspected the regiment. When he passed by, he tipped his hat to Old Abe, which caused the men to cheer wildly. The eagle responded with a shrill scream of his own and a quick flapping of his wings, which brought extreme delight to the General.
About two weeks later the Eagle Regiment was on the right of an attacking force at Vicksburg, Mississippi, under the command of General Sherman. Gunboats opened the fray with a tremendous bombardment. Old Abe led the troops into battle. He was struck twice, once in the chest, and again in the left wing. An artillery round tore the flag to shreds beside him, and killed a dozen men. Old Abe and his handler were knocked to the ground where the handler remained dazed and motionless. Old Abe uttered a tremendous scream; beat his wings so powerfully he dragged the handler forward several yards just as a second round hit the very spot where they had been.
On July 4, 1863, Abe rode proudly into Vicksburg where Grant and Pemberton were settling the terms of surrender. The seriously depleted Union forces were badly in need of replacements so Old Abe, and Company C, were sent north on a recruiting mission. The remnants of Company C were a ragged group with scars on their uniforms as well as their faces. Battle flags were tattered and worn, but crowds cheered the majestic eagle everywhere. At Eau Claire, Old Abe was guest of honor at what was probably the only banquet for a bird, ever.
Again he went south, into his last battle. Company C was ordered to Hurricane Creek, Louisiana. Flanked by cavalry to either side, the Eagle Regiment marched down the middle. Both sides heard his screeches of defiance over the roar of cannon, and other sounds of battle. On September 16, 1864 the ragged remaining 26 members of Company C were ordered home for good.
They stopped in Madison and presented Governor Lewis for the State of Wisconsin, the most famous bird in Americanhistory. Quarters were provided for him in the Capitol basement. L. W. Volk, a sculptor, made his likeness in marble. Many noted artists painted his picture, and some hang on the walls of the State Capitol building. He was often shown at fairs and reunions over the next seventeen years that he resided there. P. T. Barnum offered $20,000 for him, which was, of course, refused. Records show Old Abe being in actual battle for 80 days not counting numerous small skirmishes.
In February 1881 a fire broke out in his room. He gave the alarm with several shrill screams, and was releasedto a corridor. Apparently though the smoke gassed him, as he died a month later, among a group of sorrowing soldiers who stood by him at the end. After thoughts of giving him a military funeral, it was decided to use the talents of a taxidermist instead. He remained a historical figure in the Capitol museum for a further 23 years. On February 27, 1904 the Capitol burned along with Old Abe's remains. So passed maybe the most famous bird in history, the eagle that led an army to victory. | <urn:uuid:c579e0f4-88f4-4c21-9ff9-074066891ba6> | {
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Perfume was first used by the ancient Egyptians, who used fragrant scents in religious ceremonies. They believed that they could communicate with their gods through the use of scented smoke. The word perfume is derived from the Latin phrase "per fumum," which means "through smoke."
Egyptians also used scented balms and ointments for cosmetic purposes. Early Muslims, Chinese and Indians also used perfume for religious purposes. Widespread use of perfume for cosmetic purposes began during the Middle Ages, when scents and spices began trading on international markets. Eau de Cologne was invented in the 18th century by Jean-Marie Farina in Cologne, Italy. | <urn:uuid:1f897040-6921-4836-acaf-d32f49f5dbd9> | {
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Posted Aug 15, 2015 by Martin Armstrong
The devaluation of the Chinese renminbi (yuan) raises serious implications both economically and politically. The mere fact that a peg exists allows for political criticism, as if this were some currency war. First, China devalued the renminbi for its economy to remain on an even keel in an attempt to keep growth and employment high. Secondly, China acted to make its currency a preeminent global currency, which helps to promote the country’s diplomatic goals and solidifies the country’s centrality to the global economy. However, these two goals can also emerge in conflict with one another.
Currency pegs are dangerous for they can produce the wrong political implications. A 5% swing in currency value is no big deal in the markets as with dollar/euro. However, simply because China has a managed float (peg) they run the risk of facing accusations for creating a currency war with just a 2% adjustment. Pegs can overshoot as well as undershoot and either can be economically disruptive. We saw what happened to the Swiss peg and the pegs in Southeast Asia that facilitated the Asian Currency Crisis of 1997. In both cases, governments lost a fortune because pegs provide a stop loss to foreign capital.
China should move to a full float now for the high in the renminbi (yuan) took place with a 19-year decline in the dollar forming the 2013 low. The majority seems surprised by the dollar rally (devaluation) only because they seemed to have overlooked the fact that the low was clearly made in 2013 when an uptrend was already in motion.
China was wrongly blamed for the devaluation when in fact the trend was already in motion in the market and the economy. Floating the renminbi now will eliminate the blame that the trend is manufactured by China when in fact this is a dollar bull market unfolding globally. | <urn:uuid:610aaabe-d021-4475-b7dc-c30125b68af8> | {
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- A soft, moist mass of material, typically consisting of bran, flour, herbs, etc., applied to the body to relieve soreness and inflammation and kept in place with a cloth.Más ejemplos en oraciones
- Michael insisted on taking care of that himself, bandaging a poultice of herbs over the injury every morning.
- He beckoned, then pointed at the poultice, and was relieved when the fledgling crawled over with no sign of either suspicion or fear.
- Such practitioners, known as curanderos, use herb teas and poultices, traditional exercises, incantations, and magical touching to heal.
verbo[with object] Volver al principio
- Apply a poultice to: he poulticed the woundMás ejemplos en oraciones
- A Greek myth relates that Achilles used some form of the Yarrow for poulticing the wounds of his soldiers.
- We're just hoping that poulticing it and hot-tubbing it will do the trick.
- Mmm, he may have heated some dampened rags by the stove and poulticed them on the clay to render it supple.
late Middle English: from Latin pultes (plural), from puls, pult- 'pottage, pap'.
Más definiciones de poulticeDefinición de poultice en:
- el diccionario Inglés de EE.UU. | <urn:uuid:7775e7ab-d6e8-4c2f-9e14-c487db94137f> | {
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Groundswell support is growing for Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to be exhibited in Florence a century after it was stolen from the Louvre by an Italian employee and exhibited at the Uffizi Gallery.
An Italian petition signed by more than 150,000 people calling on the Louvre to ‘return’ the painting to Florence is in circulation, and the National Committee for Historical, Cultural and Environmental Heritage says it has made a formal request to French Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti.
The return of the Mona Lisa to Florence would be of “high historical value, both symbolic and moral,” says committee president Silvano Vincenti. The artwork is believed to have been begun in Italy before Leonardo da Vinci sold it to the French king Francis I in the early sixteenth century.
The Province of Florence is currently in negotiations with the French authorities to discuss the possibility of hosting the artwork at Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, which is equipped with the required security for an exhibition of such international importance.
In 1911 disgruntled Louvre employee Vincenzo Perugia walked out of the Louvre carrying the Mona Lisa with the intention of ‘repatriating’ it back to Italy. The theft remained unsolved for two years until Perugia confessed his crime and handed the priceless artwork over, with the stipulation that it remained in Italy. The Mona Lisa was exhibited at the Uffizi and taken on a celebrated tour of Italy before being handed back to the Louvre in December 1913. | <urn:uuid:6dde53e2-b106-466f-a379-74e9047ef7e2> | {
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The French have been known to be vibrant and true connoisseurs of art. It is the first tourist destination of the world. France is officially known as the French Republic. Its chief territory is located in Western Europe. It has other islands and territories in separate continents. The area in the Western Europe is termed as the metropolitan France, commonly referred to as the 'Hexagon', due to its hexagonal shape. Metropolitan France comprises territories from the Mediterranean Sea to the North Sea, via the English Channel. Metropolitan France also extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Sea. The French Republic comprises about 220,000 square miles.
Facts About France
The Republic of France is surrounded by Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, Monaco, Spain and Andorra. France shares its borders with Surinam, Brazil and the Netherlands Antilles due to the overseas departments.
The capital of France is Paris. Other famous cities in France are Lyon, Toulouse, Nice, Rennes, Lille, Marseille and Bordeaux. The name for the world-famous wine, 'Bordeaux' has been taken after this city. Bordeaux has many wine regions.
Wine has been made in France since the Roman times. France is famous for producing a wide range of wines from different grape varieties. The world's most famous liqueurs, such as Bénédictine, Chartreuse, Grand Marnier, Triple Sec, Cognac, Armagnac, Crème de Cassis, Pastis, are produced in France.
France was the first country to adopt the International System of Units.
France is the sixth largest economy in the world and is a developed country. It is the sixth largest importer and the fifth largest exporter of manufactured goods. France is also the second largest receiver of foreign direct investments as compared to other countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). France is the leader of the G7 countries in terms of productivity.
France is also a member of the WTO, United Nations, Secretariat of the Pacific Community and the Indian Ocean Commission. France is a partial member of the NATO and an associate member of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS). The headquarters of UNESCO, OECD, Interpol and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures are housed in France.
France uses the civil legal system. The rules of law were laid in Napoleonic code. The Law in France can be mainly divided in two areas, public law and private law. Private law mainly deals with criminal and civil law, whereas public law deals with constitutional and administrative law. French laws do not recognize blasphemy laws.
The military of France is divided into four departments, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Military Police. France has at least 359,000 military personnel. France spends almost 2.5 percent of its GDP on defense. Most of French military instruments are made in France, notably the Charles De Gaulle aircraft carrier, the Exocet missile and the Rafale fighter.
Gothic Art as well as Baroque architecture is said to have been born in France. The earlier name for Gothic art was French Art. France is therefore home to many world-famous and prestigious Gothic art in basilicas and cathedrals.
French literature is very rich and widely known. French poetry and literature blossomed during the eighteenth and twentieth century. Charles Perrault was an acclaimed French writer who wrote many popular books like 'Cinderalla', 'Sleeping Beauty' and 'Bluebeard'.
Other important contributions by France to the world of literature and heritage are 'The Three Musketeers', 'The Count of Monte Cristo', 'The Hunchback of Notre dame' and 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea'. 'The Phantom of the Opera', written by the French author Gaston Leroux during the twentieth century is considered to be one of the most famous pieces of French literature in modern times. Today, the Prix Goncourt is the most important award in French literature.
Sport plays an important role in France with football and rugby union being the most-watched sports in the country.
The annual sports events held in France are the Tour de France, which is the best known bicycle race in the world and the French Open, the most prestigious tennis tournament held over two weeks between late May and early June in Paris, France, at the Stade Roland Garros.
The Eiffel Tower is France's most iconic symbol and one of the tallest structures in Paris, France. It is also the most visited monument in the world. Besides, the Louvre, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Latin Quarter, Montmartre and the Georges Pompidou Center are the major attractions in Paris.
The Notre Dame Cathedral is a Gothic Roman Catholic Cathedral in Paris. It is one of the finest examples of the Gothic architecture.
The French are known for their fine cuisine. Breads, charcuterie items and desserts form a part of the French food.
The Bastille Day is the French National Day, which is celebrated on the 14th of July every year and is a national holiday in France.
As mentioned, France is a popular tourist destination. Its comfortable climate, beautiful countryside and a rich culture with food and wines are loved by people from all over the world. | <urn:uuid:ff9bcb2f-d154-4424-95b8-53bb314f1dbf> | {
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Argument from reason
|This article needs additional citations for verification. (April 2014)|
The argument from reason is an argument against metaphysical naturalism and for the existence of God (or at least a supernatural being that is the source of human reason). The best-known defender of the argument is C. S. Lewis. Lewis first defended the argument at length in his 1947 book, Miracles: A Preliminary Study. In the second edition of Miracles (1960), Lewis substantially revised and expanded the argument.
Metaphysical (or philosophical) naturalism is the view that nature is all that exists. Naturalists deny the existence of God, souls, an afterlife, or anything supernatural. Nothing exists outside or beyond the physical universe.
The argument from reason seeks to show that naturalism is self-refuting, or otherwise false and indefensible.
According to Lewis,
One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the naturalistic worldview].... The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears.... [U]nless Reason is an absolute--all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.—C. S. Lewis, "Is Theology Poetry?", The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses
More precisely, Lewis's argument from reason can be stated as follows:
1. No belief is rationally inferred if it can be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes.
Support: Reasoning requires insight into logical relations. A process of reasoning (P therefore Q) is rational only if the reasoner sees that Q follows from, or is supported by, P, and accepts Q on that basis. Thus, reasoning is trustworthy (or "valid", as Lewis sometimes says) only if it involves a special kind of causality, namely, rational insight into logical implication or evidential support. If a bit of reasoning can be fully explained by nonrational causes, such as fibers firing in the brain or a bump on the head, then the reasoning is not reliable, and cannot yield knowledge.
2. If naturalism is true, then all beliefs can be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes.
Support: Naturalism holds that nature is all that exists, and that all events in nature can in principle be explained without invoking supernatural or other nonnatural causes. Standardly, naturalists claim that all events must have physical causes, and that human thoughts can ultimately be explained in terms of material causes or physical events (such as neurochemical events in the brain) that are nonrational.
3. Therefore, if naturalism is true, then no belief is rationally inferred (from 1 and 2).
4. We have good reason to accept naturalism only if it can be rationally inferred from good evidence.
5. Therefore, there is not, and cannot be, good reason to accept naturalism.
In short, naturalism undercuts itself. If naturalism is true, then we cannot sensibly believe it or virtually anything else.
In some versions of the argument from reason, Lewis extends the argument to defend a further conclusion: that human reason depends on an eternal, self-existent rational Being (God). This extension of the argument from reason states:
1. Since everything in nature can be wholly explained in terms of nonrational causes, human reason (more precisely, the power of drawing conclusions based solely on the rational cause of logical insight) must have a source outside of nature.
2. If human reason came from non-reason it would lose all rational credentials and would cease to be reason.
3. So, human reason cannot come from non-reason (from 2).
4. So human reason must come from a source outside nature that is itself rational (from 1 and 3).
5. This supernatural source of reason may itself be dependent on some further source of reason, but a chain of such dependent sources cannot go on forever. Eventually, we must reason back to the existence of eternal, non-dependent source of human reason.
6. Therefore, there exists an eternal, self-existent, rational Being who is the ultimate source of human reason. This Being we call God (from 4-5). (Lewis, Miracles, chap. 4)
On 2 February 1948, Oxford philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe read a paper to the Oxford Socratic Club criticizing the version of the argument from reason contained in the third chapter of Lewis's Miracles.
Her first criticism was against the use of the word "irrational" by Lewis (Anscombe 1981: 225-26). Her point was that there is an important difference between irrational causes of belief, such as wishful thinking, and nonrational causes, such as neurons firing in the brain, that do not obviously lead to faulty reasoning. Lewis accepted the criticism and amended the argument, basing it on the concept of nonrational causes of belief (as in the version provided in this article).
Anscombe's second criticism questioned the intelligibility of Lewis's intended contrast between "valid" and "invalid" reasoning. She wrote: "What can you mean by 'valid' beyond what would be indicated by the explanation you would give for distinguishing between valid and invalid, and what in the naturalistic hypothesis prevents that explanation from being given and from meaning what it does?" (Anscombe 1981: 226) Her point is that it makes no sense to contrast "valid" and "invalid" reasoning unless it is possible for some forms of reasoning to be valid. Lewis later conceded (Anscombe 1981: 231) that "valid" was a bad word for what he had in mind. Lewis didn't mean to suggest that if naturalism is true, no arguments can be given in which the conclusions follow logically from the premises. What he meant is that a process of reasoning is "veridical", that is, reliable as a method of pursuing knowledge and truth, only if it cannot be entirely explained by nonrational causes.
Anscombe's third objection was that Lewis failed to distinguish between different senses of the terms "why", "because", and "explanation", and that what counts as a "full" explanation varies by context (Anscombe 1981: 227-31). In the context of ordinary life, "because he wants a cup of tea" may count as a perfectly satisfactory explanation of why Peter is boiling water. Yet such a purposive explanation would not count as a full explanation (or an explanation at all) in the context of physics or biochemistry. Lewis accepted this criticism, and created a revised version of the argument in which the distinction between "because" in the sense of physical causality, and "because" in the sense of evidential support, became the central point of the argument. (This is the version described in this article.)
More recent critics have argued that Lewis's argument refutes only strict forms of naturalism that seek to explain everything in terms ultimately reducible to physics or purely mechanistic causes. So-called "broad" naturalists that see consciousness as an "emergent" non-physical property of complex brains would agree with Lewis that different levels or types of causation exist in nature, and that rational inferences are not fully explainable by nonrational causes (Taliaferro 2010: 108).
Other critics have objected that Lewis's argument from reason fails because the causal origins of beliefs are often irrelevant to whether those beliefs are rational, justified, warranted, etc. Anscombe, for example, argues that "if a man has reasons, and they are good reasons, and they are genuinely his reasons, for thinking something—then his thought is rational, whatever causal statements we make about him" (Anscombe 1981: 229). On many widely accepted theories of knowledge and justification, questions of how beliefs were ultimately caused (e.g., at the level of brain neurochemistry) are viewed as irrelevant to whether those beliefs are rational or justified. Some defenders of Lewis claim that this objection misses the mark, because his argument is directed at what he calls the "veridicalness" of acts of reasoning (i.e., whether reasoning connects us with objective reality or truth), rather than with whether any inferred beliefs can be rational or justified in a materialistic world.
Similar views by other thinkers
Lewis never claimed that he invented the argument from reason; in fact, he refers to it a "venerable philosophical chestnut" (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis II: 715). Early versions of the argument occur in the works of Arthur Balfour (see, e.g., The Foundations of Belief, 1879, chap. 13) and G.K. Chesterton. In Chesterton's 1908 book Orthodoxy, in a chapter titled "The Suicide of Thought", he writes of the "great and possible peril . . . that the human intellect is free to destroy itself....It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" [Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: Image Books, 1959), p. 33]
Similarly, Chesterton asserts that the argument is a fundamental, if unstated, tenet of Thomism in his 1933 book St. Thomas Aquinas: "The Dumb Ox":
Thus, even those who appreciate the metaphysical depth of Thomism in other matters have expressed surprise that he does not deal at all with what many now think the main metaphysical question; whether we can prove that the primary act of recognition of any reality is real. The answer is that St. Thomas recognised instantly, what so many modern sceptics have begun to suspect rather laboriously; that a man must either answer that question in the affirmative, or else never answer any question, never ask any question, never even exist intellectually, to answer or to ask. I suppose it is true in a sense that a man can be a fundamental sceptic, but he cannot be anything else: certainly not even a defender of fundamental scepticism. If a man feels that all the movements of his own mind are meaningless, then his mind is meaningless, and he is meaningless; and it does not mean anything to attempt to discover his meaning. Most fundamental sceptics appear to survive, because they are not consistently sceptical and not at all fundamental. They will first deny everything and then admit something, if for the sake of argument--or often rather of attack without argument. I saw an almost startling example of this essential frivolity in a professor of final scepticism, in a paper the other day. A man wrote to say that he accepted nothing but Solipsism, and added that he had often wondered it was not a more common philosophy. Now Solipsism simply means that a man believes in his own existence, but not in anybody or anything else. And it never struck this simple sophist, that if his philosophy was true, there obviously were no other philosophers to profess it. (Chesterton, Aquinas, pp. 148-49)
In Miracles, Lewis himself quotes J. B. S. Haldane, who appeals to a similar line of reasoning in his 1927 book, Possible Worlds: "If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true ... and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms." (Haldane, Possible Worlds, p. 209)
Other versions of the argument from reason occur in C.E.M. Joad's Guide to Modern Philosophy (London: Faber, 1933, pp. 58–59), Richard Taylor's Metaphysics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 3rd ed., 1983), pp. 104–05, and J. P. Moreland's Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1987, chap. 3).
- Adapted from Victor Reppert, author of "C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea. Taken from his blog at: http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2006/07/argument-from-reason-and-lewiss-post.html"
- G.E.M. Anscombe, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981.
- John Beversluis, C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion. Revised edition. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007. ISBN 978-1-59102-531-3
- C.S. Lewis, Miracles. London & Glasgow: Collins/Fontana, 1947. Revised 1960. (Current edition: Fount, 2002. ISBN 0-00-628094-3)
- Victor Reppert, "The Argument from Reason". In William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. ISBN 1444350852
- Victor Reppert, C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003.
- Charles Taliaferro, "On Naturalism". In Robert MacSwain and Michael Ward, eds., The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-521-71114-2
- Peter van Inwagen, "C. S. Lewis's Argument Against Naturalism", Res Philosophica, volume 90 number 1 (January 2013) pages 113-124 doi: 10.11612/resphil.2013.90.1.7
- Erik Wielenberg, God and the Reach of Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ISBN 0521707102
- Peter S. Williams, C.S. Lewis vs. the New Atheists. Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2013. ISBN 1842277707 | <urn:uuid:9a05e2d1-6ee2-4b9d-9e6f-adb97d461b49> | {
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100,000 tons — it’s a difficult number to fathom, but it’s a reality we all face as Rhode Islanders because 100,000 tons represents the amount of food waste that enters our Central Landfill each year, and we’re quickly running out of space and time.
People around the world are taking action to address the problem of food waste from waste management professionals and concerned citizens to chefs and farmers leading the sustainable food movement. On Monday, April 1st the Healthy Soils, Healthy Seas Rhode Island project team will host a film screening of Wasted! The Story of Food Waste, an informative and entertaining documentary produced by celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain that takes audiences around the world, showing the tons of food that gets thrown out each year and the people fighting hardest to prevent it.
You, too, can join the fight and take local action to address food waste right here on Aquidneck Island by signing up for the HSHSRI program. Join us for the film screening at Jane Pickens Theater on Monday April 1st at 7pm to learn more about how to get involved and reduce your waste footprint today.
While the documentary demonstrates the global nature of the food waste challenge, the consequences of our 21st century problem also hits home. As the Ocean State’s main waste disposal site, the Johnston landfill serves all 39 municipalities statewide and processes approximately 450 tons of trash per day. That’s equivalent to about 37 dump trucks full each day. Plastic makes up 10-15% of the material entering the landfill. Organic waste, like food scraps and yard debris makes up another 30-35% of the material filling up our landfill.
But like many resources, our landfill is not infinite and we’re pushing the limits of its boundaries every year. Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation estimates that the Johnston landfill is expected to reach capacity by 2034; that’s a matter of just fifteen years.
Out of sight, out of mind and out of our pockets
While it’s mindless and pain-free to throw garbage in our trash bins, waste management is certainly not cost-free. Currently, Rhode Island cities and towns pay a disposal fee of $39.50 for each ton of trash delivered to RIRRC. This delivery cost, also known as a tipping fee, is expected to jump to $47 per ton in the 2018-2019 fiscal year, which will collectively cost cities and towns $2.2 million. The hike is expected to fund a desperately needed expansion of the landfill in order to keep up with the state’s trash.
Still, increasing tipping fees and a 100-acre addition will not solve the much larger problem that by 2034 the Johnston landfill will be completely full, and Rhode Island must seek alternative ways to dispose of its trash.
RIRRC is already thinking about the impending deadline and considering alternatives for waste disposal, which are few and far between:
- Find another city/town to build a landfill (no city/town has volunteered)
- Attempt to expand the current facility (this would be expensive and require land acquisitions and wetlands relocations)
- Ship trash out of state (with prohibitive tipping fees)
- Incinerate trash (RI law currently prohibits the burning of garbage)
There is a fifth alternative that is significantly less costly and has the potential to extend the life of the landfill two-fold, while saving taxpayer money and improving the health of our ocean. Rhode Island has the potential to divert half of the total waste entering the landfill. That’s more than 500,000 tons of waste per year!
In fact, more than one-third of Rhode Island’s mixed solid waste (MSW) stream is organic material that could potentially be composted or digested. This includes food waste, leaf and yard debris and compostable paper.
Though the Johnston landfill is expected to reach capacity by 2034, there is potential to buy more time without the high price tag. By diverting half of the trash in the waste stream, Rhode Island can extend the lifetime of the Central Landfill by another fifteen years through 2049.
The HSHSRI project offers an ideal opportunity for residents and businesses in Newport County on Aquidneck Island to start composting and reducing the waste that overwhelms our landfill, or worse, ends up polluting out coastal waterways as marine debris. Whether you want to compost in your backyard, drop-off food scraps at the farmer’s market or get them picked up curbside, we have a service that’s right for you, and it’s now at a new reduced cost. Together we can change the ending to the story of food waste and build a more sustainable food system that feeds healthy communities. | <urn:uuid:c680e27d-4282-4b90-b88a-38ea979091fe> | {
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Research | News
Millennial Parents: Schools Could Do Better Teaching Tech
- By Dian Schaffhauser
Millennial parents aren't necessarily happy with the track schools are following in teaching technology to their kids — and among students, girls are less satisfied than boys. That's what the Center for the Digital Future found out when it drilled down into on-going survey work. The center is part of the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. The latest work was a collaborative effort between the center and research firm Bovitz.
Overall, the researchers found that most — 56 percent — parents and students find the technological facilities in their schools at least "adequate." The same percentage of parents said they believe teachers are "adequately" preparing their students to use new technologies. Students themselves aren't so sure; only 46 percent said they agreed with that statement.
When the parent respondents were grouped by age, those who fall into the Millennial Generation — those who are currently the youngest parents — reported less confidence than any other age group. According to the findings, only 47 percent of parents aged 18 to 34 said teachers in their children's schools are "adequately preparing them to use new technologies," compared to 59 percent of non-Millennial parents. Fifty-one percent of Millennial parents said the technology in schools was adequate, compared to 56 percent of non-Millennials.
Differences also surfaced in how male and female students judged technological facilities in schools and their teachers' abilities in educating them about new technologies. While only half of female students said they agreed that the technology in their schools was adequate, reports of satisfaction went up to 65 percent among male students. And while half of male students told researchers they considered teachers adequately prepared to help them use new tech, only 43 percent of female students did.
"America's future is based on technology, yet barely a majority of parents and students think schools are up to the challenge of training the next generation of technology users," said Center Director Jeffrey Cole. "We believe that America can make great strides in improving education if a new generation of teachers from the Millennial generation — those born into using technology — has the opportunity to shape the next era of instruction."
Added Bovitz President Greg Bovitz, who is also a senior fellow at the center, "It's a clear case of digital adopters teaching digital natives. In the current classroom, the students have an innate advantage when it comes to technology."
These results come from supplemental survey work done with the Center's Digital Future Project research, which covers subjects such as privacy, social media use and use of technology at school. The "Topical Survey," from which this was culled, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent.
Dian Schaffhauser is a writer who covers technology and business for a number of publications. Contact her at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:1a77db06-88eb-41f9-93ca-735a1e22491d> | {
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At Onlea we create content with subject matter experts to deliver quality online learning across the globe. Meet Dr. Ross Lockwood, one of the instructors who soon will bring us Astrophysics 101: Visiting a Black Hole.
Ross Lockwood is a scientist with a passion for learning, experimentation, and scientific outreach. He graduated from the University of Alberta with a Bachelor of Science in Honors Physics, and a Doctorate in Condensed Matter Physics, after researching the properties of silicon quantum dots. Outside of academia, Ross has served as systems and communications engineer on the NASA-funded HI-SEAS Mars Simulation, a spacesuit tester for the Project PoSSUM microgravity simulation, and as a guinea pig for civilian spaceflight experiences under launch acceleration forces.
Ross is part of the team developing a Massive Open Online Course called Astro 101: Black Holes, which is expected to launch in the summer of 2018.
What inspired you to study Physics?
One of my passions is building things and taking them apart I think I've just taken it to a more fundamental level. My interest in physics is really about understanding the way everything works, which means I rely a lot on fundamental physics concepts. Curiosity drives me to understand how stellar-fusion works, how crystallinity of materials gives them electronic properties, and yes, even understanding why the sky is blue. My interest in physics is incredibly broad. It ranges from astrophysics and cosmology down to particle physics and nanotechnology.
Photo Courtesy of Ross Lockwood
Why did you want to teach the world about Black Holes?
