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The Use Of 3 dimensional Stamping IN Medical science
The effective use of 3 dimensional Generating in Treatment Three or more -dimensional printing is the word for a producing technique where physical objects are created by fusing material like plastic materials, metal, powders, drinks, or perhaps even lifestyle microscopic cells to produce a 3D thing.this website Today, the uses of 3 dimensional publishing in medical treatment are boosting fast and they are anticipated to make over health related. There are various broad groups of health purposes of three dimensional making. Included in these are tissue and organ manufacturing, prescription drug examine in regard to medication dosage kinds, in adition to development of individualized prosthetics, anatomical choices and implants. Subsequently, there are numerous added benefits of the application of 3D generating in medicine including the changes of clinical solutions and products, price advantages, grown output and upgraded collaboration. Even with these major and remarkable specialized medical progress, additionally, there are some famous controlled and regulatory difficulties.
Among the many present-day medical develops of 3D making is set in cells and body organ manufacturing. Cells and organisations break down resulting from some points just like period, health issues, accidents, and in addition childbirth disorders. Among the the latest treatment procedures for organ malfunction incorporate transplant from contributors. Having said that, you will discover a vital shortage of individual areas for transplant. 3 dimensional biography-producing offers the most important bonus when compared to the old fashioned regenerative way. Further, organ creating provide cellular material, biomaterials making three dimensional tissue-like design. Even though this technological innovations is still inside the infancy, a great many reports have made proof of the notion. Most notable, Cui and peers used inkjet 3D publishing technology to refurbish a persons articular cartilage. Additionally, Wang together with other research workers carried out 3 dimensional bio-making technologies to develop an synthetic liver organ by build up of numerous cellular material around multiple biocompatible hydrogels.
A different substantial use of 3D making in medicine usually is to customize implants and prostheses. It is informative that 3 dimensional generating appears to have been powerful in creating individualized prosthetic implants in health care. Really, this strategy was applied to fabricate spinal, cool and dental implants. In simple terms, the capability to make special implants and prostheses can clear up a lingering symptom in orthopedics. Historically, doctors were forced to conduct bone graft surgical treatments to modify implants. There are some professional and professional medical successes in respect to the 3D making of prostheses and implants. Investigators at a BIOMED Exploration Institution in Belgium fruitfully implanted the first three dimensional imprinted mandibular prosthesis. Also, Covering-Advisable Corporation manufactures 3D-prosthetic ears that can perform discovering electro-magnetic frequencies. Consequently, 3 dimensional producing boasts a transformative effect on production ability to hear supports.
3 or more-dimensional (three dimensional) printing is employed to build anatomical items for operative research. 3D-personalised brands for surgical coaching are far better cadavers mainly because they include applicable pathology. Exceptionally, three dimensional-produced neuroanatomical types aid neurosurgeons as they start to provide you with a reflection of the majority of confusing structures in the body. Not too long ago, 3D-imprinted designs include been utilized to develop understanding of a person’s very specific anatomy before you start a health related is carried out. For instance, a physician in Japan’s Kobe University Healthcare facility put into use 3D-personalised versions to plan liver organ changes. Even so, other doctors used the three dimensional-reproduced kind of a calcified aorta for operative intending of plaque removing.
So, 3D publishing has developed into great tool in treatments. It has got several uses such as tissue and organ fabrication, developing tailored implants and prostheses, together with anatomical designs. A large number of research workers consistently experience new health-related software programs using 3D making. Still, some ground-breaking products particularly body organ producing will require enough time to change. | <urn:uuid:eb486396-106c-41b6-b3c2-2d3df0479803> | {
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Title: Darts Jigsaw Puzzle
About: Darts is a traditional pub game, commonly played in the United Kingdom, across the Commonwealth, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Republic of Ireland, the Scandinavian countries, the United States, and elsewhere. The dartboard may have its origins in the cross-section of a tree. An old name for a dartboard is "butt"; the word comes from the French word but, meaning "target". Initially the missiles were simply cut down arrows or crossbow bolts.The first purpose made darts were manufactured in one piece from wood; wrapped with a strip of lead for weight and fitted with flights made from split turkey feathers. The standard dartboard is divided into 20 numbered sections, scoring from 1 to 20 points, by wires running from the small central circle to the outer circular wire. Circular wires within the outer wire subdivide each section into single, double and triple areas. There are many games that can be played on a dartboard, but darts generally refers to a game whereby the player throws three darts per visit to the board with the goal of reducing a fixed score, commonly 501 or 301, to zero, with the final dart landing in either the bullseye or a double segment.
Puzzle of the day on: 05-Aug-2016
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Peter Adamson is a professor of philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He is the author of several books, including The Arabic Plotinus (2002) and Great Medieval Thinkers: al-Kindi (2007) and Philosophy in the Islamic World (2016), and hosts the History of Philosophy podcast.
Edited by Nigel Warburton
Is it possible to separate out philosophical arguments from essentially theological texts?
Detail from ‘The Meeting of the Theologians’ by Abd Allah Musawwir, mid-16th century. Courtesy Wikipedia.
Maybe I’m just an optimist, but I think people today mostly acknowledge the importance and originality of philosophy in the Islamic world. Would any scholar now say in print, as Bertrand Russell notoriously did in his History of Western Philosophy (written in 1945), that ‘Arabic philosophy is not important as original thought. Men like Avicenna and Averroes are essentially commentators’? I certainly hope not. But even if we now see more clearly, we still have blindspots. The thinkers taken seriously as ‘philosophers’ are typically the authors Russell dismissed as mere commentators, men such as al-Kindī, al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and Averroes. Though they were far from unoriginal, they were indeed enthusiasts for Aristotle and other Greek authors. Yet these were not the only intellectuals and rationalists of their time, nor did rationalism and philosophical reflection die with Averroes at the end of the 12th century, as is still often believed. Throughout Islamic history, many of the figures of interest and relevance to the historian of philosophy were not Aristotelians, but practitioners of kalām, which is usually translated as ‘theology’.
The word kalām literally means ‘word’, and here abbreviates the Arabic expression ʿilm al-kalām: ‘science of the word’. It is often contrasted to the term falsafa, which as you can probably guess was imported into Arabic as a loan-word from the Greek philosophia. When modern-day scholars draw this contrast, when they assume that kalām was non-philosophical or even anti-philosophical, they are taking their lead from the medieval tradition itself. In particular, from two self-styled ‘philosophers (falāsifa)’, al-Fārābī and Averroes. In their eyes, the ‘theologians (mutakallimūn)’ engaged in mere dialectical argumentation; whereas philosophy offers demonstrative proofs. The theologian does not ground arguments in first principles, but just defends his own favourite interpretation of scripture against rival interpretations. Averroes was scornful of the results, complaining that it can lead to violent schism. For him, only a philosopher can offer a really reliable reading of the Quran, since the philosopher knows what is true on independent grounds – that is, on the grounds of Aristotelian science.
But should we accept this sharp opposition? These Aristotelians talk as if kalām makes insufficient use of reason. But most contemporaries would have seen it as controversial precisely because it was so rationalist. Theologians often departed from the surface meaning of the Quran on rational grounds: Revelation might seem to speak of God as if He had a body, but we can rule this out by giving arguments against His corporeality. The mutakallimūn also engaged in detailed disputes over such central philosophical issues as free will, atomism and the sources of moral responsibility, and debated such technicalities as the inherence of properties in substances, or the status of non-existing objects. If history had gone differently and there had been no hard-line Aristotelians writing in Arabic, I have no doubt that historians of philosophy would consider the output of the mutakallimūn to be the ‘philosophical’ tradition of the Islamic world.
That would have made our approach to Islamic intellectual history more like our treatment of Christian medieval thought. After all, medieval philosophy classes are mostly devoted to figures who considered themselves to be ‘theologians’, such as Anselm, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham. Of course, there are plenty of people who don’t like medieval philosophy either, precisely because of its religious context. But my view is that philosophy is where you find it, and that it is narrow-minded to ignore philosophical argumentation put forward by thinkers simply because they have a religious agenda, whether that agenda grows out of Christianity (as with Aquinas), Judaism (as with Maimonides), Hinduism (as with Nyāya epistemology or Vedānta philosophy of mind), or Islam.
The refusal to appreciate the philosophical interest of kalām is especially pernicious when it comes to the period after the pivotal figure of philosophy in the Islamic world, Avicenna (he died in 1037). His impact was enormous and pervasive. So we find ‘theologians’ such as al-Ghazālī (died 1111) and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (died 1210) engaging in minute analysis of Avicenna’s arguments, accepting some aspects of the Avicennian system while finding fault with others. Al-Ghazālī is notorious for his critique of Avicenna’s metaphysics in The Incoherence of the Philosophers, but he also heaped ridicule on anyone who denied the utility of the philosophers’ logic. As for al-Rāzī, his enormous theological compendia are comparable to those written by men such as Aquinas and Scotus in Latin Christendom, filled with scholastic argumentation and even structured in terms of philosophical elements like the Aristotelian categories. The myth that philosophy somehow died out in the Islamic world around the time of Averroes (died 1198) is in part the result of assuming that such texts fall outside the remit of the history of philosophy, despite being chock-full of intricate philosophical argumentation.
All of which is not to deny that some other kalām texts would be of limited interest to the philosophically minded reader, or that the mutakallimūn did typically proceed on the basis of scriptural exegesis instead of (or in addition to) pure rational argument. Nor is this the only reason that kalām texts can frequently be frustrating to the philosopher. Al-Fārābī and Averroes were right that there was a ‘dialectical’ tendency in their theological contemporaries. Premises might go unexamined because an envisaged opponent is bound to accept them, and there is a tendency – in early kalām especially – to answer questions with verbal formulae that all parties might accept, rather than delving deeper to find a really satisfying answer. But that tendency is reduced to some extent in later kalām literature. In fact, my impression – which I offer tentatively, given the vast amount of later kalām literature that is as yet unedited, and unstudied – is that kalām becomes significantly more ‘philosophical’ as the tradition developed. In the post-Avicennan period, the situation was increasingly like what we find in late 13th-century France: the most interesting and sophisticated philosophers were the theologians.
It might seem greedy of me to ask that a wide readership come to appreciate kalām, when most self-described ‘philosophers’ in the Islamic world are still rarely studied by non-specialists. It’s not as if undergraduate students are already routinely asked to read Avicenna and Averroes, never mind their ‘theological’ contemporaries and heirs. But even if the relevant texts remain largely unstudied, it is worth spreading the news that rationalism in Islam did not die with Averroes, and that the famous partisans of philosophy in the Islamic world, like al-Fārābī, Averroes and Avicenna, had no monopoly on philosophical thinking there. | <urn:uuid:7630e7e5-8604-40c5-a7f4-e86838d1a22b> | {
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How to draw dolphin. Learn to draw a dolphin step by step images with easy to follow instruction. Bottlenose dolphins are well known as the intelligent and charismatic stars of many aquarium shows. Their curved mouths give the appearance of a friendly, permanent smile, and they can be trained to perform complex tricks. In this tutorial, we will draw a dolphin with full body in leaping up vertically from below (jumping). Drawing dolphin is similar to drawing many marine mammals because of its streamline shape of the body. One of the easiest way to approach the drawing is identify simple shapes within the body. I usually do simple line drawn from step one to step three. Once I have the proportional guideline, I started adding detail drawing. It will help to define the main parts of each animal by breaking it down into simple geometry shapes.
Dolphins are marine mammals closely related to whales and porpoises. Bottlenose dolphins travel in social groups and communicate with each other by a complex system of squeaks and whistles. Schools have been known to come to the aid of an injured dolphin and help it to the surface. Bottlenose dolphins are found in tropical oceans and other warm waters around the globe.
Below are step by step how to draw a Bottlenose dolphin. Step one, I drew a simple “U” shape pointing side way. Step two, I added eye, mouth and sleek body. Step three, then I drew dorsal fin and paired pectoral fins. Step four, I then add its tail. Step five to six, I cleaned up the line drawn and finished the drawing. | <urn:uuid:95440558-a241-4bbf-a55f-ce2b4bd6d1f1> | {
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Today The Ohio Department Of Natural Resources Division Of Water Craft used The Licking River to practice it’s flood rescue techniques.
The Water Craft Division has jurisdiction over any body of water in the State of Ohio and will respond to major flooding anywhere in the country they are needed..
Training Coordinator of Water Craft Eric Reed said, "Flood rescues and anytime something floods in the state of Ohio. We have actually gone nationally and done flood rescues in our states, Katrina, Ike, we have done stuff like that any types of floods, swift waters, flat waters, urban, we call it urban flooding. Any type of flooding were someone may need rescue "
Some of the techniques they practiced were boat operations and shore based rescues.
"Yeah we have different days, different locations we are actually in Columbus tomorrow. We utilize a lot of low head dams, low head damn rescues, we do a lot of that in the state when we are called upon to do that. So we practice low head damn rescues and some techniques we would use at low head dams. "
Reed said if you find yourself in dangerous waters, use aggressive swimming, to try to get to the shore, or look for items in the water like trees or poles to hang on too. | <urn:uuid:7efdf538-e507-49e0-be55-087dc438542c> | {
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Until now their deaths have defied explanation. What caused hundreds of seemingly healthy seabirds to perish on the North Sea has baffled scientists since the discovery of their corpses on the Norfolk coastline this spring. Fears of a major pollution incident such as an oil slick were quickly dispelled.
But now the mystery is close to being solved and the answer has stunned ornithologists: the North Sea is heating up at an alarming rate. The broody expanse of water, famous for its violent storms and freak waves, is slowly being transformed.
Using the oldest maritime data in the world, scientists have found that climate change is ridding the North Sea of its precious stocks of plankton, the microscopic organisms on which all life in the sea depends. As the very building blocks of the food chain disappear, fish and the birds that feed on them, such as the puffin and guillemot, are starving to death in what has been their natural home for thousands of years.
New research from the Sir Alistair Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science in Plymouth, which has been monitoring plankton around the British Isles for more than 70 years, reveals that the North Sea is undergoing a major 'regime shift'.
Foundation director Dr Chris Reid said: 'What's happening in the North Sea is it's becoming more like the east coast of Spain. As temperatures get warmer, we are starting to see a pattern that is more typical of what you might see in the Mediterranean.'
Their concern is supported by another set of findings detailing how the sudden change of the North Sea is impacting on Britain's sea birds, many of whom breed in internationally recognised sites.
Seabird colonies off the Yorkshire coast and the Shetland Islands are headed for their worst breeding season on record. So far a number of colonies have failed to produce any young at all. Starving chicks screeching for food from their cliff nests along the eastern coast of Britain are an increasingly common sight to alarmed bird-watchers. In the Shetlands alone, thousands of kittiwakes and guillemots, regarded as one of the hardiest of species, have failed to return to old nesting sites.
Martin Heubeck, a researcher from Aberdeen University who has studied seabirds on Shetland for 28 years, said: 'There just isn't enough food. Until now the North Sea has offered an ideal nesting place for 21 of the UK's 24 species of seabird, mainly because of the abundance of seafood thrown up by the cool tide of the North Sea mixing with the warmer waters of the Atlantic. The demise of cod stocks in the North Sea triggered the first concern that the sea's ecosystem was changing, though the effects of overfishing were blamed.
BBC1's Countryfile will today show evidence that seabirds are being wiped out by the effects of climate change, and confirm that a new and far greater threat has emerged. 'The whole food web is being unravelled by climate change and this could fundamentally be the biggest change in the North Sea since it was created 10,000 years ago,' said Euan Dunn, head of marine policy for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
Officials in Whitehall, already nervous over the potential impact of global warming, are similarly worried. Environment minister Elliot Morley said government-funded research was coming to the same 'fundamental' conclusion as that of the foundation. 'It does appear that there is a migration of plankton which is moving north into the colder waters and that the North Sea is progressively warming. This is very important information,' he said.
The rate of cold-water plankton migration though, according to the Plymouth-based scientists, is astonishing, suggesting that the vital food supply may have drifted up to 1,000km further north already, almost the entire length of Britain.
Average sea temperatures throughout the North Sea vary from around 4C up to 8C. However an astonishing 4C increase in winter sea temperatures has been recorded in recent years, a rise that experts predict will escalate to Mediterranean-style temperatures that average above 20C during summer.
Some have taken comfort in the findings for their role in explaining why up to 250 guillemots, puffins, razorbills and fulmars were washed ashore on the Norfolk coast in March. Up to 200 fatalities were found on the beaches off Northern France and Belgium around the same time. It was impossible to gauge how many had sunk to the seabed.
The previous year scores of dead seabirds drifted ashore off Aberdeen, one of the North Sea's principal ports. Similarly evidence that the North Sea's food chain is collapsing might explain the new phenomenon of puffins switching from a fish diet to smaller birds.
Certainly it provides a reason why warm-water fish like squid, pilchards and the red mullet are becoming increasingly common in the North Sea. | <urn:uuid:b46d5058-160d-423b-9277-4c301cfb65bb> | {
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A Answers (6)
The American Heart Association urges all people to limit their daily sodium intake to no more than 1500 milligrams a day. This is especially valuable for people who have had heart attacks.
A 1/2 teaspoon of salt is 1200 milligrams of sodium, so it is best to avoid adding any salt to foods.
Use spices and herbs to flavor foods and ditch the saltshaker. You can also lower sodium by reducing the use of processed and packaged foods. These include:
- frozen entrees
- luncheon meats
- canned meat and fish
- processed cheeses
- prepared rice or pasta mixes
- canned soups
- salted snack foods
Also, read labels on pickles, salad dressings, olives, soy sauce and barbecue sauce.
The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend limiting daily intake of sodium to 2,300 milligrams (mg) or less for most of us, and suggest less than 1,500 mg for all African Americans and anyone with hypertension, diabetes and chronic kidney disease (including children), as well as persons older than 50.
What I find disturbing is that at a time when high blood pressure and heart attacks, collectively known as heart disease, kill more Americans than several cancers combined, you'd think that our government would take a stronger stance to protect us from the sodium lurking in processed foods.
Previously the American Heart Association (AHA) recommended that salt intake should be below 2,300 mg per day for American adults, but as of a recent article published in the journal Circulation and public call to action, the AHA suggests that consumption of less than 1,500 mg should now be the goal for all Americans, particularly since those risk categories may comprise up to 70% of the population.
One could argue that our health is supposed to be our own personal responsibility. And 'we don't need the government telling us how to eat', right? But shouldn't the government be motivated by saving money and isn't the USDA charged with protecting our health in respect to food safety?
Is it unreasonable to consider that since current health care spending is in excess of $24 billion per year for these preventable conditions it might be wise to urge Americans to get over their dependence on salt and make some serious changes? After all, reducing sodium intake could save up to $24 billion in healthcare costs each year, the AHA noted.
Reduce your sodium intake to 1,500 milligrams (mg) a day. The 2010 U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommend that most people limit salt to 1,500 mg (about 1/2 teaspoon) or less per day. This is less than the previous limit of 2,300 mg per day.
If you have kidney disease or high blood pressure, it's doubly important to stick to this limit. A registered dietitian can help with a plan based on your needs and preferences.
Americans eat on average about 3,300 milligrams of sodium a day. The U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommend limiting sodium to less than 2,300 milligrams a day. If you are in the following population groups, you should consume no more than 1,500 mg of sodium per day, and meet the potassium recommendation (4,700 mg/day) with food.
- You are 51 years of age or older.
- You are African American.
- You have high blood pressure.
- You have diabetes.
- You have chronic kidney disease.
About 6 in 10 adults should limit intake to 1500mg. The presence of the CDC logo and CDC content on this page should not be construed to imply endorsement by the US Government of any commercial products or services, or to replace the advice of a medical professional. The mark “CDC” is licensed under authority of the PHS.
It is estimated that the average adult consumes about 3,400 milligrams of sodium daily, but the current Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend a healthy adult should not eat more than about 2,300 milligrams of sodium per day or about one teaspoon of salt.
However, the Dietary Guidelines also recommend no more than 1,500 milligrams of sodium daily for at-risk populations such as African-Americans, any person with hypertension, diabetes, chronic kidney disease and any person over 51 years of age. This is significant as this lower recommendation would apply to nearly 70 percent of U.S. adults.
Keep your sodium intake to 1,500 mg a day or less. This is the amount recommended by the U.S. Dietary Guidelines and the American Heart Association.
This content reflects information from various individuals and organizations and may offer alternative or opposing points of view. It should not be used for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. As always, you should consult with your healthcare provider about your specific health needs. | <urn:uuid:4032db2f-55d9-424e-acd9-6bd0b4997814> | {
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Stop, Think, Go! Summer Problem-Solving
Learn the following simple steps of the traffic light model and practice problem-solving with your kids as a game this summer. And try out the rap that goes with it! Then, gently remind and use it each time siblings or friends get into a conflict. It can empower kids with the skills to work through their own relationship issues in constructive ways. “He messed with my stuff while I was gone. My Lego set is broken. Moooooooom!” cries Zachary about his brother. Sibling rivalry is a common family problem. Mom could fix it. “Go help your brother fix his Lego set.” Or she could help her children learn valuable skills in problem-solving. These opportunities for practicing critical life skills happen daily if you look for them. Collaborative problem solving is not one skill alone but requires a whole host of skills including self-control and stress management, self-awareness of both thoughts and feelings, perspective-taking and empathy, listening and effectively communicating, goal setting, anticipating consequences and evaluating actions.
Roger Weissberg, one of the top leaders in the field and Chief Knowledge Officer for the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and my mentor, ongoing collaborator and friend agreed to share the Traffic Light model that he and his colleagues created at Yale University with the New Haven Public Schools. The Social Development Project affected the lives of countless children, a district drawing from one of the lowest-income communities in the country. Students learned, practiced and used these skills in role playing and real life settings over and again making the development of these social skills a part of the culture and expectations of that school system. Read full article. | <urn:uuid:cc0a2aef-9f8e-4c4a-af13-db333b25305e> | {
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PREFACE to the HyperText Version of Henry Nash Smith's
As a mythological study of the American West, Virgin Land may be brought into sharper focus both by providing a more precise definition of myth that Henry Nash Smith assays, and by disentangling the thematic strands of myth that run through his landmark study. While Smith does a thorough job in describing particular myths -- their background, color, appeal to the mind, and so forth -- he is not particularly concerned with theoretical issues or with structuring his work around the various axes implied by a theoretical approach. Virgin Land is arranged more or less chronologically, tracing the concept of The West from the long-standing question for a "Passage to India," through various literary modes of expression and political and economic transformations, and finally to the settlement of the West and Frederick Jackson Turner's articulation of the "frontier hypothesis" in 1893 -- with many side roads and auxiliary topics supporting Smith's thesis along the way. An alternative method of navigating Virgin Land is to follow the individual strands of mythological construction that, taken together, weave the texture of Smith's central thesis.