Black holes are among the least understood objects in the Universe. Part of that reason is that they are so incredibly dense, both quantum mechanics and general relativity fail to describe them. Even my discipline, Condensed Matter Physics, breaks down when we talk about super-high density things, like Neutron Stars. Black holes go a step further- rending the fabric of spacetime itself, creating headaches for the scientists studying them. Black holes are really kind of an end point in understanding an extreme part of the Universe, and both learning and teaching about them is just terribly fascinating.
Who is Astro 101: Black Holes for?
Instructor Team of upcoming course Astrophysics 101: Visiting a Black Hole
We really want to make Astro 101: Black Holes a course that anybody, from kids aged 9 to 90 year olds and beyond. This makes it an interesting teaching challenge: we want to appeal to a younger learners, lapsed learners, while still being a competitive core component of an accredited university course.
How different is your experience teaching online compared to teaching in a classroom setting?
An online course feels more intimate because you know that the only thing separating you from your learners is time, and their computer screen. Since online courses can have a huge number of students enrolling at vastly different times, engaging every single person becomes a challenge. Luckily, we know that the learners we are producing this course for are dedicated to the challenge, and our role is to facilitate the content. So, outside of online teaching being completely different than traditional learning, I strive to make the most engaging content to explain the concepts.
When I am giving a lesson on camera I really try to connect with the learner sitting behind the screen of their computer or their tablet.
What challenges do you encounter teaching in classroom that you have overcome with online teaching?
The one part of classroom teaching that I miss is the student interaction in the classroom, I like to be interrupted. Since that’s not possible with online courses, I've adopted a style that emphasizes the parts of the course that I find interesting and funny. Jokes can convey information in a very broad and general sense so that feeling isn't lost on the learner.
I think the other real benefit of online courses is that it encourages focus. When a learner sits down for the course, they aren’t just staring at a screen with their headphones on. They can pause the lesson to look up a keyword, or revisit an old concept. They can find other learners and share things that interest them. Above all, online courses seed a person’s curiosity.
Photo Courtesy of Ross Lockwood
What do you consider are the key factors for successful online courses?
Understanding the new modality of teaching for online learners. For me, that means trying to establish a style that lends itself towards facilitating a more interactive learning process. So we do ask a lot of rhetorical questions and sometimes we ask leading questions. But we always try to provide an answer right then and there, so that we never leave you with a cliffhanger. We want the course to flow from section to section so that the learner doesn’t become intimidated as more difficult material is encountered.
We need to think hard about who is watching and what their needs are. Understanding things like when, where, and with whom, are our learners watching? I’m most excited to hear about young learners pairing up with parents and grandparents.
As far as timing is concerned making sure that our lessons are in small enough chunks that someone can watch a lesson on a short commute. Making sure that we're not intimidating students by the length of the course, or the length of a module. But then we also think about things like age, education and even regional vocabulary, because this is an English course. The majority of our learners for Astro 101: Black Holes will be from Canada or America, and choosing an appropriate word to make sure that the meaning is conveyed across all English speaking countries is important too, that’s a huge challenge. For example, we can’t just tell people how cold it is in Edmonton, since many of them have not visited. So instead, we try to convey the harsh and blistering cold that catches your breath and freezes your eyelashes when we’re talking about the weather in Edmonton.
How do you convey your message in a field that might seem intimidating for some audience?
Not only are black holes exciting and intriguing objects, in some sense, they are very simple objects. Scientists characterize them using only three numbers: mass, spin, and charge, which allows us to predict their behavior trillions of years into the future. When you talk about something that should be simpler than a black hole, like a star, there's all kinds of additional knowledge which describe changes over its lifetime. At the end of the day, developing analogies for black holes is much easier than it is for a star.
A nearly perfect analogy for a black hole in spacetime, is the whirlpool the next time you drain your bathtub!
On top of that, there are a lot of “I don’t knows” in black hole physics. We’ve got concepts like the Black Hole Information Paradox which says information doesn’t get destroyed going into a black hole, but no one has an answer which explains what happens to it. It’s an exciting field of physics, and I think that’s one of the reasons it appeals to everyone: black holes are really strange.
You lived 120 days in a simulated Mars outpost, have you been always interested in going to Mars?
Photo Courtesy of Ross Lockwood
The short answer is yes, I would be interested in going to Mars! But life tends to get in the way of these things, and spaceflight is all about timing. My partner and I are getting married in early 2018. She often says, “I love you to the moon and back” which I interpret to mean that I can't go to Mars. I can only go as far as the Moon. So if it happens that there is an opportunity for me to go to the Moon or even for me to go to Mars, I'm afraid I have to limit myself to the near Earth environment.
What do you enjoy the most of working with a studio like Onlea to produce online learning?
Onlea provides a strong foundational design language that we can use to express ourselves. The designers at Onlea are taking the responsibility for the design and animations. The script is merely the skeleton, with the help of the animators, the script writers we’re able to convey complex ideas in very simple graphics and imagery.
The product is art, it's eye candy for visual learning. My job is to make sure that what is happening on screen has an explanation that a learner can interpret.
One last thing that you would like to share with us about making Astro 101: Black Holes?
My biggest disappointment about this course is that unlike Mountains 101 and Dino 101 we don't have a field trip that we can go on, we can’t visit a Black Hole. I'm really missing the travel to produce this MOOC but maybe there is an opportunity for us to go and visit a lab that creates, you know, wormholes or something.
Astrophysics 101: Visiting a Black Hole is one of our current MOOC productions. Stay tuned to learn more from subject matter experts and instructors from our online learning productions or take a look at our recent work. | <urn:uuid:608584fa-e3f3-48dc-b4a7-9af83cb2f8ba> | {
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DID YOU KNOW …
- 70 % of the world’s poorest billion people are women and girls
- In some countries a woman is more likely to die in childbirth than get an education
- Two thirds of people who cannot read or write are women
(Source Care, International accessed 21 February 2012)
HOW TO FIX IT?
THE GIRL EFFECT.
Watch this two minute video, you’ll get the idea:
Interested in learning more? Read this Position paper by Care, International | <urn:uuid:751cc128-7819-4372-acd0-435588964582> | {
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of producing viable ovum, pollen,
or both. A plant which can contribute genetic material
for the creation of viable seeds.
Fertility does not affect a daylily's garden value, but it does become a serious consideration when a grower intends to hybridize with a specific cultivar. Some cultivars have fertile pollen but will not set seed, others may set seed, but the pollen may not set pods on other cultivars. Many garden catalogs will mention whether a plant is pollen or pod fertile. See fertile both ways. | <urn:uuid:5cb65443-cbb7-492c-841d-885d2c6d0968> | {
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The change in frequency caused by a moving object due to Doppler effect is used to measure their velocities in diverse areas such as military, medical science, astrophysics, etc. It is also used by police to check over-speeding of vehicles. A sound wave or electromagnetic wave of known frequency is sent towards a moving object. Some part of the wave is reflected from the object and its frequency is detected by the monitoring station. This change in frequency is called Doppler shift.
It is used at airports to guide aircraft, and in the military to detect enemy aircraft. Astrophysicists use it to measure the velocities of stars.
Doctors use it to study heart beats and blood flow in different part of the body. Here they use ulltrasonic waves, and in common practice, it is called sonography. Ultrasonic waves enter the body of the person, some of them are reflected back, and give information about motion of blood and pulsation of heart valves, as well as pulsation of the heart of the foetus. In the case of heart, the picture generated is called echocardiogram. | <urn:uuid:12d673e0-9b7b-4087-a160-424381ee6e14> | {
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|Digital Library of the Caribbean||english español français|
|dLOC Home |||About dLOC | Partners | Topical Collections | RSS|
The Preserving History Digital Collection is comprised of student work resulting from the Preserving History (HIS 4944) course at UF includes focused work in historical archives.
Historians rely heavily on documents, maps, photographs, and audio-visual recordings to conduct research. The role of an archivist is to select and preserve these materials so that they are accessible. Archivists, usually people trained in history or literature, but increasingly now in politics or science, act as record-keepers of the present and past. The course is an internship in the world of archives. It introduces students to the purpose and uses of archives and gives practical background in archives as a profession. Students are responsible for a group project and one or more individual projects during the semester, arranging and describing the contents of a collection.
This collection documents and provides access to the student work as contributions to archives and scholarly communication.
Selected Materials Included: | <urn:uuid:380ec5fa-ee38-4f65-a9ac-061da3cc70b0> | {
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Bangui — ARMED groups have released more than 500 children used as soldiers in a civil war in the Central African Republic (CAR).
This is the major breakthrough observed at the launch of a new global advocacy campaign to protect children impacted by wars. The initiative is aptly named, Act to Protect Children Affected by Conflict.
Virginia Gamba, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General's Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, also welcomed the recent release of children by armed groups in South Sudan, as confirmed last month.
Some 121 children were released in that country.
Gamba noted in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), child protection specialists were redoubling their efforts to engage with armed groups and to raise awareness on the needs to release child soldiers and prevent grave violations against minors.
"There are many reasons to remain hopeful, especially when we look at the progress accomplished in some of the world's most difficult places," the UN envoy said.
According to Child Soldiers International, 46 countries still recruit children into their armed forces.
The launch of the Act to Protect Children affected by Conflict came weeks after children were among over 130 people killed in an attack in central Mali.
Children were also killed in attacks in Afghanistan and Yemen. | <urn:uuid:d146211c-d1b8-4beb-b192-e640da5f10d0> | {
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Join Dan Sullivan for an in-depth discussion in this video Relational databases in data science, part of Advanced SQL for Data Scientists.
- [Instructor] Relational databases are the workhorses of business data management. They are used to collect, store, and manage transaction data like sales transactions, as well to analyze large volumes of data like those found in data warehouses. It is safe to say the bulk of data used in businesses and other organizations is stored in relational databases. This makes relational databases an important source for data scientists. Now, relational databases are more than just a storehouse for data.
They are data management systems that can be used to perform common transformation and analysis operations like linking data across data stores, filtering and reformatting data depending on how it needs to be used, aggregating data to provide kind of a big picture summary, as well as answering specific questions about business operations. Let's consider what goes into a production data science environment. To start, we have data sources that can include relational and nonrelational databases. Those nonrelational databases, by the way, are often called NoSQL databases.
Here, we'll refer to both of these as data stores. Application and web logs are another source of data for analysis. These are typically less structured than relational data and they may require significant filtering, formatting, and data extraction operations. Also, it's not uncommon to also need small manually curated data sets such as reference data that may be maintained in a spreadsheet. Now, we also have tools for extracting, transforming, and loading data. Data scientists might need data from multiple sources.
In these cases, a common practice is to collect data into a single repository prior to analysis. For example, an analyst might extract data from a transaction processing database, an application log, and a personally managed spreadsheet, and then store that all in a relational database. Now, if it's a really large amount of data, the data scientists may use a big data platform such as Hadoop or Spark. Transformations are operations performed on data to make the data more suitable for analysis. Now, we often need to reformat dates, replace missing values with zeroes, and strip out trailing blanks from strings.
Some analysis like building machine learning models can require additional transformations such as changing the scale of numeric values or using even more involved calculations to estimate missing values. Loading an ETL process occurs when data is moved into a data store for analysis. Now, this sounds simple, but large data sets can require specialized techniques like parallel data loads to ensure that the data is loaded in a reasonable period of time. Analysis and modeling tools are used by data scientists for a range of activities like identifying useful information, building predictive models, detecting anomalies, and to make any recommendations.
These tools read data from data stores and may write results back to databases as well. The final result, of course, is insight into business problems and relational databases play key roles throughout the data science process, that ultimately lead to those insights.
The course begins with a brief overview of SQL. Then the five major topics a data scientist should understand when working with relational databases: basic statistics in SQL, data preparation in SQL, advanced filtering and data aggregation, window functions, and preparing data for use with analytics tools.
- Data manipulation
- ANSI standards
- SQL and variations
- Statistical functions in SQL
- String, numeric, and regular expression functions in SQL
- Advanced filtering techniques
- Advanced aggregation techniques
- Windowing functions for working with ordered data sets | <urn:uuid:e898a994-7c3e-41a5-8f31-e4488957a512> | {
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Stateside chip boffins say they have developed a radical new method of building memory, which will smash through the "brick wall" that Moore's Law is about to run into. The underlying technique was thought to be dependent on the use of graphite, but in fact this has now been shown to be untrue. A plucky grad student studying at …
Whats the catch?
What's the catch? This is a possible memory unit that ticks pretty much every conceivable box. It seems as though it can be made relatively easily using currently existing techniques, from a low cost and abundant material, has the capacity to made in 3D for high density storage, and the ability to make gates considerably smaller than they are now? This is more or less the holy grail of memory. Surely this is way too easy whats the catch?
Paris, 'cos she knows the catch...
Switching signals involves converting electrical energy into heat. Compact switch layouts have less area to dissipate the same amounts of heat. 3D structures have even more problems getting the heat away from the switches. Two ways around this are to use less energy per switch transition (which raises other problems in itself such as thermal and electrical noise swamping the signal) and the other is to use materials and switch technologies that don't degrade when hot (which causes knockon problems with packaging and assembly technologies -- a ceramic-encapsulated chip that can run OK at 400 deg C will desolder itself from a conventionally-built planar).
But surely ...
... a smaller switch requires proportionately less energy.
Nobody believed him.
Good job that guy. Pint for you, mate.
- Facebook offshores HUGE WAD OF CASH to Caymans - via Ireland
- Mexican Cobalt-60 robbers are DEAD MEN, say authorities
- Apple's spamtastic iBeacon retail alerts launch with Frisco FAIL
- Submerged Navy submarine successfully launches drone from missile tubes
- Apple sends in the bulldozers as Fruit Loop construction begins | <urn:uuid:554c1ed5-8c73-4fa5-81fd-91587384a8e5> | {
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SOLUTIONS FOR FIRST HOUR EXAM
1. a) Density is mass/volume.
b) You took the mass of a number of nails by measuring them with a balance, and determined the volume of the nails by measuring the
amount of water they displaced in a graduated cylinder. You determined the density by dividing the mass by the volume.
c) The greatest source of error was uncertainty in volume, since most of you had displacements of only 1 or 2 ml, generating huge
erros in your volume. They way to overcome this is to use many more objects, so they would displace more water, and the uncertainty in
reading the volume change would become a smaller percentage of the actual volume change.
2. a) Atomic number is the number of protons in a nucleus, atomic mass is the sum of protons and neutrons in a nucleus, and an isotope
a nucleus with the same number of protons but different number of neutrons.
b) It is the atomic number, i.e.,. number of protons in a nucleus that determines the type of nucleus.
c) In the original carbon nucleus, there are 6 protons and 14 protons+neutrons, or 8 neutrons. If a neutron turns to a proton,
there are now 7 protons and 7 neutrons. This is a nucleus of N 14.
3. Speed is how much distance is covered in a certain time, velocity is the speed in a specified direction, and acceleration is the
rate of change of velocity.
4. Instantaneous speed is the average speed in a very short time interval. Avg speed = dist/time
5. a) The ball travels one meter in two secs, so avg speed = dist/time = 1m/2s = 0.5 m/s
(final speed - initial speed)/time = (1.0m/s -0 m/s)/2 s = 0.5 m/s/s
b) As you did in class, the final inst. speed is twice the average speed, so is 1.0 m/s
c) Acceleration is:
6. a)Here we know that the acceleration is 10 m/s/s, so rearranging the equation above: a = (final speed- initial speed)/time
a x time = final speed - initial speed
if the initial speed is zero, then:
final speed = a x t = 10 m/s/s x 3 s = 30 m/s
b) If the initial speed is zero, and the final speed is 30 m/s, the average speed is 15 m/s
c) If the average speed is 15 m/s and the ball is in the air for 3 secs, then the total dist traveled is 15 m/s x 3 s or 45 m
Alternately, you could have used the equation:
d = 1/2 a t2 = 1/2 x 10 m/s/s x (3s)2 = 45 m
7. You have a couple of ways you could do this. You could use the fact that the ball accelerates by 0.5 m/s/s to reason that its speed
will increase by 0.5 m/sec for each additional second it is in motion. If we extend its time of travel by two additional seconds, its
speed will increase by an additional 1 m/s, so will have a final intantaneous speed of 2 m/s. This implies that its average speed would
be 1.0 m/s. If an object travels at an average speed of 1.0 m/s for 4 secs, it covers 4 meters.
Alternately, you could use the equation in question six above as: dist = 1/2 at2 = 1/2 (0.5 m/s/s)(4 s)2 = 1/2x1/2x16 m = 4 m
8. Mass is a scalar and is the amount of "stuff" or matter in an object. Mass is a measure of inertia, an object's resistance to
changes in motion. Weight is a vector and is the force of gravity acting on an object.
9. See solutions to homework problems.
10. a) For this we use the Pythagorean Theorem to calculate the resultant speed. The result of this calculation is 5 mi/hr.
b) The only component of the swimmer's motion that carries him/her across the river is the swimmer's speed across the river; the river current, since it is parallel to
the banks, has no influence on this motion, so it takes 2 hours to travel 6 miles at 3 mi/hr.
c) The only component of the swimmer's motion that carries him/her downstream is the current of the river. If the swimmer is in the water for 2 hours, the current
will carry the swimmer 8 miles downstrean (2 hours x 4 mi/hr). Notice that the total distance covered by the swimmer in the diagonal path across the river is 10 miles. If
we use the total speed calculated in part a, we are not surprised to find that the swimmer will cover a total distance of 10 miles travelling at a total speed of 5 i/hr for
David B. Slavsky
Loyola University Chicago
Cudahy Science Hall, Rm. 404
1032 W. Sheridan Rd.,
Chicago, IL 60660
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How do you teach the concept of plot to a group of fourth and fifth graders? Gifted and Talented teacher Naomi Delgado of Burnet Elementary in El Paso, Texas, chose to let the students work it out for themselves with iStopMotion in her after-school reading group. iStopMotion was the second hands-on, digitally engaging app she used with students. She discovered it when she attended a stop motion animation session at miniCAST 2014 and knew it would be the perfect addition to her curriculum.
The first students to try it were a part of a Gifted and Talented pullout program called “Connections.” The program integrates reading, language arts and social studies to give students a supplementary education. Naomi’s after-school reading group is included in the GT program. She started with four fifth graders and one fourth grader, but the group grew by one when another student heard about Naomi’s planned iStopMotion project and asked administration for permission to join. Their assignment was to create a movie that included a setting, a protagonist, an antagonist, rising action, a climax and a resolution.
Over the course of three weeks of after-school sessions, Naomi’s students learned all the elements of plot through their iStopMotion projects. They started by browsing YouTube and looking at a few student examples of stop motion animations, and then completed their own plot graphic organizer to work out their story. All of their movie characters and props were born from household items like clay and paperclips. The students helped each other brainstorm and create, putting their heads together to come up with exciting concepts.
“Midway through, half of the students were struggling with the task of bringing their story to life,” says Naomi. “Their first attempts were choppy and too short to tell a complete story. So we watched another example stop motion from YouTube and identified and discussed the craft of iStopMotion – the amount of frames needed to make the character’s motion seem realistic, utilizing drawn background and text on whiteboards.”
The instruction helped, and the rest of the project went off without a hitch. Once the music was added, the students’ iStopMotion films came to life. Most movies were a bit different from their original ideas, but Naomi notes that it definitely wasn’t a bad thing. For example, the fourth grader had learned about plot twists during their regular class and decided to have his protagonist run over by a Koosh ball. This led to two of the fifth graders to also add plot twists to their movies.
“I must tell you that one of the characteristics of gifted students is a twisted sense of humor!” Naomi says. “One student’s movie was originally about the reunion of a mother and son, but in the plot twist the mom pushes the son off of a building!”
When the students went over their work, they talked about how easy the app was to use. They liked how they could easily save and edit their work and how the onion-skinning feature helped them to keep their camera work steady. Naomi loves how successful the project was, and she’ll definitely be using iStopMotion when she tutors next year.
“I plan to improve the learning experience by giving students a project rubric, the opportunity to work with a partner or a small group to create one movie, more time to study the craft of stop motion animation and a storyboard graphic organizer in addition to the plot graphic organizer to help set up scenes,” she says. “I would like all of my students to have the opportunity to create a movie using iStopMotion during regular school hours, too. I’m still working on developing the best way to integrate the app into the curriculum!”
Naomi says that her students are lucky to have so much access to technology in their classroom. In addition to the iPads and Mac desktop computers they use with iStopMotion, the classroom is equipped with a laptop, a document project, a SMARTboard and a projector. While some of their tools are digital and some are simply paper and pencil, Naomi always chooses the tool that will best support the learning standard.
“The best thing about technology, aside from the high student interest, is that it helps the students develop their problem solving skills,” Naomi says. “Rather than telling students how to do something, I instruct them to Google it. When one finds the solution, they always have the opportunity to teach others how to do something, and I’m always pleased when that someone is me.”
You can view Naomi’s students’ finished products here. Do you or a friend want to learn more about the inner workings of a good plot? Try creating your own story and mapping out each step – a setting, a protagonist, an antagonist, the rising action, a climax and a resolution. Who knows … maybe you’ll even throw a plot twist into the mix! | <urn:uuid:d1261a3d-a0bc-47f5-a2aa-e3039eb27ab1> | {
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|SPACE TODAY ONLINE COVERING SPACE FROM EARTH TO THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE|
|COVER||SOLAR SYSTEM||DEEP SPACE||SHUTTLES||STATIONS||ASTRONAUTS||SATELLITES||ROCKETS||HISTORY||GLOBAL LINKS||SEARCH|
Russian global positioning satellites:
Russia's Global Orbiting Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) is a network of navigation satellites in orbit – a global positioning system – like the American and European GPS networks.
GLONASS is operated by the Russian Space Forces. The system uses radio time signals to locate people and vehicles on and above the surface of Earth.
History. In 1982, the former USSR matched America's NAVSTARs with a new generation of high-flying navigation satellites when it launched the test satellites Cosmos-1413, Cosmos-1414 and Cosmos-1415 on one rocket to start GLONASS.
The first operational satellites went into service in December 1983. Russia continued building the GLONASS system after the old Soviet Union dissolved in the early 1990s. The system was in full operation in December 1995.
New generation coming. Unfortunately, a poor national economic situation after the fall of the Soviet Union left Russia with only eight GLONASS satellites in operation by 2002. Economic conditions improved and 11 satellites were in operation in 2004. A total of 14 were in orbit at the end of 2005.
Russia is improving the navigation satellite.
The satellites usually are launched by Russia from its Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. However, India will launch two GLONASS-M satellites for Russia on its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rockets. India launches space rockets from Sriharikota Island off the nation's east coast state of Andhra Pradesh.
- Already in use is the improved GLONASS-M satellite with a seven-year working life in space. Three GLONASS-M satellites were launched in 2004 and three more in 2005.
- The next generation will be the GLONASS-K satellite with internal improvements, lighter weight and a longer 10-12 year working life in space. Cutting it's weight in half greatly reduces launch costs. The first GLONASS-K satellite may be launched in 2006.
Like the U.S. and European GPS networks, the complete GLONASS constellation was, and again in the future will be, 24 satellites. That would include 21 operating in three circular orbital planes, and three satellites standing by on orbit as backup spares.
Russia has said it plans to have the system operational by 2008 with 18 satellites covering all of Russia. A complete constellation of 24 satellites with full global coverage is planned by 2010.
Then the M and K satellites will be able to locate Russia's military and civilian consumers worldwide with greater accuracy.
See: U.S. NAVSTAR GPS » Europe's Galileo GPS »
How it works. GLONASS is a system similar to the U.S. GPS network. GLONASS satellites work much the same as the U.S. NAVSTARs, including flying nearly 12,000 miles above Earth and transmitting on two frequencies in the 1200-1600 MHz range.
The GLONASS constellation orbits Earth at an altitude of about 11,868 miles (19,100 km), a bit lower than the U.S. GPS satellites.
Each satellite completes a trip around Earth every 11 hours 15 minutes. They are spaced in orbit so a user on the ground can see at least five satellites at any time.
GLONASS satellites transmit precision (SP) and high precision (HP) signals at a frequency around 1.6 GHz.
The system offers a standard C/A positioning and timing service giving horizontal position accuracy within 180 feet (55 meters) and vertical position within 230 feet (70 meters) based on measurements from four satellite signals. P is a more accurate signal for Russian military use.
There are very few inexpensive GLONASS-only receivers for consumers on the market. However, commercial GPS receivers often are capable of receiving both NAVSTAR and GLONASS data.
This GLONASS system provides accuracy that is better than GPS with SA on and worse than GPS with SA off.
Learn more: GLONASS Russian Space Forces
Galileo STO Galileo Europa Galileo ESA Galileo Industries Galileo Masters Challenge Surrey Satellite Technology Limited
COSPAS-SARSAT Search and Rescue System NOAA Emergency Rescue Beacons NOAA
What is time? STO GPS in a Wristwatch STO NAVSTAR Global Positioning System STO U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center NAVSTAR GPS Operations U.S.Naval Observatory GPS Timing Operations U.S.Naval Observatory Global Positioning System Overview Univ of Colorado NAVSTAR GPS Fact Sheet U.S.Air Force GPS Garmin What is DGPS? National Geodetic Survey NOAA GPS Used to Track Birds STO Satellites Track Threatened Birds and Animals STO Satellite Wars Over Afghanistan and Yugoslavia STO GPS Internet Information Resources How GPS Receivers Work How Stuff Works
Top of this page Satellites Search STO STO Cover Questions © 2006 Space Today Online | <urn:uuid:1648deb9-ca8b-46ac-ac8e-ffe49a23cfe6> | {
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Michigan’s Health Care Safety Net: Catching the Uninsured When They Fall
Falling sick, or just plain falling, is scary when you don’t have enough health insurance, or any at all. Since 2005, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan has donated more than $11 million to safety net organizations to improve access to high quality health care, for everyone in Michigan.
What is a “safety net” and why does it matter? We asked Kim Kratz, senior health analyst at Blue Cross.
What is a health care “safety net,” and why is it necessary in Michigan?
A safety net is a way to catch people when they fall, like the net used under a high-wire or trapeze artist. The health care safety net includes several different health care providers who know how to care for the uninsured and others who have limited access to health care or are vulnerable. The safety net protects individuals, families and communities by caring for the uninsured, under-insured and newly insured.
What are “safety net organizations,” and what is their role?
There are three primary types of safety net organizations who work together to make sure everyone can see a doctor when they need to.
- Free Clinics are often faith-based, volunteer clinics that provide free or low-cost health care low-income, uninsured patients. There are currently 48 free clinics in Michigan. Most free clinics provide access to medical care as well as dental, mental health, vision, specialty care and pharmaceutical assistance programs.
- Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) receive federal funding to provide health care for underserved populations. They provide primary care, dental treatment and mental health care, on a sliding fee scale. FQHCs care for everyone, including patients who have no other options.
- Hospitals also play an important part of the safety net — both critical access hospitals located in rural communities — and other hospitals. Many people with limited access to primary care use emergency rooms for health care, both appropriately and inappropriately.
There are several other kinds of safety net providers including Rural Health Centers, tribal health centers, teen health centers, Health Departments, and clinics affiliated with universities and health systems. All of these kinds of safety net providers are located throughout the state. But not every local community has all of them.
For more information on our Strengthening the Safety Net grants visit bcbsm.com/safetynet.
This post was originally published September 8, 2014.
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INFORMATION IN A COMED ELECTRIC BILL
The ComEd bill starts by reporting the amount of electricity used during the billing period--measured in number of kilowatt-hours (kWh). (One kilowatt-hour is equal to using a 100-watt light bulb for 10 hours.) This number is then used to calculate most of the itemized charges included in the bill.
Electricity Supply Services are generally the largest portion of the bill and include:
- Electricity Supply Charge, a per-kWh charge to cover the cost to ComEd to purchase the electricity it delivers to your home. (ComEd no longer owns power plants and must buy electricity from the wholesale market.)
- Transmission Services Charge, another per-kWh charge that covers the cost of carrying electricity from the power generator to the utility.
Delivery Services include:
- Customer Charge, a fixed amount that covers the costs of providing a standard service connection and basic customer services;
- Standard Metering Charge, also a fixed amount, to recover the costs of meter reading and servicing the meter equipment;
- Distribution Facilities Charge, a per-kWh charge to cover the costs of delivering power from the utility to your home;
- Electricity Distribution Charge, a per-kWh charge to cover the cost of the Illinois Electricity Distribution Tax.
Taxes and Other includes:
- Environmental Cost Recovery Adjustment, a charge related to the recovery of certain clean-up costs;
- Energy Efficency Programs, to fund the Smart Ideas portfolio of energy efficency incentives mandated by state law;
- Franchise Cost and Taxes.
ComEd also provides a usage profile to help customers understand their energy consumption patterns over time. It shows the monthly electrical usage for the previous 13 months and includes a chart reporting average daily kWh used and average daily temperature for the current month, the previous month, and the previous year. This information can assist customers in identifying those months in which to expect higher usage and higher utility bills.
Customers can review two years of their account history by accessing their account on the ComEd website -- and learn about programs that can save them energy and money by visiting the Home Savings section of the website. Programs of special interest include:
- Refrigerator Recycling--ComEd will pick up and recycle older-model refrigerators and freezers for free--and provide a $50 rebate.
- AC and Furnace Rebates--ComEd, in partnership with local natural gas utilities, offers rebates to customers who install high-efficiency heating and cooling systems.
- Central Air Conditioning Cyling program--Homeowners who have central air conditioning can earn credits on their summer electric bills by allowing ComEd to cycle their air conditioning compressors off and on during heavy-demand summer days. The air conditioning fan will stay on to circulate already cooled air and help keep the home comfortable. Cycling may occur only on weekdays and for limited periods of time.
- Residential Real Time Pricing (RRTP)--Ordinarily, ComEd customers pay a fixed price per kWh of electricity, no matter what time of day they use the power. But in fact, electricity prices fluctuate widely throughout the day. RRTP customers are charged for power based on the actual price of electricity on the wholesale market at the time they use the power. They can save money by changing their usage habits to take advantage of lower-priced time periods. | <urn:uuid:7120a332-f5d6-42f7-a37a-2e2f38c67d14> | {
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The Elizabethan loose gown is made of silk satin. It has long open sleeves that tie onto the bodice. It fastens down the front with hooks and eyes. The yoke, front openings, collar, and sleeves are quilted and beaded with gold seed beads. The quilted areas are edged with gold piping. All edges of the gown are also edged with gold bias binding.
Underneath the loose gown is a gold a-line kirtle with satin piping.
The entire outfit is worn over a chemise, farthingale and petticoat.
Hair is worn long and bundled up under an escoffion (hair net). The flat cap matches the outfit. It has a feather for decoration.
Shoes are square-toed and have slashes cut in them with cloth pulled through. Hosen are made of fabric rather than being knitted. They are held up with garters.
Accessories include a Swete bag of matching fabric, and a fan.
Jewelry consists of an amethyst brooch holding the feather on the hat, an amethyst cross, and amethyst earrings.
Spain became the fashion leader with the introduction of the farthingale. Another event that affected fashion was when steel needles replaced drawn-wire ones. This resulted in an increase in fine embroidery, cutwork, and lace. I have chosen the English version of this garment as it was seen around the 1560's.
The loose gown of the 16th century was seen in most cultures throughout Europe. It had its roots in Moorish designs which were then crossed with the Spanish inspiration of a high neckline (Davenport, 375). It is a garment which hangs from the shoulders and is loose fitting. The loose gown is generally worn with or without sleeves. The loose is generally worn over a kirtle. although this garment is known mostly as a Spanish gown, these loose fitting garments were popular all oaver Europe and were worn in England, Germany, and Italy. Janet Arnold's Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd shows that Elizabeth I had over 100 loose gowns in her inventory (275-281).
Pictorial evidence shows quite a variety of design. I have chosen to take design elements from several portraits of the same general time period, and incorporate those elements into an original gown. The elements I used were:
Please see the portraits in the appendix.
Silks and Cottons were both available for use at this time. According to Boucher,"merchants from Germany, Flanders, and France brought goods to Lisbon and Seville to barter for the produce of exotic countries, carrying home with them Egyptian Cotton, Persina, Iraqui[sic] and Syrian silks, and Indian cotton stuffs (221). Popular colors used in clothing of this time were yellow, orange, tawney, straw color, bright tan, peach, flame, rose, soft reds, scarlet and crimson, a purple-red called murrey, black, blues, wachet (a light greenish blue), sea-green, cold and warm gray, white, and russet. Materials used in clothing were taffeta, 'mock' velvet, patterned brocades, damasks, velvets, silks, satins, fine soft wool, fustian, russets, and linen (Arnold).
Most of the pictorial evidences show loose gowns in black, but red was also used. My loose gown is made of plum colored silk that was given to me as a thank you gift. The opportunity to use this gift in such an extravagant project was too good to pass up. The kirtle is made of red-shot gold cotton. The color gives the impression of being silk, yet allows me to use cotton since it is easier to clean.
Alcega mentioned in a note that "this gown is to be trimmed with a different fabric" (50). I chose the red-shot gold cotton to use for the bias piping and the bottom guard. The purpose of the guard is to protect the silk from floor dirt. the fact that the loose gown is trimmed with the kirtle fabric, and vice versa, ties the two items together into one outfit. Loose gowns could fasten all the way down, or be left partially open. There were several methods of fastening - button and hooks were the predominant choices. I chose the hook and eye method and chose to close the gown from the neck to the waist, leaving the rest of the gown open to display the kirtle beneath.
By the end of the sixteenth century quilting was in common use on caps, daywear, and armor. The Spanish bombast period, from 1545 to 1620, was a time when quilting was used extensively. Many skirts were quilted and embroidered in gold. Doublets, and most over-clothes of this time period were also highly quilted. The crosshatch quilting pattern was frequently used. Where seams crossed, they were frequently studded with pearls or other gems. Ordinary material could not stand the weight of all the gems, so quilting the fabric was essential. Elaborate quilting patterns were also common, featuring interlaced designs, conventional and pendant flowers, shells, fruit, and leaf forms, pineapples, roses, and pomegranates (Raighne).
Accessories and accoutrement are what makes a dress into an outfit. Unless the kirtle and loose gown are worn over the correct undergarments, the outfit will not hang right or look correct. The entire outfit is worn over a chemise, a farthingale, and a petticoat.
During this time period, a woman's hair was worn long and bundled up under an escoffion (hair net) or it was worn in braids on top of the head. I have chosen to wear my hair up in braids. Originally I made a flat cap that matches the outfit. It has a feather for decoration. However, after further study of the portraits of the time, I realize that the "pill box" style hat, or a tall hat would be more appropriate. I have not made these yet, but plan to do so soon.
Shoes were square-toed and had slashes cut in them with cloth pulled through. I do not have a pair of shoes appropriate to the style. Hosen was frequently made of fabric rather than being knitted. They would be held up with garters. I do have a pair of cloth hosen and garters to accompany this outfit.
Accessories for this outfit include a swete bag of matching fabric, and a fan. Jewelry consists of an amethyst brooch holding the feather on the hat, an amethyst cross, and amethyst earrings.
I looked at pattern #68 in The Tailor's Pattern Book by Alcega (50) and those in Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion (98) to create my own loose gown pattern. In Arnold, the loose gown attributed to Verney has a gathered back. Because I wanted to incorporate quilting in this design, I chose to have a yoke in the back. All of the back fullness was then pleated into the yoke rather than into the shoulders as shown in the Verney pattern. I chose to make a round sleeve using Alcega's desing in pattern #68 (Alcega, 50). This decision was made to show off my quilting for a maximum effect. The kirtle pattern I created was based on the kirtle pattern in Patterns of Fashion (Arnold, 108).
To make my loose gown pattern I used a fitted sloper pattern I had created. For the front, I drew the pattern as it was from the shoulder to 2" below the armseye. I angled the side out as wide as possible, taking into account the width of the fabric. Side gores were cut that are the length of the sides. Alcega states that silk was woven 2/3 ell wide (22") so that gown would need to be pieced. My fabric was 60" wide and I chose not to cut it into strips before laying out the pattern. Before I laid the front pattern on the fabric I set it back from the selvedge edge 3" to allow for a facing.
For the back I determined a yoke depth of 8". I traced the sloper pattern for the back. The remainder of the back was the width of the fabric. The length was determined minus the depth of the yoke. A short train was included in the length. I created a standup collar pattern. The round sleeves were drafted with a front and back seam to control the fit. The open edge followed the front of the arm.
All pieces were cut on the grain of the fabric. The sild fabric was laid out in a double layer. I cut w fronts, 2 front yoke linings, 2 back yokes and 2 back yoke linings(cut on the fold), 2 each right and left sleeves, 2 collar pieces, 8 each of small, medium, and large tabs and 4 each of the central tab. From the batting I cut front left and right yoke, back yoke, 2 sleeves, and long strips for the front facings. From the contrasting red-shot gold cotton I cut 20 yards of 2" bias binding to be used as binding and piping. In addition I cut approximately 8 yards of 4" bias binding for the bottom guard.
For the kirtle patten, using my sloper pattern, I drafted a simple a-line dress with a jewel collar. The sleeves are narrown and have the seams along the front and back of the arm in the period style.
All pieces were cut out on the grain of the fabric. The cotton was laid out in a double layer. I cut a back (on the fold) and a front (also on the fold). The sleeves were cut in two pieces. From the silk I also cut 10 yards of 2" bias binding to be used as binding and piping on the kirtle.
I chose to use the crosshatch quilting pattern with gold beads at each intersection. The look is understated but elegant. The quilting complements the beading and vice versa. All quilting and beading was completed before the construction began on the loose gown.
Equipment needed: fitted sloper pattern, paper, tape measure, pencil, French curve
For the front, take a fitted sloper pattern. Draw the pattern as it is from the shoulder to at least two inches below the armseye. From that point, angle the side out as wide as possible taking into account the width of the fabric. Be sure to add at least 2' to the center front for a facing.
Determine the yoke depth for the back. This should generally be 6" - 8". Trace the yoke pattern for the back. The remainder of the back is the width of the fabric and the back length minus the depth of the yoke. Be sure to include a nice train if desired.
Make side gores that are the length of the sides.
Draw the curved sleeves with the open edge following the front of the arm.
Remember to cut all pieces on the grain, not on the bias. Fabric is laid out in a double layer. Out of fashion fabric, cut 2 fronts, 2 front yoke linings, 2 back yokes and linings, 1 back, 2 each of front and back sleeve sections for right and left sleeves, 2 collar pieces, 8 each of the small, medium, large tabs and 4 each of the central tab. From the batting cut front right and left yokes, back yokes, collar, left and right sleeves. From a contrasting color you will need approximately 20 yards of 2" bias binding to be used both as binding and as piping. In addition, you will need approximately 8 yards of 4" bias binding for the bottom guard.
This is not a study in how to quilt so I won't go into the details of how to make the quilting stitch. For information on quilting methods and patterns see my book Historical Quilting. I chose to use the crosshatch quilting pattern with gold beads placed at each intersection. The look is understated but elegant. The quilting complements the beading and vice versa. All quilting needs to be completed before construction of the loose gown.
Attach the back to the back yoke by sewing right sides together. Turn under the raw edges of the wrong side of the lining and hand stitch down.
Attach front and back at the shoulder seams.
Pin the collar to the gown, matching center backs and collar ends to the center front. Hand stitch the collar over the seam.
Sew hooks every 1 1/2" to the left side of the gown front, having the ends of the hooks 1/8" from the edge of the opening. Sew the bars to the right side. This covers the division between the quilted areas and the unquilted ones.
Sew piping around the base of the collar, base of the back yoke, base of the front yoke, and down the quilted front edges.
Sew bias binding to the right side of the armholes on the loose gown. Turn bias binding to the wrong side of the armholes and hand stitch down.
Construct the tabs for the shoulder epaulets. Pin bias binding in place and then stitch. Turn the bias binding to the wrong side of the tabs and hand stitch down.
Arrange the tabs, face up in the order of small, medium, large, center, large, medium, small. Pin bias tape to the tabs seam line. Stitch bias to the tabs. Turn the bias binding to the wrong side of the tabs and hand stitch down.
Pin the epaulet into the armhole of the loose gown, wrong side of the gown to the right side of the epaulet, lapping the gown edge over the epaulet edge by 1/4".
Attach the guard fabric to the bottom of the loose gown, right sides together. Turn the guard to the wrong side and press. Hand stitch down the guard fabric.
Stitch the back seam of the sleeves and lining and press open. Quilt and bead.
Apply bias binding to the right side of the sleeve edges. Turn the bias tape to the inside and hand stitch to the lining.
Attach the points. Cut twenty 12" lengths of piping. Add aiglets if desired. Place the points at the center shoulder point, at 3" and then at 6" on either side of the shoulder point. Attach matching points in the armhole.
Equipment needed, paper, tape measure, pencil, French curve
For the front, take a fitted sloper pattern. Draw the pattern as it is from the shoulder to the end of the armseye. From that point, angle the side out as wide as possible taking into account the width of the fabric.
Draw the closed sleeves.
Remember to cut all pieces on the grain, not on the bias. Fabric is laid out in a double layer. Out of fashion fabric, cut front, back, 2 each of front and back sleeve sections for right and left sleeves. From a contrasting color you will need approximately 4 yards of 2" bias binding to be used both as piping for the neck edge and sleeves as well as for the points for the loose gown. The kirtle took approximately 6 yards of fabric.
Sew shoulder seams. Press.
Sew side seams. Press open.
Stitch front and back sleeve seam. Press open. Clip curves.
Stitch front and back seam of lining. Press open. Clip curves.
Pin sleeve linings to sleeves matching seam lines.
Attach sleeves to kirtle armseye right side together. Fold under sleeve lining edge and hand stitch down, covering the seam line.
Apply bias tape to the right side of sleeve lower edge.
Apply bias tape to the neck edge of the kirtle.
Attach piping to outer seam edges of the sleeves.
1 yard of fashion fabric; 1/2 yard of heavy interfacing; seam binding to match fabric.
Cut four circles with a diameter a 12". Cut a 6 1/2" circle out the center of three of the circles to create a doughnut shape.
Cut two doughnut shapes out of the interfacing.
To make the brim, sandwich two of the doughnut shapes of fabric between the two doughnuts of interfacing. Sew them together around the outside edge. Turn; press.
To make the crown, sew the other donut shape and the large circle together along the outside edge. Turn; press.
Sew the brim and the crown together along the inside curve. Clip the curves.
Bind the raw edges.
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Historical Marker Text
Historic Falmouth E-47 Founded in 1727 as a trading center for the Northern Neck. Hunter’s iron works here were an objective in the Virginia campaign of 1781. The Army of the Potomac camped here from November 1862 to June 1863 and moved hence to Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.
The town of Falmouth was incorporated in 1727. It was named for the seaport town in Cornwall, England. Falmouth became one of the most important trading centers in Virginia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Business and industry took over where Marlborough left off. In 1730, a tobacco warehouse was built and was soon joined by various factories (Eby 295). In this same year, Falmouth was designated an official tobacco inspection station, which gave the town a monopoly over shipments of tobacco (Felder, “Falmouth”).
Home of Industry
Hunter’s iron works, located near Falmouth, was considered one of the best examples of iron manufactories in North America. Around the time of the American Revolution, the factory produced 600-800 tons of iron annually. It played a very important role in the Revolution. In fact, James Mercer wrote to Thomas Jefferson on April 14, 1781, that “it is from Mr. Hunter’s Works that every camp kettle has been supplied for the continental and all other troops employed in this State” (Darter, 103). In short, Hunter’s iron works was crucial to the success of the American Revolution.
By the 1830s, Falmouth boasted a flourmill, a cotton factory, and a nail factory (Eby 296). In addition to these industrial sites, Falmouth contained twelve general stores, one school, one Masonic hall, one druggist shop, and one non-denominational church (Darter 81). However, by the late 1840s, the Rappahannock River began to accumulate silt due to poor farming activities. This brought the end to shipping activities, the town’s lifeline. Falmouth faded from importance (296).
During the Civil War, Stafford County saw little fighting. However, Falmouth and other towns did play host to Union camps during the Battle of Fredericksburg. During this time, the town sustained heavy damage. “There was little or nothing for residents to return to after the war” (Eby 338). Generals French, Stimson, Grant, and Burnside were some of the Union leaders who made Falmouth their headquarters (338).
“Falmouth Church Wall,” Courtesy of Amy Benjamin, 2008.
“Amy’s Cafe in Falmouth,” Courtesy of Amy Benjamin, 2008.
For Further Reference
Darter, Oscar H. Colonial Fredericksburg and Neighborhood in Perspective. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1957.
Eby, Jerrilynn. They Called Stafford Home: The Development of Stafford County, Virginia, from 1600 until 1865. Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, Inc., 1997.
Felder, Paula S. Fielding Lewis and the Washington Family: A Chronicle of 18th Century Fredericksburg. Fredericksburg, VA: The American History Company, 1998.
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GIS Day is an annual celebration of geospatial technologies, held on the Wednesday of Geography week. The Stanford Geospatial Center uses GIS Day as an opportunity to connect Stanford researchers to the cutting edge of geospatial technologies, services and applications through talks, workshops and other activities. This year, we'll have analysts, developers and scientists from DigitalGlobe, Mapbox, CARTO, NASA, The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and more, talking about their work to leverage geospatial data and technologies using machine learning, drones, satellite imagery, and historical data!
For nearly four years, the Stanford Digital Repository (SDR) has been home to the research outputs of scientists and scholars from across Stanford’s campus. But while those data files, videos, source code, microscopy images, survey results, maps and more have been discoverable and accessible through the Libraries’ online catalog, SearchWorks, it has been hard to get an overview of all the available data. Until now.
Chemists need a wide array of information before doing experimental work in the lab. To help them find chemical safety information they need more effectively and efficiently, a Chemical Safety Portal was created that searches multiple resources at one time. Developed in collaboration with Deep Web Technologies, this search site includes 60+ resources.
You are invited to attend three Mnova workshops being held this Friday, June 24th, at the Swain Library. Please RSVP by sending email to [email protected]
- Session 1. Introduction on Mbook - Online Electronic Lab Notebook for Organic Chemistry. (9am-10am)
- Session 2. Training on Mnova Basic features ( 10:15-11:45 am)
- Session 3. Training on Mnova advanced features (1-2:30 pm)
When Stanford Digital Repository staff found out someone was depositing research data about using x-ray lasers to explode jets of liquid, I have to admit there was a bit of excitement. Researching explosions (even on a small scale) sounds like an immense amount of fun. But Stanford researcher Claudiu Stan and his colleagues were doing way more important things out at SLAC than just having fun. They were performing serious research into fluid dynamics.
The latest news from the Swain Library covers the following topics:
- Catalysis Resources
- Keep Current with journal literature
- Green Pocketbook
- Chemists Celebrate Earth Day - The Great Indoors: Your Homes Ecosystem
- Household Products Database
Aimed at providing news as quick info bytes, each topic is covered in a PowerPoint slide. This format enables us to easily re-use this content in a digital sign at the library. Please see: Swain Library News - 22 April 2016
Happy Earth Day 2016!
Many scientists are making the reproducibility of their research a much higher priority these days than they used to. But it's a time consuming task, which means that many are searching for tools and workflows to help facilitate their efforts.
Hatef Monajemi, a PhD student in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and his PhD advisor Professor David L. Donoho, have developed a new piece of software that can make reproducibility an easier goal to achieve. His new software is called Clusterjob (CJ). This software can be used to develop reproducible computational packages and make the generation of data for a research study fully reproducible. CJ is an open-source software available on GitHub.
In the news this quarter:
- Branner Head Librarian takes on National Leadership Role
- Rumsey Map Center Opening April 25, 2016
- Inaugural Geo4LibCamp forges new collaborations
- USGS Increases Public Access to Scientific Research
- Interested in getting articles emailed to you? Scan-to-PDF Pilot Service for Items at SAL3 | <urn:uuid:3ca244c9-c6b2-4b54-b8f6-68eb4eb4c27a> | {
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The flu vaccine is commonly assumed to be an efficient mechanism for preventing the flu. However, it is much more difficult to estimate the unintended consequences of the influenza vaccine than most people realize. As such, there may be costly and dangerous consequences from getting a flu vaccine. In fact, the most responsible stance suggests one should educate themselves, and decide whether or not to get the flu vaccine.
People who are already ill are generally more susceptible to the Influenza virus. For this reason, people who are already ill or suffering from diminished immune system function may actually avoid death from the flu if they get the vaccine. Generally, children under age two, and adults over the age of 65, may benefit the most from the vaccine. But, physicians advise against any child under six months of age being inoculated. Surprisingly, there is only one universal dose of the vaccine given to everyone regardless of age or body size.
People receiving the vaccine are sometimes, but not always, given a list of side effects they might experience. But, rarely are all the possible side effects listed. This makes it that much more difficult to keep clear track of reactions and make sure that these reactions are accurately reported and recorded.
Indeed, the issue of under-reporting looms large when it comes to evaluating flue vaccine side effects. In the U.S.A., about 25 percent of the population gets a flu vaccine every year. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) says that this year any one of us has a one in eight chance of getting the flu.
Regarding death, there is a one in 345,000 chance that the flu will turn deadly for any one person. Indeed, the number of people that die from the flu every year has decreased markedly since the vaccine was first approved in the 1950’s. However, the overall decrease in flu mortality cannot be attributed solely to the flu vaccines. So many aspects of our health have improved in the past 50 years that one cannot say exactly how effective the flu vaccine really is.
According to the CDC the influenza vaccine killed 51 people in 2011. That year the flu was also reported as creating 232 life-threatening events, resulting in 116 permanent disabilities, and requiring over 700 hospitalizations. 2011 also saw 109 prolonged hospitalizations for the flu, and over 4,000 emergency room visits.
While over 6,000 reports described as “not serious” were also made to the CDC in 2011, the National Vaccine Information Center reports that less than one percent of adverse reactions to the vaccine are ever even documented.
Historically, there have been glaring unintended consequences from the flu vaccine. For example, it has been ascertained that adverse reactions, such as Guillain-Barre syndrome, have occurred as a result of flu vaccines. However, the CDC says it has not been proven to result from the vaccine since 1976. The CDC still does not understand why that increase in Guillain-Barre syndrome occurred. This confusion of reports versus understanding why they occurred was documented by the Institute of Medicine in 2003.
Flu symptoms commonly include fever, cough, chills, and sore muscles. Mild reactions to flu vaccines include headaches, fatigue, muscle pains, fevers, runny nose, vomiting, sore throats, coughs, and wheezing. These reactions occur in 30 percent of people who receive the vaccine. Severe cases of anaphylactic shock or autoimmune disorders are rare, but potentially deadly.
According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, Individuals who have lung disorders are more at risk of severe illness from the flu. Senior citizens in general are 16 times more likely to die from the flu than any other age cohort.
Since not many people die from the flu, and only the flu, the actual numbers are difficult to assess. In spite of confusion and lack of clear understanding, it seems the flu is most deadly to people who with altered immune system function or pre-existing health issues.
Critics of the flu vaccine point out that physicians and their staffs, who treat most flu victims in need of medical care, do not seem to be anymore at risk of getting the flu than anyone else. There may be reason to believe that the flu vaccine is not as important as we once thought it was. We still do not have a good understanding of the potential side effects of the flu vaccine.
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) functions as a national vaccine safety surveillance program co-sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). VAERS functions as a post-marketing safety surveillance program. They try to collect information about side effects that occur after the administration of vaccines licensed for use in the United States. Though awareness of vaccine issues is on the rise, nearly half of vaccine injury cases are never fully resolved because it is so difficult to link problems with the vaccines.
The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has a Trust Fund that provides funding for the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to compensate vaccine-related injury or death claims for certain vaccines administered since October 1, 1988.
The influenza vaccine continues to be a controversial issue with great debates regarding the efficacy of the flu vaccine, and its unintended consequences. The flu is not as big a problem as it used to be, but the elderly and the very young, as well as those with pre-existing conditions may do well to consider it as an option. However, after 50 years of use, no one can say conclusively that it provides any guarantees for one’s health and wellness.
By Alex Durig | <urn:uuid:2386886b-8792-4eb7-81c4-7bf19d0b7912> | {
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Brazilian Biosphere Reserves Network
The Biosphere Reserves are limited zones in the interior of the countries. They are dedicated to the conservation of biodiversity, to the promotion of sustainable development, and to the maintenance of cultural values associated to the use of biological resources. They are internationally recognized by the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB). The Brazilian Biophsere Reserves Network was created in 1995. It is coordinated by the Ministry of Environment. The network has six biosphere reserves: Mata Atlântica including São Paulo greenbelt, Pantanal, Central Amanzonia, Cerrado, Caatinga, and Espinhaço Mountain Range.
- Biosphere Reserves
- Biosphere Reserves in Brazil
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ELE3105 Computer Controlled Systems (FOENS)
Units 1.0 (Electrical, Electronic Enginee) Band 2
To apply control to any 'real' problem, it is first necessary to express the system to be controlled in mathematical terms. The 'state space' approach is taught both for expressing the system dynamics and for analysing stability both before and after feedback is applied. These concepts involve revision and extension of matrix manipulation and the solution of differential equations. By defining a time-step to be small, these state equations give a means of simulating the system and its controller for both linear and nonlinear cases. Many of the implementations of on-line control now involve a computer, which applies control actions at discrete intervals of time rather than continuously. It is shown that discrete-time state equations can be derived which have much in common with the continuous ones. Simulation does not then rely on a very small time step. The operator 'z' is first introduced with the meaning of 'next', resulting in a higher order difference equation to represent the system, then shown to be a parameter in the infinite series which is summed to form a 'z- transform'. It is shown that the discrete-time transfer function in z can be derived from the Laplace transform of the continuous system, with additional terms to represent the zero order hold of the DAC. Analysis of stability in terms of the roots of a characteristic equation are seen to parallel the continuous methods and techniques of pole assignment and root locus are also seen to correspond. Techniques are presented for synthesising transfer functions by means of a few lines of computer code, to make stable control possible for systems which would be unstable with simple feedback. | <urn:uuid:65011cba-ca29-47c9-b5e6-18ae2d893fc1> | {
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Road Trip 2011: A view of the "secret" bunker under the Eiffel Tower, and of the rest of the world famous landmark.
PARIS--Completed in 1889, the Eiffel Tower is without question one of the most famous landmarks on the planet. It was built over the course of two years, two months, and five days for the World's Fair of 1889.
One of Gustave Eiffel's greatest achievements with the tower was the use of hydraulic elevators, an innovation that enabled hundreds of thousands of people to easily ride 380 feet above the ground.
As part of Road Trip 2011, CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman visited the Eiffel Tower and got a behind-the-scenes tour that, among other things, explored the "secret" underground military bunker beneath the tower, as well as the inner workings of the hydraulic elevators.
Here, we see the Eiffel Tower from just in front of it.
Some might consider the hydraulic elevator system that Gustave Eiffel designed in 1889 to be well ahead of its time. Here's how it works, according to information provided by the organization that runs The Eiffel Tower:
The elevator "passenger compartments, mounted on a carriage and kept horizontal by a leveling system, are pulled upwards by cables that move in line with two parallel pistons located underground, via a cable drum system--the cables themselves, the ends of which are attached to the passenger compartment carriage--run back and forth eight times over two sets of pulleys, one of which is fixed and the other attached to the moving pistons, thereby ensuring that the [elevator] passenger compartments can travel [420 feet], i.e. eight times the piston travel--of 52 feet.
"The pistons are actuated by a water circuit with a pressure of 40 to 60 bar, which until 1986 generated motion thanks to three large accumulators of some 200 metric tons each, which provided both the pressurized water reserve--the energy to drive the motion--and the counterweight function.