The birth and life of a myth (in a sense, they never die) may be roughly divided into seven major stages of development. It should be understood that these categories are rigid in rubric only; there is significant overlap between them, and echoes from one to another. A hypertext approach to Virgin Land, however, necessarily entails some type of schematization.
The following seven sections form a "home-page," or base of operations, from which you may navigate Virgin Land mythologically. Choosing one of the seven will first take you to a brief explanation of the category and a series of thought-provoking questions, and then allow you to branch out into the book to see a variety of illustrative examples. The assortment of examples does not pretend to be comprehensive; rather, it is designed to stimulate thought and encourage an alternative vision of Smith's work.
(The numbering system below operates as follows:
16.8.7 indicates page 16, line 8, word 7
THE MOTIVATIONS OF MYTH
What are the conscious or unconscious human impulses and desires that underlie the creation of a mythic construct? How do economic, religious, and political considerations, often intertwined, contribute to the process? Which societal interests are served by the myth? Which are hindered? Attempting to answer these types of questions may lead to a clearer understanding of the myth-generating power of human desire, and of the reasons that certain myths endure while others wither.
In Virgin Land, the primary motivations for a Western mythology appear to stem from *economic ambition* in settling or portraying the West (7.28.3, 28.12.1, 29.3.1) and *political considerations* in accomplishing that settlement (27.38.1, 151.8.1, 206.9.1).
MECHANISMS OF MYTH'S CREATION
Given a set of underlying motives, what is the actual process by which a myth comes into existence? When is it first uttered? Uttered a second time? How do the springs of individual thought and social interaction give rise to a concept that takes on a life of its own?
There are at least four principal mechanisms of mythologization at work in Virgin Land. The first is the active role of *individual psychology* in interpreting and describing the world, from which myth directly takes its form and color (22.35.2, 23.18.10, 30.39.8, 32.31.3, 44.8.7). Equally important is the simple *repetition* of a phrase or idea; its increasing currency; its gradual evolution from individual to social existence (32.5.9, 37.4.6, 103.22.6). After a certain threshold of self-consciousness has been crossed, myths, or the seeds of myth, can undergo *deliberate manufacture* (27.9.3, 104.7.1, 106.33.6, 255.6.11). Another important mechanism, although not as critical as the first three, is the physical and public embodiment of an idea, as in art (53.7.5).
THE CHARACTER OF MYTH
What do myths express and from where do they derive their power? What are the psychological and culture wellsprings of myth? What personal or social values do they reflect and uphold?
The myth constructs that Smith describes appeal almost universally to the *imagination* (17.18.7, 22.12.1, 186.32.1, 192.30.1) or to deeply held emotions, including *personal well-being* (170.25.7, 204.2.4) and *national identity* (9.15.7, 23.33.6, 44.3.5). Myths tend to resonate with a *preexisting ethos in society (4.3.1, 60.36.2, 91.33.7). Perhaps most importantly, myths of the West tap into powerful and often ambivalent *emotions regarding nature*, ranging from a love of nature either for its own right or as a romantic ideal, to a fear of nature as an untamed and immoral place (52.16.10, 72.4.1, 77.27.13, 79.36.1, 89.8.6).
There are uniquely American qualities to the character of the myths of the West, or, to put it more precisely, ways in which the uniqueness of the United States imparted to its myths a distinctive coloring. The dominant hues involve *liberty* (252.3.6), the *physical geography* of the United States (11.17.1, 39.35.2, 40.14.1), and the images of an *American empire* (186.8.1, 187.19.1) and an *American utopia* (32.10.6, 37.19.1, 205.38.1).
A curious feature of the myths evolving during Smith's time-frame was their habit of referring to *the past*, to Europe at the same time that they articulated a vision of America's future (8.28.7, 19.21.8, 25.10.3, 128.32.1). Yet there still abided and thrived a longing to *escape the past* and tradition (26.2.3, 44.8.7).
DISSEMINATION OF MYTH
As noted under "Mechanisms of Myth's Creation," a requisite component of the formation of a myth is repetition. At a mature stage of development, a myth will have achieved a certain ubiquity, usually through the agency of all varieties of mass media. It is possible to identify two extremes between which the dissemination of myth operates: a top-down, conscious promotion of a concept on the one hand, and on the other, the diffuse and unconscious expression of the multitude.
The main channels of media which brought myth to the public during the nineteenth century include: *literature* (60.3.1, 76.11.1, 78.26.1, 220.1.1); *biography* (85.13.1); *sub-literature* (86.38.4, 91.12.1, 92.29.1, 95.22.1, 102.8.1, 227.18.1); *newspapers and magazines* (185.6.9, 189.17.7, 254.16.7); *speeches* (26.10.1, 28.12.1); and *other documents* such as Senate papers (38.8.1). Naturally, one cannot ignore the role played by *press agents* in disseminating myth (108.19.1, 111.3.1).
THE POWER OF MYTH OVER HISTORY
Once a myth has taken on a life in the public consciousness, how does it make itself felt? How does a deeply held conception of the world inflect people's thinking and actions? How does a myth change the very face of history by influencing actual events? And how does it gravitational force distort preexisting history by draining people and events of their objective essence?
This last process, by which historical reality is molded and conscripted into the service of an idea or ambition, has been discussed at length by Roland Barthes in his essay "Myth Today." In Virgin Land, the American West and its inhabitants and representative figures are by no means stable entities; myth effects a *transformation of their intrinsic reality* (54.12.1, 85.27.1, 86.24.5, 89.5.1, 102.32.1, 103.10.11, 135.22.2, 187.17.2).
Myth's influence over people operates primarily on a psychological plane, by gradually and imperceptibly becoming part of one's *thought process* (154.33.2, 189.1.1, 192.30.1, 255.12.5) and thereby encouraging certain *ways of viewing the world* (187.24.9, 188.1.1). This psychological power of myth can be readily translated into action, or an *effect on the course of history*, often through the gears of politics (165.1.1, 180.5.8, 193.27.4, 199.10.3, 200.9.4, 259.34.8). One of the ways that myth changed the history of the West was to accelerate the *removal of native Americans* (4.15.1, 46.16.1, 126.1.9, 257.13.1).
THE POWER OF HISTORY OVER MYTH
What happens when the course of historical events renders a myth irrelevant or implausible? How flexible and successful are myths in adapting to the exigencies of their age? How do myths mature?
The most dramatic examples of how myth adapts or succumbs to history occur when *reality flatly contradicts* the assumptions or implications of a myth, often with wrenching effect (156.2.1, 179.3.1, 188.25.10, 192.32.1, 196.4.8, 247.19.1). Yet even in such cases, myths can display a remarkable *resilience* and slowness in changing (141.37.1, 159.15.2). Another dramatic reformulation can take place through the *perversion of myth* for purposes unrelated to its original motivating ideas (195.9.1, 248.3.1). But such drama is not an inevitable phenomenon. Myths can undergo *natural and predictable evolution* in accordance with the times (174.23.1).
In the realm of literature, one can identify ways in which the treatment of myth is circumscribed and shaped by the *dictates of convention* (65.11.6, 68.3.1, 70.5.1), and similarly, ways in which writers try to maintain *plausibility* by acknowledging historical fact or incorporating it into their stories and characters (84.1.1, 88.17.3, 119.29.1, 224.21.3).
COMPETITION BETWEEN MYTHS
What are we to make of myths that contradict each other, rest on divergent human values and principles, or assert fundamentally different views of the world? When myths grow obsolete or unfashionable, are they necessarily supplanted by other myths? If so, what imaginative, emotional, or political advantages do the ascendant myths possess?
In the various conceptualizations of the American West that Smith describes, there are three principal clashes: *the Cult of Nature vs. the Cult of Progress* (52.28.1, 119.29.1, 218.11.1, 256.12.1); *the Garden of the World myth vs. the Great American Desert myth* (175.3.11, 185.25.1, 189.1.1); and *the Garden of the World myth vs. the Southern Plantation myth* (133.11.1, 143.4.1, 152.26.9).
Minor competitions involve *opposing notions of empire* (12.8.1, 29.25.1), and the opposition of *agrarianism and mercantilism* (34.8.1). | <urn:uuid:48599754-adb4-4c04-acb6-fddbca4a0e02> | {
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About 20 percent of adults take aspirin regularly, either to ease pain or to reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke.
But taking aspirin might increase the risk of macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness in old age, according to a study of nearly 5,000 people in Wisconsin.
Nobody wants to go blind. So does this mean it's time to give up on aspirin? Not at all, say ophthalmologists.
"It doesn't prove that taking aspirin causes macular degeneration," says Dr. Abdhish Bhavsar, clinical correspondent for the American Academy of Ophthalmology "We have no idea if they're related, and we have no idea if there's a cause and effect," says Bhavsar, who's also director of clinical research for the Retina Center of Minnesota.
He's talking about research in the latest JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, that found an increased risk of the more serious "wet" form of age-related macular degeneration, or AMD, in older people who took low-dose aspirin regularly 10 years before they were diagnosed with the eye disease.
That comes from the Beaver Dam Eye Study, which checked on the vision of people age 43 and up, from 1990 to 2010. That kind of long-term study can be valuable for figuring out associations between habits and disease.
In this case, about 1.76 percent of people who'd regularly used aspirin 10 years before a retina exam had signs of late-stage AMD compared with 1.03 percent of those who hadn't taken aspirin.
But a study like this one can't tell if a particular habit, like taking aspirin, causes a disease.
To find that out, it would take a randomized clinical trial, which gives people a specific treatment and measures its effects. There have been hundreds of clinical trials showing that taking low-dose aspirin reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke in people who have heart disease.
That's why Bhavsar and his fellow ophthalmologists aren't about to tell patients to stop with the aspirin. "To change recommendations based on a population-based study would be very difficult to do," he tells Shots. "It's hard for the public to realize the difference in the differences in clinical trials. But it's really important to hone in on that."
Wet macular degeneration is generally more severe than another version, known as dry macular degeneration. But the wet variety is also less common, affecting about 1 percent of people over age 40. Both affect the macula, an area in the eye's retina that's used to see fine detail. Aspirin reduces inflammation and increases the risk of bleeding, but it's unclear how those effects could be related to eye damage.
In the study, the people taking aspirin 10 years earlier were twice as likely to get macular degeneration, but because wet macular degeneration is relatively uncommon, the overall risk is pretty low.
Still, eye doctors keep looking into the possible links. Another big observational study, the European Eye Study, reported earlier this year that people aged 65 and older who took aspirin daily also were more likely to have "wet" macular degeneration.
Bhavsar does have advice for people worried about macular degeneration: "Stop smoking, and avoid exposure to smoke."
Tobacco smoke is known to speed progression of age-related macular degeneration. "If there's any single one behavior we could change and impact hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, it would be smoking." | <urn:uuid:1f8cab04-8a9b-4dc2-bf5c-331c17df57cc> | {
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Dating stoneware mineral water jug
Given the options offered by the pharmacist – and procedures like bloodletting that were still commonly prescribed by early 19th-century doctors – I might have opted for the mineral water as well. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons, see References.) Historically, there are two ways in which afflicted people have sought a cure by water: bathing in it, and drinking it.
Bathing in natural hot springs as well as mineral springs was popular among the ancient Greek and Roman cultures.
It has long been held that certain of the minerals and elements in the water can have beneficial effects on specific ailments.
In the 18 centuries, people may have indeed noticed improvements to their health after drinking it because the water provided minerals missing from the typical diet.
(Adler 2005; Skerry and Hood 2009; Southeastern Archaeological Research Inc., 2010) Evolution of mineral water bottle shapes. 1700-1799 (image source, Museum of London website, see References); bottle ca.
1770 (image source: Skerry and Hood, page 55); bottle ca.
Still today, some people claim that drinking carbonated water can help with indigestion!
Perhaps some people benefitted from actual improvements in their health due to the trace elements and minerals; perhaps some benefitted from the power of positive thinking amidst all of the hype. Stoneware mineral bottles were common from the middle of the 18 century they started to fade out of fashion as cheaper glass bottles became available (and as over-the-counter drugs became more reliable with the passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act in 1906).
1898-1930 (image source: Museum of London website, see References) century.
Mineral water can be defined as water that while underground, absorbs minerals and metallic trace elements from surrounding rocks (Erfurt 2001).
Beginning in the 18 century, mineral water from Selters was bottled in stoneware vessels and shipped around the world.
German potters known as Krugbacker, or pot bakers, produced cylindrical, brown mineral water bottles from the second half of the 18 centuries simply love the taste and refreshing quality of carbonated water?
Perhaps, but what they primarily sought in natural mineral water was not a tasty drink, but rather a cure for a variety of physical ailments. | <urn:uuid:ba5041df-3ec4-4048-8e98-f53c6bb10fa1> | {
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Secondary distribution of Overhead
The production departments do not produce any goods and services without getting any service from the service departments. Hence, there is logic that the cost of production should include the costs of service departments. Based on this logic, the total expenses of service departments are to be apportioned only to the production departments on suitable basis.
The process of redistribution of cost of service departments among production departments on suitable basis is known as secondary distribution. In making the secondary distribution, there is a distinction of production departments and service departments.
Criteria for Secondary Distribution of Overhead
The following is the criteria for determining the basis for apportionment of cost of service departments among production departments.
1. Services Received.
2. Analysis of Survey or Survey of existing conditions.
3. The ability to pay basis.
4. Efficiency or Incentive method,
5. General use indices.
Bases for Secondary Distribution of Overhead
The following bases are commonly used by many organizations for second distribution of overhead.
Methods of Secondary Distribution of overhead (Redistribution)
First, the management should determine the basis for redistribution of service departments. Then, the actual redistribution can be done by any one of the following methods.
1. Direct Redistribution Method
Under this method, the costs of one service department are apportioned only to the production departments ignoring the service rendered by one service department to another. If this method is followed, the number of secondary distribution will be equal to number of service departments.
2. Step Method
This method is also known as non-reciprocal method. This method ignores the service rendered by one service department to another. Moreover, there is no two-way distribution of costs between two service departments. It means that the costs of one service department cannot be distributed to other service departments even though service rendered to them.
For example: Canteen expenses are distributed to stores department because canteen renders service to stores department employees. But, no part of stores department cost is not distributed to canteen even if stores department render service to canteen.
Sometimes, large service department costs are distributed first. Then, next large service department costs are distributed. In this way, least service department costs are distributed finally. The cost of last service department is distributed only among production departments. Some authors have the view of distribution of cost of service department with largest amount first.
3. Reciprocal Service Method
Under this method, the costs of one service department are distributed to other service department on the basis of rendering service. Here, there is a two-way distribution of costs between two service departments. It means that the costs of one service department can be distributed to other service departments if service rendered to them.
The full operating cost of a service department cannot be known till inter department transactions among the service department are taken into account. The service department costs may be controlled to some extent.
4. Trial and Error Method
Under this method, the cost of one service department is apportioned to another service department. Now, the cost of another service department plus the share of costs received from the first service department is again apportioned to first service department. In this way, this process is going on till the balancing figure becomes negligible.
5. Repeated Distribution Method
This method is otherwise called as continued distribution and attrition method. The service department costs are distributed to other service departments and production departments on agreed percentage. In this way, this process is repeated till the costs of service department are too small. Then, the costs of service department are distributed only among production department.
6. Simultaneous Equation Method
Under this method, the total costs of service departments are ascertained with the help of simultaneous equation. Then, the costs of service departments are apportioned on agreed percentage only among production departments. | <urn:uuid:e985ab61-ebc1-42f9-9812-73983100e394> | {
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When the hero Baltog came to the rich land of Ibalon, many monsters still roamed around in its very dark forest. Baltog, born in Baltavara to the brave clan of Lipod, was the first to cultivate the fields in the rich land of Ibalon.
2 Then the Tandayag attacked and destroyed Baltog‘s fields and crops. The Tandayag was a monstrous wild boar but the hero Baltog was not afraid. One night, he waited for the Tandayag and wrestled with it with all his might. The Tandayag had very long fangs. The earth shook at the Tandayag‘s step. But Baltog was strong and brave. He was able to pin down the monstrous wild boar and tear out its mouth.
3 Baltog carried the Tandayag and hung it on a talisay tree in front of his house in Tondol. The people celebrated when they learned of the victory of their king Baltog. The clans of Panicuason and Asog came over to marvel at the monstrous wild boar in Ibalon.
4 At that time the hero Handiong came with a band of warriors to the land of Ibalon. Handiong and his men had to fight thousands of battles, and face many dangers to defeat the monsters. They first fought the one-eyed giants in the land of Ponon. They fought without rest for ten months until all the one-eyed giants were killed.
5 They went to the lair of the giant flying fishes called Tiburon which had slimy, scaly, and hardy flesh and sawlike teeth that could crush rocks. Handiong and his men did not stop until they vanquished every Tiburon.
6 They tamed the fierce tamaraws. They drove away the giant Sarimaw which was larger than an elephant and very fierce. They used their spears and arrows to kill all the crocodiles which were bigger than boats. The savage monkeys were frightened and hid when they
saw the rivers and swamps of Ibalon turn red with blood.
7 Oriol was the hardest to kill. A serpent with a beautiful voice, Oriol could change its image to deceive enemies. Oriol had escaped every trap and disappeared.
8 All by himself, Handiong looked for Oriol in the heart of the forest. He followed the beautiful voice and was almost enchanted by it in his pursuit. It is said that Oriol admired Handiong‘s bravery and gallantry. Thus, the serpent taught the hero how to conquer the monsters until peace came to the whole Ibalon.
9 Handiong built a town in Isarog and a season of progress followed. Under Handiong‘s leadership, the people planted rice which they named after him. He built the first boat to ride the waves of Ibalon seas. Because of his good example, inventors came forth from his people. Ginantong made the plow, harrow, and other farming tools. Hablom invented the first loom for weaving abaca clothes. Dinahon, an Aeta, created the stove, cooking pot, earthen jar, and other kitchen utensils. The brilliant Sural thought of the alphabet and started to write on white rock. It was a golden period in Ibalon when even slaves were respected under the laws of Handiong.
10 But there came the big flood freed by Unos, with earthquakes and the eruption of the volcanoes of Hantik, Kolasi, and Isarog. Rivers dried up and the seas receded. The earth parted, mountains sank, and many towns in Ibalon were destroyed.
11 Then appeared the giant Rabot, half-man half-beast, with terrible powers.
Bantong, Handiong‘s good friend, was ordered to kill the new monster in Ibalon. He took with him a thousand warriors to attack Rabot‘s den. Bantong used his wisdom against Rabot. He did not attack the giant‘s den right away but instead observed Rabot‘s ways. He saw many rocks around the den. They were people turned into rock by Rabot.
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The following table shows how the standard operators are directly converted into routine calls.
Operator Routine ------------------------------------ expr1 + expr2 expr1.plus(expr2) expr1 - expr2 expr1.minus(expr2) expr1 * expr2 expr1.times(expr2) expr1 / expr2 expr1.div(expr2) expr1 ^ expr2 expr1.pow(expr2) expr1 % expr2 expr1.mod(expr2) expr1 < expr2 expr1.is_lt(expr2) expr1 = expr2 expr1.is_eq(expr2) - expr expr.negate ~ expr expr.not
In addition to the unary and binary operators, there are additional operators that are defined in terms of a combination of the unary and binary operators
Operator Translation --------------------------------------- expr1 <= expr2 expr2.is_lt(expr1).not expr1 >= expr2 expr1.is_lt(expr2).not expr1 /= expr2 expr1.is_eq(expr2).not expr1 > expr2 expr2.is_lt(expr1)
Earlier versions of Sather 1.0 defined separate routines for each of these operators.
The form '[expression list]' is translated into a call on the routine aget. For instance,
a := [3,5]; -- Equivalent to a := aget(3,5); Used in the array class f := arr; -- Equivalent to f := arr.aget(2); Used outside the array
This is described in more detail later.
In addition to the above mentioned operators, it is possible to group expressions using plain parentheses, which have the highest precedence.
The precedence ordering shown below determines the grouping of the syntactic sugar forms. Symbols of the same precedence associate left to right and parentheses may be used for explicit grouping. Evaluation order obeys explicit parenthesis in all cases.
Strongest | . :: () | ^ | ~ unary - | * / % | + binary - | < <= = /= >= > Weakest | and or
The >, >= and /= operators are not directly translated into their own routine. Rather, they are defined in terms of is_lt and is_eq.
Each of these transformations is applied after the component expressions have themselves been transformed.
'out' and 'inout' modes may not be used with the syntactic sugar expressions.
The '<=' and '>' expressions do not reverse the original left to right order of argument evaluation.
and' and or' are not listed as syntactic sugar for operations in BOOL'; this allows short-circuiting the evaluation of subexpression.
The aget and aset routines are meant to support array like indexed access and require at least one index argument.
Here's a formula written with syntactic sugar and the calls it is textually equivalent to. It doesn't matter what the types of the variables are; the sugar ignores types.
-- Written using syntactic sugar r := (x^2 + y^2).sqrt; -- Written without sugar r := (x.pow(2).plus(y.pow(2))).sqrt | <urn:uuid:5d3e13ce-f1c5-4a8a-84a9-60567b5b12a0> | {
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ESCANABA - The rumor mill is in high operation as we near the end of yet another U.P. winter.
Weather conditions in February were favorable to wildlife in the region, with warmer temperatures and a reduction to the snowpack in the south central U.P.
The January Winter Severity Index (WSI), used years ago to gauge the stress level on whitetail deer, had been hovering around 45, well below the dangerous high points starting at 70-80. It is at that level stressors impact deer so much we start seeing die-off, especially with fawns who rank low in the feeding hierarchy.