"Since modernization in 1986, high-pressure, oil-driven hydraulic motors drive piston carrier motion while two of the three accumulators serve as counterweights."
Here we see two of the hydraulic lifts and one of the accumulators.
Just adjacent to the south pillar of the Eiffel Tower, there is a nondescript green cage. This is, in fact, the entrance to a "secret" underground bunker, which was originally designed to belong to the French military. Although today the bunker is open to small guided public groups and contains a collection of Eiffel Tower memorabilia, posters, and pictures, it still connects to military tunnels, and the public is only allowed to go a very short distance inside. It's not known how far or where the tunnels go, but legend has it that they stretch all the way from the Eiffel Tower, under the famous Champ de Mars, and to the Ecole Militaire, the major French military academy.
This diagram illustrates the principles of the hydraulic elevator, as explained in the second caption. Today, two of the elevators are still hydraulic, but two are electric and were installed by Gustave Eiffel for the World's Fair of 1900. But the electric elevators have proved to be more fragile and require more maintenance. Two hydraulic elevators remain to this day as a cultural reminder of the origins of the tower.
This is a view of the very top of the Eiffel Tower, an antenna that rises above everything else. Visitors can reach the third level of the tower but still must look up at a group of antennas and other telecommunications equipment.
This is a photograph of a historical picture of the Eiffel Tower showing what are called the foundation caissons, essentially waterproof metal cages that made it possible to construct the tower's foundation adjacent to the famous Seine River of Paris.
On the third level of the Eiffel Tower, there are markers showing the distances from the tower to famous cities around the world in the direction you're looking. Here, we see the sign showing the distance to New York City, Washington, D.C., and (more roughly) to Mexico.
There is an apartment on the third--highest--level of the tower, and those who look in the windows will see mannequins of Gustave Eiffel (right) and inventor Thomas Edison. The two were friendly, and Edison visited the apartment, which Eiffel kept for entertaining illustrious visitors, on September 10, 1889.
According to a plaque in the military bunker, "Gustave Eiffel knew that in order to survive, the Eiffel Tower would have to prove its practical worth for science. The tower was scheduled to be dismantled after just 20 years. [So] he...allowed it to be used for a wide range of scientific experiments, from meteorological and astronomical observations to monitoring physical and air resistance phenomena.
"He secured the future of his tower with the installation of a huge wireless transmission antenna." The tower then became the site of the first radiotelegraph broadcasts of the early 20th century, the plaque says. | <urn:uuid:12a082b1-de05-4124-9c8d-f7d6ff0e219d> | {
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3 October 2017, for immediate release:
The world’s first public museum, the Ashmolean in Oxford, is celebrating a new permanent gallery called the ‘Ashmolean Story’ which opens today. The gallery marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of the museum’s founder, Elias Ashmole (1617–92) who gave his collection to the University of Oxford in 1677 and founded the Ashmolean in 1683. On display are many of the original artefacts, specimens and curiosities that fascinated museum visitors of the seventeenth century.
Elias Ashmole was a leading intellectual of his day who studied at Oxford and was elected a founding Fellow of the Royal Society in London in 1661. A true Enlightenment polymath, he was interested in everything from natural history, medicine and mathematics, to alchemy, astrology and magic - all popular disciplines in the seventeenth-century. In founding a new public museum Ashmole’s vision was to create a centre for practical research and the advancement of knowledge of the natural world which, in his own words, ‘is very necessary to humaine Life, health, & the conveniences thereof.’ He recommended that the Keeper (head) of the museum should be Oxford’s Professor of Chemistry and the first incumbent was Dr Robert Plot, a noted scientist and naturalist.
Evoking the style and atmosphere of the original museum, the new gallery displays objects related to scientific enquiry and the quest for knowledge that would have captivated visitors in 1680s Oxford. These include a crystal ball probably used by Ashmole for ‘crystal-gazing’ and making predictions; medical equipment and samples like kidney stones, apothecary jars and powders; and an array of natural history specimens of exotic animals, fish and birds. One such specimen that clearly confused Plot was a ‘Gigantick thigh-bone’. He recognized that it was a real bone but could not identify the species due to its enormous size and concluded that it must have been the remains of a giant man or woman. Now known to be part of a femur of a large meat-eating dinosaur, Plot’s illustration was nonetheless the first publication of a dinosaur bone. Plot’s tenure at the Ashmolean came to end in 1689/90 when he resigned both his university posts citing an insufficient salary.
Ashmole’s gift to the University included his own extensive collection of books, manuscripts, coins, medals and other antiquities. It also included the celebrated Tradescant family collection of ‘Rarities’ that had been gifted to Ashmole by John Tradescant the younger. In 1683 Ashmole transferred everything to Oxford from London, sending it by barge in twentysix large chests. Ashmole specified that the new museum should be housed in a building designed to promote scientific practice. In the original Ashmolean in Broad Street, Oxford, there was a repository for the collections on the first floor; a lecture theatre for natural history on the ground floor; and in the basement was a state-of-the-art chemical laboratory and anatomy room. He also provided statutes of governance to guide the museum in achieving its aims, and this original handwritten document is on display in the new gallery. The eighteen statutes include the establishment of a board of governors, an annual inspection and audit, and the cataloguing of all objects that came into the collection. They also established procedures for the care and security of objects, the admission of visitors and museum finances – a model for modern museums and galleries the world over.
While the collections have grown and shifted focus to art and archaeology, the purpose of the Ashmolean is little changed today. The museum’s main aim remains the preservation and display of the collections for enjoyment and the advancement of knowledge. The development of the new gallery has allowed the redisplay of important pieces such as Guy Fawkes’ lantern – a favourite of museum visitors. It has also created space to bring out of storage works such as Ashmole’s portrait collection of scholars and scientists which includes the famous painting of Elizabethan astrologer and mathematician, John Dee.
The gallery development has also provided staff the opportunity to research and conserve objects from the founding collection. One of the most significant pieces that has been redisplayed is Powhatan’s Mantle. Made of four white-tailed deer hides sewn together and decorated with shells, this huge and fragile object is traditionally linked to Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas and chief of the Indigenous North American Powhatan people who lived in Virginia, the area settled by the English in the 1600s. The museum’s conservation team has investigated the mantle with the help of the Factum Arte Foundation using specialized photography and imaging. Archival research into the mantle indicates that it was probably displayed vertically on the wall from the seventeenth century. The loss of shells around the lower border suggests that people were able to touch it and may have taken shells as souvenirs of their visit.
Today, the mantle has proved equally popular. The Ashmolean’s 2017 annual appeal has asked members of the public to support a new high-tech display case for the iconic object. Donors to the appeal have been offered the chance to have their name or a dedication inscribed on the case and more than 200 people have made donations totalling nearly £52,000. Miss Laura Wilson who made a dedication for her grandmother, says: ‘As soon as I saw the Ashmolean Birthday Appeal for the preservation of Powhatan’s Mantle, I knew I had to donate. When I was a little girl, my grandmother, Margaret Pinsent, would often take me to the museum to explore and we would always look at the Mantle – we were in awe of its historical significance. A quarter of a century later and I am still enchanted by this marvelous object and indebted to my grandma for her investment in my education. I cannot wait to see the Mantle in the new gallery and to enjoy it for many years to come.’
In addition to the public appeal, the new gallery has been made possible by a generous donation from Mr Stephen Stow, Fellow of the Ashmolean; a major grant from the Linbury Trust; and a £110,000 grant from the DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund.
Dr Xa Sturgis, Director of the museum, says: ‘Thanks to the generosity of members of the public, institutional support and private donors, we have been able to mark Elias Ashmole’s 400th birthday with this new gallery. It is a celebration of Ashmole’s vision and of the role the Ashmolean has played in the development of museums and galleries in this country and across the world.’
John Glen MP, Minister for Arts, Heritage and Tourism, says: ‘The Ashmolean Museum’s new gallery will mark 400 years since the birth of its founder Elias Ashmole and government is proud to support this fantastic space with £110,000 from the DCMS/Wolfson Museums & Galleries Improvement Fund. The public support for this project shows how well-loved the museum is and I wish all at the Ashmolean well for this exciting new chapter in its illustrious history.’
Paul Ramsbottom, Chief Executive of the Wolfson Foundation, says: ‘There seems to be an increased interest in the collectors and stories behind the UK’s great museums – and the Ashmolean has a fascinating story to tell. Ashmole’s vision of a place of curiosity which fuels a quest for knowledge is still being realised. We hope there will be many more little Laura Wilsons visiting with their grandmothers and enjoying the delights this new gallery has to offer. The Wolfson Foundation is a charity supporting and promoting excellence, and we are delighted to be funding this through the DCMS/Wolfson Fund – which sends a strong message about the importance of shared public and charitable funding of these great collections.’
--- ENDS ---
Claire Parris, Press Officer
T+44 (0)1865 278 178 | M+44 (0)7833 384 512
www.ashmolean.org/press | @AshmoleanPress
Images for editorial use are available to download here
NOTES TO EDITORS
The Linbury Trust
Founded in 1973 by Lord and Lady Sainsbury of Preston Candover, the Linbury Trust makes grants to charities and towards charitable causes across a broad range of categories within the Arts, Education, Environment, Medical, Museums & Heritage, Overseas, and Social Welfare. In Oxford, Linbury has been a major supporter of the Ashmolean Museum; the Saïd Business School; Worcester College; and the Bodleian. Elsewhere the Linbury name is particularly associated with the Linbury Theatre (Royal Opera House), the Linbury Galleries (Tate Britain), the Linbury Gallery (Museum of London), and the Linbury Prize for Stage Design.
The DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund
The fund aims to provide capital funding for museums and galleries across England to deliver projects in one or a number of the following key areas:
• Renovation and improvement of the display of exhibits in permanent galleries and exhibition spaces;
• Improvements to public spaces and access to the collection;
• Physical improvements to access and facilities for disabled visitors;
• Physical improvements to collection interpretation;
• Improvements to environmental controls in public access spaces and galleries.
Further information | Twitter: @DMCS | Facebook: @DCMSgovuk
The Wolfson Foundation
The Wolfson Foundation is an independent charity that supports and promotes excellence in the fields of science, health, education and the arts and humanities. It has awarded over £800 million (£1.7 billion in real terms) to some 10,000 projects across the UK, all on the basis of expert peer review. Established in 1955, the Wolfson Foundation celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2015.
Further information | Twitter: @Wolfsonfdn | Facebook: @WolfsonFoundation | <urn:uuid:abfa9172-6dac-451c-a6a0-f7be27b06785> | {
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One end of a spring is fixed, while the other can be moved in such a way to stretch or compress the spring. Suppose we choose the origin to be the position of the left end of the cart when the system is at equilibrium, and the direction such that a displacement that stretches the spring is positive, as seen in Fig. 11.6, (where a 0.75 kg cart has been attached to the free end of the spring).
Figure 11.6: The left end of the cart is 2.0 cm beyond the equilibrium point.
Figure 11.7: Determine the spring constant from this graph of force exerted by the spring vs displacement from the equilibrium position.
3. If the cart is released from rest at the 2.0 cm mark, what will its kinetic energy be when it first passes through the spring's equilibrium point and what will it's velocity be when it first passes through the spring's equilibrium point? | <urn:uuid:c168fc92-fd1c-45ce-8d2f-f0af9feb6cb4> | {
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Modeling & Analysis
California has complex water management systems with natural features like mountain snowpack, lakes, rivers, and groundwater basins that are managed with engineered features like reservoirs, levees/flood walls, weirs, culverts, bypasses, and canals. Models represent the complex physical interactions between these features in a conceptual way. Models and other analytical tools help water managers make informed decisions about how best to manage water for people, farms, and the environment as well as to protect lives and properties from flooding.
We develop and maintain a number of state-of-the-art models and analytical tools that describe how water flows, flood risk, and water quality in California’s rivers, groundwater basins and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, including current and future operations of State and federal projects.
- Methodology for Flow and Salinity Estimates in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and Suisun Marsh 39th Annual Progress Report to the State Water Resources Control Board - June 2018
- State Water Project Delivery Capability Report
- Estimates of Natural and Unimpaired Flows for the Central Valley of California: Water Years 1922-2014
- Methodology for Flow and Salinity Estimates in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and Suisun Marsh: 38th Annual Progress Report to the State Water Resources Control Board – June 2017
- U.S. Geologic Survey, Central Valley Hydrologic Model
- U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Hydrologic Engineering Center
- SCHISM Modeling System
- California Water and Environmental Modeling Form
- California Waterfix
- Groundwater Interactive Map
- SGMA Modeling Best Management Practices | <urn:uuid:98fc61fe-2d04-42d2-ada8-0ca29cad94db> | {
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In recent years, the problem of human trafficking has multiplied exponentially in the United States. At one time, many people considered this an offense that only occurred in seedy locales on foreign lands. The idea of slave labor and child prostitution is deplorable to most Americans, and the fact that these acts occur on American soil is almost unfathomable. Statistics show, however, that the United States is a leading destination for sex traffickers.
According to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center, it is estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 children are victims of child exploitation in the United States each year. While many people believe that victims are undocumented immigrants, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that 83 percent of victims are United States citizens.
It is the second most profitable organized crime, following only drugs.
Sex and labor trafficking violate both state and federal statutes. In the past, the federal government left most cases to the states to prosecute; however, with the growth in the number of cases in recent years and the interstate nature of many incidents, the United States government has begun to take an active interest. The FBI, ICE, and other federal agencies conduct sweeps to try to stem the tide .
The FBI's Innocence Lost National Initiative combines the efforts of the Bureau, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Department of Justice Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, and local law enforcement agencies to rescue minors from child prostitution and prosecute traffickers of children. The seventh incarnation of the Initiative's Operation Cross Country sting was the largest to date, recovering 105 child victims of sexual exploitation. In Oklahoma, three teens aged 16 to 17 were freed from prostitution as a result of Operation Cross Country VII.
Human trafficking is a term used to describe forced or coerced labor or commercial sex. It is called "modern slavery," but while the means of coercion and procurement have changed, the tactics have been around since antiquity.
Although it is often confused with human smuggling, the two are not the same. Migrant smuggling involves concealing humans to bring them into the country illegally, without proper documentation. While illegal immigrants may soon become victims of this crime through debt servitude, trafficking in persons is a separate offense.
The crime does not require transportation as a defining characteristic. Often, victims of human sex traffickers are moved from city to city, but this is not always the case. Labor or forced domestic servitude typically leaves the victim in one home, restricted from movement.
The crime is defined and proven by three elements, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime:
Often, victims are vulnerable populations including illegal immigrants and runaway, homeless, and disenfranchised youth. Four-fifths of all victims of sex trafficking are United States citizens; 95 percent of labor trafficking victims are foreign nationals, with 67 percent undocumented aliens. Traffickers exploit the vulnerability of these individuals, often luring them with false promises and then enforcing servitude in the labor or commercial sex industries through abuse.
The heartland is not immune to child prostitution and sex traffic crimes. With its proximity to Texas, one of the leading states for these types of crimes, and major interstates spanning the borders from north to south and east to west, the state is a hub for moving both drugs and humans. Since 2007, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline has received more than 700 calls from Oklahoma.
Oklahoma's laws are a part of the state's kidnapping statutes. Defined in 21 O.S. § 748, it is modern-day slavery that includes, but is not limited to, extreme exploitation and the denial of freedom or liberty of an individual for purposes of deriving benefit from that individual's commercial sex act or labor."
Both state and federal law prohibit the participation of anyone under the age of 18 in a commercial sex act. Any person under the age of 18 found to be engaged in "sexually explicit performances, prostitution, participation in the production of pornography, performance in a strip club, or exotic dancing or display" is assumed to be a victim. Anyone who persuades, coerces, entices, or aids a minor to participate in a commercial sex act may be prosecuted as a trafficker.
In Oklahoma, trafficking in humans is a felony offense punishable by a minimum of five years in prison and a maximum fine of $10,000. If the victim of is under the age of 18, the penalty is doubled, carrying a minimum of ten years in prison and a maximum fine of $20,000.
Since 2000, the federal government has begun to take a strong stand against this crime in all its forms. Federal legislation includes two notable acts on which most state laws are based:
The United States Criminal Code defines and prohibits human trafficking in chapter 77 of Title 18: Peonage, Slavery, and Trafficking in persons. The primary sections dealing with human labor and child sex are found in 18 USC §1589 – 1591:
If you have been charged with trafficking in humans, accused of aiding child prostitution or forced labor or servitude, you need experienced defense counsel as quickly as possible. As this crime grows, so does the desire of legislators and prosecutors to take a hard line against it.
Call (405) 418-8888 today to speak confidentially with an attorney about your case. | <urn:uuid:f3b80682-c856-4e96-985a-7ec57bc3a71f> | {
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Biofuels - July 31
Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Digesting the problem
Terry Slavin, The Guardian
Looking at the cows on his dairy farm in Devon, Winston Reed does not see what many environmentalists do: animals burping up vast quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than CO2. He is more concerned with what comes out of the animals' other end - and it offers hope for the planet. As Reed says: "The poo from four cows can produce enough energy to heat and light a house for a year."
Unlike the methane that cows and other ruminants exhale as their stomachs convert grass into milk, and which is believed to be responsible for up to a quarter of "manmade" methane emissions worldwide, the gas in their manure can be harnessed as a force for good. And the same goes for all other forms of organic waste that would otherwise rot in landfill sites.
Reed, 35, is seeking planning permission to build an energy centre on his farm, in a rural community on the outskirts of Tiverton, near Exeter, taking in manure from local farms and waste from local abattoirs and food processors. It would not be the first of its kind in the UK, but it would be by far the most ambitious - creating electricity to light 6,000 local houses and £700,000 worth of heat for local industries, including a sawmill plant making wood pellets for biomass boilers. Since Tiverton's population is only 20,000, it will go a long way to making the town self-sufficient in energy, he says...
(30 July 2008)
Using crop residue for biofuels hurts soil quality (podcast)
Karen Hopkin, Scientific American
Biofuels sound like such a good idea. A clean-burning fuel that reduces our need for foreign oil. What’s not to like? Well, for one thing, turning corn into biodiesel could be taking food off hungry people’s plates. “Okay,” biofuel advocates say, “suppose we just use the stems and leaves that are left over after crops are harvested? That should solve the problem.” Well, maybe not entirely. Because removing that so-called crop residue takes food away from soil microbes. They convert that material into the nutrients that crops need. So says USDA scientist Ann Kennedy of Washington State University.
Microbes break down crop residue to form organic matter—the stuff that gives soil its rich, dark color. Organic matter, in turn, provides nutrients, helps the soil retain water, and prevents erosion. So, if you harvest the crop residue to produce biofuels, you remove the materials that are fodder for the bugs that make organic matter. Soil quality would drop, and farmers would have to find some other way to fertilize their fields. So biofuels are not a magic bullet. Maybe you should just eat the corn and ride your bike...
(30 July 2008)
Obama's biofuels policy tension
US presidential hopeful Barack Obama is coming under increasing pressure to change his policies on biofuels.
Senator Obama has been a big supporter of corn subsidies for American farmers to produce the plant-fuel ethanol.
But a new report from his own green adviser warns of the many problems associated with the biofuel.
Daniel Kammen's paper says that a car will emit more greenhouse gases driving on corn ethanol processed with coal than it will using normal petrol...
(28 July 2008)
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This is a community site and the discussion is moderated. The rules in brief: no personal abuse and no climate denial. Complete Guidelines. | <urn:uuid:b10558a4-f095-421c-b671-94180b95b0bf> | {
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Could anyone please explain the two above systems and there differences or refer me to some text that will
In a nutshell, Isochronous Speed Control refers to the prime mover governor speed control mode that controls the frequency (speed) of an AC generator (alternator) and Droop Speed Control refers to the prime mover governor speed control mode that allows multiple AC generators (alternators) to be operated in parallel with each other to power large electrical loads, or to "share" load.
The frequency of a synchronous AC generator (the type most commonly used in AC power generation) is directly proportional to the speed of the rotating electrical field(s) F = P * N / 120, where F = frequency (in Hz), P = number of poles of the rotating electrical field, and N = the speed of the rotating electrical field (in RPM).
In Isochoronous Speed Control mode, the energy being admitted to the prime mover is regulated very tightly in response to changes in load which would tend to cause changes in frequency (speed). Any increase in load would tend to cause the frequency to decrease, but energy is quickly admitted to the the prime mover to maintain the frequency at the setpoint. Any decrease in load would tend to cause the frequency to increase, but energy is quickly reduced to the prime mover to maintain the frequency at the setpoint.
In Droop Speed Control mode, the governor of the prime mover is not attempting to control the frequency (speed) of the AC generator. The term "share the load" causes much confusion, but just refers to the ability of the prime movers of AC generators to smoothly control the production of torque when connected in parallel with other generators supplying an electrical load.
Droop Speed Control, in fact, refers to the fact that the energy being admitted to the prime mover of the AC generator is being controlled in response to the difference between a speed (frequency) setpoint and the actual speed (frequency) of the prime mover. To increase the power output of the generator, the operator increases the speed setpoint of the prime mover, but since the speed cannot change (it's fixed by the frequency of the grid to which the generator is connected) the error, or difference, is used to increase the energy being admitted to the prime mover. So, the actual speed is being "allowed" to "droop" below its setpoint.
On a small electrical grid, one machine is usually operated in Isochronous Speed Control mode, and any other (usually smaller) generators which are connected to the grid are operated in Droop Speed Control mode. If two prime movers operating in Isochronous Speed Control mode are connected to the same electrical grid, they will usually "fight" to control the frequency, and wild oscillations of the grid frequency usually result. Only one machine can have its governor operating in Isochronous Speed Control mode for stable grid frequency control when multiple units are being operated in parallel. (There are Isochronous Load Sharing schemes in use in various places around the world, but they aren't very common.)
On very large electrical grids--commonly referred to as "infinite" electrical grids--there is no single machine operating in Isochronous Speed Control Mode which is capable of controlling the grid frequency; all the prime movers are being operated in Droop Speed Control mode. But there are so many of them and the electrical grid is so large that no single unit can cause the grid frequency to increase or decrease by more than a few hundredths of a percent as it is loaded or unloaded.
Very large electrical grids require system operators to quickly respond to changes in load in order to control grid frequency properly since there is no Isochronous machine doing so. Usually, when things are operating normally, changes in load can be anticipated and additional generation can be added or subtracted in order to maintain tight frequency control.
One method many electrical grid operators use to control grid frequency is called AGC, or Automatic Grid Control. Units being operated in AGC get their Droop Speed Control speed setpoints adjusted remotely in response to commands from the system operator(s) to maintain grid frequency.
There really is a dearth of material on Droop and Isochronous governor control, and much of what is written is very difficult to understand and, frankly, is explained in unrealistic terms. One of the best authors on the subject is Charles I. Hubert; his 'Preventive Maintenance of Electrical Equipment' and 'Electric Machines: Theory, Operation, Applications, Adjustment, and Control' both contain some good sections (though brief) on the two speed governor control modes.
This author is hopeful that someday soon, an article on Wikipedia will be started and that the collective thoughts and efforts of many knowledgeable people will be combined into one thoughtful and insightful-and most importantly, understandable--definition of the concept of governor speed control modes.
We have a situation with 2 x 15MW generators and a 14MW load. We want one to take the maximum load (becasue it is running on cheap gas) and the other to run on diesel, which is expensive. It is suggested that we can do this my running one on droop and one on isoch. We have a PMS system. Any ideas how to do it ???
If one trips out we want the other one to be able to accept the load
The term "PMS system" is not familiar; can you explain the acronym and describe what you are talking about, please? Please try to remember that to many people the acronyms bandied about a plant on a daily basis may not be familiar to others so when posting a question with an acronym it's always a good idea to explain the acronym.
Presuming you have a small AC (Alternating Current) electrical grid/load that is supplied by one or both of the two 15 MW generators and is NOT connected to any other source of electrical energy or electrical grid, it would be hard to understand how the frequency is controlled and maintained if one of the units is not run continuously in Isochronous mode. Is there some special kind of frequency control which is acting through Droop speed control to maintain the frequency on the grid? Do the operators control the frequency manually? Does the load not vary much, so that Droop speed control can be used to maintain grid frequency?
When a generator is being operated in Isochronous mode and another generator whose prime mover is being operated in Droop speed control mode is paralleld with the Isochronous machine, the load on the Isochronous machine is a function of how much load the Droop machine has taken/accepted from the Isoch machine.
For example, if the load is 14 MW and only one unit is supplying the load, its governor is usually being operated in Isoch mode to maintain grid frequency. If another unit is paralled to the load with the Isoch machine it is usually done so with the second machine's governor in Droop mode.
As the Droop machine is "loaded" the tendency would be for the grid frequency to decrease--but the Isoch machine reduces its power output (and generator output) to maintain the frequency. (Remember: The electrical "load" on a grid is NOT a function of the number, rating, or output of the generators connected to the grid--it's the combined total of the "consumption", the motors, lights, transformers, etc., which are connected to the grid.) So, if the Droop machine in this example was loaded to 7 MW, the Isoch machine's load would automatically drop to 7 MW. If the Droop machine was loaded to 12 MW, the Isoch machine's load would automatically drop to 2 MW.
One cannot "load" an Isoch machine by pushing or holding the RAISE SPD/LOAD button or handle--if one does so, what he/she will be doing will be increasing the frequency setpoint and in doing so the grid frequency will increase.
The load on an Isoch unit is "controlled" by the amount of load on the Droop machine, in this simple example of two generators one of which is being operated in Isoch mode and the other in Droop mode.
Now, there are Isochronous Load Sharing Schemes (is that what's in operation at your site?) whereby multiple units can "share" the task of maintaing grid frequency--but these are not very common and require tuning and testing, both of which make many people very nervous. And, as the size and nature of loads tend to change, the schemes need to be re-evaluated and re-tuned and re-tested to ensure they are working as required--another expense and effort many companies aren't willing to expend once a plant has been commissioned and put in service....
Can either machine be automatically switched to Isoch mode (by, say, a breaker status contact)?
It's up to you to decide how you want to operate your machines: Load the unit running on cheap gas fuel to 13 MW by running it in Droop mode and the load on the other unit which is running on distillate fuel (which should be operating in Isoch mode) will drop to 1 MW. If the Droop unit trips, the Isoch unit will very quickly increase its output to maintain the load AND the grid frequency.
OR, put the unit running on distillate fuel in Droop mode and operate the other unit running on cheap gas in Isoch mode and only load the Droop unit to 1 MW. However, in this scenario, if the Isoch unit trips, the Droop machine will maintain the load BUT the grid frequency will drop until the operator either raises the unit's Droop speed control reference OR puts the unit's governor is Isoch mode.
The choice is yours. But we'd still like to know what a "PMS system" is, and how the units are currently being operated....
There was a previous reference to "PMS system" (http://www.control.com/1026218262/index_html). From that reference, it can be inferred that the PMS system can be used to control the load of multiple units by supplying load control setpoints (probably in the form of 4-20 mA signals to the External Droop Speed Control inputs) to the prime mover governors.
It doesn't seem that this system could be used to control the load of multiple generators if one of the generators were operated in Isochronous control mode. The Isochronous control mode would probably not recognize the External Load Control signal since it would be applied to the Droop control mode.
It would be most helpful if one uses an acronym in their post that they define the term at least once (the first usage). PMS can be Property Management System, Post-Meiotic Segregation, Permanent Magnet Synchronous, Popular Music School, or, the most commonly found usage on the World Wide Web, Post-Menstrual Stress--but none of these descriptions seem to be applicable to this usage of PMS....
In short, a PMS system as we (Marine Industry) use the term is Power Management System (PMS). This system typically control the Diesel (or LNG (Liquid Natural Gas))engines on a higher level (over the govenors) and the system will also control all heavy consumers on the plant (load sharing, load shedding, blackout preventions etc). Also opening/closing of breakers is typically controlled from a PMS system. The PMS system consist of a PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) with I/O (Input/Output) cards and an HMI (Human Machine Interface).