Winter supplemental feeding of deer has remained controversial since the increased prevalence of bovine tuberculosis in the northern Lower Peninsula.
Feeding was banned statewide, with later reprieve given to the northern snowbelt region of the Upper Peninsula. There, deer populations are well below carrying capacity and the effort to feed is simply to sustain a huntable population.
The benefits of artificial feeding of deer have been argued for decades and has pit the Michigan Department of Natural Resources against a lot of conservationists who feel feeding is a viable tool.
Retired Wildlife Research Biologist John J. Ozoga, who used to head the DNR Cusino Deer Research Facility, once wrote a paper with guidelines for artificial feeding of wintering whitetails. Included in the publication was a brief history of supplemental feeding, expressing both the pros and cons of such programs.
He wrote that "supplemental feeding of deer to prevent large scale winter-kill has been tried (and failed) in many states, including Michigan. Most ventures were ill-conceived emergency ventures, however, and offered relatively poor quality feed in limited amounts to animals already in starving condition. Severe losses were seldom averted, and in many instances over browsing by large concentrations of hungry deer caused irreparable damage to the natural habitat.
"In sharp contrast, feeding of big game is routinely and successfully employed in Europe where herds are more intensively managed and 'culled' to regulate sex-age composition and size. Moreover, such operations are carefully planned and conducted annually, not done on a spur-of-the-moment basis."
The latter version was utilized in a program established by U.P. Whitetails Association (UPW). It was subsequently abandoned following the increased prevalence of bovine tuberculosis in the northern Lower Peninsula.
Twenty years ago, suspect timber harvest areas holding stressed deer in the south central Upper Peninsula were monitored by Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) personnel and if conditions were bad enough, a message to UPW triggered a response for emergency supplemental feeding.
Second crop alfalfa was used as it was readily available and was close in nutrition to that of white cedar, a common staple of the deer's winter diet.
Participating club members were instructed on the proper means of spreading the feed, assuring deer would also pick up enough moisture to support their healthy diet.
Since the closure, a blanket program for feeding deer has re-opened in the northern U.P., primarily in the high snowfall region. All baiting and feeding of deer in the entire Lower Peninsula remains shut down by rule, due to the find of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in Kent County near Grand Rapids.
It was originally an interim order that was later made permanent and supported by the State Legislature in making it the law.
A recent bill (HB-4198 of Feb. 5) introduced by 110th District Representative Mike Lahti has speculators claiming it is part of a plan to forever shut down baiting and feeding statewide. The fact is the bill simply extends the sunset clause of 2010 to 2016, allowing the MDNR authority to extend the rule as needed.
The DNR is not closed minded in the suggestion feeding can continue and perhaps expand to some reaches of the U.P., and there is also no formal dialogue ongoing to ban bait hunting statewide.
In my discussions with MDNR division staff and Director Becky Humphries, consideration can and should be given to a formula once proposed by UPW and a coalition of conservation clubs regarding winter feeding of deer.
When and where winter feeding should take place could be determined by use of a formula, incorporating a combination of factors that include the Winter Severity Index (WSI), Population Dynamics, Habitat Conditions and Cause Circumstances.
It provides a scientific approach not currently being used in some parts to the north.
The DNR does remain steadfast on the ban in the L.P. They indicate that policy will not change until such time it is clear CWD was not spread outside the current surveillance zone.
It boils down to understanding what is taking place by fact. Unfortunately, and once again, rumors started by some become a fact for others and thus cause for alarm. | <urn:uuid:bbac50ac-0656-4f26-978a-f6c77430150f> | {
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Much of Ellen Wilson’s life was spent as the wife of a college professor, at Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan University, and, finally, Princeton. If college students then were like college students now (and they probably were!), the Wilsons were exposed to most popular music of the day, including music which some thought was “degrading” and even “sinful.” Such a kind of music was ragtime, a bouncy, march-like music with a syncopated, “off” beat, that gave it it’s “ragged” style. In fact, ragtime music laid a foundation for jazz, and both ragtime and jazz are considered to have been “born in America.”
Students who participate in this activity will learn something about ragtime music, its history, and the ways in which it has contributed to others forms of American popular music. They will also have the opportunity to think about their own personal response to a certain type of music and try to “capture” that response in words and drawings.
Access to the Internet
Access to books about ragtime music, or recordings of ragtime music
Paper and pencils
1. As background, the teacher can read “Ragtime may be the first American music…,” an Internet site listed below.
2. With the whole class, play some ragtime music for the whole class (The Maple Leaf Rag and The Entertainer are two likely pieces) either from a CD or from the Internet sites, “Listen to Some Ragtime,” and "The Music of Scott Joplin," below.
3. Ask students to draw a picture expressing the feeling the music gives them. Have students share their pictures with one another and talk about what their pictures express.
4. Then ask students to write several short sentences, or even a short paragraph that attempts to put the feelings generated by the music into words. Have students share these written pieces as well.
5. Play some representative pieces of current popular music, particularly rock and roll and rap. Ask students to draw and write about how the music makes them feel, as they did with ragtime music, and to share their work.
6. As a culminating activity, the whole class can discuss the following:
- what makes music “popular”?
- what some similarities and differences are between ragtime and rock and roll or rap?
- why popular music is sometimes thought by some to be “bad” or “vulgar” or even “sinful”?
Extending the Lesson:
One way in which this lesson could be extended is through the study of the life of Scott Joplin, who was perhaps the greatest ragtime composer. Students can write biographies of Joplin, or could become familiar with the history of some of his particular compositions, including the history of his ragtime opera, Treemonisha, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973.
Sources & Resources:
Ragtime may be the first American music
Listen to Some Ragtime
Biography of Scott Joplin
The Music of Scott Joplin
This lesson plan was developed by Averil McClelland, Kent State University. | <urn:uuid:46e84cbc-405d-4ea5-b685-9d768d70d0e4> | {
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As a Vim user that obeys the philosophy of Vim, you will do anything to minimize the number of key presses because extra keys pressed equals extra time wasted.
So, why type each word to the end when Vim is able to guess what you are typing and automatically complete the word for you?
In Vim, there are multiple ways to autocomplete the words you are typing. Some methods simply complete words you have written once in one of the opened buffers, while others involve analyzing the code you are working on—not just the current file, but the entire source tree.
In the following sections, we will look at three different ways to use autocompletion in Vim: | <urn:uuid:169cd15d-eb73-4500-86f1-c59c32108277> | {
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NASA to Bring the Stars to Tennessee with Interactive Exploration Exhibit
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
News Release: 07-033
Starting April 3, Tennessee residents can visit the stars without ever leaving the ground.
NASA is launching the Vision for Space Exploration Experience – an interactive traveling exhibit allowing visitors to slip the confines of Earth -- on a weeklong tour of select cities in Tennessee. Stops along the way include Memphis, Nashville and Murfreesboro.
The Experience uses holographic and 3D imagery to show "explorers" what it might be like to visit the surfaces of the moon, Mars and destinations beyond. Visitors can manipulate their environment and explore simulated lunar and Martian landscapes as well as travel to one of Saturn's moons.
The first stop on the tour -- Memphis beginning April 3 -- brings together students who may be the future of NASA with exciting images of the future of space travel. The exhibit visits the Memphis Academy of Science and Engineering. The Vision for Space Exploration Experience will be open for student tours April 3-4 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. CDT and will open to the public from 3 to 5 p.m.
Next, the Experience will travel to the Adventure Science Center in Nashville April 6 and 7, to show what the future may hold for human space travel. The exhibit will be located just outside the Science Center on Fort Negley Boulevard, and open to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day.
The final stop on the tour is Murfreesboro, where the Discovery Center on Broad Street will host the exhibit April 10 and 11. The Experience is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day.
NASA staffers will be on hand at each of the tour's stops to answer questions and discuss some of the tens of thousands of technologies used on Earth as a result of years of space-based research and development. Visitors can learn how tomorrow's lifestyles will change as NASA develops advancements in power, computer technologies, communications, networking and robotics to support the Vision for Space Exploration. Visitors also will see how other advanced technologies will increase safety and reliability of space transportation systems, while reducing costs.
Touring the exhibit, which is wheelchair accessible, takes approximately 10 minutes and can accommodate up to 144 visitors each hour.
For more information on NASA's Vision for Space Exploration, visit: | <urn:uuid:10604438-9b9b-493a-8728-a30eac6d8fd5> | {
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Breastfeeding remains an important route of acquisition of HIV-1 infection for infants; in 2005, an estimated 630 000—820 000 infants were newly infected, of whom around 280 000—360 000 would have been infected through breastfeeding.1—3
Comprehensive prevention of mother-to-child-transmission (PMTCT) programmes report substantially lower rates of perinatal transmission of between 2% and 5% in non-breastfed and breastfed populations.4—6
Yet, even where programmes are available that offer HIV testing to pregnant women and antiretroviral prophylaxis for those infected, many infants continue to become infected through breastfeeding. National and local recommendations for infant feeding by HIV-infected mothers in resource-poor countries have been confounded by the scarcity of accurate estimates of the risk of HIV acquisition through different infant feeding practices and the associated survival risks and benefits.7
In particular, the risks of exclusive breastfeeding by HIV-infected mothers in developing countries have not been adequately reported.
Observational data from a randomised trial of the effect of antenatal vitamin A supplementation on perinatal transmission,8
suggested that the risk of postnatal HIV transmission was lower with exclusive breastfeeding than with mixed breastfeeding. Another trial of a vitamin A intervention showed that HIV postnatal transmission risk and mortality were higher in mixed breastfed infants than in those who were exclusively breastfed.9
Furthermore, both clinical trials and operational research settings have shown conflicting serious morbidity and mortality risks associated with the free provision of replacement feeds.10
In Botswana, cumulative all-cause infant mortality at 7 months was significantly higher in infants randomly assigned to formula-feeding than in those assigned to breastfeeding and zidovudine.10
In the first quarter of 2006, over 22 500 infants in 12 districts in Botswana had diarrhoea (compared with 9166 in the same period in 2005), and the number of deaths in children less than 5 years increased by about 20 times; almost all these infants were not breastfed,12
and there were no reported changes in infant feeding practice over this time. In Côte d'Ivoire, however, infants of HIV-infected mothers who chose to formula feed had no greater mortality than did those who were breastfed.11
These, and other similar reports, have confused rather than guided infant feeding policies and how health workers should counsel mothers in high HIV-prevalence settings on infant feeding options.13
We therefore implemented a study to assess the HIV transmission risks and survival associated with exclusive breastfeeding and other types of infant feeding.
HIV-infected and uninfected pregnant women attending antenatal clinics in KwaZulu Natal (seven rural, one semiurban, and one urban) were enrolled into a non-randomised intervention cohort study if they were 16 years of age or older, planned to stay in the study area for at least 3 months after delivery, and provided written informed consent. Uninfected women were included to establish the effect of HIV status on adherence to exclusive breastfeeding and other infant-feeding practices. The populations served by the rural and semiurban antenatal clinics were part of the surveillance area of the Africa Centre Demographic Surveillance System. Maternal sociodemographic and health information was recorded; antenatal CD4-cell counts were measured in HIV-infected women (September, 2001, to March, 2003, FACScan, Becton, Dickinson and Company, NJ, USA, thereafter Epics XL, Beckman Coulter, CA, USA).
Single-dose nevirapine was provided for all HIV-infected women and their infants any time after first booking or 28 weeks' gestation.14
All women were counselled antenatally about infant-feeding options.15
6 months' supply of commercial infant formula (number of tins increased with age) was offered free through the KwaZulu Natal PMTCT programme from the end of 2002, and HIV-infected mothers could choose to access this supply any time in the first 12 months of the infant's life. For those initiating formula milk from birth, an initial supply was provided antenatally.
After delivery, all mothers, irrespective of HIV status, and their infants were visited at home by infant-feeding counsellors three or four times in the first 2 weeks of life and every 2 weeks thereafter until the infant was 6 months old. Counsellors and clinic-based study nurses supported mothers to breastfeed exclusively or to replacement feed exclusively according to antenatal or present choice. The counsellors also recorded information on breast health and breastfeeding technique (positioning and attachment) but no data on infant-feeding type, to avoid potential recording bias. Instead, mothers reported feeding practices to an independent group of field monitors who visited every week and documented all feeds (milks and solids), fluids, drugs, morbidity episodes, and attendances at health facilities for every day of the preceding week. Mothers kept food-intake and morbidity diaries for use during the field-monitor interview to corroborate the verbal report. Cumulative patterns of exclusive breastfeeding were determined only at the time of analysis and not during the course of home visits. If a mother was not present for a counselling or monitoring visit, the study team returned on up to 2 consecutive days.
Neither feeding counsellors nor field monitors were aware of the mothers' HIV status. Mothers and infants also attended clinics 6 weeks after delivery and every month thereafter until 6 months. At every visit the study nurse measured the infant and recorded any morbidity events, a dried blood spot sample was obtained by heel or finger prick from the infant, and a breastmilk sample from the mother. A dried blood spot sample was also obtained within 72 h of delivery when possible. Clinic nurses and HIV counsellors advised HIV-infected women to stop all breastfeeding when infants were 6 months old. At the time of the study, highly active antiretroviral treatment was not available through the provincial health services. The study was approved by the biomedical research ethics committee of the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Exclusive breastfeeding was defined as the infant receiving only breastmilk from birth (including expressed breastmilk) from his or her mother and no other liquids or solids, with the exception of drops or syrups consisting of vitamins, mineral supplements, or drugs.16
Our protocol, however, allowed water or formula milk to be given for up to a total of 3 days, either on separate or continuous days, without exclusion from the group (this allowance was included since we were unsure how well participants would be able to adhere to the strictest definition of exclusive breastfeeding). Periods of exclusive breastfeeding ended on the fourth day of a child receiving either water or formula milk. Infants who received porridge or other solid foods, even if only once, were excluded from the feeding group. Although the WHO definition allows all drugs, including those self-prescribed, we additionally stipulated that paracetamol could be given only for up to 7 days and oral rehydration solution as treatment for diarrhoea for up to 72 h. Replacement feeding was defined as provision of any non-human milk and the exclusion of all breastmilk, with or without other liquids or solids. Mixed breastfeeding was defined as giving breastmilk with non-human milk, other liquids, or solids.17
HIV status was established by quantitative HIV RNA assay (Nuclisens HIV-1 QT, Organon Teknika, Boxtel, Netherlands, and Nuclisens EasyQ HIV-1, Biomerieux, Boxtel, Netherlands) with a sensitivity of 80 copies of HIV RNA per mL of blood (equivalent to 1600 copies HIV RNA per 50 μL dried blood spot).19
If HIV RNA was not detectable (<80 copies per mL blood) the infant was regarded as HIV uninfected. Infants were regarded as HIV infected if two samples both had more than 4000 copies per mL.20
If the second sample had less than 4000 copies per mL, a third sample was obtained for confirmation. For infants with detectable HIV RNA viral load at 6 months, stored samples were tested, if available, to assess when the infection was acquired.
We captured data with optical imaging recognition software (Teleform, Cardiff, San Diego, CA, USA) into a Microsoft SQL Server database with custom written applications (Perlcom, Durban, South Africa). Analysis was based on the database created on Oct 10, 2005. Infants with no feeding or test data were excluded from the analyses, and infants were excluded if there were more than 5 days of missing feeding data in any 30 day period. Feeding categories were established from the analytical database by application of algorithms that first classified infant-feeding practices on every day of life and then measured the cumulative pattern from birth. Analyses were done with Stata (version 9.1). Continuous data with a normal distribution were assessed with t test, Mann-Whitney test for non-normal distributions, two-sample tests of proportions or χ2 for categorical variables, and Fisher's exact test if numbers were small.
Cumulative transmission and mortality in the first 6 months of life were assessed by Kaplan-Meier analysis, and association with maternal and infant variables was quantified in a Cox regression analysis.21—24
We assessed the proportional-hazards assumption of the Cox regression model with log-log plots and regression of the Schoenfeld residuals; the goodness-of-fit was assessed by the log-likelihood test.22
Transmission rate at 6 weeks and 6 months was based on infants' samples obtained at 4—8 weeks and 20—26 weeks, respectively.25
For the Kaplan-Meier analyses, the estimated time of acquisition of infection was taken to be midway between the dates of the last negative test and the first positive test.25
For some variables, a missing response was considered to mean that the interviewee was unsure of the answer, and in such cases missing was included as a category of the variable. The sample size was defined with a CI approach on the basis of a priori estimates. We assumed that 6-week transmission would be around 11%, and regarded an additional 5% postnatal transmission as of public-health significance. The sample size to detect whether the HIV-infection rate at 22 weeks of infants who were exclusively breastfed until 18 weeks was 16% ± 2% variance with 80% power and 95% CI (Statcalc in EpiInfo) was 1344 exclusively breastfeeding mothers, assuming 65% exclusive breastfeeding adherence to 18 weeks.
Role of the funding source
The sponsor of the study had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or writing of the report. The corresponding author had full access to all the data in the study and had final responsibility for the decision to submit for publication.
Between Oct 29, 2001, and April 16, 2005, 2722 women delivered 2779 liveborn infants—1372 HIV-infected mothers had 1405 infants, 1345 HIV-uninfected had 1369, and five had indeterminate HIV-infection status. Our analysis is based on HIV-infected mothers and their infants. There were 36 twin pairs born to HIV-infected mothers, of whom 32 were both liveborn, and four in which one of the twins was stillborn and one liveborn. Twins were concordant on feeding method with the exception of a pair in which feeding data were missing for the first born and the second born was reportedly exclusively replacement fed. The second born of liveborn twins were excluded, leaving 1372 liveborn infants from 1372 HIV-infected mothers. Complete feeding data from birth to 6 months were available for 1276 infants. Figure 1
shows recruitment of patients, feeding practices, and follow-up, including reasons for loss to follow-up and non-availability of infant-feeding data and HIV-transmission results.
Flow diagram of infant-feeding groups over time and associated HIV testing
EBF=exclusive breastfeeding. RF=replacement feeding. MBF=mixed breastfeeding. Figure does not show infants who switched from RF (any time) to MBF. MBF numbers are included in text and table.
Most of the mother-infant pairs initiated exclusive breastfeeding (table 1
). Median duration of exclusive breastfeeding for women who initiated breastfeeding and whose infants had HIV test results available (n=1034) was 159 days (first quartile [Q1] to third quartile [Q3], 122—174 days); 847 (82%) exclusively breastfed for at least 6 weeks, 688 (67%) for at least 3 months, and 415 (40%) for 6 months. The proportions of infants with HIV results available who were fed a mixture of breastmilk and other fluids at 6 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months were 3·8%, 5·7%, and 15·4%, respectively. Some children were replacement fed from birth and appropriately switched to replacement feeding without any mixed feeding; some were not included at some time points because HIV results were not available within the interval specified per protocol, even though feeding data might have been available. In 193 076 days of follow-up, exclusive breastfeeding was reported in 141 599 (74%) days and complete avoidance of breastmilk was reported in 37 143 (19%) days. Of the 114 women who initiated exclusive breastfeeding and who subsequently moved,45
or were lost-to-follow-up,34
about 68% were exclusively breastfeeding at the time of last contact. More women who chose to replacement feed had CD4-cell counts less than 200 cells per μL than did those choosing to exclusively breastfeed (p=0·003; table 1
Characteristics for liveborn children and HIV-infected mothers by infant-feeding practice at birth
At 4—8 weeks of age (median 44 days; Q1—Q3, 40—48 days), 998 infants (all feeding types) were tested for HIV infection. 150 were positive, giving a point prevalence rate of 15·0% (95% CI 12·9—17·4). At 20—26 weeks of age, 962 children were tested, of whom 208 (21·6%, 19·1—24·4) were infected. Of the 760 exclusively breastfed infants who were tested at 4—8 weeks of age, 114 (15·0%, 12·5—17·8)) were infected; of the 497 infants exclusively breastfed for more than 20 weeks and tested at 20—26 weeks of age, 80 (16·0%, 13·0—19·6) were infected.
Of 1034 exclusively breastfed infants, 175 had been diagnosed with infection before 6 months of age (3686·63 person-months at risk postpartum). In Kaplan-Meier survival analysis conditional on exclusive breastfeeding, cumulative infection rates were 14·1% (12·0—16·4) at 6 weeks of age, 18·1% (15·8—20·8) by 4 months, 18·6% (16·2—21·4) by 5 months, and 19·5% (17·0—22·4) by 6 months. In 723 exclusively breastfed infants who were HIV uninfected at or after 6 weeks, the estimated Kaplan-Meier cumulative risk of infection from 6 weeks of age was 1·1% (0·28—1·84) after 1 month, 2·2% (1·05—3·34) after 2 months, 2·7% (1·44—4·02) after 3 months, 3·3% (1·88—4·77) after 4 months, and 4·0% (2·29—5·76) after 5 months (ie, at about 6 months of age).
For infants who were HIV uninfected at or after 6 weeks of age, and accounting for a 2-week time lag between the end of a feeding episode and the estimated time of infection, the overall transmission rate per 100 child-days, including infants who were replacement fed and those with missing data excluded, was 0·032 (0·0222—0·0455). This rate varied from 0·0290 (0·0195—0·0442) for 100 days of exposure to exclusive breastfeeding and 0·0436 (0·0208—0·0915) for breastmilk plus other foods or fluids. This result equates to an estimated risk of 10·72 per 100 child-years of exposure to exclusive breastfeeding (or 0·89% per child-month). In Cox regression analysis with exclusive breastfeeding as reference, the hazard ratio (HR) for breastmilk plus other food or fluids was 1·56 (0·66—3·69, p=0·308).
Infants who were breastfed but also received solids (generally home-prepared cereal or commercial infant porridges) any time after birth, were nearly 11 times more likely to acquire infection than were exclusively breastfed children (HR 10·87, 1·51—78·00, p=0·018). 203 mothers started exclusively breastfeeding and later introduced solids; the median age at which solids were introduced was 147 days (Q1—Q3, 99—171 days). Similarly, infants who at 14 weeks of age were fed both breastmilk and formula milk were nearly twice as likely to be infected as exclusively breastfed infants at that time (1·82, 0·98—3·36, p=0·057). Table 2
shows maternal antenatal CD4-cell counts and HIV point prevalence rates at 26 weeks of age by method of feeding at 26 weeks.