Very nice introduction to Droop/Isoch by the way!
Thanks for the information!
So, PMS can also mean "Power Management System"... Aren't acronyms wonderful? Especially TLAs (Three-Letter Acronyms)!
It's possible to see how such a system which controls all large consumption, circuit breakers, etc., could be used to provide a Droop speed control reference to a prime mover governor which was "tuned" for desired response (i.e., loading/unloading rates a little faster than typical).
It does seem though, that the PMS system would have to be "disabled" if one of the units were to be run in Isochronous mode. Or at least "de-tuned" to prevent interaction and instability.
PMS is the Power mangement system, which is basically a PLC program switcing different modes of generator according to grid breaker or electric network breaker. If grid is not connected, it decides the ISO machine selection through some logic.
I was doing some research because of load sharing problems I am having with my plant powered by 4 2MW gen sets all running in Isochronous mode. The load is not being distributed evenly and I am getting some very low power factors with a large amp draws. We are running through a ASCO switchgear. In the fifth paragraph of your post you talked about this set up briefly and mentioned that constant tuning and testing. Can you expand and give me a bit of an idea of where I should look first thanks.
>As the Droop machine is "loaded" the
>tendency would be for the grid frequency
>to decrease--but the Isoch machine
>reduces its power output (and generator
>output) to maintain the frequency.
>(Remember: The electrical "load" on a
>grid is NOT a function of the number,
>rating, or output of the generators
>connected to the grid--it's the combined
>total of the "consumption", the motors,
>lights, transformers, etc., which are
>connected to the grid.) So, if the Droop
>machine in this example was loaded to 7
>MW, the Isoch machine's load would
>automatically drop to 7 MW. If the Droop
>machine was loaded to 12 MW, the Isoch
>machine's load would automatically drop
>to 2 MW.
Edward... Is it correct to state that your facility's alternator's are supplying power to the facility's electrical load? Furthermore if connected to an "External Grid" they do not normally export or import power!
if you are having high amp draws and poor power factor, then you need better droop current compensation installed on each unit's AVR (automatic voltage regulator). Besides speed control, generators require voltage control. Like the other authors suggest having one generator operate in isochronous mode (frequency control) and the other gens in droop speed control (followers) The voltage regulators must be set up in the same way. One of the four 2MW generators should have the voltage droop mode off (this unit sets the voltage of the system grid). The other 3 2MW units should operate in voltage droop mode (following). Using this method you will not get circulating current between generators because the three units paralleled in droop mode will not "push" the voltage up or pull it down. A simple current droop compensation circuit requires a CT (current transformer), a resistor (a load which builds a voltage when current is passed through it, and a transformer (basically an amplifier) to boost that ac voltage formed on the resistor. This circuit is installed on each generator and a switch can short the CT current effectively disabling droop compensation. Also the output of the transformer is connected in series with the voltage sensing of the AVR voltage regulator. Depending upon the direction of the current the voltage sign either adds or subtracts from the nominal sense voltage. Thus this negative feed back circuit protects each generator against high circulating current (over current tripping)and poor PF power factor etc.
Hope this helps.
Len Howe AET Avionics.
My e mail is lenhowe at cintek dot com.
In your example scenario, i.e. one machine in iso at 7MW and other machine in droop at 7MW, what will happen if the total load demand drops to say 5MW? What will be the response of iso machine because the system frequency will increase because of droop machine's response?
A good article and it clears many doubts. Generally people get confused droop mode to load mode and isochronous mode to speed mode. Further to elaborate the droop mode consists of load mode and speed mode.
Even though i am replying on your old thread, i feel you are the right person to answer my query.
I am briefing my problem in details as below,
We have 2 nos STG sets of 25 MW and 15 MW capacity, and we are trying to operate in parallel with SEB grid both STGs. Both STgs have woodward governor 505E.
The present arrangement is, we have given tie breaker signal to both the governor from SEB breaker to operate in droop mode. When both STGs are operating in parallel with each other and SEB, we are operating both STGs in load control mode.
When SEB breaker opens both STGs are coming to isochronous mode of operation, even though they are parallel with each other. When this happens the shifting of load between two STGs takes place on continuous basis.
Now my query is: i want to keep both STGs in droop mode of operation and should come out of load control mode when SEB breaker opens.
i hope you have understood my query. please share your experience to solve the issue. When contacted woodward they are marketing isochronous load sharing relay, which is not acceptable to me until unless i am convinced about this relay requirement.
This is an old thread.... And this topic has been smothered to death on (speed)control.com.
Whenever two governors are in Isoch mode (without some kind of Isoch Load Sharing scheme) they will "fight" each other to control the frequency. That's their nature, and they're not disposed to sharing the load. Each governor wants to control frequency and so each will respond to any change in frequency (which results from a change in load, system load).
An Isochronous Load Sharing scheme will allow the two units to "split" or "share" the load between them depending on how the scheme/controller is programmed. It will allow more than one governor to be operated in Isoch mode and will reduce and possibly even eliminate frequency swings as a result of load changes. Whether or not two governors need to be operated simultaneously in Isoch mode is a function of many factors, and to cover all the possibilities would take the equivalent of several chapters in a textbook.
Imagine two people riding on a tandem bicycle, each with pedals to contribute to the torque required to move the bicycle and any load they might be carrying. Imagine they have to maintain a constant speed (which in an AC system speed is directly proportional to frequency). The two riders are each prime movers providing torque to the bicycle, just as turbines provide torque to generators. It takes a certain amount of torque to maintain a certain speed (on a flat and level road) when there is no load on the bicycle (packages, etc.) and more torque to maintain that same speed when there are packages and possibly a passenger on that same flat and level road.
Let's further say that the number and weight of the packages can be variable, that they can be dropped off the bicycle and added to the bicycle at random times and intervals while the bicycle is moving, meaning that the torque required to maintain a constant speed is going to change as the number of packages and the weight of the packages change.
If both riders are each working to independently control the speed of the bicycle as the load changes, it's very likely that the speed of the bicycle won't be very constant. If they both apply more torque as a package or packages are added to the bicycle the speed might increase above the desired rate, and if they both decrease their torque at the same time to slow the bike down then the speed might decrease below the desired rate.
But, if they decided that one rider will pedal with a fairly constant torque and the other rider will vary his torque output to maintain the desired speed as the number and weight of the packages changes, then it's more likely that the speed of the bicycle (and it's load) will remain fairly constant.
We'll call the rider who's maintaining a relatively constant torque "Droop" and the rider who's varying his output as a function of load "Isoch."
Let's say that Droop is supplying a constant torque to the pedals equal to 50% of his ability while the bicycle is moving and packages of varying weight are being dropped off and picked up. This means that Isoch's output is varying as necessary to maintain the desired speed as the load on the bicycle is changing. BUT, if the load exceeds Isoch's ability to produce torque, then the speed of the bicycle will slow down, because Droop is only putting out 50% of his output. So, Isoch can ask Droop to increase his torque to help get the bicycle back to desired speed. And in so doing, as Droop increases his torque the amount of torque that Isoch is producing will be decreased as the desired speed is reached. Droop should increase his torque output such that any anticipated load increase can be handled by Isoch so that the speed will remain constant as expected load changes occur.
Now let's say that the load on the bicycle has dropped significantly (a lot of the packages have been dropped off the bike), and the amount of torque that Isoch has to provide is down to near zero (he's just "coasting") to maintain the desired speed. If even more packages are removed from the bike, then the speed will start to increase. And, so Droop will have to decrease his torque output to reduce the speed of the bicycle. Droop should reduce his torque output such that Isoch has to increase his torque output above that required for the loss of any additional packages in order to maintain the desired speed.
AC generators (alternators) with prime movers are identical to this example. They have to operate at a constant speed (frequency) and they have to vary their torque output in order to control speed (frequency) when load is changing when they are being operated "off-grid", or in "island" mode. But, if two governors are both trying to control the speed (frequency) they will generally fight each other which will cause the frequency to be unstable, and the loads on the two generators to be unstable.
We have no way of knowing what the load is when the two units are separated from the grid. Let's presume the two units are running at 10 MW and 20 MW in parallel with the utility. And suddenly, the tie breaker opens, and the "island" load drops to 12 MW. Let's further presume that one (only one) of the 505E controllers will switch to Isoch mode when the tie breaker opens, and let's say it's the unit running at 20 MW (which we'll call "Big"). So, when the tie breaker opens Big will switch to Isoch mode and the other unit (we'll call it "Little") stays in Droop control mode.
Because the power output of the two units at the instant the tie breaker opens exceeds that required for the "island" load, the frequency will start to increase very quickly, and Big will reduce it's load (hopefully very quickly!) to about 2 MW, which in combination with the load on Little (10 MW) should result in a stable frequency. (What will really happen is that the frequency will increase and Little's load should decrease because of Droop action and as Big's load comes down Little's load will increase back to 10 MW as frequency returns to normal.)
Hopefully, when Big closes the control valves very quickly it doesn't cause a sudden spike in inlet steam pressure and maybe even lift a safety valve or two! (The boiler control also has to reduce firing rate pretty quickly to try to help reduce steam pressure because of the reduced steam flow to Big.)
Big, being the Isoch unit, will now respond to any load changes in the "island" load. (This presumes Little is in "straight" Droop speed control with no load setpoint.) However, if the island load decreases by more than two MW, Big can't reduce its output below 0 MW, and so what will happen is that the load on Little will decrease but the frequency of the island will increase.
Now, if someone wants to increase the load on Big the operator needs to decrease the load on Little.
Presuming Little's 505E is operating in "straight" Droop speed control, it's load will remain fairly constant as long as frequency remains fairly constant. If Little's 505E is trying to maintain a specific load setpoint and Big has any difficulty responding to load swings and the frequency starts to vary, then Little won't help try to maintain frequency--it will actually make the frequency problem worse, because instead of changing it's output to help maintain the frequency setpoint by increasing or decreasing load as necssary, it will by trying to keep its load constant which will make the frequency problem worse.
If you want to operate both units in Isoch mode (and there may be compelling reasons to do that, we don't and can't know that from the information you have provided) you should seriously consider investing in an Isoch Load Sharing module. But, it shouldn't be necessary, unless your operators can't respond to load changes and adjust the output of Little to keep Big in a range of output that would allow it to control frequency as load changes.
Steam turbines don't generally make great Isoch machines, because the firing rate of the boiler can't usually be changed very quickly if load changes quickly. It's not that they can't be tuned to be good Isoch units, it's just that it usually takes tuning of both the governor and the boiler control to achieve smooth frequency control, and then only for expected load changes. If the load changes much more than expected for some reason, then they generally won't respond as quickly as necessary.
Very useful and clearly explained information on this thread. Now I have a question: how this theory applies in the case we have inverters (powered by photovoltaic panels or by batteries) in parallel with diesel and/or steam generators?
The concept of frequency control in droop and isochronous mode is the same? What about the isochronous load sharing? Can 2 inverters be in parallel and do load sharing (the same as 2 generators in parallel both in isochronous mode)?
Thanks in advance!
Thanks a lot for your informative article. I have a query about the difference between speed droop & KW droop. A STG's (3MW) governor having KW droop of 4% and another STG's (3MW) governor having speed droop of 3%, what does this actually mean when these two generators are running parallel in island mode? I think you can help me.
Its good you have a query, and not a doubt....
I have encountered some smaller prime mover-generator units, and even some very large steam turbine-generators, that use rated load for droop control rather than speed. This is mostly on units that are never intended to be operated in Isochronous Speed Control mode. The reference would a percentage of rated load (the percentage related to the amount of Droop), and the feedback would be actual load. If the error were to change then the power input to the prime mover would change. This does very little to support grid frequency, but for small units connected to a larger ("infinite") grid it's probably fine.
If the two generators in your example are the only two generators being operated in Island mode, then either the load is relatively stable and the operators can react quickly to change load as frequency varies, or there is some other control system supplying some kind of over-riding input to one unit or the other. When only two generators are paralleled, then the usual method would have one in Isoch Speed Control mode (to control the frequency by adjusting load as necessary), and the other in Droop control mode (Speed- or Load Droop would be fine) producing stable power in parallel with the Isoch unit.
Thanks a lot for your quick response. and you are right that in my example, load is almost stable & operators are very much conscious about any load change.
When 3 generators are running in parallel and if we adjust the droop setting for one particular generator, what are the changes occurs in this situation?
I mean does it applies to all running generators or to that particular unit only?
thanks for the elaborate description about droop and isocho that was really helpful.
Under your scenario with three gen-sets operating in parallel, one in Isoch and the remaining two in Droop, if you change the Droop setpoint of one of the Droop machines the load of that Droop machine will change AND the load of the Isoch machine will also change by an amount equal and opposite to the load change on the Droop machine.
Let's say this is the configuration:
Unit 1: 10 MW machine, operating in Isoch control at 5.0 MW
Unit 2: 4 MW machine, operating in Droop control with 4% Droop, at 2.0 MW
Unit 3: 5 MW machine, operating in Droop control with 5% Droop, at 5 MW
So, the total load on the system is (5+2+5) 12 MW and the load is relatively stable at this time.
Now, this means that the Droop speed reference for Unit 2 is 102%, and the Droop speed reference for Unit 3 is 105%. (Unit 2 is operating at half of rated capacity, so the Droop setpoint is half of rated, which is half of the possible 4% Droop, or 102%. Unit 3 is operating at full rated capacity, which is the full 5%, or 105%.) the Isoch machine, Unit 1, is operating at 50% of rated capacity but the speed reference is 100.0% because it is controlling frequency.
Now, if the operator lowers the speed reference of Unit 3 by 1%, from 105% to 104%, the load of Unit 3 will drop to 4.0 MW. Unit 1's governor, sensing the drop in frequency as the load of Unit 3 is lowered will Increase its output to 6.0 MW, and the frequency will remain stable at rated. Unit 2 will remain unchanged at 2.0 MW. The load on the system is unchanged at 12.0 MW, but now Unit 1 is supplying 6.0 MW, Unit 2 is supplying 2.0 MW, and Unit 3 is supplying 4.0 MW.
If the operator then increased the Droop setpoint of Unit 2 to 103%, the load of Unit 2 would increase to 3.0 MW, and the load of Unit 1 would decrease to 5.0 MW. The load of Unit 3 would be unchanged at 4.0 MW, and the total load on the system would still be 12.0 MW at rated frequency.
Does this help?
Almost forgotten--this website:
has excellent technical information on electrical power plant fundamentals.
This page/pdf file in particular has good information about Isoch and Droop Governor Control!
And, they're costless (i.e., gratis, free)! | <urn:uuid:26188ccd-1994-44c7-b8e8-cd635430e827> | {
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MIGHT M’OaD Mem-Aleph-Dalet
MIH-O(D)TE_____אמץ_____[MOD à MOT]
ROOTS: Anglo-Saxon miht (power) may or may not derive from Indo-European (IE) “root” magh (to be able, to have power). If it doesn't, one possibility is MIGHT (the GH being silent) might be an M-T word, but Ben Johnson, etc. who made up spelling conventions couldn’t find an M-T source, and did not want this word confused with “mite.”
1. אמץ OaMeTS is “might, strength” -- B-Y, courageous (Deuteronomy 3:28) or firm, obstinate (Deuteronomy 15:7). The Slavic derivatives below bear these out.
2. מאד M’OaD (force, strength or "might" in Deuteronomy 6:5).
3. One may also consider an M231 metathesis of עצם GHoTSeM, might (Deuteronomy 8:17)
There are two more nasal-dental words of strength: אמת EMeT (firmness -- Psalms 19:10 -- see “ETMOLOGY”), and מתן MeTeN, firmness, with מתן MoaTaiN (“loins,” hips, waist … the seat of strength -- Genesis 37:34
BRANCHES: MIGHT is allegedly a cognate of MAY and MAIN. See alternative Hebrew etymons at "MACHINE" and "MAGIC" - two other terms listed as cognates at IE “root” magh.
German “might” is Macht.
מאד M’OaD can mean “very” and “exceedingly” (Ben-Yehuda), or with much quantity (Genesis 27:33). "A lot" in Portuguese is muito. Perhaps the L in MULTI- is non-historic. The reconstructed IE “root” of words like MULTITUDE means “strong, great” fitting Mem-Aleph-Dalet. Mottomo means “most” and “extremely” in Japanese. | <urn:uuid:267bcd17-9400-4d7c-9478-08a8ca47da66> | {
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Dot dot dot-dash dash dash-dot dot dot. Dear readers, do you know what that is? It is SOS in Morse Code. All radio operators know this. It is an understood code that crosses all language barriers. The gringa, fascinated with all things space, then has to ask, does this include extra-terrestrials? Well, who knows?!
Now, the SETI Institute (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligent Life) doesn’t really make it a practice to emit signals in their search for ETs, rather, they listen to outer space “noise”. NASA’s search for extra-terrestrial life isn’t so much for little green men to have a conversation with, but, rather, the origins of life such as amino acids, ribonucleotides (RNA) and certain gases such as oxygen, methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and, of course, water.
However, Earthlings have been inadvertently sending out all sorts of signals into space for over five decades. As technological devices fill the Earth, transmission signals fill the heavens: radio broadcasts, television signals, radar blips and bleeps, etc. So, why do we not purposely send a message designed to create a favorable first impression rather than let all this mish-mash represent humankind? Does NASA and SETI believe that no one exists, thus no one is listening or do they believe there may be inherent danger in seeking out contact? Evidently the reason is because there is no consensus, yet, within the scientific community. The professionals are ARGUING. Hmph.
Douglas Vakoch, a researcher with SETI, thinks that it may be time to have an international discussion on the subject and let the public’s opinion on the matter be heard. He is on the pro-sending signals side of the argument. He proposes transmitting radio signals to hundreds of stars within eighty-two light years of our home planet. This can be accomplished with the radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
Renowned physicist, Stephen Hawking, on the other hand, thinks this is a bad idea. By sending out so many signals to every Tom, Dick and Harry alien out there, we could communicate with the good, the bad and the ugly. He believes we should be much more cautious in our approach.
So, it seems that, although there is no consensus within the scientific community on whether or not we should initiate communication, there is a consensus that somewhere out there is intelligent life that would not only receive the signals, but would be capable of responding, perhaps in person. The gringa says, “Hmmm.”
Now, the telescope at Arecibo has already sent a space message back in 1974. Consisting of an intricate code, it was transmitted to a cluster of stars 25,000 light years away.
The Crimeans sent out four messages to the cosmos from 1999 until 2008. They were transmitted from the Yevpatoria RT-70 radio telescope at Crimea’s Center for Deep Space Communications. Their ET messages were entitled: “Cosmic Call”, “Teen Age Message”, “Cosmic Call 2”, and “A Message From Earth”. The messages were made up of binary code, repeating signals, musical compositions, photographs, whale songs, etc.
Scientists believed that it is important to purposely beam thoughtful messages into deep space rather than let ETs believe all Earthlings are like the Kardashians, or the Zodiac killer, or Archie Bunker. Although Earthlings have been flooding outer space with signals since the beginning of the television era, most of our daily technologies do not have signals that are sufficiently strong enough to be picked up by our nearest living ET neighbors’ light years away. Although, if they are advanced enough, they have probably detected something by now.
So, if SETI and the Crimeans have already sent out some transmissions, the gringa then wonders, “What’s the big deal about sending more?” And, if our own daily barrage of digital signals and radio waves have the possibility of already being detected, what’s the point of “laying low”? If an ET civilization is super advanced to the point they could easily dominate us, yet they haven’t shown up and taken over, why be so worried? It seems they could care less.
The gringa thinks the real reason why the scientists can’t stop arguing and just get to the business at hand is an age old reason. Power struggle. Tsk, tsk. How disappointing. The gringa believed that surely, of all human beings, scientists were above such nonsense. As scientists consider the possibility of the most ground-breaking and historical event EVER playing out, they eye one another suspiciously and wonder just who is going to get the credit. Yes. Exactly who gets to devise the message, approve it and send it as the representative of the entire Earth?!
So, although there are researchers who want to open up the subject to public debate, that also opens it up to the general host of problems that goes along with human nature. Venturing into the area of communicating with an alien race would mean the establishment of protocols. Who gets to decide who we Earthlings talk to and what we talk about?
Although SETI wants to actively transmit in hopes of communicating with extra-terrestrials, the official policy of the institute is that the final decision belongs to the people of Earth. Such a decision affects all humans. It could be the single-most life affecting decision for mankind. Therefore, it should be left in the hands of all the people and not just a few “experts”.
Many other leaders in the space exploration community are in agreement, such as former Senior Scientist for Astrobiology in NASA’s planetary protection office, John Rummel and SpaceX founder, Elon Musk. Pioneering American astronomer, Geoff Marcy, who has discovered many “extrasolar” planets, believes it is important that every culture, even deep jungle indigenous peoples, upon Earth have the opportunity to have their voices heard in such a decision that will affect every person worldwide.
The discussion on this issue will probably continue to heat up because, recently, some interesting radio signals have been detected by astronomers who have been left scratching their heads and wondering if they could, perhaps, be a signal from intelligent beings, seeing that, like one of our own repeated signal transmissions, this signal also repeated itself.
If a repeating signal has been detected in deep space, could it have other origins than intelligent beings purposely transmitting? Canadian scientist Paul Scholz finds the mystery rather exciting and believes this to be an important discovery and wants to know if the signals originated with living, breathing ETs or if a star just went “kaplooie” and it’s just a “coincidence” that it created a shockwave noise that mimics a man-made (or little green man-made) artificial, repeating signal.
Until the signals began repeating, scientists theorized the rapid bursts of radio signals resulted from a star that went supernova and exploded or, perhaps, a neutron star collapsing into a black hole. But, now that the signals are identical and repeating, the same scientists don’t quite know what to think.
In addition to a repeating pattern, there are other singular differences that set the signals apart from other space “noise”. When studied further, the signals are “brighter” and in a different “spot” on the “spectrum” of other fast radio burst signals (FRBs). These details are all well and good, but all the gringa wants to know is, “Are we alone or not?”
The closest I can get to a straight answer is what a Cornell University astronomy professor has to say. According to Professor James Cordes, whatever charge is powering the signal, it is powerful enough to repeat the signal cycle within minutes. The energy packed behind the transmission must be impressive because they are extraordinarily bright, thus enabling us to see them from very, very, very, very, far away. And, the power source must also be incredibly secure and amazingly strong and durable because it is not destroyed by the transmission of an exploding-star-scale blast and is capable of repeating the exploding-star-scale blast.
To put all of this in a nutshell, five fast radio burst signals were captured by the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia. Rather than just be a single burst of energy, these are double bursts, two bursts separated by 2.4 milliseconds, consistently. They repeated five times. The origins of the signals could be as far away as several billion light years beyond the Milky Way Galaxy, our home turf in the cosmos.
The gringa has no answer and remains intrigued. And my vote is that we send our own signals.
Image Source: www.dailymail.co.uk | <urn:uuid:daac8547-410e-4c3d-918a-4a58d90a668d> | {
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In 1896 Susan B. Anthony claimed that the bicycle had ‘done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance’. More than a century later, the importance of the bike to the Ovarian Psycos is testament to that.
The clue is in the title! This funny, and often very sweet, take on the trials and tribulations of dating deals with loneliness, terrible dancing, extraterrestrial life-forms, and the comfort of being yourself with someone who gets you - even if they are an alien.
What makes a positive ‘superstar role model’ for tweens? How can kids navigate a media landscape that is increasingly sexualised?
CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap is an absorbing look at the lack of women and minorities in software engineering. Enjoying a premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, this documentary is inspiring in its structure: tracing the history in the USA..
Future Media Needs Feminism
In this claustrophobic, near-future world, where women continue to be prized for their youth, beauty, and fertility, Sundance award-winning Advantageous raises issues related to technology and surveillance and asks pressing questions about what makes us human.. | <urn:uuid:b211973c-4284-4c49-ad5f-87f83257effd> | {
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James J. Stapleton, Ph.D., an Integrated Pest Management plant pathologist at the University of California’s Kearney Agricultural Center Academic Unit in Parlier, California, has studied solarization since he was a graduate student in the late 1970s. Probably the biggest advantage of solarization for home gardeners, he says, is weed control, “but solarization is a general biocidal treatment that mimics the effect of soil fumigation with a fumigant chemical, and will kill pests in the soil.”
While the benefits can be big, solarization will put the garden out of commission for 4 to 6 weeks during the sunniest, hottest time of the year, Stapleton says—the peak growth period for many garden crops. “In the West—and especially here in California—the growing season is fairly long and you can solarize in the summer and follow it with a fall garden crop,” he says. “In other places, if your garden is big enough, you could solarize part of it and actively garden the rest, or if you have a bad problem with soil pests, you might be willing to forgo gardening for a year and solarize instead.”
Solarization is a simple, four-step process, Stapleton says. Step one: Cultivate the soil, and collect and dispose of dead plants and other debris that might harbor pests. Step two: Level and smooth the soil surface. Step three: Irrigate the soil very well to at least 12 inches deep to increase its heat conductivity. Step four: Lay a clear plastic tarp on the soil surface. (1 to 4 mil painter’s plastic works well and is readily available.) Anchor the edges of the tarp with soil. The closer to the soil surface the plastic is, the better the heating. Remove the tarp after 4 to 6 weeks and resume gardening. Don’t keep the plastic on much longer than that, or it will begin to break into pieces.
The heat that is concentrated under the tarp often kills pest organisms more readily than beneficials, Stapleton says, because soilborne pests tend to die out more easily in the absence of plants, while beneficials are more adaptable. Mobile pests—nematodes and insects in the juvenile or adult stages—may be able to escape the heat by moving out from underneath the tarp or burrowing deeper into soil.
Solarization is most effective when the weather is hot and cloudless. In areas that don’t get very warm or don’t get much sun, solarization may not work—and can even create a greenhouselike setting that actually stimulates weed growth. Gardeners in the far north and cool, foggy coastal regions should find out from a local extension agent if others have had success solarizing in their area.
A side benefit of solarization is an increase in nutrient availability, Stapleton says. As irrigated soil starts to heat up, the organic matter in it undergoes a mild cooking process. “Just like when you make soup, you add solid material to water and that solid material starts breaking down, creating a nice, nutrient-rich liquid. After solarization, those rich nutrients are available to your crops, usually at higher rates than they would be otherwise.”
Originally published in Organic Gardening Magaine April/May 2013. | <urn:uuid:d626bf1b-739a-4592-b5af-1432ff1da029> | {
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Key: "S:" = Show Synset (semantic) relations, "W:" = Show Word (lexical) relations
Display options for sense: (gloss) "an example sentence"
- S: (adj) askew, awry, cockeyed, lopsided, wonky, skew-whiff (turned or twisted toward one side) "a...youth with a gorgeous red necktie all awry"- G.K.Chesterton; "his wig was, as the British say, skew-whiff"
- S: (adj) amiss, awry, haywire, wrong (not functioning properly) "something is amiss"; "has gone completely haywire"; "something is wrong with the engine"
- S: (adv) awry, amiss (away from the correct or expected course) "something has gone awry in our plans"; "something went badly amiss in the preparations"
- S: (adv) askew, awry, skew-whiff (turned or twisted to one side) "rugs lying askew"; "with his necktie twisted awry" | <urn:uuid:008f259e-3533-4e60-8c68-4679ed81c604> | {
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The Hundred-Billion-Euro Bomb: Euro-Zone Central Bank System Massively Imbalanced
More than a year ago, German economist Hans-Werner Sinn discovered a gigantic risk on the balance sheets of Germany's central bank. Were the euro zone to collapse, Bundesbank losses could be half a trillion euros -- more than one-and-a-half times the size of the country's annual budget.
The crucial clue came from the same man whose signature once adorned the deutsche mark: Helmut Schlesinger, former president of Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank. He was the one who pointed Hans-Werner Sinn, an economist in Munich, in the direction of a strange entry in the Bundesbank's statistics: In late 2010, records showed claims on other euro-zone central banks totaling over 300 billion ($400 billion). Curious, Sinn began to dig deeper. What he found exceeded his worst expectations.