Maternal antenatal CD4-cell counts and HIV point prevalence rates at 26 weeks by method of feeding at 26 weeks
In a further regression analysis with feeding classified as exclusive breastfeeding for 20 weeks or more, exclusive replacement feeding for 6 months, or mixed breastfeeding starting before 3 months and after 3 months, both early-mixed feeders (n=356) and late-mixed feeders (n=257) were at greater risk of being infected than were infants exclusively breastfed (1·54, 1·10—2·15, p=0·011 and 1·53, 1·07—2·20, p=0·021, respectively).
94 of the 1034 liveborn children who were initially exclusively breastfed died, with estimated cumulative mortality rates increasing from 1·92% (1·23—3·00) after 1 month, 3·60% (2·66—5·10) at 2 months, 6·13% (4·74—7·92) at 3 months, 8·01% (6·37—10·05) at 4 months, 9·20% (7·27—11·22) at 5 months, and 12·24% (10·06—14·85) at 6 months. Of these 94 infants who died, 73 (78%) were HIV infected. Eight of 101 children who initiated exclusive replacement feeding from birth died. Kaplan-Meier mortality estimates by the end of 1 month were 4·22% (1·34—12·87), 9·90% (4·49—21·05) after 2 months, and 15·12% (7·63—28·73) after 3 months with no further events thereafter (figure 2
). In a separate Cox regression model including both exclusive breastfeeding and replacement feeding, the HR for formula feeding was 2·06 (1·00—4·27, p=0·051). Overall, there were 223 (22%) deaths or infections in infants exclusively breastfed, resulting in an overall Kaplan-Meier estimated HIV-free survival of 75·4% at 6 months (figure 3
Survival probability by feeding type
*No further events beyond last time point of around 22 days. Note break in legend.
6 month HIV-free survival by feeding type
*No further events beyond last time point of around 22 days. Note break in legend.
In univariable and multivariable Cox's regression analyses conditional on exclusive breastfeeding, risk of transmission overall was strongly associated with maternal CD4-cell counts and less strongly with maternal age, birthweight below 2500 g, vaginal delivery, and long duration of ruptured membranes (table 3
). The estimated transmission at 6 months in exclusively breastfed infants born to HIV-infected women with CD4-cell counts less than 200 per μL or 200 and greater cells per μL were 34% and 17%, respectively. Infant's sex, maternal socioeconomic status and education, location of residence, antenatal feeding intention, and duration of labour were not significantly associated with the overall risk of transmission, and there was no evidence of a significant trend over time. Data for nevirapine uptake and ingestion were inconsistent and are not included in any analysis.
Mother-to-child transmission risk during exclusive breastfeeding (n=1034)
In univariable regression analyses, maternal CD4-cell count (less than 500 per μL), low birthweight, infant's infection status, and place of birth (other or unknown) were significantly associated with increased mortality. In multivariable analyses, however, only infant's infection status was significantly associated with death; infected infants were 15 times more likely to die than uninfected children (15·28, 9·20—25·40, p<0·0001). In multivariable analyses, in a model with a significantly reduced goodness-of-fit (log likelihood −599·07 compared with −530·11) that excluded infant's infection status, the only significant factor was maternal CD4-cell count. Infants born to mothers with a CD4-cell count of 200—500 cells per μL were nearly twice as likely to have died (unadjusted HR 1·89, 1·16—3·08, p=0·011) than were those born to mothers with a CD4-cell count greater than 500 per μL. Those born to mothers with CD4-cell counts less than 200 per μL were more than three times as likely to have died (3·19, 1·73—5·88, p=0·0001).
Infants born to mothers with CD4-cell counts less than 200 per μL were almost four times more likely to acquire HIV or die than were those born to mothers with CD4-cell counts greater than 500 per μL, and those born to mothers with CD4-cell counts between 200 and 500 cells per μL were 2·2 times more likely to acquire HIV or die. Other variables significantly associated with decreased HIV-free survival were birthweight less than 2500 g, rupture of membranes for longer than 12 h, and maternal age between 20 and 30 years (table 4
Factors associated with HIV-free survival in exclusively breastfed infants in the first 6 months of life (n=1034)
This study, with a rigorous design and implementation, accords with earlier reports that exclusive breastfeeding carries a significantly lower risk of HIV transmission than do all types of mixed breastfeeding.8
Infants who received formula milk in addition to breastmilk, before or after 14 weeks of age, were nearly twice as likely to be infected as were infants who received breastmilk only. Although the numbers in non-exclusively breastfeeding categories were small, infants who were breastfed but also received solids were nearly 11 times more likely to acquire HIV infection than were those who received breastmilk only.
The main objective of our study was to provide an accurate rate of mother-to-child transmission of HIV-1 and survival of exclusively breastfed infants born to women who were HIV infected at enrolment. We initiated an intervention cohort study that offered intensive infant-feeding support and ensured high-quality data through carefully designed data-collection forms and processes. We did not randomly assign infants to the different feeding groups for several reasons. We already knew that there is no transmission after 6 weeks (beyond perinatal acquisition) if mothers do not breastfeed, although many mothers who choose replacement feeding also breastfeed for various reasons.3
Most importantly, we believed a randomised study would be unethical because of the well-documented morbidity and mortality risks of mixed breastfeeding. We expected, however, that some women would choose replacement feeding whereas others would default to mixed breastfeeding, allowing some comparative analyses. Most women sustained exclusive breastfeeding for long periods, resulting in very few infants being mixed fed, and thus our ability to make comparative analyses was restricted. Our study design contrasts with the two studies in South Africa and Zimbabwe that examined infant feeding and HIV transmission, in which only 26% and 8% of infants, respectively, were still exclusively breastfed at 3 months.9
Our results show that the Kaplan-Meier estimated risk of postnatal transmission of HIV by 20—26 weeks of age in exclusively breastfed infants who were negative at 6 weeks of age was 4·04%. This result is close to that of the Durban (South Africa) study, in which the cumulative probability of infection between 6 weeks and 6 months in the 118 infants who were exclusively breastfed for at least 3 months was 4·4%.26
In the Harare (Zimbabwe) study the estimated risk of transmission in 156 infants who were exclusively breastfed for at least 3 months was only 1·3% compared with 3·9% in the entire cohort (n=2060) and 4·4% in infants who received mixed feeding.9
Methodological differences and the heterogeneity in risk factors for transmission and survival,25
and differences in overall rates3
make direct comparisons difficult. The Durban and Harare studies were both randomised controlled trials of the effect of vitamin A supplementation on mother-to-child transmission. Estimation of the risk of HIV transmission associated with exclusive breastfeeding was a secondary objective, and infant-feeding data were obtained only at 6 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months. The long recall periods could have caused misclassification of feeding type.29
Conversely, the frequent visits made by feeding counsellors in our study might have prompted mothers to report feeding practices falsely and over-represent exclusive breastfeeding. However, feeding information in this study was obtained by a separate team of fieldworkers who were unaware of the feeding counsellors' interactions with mothers. The Durban and Harare studies were urban-based studies and had substantially fewer infants exclusively breastfeeding beyond 3 months than in our study. Clade C, the dominant HIV type found in South Africa, is more likely to result in mother-to-child transmission than in clades A and B found elsewhere in Africa.30—32
We implemented an intervention to improve exclusive breastfeeding practices in HIV-infected women who chose to breastfeed and in HIV-uninfected women. We achieved a much higher rate of exclusive breastfeeding than has previously been reported in any HIV-infected or HIV-uninfected cohorts using the most stringent of definitions and data-collection methods. In our experience, HIV-infected women, if given good support, are able to adopt appropriate and optimum feeding practices, including rapid cessation at 6 months (data not reported) to restrict both transmission and mortality risks present in the environment. Although many infants were withdrawn from the study and HIV test results were unavailable for some, their omission is unlikely to significantly affect the transmission risks and estimates. Feeding practices in these infants were very similar to those in their peers at the time of withdrawal or loss to follow-up, and demographic determinants such as maternal socioeconomic status and education and location of residence were not otherwise associated with transmission risks. Infant's sex did not affect either feeding practices or, in contrast with other studies,27
the rate of postnatal transmission.
Exclusive breastfeeding ordinarily protects the integrity of the intestinal mucosa, which thereby presents a more effective barrier to HIV. Exclusive breastfeeding is also associated with fewer breast health problems than is mixed feeding, such as subclinical mastitis and breast abscesses, which in turn are associated with increased breastmilk viral load. The effect that small departures from exclusive breastfeeding have on the risk of HIV transmission is uncertain, although predominant breastfeeding (the introduction of non-milk fluids) was associated with reduced transmission in one study.9
Why is the addition of solids especially hazardous? Perhaps large and complex proteins found in solid foods precipitate greater damage than do modified cows' milk proteins to gastrointestinal mucosa, which ease viral entry between cells, or regulate gut receptors differently, thereby increasing the likelihood of virus adherence and infection. Smith and Kuhn33
have summarised some of these findings and mechanisms.
We noted that mortality in the first 3 months of life was roughly doubled in the group receiving replacement feeding compared with the exclusive breastfeeding group (15% vs
6%). This result remains a concern, even though mothers who chose to replacement feed were more likely to have CD4-cell counts less than 200 per μL than were mothers who exclusively breastfed. If these women also had clinical symptoms, their ability to care for their children appropriately could have been affected. A significant increase in early mortality in formula fed versus breastfed infants was also identified in studies in Kenya34
9%) and Botswana35
3·7%). However, in better resourced areas these differences have not been reported,36
which reinforces the UNAIDS guidelines on replacement feeding—namely, “where replacement feeding is acceptable, feasible, affordable, sustainable, and safe, avoidance of all breastfeeding is recommended, otherwise exclusive breastfeeding is recommended for the first few months of life”.37
The substantial mortality associated with not breastfeeding in this study emphasises the importance of developing feeding policies appropriate to background infant-mortality rates, which can be successfully supported by health services and to guide individual mothers. The Lancet
on global dimensions of neonatal and child survival emphasised the need to consider overall survival and not only avoidance of HIV infection; breastfeeding remains a key intervention to reduce mortality. Even in countries with high HIV prevalence, breastfeeding could prevent 13% of deaths in children younger than 5 years; in countries with low HIV prevalence, 15% of under-5 deaths could be prevented. Furthermore, 210 000—270 000 of new infections attributable to breastfeeding every year could be averted if HIV-infected mothers who breastfeed stopped after 6 months of exclusive breastfeeding (around 4% transmission) rather than the more usual 18—24 months of mixed feeding (16% transmission). This finding also has relevance for the promotion of exclusive breastfeeding in HIV-uninfected mothers in high-prevalence settings; in addition to the proven survival benefits for the infant, if such mothers unknowingly become HIV infected while breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding will carry a lower risk of transmission than will mixed breastfeeding.
Infants exclusively breastfed by women with CD4-cell counts less than 200 per μL were twice as likely to become infected and almost four times more likely to die before 6 months of age than were infants exclusively breastfed by women with CD4-cell counts above 500 per μL. Similar findings in west,39
and southern Africa9
provide a strong argument for intensification of efforts to identify this susceptible group and immediately offer them highly active antiretroviral treatment for the health of both mothers and infants. Where such programmes exist, the referral and counselling of pregnant women and initiation of treatment should be an over-riding priority that is closely monitored as an indicator of overall programme effectiveness.
The key policy finding of our study is the definite demonstration that early introduction of solid foods and animal milks increases HIV transmission risks compared with exclusive breastfeeding from birth. These data, together with evidence that exclusive breastfeeding can be supported in HIV-infected women, warrant revision of the present UNICEF, WHO, and UNAIDS infant feeding-guidelines that were last revised in 2000.37
The need for this review is reinforced by the reported drawbacks of free formula milk41
and WHO recommendations for the provision of highly active antiretroviral therapy to pregnant women with CD4-cell counts lower than 200 per μL.43
Janet Darbyshire (chair), Nono Simelela (SA National Department of Health), Victoria Sithole (Community Advisory Board) and the study investigators.
Cathy Wilfert (chair), Elizabeth Glaser (Pediatric AIDS foundation), Carl Lombard (statistician, Medical Research Council, South Africa), Ames Dhai (Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and the Biomedical Ethics Unit, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa), and Francis Crawley (Good Clinical Practice Alliance).
H M Coovadia and A Coutsoudis contributed to the conception of the study. H M Coovadia, N C Rollins, R M Bland, A Coutsoudis, M L Bennish, and M-L Newell designed and implemented the study. N C Rollins and R M Bland project managed the study. H M Coovadia, N C Rollins, A Coutsoudis, and M-L Newell drafted the report. N C Rollins, K Little, and M-L Newell analysed the data. R M Bland, K Little, and M L Bennish reviewed the report. All authors read and approved the final version of the report.
MLB was supported by a mid-career grant (1 K24 AI/HDO1671-01) in clinical research, and an International Collaboration in Infectious Disease Research award (1 UO1 AI45508-01) from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the United States National Institutes of Health, and by a grant from the Wellcome Trust (62925). KL receives a UK MRC PhD scholarship. | <urn:uuid:e9cc3da7-2ee4-4803-828f-1249f1df52cc> | {
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Anemia is a fancy word for iron deficiency. It's fairly common pregnancy nutrition issue, since you and your developing baby need a lot more iron than usual. You are at even greater risk of developing anemia if:
You often drink tea or coffee right before (or right after) you eat. This can make it tricky for your body to absorb the iron it should be getting from the food.
You have a history of heavy menstrual bleeding (as if you needed another reason to dislike that!).
You don't eat enough meat, fish or poultry - which are great sources of iron. Not getting enough vitamin C is a related pregnancy nutrition issue, as vitamin C helps the body absorb iron.
You have had two or more back-to-back pregnancies.
You donate blood at least three times a year.report abuse | <urn:uuid:8aa39449-0e30-486d-98f3-c58856564d77> | {
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SIEGFRIED TRANSLATEUR (1875 - 1944)
This composer’s best known piece is Wiener Praterleben or Sportspalast waltz, and he had his own publishing company in Berlin, Lyra. It published his own music as well as that of Paul Lincke and Franz von Blon. Unfortunately Translateur was one of the many composers with Jewish connections who fell foul of the Nazi regime. He was forced to sell his publishing company to Bosworth, and most of his music was destroyed. Because of this, today his works are hardly performed. Thus to locate his Diabolo, Galop is more of passing interest, as he was a significant contributor to this genre of music. Another example, his slow waltz Träumveloren, was included in The Johann Strauss Society release Spirit of Vienna Vol. 1. Born in present day Poland, Translateur studied in Breslau, Vienna and Leipzig, and was a one-time student of Emil Waldteufel, before becoming a conductor in Berlin in 1900. Before the First World War he undertook many tours and became very popular. He wrote some 200 works. He was deported to a Nazi concentration camp in the Czech Republic where he died. | <urn:uuid:b9f4a2c1-1040-44a0-b15d-cace20815491> | {
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Pigs are intelligent, social creatures, which like to root in the dirt, wallow in the mud and forage for food. However, most pigs that are born and raised in conventional systems in Australia are not able to express these normal behaviours. Instead, piglets are subjected to painful husbandry procedures like tail docking and teeth clipping without anaesthetic and mother pigs (sows) are intensively confined in narrow stalls and farrowing crates, so small they cannot even turn around.
Your choices at the supermarket can make a huge difference to the lives of pigs in Australia. Take action by shopping humane. Look for RSPCA Approved pork products or, alternatively, sow stall-free, bred free range or free-range pork.
Shop Humane and help make a difference
In 2010, the first steps were taken to address the intensive confinement of pigs with the Tasmanian Government and then the pig industry itself announcing that sow stalls would be phased out from 2017.
On conventional pig farms, towards the end of pregnancy, sows are moved to a farrowing crate to give birth. Pregnant sows are highly motivated to engage in nesting behaviours, but they are frustrated from carrying out this behaviour in farrowing crates, which do not provide bedding or nesting material. A sow may be confined in a farrowing crate for up to 4 weeks.
Find out more about RSPCA Approved Farming
“Pigs are intelligent and social animals. Intensive confinement of these animals is inhumane and can lead to stress, injury and abnormal behaviours.” | <urn:uuid:822210d1-fd1c-4926-aa80-aa4f961d7110> | {
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From the site:
During the pre-Colombian period, the area now known as Colombia was inhabited by indigenous peoples who were primitive hunters or nomadic farmers. The Chibchas, who lived in the Bogotá region, were the largest indigenous group.
The Spanish sailed along the north coast of Colombia as early as 1500; however, their first permanent settlement, at Santa Marta, was not established until 1525. In 1549, the area was a Spanish colony with the capital at Santa Fe de Bogotá. In 1717, Bogotá became the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, which included what are now Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama. The city became one of the principal administrative centers of the Spanish possessions in the New World, along with Lima and Mexico City.
In August 2000 the capital's name was officially changed from "Santa Fe de Bogotá" to the more commonly used "Bogotá." On July 20, 1810, the citizens of Bogotá created the first representative council to defy Spanish authority. Full independence was proclaimed in 1813, and in 1819 the Republic of Greater Colombia was formed. | <urn:uuid:e8bc80bd-9723-45c8-a94a-453f604b3eac> | {
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ISSL LED (Light Emitting Diodes) are the latest and most exciting technological advancement in the lighting industry. LEDs are small, solid light bulbs which are extremely energy efficient and long lasting. LEDs operate differently than traditional incandescent light bulbs. This makes LEDs far more rugged and durable than traditional incandescent light bulbs. LED technology also offers many additional advantages over incandescent, neon and compact fluorescent lighting devices – such as exceptionally longer life span (60,000 hours), enormously lower energy usage (90% more efficient), reduced maintenance costs and higher safety. LEDs are currently being used for a wide variety of applications such as: residential lighting, aerospace, architectural lighting, automotive, aviation, broadcasting, electronic instrumentation, entertainment and gaming, industrial automation and controls, the military, traffic and safety & transportation.
Discover the color temperature to fit the needs of your home or office space. Additionally, beam angles are available from 10 to 90 degrees. Spanning from 15,000 to 50,000 life hours, these GU10 MR16 LEDs match the brightness of halogen lamps but use only a fraction of the energy. ISS Limited LED Lightsmakes it easy for you to find what you’re searching for. With the largest inventory available at the lowest prices, this is the ultimate online lighting retailer.
LEDs are extremely energy efficient and consume up to 90% less power than incandescent bulbs. Since LEDs use only a fraction of the energy of an incandescent light bulb there is a dramatic decrease in power costs. Also, money and energy is saved in maintenance and replacement costs due to the long
LEDs are currently used for a wide variety of different applications such as: residential lighting, aerospace industry, architectural, automotive, broadcasting, electronic instrumentation, entertainment and gaming, the military, traffic and transportation. Since LEDs are focused lights they prove best at specific lighting tasks such as desk lamps, reading lights, night lights, security lights, spot lights, accent lights and lighting for signage
LEDs have a lifespan of up to 60,000 hours compared to 1,500 hours for incandescent bulbs. An LED light will last over 7 years (constant use) before needing replacement. On average, LED bulbs last 10 times as long as compact fluorescent bulbs, and 133 times longer than typical incandescent bulbs. Long lifespan of LEDs will dramatically reduce maintenance costs and lower long-term operating costs compared to traditional incandescent and fluorescent tubes.
LED lifespan scenarios:
– 50,000 hours powered 4 hours/day = 34 year lifespan
– 50,000 hours powered 8 hours/day = 17 year lifespan
– 50,000 hours powered 24 hours/day = 6 year lifespan
LEDs are solid state lighting devices that utilize semiconductor material instead of a filament or neon gas. An LED light is a tiny chip encapsulated in an epoxy resin enclosure, which makes LEDs far sturdier than traditional incandescent light bulbs or fluorescent tubes. Since LEDs don’t use fragile components such as glass and filaments, LEDs are able to withstand shock, vibration and extreme temperature.
Improved safety may be LED’s most important benefit
LED lights generate virtually no heat therefore they are cool to the touch and can be left on for hours without incident or consequence if touched. LED’s produce 3.4 btu’s/hour, compared to 85 for incandescent bulbs. In comparison, incandescent lighting expels 90% of the energy it consumes via heat, making the bulbs hot to the touch. LEDs reduce the potential for safety risks such as burns and fires.
LEDs are made from non toxic materials, unlike fluorescent lighting that uses mercury that may pose a danger to the environment. LED’s are also recyclable and considered “green” or Earth-Friendly. | <urn:uuid:e4aefa3e-9374-46ba-b745-f2975e3d8d5b> | {
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Energy TransferVideo Cassette - 1991
The aim of this series is to involve students in making decisions about problems and issues which are scientifically based. This program looks at what happens when energy is released and transferred from one system to another. Examines the increase and decrease of kinetic energy at a molecular level. Explores the relationships among temperature, structure and kinetic energy.
Publisher: [Toronto, Ont.] : Thames Television ; [Edmonton, Alta.] : Access Alberta, c1991.
Characteristics: 1 videocassette (VHS) (20 min.) :,sound, color ;,1/2 in. | <urn:uuid:1da4f1d4-5d08-4367-9b15-4e6d6e35dcc8> | {
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roviding programmers and developers of all skill levels with a comprehensive tutorial and reference to Visual Basic (VB) 2008, Microsoft MVP Rod Stephens presents a broad, solid understanding of essential topics on the latest version of VB. He explains the forms, controls, and other objects that VB furnishes for building applications in a modern windows environment. Plus, he examines the powerful development environment that makes VB such a productive language, and delves into the VB language itself, showing you real-world examples for performing a variety of important development tasks.
As Rod updated the previous version of this book, he added numerous examples and revised and retested code extensively to make sure the code is compatible with and represents best practices for the 2008 release. The book's appendixes will prove particularly useful for developers changing languages; as they can help translate code from familiar languages into the corresponding VB syntax. Ultimately, you'll find coverage of the technologies you need to build sophisticated applications with VB 2008.
- Covers extension methods for adding new features to existing classes
- Explains how to select and use Windows Forms Controls for a specific purpose
- Provides tips for using subroutines and functions to break a program into manageable pieces
- Discusses techniques for error handling and debugging
- Lists the most important classes and objects you'll use when building an application
- Covers how to use the graphics device interface routines to draw images in VB
- Explores ways an application interacts with its environment
This book is for programmers who are looking to explore the latest features of the new release of Visual Basic. No prior experience with earlier versions of Visual Basic is necessary.
Chapter 34 covers printing in VB from the ground up. It doesn't just discuss how to print text documents, but also covers printer management, providing print preview capability, graphics devices in .NET, drawing images, resizing content to fit on a page, and much more. Download the PDF of Chapter 34: "Printing."
Reproduced from Visual Basic 2008 Programmer's Reference by permission of Wiley. ISBN-10: 0470182628, ISBN-13: 9780470182628, copyright 2008. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:d861d703-6397-4be4-8e6d-e27603f0f047> | {
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GAUDAIS-DUPONT, LOUIS, royal commissioner in New France (1663), whom several authors have confused with Nicolas Dupont*, Sieur de Neuville.
In 1661 and 1662 Louis XIV had made himself acquainted with several reports on New France; he had granted hearings to prominent people of the colony; he had even sent a royal investigator, the Sieur de Monts, to America. A distinct change of policy was quite obviously necessary. At the beginning of 1663 the monarch accepted the resignation of the Compagnie des Cent-Associés. New France again became the property of the king.
Louis XIV resolved to supervise personally the progress of Canada, and decided to send a commissioner there to take possession of the country in his name and to set up the new administrative and judicial institutions that had been granted to the colony. On 7 May 1663 he appointed the Sieur Gaudais, to whom he assigned the responsibility of going “to examine Canada,” and he gave him precise instructions: to describe the colony in detail, study its trade, analyze the financial and legal administration of the previous few years, take a census of the population, investigate the extent of land clearance, agriculture, and natural resources, suggest means whereby the revenues from the fur trade could be turned to the profit of the Crown and the seigneurial rights of the king established over Canada; in short, to transmit any piece of information which would help in the organization and development of New France. Gaudais’ commission and instructions were accompanied by a secret document ordering him to make discreet enquiries into the conduct and views of the previous governor and the newly appointed one, of Bishop Laval*, and of the Jesuits. The king wanted to discover the reason for the quarrels that had taken place between Pierre Dubois Davaugour and the clergy.
Gaudais had a heavy task to perform and little time at his disposal, since the king required him to return by the same ship that would take him to New France. He landed at Quebec on 15 September with Bishop Lava] and Augustin de Saffray de Mézy, and on 18 September attended the first session of the Conseil Souverain, of which the king had made him a member. A few days later, perhaps on the twenty-second, he set out for Trois-Rivères and Montreal, a journey which took him ‘16 or 17 days.” Gaudais’ activities in New France are recounted in a letter of Marie de l’Incarnation [see Guyart]: “He has settled all the affairs of the country. He has appointed officers to dispense justice according to the prescription of the law. He has also established an administration to take care of trade and maintain civil society. All the inhabitants of the country have without exception rendered faith and homage to him, declaring themselves dependent on the king because of his castle at Quebec.”
As early as 20 September the conflict between the directors of the Communauté des Habitants and the talkative Jean Peronne Dumesnil, the intendant of the Compagnie des Cent-Associés, had been referred to Gaudais. The Conseil Souverain had instructed the royal commissioner to examine Dumesnil’s claims. But Gaudais, for want of time, had to sail for France before being able to announce his conclusions. In a report to Colbert the following year Dumesnil did not spare Gaudais, whom he accused of partiality and of collusion with the Jesuits and the former directors of the Communauté des Habitants. Colbert, ever suspicious, appears at least momentarily to have held the Sieur Gaudais responsible for the affronts suffered by Dumesnil. In his turn Gaudais addressed a report to the minister, giving a different version of the facts and clearing himself of the accusations levelled by the intendant, whom he considered lacked judgement and moderation.
Gaudais had sailed for France on 26 Oct. 1663, four days after marrying his niece, Michèle-Thérèse Nau, to Joseph Giffard, the son of the seigneur of Beauport. In the colony he had left his own son, Nicolas Gaudais, Sieur Du Chartran, who is mentioned as being at Quebec on 2 Dec. 1663 and who sailed for France on 30 Aug. 1664.
No trace has been found of the report that Gaudais made to the king on his “examination” of New France.
AN, Col., C11A, 125, 217. APQ, Ins. cons. souv., I, 2v. Édits ord., III, 22–27. Marie Guyart de l’Incarnation, Lettres (Richaudeau), II, 266f., “Marie de l’Incarnation à son fils, 1663.” JJ (Laverdière et Casgrain), 321, 328. Jug. et délib., I, 1–2, 3–6, 33–34. “Mémoire du sieur Gaudais-Dupont à Mgr Colbert,” éd. P.-G. Roy, BRH, XXI (1915), 227–31. Caron, “Inventaire des documents,” APQ Rapport, 1939–40, 197–98. “Jean Peronne Dumesnil et ses mémoires,” BRH, XXI (1915), 169–71. Régis Roy, “Nicolas Gaudais, sieur de Chartran,” BRH, XL (1934), 320. | <urn:uuid:c111a396-d54f-4d1c-9609-294bfac8c763> | {
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The California lilac (Ceanothus spp.) is an evergreen, drought-tolerant shrub. It bears deeply fragrant lavender flowers and has an easy-care nature. With over 50 species to choose from, the gardener can find a variety of California lilac growth habits, from small trees to groundcovers. In the UK, California lilac shrubs are best grown in the South West and on all of the Gulf Stream affected west coast of Great Britain. This is a plant that is so easy to care for, it develops problems if pampered too much.
Plant the California lilac in well-drained soil. It is prone to root rot and should never have water sitting at the roots. Mix 7.5 to 10 cm (3 to 4 inches) of compost or peat moss into heavy soils to help with drainage problems.
Avoid the use of mulch around the California lilac. Mulch conserves soil moisture -- an environment that can kill this plant.
Water the California lilac only during periods of extreme drought and then water to a depth of 15 cm (6 inches). Allow the soil to dry completely before watering again. If you live in an area with cold winters, do not water at all beginning in late summer to give the California lilac a chance to harden off for winter.
Prune the California lilac to keep it to the size and shape you want. Use pruning shears to selectively prune branches that are growing out of bounds. Other than controlling the size of the plant it needs no other pruning.
The California lilac does not require fertiliser.
Things you need
- Compost or peat moss
- Pruning shears | <urn:uuid:1aa7c242-4828-4e90-808b-55a13efb15c9> | {
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Died June 22, 1995 in Coventry
Son of a Professor
Educated as a Foundation Scholar
Married Valerie Watts
Interested in how children learn
Richard R. Skemp, psychologist & mathematician
(expert in teaching both)
Skemp worked from a constructivist point of view years ahead of the widespread use of the term ‘constructivism’, centering on understanding how new concepts are built from existing concepts and fresh experiences (Gough, 2004, p. 72).
Skemp believed that relational understanding is consistent with intelligent learning.
It’s knowing what to do and why.
Lecturer in Psychology, Manchester University, 1955-52,
Senior Lecturer 1962-73
Professor of Educational Theory, Warwick University, 1973-86;
Director of the Mathematics Education Research Centre, Warwick 1978-86;
Visiting Professor, University of Calgary 1987-94;
Published 3 books and many papers
Educational Background & Publications
Let me construct!
MCC3.OA.3 Use multiplication and division within 100 to solve word problems in situations involving equal groups, arrays, and measurement quantities, e.g., by using drawings and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.12
MCC3.OA.4 Determine the unknown whole number in a multiplication or division equation relating three whole numbers. For example, determine the unknown number that makes the equation true in each of the equations 8 × ? = 48, 5 = □ ÷ 3, 6 × 6 = ?. × ? = 48, 5 = □ ÷ 3, 6 × 6 = ?.
Most noted for: Relational and Instrumental Understanding
Skemp states “To understand something means to assimilate it into an appropriate schema” (The Psychology of Learning Mathematics, pg. 46).
Relational understanding is consistent with intelligent learning. Knowing what to do and why.
Instrumental understanding means habit-learning or learning 'rules without reasons‘. Learning and using rules.
Relational Understanding versus
Easier to adapt to new tasks
Easier to remember
Relational knowledge is it’s own reward (with less emphasis on reward/punishment)
Natural quality of understanding; not a skill to be learned
Knowing what to do and why.
Teachers have misunderstandings
Difficult to assess: Time to talk to every student in determining relational understanding
More to learn; more actual content
Students want the right answer with being shown the right way to do it
Knowing without understanding why
Less knowledge involved
Needs to be reviewed often
Just suppose…more teachers are teaching this way (Does this reflect our our Process Standards).
Is easier to teach and understand
Results and rewards are more instantaneous
Quicker and easier route to figuring out the correct answer
Learning and using rules
Problem Solving Based Activities
Safe learning environment
Teacher is facilitator
Common Core Standards reflect Constructivism.
Math Practice Standards mandate students construct relational understandings.
Problem Solving must be premise of math curriculum.
Implications and Implementation
of teaching mathematics using
1. How do our Common Core Math Practice Standards reflect Skemp's Theory of Relational Understanding?
2. How can we use technology to enhance relational understanding?
3. If you are familiar with creating Prezis, how does that process better reflect relational understanding than traditional Power Points?
You have an understanding of one way and now it doesn’t work because the situation has changed.
You have an understanding that you can take different ways and know an alternate way to get there. So, you are able to get to your destination.
Question to ponder:
What happens if there is an accident and you cannot find your way and you have no phone or GPS? | <urn:uuid:3351ad7f-11ad-41bd-8e0d-cc075069061b> | {
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Yes, ‘tis the season for some good holiday activities in class! You students’ attention is probably on the upcoming holiday break. So try out these fun activities to keep them focused on their school work before the break.
Explore the different December Holidays
Some students may celebrate Christmas; some observe Hanukkah or Kwanzaa. Regardless of what they celebrate, it is great to have them be more conscious of the different holidays celebrated in December. Have them complete a Venn diagram to help compare and contrast the different holidays. Have them include how the holiday is celebrated, the foods eaten, and the history of the holiday. Or you can check out these Voki Holiday Lesson Plans for you class!
Charles Dickens Readout loud
Bring some Christmas spirit into class by having your students read A Christmas Carol. Allow your students to pick a role to play and remember to let everyone have a chance of reading it! Make it more fun and share it with their parents by having them record their voice on a Voki!
Create a Holiday-themed Classroom Newsletter
Ask your students questions about what they learned over the year and what are the looking forward to for the upcoming year. Share your students’ research projects in the newsletter. A great research project idea is have research the different holiday traditions! (See first activity). Or you can create fun holiday polls. The idea is easily adaptable to different subjects, like language arts and math.
What holiday activities did you plan this year? Let us know!
Until next time,
The Voki Team | <urn:uuid:1b4ac723-b705-4f46-ad33-5b4cd0772393> | {
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There are several answers to that question; various authors have favoured one or another, but it is probable that the fall of the Western Roman Empire was due to their combination.
From a geostrategic point of view, the stability of the Roman Empire was guaranteed by the legions: strong but not numerous forces, able to intervene in many places thanks to their high mobility. Legions were thus supported by strong logistics (supply chain) and infrastructure (the famous Roman road network). However, the West, being less populated than the East, had comparatively more boundaries to handle with less troops. Moreover, a big part of the Eastern Empire boundaries were shielded against invaders by geography (Black Sea, Caucasus mountains, Arabic desert...) and by the Persian Empire.
In the fourth century AD, due to increasing population, the "Barbarians" were seeking land to settle. From the point of view of a Visigoth, Rome is the Civilization, and room was to be found mostly in the Western part of the Empire. Indeed, all along the third and fourth century, there had been a constant stream of "germanic" newcomers who were willing to become part of Rome, and eager to obtain land, by charity or by force, whichever was necessary. What changed at Adrianople is that the immigrants became too numerous to content with henceforth unoccupied land, and they turned out to be too strong to be dealt with militarily. Adrianople is the symbolic pivot because in the aftermath of the battle, Rome had to evict Roman citizens to meet the demands for land of the invaders. This is the point where Rome failed to defend its own. This is the moment where people began to cease to believe in Rome.
Demographically speaking, the fall of Rome, or at least part of the Empire, was "unavoidable" (with all the usual caveats in these matters), since the population in the Empire was somewhat constant, while it was rapidly increasing in northern and eastern Europe. That the West half should fall first was "logical" because it was larger, less densely populated, less supported by its economy and infrastructure, and primarily targeted by invaders.
(Edward Luttwak's books are a very good reading on the strategic aspects of the Roman Empires, both before and after the split: The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire and The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire.)
These considerations must not hide other facts:
From the third century onwards, a constant theme in the Roman Empire was regular usurpations. Most emperors got the job by being proclaimed by their enthusiastic legions; when such a general was given this "nice" present by his troops, he had little choice but to roll with it and try to defeat the other legions still loyal to the previous emperor. If he succeeded, then he knew that he would have to crush many similarly rebellious commanders. The Roman military forces were mostly employed to quell such unrest.
In the late fourth century AD, it had become quite impossible for distant provinces to obtain any form of military help from Rome. This is the meaning of Rome's evacuation of Great Britain in 410 AD: as Honorius puts it, Britain's cities had to fend for themselves now. This was what they had already done for some time: legions were sent only to suppress rebellions. In that sense, the Western Empire can be said to have fallen by fighting itself to death.
Germanic people were increasingly part of the legions themselves. Rome was finding expedient to hire these newcomers, who were more easily expendable than Roman citizens. Great Germanic generals like Stilicho and Odoacer were really considering themselves as "Romans". From their point of view, they did not "invade" the Empire; they were the Empire.
It has been argued that a severe and long-standing economic crisis had made the Empire unsustainable. The roots of that crisis have been variously attributed to demographic stagnation, rarefaction of precious metals, disruption of long-distance commerce... even epidemics, introduction of rats and climatic changes have been invoked. In fact we don't really know; but we can see, for instance, that the population of Rome (the city) had been steadily decreasing, from a maximum of about 1.65 millions in around 100 AD, down to 1.1 millions in 400 AD, then sharply falling to 0.5 millions in 450 AD, then 100000 in 500 AD. Though the big drop is contemporaneous with the formal "fall of Western Empire" of 476 AD, the problem was apparently much older.
Therefore, it may be so that Odoacer, once having grabbed the reins of power, was lucid enough to realize that the former model had outlived its usefulness, and had to be dropped. Such economy-related explanations may make sense only if we can explain why the East was able to pull through; since climate, agriculture and commercial networks in the East used different structures, this kind of explanation is possible.
Some authors have blamed Christianism, preventing proper assimilation of Gothic people because they are Arianists, due to an historical accident: Ulfilas converted them to Christianism just at a time when Arianism was still fashionable. Goths and Lombards have clung to their now heretic liturgy because it was in their own language. The intransigence of Catholic rulers would have triggered rebellions, then chaos and fall.
This is too simplistic a story to be accurate. However, it highlights the fact that the society structure was changing. Indeed, the Germanic people were trying to become Roman, but not the same kind as the Romans already there; they still wanted to retain some of their identity. In very anachronistic terms, we might say that the new immigrants were not content with a central government, and were pushing for diluted federalism. | <urn:uuid:eac232b2-0a57-4041-b77b-e917007d921a> | {
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When patients describe the symptoms of restless legs syndrome, also known as Willis-Ekbon Syndrome, it can sound like something out of a psychothriller movie.
An ode to its name, the uncomfortable and often painful sensations of restless legs syndrome (RLS) begin when a person is sitting or sleeping. Patients often describe it as though small ants or worms are crawling all over a person’s limbs. Moving actually relieves the pain, so when you should be sleeping, your body is crying out to move. As a result, falling asleep is difficult, and those afflicted with this condition (between 3.9 and 14.3 percent of the population) often move through their days like zombies — absolutely sleep deprived and even less mobile because of their extreme fatigue.
Neurology experts say RLS is worthy of attention, not only because of its impact on the quality of a person’s life, but because of the extreme impact it can have on chronic disease.
A report released Wednesday in the journal Neurology followed more than 12,500 men for six years to determine the long-term effects of restless leg syndrome on the quality of the subjects’ lives, specifically to examine the effects of daytime sleepiness (as a result of RLS) and its impact on physical function.
Dr. Xiang Gao at Harvard Medical School, the lead researcher and corresponding author of the study, and his team only had data available on men, but in the future he said they plan to study women, for which the disease is almost twice as prevalent.
In the study, researchers were able to correlate the severity of a subject’s RLS symptoms with the level of their physical function. During the six-year period, researchers determined that the physical impact of the symptoms of severe restless legs syndrome on the body is equivalent to five years of aging or moderate amounts of smoking. In a phone interview, Dr. Gao said this is the first study of its kind to isolate a relationship between the RLS and its impact on physical debilitation. They established a control for the patients’ other disease factors, so that researchers could determine where the specific effects of RLS took an impact on the men’s health.
“Although it’s an association over a period of time, restless legs is linked to cardiovascular disease and even morbidity and mortality. There’s something going on that’s more than a matter of simple discomfort for these folks,” said Dr. Sanford Auerbach, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Boston Medical Center and associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Auerbach wrote an editorial on RLS in the same issue of the journal, arguing for physicians on the front lines of care to treat RLS as an indicator that physicians look for additional problems with the patient that may not be immediately evident.
“If you have restless legs syndrome, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have other medical problems, but it’s worth taking another look. The trouble is, while some patients come in complaining, others don’t think RLS is a real problem, or they don’t think the physician can really do anything about it. Or, they will just think that they’re crazy,” he said.
Sadly, the condition itself pushes patients physically to the brink.
For more information about restless legs syndrome, please consult this fact sheet from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
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How can teachers support oracy in their classrooms?
Speech and communication lies at the heart of classroom practice. It is the predominant way in which teachers provide instruction and support to their students and is central to how most students engage with the curriculum. This article examines how teachers can support oracy in the classroom, drawing on research commissioned by Voice 21, an organisation working with UK schools to support the teaching of spoken communication skills, and undertaken by LKMco, a think tank working across the education and policy sectors.
What is ‘oracy’?
Oracy can be seen as an outcome, whereby students learn to talk confidently, appropriately and sensitively. This article focuses on oracy as a process, whereby students learn through talk, deepening their understanding through dialogue with their teachers and peers (Alexander, 2012). Oracy involves teachers and their students thinking carefully and deliberately about the sorts of spoken language they are using, and this will vary across subjects and with different age groups. Different types of talk will be appropriate at different points in the learning cycle, and Robin Alexander outlines five key types of ‘teaching talk’ (Alexander, 2008):
- Rote: imparting knowledge by getting students to repeat key pieces of information to impart facts, ideas and routines.
- Recitation: using questions to test students’ knowledge and understanding, to check students’ progress, and stimulate recall.
- Instruction: telling students what to do and explaining key facts, principles or processes in order to transmit information.
- Discussion: encouraging the exchange of ideas within a class, to share information.
- Dialogue: using structured questions and discussion, helping students deepen understanding of key knowledge, principles and processes.
What are the benefits of developing teachers’ and students’ oracy?
Developing classroom talk has a wide range of benefits on students’ outcomes during school, and beyond. In particular, structured dialogue during lessons, where students are encouraged to participate verbally and given space and time to reflect upon and discuss complex ideas, is linked with:
- Cognitive gains, including improved results in English, maths and science, the retention of subject-specific knowledge, and ‘transference’ of reasoning skills across subject areas (Jay et al., 2017);
- Personal and social gains, including attitudes towards learning, enhanced self-esteem and self-confidence, and a reduction in anxiety (Hanley P et al., 2015); (Gorard et al., 2015), and;
- Civic engagement and empowerment, increasing children and young people’s ability to debate issues, while also increasing understanding about social issues and ability to manage differences with others (Nagda and Gurin, 2007).
Recent Education Endowment Foundation-funded evaluations indicate raising the quality and rigour of classroom talk has a range of positive academic, personal and social outcomes, in particular for children eligible for free school meals (Gorard et al., 2015); (Hanley P et al., 2015), and in terms of teachers’ confidence (Jay et al., 2017).
How do teachers use oracy?
Teachers recognise the importance of developing oracy in their lessons. Drawing on the results of a poll of over 900 teachers, 11 interviews with oracy experts, and 26 interviews and focus groups with teachers, school leaders and students in thirteen schools, LKMco’s research with Voice 21 highlights work taking place from the Early Years up to post-16 provision, in mainstream and special schools, and in the state and independent sectors (Millard and Menzies, 2016).
In the poll, over half of teachers said they model the sorts of spoken language they expect of their students, set expectations for their students’ oracy, and initiate pair or group activities in most of their lessons. Early Years and primary teachers, and essay-based subject teachers, tend to initiate such activities with greater regularity than their colleagues.
Exploring the strategies used in classrooms to support students’ language learning, Dockrell et al. (Dockrell et al., 2012) find teachers use some strategies more regularly than others. Their analysis of language learning environments, opportunities and interactions in 101 Reception and Key Stage 1 classes using the Communication Supporting Classroom Observation Tool (CSCOT) found:
- Small group work was the most common language learning opportunity across the year groups studied;
- The use of gesture and open questions were among those used regularly by teachers, while;
- The encouragement of new words, turn taking and listening skills were among the interactions observed less regularly.
One particular type of verbal interaction that features heavily in whole class teaching is teacher-led recitation, in which the teacher asks a question, a student responds, and the teacher evaluates their answer. Studies of classroom discourse suggest this form of interaction is highly prevalent throughout schooling, and that the questions themselves tend to seek predictable answers. While this has its uses, it is of limited use in prompting students to explore more elaborate ideas.
What are the barriers to better oracy?
Despite the importance teachers place on developing students’ oracy, LKMco’s research found there are barriers to them doing so (Millard and Menzies, 2016). A lack of time is the most common, cited by 31% of teachers. A quarter of respondents talked about avoiding oracy-based activities for fear of making shy or under-confident students uncomfortable. Consequently, the students who might potentially benefit most from such activities can miss out. Another common concern, cited by one in five respondents, is that discussion and dialogue will lead to disruption, prompting some to avoid such activities altogether.