Sinn spoke with specialists at various central banks and with colleagues in his field. "Each person knew a little bit," Sinn explains, "and I had to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. It was real detective work."
After weeks of work, Sinn had assembled enough pieces to create a picture that would make any one shudder: Since the 2007 financial crisis, immense imbalances have formed within the otherwise harmless payment system that exists between the central banks of the 17 euro-zone member states. While Italy, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece, all hit hard by the debt crisis, show deficits totaling over 600 billion, the claims owed the Bundesbank have climbed to 498 billion.
'Caught in a Trap'
As long as the monetary union continues to exist, this isn't a catastrophe. The money is virtual, created by central banks, and its existence doesn't mean that an equivalent amount is lacking elsewhere. But as soon as a country leaves the euro zone, or the currency union collapses entirely, things get critical.
"We're caught in a trap," Sinn says. "If the euro breaks apart, we're left with an outstanding balance of nearly 500 billion, owed by a system that no longer exists." That figure, 500 billion, is more than one and a half times Germany's annual federal budget.
This, though, is the worst-case scenario, and would only apply if the euro zone falls apart entirely. A far more realistic possibility is that one country, such as Greece, would leave the monetary union. In this case, all of the other euro-zone central banks would have to bear the Greek central bank's debt together. Germany's Bundesbank, in accordance with its share of the European Central Bank (ECB), would assume about 28 percent. With Greek debt at 108 billion, Germany's share would be approximately 30 billion.
The Bundesbank's claims are set off by massive debts in crisis-stricken euro-zone countries.
"This is dangerous," Sinn says, his eyes flashing. These outstanding balances owed by other central banks open Germany up to blackmail, he explains. "Now everyone knows we have to save the euro, at almost any cost."
Sinn certainly isn't shy about making himself heard. He's a welcome guest on talk shows because he makes his case clearly and sums it up in pithy sound bites. But that approach doesn't work with Sinn's current subject, which is too complex for a talk show. Then there's the name of the payment system between the central banks -- "TARGET2" -- which sounds about as exciting as the title of an accounting seminar.
- Part 1: Euro-Zone Central Bank System Massively Imbalanced
- Part 2: The Genesis of the Problem
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2012
All Rights Reserved
Reproduction only allowed with the permission of SPIEGELnet GmbH | <urn:uuid:afd8b698-d80b-4c0b-9c00-1888a18f4c0f> | {
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Insufficient funding and delays in food delivery threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands in the Sahel belt of West Africa. There is little excuse for the lack of adequate funding and delays – the international community had been warned of the magnitude of the unfolding crisis for months.
As a result of severe drought, the 2009 harvest in Niger produced less than a quarter of the country’s annual needs. Now half of all Nigeriens do not have enough food. Oxfam and our partners have implemented a destocking humanitarian program in the most vulnerable areas.
Ten leading aid agencies today called for a 'surge' in the humanitarian effort to help 10 million people at risk of acute hunger across the Sahel region of West and Central Africa.
As the G8 Summit comes to a close, international agency Oxfam criticized the leaders for their failure to deliver on their promises and for trying to divert attention by cobbling together a small initiative for maternal and child health. | <urn:uuid:eab9f6a8-eac7-4be7-98df-932fb641ffd1> | {
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History of SatanismEdit
It is apparent from a study of history that the earliest forms of Satanism were in fact fabrications by various groups of Christians. Many of the erroneous beliefs about Satanists still believed today can be traced Medieval and Renaissance books such as Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch's Hammer) (1486) by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger.
The Church of SatanEdit
The Church of Satan was founded by Anton Szandor LaVey (1930-1997), author of The Satanic Bible (1969). In that book, LaVey argued that religions such as Christianity rejected the physical world; he was attempting to create a religion which uplifted it.
Other books written by LaVey on the subject include The Compleat Witch (1971), The Satanic Rituals (1972), The Devil's Notebook (1992), and Satan Speaks! (1998). LaVey appointed Blanche Barton command of the church, and she assumed the role when he died in 1997. | <urn:uuid:31d35c20-c014-4440-9e34-c6433b9d3e6b> | {
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Introduction: Gena Philibert-Ortega is a genealogist and author of the book “From the Family Kitchen.” In this guest blog post, Gena writes about Eleanor Roosevelt’s popular and long-running newspaper column, “My Day.”
When you think of Franklin Delano Roosevelt what comes to mind? Maybe it’s the fact that he was the only U.S. president to be elected to four terms. Maybe you’re familiar with the programs he helped to establish during the Depression, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Maybe you remember the words from his speech after the attack on Pearl Harbor, calling it “a date which will live in infamy.” Our 32nd president led the nation during the difficult times of the Great Depression and World War II.
What do you know about his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt? She was a crusader for many political and social issues, including women’s and civil rights. Mrs. Roosevelt has a long list of accomplishments in her own right apart from being a first lady. Starting in late 1935 she became one of the most-documented first ladies in U.S. history, due to the fact that she began a syndicated newspaper column that she personally wrote. Eleanor worked on her column “My Day” six days a week, from 1935 to 1962, writing about her daily activities and giving her views on a range of subjects.
This 1935 newspaper notice announced the upcoming “My Day” newspaper column.
Many of Eleanor Roosevelt’s newspaper columns read like diary entries. In some cases, they resemble a letter to a dear friend—filled with her thoughts, conversations and opinions.
Her newspaper columns addressed many different topics; not all were especially poignant. For example, in one early column she discusses how much sleep she got and describes eating a tray of food by herself in her room. But looking at the totality of the columns helps paint a picture of the United States through the mid-20th century, reflecting the important issues our families faced such as war, poverty and racism. These “My Day” columns provide researchers with a social history of life during this time.
One issue that Eleanor Roosevelt was passionate about was civil rights. In her 21 February 1936 column, she mentions that she and her husband enjoyed a concert by African American singer Marian Anderson.
Three years later in February 1939 Eleanor Roosevelt quit the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) over their refusal to allow Marian Anderson to perform in Constitution Hall. At that time the Hall was segregated and the DAR refused to allow African Americans to perform there.
In her resignation letter, Mrs. Roosevelt stated:
“However, I am in complete disagreement with the attitude taken in refusing Constitution Hall to a great artist. You have set an example which seems to me unfortunate, and I feel obliged to send in to you my resignation. You had an opportunity to lead in an enlightened way and it seems to me that your organization has failed.”
You can view a copy of that DAR resignation letter on the National Archives website.
Thanks to the support of Eleanor Roosevelt and other like-minded individuals, Marian Anderson eventually sang at Constitution Hall at the invitation of the DAR in 1942.
Mrs. Roosevelt’s 27-year newspaper column spanned her time as first lady, when she became a widow, and when she worked with the United Nations. One of her only breaks from writing the columns was in the days following her husband’s death on 12 April 1945.
In her last column, which ran 26 September 1962, Eleanor was once again addressing the issue of civil rights. In that column she discussed the issue of desegregating the schools, saying:
“In the same way, we must realize that however slow the progress of school integration in the South, analogous situations exist over and over again in the Northern states. There the problem of school desegregation is closely tied to desegregation of housing; certainly we are not doing any kind of job that we could hold out as an example to our Southern neighbors.”
With that discussion Eleanor’s “My Day” column came to an end.* She died two months later on 7 November 1962 at the age of 78. | <urn:uuid:4bf88b65-8f3c-4a6b-b6b6-ac9222af65c2> | {
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August 1, 2006
by Canadian Architect
Text + Chart Julie Bogdanowicz
Within the past 15 years, the City of Vancouver has planned for a residential downtown, reversing sprawl. As it turned out, the building that most satisfied the city’s intentions was a tall, thin tower on a podium. Individually, these buildings may be nice to look at and nice to inhabit with their appropriate setbacks and townhouses, but they are all far too similar. Yes, the type works, but it works too well and Vancouver’s planning goals oppress another kind of urban life, one that goes beyond mere livability. Vancouver’s paradox: too much nice is a bit nasty.
Vancouver can in some ways be read as a planning model. The catalogue of conditions and ideologies below begin to reveal how the city has been conceived in bullet points, a kind of point-form urbanism. While the model has been successful on its own terms and is being exported internationally, Vancouver’s good taste is not resulting in a healthy, diverse city.
Function: Breaking the rules of expected North American urbanism.
1. Young city with high residential density.
2. No freeways.
3. Racially integrated.
4. Planning decisions insulated from interference by city councillors.
5. Social bonus zoning: density for amenity.
Secret for Success: City’s comprehensive integrated strategy.
1. Pushing for housing intensity.
2. Insisting on housing diversity.
3. Structuring for coherent identifiable neighbourhoods.
4. Fostering suitably domestic urban design and architecture.
Organizing Principles: City aligns these variables to achieve a successful model.
1. Limit commuter access into downtown by allowing congestion.
2. Extend downtown grid right to and beyond shoreline; integrate new neighbourhoods.
3. Develop a complete pedestrian-scaled mixed-use neighbourhood unit.
4. Provide a rich mix of market and non-market housing for mixed incomes.
5. Foster an economic ecology where home, work, and services are in close proximity.
6. Treat public realm to express community identity and social life.
7. Create open and green space to provide linkages and amenities.
Land Use Regulation: Zoning is the most significant variable in the city’s development.
1. Protecting the city form from being overtaken by market forces.
2. As a means to an end, zoning regulations can prevent innovation.
Influences: Hong Kong Residential, New Urbanism.
1. Tall and thin tower was imported from Hong Kong.
2. The four-storey eyes-on-the-street podium in the downtown core has been reinterpreted in response to New Urbanist tendencies to define street walls with front porches.
3. The nicely scaled podium, at street level, should make the tall, thin tower almost disappear from one’s perception.
Economic Return: Making money for condominium developers.
1. A leading developer estimates that condos now generate five times more revenue than new offices.
2. The “density for amenity” approach ensures that developments are well endowed–they are much more desirable as a commodity when they include parks, schools and shops–amenities destined for the public good but which translate into profit for developers.
Reactionary: Addressing contemporary trends facing North American cities.
1. The flattening of downtown office growth.
2. The continued expansion of the suburbs; mitigating fear of the inner city.
3. The success of the “Edge City” phenomenon (e.g. Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey).
1. With the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997, Vancouver became a very significant destination for foreign investment and immigration in North America.
Architectural Value: Deficient.
1. Architectural quality, innovation, and standards of building finishes are in the hands of the Planning department.
2. May not be avant-garde design, but works as an urbanistic ideology.
3. The downtown planning team has discretionary power, which allows them to intervene on design issues.
4. Vancouver may have mediocre public architecture because it has such an overwhelming natural setting.
Obsession: The view.
1. Downtown Vancouver is on a peninsula surrounded by ocean and mountains.
2. Slim towers are more expensive to build than bulky towers. However, purchasers who are attracted to the view pay for the extra cost in construction.
Central Business District: On the verge of extinction and being replaced by housing.
1. Office towers are rarely proposed in downtown Vancouver and make up only 10 percent of new downtown towers approved in the past five years.
2. Vancouver has placed a moratorium on converting office buildings into residential use.
3. More commuters will take rapid transit from the downtown to the suburbs for work each morning than those who commute into the traditional city centre.
4. The city is considering Richmond as one of the new business centres, rendering downtown a residential suburb/bedroom community.
5. Vancouver has an energetic small-business sector signalling a movement towards a new creative economy.
6. “Live-work” means that the spaces can be used for housing or small business, but they are unsuitable for large corporate tenants.
Urban Type I: Anti-urban or a new kind of domestic urbanism.
1. Vancouver’s downtown fosters a more domestic public realm and building design to mitigate the harsh effects of high-density residential living.
2. “Rather than defining Vancouver as anti-urban, the type of urbanism can be described as pandering to a superficial consumption of nature.” (Berelowitz)
3. “From its inception, Vancouver has been a state of mind rather than a powerful economic or urban entity.” (Berelowitz)
Urban Type II: The new urban-suburban paradigm.
1. To bring out the competitive advantages of the urban lifestyle over the suburban lifestyle and to make the residential city a reality, the city created an attractive surrogate for the single-family housing model situated in the single-family suburb.
2. To facilitate a life experience that is more exciting and convenient yet equally safe and secure as that offered in the suburbs, the city has overcome noise, danger, overviewing, invasion of privacy and the exclusion of children.
Particularities: Of time and place.
1. The downtown peninsula is geographically constrained by water and by Stanley Park, resulting in higher densities.
2. To fulfill the density allowance, the West End in the ’50s and ’60s set a precedent: small floor plates were stacked vertically because property size was limited by public lanes running throughout small downtown blocks.
3. The West End and False Creek South have had long-standing traditions of high-density living fostered by immigrant cultures accustomed to high-rise density.
4. Local demographics enabled an urban lifestyle where Vancouver hosts a large number of dual-income professional households; couples who married later and had children later; wealthy immigrants from older cities who shun the single-family lifestyle; and wealthy empty nesters.
Julie Bogdanowicz has just completed her Master of Architecture degree at the University of British Columbia. Her insights on the city derive from Vancouverism in Vancouver, a documentary film she recently produced with Robin Anderson.
Beasley, Larry. “Living First in Downtown Vancouver.” American Planning Association’s Zoning News, April 2000.
Berelowitz, Lance. Dream City: Vancouver and the Global Imagination. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2005.
Boddy, Trevor. “Downtown Construction, 90% Condos.” City Building for the Daily Special, 08 Febr
Boddy, Trevor. “New Urbanism: The Vancouver Model.” Places 16.2 (2004).
Boddy, Trevor. “Vancouverism vs. Lower Manhattanism: Shaping the High Density City.” ArchNewsNow.com. 20 September 2005 <http://www.archnewsnow.com>
Broken Down Into Basic Mix 'N' Match Components, the Typical Podium-And-Tower Configuration Represents a Do-It-Yourself Kit of Parts, a Foolproof Recipe for Vancouver Urbanism. | <urn:uuid:38161f9b-a8e3-4526-bf49-c26383e79b6a> | {
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Gulf resilient five years after Deepwater Horizon
Published 11:00 pm, Monday, April 13, 2015
CORPUS CHRISTI — The Gulf of Mexico remains resilient five years after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon caused the second largest oil disaster in world history. Scientists at the Harte Research Institute (HRI) for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi are leading a historic effort to study the spill’s impact from the deepest waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the people who live on its shores.
“There’s never been more research on the Gulf of Mexico than there is now,” McKinney said. “The Gulf has not received the kind of funding for research that we see on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. But today, what we are learning from the Gulf will have applications all over the world.”
McKinney compared the Gulf’s resiliency after the Deepwater Horizon to a rubber band, snapping back into place after a test of its strength. Many of the Gulf’s most iconic species, like crabs, shrimp and oysters, have shown no lasting effects from the spill, McKinney said. But he warned that coastal residents should not take that quick rebound for granted. The Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010 was just one of many challenges testing the resiliency of the Gulf of Mexico. Factors like climate change, habitat loss and ocean acidification continue to threaten the long-term health and productivity of the ecosystem.
“The true measure of the health of the Gulf of Mexico is how well it can bounce back.” McKinney said. “The spill was a tremendous test of that resiliency, and five years later it seems the Gulf has passed. But questions remain about the impact of the spill on long-lived species like turtles, marine mammals, cold-water corals and the deep Gulf ecosystem. If you continue to stretch a rubber band to its limit, you’re losing some of that elasticity and making it weaker. That is the concern we must have for the Gulf.”
Looking forward, the oil spill has created opportunities for an unprecedented research on both the long-term impact of major oil spills and the environmental health of the Gulf of Mexico.
HRI was recently named as the lead organization of one of Texas’ two research Centers of Excellence, funded by oil spill fines set aside by the federal RESTORE Act. Created to serve as a hub of study into the effects of man-made and natural disasters to help guide future science and restoration efforts, the Texas OneGulf Center of Excellence will join similar efforts in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
Texas OneGulf brings together experts from a variety of disciplines and state institutions, McKinney said, including traditional biological and physical sciences, human health and socioeconomics to provide a holistic picture of the spill’s impacts. All are leaders in their respective areas of research.
“Because of our unique, multi-disciplinary approach, HRI is involved in more aspects of the spill than any other institute in the Gulf,” McKinney said.
The center’s goals include creating a network of academic experts that can be called upon to respond to future Gulf-related disasters, such as oil spills or hurricanes, to ensure the best science is available for the emergency response and long-term research. Texas OneGulf will also integrate two of the largest and most powerful scientific databases now operating in the Gulf, the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information and Data Cooperative (GRIIDC) and the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System (GCOOS), to ensure that information is available to anyone, the public, scientists, emergency responders and public officials. Using that resource, Texas OneGulf scientists will initiate GulfHealth Metrics, a program to continually assess the health and productivity of the Gulf of Mexico.
HRI researchers have also been taking a first-time look at how oil impacts the deepest parts of the Gulf of Mexico. Research led by Dr. Paul Montagna, HRI’s Endowed Chair for Ecosystems and Modeling, found initial damage and losses suffered by the communities of tiny marine animals living on the sea floor. Because the deep sea and the sea floor are colder than the rest of the Gulf, that ecosystem could take decades longer to recover. As drilling moves father offshore and attempts to tap deeper oil reserves increase, it becomes more important to understand how spills impact these hidden communities on the soft, muddy bottom that make up the base of the Gulf’s food chain.
To learn what the future may hold for areas affected by the Deepwater Horizon spill, HRI scientists will travel to Mexico this summer, teaming with local scientists to look for residual impacts from the 1979 Ixtoc spill in Mexico’s Bay of Campeche, the third largest oil spill in history after Deepwater Horizon.
Almost no research was done immediately after the blowout of the well at Ixtoc. Dr. Wes Tunnell, HRI Associate Director and Endowed Chair for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, has long followed the impacts from the Ixtoc spill, and continues to lead this research initiative today.
The summer’s research will cover coastal areas, fisheries and deep-sea regions affected by the catastrophe, as well as the social and economic consequences of the spill.
“This is as in indicator of what the effects of Deepwater Horizon may look like 30 years from now,” McKinney said.
HRI also will team with UNAM-Sisal, a leading Mexican marine research institute, to carry out a three-year biodiversity study of the southern Gulf of Mexico. | <urn:uuid:e26d9ab6-c4db-4e93-aed3-fb31d7bd99bb> | {
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Storm Water Pollution 101
Storm water has a lot more to it than just water.
Storm water is the water that runs into storm drains during and after a rainfall. It then gets routed into nearby lakes, streams, rivers or oceans, storm water runoff that ensures that our streets and neighborhoods don't flood. This storm water control occurs when the earth can't absorb the storm water, either because it's covered by nonporous surfaces like parking lots and roads, or the ground is too hard to soak it all up. Other sources of water that find their way into our storm systems come from activities like washing cars and watering lawns.
And a lot more than just water is swept down the storm drain. The list of items that cause storm water pollution is long and arduous. Depending on where you live, storm water can contain chemicals such as oils, fertilizers, cleaners and pesticides. Additionally, pet waste, leaves and grass clippings can also find their way to lakes and rivers along with soaps, detergents, litter and even particles from automotive exhaust. All of these things can choke lakes and rivers and wreak havoc with fish and wildlife.
The effects of storm water pollution reaching our lakes, rivers and oceans from storm water runoff are evident in so many ways. Chemicals can cause severe illnesses in fish and wildlife. Pet waste contributes to bacteria growth and spreads diseases to plants, animals and humans. Grass clippings and leaves decompose and rob the water of oxygen needed to support plant and animal life. | <urn:uuid:2bd80257-8296-48f0-a836-4c3d7c557499> | {
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Set in a futuristic negative utopia, George Orwell’s novel, 1984, is a cautionary tale for the sake of mankind. In Orwell’s society, the Party rules with a tenacious grip on humanity. They monitor and control every thought, action, and emotion, dehumanizing society in the process. Struggling with the prohibition of his expression, Winston’s journey demonstrates the dangers of dehumanization. Individuality, the very thing that keeps humanity sane, when stripped away creates an entire population of automatons — nefariously dehumanizing society in the strive for power.
In order for the Party to remain in power, it must control the entirety of each individual, demoralizing them and their existence. O’Brien tells Winston in the Ministry of Love that “power is power over human beings,” the most important, “above all, over the mind” (264). To control a person is to govern their entire being. Physical actions are only a small part; the foremost aspect is one’s mind. With control of the brain comes control of a person’s thoughts, emotions, judgement, reasoning, self-awareness, sanity — everything associated with humanity. Therefore, to control the mind is to control the person. If a dominating group can control the individuals, they in turn hold power over the collective group. In doing so, they sacrifice humanity. Since the Party controls the minds of people, they can control reality, which cause individuals to question their sanity.
In the eye of the majority, sanity is a malleable concept. Winston questions his thoughts of rebellion along with his whole existence after his sessions with O’Brien, thinking to himself “Sanity was statistical” (277). The perception of one’s state of mind is judged based on the majority’s opinion. If a thought is accepted by the majority, as statistics are, then the sanity of individuals depends upon the majority as well. Those who conform to the numbers will be known as sane, while those who don’t will be outliers. In Winston’s case, he is certain that 2 + 2 = 4, however, the entirety of the Party claims that 2 + 2 = 5. Although today’s society agrees with Winston, he is seen as insane because everyone that surrounds him believes a different truth. Therefore, it can be said that truth and sanity are contrived calculations, based on statistical averages. The truth of 2 + 2 = 5 is engrained in the Party’s memories, but cannot, nor is, physically proven: “reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else” (249). The state of existence lies only in the collective minds of the Party: “Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth” (249). Thus, from a position of power, the Party controls truth, therefore manipulating the existing reality.
In order to control reality, the Party uses a technique known as doublethink: “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them” (214). Citizens must store previous information in their subconscious while primarily believing another thought that opposes the former. They must be able to instantly switch between two thoughts if and when the Party says so, while never believing they ever switched: in order to practice doublethink, one must use it to forget exercising it in the first place. It is an essential process for the Party to maintain power; doublethink allows the Party to constantly mold the past while citizens automatically accept new truths, depicting the Party as an all-knowing deity. Orwell portrays Winston as having incredulous difficulty with doublethink when he is with the needle and O’Brien in the Ministry of Love, O’Brien demanding of him what 2 + 2 equals. Winston is even more confused when O’Brien punishes him for saying five without believing it, even though it is the answer the Party says is correct. As said in Goldstein’s book, “the more intelligent, the less sane” (215): Winston has the knowledge that 2 + 2 should equal four as well as the knowledge that the Party says it equals five. He has both thoughts in his mind, but he still believes the former, only answering five to please the Party; he is considered insane because the majority believes the latter. The Party uses its power over the truth to make rebels like Winston think that their own thoughts are wrong — that they are insane. O’Brien aims to change Winston, as the Party changes the minds of people, creating one uniform mind and destroying individuals.
Through contradictory concepts, Orwell proposes a yin yang element. Each thought in doublethink opposes its opposite, but works together with it — a codependency. In addition to doublethink, Orwell illustrates a similar effect through stupidity and intelligence: “Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain” (279). The two are complete opposites — one is the lack of knowledge while the other is the possession and abundance of knowledge. Even though they contradict one another, neither one can exist without the other. If everyone is intelligent, then truly no one would be intelligent, nor stupid: they would all be average. The irony is in the fact that the two terms contradict each other, yet one’s existence depends on the other’s. In addition, stupidity and intelligence are equally difficult to acquire. In both scenarios it is necessary to learn something new. The difference is that when obtaining intelligence, one must fill an unexplored part of their brain, while one must use doublethink to attain stupidity, replacing a piece of existing knowledge. In the case of the Party, stupidity is used as a tool to create a nation of automatons, all of whom think for, and as, the Party — never as individuals.
A society cannot function equally if the individuals are not seen as such. When a person’s right to existence is taken away, they lose their humanity, acting as robots instead of as individuals. They become easily manipulated and dictated by a higher group. As seen through numerous historical events — Nazi Germany in WWⅡ, the dictatorship of Stalin, terrorist groups, current presidential elections — the outcomes of dehumanization are horrific. To avoid such barbarities, individuals must be able to think for themselves. It is essential to the survival of humanity.
Orwell, George. 1984. New York: Signet Classics, 1961. Print. | <urn:uuid:5ce2e791-6cbb-4d18-9bd8-ef8db43397b2> | {
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The following is excerpted from Wilfred M. McClay's excellent little book, A Student's Guide to U.S. History.
American history needs to be seen in the context of a larger drama. But there is sharp disagreement over the way we choose to represent that relationship.
Is, for example, the nation and culture we call the United States to be understood fundamentally as one built upon the extension of European and especially British laws, institutions, and religious beliefs?
Or is it more properly understood as a modern, Enlightenment-based post-ethnic nation built on acceptance of abstract principles, such as universal individual rights, rather than bonds of shared tradition, race, history, conventions, and language?
Or is it a transnational and multicultural “nation of nations” in which a diversity of subnational or supernational sources of identity—race, class, gender, ethnicity, national origin, sexual practice, etc.—is the main result sought, and only a thin and minimal sense of national culture and obligation is required?
Or is it something else again? And what are the implications of each of those propositions for the answers one gives to the question, “What does it mean for me to be an American?” Clearly each understanding will cause one to answer that question in quite a distinctive way.
All three are weighty and consequential notions of American identity. The one thing they have in common is that they seem to preclude the possibility that the United States is “just another nation.” Even nations-of-nations don’t grow on trees. Perhaps you will sniff in this statement the telltale residue of American exceptionalism, the debunkers’ favorite target.
But the fact of the matter is that the very concept of “American” has always been heavily freighted with large meanings. It even had a place made ready for it in the European imagination long before Columbus’s actual discovery of a Western Hemisphere. From as early as the works of Homer and Hesiod, which located a blessed land beyond the setting sun, to Thomas More’s Utopia, to the fervent dreams of English Puritans seeking Zion in the Massachusetts Bay colony, to the Swedish prairie homesteaders and Scotch-Irish hardscabble farmers and frontiersmen, to the Polish and Italian peasants that made the transatlantic voyage west in search of freedom and material promise, to the Asian and Latin American immigrants that have thronged to American shores and borders in recent decades—the mythic sense of America as an asylum, a land of renewal, regeneration, and fresh possibility, has remained remarkably deep and persistent.
Let us put aside, for the moment, whether the nation has consistently lived up to that persistent promise, whether it has ever been exempted from history, or whether any of the other overblown claims attributed to American exceptionalism are empirically sustainable. Instead, we should concede that it is virtually impossible to talk about America for long without talking about the palpable effects of this mythic dimension. As the sociologists say, whatever is believed to be real, even if it is demonstrably false, is real in its social consequences; and it does one no good to deny the existence and influence of a mythic impulse that asserts itself everywhere.
Almost everyone seems convinced that America, as well as American history, means something. To be sure, they don’t agree on what it means. (Iranian clerics even credit America with being “the Great Satan,” a world-historical meaning if there ever was one.) But few permit themselves to doubt that American history means something quite distinctive.
Americans seem disinclined to stop searching for a broad, expansive, mythic way to define their national distinctiveness. They have been remarkably productive at this in the past. Consider the following incomplete list of conceptions, many of which may already be familiar to you, and most of which are still in circulation, in one form or another:
- The City Upon a Hill: America as moral exemplar
- The Empire of Reason: America as the land of the Enlightenment
- Nature’s Nation: America as a nation uniquely in harmony with nature
- Novus Ordo Seclorum: America as the new order of the ages
- Redeemer Nation: America as redeemer of a corrupted world
- The New Eden: America as land of newness and moral renewal
- The Nation Dedicated to Proposition: America as land of equality
- The Melting Pot: America as blender and transcender of ethnicities
- Land of Opportunity: America as the nation of material promise and social mobility
- The Nation of Immigrants: America as a magnet for immigrants
- The New Israel: America as God’s new chose nation
- The Nation of Nations: America as a transnational container for diverse national identities
- The First New Nation: America as the first consciously wrought modern nation
- The Indispensable Nation: America as guarantor of world peace, stability, and freedom
In addition to these formulations, there are other, somewhat more diffuse expressions of the national meaning. One of the most pervasive is the idea of America as an experiment. This concept of the national destiny was used by none other than George Washington, in his first presidential inaugural address, to denote two things: first, a self-conscious effort to establish a well-ordered, constitutional democratic republic, and second, the contingency and chanciness of it all, the fact that it might, after all, fail if our efforts do not succeed in upholding it. But the idea of the national experiment has, over time, lost its specific grounding in the particulars of the American Founding, and has evolved into something entirely different: an idea of constant openness to change. “Experimental America” has a tradition, so to speak, but it is a tradition of traditionlessness. In this way, America-as-an-experiment is a pseudoscientific way of saying that none of the premises of our social life are secure: everything is revocable, and everything is up for grabs. One can call this dynamism. One can also call it prodigality.
That said, however, one has to acknowledge that the sheer number of these mythic versions of America tends to undermine their credibility—just as, when there are too many religions in circulation, all of them begin to look implausible. And so there can be no doubt that, while the desire to discover national meaning continues unabated, the story of American history as told today does not have the same kind of salient and compelling narrative energy that it had fifty or a hundred years ago.
Perhaps the myths are too exalted, too inflated, to live by, without egregious hypocrisy or overreaching. In any event, we have, in some measure, lost our guiding national narrative—not completely, but certainly we have lost it as a near-universal article of faith. There is too much self-conscious doubt, too little confidence that the nation-state itself is as worthy of our devotion as is our subgroup. Indeed, the rise of interest in more particularist considerations of race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, and so on have had the effect of draining energy away from the national story, rendering it either weak and indecisive—or the villain in a thousand stories of “subaltern” oppression.
The problem is not that such stories do not deserve to be told. Of course they do. There is always a horrific price to be paid in consolidating a nation, and one is obliged to tell the whole story if one is to count the cost fully. The brutal displacement of Indian tribes, the horrors of chattel slavery and post-emancipatory peonage, the grim conditions of industrial labor, the ongoing tragedy of racial and religious hatred, the hidden injuries of class—all these stories and others like them need to be told and heard, again and again.
They should not, however, be told in a way that sentimentalizes them, by displacing the mythic dimension of the American story onto them, and by ignoring the pervasive existence of precisely such horrors and worse in all human societies throughout recorded time. History is not reducible to a simple morality play, and it rarely obliges our moral aspirations in anything but rough form. The crimes, cruelties, inequities, and other misdeeds of American history are real. But they need to be weighed on the scale of all human history, if their relative gravity is to be rightly assessed. It is all very well, for example, to be disdainful of corporate capitalism, or postwar suburbia, or any of the other obligatory targets. But the criticism will lack weight and force unless the standard against which corporate capitalism is measured is historically plausible rather than utopian. One can always imagine something better than what is. But the question is, Are there any real historical instances of those alternatives? And what hidden price was paid for them? That is the kind of thinking historians are obliged to engage in.
Which raises an interesting question: Since throughout history strong and cohesive nations generally have had strong and cohesive historical narratives, how long can we continue to do without one? Do our historians now have an obligation to help us recover one—one, that is, that amounts to something more than a bland-to-menacing general background against which the struggles of smaller groups can be highlighted?
Or are the scholarly obligations of historians fundamentally at odds with any public role they might take on, particularly one so prominent?
Such a conundrum is not easily resolved. One should, however, at least acknowledge that it exists.
Dr. McClay is the G. T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America (University of North Carolina Press, 1994), which received the 1995 Merle Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians for the best book in American intellectual history. | <urn:uuid:cdb26d05-cf35-4375-830a-c59ddae3d664> | {
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- ISRAEL21c - http://www.israel21c.org -
The secret weapon of the almond tree
Posted By ISRAEL21c Staff On February 1, 2010 @ 8:24 am In | No Comments
In January and February Israel’s almond trees are in full bloom, coinciding with the Jewish holiday of Tu Bishvat, also known as the birthday of the trees, which this year fell on January 29.
Almond trees have a secret weapon: Their nectar produces an extraordinary and dangerous poison. This is the only known plant to have this poison in its flowers’ nectar and a recent study at the University of Haifa has revealed that bees are mysteriously drawn to the toxic substance, but not harmed by it.
A group of researchers at the Department of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology and the Department of Science Education at the University of Haifa-Oranim speculate that the toxin called amygdalin that is found in almond tree nectar is in fact an evolutionary development that gives the tree an advantage over others in its surroundings.
The researchers investigated why this plant produces such a potent toxin – a by-product of which is cyanide.
“It is difficult – and sometimes impossible – to determine the workings of evolution, but it is likely that amygdalin is produced in the almond nectar so as to give the almond tree an advantage in reproduction,” explains Prof. Izhaki, one of the researchers.
The substance is deadly for small mammals and dangerous for humans, but is not poisonous for insects, such as the honey bee, and it even produces a stimulant that attracts the bees.
Article printed from ISRAEL21c: http://www.israel21c.org
URL to article: http://www.israel21c.org/news/the-secret-weapon-of-the-almond-tree/
Copyright © 2012 Israel. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:f69c819d-9103-4c76-9650-18e5395e6e63> | {
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U.S. planes strike North Vietnamese petroleum-storage facilities in a series of devastating raids. These missions were part of Operation Rolling Thunder, which had been launched in March 1965 after President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a sustained bombing campaign of North Vietnam. The operation was designed to interdict North Vietnamese transportation routes in the southern part of North Vietnam and to slow infiltration of personnel and supplies into South Vietnam. During the early months of this campaign, there were restrictions against striking targets in or near Hanoi and Haiphong. In 1966, however, Rolling Thunder was expanded to include the bombing of North Vietnamese ammunition dumps and oil storage facilities. In the spring of 1967, it was further expanded to include power plants, factories, and airfields in the Hanoi and Haiphong area.
The White House closely controlled operation Rolling Thunder and at times President Johnson personally selected targets. From 1965 to 1968, about 643,000 tons of bombs were dropped on North Vietnam. The operation continued, with occasional suspensions, until President Johnson halted in on October 31, 1968, under increasing domestic political pressure. | <urn:uuid:a081ee5e-ff76-4057-9be0-34fcb830e0cc> | {
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Implications of CladisticsUNDERSTANDING BRANCHING DIAGRAMS
The output from a phylogenetic analysis is a hypothesis of relationship of different taxa. This hypothesis can be represented as a cladogram, a branching diagram. Cladograms bear a lot in common with the notion of family trees. In a family tree we trace back our ancestry. For example, in the family tree on the right, the ancestors of all the rest of the family are the initial black dot and yellow square. These ancestors give rise to three children, one of which mates and has two children. We can all trace our lineages back to one set of ancestors.
All species have ancestors too. So, for example, sometime in the past an ancestral species (father) of Homo sapiens walked the earth. This ancestor went extinct (died), but left descendent species (children).
In family trees, we can talk coherently about real ancestors. In biology, the ancestors are often gone sometimes without a trace. All we have left are the children. Reading cladograms is much like reading a family tree. Both are rich in information. Cladograms, like family trees, tell the pattern of ancestry and descent. Unlike family trees, ancestors in cladistics ideally give rise to only two descendent species. Also unlike family trees, new species form from splitting of old species. In speciation, it does not take two to tango. The formation of the two descendent species is called a splitting event. The ancestor is usually assumed to "die" after the splitting event.
In the first tree, labelled Cladogram A, notice the small circles. These mark the nodes of the tree. The stems of the tree end with the taxa under consideration. At each node a splitting event occurs. The node therefore represents the end of the ancestral taxon, and the stems, the species that split from the ancestor. The two taxa that split from the node are called sister taxa. They are called sister taxa because they are like the siblings from the parent or ancestor. The sister taxa must each be more closely related to one another than to any other group because they share a close common ancestor. In the same way, you are most closely related to your siblings than to anyone else since you share common parents. Lets focus on node C in Cladogram A. At the node, the ancestor goes extinct but leaves two siblings hypothesized to be humans and gorillas. Humans and gorillas are sister taxa and are more closely related to one another than either is to chimpanzees or baboons.
Working down the tree we come to node B. At this node the ancestor of the humans and gorillas split from the chimpanzees. Therefore the chimpanzees sister taxon is the human/gorilla ancestor. A sister taxon can be an ancestor and all its descedents. We call an ancestor plus all its descendents a clade. A cladogram shows us hypothesized clades.
Finally we come to node A. Here, we find the splitting event that led to the baboons and the ancestor to the chimpanzees, humans and gorillas. By working our way down the cladogram we have learned the pattern of splitting. We have found out that chimpanzees, humans and gorillas are more closely related to each other than to baboons. In this example, baboons are the outgroup.
Now, how in the world did we manufacture Cladogram A? We mentioned that it was a hypothesis. What if it we chose another hypothesis like Cladogram B or Cladogram C? We would change the pattern of speciation events. In Cladogram B, humans and chimpanzees are sister taxa and in Cladogram C, chimps and gorillas are sister taxa.
Which of the three cladograms presented above is correct? None of the cladograms can be proved correct, but Cladogram B is the best supported of the three based on character data and is therefore hypothesized to best reflect the true branching pattern.
Manufacturing cladograms which show hypotheses of ancestry and descent requires that we analyze characters and find those characters that unite clades.
Continue your journey by selecting one of the topics below.
Implications of Cladistics | <urn:uuid:4f1cd9ba-e302-45fb-b2dc-768aa9e67d06> | {
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Details: This poster shows an old-fashioned map of the world. Around the border are scenes of various people and explorers.
A map is a simplified depiction of a space which highlights relations between components (objects, regions) of that space. Most usually a map is a two-dimensional, geometrically accurate representation of a three-dimensional space, e.g., a geographical map. More generally, maps can be devised to represent any local property of the world or part of it. | <urn:uuid:14fc2812-82be-4cea-8202-138fd7728b06> | {
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William Curteys, 1429-1446. Of this excellent man a life might be written, throwing much light on the history of the period, on the power and wealth of the great monasteries, and their influence both in home and foreign affairs, before the breaking out of the civil wars.Back to "The Poet: John Lydgate"
A great misfortune befell the abbey in January 1430. The southern part of the great bell-tower built by sacrist Lavenham, weakened by too constant ringing of the bells, fell with a sudden crash. The east side of the same tower fell in January 1431. The west front was still in a ruinous and unsafe condition when the young king was brought to Bury in 1433. But Abbot Curteys, obtaining from the Holy See an indulgence for all those who should contribute to the restoration, rebuilt the tower at a cost said to amount to 60,000 ducats.
Henry VI., after his futile coronation at Paris in 1431, had been brought back to England, and was royally received in London. Bury had a poet at this time,--the famous John Lydgate; who, three years before, when Henry was crowned at Westminster (November 6th 1429), had presented to him a ballad beginning "Most noble prince of Crysten princes all." When the king passed through London in 1433, Lydgate wrote a ballad entitled "The royal receiving of Henry the 6 into his noble citie of London after his returne out of France." Probably other means of recommending himself and his community to the king and council were also used by the poet; as the result of which the council determined, on All Saints' day 1433, that Henry and the court should spend the Christmas at Bury, and continue their stay till tbe feast of St. George (April 23) in the following year. Of this visit Curteys has left an account in his register; Lydgate also, in his life of St. Edmund, thus speaks of it:--
Whan sixte Henry in his estat roial With his sceptre of Yngland and of France Heeld at Bury the feste pryncipal Of Cristemesse with ful gret habundance, And aftir that list to have plesance-- As his consail gan for him provide-- There in his place til hesterne for to abide; Whiche is an house of his fundacioun, Where his preestis synge ay for him and preie, Of ful hool herte and trewe affeccioun, That God his noblesse in al vertu conveie, And grante him wynne toforn or that he deie A palme of conquest, and, whan that he shal fyne, To be registrid among the worthy nyne.The abbot was at Elmeswell (Vol. I., p. 275) when the message from the council reached him. Returning to the convent, he immediately set 80 masons and artificers to work, to enlarge and adorn the abbot's palace. Then he consulted the alderman, and it was agreed between them that in the procession which went forth to meet the king, the alderman and burgesses should be robed in scarlet, and inferior persons in red. So it was done; the townsmen, headed by their alderman, turned out five hundred strong; the monks were in costly "cappas." Owing to the ruined state of the campanile, and the danger of falling stones, the procession met the king on the south, not on the west side of the great church; the king was lifted, or helped, off his palfrey, by his governor the earl of Warwick; the bishop of Norwich (William Alnwick) and the abbot, with due welcome, gave him holy water, and the procession marched up to the high altar, singing the anthem from St. Edmund's office "Ave rex gentis Anglorum." To this auspicious beginning all the rest of the visit seems to have corresponded. The abbot made liberal presents both to the king and the nobles, in aid of which the prior and convent made him a noble grant of one hundred pounds. The king lodged at first in the abbot's palace, but after the Epiphany moved to the prior's residence near the east end of the church, so as to be nearer to the vineyard across the Lark, and the open country beyond. The courtiers hunted the fox and the hare in the fields and woods to the eastward. On the 23rd January the royal Party went to Elmeswell, where they had great enjoyment of fishing and hawking. Lent was passed at the prior's lodging, and then Easter was celebrated with great solemnity and splendour. When the set time came for departure, the Duke of Gloucester and all the courtiers were admitted to the spiritual privileges of the monks--made, so to speak, honorary members of the house. The king prayed before St. Edmund's shrine; then he passed into the chapter-house, where the abbot solemnly admitted him also into the holy brotherhood of the community, and gave him the fraternal kiss--
Which [the king] at departyng in Bury from his place, Lyst of his noblesse and magnanymite And of his owyn special grace, Mevyd in hym-silf of his benignyte, And ther chapitle a brother forto be, Yeving his chapleyns occasion and matier Ay to remembre on him in ther praier.Finally, at the suggestion of his uncle the duke of Gloucester, the king took a grateful and affectionate leave of the monks, and rode off on his way. The abbot requested Lydgate, the poet of the house, to make a metrical Life of the royal martyr, their founder, for presentation to the king:--
--to the king forto do plesaunce, Thabbot William, his humble chapeleyn, Gaf me in charge to do myn attendaunce The noble story to translate in substaunce, Out of the latin aftir my kunnyng, He in ful purpose to yeve it to the king.The "Letters," printed at p. 241 seq., are all taken from the Curteys Register. The king seems to have consulted the abbot frequently and freely, as a young man consults an old and experienced friend, whom he knows he can trust. He often borrows money from him; asks his help in order that all fitting preparations may be made to receive the French princess whom he is about to marry; confides to him his anxiety about the progress of the French arms; begs him, as he, Henry, cannot be Present, to go to Cambridge for the laying of the first stone of King's College Chapel. That he held the abbot in the highest respect is certain; see the expressions on p. 264~.
Abbot Curteys died in 1446, and was succeeded by William Babington (1446-1453), of whom personally next to nothing is known. The practice of keeping a register seems to have been dropped by all the later abbots; hence the great obscurity which wraps the last eighty or ninety years of the monastery's existence. | <urn:uuid:cc39484c-6408-4f12-8376-522f8d3a691b> | {
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News Stories, 25 January 2010
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, January 25 (UNHCR) – Sitting in front of a microphone in a Costa Rican recording studio, Annye tells how an irregular armed group in her native Colombia threatened the life of her brother some eight years ago, prompting her family to flee the country.
"If my father did not pay them a specific sum of money, they would kill my brother," said the 16-year-old refugee, who has been taking part in a UNHCR project aimed at spreading awareness about refugees and combatting xenophobia in Costa Rica's high schools.
According to a UNHCR survey conducted two years ago, 40 per cent of young refugees in Costa Rica say they have been the victims of intolerance or insulted by their classmates or teachers.
Under the project, Annye and 13 other teenagers – refugees and Costa Ricans – recorded a series of radio stories aimed at giving students around the country a greater understanding of what it means for a young person to be forced to flee their home and leave so much behind because of violence or persecution.
"For UNHCR it has become crucial to create a tool to combat xenophobia in schools, to inform children about who the refugees are and why they need our support to integrate into this new community," said Jozef Merkx, UNHCR's representative in Costa Rica.
Having children tell their peers about their suffering, helps make the issue much more personal and real. It can also create sympathy and bonds between young people of different nationalities and backgrounds.
The radio stories, which were developed with help from the Radio Netherlands Training Centre (RNTC) and UNHCR's local partner, ACAI, will form part of an education module being developed to counter xenophobia in schools. "The idea is to distribute the module in April, as a pilot project, to schools in locations with a large migrant and refugee presence," Merkx said. It will then be used in other areas.
The Colombian refugees and local children who took part in the two-day project, held here recently, started off by learning the nuts and bolts of broadcasting. The stories were then recorded.
"We reviewed the basics of how to make radio stories and we also explored the rights of refugees," explained RNTC producer, Arturo Meoño. "With Costa Rican and refugee high school students taking part, we were able to hear two sides of the issue: the perceptions of young refugees on their life in Costa Rica and the reaction of young local people on the life stories, rights and experiences of refugees."
Psychologist Maria Andrea Araya said the approach made for an interesting mix of stories and reactions. "Some concentrate on the flight from violence and the challenges of local integration; others prefer to discuss what young refugees in Costa Rica experience in their daily lives."
Leidy, a 16-year-old refugee, talked excitedly about her love of Latin American music, while Karen, aged 15, complained about how refugees were often stereotyped unfairly. "When somebody gets angry with me, they call me a drug dealer," she noted.
Others mentioned incidents of xenophobia in Costa Rica, while also touching on positive experiences. "When we arrived here we saw that education and health were free," said Alexander, 15, adding that in Colombia, it was more a situation of "don't get sick, because there is no money to pay for the hospital bill."
Costa Rica provides shelter for some 12,000 refugees from about 40 nationalities, though more than 80 percent are Colombian. The country receives approximately 80 asylum seekers per month and also hosts a large migrant population. Since 2009, there have been small migratory movements through Costa Rica of Africans and Asians trying to reach North America.
By Andrea Vasquez in San Jose, Costa Rica | <urn:uuid:aa1e661d-b140-46e5-a2c9-b150ce2ef308> | {
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Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment
Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment consisted of runaway slaves who served as English troops under the last royal governor of Virginia, Lord John Dunmore. In November 1775 Dunmore, who had wearied of tensions with the colony's ruling elite, offered freedom to Virginia slaves who would take up arms against the colonists. In short order, 300 runaways joined him and became known as "Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment."
Concern over Dunmore's actions to free slaves spread into North Carolina, sparking the colony's first military engagement. Robert Howe led the 2nd Regiment of North Carolinians to Hampton Roads to assist the Virginia Continentals in repelling Dunmore's attacks on Norfolk area houses and plantations. En route, Dunmore's Loyalist troops, including the Ethiopian Regiment, attacked the colonials at Great Bridge, Va., on 9 Dec. 1775. Dunmore's troops lost the battle and were forced to evacuate to English warships in the port at Norfolk.
The British fleet sailed south from Norfolk and eventually anchored off the Cape Fear coast in early 1776. Once they learned of the English ship's arrival, North Carolina slaves began to desert their masters. Capt. George Martin, under Sir Henry Clinton, organized a North Carolina company called the "Black Pioneers," whose main duties were to relieve the British troops of the worst chores of military life: building fortifications, laundering clothes, cooking, and managing the horses and carts. The Black Pioneers also provided valuable intelligence on roads and waterways.
By the summer of 1776 Dunmore had disbanded his black troops and left southern waters, sailing for New York. In the end, few runaway slaves earned their freedom.
Jeffrey J. Crow, The Black Experience in Revolutionary North Carolina (1977).
Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800 (1986).
Robert A. Selig, "The Revolution's Black Soldiers," Colonial Williamsburg (Summer 1997).
Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment, Black Past: http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/lord-dunmore-s-ethiopian-regiment
Proclamation of Earl of Dunmore, 1775. Courtesy of PBS. Available from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h42.html (accessed October 8, 2012).
1 January 2006 | Causey, Ellen Fitzgibbons | <urn:uuid:0729880d-4c46-45d5-b401-88fc688fda61> | {
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Solar PV or Solar Thermal?
Many of our heat pump clients in Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and beyond want to combine our installations with other forms of renewable energy, such as solar panels, in hopes of producing the most efficient and eco-friendly home they possibly can. However, many people aren’t sure which type of solar panel system is best to use alongside a ground or air source heat pump.
Firstly, it’s important to understand that although there are many types of solar panel systems available that can be floor mounted, roof mounted and made into tiles with many different functions. If we look specifically at combining heat pump and solar technology though, there are two options.
Solar thermal technology involves a water heating system that uses heat from the sun to warm domestic water. Solar water heating uses either flat plates or evacuated tubes to collect energy from the sun which is stored in a hot water cylinder inside the property.
Solar thermal considerations
The first question to ask is if you have an adequately sunny place to locate your solar panels. This is because solar panels will only be able to produce hot water when they have gathered sufficient energy from the sunshine, and even then, they may need to be supplemented with another energy producing system. Investing in an additional system would take up more space and more of your budget.
Solar thermal compatibility with a heat pump
While it’s possible to use a heat pump and solar panels in conjunction, both technologies essentially do the same job, so you would be doubling your costs for little or no benefit. This is because an air or ground source heat pump will be able to produce 100% of your property’s hot water and heating demand. Some argue this point in the following way; “With a solar panel system also installed, the heat pump will not need to work as hard and consequently there will be a reduction of running costs.”
Unfortunately this isn’t the case, as in order to fulfill its job of producing 100% of your property’s heating and hot water demand, the heat pump must be sized correctly, so you won’t be able to “get away with installing a smaller system” and you might have to use the heat pump to supplement the energy production expected of the panels, when they do not perform sufficiently, due to a lack of energy gathered from the sun for example.
Also known as solar photovoltaics (PV), solar panel electricity systems collect energy from the sun through photovoltaic cells before converting that energy into electricity for your home using technology that even works on a cloudy day!
Solar PV compatibility with a heat pump
Solar PV systems are the perfect renewable partner for heat pumps. PV systems create electricity by using sunlight and heat pumps can use that electricity to create up to four time as much energy as they consume, before converting that energy into heating and hot water. Using relevant measures of energy, for every kW of electricity that your PV panels produce, your heat pump can create up to 4.3kW of heating and hot water.
If your heat pump is being run or supplemented by the electricity produced by your solar PV panels, your running costs would decrease even further. Any additional electricity can be used to power other parts of your home and you could still sell your electricity back to the national grid. Solar PV systems and heat pumps really are a match made in renewable heaven!
Solar PV considerations
The larger your solar PV system is, the more electricity it can generate. This subsequently increases the cost of the solar PV system, but also increases the amount of money it could save you.
What do we suggest?
If you have already decided that you would like a heat pump to produce 100% of your property’s heating and hot water demand, but want to use additional renewable technologies, Source Energy would suggest that investing in a solar PV system is your best option. Solar PV panels are able to produce the minimum amount of electricity that the heat pump requires in order to run, in addition to supplementing the electricity demand of your home. Also, by selling electricity back to the national grid you can benefit from the Feed In Tariff, by earning back the cost of the panels while producing free electricity to run your heat pump.
Please call 0800 865 4328 today if you have any questions about how heat pumps and solar panel systems could be suitable for your project. You can also visit our Solar PV Partner page for information about Cornwall Solar Panels. | <urn:uuid:caa403f8-d147-43b2-876e-bc351c13b701> | {
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During November there is a tradition that links almost all Americans. And I am not talking about the U.S. holiday, Thanksgiving.
Instead, think back to the first time you drew a turkey (or showed a child how to draw one). It’s the same process: Trace your fingers and palm on a piece of paper and fill it in with bright colors to conjure up this large bird with fanned-out feathers. This was your first wild turkey!
The wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), an upland game bird, is native to North America and found from southern Canada throughout the 48 contiguous states and Hawaii, and along the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range to central Mexico.
The domestic turkey, a staple of Thanksgiving feasts, was derived from wild turkeys brought to Europe from Mexico. The common name, turkey, may be attributed to the fact that the bird were transported to England through Turkey — and was first called “turkey coq” before being shortened to just “turkey.”
Wild turkeys are large birds, 36–44 inches in length. They are noted by their large, fan-shaped tails; long, pink or gray legs; short, rounded wings; and bare head and neck. Their body is covered with iridescent bronze feathers with black and white bars on their wings. In the East, the tip of the turkey’s tail is brown.
The male turkey has a tuft of feathers called a beard on his chest and an upwardly curving spur on his lower legs. His breast feathers are tipped with black and he has a bluish-gray neck and a red fleshy lobe of skin that hangs from its neck or chin called a wattle. The male’s bare head and neck is red, blue or white depending on the season
The female’s breast feathers are tipped with brown, white or gray. She doesn’t have spurs and she usually doesn’t have a beard. She has a gray head and a feathered neck. Males are usually larger than females.
Wild turkeys get around mostly by walking, though they can also run and fly. When threatened, females tend to fly while males tend to run. At sundown, turkeys fly into the trees moving upward from limb to limb to a high roost spot. They usually roost in flocks.
Courting males gobble and strut with their tails fanned to attract females. Males breed with multiple mates and form all-male flocks outside of the breeding season, leaving the chick-rearing to the females.
Wild turkeys nest on the ground in dead leaves at the bases of trees, under brush or shrubs, or occasionally in open fields. They lay four to 17 eggs that incubate for 25–31 days. Chicks are precocial, meaning they are mobile and ready to leave the nest soon after hatching. The female will feed her chicks for a day or two, then the chicks are able to forage on their own. The chicks travel in a family group with their mother, often combining with other family groups to form large flocks of young turkeys accompanied by two or more adult females.
Wild turkeys are hunted by people and preyed on by coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, mountain lions, golden eagles and great horned owls. Nest predators include raccoons, opossums, striped skunks, foxes, woodchucks, snakes, birds and rodents.
When first encountered by colonists, wild turkeys ranged from Canada to Mexico and numbered in the millions. This was due to the plentiful habitat of hardwood and mixed conifer-hardwood forests; access to open areas such as fields and grasslands; and a wide variety of foods including mast (the nuts and fruits of trees or bushes that is eaten by wildlife), seeds, fruits and insects.
Between the excessive loss of habitat and hunting, their numbers dwindled in the late 19th and early 20th century. Game managers estimated that the entire U.S. population of wild turkeys was as low as 30,000 by the late 1930s.
In the late 1940s, people began to successfully transplant wild-caught turkeys into other areas with suitable habitat. These transplantations allowed wild turkeys to spread to all of the lower 48 states (plus Hawaii) and parts of southern Canada.
In 2014, Partners in Flight estimated a global breeding population of 7.8 million turkeys, with about 89 percent of those birds in the United States.
Populations have rebounded in part because of maturing forests. Landowners can manage land to provide for this bird’s needs. Promoting the growth of mast-producing trees provides a vital food source especially during winter. Acorn crops can be cyclical, so it is important to promote a diversity of woodlands trees. Pine, hickory, birch, alder and American beech are great food sources for turkeys.
Small clearings near a woodlot provide crucial brooding habitat for young turkeys and are great foraging habitat for most of the year. Grassy, shrubby patches provide cover. Grassy areas may need to be mowed every few years to prevent the forest from encroaching. Creating a soft edge between field and the forest also provides better escape and cover for turkey. This can be done by planting early successional, mast-producing shrubs like viburnums, elderberry, sumac and blackberry. | <urn:uuid:827a92c6-7f05-4025-8198-956aa7b1c6a6> | {
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KASB 2012 Advocacy Step-by-step Guide, Toolkit and Database
- The first is "Effective Advocacy for School Leaders: Nine Steps to Effective Advocate for Public Schools" (pdf). This resource is full of information to help you learn about advocacy at different levels of government, keeping your community engaged and contacting legislators.