An additional challenge faced by teachers and schools wanting to develop and extend oracy is that there is ‘nothing to show for it’. Interviewees felt this was a response to ‘high stakes’ accountability, wherein teachers feel under pressure to ensure students produce lots of writing.
How can teachers and schools overcome these barriers?
Individual teachers, groups of teachers, and whole schools can work to support their students’ oracy. Teachers can:
- Set clear ‘ground rules’ for talk during lessons (for example, by clarifying how and when students can contribute to class discussions, and what ‘active listening’ involves). Whole schools can also set expectations in this regard, such as in terms of how students should speak to their peers, and to staff and visitors.
- Model the talk they expect from students (in terms of tone and etiquette, as well as vocabulary and content).
- Ask great questions, encouraging different sorts of thought processes at different stages in the learning process. For example, teachers might prompt students to recall information at first, before then encouraging a deeper exploration of ideas.
- Scaffold students’ interactions and responses during lessons, for instance, by using sentence starters.
- Provide students with feedback on both what they say, and how they say it.
- Seek and give colleagues feedback on their classroom talk during development lesson observations.
Teachers at Eastwood Primary School in Keighley, for example, make video recordings of students at work, and then help the children evaluate their interactions in lessons. Riz Saleem, a year 6 teacher, said students reflect both on the content itself and on how they interact with one another. They might say, for example, “‘Miss, we don’t think we made eye contact with each other, and we think we need to…build on each other’s ideas.” This feedback is then used to inform future class work. Staff at the school said this has helped the students – many of whom speak English as an additional language – develop their confidence and skills as communicators.
Teachers should ensure their expectations of students’ ability to engage in dialogue are challenging but reasonable. Talking Point, a website run by the children’s communication charity I CAN, has a progress checker that teachers working with students of all ages may find helpful when establishing expectations for classroom talk (Talking Point, 2018).
Promoting oracy in the classrooms has the potential to help diversify and strengthen pedagogy, and deepen learning.
Learning through talk: Deepening subject knowledge through oracy
What could an oracy-rich classroom look like and how could it support students to refine their subject knowledge and develop their understanding?
At School 21, in Stratford, East London, teachers provide students with opportunities to learn, both to and through talk. In practice, this means that students are encouraged to develop and revise their understanding through sustained and productive dialogue with their peers. When engaging in discussion, for example, students must have a system for turn-taking, and they must ensure that everyone has a chance to contribute and that when somebody speaks, their ideas are respected. Introducing ‘ground rules for talk’, as advocated by Dawes et al. (Dawes et al., 2004) has been particularly effective at teaching students the conventions of group talk and ensuring that everybody’s voice is valued.
To ensure that the contributions students make to group discussions improve their reasoning and develop their understanding, students are also taught a number of ‘talk moves’ or ‘roles’. These encourage students to develop and interact with their own and other’s ideas by, for example, challenging, clarifying or probing a group member’s idea. Students are also taught to build or elaborate on each other’s ideas, rather than merely stating their own thoughts with no relation to what has been said previously. They are taught when to introduce a new line of enquiry or summarise a discussion and are encouraged to consider how these ‘moves’ can help further their thinking as a group.
The Oracy Framework, developed in conjunction with teachers at School 21 and Cambridge University, provides a lens through which to view the oracy skills required to engage in effective group talk, and can be an effective way of framing the teaching of these skills ((Mercer N et al., 2017); see https://impact.chartered.college/article/mercer-identifying-assessing-student-spoken-language-skills/)
Teaching students the oracy skills they require to learn effectively throughtalk ensures that group talk develops both students’ thinking and understanding. Anna Kyrk, Head of Curriculum at School 21, has developed a talk-rich approach to teaching Year 7 science, which provides students with plenty of opportunities to develop their scientific subject knowledge and understanding. She explains one strategy that has been particularly useful:
‘Representing a scientific concept as a story, through pictures, has been a really effective way of immersing students in big scientific concepts. The students decode the stories through discussion in groups. I then layer in the key vocabulary needed to identify the processes of complex ideas such as genetic mutation, variation and natural selection. By the end of a 40-minute session, students are able to explain these processes, using the story to support their explanations. My role is to listen in, to guide the discussion and move the students’ understanding on through talk and effective questioning.
Becoming an oracy teacher has changed my practice significantly. In our classroom, I am not the holder of knowledge and my job is not to ‘fill up’ the students. We talk to discover, then we communicate what we have found out, backed up by the subject knowledge and key vocabulary that we have developed through talk. We are explorers together.’ | <urn:uuid:1b5bfe74-00e4-4c40-bf98-440f4d9cbc7e> | {
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The “web-based” solution, which runs on a remote server, is generally able to be reached by the general public through a web page. It constitutes a web page with a chatbot embedded in it, and a text form is the sole interface between the user (you) and the chatbot. Any “upgrades” or improvements to the interface are solely the option and responsibility of the botmaster.
Simple chatbots work based on pre-written keywords that they understand. Each of these commands must be written by the developer separately using regular expressions or other forms of string analysis. If the user has asked a question without using a single keyword, the robot can not understand it and, as a rule, responds with messages like “sorry, I did not understand”.
ELIZA's key method of operation (copied by chatbot designers ever since) involves the recognition of clue words or phrases in the input, and the output of corresponding pre-prepared or pre-programmed responses that can move the conversation forward in an apparently meaningful way (e.g. by responding to any input that contains the word 'MOTHER' with 'TELL ME MORE ABOUT YOUR FAMILY'). Thus an illusion of understanding is generated, even though the processing involved has been merely superficial. ELIZA showed that such an illusion is surprisingly easy to generate, because human judges are so ready to give the benefit of the doubt when conversational responses are capable of being interpreted as "intelligent".
You can find chatbots on many messaging apps, including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Kik, and Telegram. Even the more work-focused service Slack has its own built-in bot that helps you set reminders and jot down notes. Twitter has bots too which will reply to you, but usually not offer any assistance. I've rounded up some of the top chatbots on each platform in the list below.
A chatbot (also known as a spy, conversational bot, chatterbot, interactive agent, conversational interface, Conversational AI, talkbot or artificial spy entity) is a computer program or an artificial intelligence which conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods. Such programs are often designed to convincingly simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner, thereby passing the Turing test. Chatbots are typically used in dialog systems for various practical purposes including customer service or information acquisition. Some chatbots use sophisticated natural language processing systems, but many simpler ones scan for keywords within the input, then pull a reply with the most matching keywords, or the most similar wording pattern, from a database. | <urn:uuid:56c7150d-cc27-48ea-adbc-b69ba70e9fe5> | {
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Many adults remember walking or riding their bikes to and from school. How many times do we remember Grandpa telling us about how hard his walk to school was back in the day (“I walked seven miles uphill in six feet of snow each way. You kids have it easy, I tell you.”)?
But over the last couple of decades, fewer kids have been able to walk or bike to school. Now they catch a school bus or are driven to class by their parents, even when they live less than a half-mile away from the school building.
In 1997, the Partnership for a Walkable America sponsored the first National Walk Our Children To School Day in Chicago, modeling it after a program in Great Britain. By 2002, all 50 states and more than 3 million students were participating in International Walk (or Bike) to School Day. This is an event that promotes safer and improved streets and sidewalks, healthy habits and clean air.
There still is time for schools in Alaska to organize their own International Walk (or Bike) to School Day Events. To get started, go to the State of Alaska’s Safe Routes To School site. There should be a list of events scheduled for Alaska schools (if your school isn’t listed, then create and event and register it). You also can go to the National Center for Safe Routes To School site for more information.
Many parents will organize walking school buses (where kids join a group of walkers as it passes their house, with several parents in the mix for safety). Local merchants can donate door prizes that are raffled off to kids who walk or bike to school (reflective arm/leg bands, bike lights, bike helmets, etc., are good prizes). It’s good to have parents involved, because they can note problems along the route, such as a blind corner with no sidewalk for walkers or a house with an aggressive dog. Also, don’t forget to reward safe practices, such as all cyclists should wear bike helmets (Sitka has a mandatory helmet ordinance for youth) and making sure jackets have reflectives so drivers can see the kids. | <urn:uuid:b0cf2947-af6d-42f7-b2af-db724e725c87> | {
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In geometry, a dodecahedron (Greek δωδεκάεδρον, from δώδεκα dōdeka "twelve" + ἕδρα hédra "base", "seat" or "face") is any polyhedron with twelve flat faces. The most familiar dodecahedron is the regular dodecahedron, which is a Platonic solid. The pyritohedron is an irregular pentagonal dodecahedron, having the same topology as the regular one but pyritohedral symmetry instead. The rhombic dodecahedron has octahedral symmetry. There are a large number of other dodecahedra.
Ih, order 120
Th, order 24.
T, order 12.
In crystallography, two important dodecahedra can occur as crystal forms in some symmetry classes of the cubic crystal system that are topologically equivalent to the regular dodecahedron but less symmetrical: the pyritohedron with pyritohedral symmetry, and the tetartoid with tetrahedral symmetry:
A pyritohedron has 30 edges, divided into two lengths: 24 and 6 in each group.
|Face polygon||irregular pentagon|
|Symmetry group||Th, [4,3+], (3*2), order 24|
|Rotation group||T, [3,3]+, (332), order 12|
A pyritohedron is a dodecahedron with pyritohedral (Th) symmetry. Like the regular dodecahedron, it has twelve identical pentagonal faces, with three meeting in each of the 20 vertices. However, the pentagons are not constrained to be regular, and the underlying atomic arrangement has no true fivefold symmetry axes. Its 30 edges are divided into two sets – containing 24 and 6 edges of the same length. The only axes of rotational symmetry are three mutually perpendicular twofold axes.
Although regular dodecahedra do not exist in crystals, the pyritohedron form occurs in the crystals of the mineral pyrite, and it may be an inspiration for the discovery of the regular Platonic solid form. Note that the true regular dodecahedron can occur as a shape for quasicrystals with icosahedral symmetry, which includes true fivefold rotation axes.
The coordinates of the eight vertices of the original cube are:
- (±1, ±1, ±1)
The coordinates of the 12 vertices of the cross-edges are:
- (0, ±(1 + h), ±(1 − h2))
- (±(1 + h), ±(1 − h2), 0)
- (±(1 − h2), 0, ±(1 + h))
where h is the height of the wedge-shaped "roof" above the faces of the cube. When h = 1, the six cross-edges degenerate to points and a rhombic dodecahedron is formed. When h = 0, the cross-edges are absorbed in the facets of the cube, and the pyritohedron reduces to a cube. When h = (√5 − 1)/2, the inverse of the golden ratio, the result is a regular dodecahedron.
A reflected pyritohedron is made by swapping the nonzero coordinates above. The two pyritohedra can be superimposed to give the compound of two dodecahedra as seen in the image here.
The pyritohedron has a geometric degree of freedom with limiting cases of a cubic convex hull at one limit of colinear edges, and a rhombic dodecahedron as the other limit as 6 edges are degenerated to length zero. The regular dodecahedron represents a special intermediate case where all edges and angles are equal.
|1 : 1||1 : 1||2 : 1||1.3092... : 1||1 : 1||0 : 1|
|h = - (√5 + 1)/2||h = 0||h = (√5 − 1)/2||h = 1|
Regular star, great stellated dodecahedron, with pentagons distorted into regular pentagrams
Concave pyritohedral dodecahedron
A cube can be divided into a pyritohedron by bisecting all the edges, and faces in alternate directions.
The geometric proportions of the pyritohedron in the Weaire–Phelan structure
A regular dodecahedron is an intermediate case with equal edge lengths.
A rhombic dodecahedron is the limiting case with the 6 crossedges reducing to length zero.
Tetragonal pentagonal dodecahedron
|Face polygon||irregular pentagon|
|Conway polyhedron notation||gT|
|Symmetry group||T, [3,3]+, (332), order 12|
|Properties||convex, face transitive|
A tetartoid (also tetragonal pentagonal dodecahedron, pentagon-tritetrahedron, and tetrahedric pentagon dodecahedron) is a dodecahedron with chiral tetrahedral symmetry, (T). Like the regular dodecahedron, it has twelve identical pentagonal faces, with three meeting in each of the 20 vertices. However, the pentagons are not regular and the figure has no fivefold symmetry axes.
Although regular dodecahedra do not exist in crystals, the tetartoid form occurs in the crystals. The name tetartoid comes from the Greek root for one-fourth because it has one forth of full octahedral symmetry, and half that of pyritohedral symmetry. The mineral cobaltite can have this symmetry form.
Its topology can be as a cube with square faces bisected into 2 rectangles like the pyritohedron, and then the bisection lines are slanted retaining 3-fold rotation at the 8 corners.
It can be seen as a tetrahedron, with edges divided into 3 segments, along with a center point of each triangular face. In Conway polyhedron notation it can be seen as gT, a gyro tetrahedron.
The rhombic dodecahedron is a zonohedron with twelve rhombic faces and octahedral symmetry. It is dual to the quasiregular cuboctahedron (an Archimedean solid) and occurs in nature as a crystal form. The rhombic dodecahedron packs together to fill space.
The rhombic dodecahedron can be seen as a degenerate pyritohedron where the 6 special edges have been reduced to zero length, reducing the pentagons into rhombic faces.
Another important rhombic dodecahedron has twelve faces congruent to those of the rhombic triacontahedron, i.e. the diagonals are in the ratio of the golden ratio. It is also a zonohedron and was described by Bilinski in 1960. This figure is another spacefiller, and can also occur in non-periodic spacefillings along with the rhombic triacontahedron, the rhombic icosahedron and rhombic hexahedra.
There are 6,384,634 topologically distinct convex dodecahedra, excluding mirror images, having at least 8 vertices. (Two polyhedra are "topologically distinct" if they have intrinsically different arrangements of faces and vertices, such that it is impossible to distort one into the other simply by changing the lengths of edges or the angles between edges or faces.)
Topologically distinct dodecahedra (excluding pentagonal and rhombic forms)
- Uniform polyhedra:
- Johnson solids (regular faced):
- Congruent irregular faced: (face-transitive)
- Other less regular faced:
- Hendecagonal pyramid – 11 isosceles triangles and 1 regular hendecagon, C11v, order 11
- Trapezo-rhombic dodecahedron – 6 rhombi, 6 trapezoids – dual of triangular orthobicupola, D3h symmetry, order 12
- Rhombo-hexagonal dodecahedron or elongated Dodecahedron – 8 rhombi and 4 equilateral hexagons, D4h symmetry, order 16
- Truncated pentagonal trapezohedron, D5d, order 20, topologically equivalent to regular dodecahedron
|Regular dodecahedron graph|
A Hamiltonian cycle in a dodecahedron.
|Properties||Hamiltonian, regular, symmetric, distance-regular, distance-transitive, 3-vertex-connected, planar graph|
This graph can also be constructed as the generalized Petersen graph G(10, 2). The high degree of symmetry of the polygon is replicated in the properties of this graph, which is distance-transitive, distance-regular, and symmetric. The automorphism group has order 120. The vertices can be colored with 3 colors, as can the edges, and the diameter is 5.
The dodecahedral graph is Hamiltonian—there is a cycle containing all the vertices. Indeed, this name derives from a mathematical game invented in 1857 by William Rowan Hamilton, the icosian game. The game's object was to find a Hamiltonian cycle along the edges of a dodecahedron.
- 120-cell: a regular polychoron (4D polytope) whose surface consists of 120 dodecahedral cells.
- Pentakis dodecahedron
- Snub dodecahedron
- Truncated dodecahedron
- Dodecahedral Crystal Habit
- Hafner, I. and Zitko, T.; Introduction to golden rhombic polyhedra
- Lord, K.; Tilings, coverings, clusters and quasicrystals
- Counting polyhedra
- Weisstein, Eric W., "Dodecahedral Graph", MathWorld.
- Plato's Fourth Solid and the "Pyritohedron", by Paul Stephenson, 1993, The Mathematical Gazette, Vol. 77, No. 479 (Jul., 1993), pp. 220–226
- THE GREEK ELEMENTS
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to Regular dodecahedra.|
- Weisstein, Eric W., "Dodecahedron", MathWorld.
- Weisstein, Eric W., "Elongated Dodecahedron", MathWorld.
- Weisstein, Eric W., "Pyritohedron", MathWorld.
- Stellation of Pyritohedron VRML models and animations of Pyritohedron and its stellations.
- Richard Klitzing, 3D convex uniform polyhedra, o3o5x – doe
- Editable printable net of a dodecahedron with interactive 3D view
- The Uniform Polyhedra
- Origami Polyhedra – Models made with Modular Origami
- Dodecahedron – 3-d model that works in your browser
- Virtual Reality Polyhedra The Encyclopedia of Polyhedra
- VRML models
- K.J.M. MacLean, A Geometric Analysis of the Five Platonic Solids and Other Semi-Regular Polyhedra
- Dodecahedron 3D Visualization
- Stella: Polyhedron Navigator: Software used to create some of the images on this page.
- How to make a dodecahedron from a Styrofoam cube
|Fundamental convex regular and uniform polytopes in dimensions 2–10|
|Family||An||Bn||I2(p) / Dn||E6 / E7 / E8 / F4 / G2||Hn|
|Uniform polyhedron||Tetrahedron||Octahedron • Cube||Demicube||Dodecahedron • Icosahedron|
|Uniform 4-polytope||5-cell||16-cell • Tesseract||Demitesseract||24-cell||120-cell • 600-cell|
|Uniform 5-polytope||5-simplex||5-orthoplex • 5-cube||5-demicube|
|Uniform 6-polytope||6-simplex||6-orthoplex • 6-cube||6-demicube||122 • 221|
|Uniform 7-polytope||7-simplex||7-orthoplex • 7-cube||7-demicube||132 • 231 • 321|
|Uniform 8-polytope||8-simplex||8-orthoplex • 8-cube||8-demicube||142 • 241 • 421|
|Uniform 9-polytope||9-simplex||9-orthoplex • 9-cube||9-demicube|
|Uniform 10-polytope||10-simplex||10-orthoplex • 10-cube||10-demicube|
|Uniform n-polytope||n-simplex||n-orthoplex • n-cube||n-demicube||1k2 • 2k1 • k21||n-pentagonal polytope|
|Topics: Polytope families • Regular polytope • List of regular polytopes| | <urn:uuid:671f61a8-05b2-4fc2-8561-a7e228c5346a> | {
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What does the expression “Demographic Winter” mean?
The phrase “Demographic Winter” denotes the worldwide decline in birthrates, also referred to as a “birth-dearth,” and what it portends.
Demographer Philip Longman (author of “The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity”) observes: “The ongoing global decline in human birthrates is the single most powerful force affecting the fate of nations and the future of society in the 21st. century.”
Worldwide, birthrates have declined by more than 50% in the past 30 years (since 1979). There are now 59 nations, with 44% of the world’s population, with below-replacement fertility
Sometime in this century, the world’s population will begin to decline. (The United Nations Population Division says that, worldwide, we could achieve below-replacement fertility by 2030.) At a certain point, the decline will become rapid. We may even reach what demographers call population free-fall in our lifetimes.
Russia is losing three-quarters-of-a-million people a year. Its population (currently 145 million) is expected to fall by one-third by 2050.
The term “nuclear winter,” popularized in the 1980s, alluded to the catastrophic environmental impact of a nuclear war. The long-term consequences of Demographic Winter could be equally devastating.
What is replacement fertility, and why is the number 2.13 so important?
Replacement fertility is the point of equilibrium at which a country’s population is neither growing nor declining. In order to maintain current population, the average woman must have 2.13 children during her lifetime. She needs to replace herself and a man. Because some children will die before reaching maturity and having children of their own, slightly more than two children are needed – hence 2.13.
A birthrate of more than 2.13 equals population growth. A birthrate of less than 2.13 means long-term population decline.
If birthrates are declining, why does the world’s population continue to grow?
If it’s already in motion, car in neutral will continue moving forward for a while, especially if it’s going downhill, even if gas isn’t being injected into the engine.
Today’s population growth is due to two factors: 1. higher fertility rates in the 1950s and 60s, and 2. people living longer than ever before.
The thing to remember is this: Declining birthrates will equal a declining population worldwide at some point in the next few decades. In the West (especially in Europe) population decline will become a reality much sooner. In some countries, such a Russia, it’s already happening.
A nation’s demographic future can be seen in its current birthrate. In Europe, the number of children under 5 has declined by 36% since 1960. Worldwide, there are 6 million fewer children, 6 and under, today, than there were in 1990. If present trends continue, the United Nations estimates that by 2050 there will be 248 million fewer children in the world then there are now.
Where are birthrates lowest?
Of the 10 countries with the lowest birthrates, 9 are in Europe. Overall, the European fertility rate is 1.3, well below replacement level (2.1). No European nation has a replacement-level birthrate.
Italy’s fertility rate is 1.2. Spain’s is 1.1. That means in the not-too-distant future, absent massive immigration, these countries will lose half of their people in every generation.
Russia’s birthrate fell from 2.4 in 1990 to 1.17 today – a decline of more than 50% in less than 20 years. Each year, there are more abortions than live births in the Russian Federation.
While birthrates are also plummeting in developing nations, most still have above-replacement fertility – for the time being.
The U.S. fertility rate is just at the replacement level, due in part to higher immigrant birthrates. How long this will continue is anyone’s guess. It’s also important to note that all of the factors driving down birth rates elsewhere in the world are present here as well.
What are the consequences of demographic decline?
Economist Robert J. Samuelson wrote in a June 15, 2005 column in The Washington Post: “It’s hard to be a great power if your population is shriveling.” Samuelson warned: “Europe as we know it is going out of business…. Western Europe’s population grows dramatically grayer, projects the U.S. Census Bureau. Now about one-sixth of the population is 65 and older. By 2030, that could be one-fourth and by 2050, almost one-third.”
By the mid-point of this century, 16% of the world’s population will be over 65. In developed nations, today, 20% of the population is over 60. By 2050, the proportion of elderly will rise to 36%. By then, these societies will have two elderly for every child.
If present low birthrates persist, the European Union estimates there will be a continent-wide shortfall of 20 million workers by 2030.
Who will operate the factories and farms in the Europe of the future? Who will develop the natural resources? Where will Russia find the soldiers to guard the frontiers of the nation with the largest land mass?
Who will care for a graying population? A burgeoning elderly population combined with a shrinking work force will lead to a train-wreck for state pension systems.
This only skims the surface of the way demographic decline will change the face of civilization. Even the environment will be adversely impacted. With severely strained public budgets, developed nations will no longer be willing to shoulder the costs of industrial clean-up or a reduction of CO2 emissions.
What factors contribute to demographic decline?
A number of social trends of the post-war era have converged to create a perfect demographic storm.
Men and women are delaying marriage, making it less likely they’ll have more than one or two children. Today in the West, almost one in two marriages ends in divorce. The children of divorce are less likely to marry and form families themselves. More married women are putting off having children for careers. After 35, it becomes progressively harder for women to conceive.
The news and entertainment media tell young adults that satisfaction comes from careers, romance, travel and “personal growth” – not from having children. It’s rare that Hollywood even portrays large families (today, more than 2 children). The culture’s message is live-for-moment and lives primarily for yourself, with no sense of obligation to generations past or concern for posterity.
The growth of cohabitation also has an impact. (In Scandinavia, almost as many couples are living together as married.) Cohabitation is not conducive to childbearing or childrearing.
For the past 20 to 30 years, children have been taught that over-population (the so-called population bomb) will wreak havoc on the environment and economic development. Not surprisingly, children thus indoctrinated frequently choose to have fewer children when they reach maturity.
Religious observance has been shown to correlate with higher birthrates. The increasing secularization of Western societies has been accompanied by lower birthrates.
Thus, every aspect of modernity works against family life and in favor of singleness and small families or voluntary childlessness.
Can’t the problem be fixed by increased immigration?
In a demographic sense, this is robbing Peter to pay Paul.
The host country gains people, but the home country loses. The developing world, which has seen its own birthrate, cut in half since 1970 (from almost 6 to barely 4) can ill afford to lose large numbers through emigration.
Mass immigration changes the national character of the host country. Immigrants tend to have a lower education level than natives. Many never learn the language of their new home or identify with its history and heritage. (Instead of being French-Algerian, they remain an Algerian who happens to be living in France.)
Citizens of developed countries often worry about the loss of national identity.
Can’t demographic winter be countered by governments encouraging people to have more children?
This is being tried in Western Europe and Russia. The Russian Federation pays families a bonus of 250,000 rubles (the equivalent of $9,200) for every child after the first – in a nation where the average monthly wage is only $330. It’s not working.
Couples decide to have children for all kinds of reasons – religious, emotional, cultural, etc. Money isn’t one of them.
Children are a life-long commitment. While governments should make childrearing easier, by lowering the tax-burden on families (out of self-interest if not fairness), cash incentives don’t work.
If the United States has near-replacement fertility, why should we care?
All of the factors that are leading Europe into the depths of Demographic Winter are present in the United States as well, including high divorce rates, the rise of cohabitation, families putting off procreation to pursue careers, an anti-family culture and voluntary childlessness.
We may be a few decades behind Europe, but we’re heading in the same direction.
National economies are interconnected to such an extent that the impact of economic collapse in one country or region can be felt around the world.
The social, political and economic decline of previously stable nations can destabilize entire regions and create perils for neighbors and far-ways allies. The United States is connected to Europe economically and through multiple security treaties.
What Is “Demographic Winter: Decline of the Human Family”
“Demographic Winter: Decline of the Human Family,” is an hour-long documentary which explores every aspect of demographic decline based on interviews with hundreds of academics, scholars, researchers, elected officials and civil and religious leaders from more than 33 countries.
Produced by Barry McLerran and directed by Rick Stout, “Demographic Winter” brings together a number of disciplines to examine and analyze what could be the greatest threat confronting humanity in the 21st century.
What role did declining birth rates play in the current economic crisis?
Economist Harry S. Dent notes that 70% of GNP in the U.S. is consumer-driven. As the Baby Boomers aged, they began spending less, moving to smaller homes and planning for their retirement. Gen-X can’t fill the gap of the decline of spending by 81 million baby-boomers. This contributed to the slump in the housing market – when Boomers began selling rather than buying, there was a glut on the market and home sales began to decline. “Demographic Winter” predicted the financial crash of 2008 to within 18 months. The “Demographic Bomb” forecasts worse in store for our economy.
Can the economic impact of declining birth rates be seen outside the United States?
Yes, in Japan, which has a birth rate of 1.25. Of the 10 nations with the lowest birth rates today, Japan is the only one outside of Europe. It also has the highest ratio elderly to children in the world. As the rising sun sets, where will the next generation of consumers and producers come from? While much of the industrialized world saw their economies grow in the 1990s, from 1990 to 2005, Japan’s stock market fell 80%. Between 1990 and 2005. Its real estate market lost 60% of its value.
What is the population control movement and how has it promoted demographic winter?
The population control movement includes organizations, governments and international bodies (like the United Nations), dedicated to lower birth rates. Their methods range from the voluntary to the coercive – including forced sterilization in Peru and China’s one-child-per-family policy, which has included forced abortions. Over the course of decades, population controllers have persuaded the public, through fear and hysteria, that there are too many people in the world and drastic action must be taken to curb population growth. Their fallacies have been institutionalized and become the “standard wisdom” of Western elites.
Who is Paul Ehrlich and what is his relation to declining birth rates?
An etymologist by training, Paul Ehrlich is the author of the 1968 best-seller “The Population Bomb,” and the father of the modern population control movement. In “The Population Bomb,” Dr. Ehrlich argued that population would quickly outstrip resources, leading to global starvation. (“The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famine … .hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.”) Ehrlich also argued that if voluntary limitations on population didn’t work, coercion would be necessary – a refrain taken up by the movement he spawned. He described human population growth as a cancer that would require drastic action to treat. Currently a professor at Stanford, Erhlich continues to argue that (absent draconian measures) population growth will doom the planet – this notwithstanding that none of his more sensational predictions have come to pass.
What is “The Demographic Bomb: Demography Is Destiny”?
Released in July of 2009, “The Demographic Bomb” is the long-awaited sequel to “Demographic Winter: the decline of the human family.”
It continues the examination of rapidly falling birth rates (and both the causes and consequences thereof) where “Demographic Winter” left off. “The Population Bomb” focuses on the economic impact of declining birth rates — especially as they relate to the current global economic crisis – and the role played by the population-control movement in this disaster in the making.
Like “Demographic Winter,” “The Demographic Bomb” includes input from distinguished economists, historians, demographers and other social scientists. It also includes the views of Dr. Erhlich, as well as the current and past heads of the United Nations Population Division.
To order a copy of “Demographic Winter: the decline of the human family” and “The Demographic Bomb: Demography Is Destiny,” or view a trailer for either documentary, go to http://www.demographicwinter.com | <urn:uuid:65d15cc0-c70f-4036-b8d5-c7b809562072> | {
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What Makes the McRib the McRib? McRibbitives.
CSPI Rates the Additives in McDonald's Seasonal Pork Sensation
Few fast-food items have achieved the cultural prominence of the McRib. Object of satire,conspiracy theory, and fevered online speculation, the McRib typically appears on McDonald's menus with great fanfare only to vanish, fleetingly, some time later.
As Ian Bogost wrote in The Atlantic, we experience the McRib as (quasi-) foodstuff, as marketing campaign, as cult object, as Internet meme, but those experiences don't sufficiently explain it.
To better explain the McRib, the Center for Science in the Public Interest has taken a closer look at a few of its chemical ingredients. There's more to the McRib, it turns out, than bun, pork, sauce, pickles and onions.
McRib Pork Patty: BHA, propyl gallate, and citric acid are used as preservatives in the patty. While citric acid is safe, CSPI recommends that consumers avoid BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole) and propyl gallate. The Food and Drug Administration permits the use of BHA in food, even though its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, says that BHA is "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen." It is often used with propyl gallate to prevent fats and oils from spoiling. CSPI says that propyl gallate may be an endocrine disruptor and needs to be better studied.
McRib Sauce: After water, the main ingredient in the sauce is high-fructose corn syrup. It's not true that HFCS is worse than regular sugar, but CSPI recommends everyone cut back on both. Xanthan gum, which is secreted by bacteria, is safe, at least in this application. (Used in a product called SimplyThick, it has caused problems in infants.) Sodium benzoate appears to be safe, though it causes allergic reactions in sensitive individuals. It is unclear exactly which of several caramel color varieties is used in McRib Sauce, but when it is produced with ammonia, carcinogenic contaminants form. That's been a problem in caramel-colored soft drinks, but regardless of how the caramel coloring in McRib Sauce was produced, the amount one would consume is small and not a problem. Good for McDonald's for using beet powder to color the sauce instead of Red 3 (a carcinogen) or Red 40 (one of several dyes which in Europe must be labeled as having "an adverse effect on activity and attention in children").
McRib Bun. The white-flour bun, like a lot of commercially made breads, features preservatives, conditioners, and other additives. The bun contains partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil, which provides under half a gram of artificial trans fat so McDonald’s can state "0 grams" in its nutrition information (the FDA has tentatively concluded that partially hydrogenated oil should not be used because it increases heart disease risk). Dextrose is a sugar and helps provide color in baked bread. Ammonium sulfateis a safe leavening agent. Sodium stearoyl lactylate is a safe dough conditioner, and diacetyl tartaric acid ester of monoglycerides, or DATEM, and mono- and diglycerides are safe emulsifiers. Calcium propionate is a safe preservative. The bun also has dollops ofazodicarbonamide, monocalcium phosphate, and calcium peroxide.
Pickle Slices. McDonald's pickle slices contain polysorbate 80, a safe emulsifier; potassium sorbate, a safe additive which inhibits mold growth; and alum and calcium chloride.
The pork, bun, sauce, and pickle slices all contain salt, which CSPI says is probably the single most harmful ingredient in the food supply. Excess salt in the diet contributes to high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and other health problems. CSPI has repeatedly urged the FDA to set reasonable limits on salt in various categories of foods. The McRib has 980 milligrams of sodium (about half a day's worth) as well as 10 grams of saturated fat (also half a day's worth).
"Scary-sounding additives aside, it's just as well that the McRib's annual disappearance is as certain as its annual arrival," said CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson. "It's basically 500 calories worth of white flour and factory-farmed, highly processed, and fatty meat that has been flavored, texturized, colored, and preserved with a bunch of both safe and questionable additives."
It is not known when this year's McRib "season" will end.
Contact Jeff Cronin (jcronin[at]cspinet.org) or Ariana Stone (astone[at]cspinet.org). | <urn:uuid:d54fb64e-ec7d-4b25-8d46-bdf9ee5dd384> | {
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More than half the country has a school choice program that enables families to use public money to send their children to private school.
The programs vary by name, structure and eligibility requirements, but most are geared toward low-income families.
In 2015, less than 1 percent of children in kindergarten through high school used vouchers to attend private schools.
A look at some of the different types of school choice programs:
State money in a per-student amount is reallocated and given to a chosen private school where the child is accepted. That money would have otherwise been given to the public neighborhood school that holds the responsibility to educate the student.
The only federal voucher program is in the District of Columbia.
The programs generally allow private nonprofit groups to solicit taxpayers, primarily businesses, to contribute to their scholarship fund in exchange for state tax credits. The money is considered a charitable donation and the state deducts the amount, sometimes dollar-for-dollar, from the contributor’s tax bill. Families can then apply for a scholarship and the private nonprofits pay the private schools directly. States’ roles are deliberately limited to get around restrictions on using public money for private schools.
EDUCATION SAVINGS ACCOUNTS
Public funds are placed in a government-administered “savings account” that families can use to pay for a wide range of education costs, from tuition and tutoring to transportation and textbooks.
Republished with permission of The Associated Press. | <urn:uuid:48a51158-5167-442b-bede-84d68db869b6> | {
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The Higher Arithmetic
How to count to a zillion without falling off the end of the number line
Last year the National Debt Clock in New York City ran out of digits. The billboard-size electronic counter, mounted on a wall near Times Square, overflowed when the public debt reached $10 trillion, or 1013 dollars. The crisis was resolved by squeezing another digit into the space occupied by the dollar sign. Now a new clock is on order, with room for growth; it won’t fill up until the debt reaches a quadrillion (1015) dollars.
The incident of the Debt Clock brings to mind a comment made by Richard Feynman in the 1980s—back when mere billions still had the power to impress:
There are 1011 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.
The important point here is not that high finance is catching up with the sciences; it’s that the numbers we encounter everywhere in daily life are growing steadily larger. Computer technology is another area of rapid numeric inflation. Data storage capacity has gone from kilobytes to megabytes to gigabytes, and the latest disk drives hold a terabyte (1012 bytes). In the world of supercomputers, the current state of the art is called petascale computing (1015 operations per second), and there is talk of a coming transition to exascale (1018). After that, we can await the arrival of zettascale (1021) and yottascale (1024) machines—and then we run out of prefixes!
Even these numbers are puny compared with the prodigious creations of pure mathematics. In the 18th century the largest known prime number had 10 digits; the present record-holder runs to almost 13 million digits. The value of pi has been calculated to a trillion digits—a feat at once magnificent and mind-numbing. Elsewhere in mathematics there are numbers so big that even trying to describe their size requires numbers that are too big to describe. Of course none of these numbers are likely to turn up in everyday chores such as balancing a checkbook. On the other hand, logging into a bank’s web site involves doing arithmetic with numbers in the vicinity of 2128, or 1038. (The calculations take place behind the scenes, in the cryptographic protocols meant to ensure privacy and security.)
Which brings me to the main theme of this column: Those streams of digits that make us so dizzy also present challenges for the design of computer hardware and software. Like the National Debt Clock, computers often set rigid limits on the size of numbers. When routine calculations begin to bump up against those limits, it’s time for a rethinking of numeric formats and algorithms. Such a transition may be upon us soon, with the approval last year of a revised standard for one common type of computer arithmetic, called floating point. Before the new standard becomes too deeply entrenched, perhaps it’s worth pausing to examine a few alternative schemes for computing with astronomical and economical and mathematical numbers. | <urn:uuid:ecae9304-85d4-4ccb-a4d2-041a4320ce92> | {
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A pair of Trumpeter Swans lifts off a frozen river freshly dusted in snow. Trumpeter Swans are the largest waterfowl found in North America. Growing 6 feet in length and weighing up to 25lbs. In order to get airborne these birds need 100 yards of runway for successful take-offs.
To select item quantities for purchase, add item to cart, then specify quantities from the main 'Cart' screen. | <urn:uuid:4514509f-fb5c-4486-87fc-59e065fd4736> | {
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America’s Wars on Poverty and the Building of the Welfare State
Summary and Keywords
On January 5, 2014—the fiftieth anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s launch of the War on Poverty—the New York Times asked a panel of opinion leaders a simple question: “Does the U.S. Need Another War on Poverty?” While the answers varied, all the invited debaters accepted the martial premise of the question—that a war on poverty had been fought and that eliminating poverty was, without a doubt, a “fight,” or a “battle.”
Yet the debate over the manner—martial or not—by which the federal government and public policy has dealt with the issue of poverty in the United States is still very much an open-ended one.
The evolution and development of the postwar American welfare state is a story not only of a number of “wars,” or individual political initiatives, against poverty, but also about the growth of institutions within and outside government that seek to address, alleviate, and eliminate poverty and its concomitant social ills. It is a complex and at times messy story, interwoven with the wider historical trajectory of this period: civil rights, the rise and fall of a “Cold War consensus,” the emergence of a counterculture, the Vietnam War, the credibility gap, the rise of conservatism, the end of “welfare,” and the emergence of compassionate conservatism. Mirroring the broader organization of the American political system, with a relatively weak center of power and delegated authority and decision-making in fifty states, the welfare model has developed and grown over decades. Policies viewed in one era as unmitigated failures have instead over time evolved and become part of the fabric of the welfare state.
Since President Lyndon B. Johnson left office in 1969 competition between America’s two major political parties has in many ways centered on their relationship to the conflicts of the late 1960s. On most major issues, whether it is how the United States is governed, what role the federal government should play vis-à-vis the states, how minorities—ethnic or sexual—should be treated, or the role of the Supreme Court in interpreting the Constitution, the real and imaginary divisions the 1960s spawned continue to profoundly shape American politics. By and large these divisions have discredited American liberalism, making the 1960s known as the decade of “liberal overreach.”1 American conservatives have for decades argued that the expansion of government through the Great Society programs was a mistake and often failed to help its intended recipients, the poor and underprivileged.2 Charles Murray in his mid-1980s social policy blockbuster Losing Ground flatly stated that: “We tried to provide more for the poor and produced more poor instead. We tried to remove the barriers to escape from poverty, and inadvertently built a trap.”3
While historians and social scientists have generally been more nuanced in their assessment of the Great Society, there is still a distinct sense in the literature that if not outright failures, the Johnson administration’s social programs did not live up to their expectations and were, at the very least, a missed opportunity.4 Indeed, in one of the leading textbooks on American postwar history William Chafe has argued that the antipoverty effort was fundamentally flawed because policy makers never realized that what was really needed to fight poverty was a massive jobs program and redistribution of income. Other historians have agreed. They have argued that a massive program of employment and/or large-scale income redistribution would have been much more successful and desirable than the War on Poverty.5
This broadly negative judgment on the Great Society (and in particular the War on Poverty) has become part of the wider narrative on the American welfare state. Ramshackle and largely ineffective, it is often accused of and criticized for not living up to the size and standards set by other developed countries, most notably in Europe. The manner in which the United States fights (or doesn’t fight) poverty is an important example often referred to as illustrating this broader point. Negative pronouncements are made every year in conjunction with the Census Bureau’s publication of the official poverty rates. The perennial questions asked are variations on if America needs a new war on poverty or why decades on (since the original 1964 launch) the war is still being lost.6 Indeed, critics of varying political colors point to how rates of poverty have barely budged since the mid-1960s and that compared to European countries the United States is far behind and spends ever less on the poor.7 In the late 1950s and early 1960s the poverty rate stood at over 20 percent.8 By the early 1970s this had fallen to close to 10 percent and the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest (2013) estimated rate is 14.5 percent.9 For example, noted economist and public policy doyen Jeffrey Sachs in 2006 argued in Scientific American that the United States (and other “Anglo Saxon” modeled countries) had fallen behind the high-tax and high-spend Nordic region on most indicators of economic performance.10 He claimed that “the U.S. spends less than almost all rich countries on social services for the poor and disabled, and it gets what it pays for: the highest poverty rate among the rich countries and an exploding prison population.”11 Others have argued a similar point. In 2001 a National Bureau of Economic Research paper argued that the United States was indeed much less generous to its poor and did not fight poverty as well as many European countries.12 The authors argued that this was primarily a result of a political system that by and large was geared against income redistribution and a concomitant lack of broad public support for income redistribution primarily due to racism.
The Great Society and War on Poverty programs offer a fascinating prism for understanding the evolution of the 20th-century American welfare state. Its postwar development is not only a story about a number of “wars” or individual political initiatives against poverty, but also about the growth of institutions within and outside government to address, alleviate, and eliminate poverty and its concomitant social ills. From the New Deal to modern-day reform efforts including the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, the expansion of Medicare and Medicaid coverage through Medicare Part D and the most recent Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, one of the key characteristics of the American welfare state is its piecemeal and gradual evolution. While there have been a number of “big bang” reform efforts, overall the story of the postwar period is the incremental development of a welfare state that has evolved and changed as part of other major political and socioeconomic changes and processes. This development has not been driven only by a policy or reform initiative’s perception of success; more intriguingly, policies and reforms considered as grave political errors or failures in a particular era have over time become staples of American social policy. In this respect the Johnson administration’s War on Poverty initiative is instructive. It was largely discredited at the time and since, and few would argue that the Great Society and War on Poverty have an enviable reputation—political or otherwise. Yet the faith of its biggest and most maligned component—the Community Action Program—illustrates how a social policy can fail politically and by reputation, yet survive. Over the long-term the program itself and the ideas underpinning it have become an institutionalized and elemental part of the American welfare state.