- The second is an "Advocacy Toolkit 2012" (pdf) based on the "Nine Steps." This toolkit and accompanying plan template (word doc) is designed to be used with any size group as a step-by-step process to creating an advocacy plan for your community. Use it as a board, with site councils, with community groups, with PTOs or PTAs, with students' any group who has something to say!
- The third resource is an excel data base that will provide you with a way to quickly create a data-sheet about your district. We suggest you use this with "Step 2" in the "Advocacy Toolkit" as you prepare to tell your school's story to your community and legislators.
KASB staff is ready and willing to come to your community and help facilitate the discussion. Association staff traveled to Stafford in late November to participate in a joint meeting of five school boards in that community. They used the "Advocacy Toolkit" to create consensus on issues about school funding. If you would be interested in KASB helping with the process, call or email Carol Pitts, KASB assistant executive director/communications and marketing, 785-273-3600, [email protected].
What is advocacy?
"The board serves as education's key advocates on behalf of students and their schools in the community in order to advance the community's vision for its schools, pursue its goals, encourage progress, energize systemic change, and deal with children as whole persons in a diversified society."
"The Local School Board and the New Realities," National School Boards Association
In the broadest sense, advocacy means any effort to advance or defend the interest of an individual or group. To put more simply, it means trying to get what you want for yourself or someone else. When there is not enough resources to go around or when people disagree on the conduct of their relationships, conflict occurs. Advocacy is usually defined as taking place within the political or governmental sector: the legislative process, executive agencies and the courts. This is because government has the ultimate responsibility to resolve these conflicts by passing and enforcing laws; committing public resources; defining rights and obligations; and deciding guilt or innocence, punishment or remedy.
Why is school board advocacy important?
Because local boards of education are part of the political system in Kansas and because school board members are elected officials, board members may see themselves as the people making the decisions, instead of trying to influence the decisions. There are a number of reasons why school board members cannot function effectively if they ignore the larger political environment.
The Kansas Constitution charges the Kansas State Board of Education with the "general supervision" of schools and other education interests of the state.
- Although the Kansas Constitution requires public schools be "managed, developed and operated by locally elected boards," school boards do not have "self-executing" powers. School board authority is granted by the Legislature. Recent changes in state statute allow local school boards the flexibility to have local control. They can maximize their functions and operate more efficiently by doing things that are not specifically prohibited by law.
- Local school boards do not have independent authority to raise revenue. The Legislature decides what kind of taxes or fees school boards can impose and defines the tax base on which school taxes are levied. The Legislature also imposes controls on school district budgets and spending.
- State and federal laws and regulations have a great impact on the management and operation of school districts. For example, a few of the areas affected include: employee rights, benefits and working conditions, building and transportation safety codes, student and staff civil rights, and investment and accounting practices.
- The primary responsibility of schools is to educate students. But neither schools nor children exist in a vacuum. Other institutions also touch the lives of children. Local governments deal with the safety of a child's walk to and from school, or the provision of health services. Other agencies deal with children whose families cannot or will not support them. Disadvantaged or disabled children may need help the school alone cannot provide.
In each of these cases, the ability of school boards to carry out their mission is affected by decisions made at other levels of government. School board advocacy means working to influence those decisions in the interests of local education.
The focus of school board advocacy
The Kansas Legislature is perhaps the most important group to school board advocacy because the Legislature controls the purse strings and defines the scope of authority for local boards. Working with the Legislature is relatively easy: every school board member is represented in the Legislature by a senator and representative; the Legislature is in session for approximately 90 days; and education is the largest function of state government.
Under the Kansas Constitution, the Kansas State Board of Education has the power of "general supervision" over school districts, and approves most of the regulations that govern the day-to-day operation of school programs.
The role of the U.S. Congress in education changed dramatically with the passage of NCLB. The impact of federal laws, from special education requirements to mandates in such areas as smoking, weapons, school lunches and nutrition on district programs and budgets has grown over the years. NCLB has raised federal involvement to new heights. Increased requirements for assessments will dramatically change the daily classroom routine. This makes advocacy work at the federal level, although a daunting task, even more important.
Local governments, like cities and counties, have little direct influence over schools, but cooperative relationships between these units may be the most effective way to improve the overall climate for learning.
School board members need to understand each of these governmental levels, be able to follow their activities, and know how to communicate and influence their decisions.
For more tips - choose an item at left. | <urn:uuid:52a41e64-f09c-4a2c-9cac-c97c58a2b26e> | {
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BOOKS OF THE CHRONICLES OF THE KINGS OF JUDAH AND ISRAEL, two sets of royal annals, mentioned in I and II Kings but subsequently lost. The historian of Kings refers to these works as his source, where additional information may be found. These references show how the historian of Kings used extensive sources selectively. The books are referred to by this formula, with slight variations: "Now the rest of the acts of [the king], and all that he did, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah/Israel." Frequently references are made to "his might," or "how we warred," and occasionally more specific deeds are mentioned (e.g., I Kings 15:23; II Kings 20:20).
The Israelite annals are mentioned 18 times (I Kings 14:19 (17); 15:31; 16:5; et al.) and the Judean annals 15 times (I Kings 14:29; 15:7, 23; et al.). Of all the kings of Israel, only Jehoram and Hosea are not mentioned as referred to in the Israelite
annals. Of the kings of Judah (after Solomon) only Ahaziah, Athaliah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah are not mentioned in this regard. It is uncertain whether these books were royal records themselves or edited annals based on the records. It seems likely in view of the negative references to certain kings (Zimri, Shallum, and Manasseh), which would not very likely be the product of the king's own recorders, that the books were edited annals. Furthermore, the Judean author of Kings could hardly have had access to all the royal records of the northern kingdom. The content of these books appears identical in character to the Assyrian annals. Probably the mass of facts on royal activities in Kings came from these books. Chronicles mentions the book of the kings of Israel (I Chron. 9:1; II Chron. 20:34) and the book of the kings of Israel and Judah (or Judah and Israel; II Chron. 16: 11; 27:7; et al.). The chronicler seems to be referring to the same works, but probably did not actually have them at his disposal.
J.A. Montgomery, Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Kings (ICC, 1951), 24–38; B. Maisler (Mazar), in: IEJ, 2 (1952), 82–88. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: M. Cogan, I Kings (AB; 2000), 89–91.
[Michael V. Fox]
Source: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2008 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:8e498897-862e-4dde-b878-e81af07cbd44> | {
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The Elliott Wave Theory was crafted in the 1930s by Ralph Nelson Elliott. The theory asserts that although the stock markets tend to often act in a random and pragmatic nature, there are predictable market trends that must be assessed for the enterprising investor.
Elliott wave theory asserts that human psychology can be used to gauge the stock market, where movements in the market are correlated to psychological fluctuations. Essentially, swings in psychological conditions are related to waves of movements in the financial markets.
Supported by Fractal Patterns:
Elliott wave theory differs from the Dow theory in that the Elliott theory breaks markets down into fractal patterns. Fractals are mathematical structures which infinitely repeat themselves on a micro-scale. These repetitive fractals can also be observed in market index patterns, and these patterns can be used as predictive indicators of future stock market moves.
Predicting Movements with Elliott Wave Theory:
There are many stock market predictions that can be made base don the interpretations of wave patterns. The basic movements of the theory consist of impulse waves and corrective waves. Impulse waves consist of five sub-waves and travel in the same direction as the larger overall trend. Oppositely, a corrective wave moves in the reverse direction of the main trend. It also consists of five smaller waves that make up the overall wave pattern.
Understanding the trends:
In the financial markets, trends can continue to rise in an upward pattern or be corrective. Trends that occur within the financial markets are examined below:
The 5-3 move is a common market movement that exhibits the Elliott Wave Theory. In this 5-3 trend, 5 waves follow the direction of the main trend, followed by 3 corrective moves.
Image sourced from forextradingstrategies4u
In this trend, waves 1, 2, 3, a, and c form the impulsive waves that follow the upward trend. They are then proceeded by corrective trends 2, 4, and b. Waves 2, 4, and b counteract the impulsive waves. They exhibit the idea of trends and countertrends.
The Types of Waves:
In the Elliott Wave Theory, there are nine types of waves of varying degrees. They consist of, from smallest to largest:
- Grand Supercycle
Considerations to Make When Using Elliott Wave Theory:
There is a clear difference between correlation and causation. Market movements can be correlated to psychological factors, however, there is not a direct link between the two. Just because movements can be indicative of future security prices does not mean that traders should believe they can predict these prices to a science. Traders using this theory should always remain up-to-date in the current market and world news, as well as developments within the security that they are following. | <urn:uuid:d744092f-c654-4aac-8c7b-7157963f02e7> | {
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DATA GROWING EXPONENTIALLY
We truly live in the digital age. Like never before, every aspect of our lives involves data storage. In 2017, Seagate commissioned IDC to research the global datasphere. In their ensuing report, IDC identified five key areas that will govern data growth over the next decade: life-critical data, embedded systems (the Internet-of-Things), mobile and real-time data, artificial intelligence, and security. They conclude the amount of data created in 2025 will reach a staggering 163ZB (zettabytes, or trillions of gigabytes), which is ten times more than in 2016:
Figure 1: Annual Size of the Global Data Sphere (from Data Age 2025: The Evolution of Data to Life-Critical)
To give one an idea of the enormity of this data, storing all 163ZB would require 16 billion 12TB HDDs. Thankfully, even though that much data will be created, not all will need to be retained. Much of it will be used only once or twice, and then replaced by smaller metadata. Even so, IDC projects that 19ZB of storage capacity must ship through 2025 to meet the demand. And roughly 60% of this (or >11ZB) will still use HDDs:
Figure 2: Enterprise Storage By Type (from Data Age 2025: The Evolution of Data to Life-Critical)
This incredible demand for data storage really cannot be overstated. In his recent article, Luke Dormehl of Digital Trends explains,
“The reason for this is the unimaginable pace at which we currently produce data. Each day, around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is created, courtesy of the 3.7 billion humans who now use the internet. In the last two years alone, a mind-boggling 90 percent of the world’s data has been created. With a growing number of smart devices connected to the Internet of Things, that figure is set to increase significantly.”
HDDs Are Here To Stay
Some analysts in the storage industry claim that SSDs will soon replace HDDs. While this might be true for applications that require extremely high number of operations-per-second, like transaction processing databases, it will likely never be true for mass data storage applications.
First, there is currently not enough flash production capacity to store all the world’s data; in fact only about 10% of the world’s data is currently stored on SSDs. And at the rate that the datasphere is growing, it is unlikely that flash production will ever meet the entire world’s demand. In fact Samsung, the world’s number one manufacturer of flash memory, is predicting that today’s flash production capacity of ~80 exabytes (or billions of gigabytes), will only reach 253 exabytes (0.253 ZB) by the year 2020. That falls far short of the 3000 EB needed by then. (See Samsung: NAND flash industry will triple output to 253EB by 2020.)
And secondly, HDDs still boast a 10x cost advantage over SSDs per-gigabyte, and this savings should continue, especially if HDD technology can continue to evolve through innovation.
Existing Technology Has Plateaued
Unfortunately current HDD technology is not evolving quickly enough to meet the exponentially growing demand. First, Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) technology has reached its limits. The biggest recent gains were achieved by increasing the number of platters. Newer technologies that use energy assist (e.g., HAMR and MAMR) continue to be delayed with no clear timeline in sight. As a result, drive capacities have not grown at a significant rate, and certainly not at a pace to match the rising demand.
Air-Bearing Prevents Evolution
At L2 Drive, we believe the main culprit is the continued reliance on the air-bearing. Invented by Bill Goddard at IBM in 1956 (he called it an air-head), it has been central to HDD design for the past 60 years. It does solve a critical issue for drive operation, namely getting the read/write head to follow the disk surface closely enough so that data can be written and read reliably. It does so passively, by balancing the aerodynamic lift against the down-force, resulting in a dynamic but predictable fly-height. However, even though the head flies above the disk surface most of the time, it does touch the surface periodically. And each time it touches, it scrapes away some of the lubricant layers. That material then collects on the read/write head or gets dispersed throughout the drive. Eventually there is not enough lubrication remaining and the drive fails due to a head crash. Indeed 75% of drive failures are due to this phenomenon. | <urn:uuid:02a442d3-eed8-4368-8ac9-12d83b5a9a1b> | {
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Dolphin May Have 'Remains' of Legs, Possible Evidence Ocean Mammals Lived on Land
By HIROKO TABUCHI
TOKYO Nov 6, 2006 (AP)— Japanese researchers said Sunday that a bottlenose dolphin captured last month has an extra set of fins that could be the remains of hind legs, a discovery that may provide further evidence that ocean-dwelling mammals once lived on land.
ossil remains show dolphins and whales were four-footed land animals about 50 million years ago and share the same common ancestor as hippos and deer. Scientists believe they later transitioned to an aquatic lifestyle and their hind limbs disappeared.
"I believe the fins may be remains from the time when dolphins' ancient ancestors lived on land … this is an unprecedented discovery," Seiji Osumi, an adviser at Tokyo's Institute of Cetacean Research, said at a news conference televised Sunday.
I debated posting this in the religion section. | <urn:uuid:b2cbf470-f4e2-492f-8e17-41abf373ff80> | {
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Placebos are substances that are made to resemble drugs but do not contain an active drug.
A placebo is made to look exactly like a real drug but is made of an inactive substance, such as a starch or sugar. Placebos are now used only in research studies (see see The Science of Medicine).
Despite there being no active ingredients, some people who take a placebo feel better. Some others develop "side effects." This phenomenon, called the placebo effect, appears to occur for two reasons. The first reason is coincidental change. Many medical conditions and symptoms come and go without treatment, so a person taking a placebo may just coincidentally feel better or worse. When this change occurs, the placebo may incorrectly be credited with or blamed for the result. The second reason is anticipation (sometimes called suggestibility). Anticipating that a drug will work often actually makes people feel better. The placebo effect is mainly on symptoms rather than the actual disease. For example, a placebo will never make a broken bone heal faster, but it may make the pain seem less. Some people seem more susceptible to the placebo effect than others. People who have a positive opinion of drugs, doctors, nurses, and hospitals are more likely to respond favorably to placebos than are people who have a negative opinion.
When a new drug is being developed, investigators conduct studies to compare the effect of the drug with that of a placebo because any drug can have a placebo effect, unrelated to its action. The true drug effect must be distinguished from a placebo effect. Typically, half the study's participants are given the drug, and half are given an identical-looking placebo. Ideally, neither the participants nor the investigators know who received the drug and who received the placebo (this type of study is called a double-blind study).
When the study is completed, all changes observed in participants taking the active drug are compared with those in participants taking the placebo. The drug must perform significantly better than the placebo to justify its use. In some studies, as many as 50% of participants taking the placebo improve (an example of the placebo effect), making it difficult to show the effectiveness of the drug being tested.
Last full review/revision July 2013 by Daniel A. Hussar, PhD | <urn:uuid:d662d685-2110-4c64-b62a-2e83963a774d> | {
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Did you know that some statues in Paris are believed to hold magical properties? For a long time now, a tenacious superstition has involved a statue of Montaigne in the 5th arrondissement. I went to see the statue to find out the facts for myself.
What makes the statue of Montaigne so popular ?
The statue of Montaigne is situated in a shady square in the 5th arrondissement opposite the medieval-looking Hôtel de Cluny (National Museum of the Middle Ages). More interestingly, the statue faces the Sorbonne university.
For many years, students have believed it was good luck to touch Montaigne’s right shoe before sitting an exam. By also greeting the statue with “Salut, Montaigne!” (Hi Montaigne!), the students were hoping the touch would bring success and the best of luck in their studies. Well, that day the only students I saw touching the foot were tourists learning a few Paris facts on a guided tour…
The statue of the French philosopher was originally carved in white marble. Due to the excessive number of touches made over the years, it was decided in 1933 to replace it with a more robust copy in bronze. This explains the bright polish of Montaigne’s right shoe. (the same feature is found in Dalida’s bust in Montmartre).
The present-day statue was created by Paul Landowski (1896-1961) in 1933 and represents Montaigne seated in a relaxed position. Now for the facts, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592) was a French philosopher of the Renaissance era and a reference author for his intellectual insight.
The statue is located in the Square Paul Painlevé (5th arrondissement). The closest métro station is Cluny-la Sorbonne (line 10). The statue can’t be missed as there are often tour groups standing in front of it.
Did you like this article? If so, please share it on facebook or twitter! | <urn:uuid:f83a97e0-0604-4964-9fb9-d188af22fe13> | {
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What the New
Testament says about John
identifies John the son of Zebedee with "the disciple whom Jesus loved"
and the eyewitness "who testifies to these things" in the Gospel of
today, however, question whether John the son of Zebedee is the author
of the Gospel of John according to our modern sense of authorship. So
it may be better to say that the Gospel preserves the memories of John
the Son of Zebedee while receiving its final form from one or more of
writings ascribed to John, such as the letters and the Book of Revelations,
may also come from the Johannine school.
What later Christian
tradition says about John
as the year 135 A.D., the Christian writer Justin who visited Ephesus
says that John, the son of Zebedee, resided in that city. Indeed, recent
excavations beneath the ruins of the early church of St.John at Ephesus
have uncovered a grave that may be his.
of the apostles inspired as many stories as John did. In early Christian
and medieval times, stories teaching a moral lesson from his his later
life and ministry abound. The following are from the Golden Legend and
are immortalized in many works of medieval art.
Oil and Exile
is said that the Emperor Domitian, hearing that John had founded so
many churches in Asia Minor, decided to kill him. So he ordered him
brought as a prisoner to Rome and thrown into a vat of boiling oil
that was set up near the Porta Latina, a gateway to the city. The
apostle was unharmed by the boiling oil, and the emperor then decided
to send him into a lonely exile on the Island of Patmos. There John
wrote the Book of Revelations. When the emperor died, the Roman Senate
revoked his decrees and John was free to return to Ephesus, where
he was greeted by crowds of people with the same words that welcomed
Jesus to Jerusalem: "Blessed is he is comes in the name of the Lord."
right: Velasquez imagines John on Patmos, transcribing a vision
Raising of the Dead
he entered the city he met a funeral procession carrying the body
of a woman named Drusiana, who had cared for the orphans and needy
of Ephesus. She was John's friend and had prayed for his return. The
apostle ordered them to stop and opened the top of the woman's coffin.
"Drusiana, my Master Jesus Christ raises you to life. Return to your
home again," John said. And she returned to her home and prepared
a feast for the apostle. right: a detail from Giotto's "Raising
Philosopher and the Diamonds
next day, as John was walking in the town square, he saw a crowd listening
to a famous philosopher whose name was Crato. The philospher had just
commanded two young disciples who were very rich to exchange everything
they had for a few valuable diamonds. Then before the crowd, he had
the young men smash the diamonds into small pieces to show how meaningless
said to the philosopher this was wrong to do. Jesus taught not to
condemn riches, but to give them to the poor. "Go, sell what you have,
and give to the poor," he had said to the rich young man. Gathering
the fragments of the diamonds, John restored them to their original
form. The two young men then followed him and gave their riches to
those in need.
for a soaring eagle
Site Introduction Links
questions or comments about this page
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The Passionist Congregation - All rights reserved | <urn:uuid:e9735e7d-2108-4cf7-a0a1-8aa38dde6e9e> | {
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In this lesson, the students will learn the fundamentals of airbrushing. The students will use JiGu's Blow Pens and templates to make colourful airbrush illustrations.
- First, the students will be given a simple template & paper and start practice using their Blow Pens
- After airbrushing some basic designs and getting use to the tools they will be given a more complex template to airbrush.
- Students will use a variety of colours to complete their air brush illustration.
Materials JiGu's Blow Pens, Air Brush Templates and Sketch pad | <urn:uuid:38760031-c473-4349-8449-c73993c80b98> | {
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Kutch has about forty – six thousand square kilometres of land. The astonishing diversity of crafts found in this relatively small region is perhaps unmatched anywhere in the world.
From bell-making to block printing, from pottery to woodcarving, Kutch has a vibrant crafts tradition that has been enriched over the centuries by the communities that have migrated to this region.
It is believed that the first humans entered Kutch anywhere between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, from the eastern coast of Africa. What we can say with certainty is that a 5000-year-old footprint of a human being has been found near a well at Dholavira. This excavated city has been established as the second largest city of the Indus river civilization. It sprawled from Mohenjo Daro in Sindh to Harappa in Punjab to Dholavira in Kutch and all the way to Daimabad in Maharashtra. Some scholars suggest that a more accurate name for this civilization is the Saraswati river civilization.
A 5000-year-old delicate skeleton of a woman with a shell bangle in one hand, and a beautiful bronze mirror held close to her chest with the other, speaks of how crafts were an integral part of this culture.
Artefacts found in the late twentieth century continue the story of Kutch’s highly developed crafts sensibility. Excavations in Naani Raayan, a small village near the Rukmavati river, have unearthed several treasures, some of which are 2000 years old. They include exquisitely carved shell bangles and rings, as well as stamped pottery with floral, bird, animal and figurative designs.
The very first artefact found at this site was a perfect terracotta bead. A five-feet-tall terracotta pot has also been found on this site. As also a shell ornament called baajubandh with a carving of a peacock that is cleaning its tail. There are hundreds of such artefacts. Their creative and technical excellence proves that the artisans of ancient Kutch were not only artists but also masters of the science that informed their craft.
The crafts were for local use. But they were much sought after and sometimes exported to places as far away as Rome, Turkey and Baghdad. A gold Byzantine coin of the late sixth century CE has been found. Another gold coin, from the first series of Arab coins ever to be minted, has also been found in Naani Raayan.
The tradition of excellence in handmade artefacts has continued down the ages and 22 different crafts are practised even today.
Weaving, block printing, tie-dye, discharge printing, batik, woodwork, silver work, metal work, lacquer work, mud work, painting, pottery, and embroidery . . . indeed Kutch and crafts are inseparable. | <urn:uuid:b04e91af-0609-4aa0-b983-2cdb6a7e20e6> | {
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Essays about: "referential terms"
Found 2 essays containing the words referential terms.
University essay from Högskolan i Halmstad/Akademin för lärande, humaniora och samhälle
Abstract : Modes of address between speakers in Sweden and the U.K differ from each other, yet both countries are influenced by similar mass media and aspects of globalization that otherwise generally lean towards linguistic convergence. Survey data from students and teachers in UK and Sweden has revealed some noteworthy differences. READ MORE
University essay from Blekinge Tekniska Högskola/Sektionen för datavetenskap och kommunikation
Abstract : Parallel programming models are quite challenging and emerging topic in the parallel computing era. These models allow a developer to port a sequential application on to a platform with more number of processors so that the problem or application can be solved easily. READ MORE | <urn:uuid:10e891d8-6513-421e-97f7-5c0f61fe6252> | {
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What Is an Anoscopy?
An anoscopy is a simple medical procedure that can help your doctor
identify an abnormality in your gastrointestinal tract, notable in your anus
To perform an anoscopy, your doctor will insert a device called
an anoscope into your anus. This scope is typically made of plastic
(disposable) or stainless steel (sterilizable). An anoscope allows your doctor to
get a detailed look at the tissue within your anal-rectal areas.
An anoscopy can identify several conditions and diseases that can
affect the lower part of your intestines. These include cancer, tears in the tissue
called anal fissures, hemorrhoids (swollen veins around
the anus and/or rectum), and rectal polyps.
How to Prepare for an Anoscopy
If you are going to have an anoscopy, you’ll need to empty your
bladder and bowels before the procedure. Emptying your bladder and bowels will
make you more comfortable during the procedure. Your doctor may give you a
laxative or enema to help you completely empty your bowels before the anoscopy
What an Anoscopy Entails
The anoscope is
a rigid hollow tube. It is 3 to 5 inches long, and about 2 inches wide. The
anoscope is equipped with a light and allows the doctor to examine the anus and
rectum in detail.
Before the anoscope is inserted into your anus, you’ll be asked
to remove your undergarments. Your doctor may request that you position
yourself in the fetal position on a table, or bend forward over the table.
The doctor will then insert the anoscope, which is lubricated
with K-Y Jelly (or similar product), into your lower gastrointestinal tract via
your anus. While the anoscope is being inserted, the doctor may ask you to
intensify your internal muscles and relax as you would when having a bowel
movement. This eases the placement of the anoscope.
Once the exam is performed, the doctor gently withdraws the
anoscope. Your doctor may decide to perform other procedures in
conjunction with the anoscopy.
These can include:
rectal exam (DRE): the DRE involves placing a gloved and lubricated
finger into the rectum via the anus. This is done to feel for irregularities
inside your rectal area.
depending on the results of the other tests, your doctor may also want to take
a small sample of tissue.
What Are the Risks of an Anoscopy?
An anoscopy is usually a painless procedure, but you may feel
pressure or an urge to have a bowel movement. If you have hemorrhoids, there
may be a small amount of bleeding.
It’s important to relax and tell your doctor how you’re feeling.
If a biopsy is taken, you may feel a slight pinch.
What Could an Anoscopy Find?
This is an outpatient procedure, which means that once it is
done, you can go about your day. Your doctor can usually give you an idea of
the results once the exam is complete.
An anoscopy can spot a number of problems, including:
An abscess is a deposit of pus that can cause swelling and other
problems in the tissue around it. An abscess may be caused by the blockage of a
gland, infection of a tear in the tissue called an anal fissure, a sexually
transmitted infection, or inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Inflammatory bowel
diseases include ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, characterized by
inflammation of the lining of the gastrointestinal tract.
Anal fissures are tears in the tissue of the anus that can occur
due to constipation, having hard, large bowel movements, long periods of
diarrhea, or decreased blood flow. Anal fissures can also appear after
childbirth or in people with Crohn’s disease. They can be found in people of
all ages and are common in infants.
Hemorrhoids are swollen veins around the anus and rectum. The
veins swell when they’re under extra pressure. Hemorrhoids are common in
pregnant women and can also occur due to an infection or straining during a
bowel movement. Swollen veins in your anus and rectal area can be painful and
Polyps are growths that protrude from the lining of the rectum or
colon. They’re usually benign, but some can be cancerous. Regular screenings
can be very effective in preventing polyps from becoming a serious problem.
Cancer can appear in the lower digestive tract, including the
anus and the rectum, but cancers in this area are uncommon (much more common
further up the digestive tract and colon).
What To Do Afterwards
The results of your anoscopy will determine next steps. The test
can help your doctor determine appropriate treatment for your condition, or the
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Find two or three articles that address financial reporting practices and ethical standards in health care finance, including Generally accepted accounting principles and Corporate compliance, ethics, or fraud and abuse.
Discuss the financial management of health care organizations and integrate your research articles.
Include a summary of the four elements of financial management.
Include a summary of generally accepted accounting principles and general financial ethical standards.
Provide examples from the articles that reflect ethical standards of conduct and financial reporting practices.
Explain the significance of each example.
Hope you are well.
The reporting practices of financial activities and ethical standards within the healthcare industry entail the basis of accounting principles including ethical framework consistency. Within the healthcare industry, the financial reporting entails the principles under the GAAP. The compliance of using GAAP principles provides the guidelines in adhering to certain international final reporting standards. The daily operations of reporting the financial data within a healthcare organization entails the accountability to the business activities within a given timeframe. In accessing the daily healthcare operations the overall internal accounting processes are essentially important - to represent the current status of the business financial standing.
Let's also take a look at several elements within a core financial management assessment within a healthcare organization:
The four elements of financial management
In preserving the core principles of financial management, the overview of financial assessment entails areas that provide proficiency. By doing so, the healthcare organization can successfully assess the profitability or efficiency in managing of finances is up to certain standards. The CFO of the healthcare organization is a key component for leading the facility towards a more proficient establishment that adheres to the GAAP and IFRS. The CFO fully understands that support the operations in monitoring core area of focuses for promoting a sense of responsibility towards financial planning. The following relates towards the four elements of financial ...
The expert examines reporting practices and ethics paper. | <urn:uuid:81654482-26b7-4596-8238-db3d98394977> | {
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Subsets and Splits