“Fighting Man’s Ancient Enemies”: The War on Poverty and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society
I want to be the President who educated young children to the wonders of their world. I want to be the President who helped feed the hungry and to prepare them to be taxpayers instead of taxeaters. I want to be the President who helped the poor to find their own way and who protected the right of every citizen to vote in every election … This great, rich, restless country can offer opportunity and education and hope to all: black and white, North and South, sharecropper and city dweller. These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease. They are the enemies and not our fellow man, not our neighbor. And these enemies too, poverty, disease, and ignorance, we shall overcome.13
— Lyndon Johnson, Special Message to the Congress, March 15, 1965
Johnson’s cause—the thing for which he hoped to be remembered—was the Great Society, his effort to outpace the New Deal, outflank group conflict, override class structure, and improve the lot of everybody in America.14
— Richard Neustadt, in Presidential Power, 1976 edition
When he spoke about poverty, Lyndon Johnson spoke with passion. Whether it be from his childhood growing up in rural Texas, his experience from a year out from college teaching destitute Mexican schoolchildren in Cotulla, south Texas, or in his first major political assignment during the mid to late 1930s managing the Texas National Youth Administration, the 36th president of the United States had a deeply personal relationship with poverty. Throughout his years in public office, in speeches and on the campaign trail, Johnson would frequently—no matter what the topic—revert back to images of the poor and of the basic needs and wants of all peoples, regardless of their color or background. In his public and private remarks the president expressed his belief that most people had the same basic wants and desire for education, medical care, and an opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty. Because this conviction was absolutely central to his presidential program, Johnson never saw the War on Poverty and poverty itself as being discrete policy issues isolated from his overall domestic program. On the contrary, most of the Great Society’s legislative goals and victories—the extension of civil rights, voting rights legislation, setting federal standards and providing funding for elementary and secondary education, funding health care for the elderly and poor through Medicare and Medicaid—were part of the same idea of building on the New Deal to provide and extend equality of opportunity to all.15
But poverty was never defeated. Instead of leading the fight on poverty, the President’s Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) and its local staff were accused of playing an active part in the Newark riots of 1967, funding criminal gangs in Chicago, supporting the staging of racist theater performances in New York City, and embezzling federal money in Mississippi. Such key War on Poverty components as Community Action, the Job Corps, Legal Services, Upward Bound, and even the popular Head Start, were often mentioned in sensational news stories of violence, corruption, and financial mismanagement. Almost as quickly as it had risen to the top of the national policy agenda, the War on Poverty and its programs became one of the topics the president and White House least wanted to discuss. By the end of LBJ’s presidential term when poverty as an issue did present itself, it was in the context of the growing welfare rights movement and the newfound militancy of the poor. Revealingly, for these the president did not have much sympathy. For example, during the summer of 1968 the Poor People’s Campaign—originally a campaign idea by Martin Luther King Jr.—marched and set up a camp in Washington DC. Giving speeches and meeting with administration officials, the campaign demanded that the federal government and Congress do more for minorities and the poor. But the president was not moved. Illustrating just how much the times had changed from four years earlier, when the antipoverty campaign had been launched and Johnson had laid out his Great Society vision, LBJ complained to Agriculture Secretary Freeman: “the very people we are seeking to help in Medicare and education and welfare and Food Stamps are protesting louder and louder and giving no recognition or allowance for what’s been done.”16 In a remarkable glimpse of the subsequent staple conservative criticism that was to define the Great Society in a post-LBJ world, the president lamented the undesirable social consequences that his programs seemed to have resulted in: “Our efforts seem only to have resulted in anarchy … The women no longer bother to get married, they just keep breeding. The men go their way and the women get relief—why should they work?”17 If Vietnam became LBJ’s foreign policy albatross, the War on Poverty was viewed by many as his domestic one. Indeed, Time magazine in 1966 wrote that “next to the shooting war in Viet Nam, the spending war against home-front poverty is perhaps the most applauded, criticized, and calumniated issue in the U.S.”18
Not much has changed since the 1960s. Ronald Reagan’s famous 1987 sound bite—“we had a war on poverty—poverty won”19—if not a wholly accepted verdict, still rings true to a lot of subsequent observers and the American public. Indeed, the chief political legacy of the Great Society and War on Poverty programs can best be understood through this prism of chaotic failure. Politically the results have been stark and largely negative for the Democratic Party. Drained by the war in Vietnam and the general perception that although government programs were not directly responsible for urban rioting and student militancy, they were not doing enough to discourage them, the Johnsonian brand of consensus politics that had so dominated the Democratic Party for nearly two decades fell apart. Beginning in 1968 Democrats in a post-Johnson world embraced what many voters deemed social and political radicalism and abandoned the center ground. Indeed, presidential elections since have often been fought on the issues and perception of the issues permeating from the 1960s. In the words of former presidential speech writer to George W. Bush David Frum, Republicans have been “reprising Nixon’s 1972 campaign against McGovern for a third of a century.”20 The results have been profound: since 1968 virtually no Democratic presidential candidate either running as a self-described liberal or labeled as one by his Republican opponent has won an election. In fact, those who have run as outspoken liberals—George McGovern in 1972 and Walter Mondale in 1984—lost forty-nine states each and were beaten in some of the biggest landslides in American electoral history.
For the American welfare state the political legacy and poor reputation of the Great Society programs have meant that it has often found itself facing criticism of not doing enough for its intended recipients while maintaining a deep unpopularity with the general public. As sociologist John Myles has put it, there is a general perception that “for middle-aged, middle-income Americans, the welfare state is virtually all cost and no benefit.”21 Yet while critical in contributing to these negative perceptions of the welfare state, the negative political history and legacy of the Great Society is only half of the story. Paradoxically, many of the most heavily criticized anti-poverty programs are the most misunderstood, as they have had, and continue to have, a long-lasting impact on social and welfare services in the United States.
Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: The Community Action Program and the Divisions of the 1960s
While more famous programs, such as Project Head Start and Legal Services, have achieved higher levels of visible success and entrenchment within the American social policy framework, it is arguable whether any of the War on Poverty programs have been more influential on American social policy than the Community Action Program (CAP).
When it was launched in the mid-1960s, Community Action was meant to be a way of funneling federal support directly to local communities and involving these communities in the design and implementation of local anti-poverty action programs. It was in many ways intended to bypass conventional interest groups and involve a multitude of stakeholders. Indeed, communities consisting of the poor, local government, and business and labor interests would come together and form not-for-profit Community Action Agencies (CAAs) to coordinate, engage, and devise plans for tackling the problems of local poverty. The CAP designers believed that locally planned and implemented programs would stand a better chance of successfully fighting poverty and coordinating existing federal, state, and local efforts than any program that was centrally designed and managed through existing federal departments. In particular this was a view supported and promulgated by the president’s economic counselors including Walter Heller and Charles Schultze of the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) and Bureau of the Budget (BOB), respectively. Yet the CAP quickly became one of the Johnson administration’s most heavily criticized and maligned programs. At root was a basic and unresolved disagreement over what Community Action actually meant.
To some the idea of Community Action was simply a management vehicle, a way of coordinating the many disparate and overlapping anti-poverty programs existing within the federal, state, and local bureaucracies. Community Action was in this light viewed as a deliverer and coordinator of services to combat poverty. Certainly, consultation with the poor and participation of the poor were elemental parts of this approach, but this version of Community Action was not about political or social empowerment. It was simply a new way of more efficiently coordinating programs and engaging the poor in an effort to help them help themselves.22 Bypassing state government and distributing federal funds directly to the CAAs was administratively a relatively new approach,23 but one based on what the White House and administration viewed as the “traditional and time-tested American methods of organized community effort to help individuals, families and whole communities to help themselves.”24 This was also the view held by many in Congress. For example, Republican congressman Albert Quie was a staunch supporter of the Community Action concept, if harsh critic of the OEO, arguing that the Community Action concept devolved power locally.25 Similarly, Carl Perkins, a member of the House Education and Labor Committee to which the poverty bill was referred to in March 1964, supported the idea of local community involvement and participation of the poor.26
But to others, Community Action translated into direct political empowerment—a way of forcefully confronting political and economic power structures. It was a way of taking, and giving, power to the poor by means of confrontation. This type of Community Action was closely associated with the thinking of Saul Alinsky, a former Chicago academic and community organizer who ran several independent community organizations around the country and later became associated with some of the more radical OEO-funded programs in Syracuse and Chicago. Crucially, this brand of Community Action became the popularized perception of the program and was extensively covered by major news outlets and in Congress throughout the 1960s.27
President Johnson’s views on what Community Action would do to shake up social policy and local government appear to be very different and certainly a lot less radical than those of other proponents of Community Action. As he would later reveal in his memoirs: “This plan [community action] had the sound of something brand new and even faintly radical. Actually, it was based on one of the oldest ideas of our democracy, as old as the New England town meeting—self determination at the local level.”28 The tragedy of Community Action, the OEO, and the War on Poverty is that these efforts never had the type of leadership and clarity of purpose that could have made this vision a political reality and from the beginning effectively sidelined the noisy minority of radicals both within the OEO and on the ground. The anti-poverty director Sargent Shriver was never wholeheartedly committed to the Johnsonian view of the War on Poverty and Community Action. While this does not mean that he was committed to a more radical view of Community Action, Shriver’s political ambitions and willingness to cater to some of his more radical constituents and own staff meant that the fundamental confusion about the purpose of Community Action and the War on Poverty—highlighted in management survey after management survey of the agency—was never resolved.29 When the anti-poverty director finally attempted to grapple with this fundamental problem in 1967 by amending the anti-poverty legislation to include more representation of local government, the OEO had already reached a political endgame. Once the ghettos started burning and conflict and militancy firmly replaced consensus and peaceful civil rights, neither the OEO director nor the White House were in any position to stem the tide.
When CAP was launched, Shriver expressed the sentiment that it relied “on the traditional and time-tested American methods of organized community effort to help individuals, families and whole communities to help themselves.”30 While this was certainly the view that the president took, Shriver never consistently or convincingly maintained this position. Norbert Schlei, Department of Justice lawyer and drafter of the original Economic Opportunity Act in 1964, has argued that relatively early on there was a real shift in the emphasis of the poverty program, a shift that came from the anti-poverty director himself:
I think the whole concept [of maximum feasible participation and Community Action] began to evolve and it got to be much more this matter of putting the target population in charge, putting the local people in charge of the federal money … I really hadn’t understood that that was part of it … I think that even while it was not yet passed [the EOA] there appeared some drift in the whole thinking about community action … Some of it came out of Shriver. I would hear Shriver say things that made me feel that there had been some evolution in thinking since I was directly involved … the idea of putting the target population in a power position and the idea of putting the local government people in a power position seemed to me to be talked about like they were much more integral to the whole idea than I had understood originally.31
Other OEO insiders have supported this view. For example, Eric Tolmach, who worked on CAP in the OEO, has also described Shriver as sending very mixed messages to those within the agency who supported radical Community Action. Tolmach argued that Shriver felt that by supporting radical CAPs “it separated him from the average bureaucrat in town, and it gained him some credibility on the one hand with large groups of people who were for doing this kind of thing, and with the poor.”32 This is an important aspect of the history of the War on Poverty as it ties in with the bigger narrative of the changing politics of poverty and the Democratic Party during the mid to late 1960s.
Ambitious Democratic politicians such as Sargent Shriver and Bobby Kennedy—and even some Republicans like New York mayor John Lindsay33—saw the radicalization of the political discourse that permeated this period as an opportunity as well as a shift in how future elections and voters would be won. For Shriver, building up and maintaining a natural constituency through the poverty programs was a way of connecting with this new type of politics and its new constituents. Indeed, some have argued that this was in fact Shriver’s raison d’être for staying on as OEO director. In his oral history interview for the Johnson library, Ben Heinemann (chairman of one of the internal White House policy task forces) described Shriver’s and the president’s working relationship as “terrible” and commented that the only reason Shriver stayed on was “ambition” and a desire to “remain in the public view.”34 The anti-poverty director, Heinemann said, “didn’t have a good alternative [to the War on Poverty] that would still have been in the public eye.”35 That he was intent on running for office was clear to Heinemann, who described Shriver in 1967 as being “anxious to talk … about the possibilities of his running for Governor in Illinois in ’68.”36
But Shriver’s constituency and brand of New Politics did not have the kind of national electoral impact for which he had hoped. In 1968 the Democratic presidential coalition fell apart with Richard Nixon and George Wallace combining to shave off almost 20 percentage points off LBJ’s 1964 margin of victory over Goldwater. The New Politics never emerged as a winning electoral force; instead, it created the bedrock for the success of the Republican coalition. In no small measure this was caused by the perceived radicalism of the New Politics constituents: younger voters, Vietnam protesters, and radical civil rights and welfare activists. Many of these groups took their roots in the poverty programs and the type of militancy that became the public image of the OEO. These groups contributed to splitting the Democratic Party by pushing white blue-collar voters into the GOP and shaping subsequent winning Republican presidential coalitions. When Shriver finally ran as George McGovern’s vice presidential candidate in 1972, Richard Nixon leaned heavily on his opposition to this New Politics coalition and scored a historic victory on par with Johnson’s eight years earlier. Similarly, in 1976 when Shriver was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, he did not win a single primary; his best showing was in Vermont, where he came in second, gaining 28 percent of the vote and losing to the eventual nominee, Jimmy Carter.
In many ways, the history of Community Action represents a microcosm for the wider War on Poverty and Great Society effort. Maligned at the time, both the very nature of the program and its achievements tell a different story. Now lost in the broader fireworks of the 1960s, the Community Action Program at the time became the prime example of everything that had gone wrong with the anti-poverty effort and a symbol of the Johnson administrations’ and “big government’s” overreach. The most famous and scathing criticism came from former White House and executive branch insider D. P. Moynihan, whose negative assessment of the War on Poverty set the tone for both contemporary understanding and subsequent analysis.37 In 1968 he went as far as to claim that intended or not, Community Action had contributed to the past summers’ rioting:38 Although vehemently denied in government press release after press release, this image of the OEO and Community Action Agencies as playing a prominent part in the tearing up of the American social fabric persisted in the popular as well as the political mind.
Yet for all the bad press and brouhaha it is not clear that a majority, or even a large minority, of Community Action Agencies were engaged in the types of activities as depicted in the media. Certainly, there were many instances in which a local agency got into political trouble and hit the front pages of the national newspapers for all the wrong reasons, but these instances are not representative of the policy directions taken by all, or even a majority, of the agencies that had been established by the mid-1960s. By 1967 there were almost 1,100 Community Action Agencies in operation, and only a handful of these can be described as having been marked by the type of radicalism and conflict that has come to define the entire program. And, as accurately noted by historian Alice O’Connor, these grants were primarily from the CAP’s experimental demonstration programs.39 These facts were noted and understood at the time within the White House. Internal memoranda and research suggests that there was broad support and understanding for the real achievements of Community Action within the War on Poverty.40 For example, in the recommendations to President Johnson of the 1966 Taskforce on Government Organization it was argued that “community action agencies remain the best available instrument for integrating and focusing government and private social service programs at the local neighborhood and community level” and that “at their best, community action agencies reflect a thoroughly American, solidly conservative approach to social problems: they are locally inspired and controlled, and responsive to the disadvantaged people whom they seek to serve.”41 Even President Johnson himself lent the program his vocal support in the 1967 State of the Union address, which dealt in some detail with the War on Poverty and, if anything, reaffirmed the president’s commitment to fighting poverty through localized Community Action.42 Yet, these messages never reached the broader public or, until recently, the scholarship.43 But for all the negative press, Community Action has lived on and continued to shape American social policy.
While the OEO was finally disbanded by President Gerald Ford in 1976, Community Action has survived as a federally funded program. Today there are over 1,000 Community Action Agencies.44 The latest data from the National Association for State Community Services Programs shows that in 2013 Community Action Agencies served close to 16 million individuals (part of 6.7 million families) of which over 70 percent were at or below the federal poverty line.45
But in contrast to its role set out in the original Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, the federal government now plays a reduced part in the funding and monitoring of national Community Action. Instead, much of the responsibility has since the 1990s been transferred to the state level.
Created as a new federal agency by Congress in December 1974, the Community Services Administration (CSA) replaced the disbanded OEO. Never part of the Executive Office of the President, the CSA remained a separate independent agency outside the established federal bureaucracy until its own subsequent closure in 1981. That year President Ronald Reagan replaced, and Congress approved, the CSA with a small Office of Community Services lodged in the Department of Health and Human Services. This office remains in operation and is today responsible for the government-supported Community Action effort. But under the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1981 the federal government’s direct role in funding local CAPs was replaced by Community Service Block Grants (CSBG). No longer do federal grants go directly to local Action Agencies. Instead CSBGs are distributed to the states, which then in turn administer them to organizations that are officially designated Community Action Agencies under the CSBG Act.46 These block grants are applied for by individual states and approved on an annual basis by the Office of Community Services. Outside of government, Community Action is represented by the National Association of Community Action Agencies, a group formed in 1971 to provide a national voice for Community Action. This association professes to be a “national forum for policy on poverty and to strengthen, promote, represent, and serve its network of member agencies to assure that the issues of the poor are effectively heard and addressed.”47
It would seem that if longevity is any measure of success, there is a strong argument to be made that Community Action has been anything but a failure. Although the CAAs of today are different from those of the 1960s, the requirement that Community Action boards should be made up of a combination of the poor, local and state government, and the private sector is still there.48 Outlasting the Office of Economic Opportunity, the continued existence of these CAAs suggests that while the centralized operational arm of President Johnson’s War on Poverty could not survive on its own, the local organization, run for and by local communities, could, and has. This is a powerful testament to the idea that decentralized policymaking in social and welfare policy involving all relevant stakeholders is as an enduring part of American social policy as ever. Remarkably, this belief has since the late 20th century crossed party and ideological lines, becoming a defining characteristic of modern American conservatism.
From Community Action to Compassionate Conservatism
In the mid-1990s compassionate conservatism became part of the mainstream political lexicon. Pioneered by Texas academic Marvin Olasky in his 1992 The Tragedy of American Compassion, compassionate conservatism was embraced by a number of influential Republican thinkers, politicians, and strategists. Indeed, during this time many Republican think tanks and grassroots organizations acutely felt the need for the Republican Party to redefine itself, and move away from the popularized image of the party with a cold heart, dead-set against helping the poor and needy. John Ashcroft, Ralph Reed, Bob Dole, Bill Bennett, Jack Kemp, Dan Coats, and Jim Talent all became part of this burgeoning compassion movement. Loudest of the voices calling for a new direction was freshly appointed Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, who pleaded for more compassion in the GOP. During his first session as Speaker he repeatedly made reference to Olasky’s work when outlining the need for Republicans to adopt a new conservative agenda.49
But it was not only in Washington that Republicans were talking about compassion. While George W. Bush had shown an interest in the founding ideas of compassionate conservatism as early as 1993—even meeting with Professor Olasky—and had during his first term as governor made it easier under Texas state law for private and religious charities to operate, Bush would not become compassionate conservatism’s national face until his 1998 gubernatorial re-election. On victory night of his landslide win he declared that he had big plans for the future, wanting to give the Republican Party a new look, that of compassionate conservatism.50
During the following primary campaign for the Republican 2000 presidential nomination, Governor Bush set out his vision and philosophy for what compassionate conservatism meant to him and a future Bush administration. In a defining speech summing up the work of a task force of policy analysts and academics he had appointed in February, Bush in July 1999 outlined what compassionate conservatism meant and what as president he could do for America’s poor. Central to this speech, and the governor’s conception of compassionate conservatism, was the idea that anti-poverty initiatives should be local and as far as possible designed and run by third-sector agencies. He argued that local communities, religious organizations, and other nongovernmental groups should together with local, state, and the federal government fight poverty and provide opportunity for the poor, homeless, and needy:
We will make a determined attack on need, by promoting the compassionate acts of others. We will rally the armies of compassion in our communities to fight a very different war against poverty and hopelessness, a daily battle waged house to house and heart by heart. This will not be the failed compassion of towering bureaucracies. On the contrary, it will be government that serves those who are serving their neighbors. It will be government that directs help to the inspired and the effective. It will be government that both knows its limits and shows its heart. And it will be government truly by the people and for the people.51
To Governor Bush, such a plan to fight poverty stood in stark contrast to the efforts of the War on Poverty and the Great Society, which he accused of being too bureaucratic, government-centered, and lacking in true compassion:
In the past, presidents have declared wars on poverty and promised to create a great society. But these grand gestures and honorable aims were frustrated. They have become a warning, not an example. We found that government can spend money, but it can’t put hope in our hearts or a sense of purpose in our lives.52
The ideas of fighting poverty through local charities and religious organizations became a defining feature of Bush’s successful presidential campaign. Compassionate conservatism and the belief that faith-based organizations could revolutionize the way in which the federal government delivered its social welfare programs became one of the campaign’s core selling points on domestic policy. Indeed, as early as June 1999 political correspondent Adam Nagourney of the New York Times was writing about compassionate conservatism as being Governor’s Bush’s defining political slogan.53 Once he took office, the president’s Faith-Based Initiative was at the center of his compassionate agenda. While the actual legislation put forward for the initiative was primarily about the federal government not discriminating against religious groups when providing funding for local anti-poverty and social welfare services, at its heart the initiative was as much about local action being the best remedy for social problems like poverty, drug addiction, and single parenthood.54 Yet what Governor and then President Bush failed to at least publicly acknowledge was that the influence of the War on Poverty and Community Action had already extended and heavily influenced the manner in which America’s welfare state actually provides and delivers its public services. The Great Society’s, War on Poverty’s, and Community Action’s most important social policy legacy is perhaps the contribution it made toward the outsourcing of service provision to the third sector and nonprofits.
Community Action and Modern American Social Policy
Local, decentralized, usually not-for-profit and nongovernmental—in all but a few instances, these are the defining characteristics of the providers of many of the public services Americans receive today. Since the 1960s and the launch of the Great Society programs, the growth in the provision of governmental services through the third sector has been astonishing. Although in sheer numbers the Social Security program is still the number one social welfare program today, many public services are not provided through or by the American government. Instead, government services are now largely provided by nongovernment entities and nonprofits in particular. This is especially pronounced with regard to social services and human services, where nonprofit organizations actually deliver a larger share of the services government finances than do government agencies themselves.55 Through some of the biggest federal welfare and human services programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, student aid, and food stamps, the American state at all levels—federal, state, and local—serves mainly as the ultimate payer and regulator, but not provider of public services.
Similarly, and while conceptually different, the expansion of the use of grants-in-aid programs since the 1960s has also significantly bolstered the use of nonprofits and nongovernmental entities in the provision of public services. Through grants-in-aid the federal government provides block grants to state and local governments with relatively few programmatic requirements on how services should be provided. These grants are then used and distributed by state and local governments, which contract out the provision of services to nonprofits and the private sector.56
In 2011 it was estimated that over 30 percent of the federal government’s budget went to the direct purchasing of public services or grants to provide such services.57 For nonprofits in particular the growth has been significant both for direct purchases and grants, growing by an estimated 195 percent for the former between 1977 and 1997 and over 330 percent for the latter in the two decades between 1982 and 2002.58
While the seeds of the use of nonprofits and nongovernmental entities existed prior to the 1960s, the Johnson administration’s anti-poverty and welfare programs greatly expanded and institutionalized the use of the third sector in the provision of public services, primarily through the War on Poverty programs and the use of Community Action. Indeed, political scientist and noted historian of the third sector Peter Hall saw the War on Poverty as central to the growth of the postwar nonprofit sector:
if the political right supplied the rhetoric for efforts to down-size government, liberals and progressives could take credit for actually implementing large-scale privatization, first through local nonprofit organizations—many of them faith-based—subsidized by Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, and later through deinstitutionalization of the mentally disabled and the subsequent creation of a vast system of community-based treatment and care provided by nonprofits operating under contract with state and local government.59
Conclusion: America’s Wars on Poverty and Welfare State
In his classic 1990 dissection of the welfare state, Danish sociologist Gøsta Esping-Andersen outlined three welfare state regimes: liberal, corporatist, and social democratic.60 With its traditional reliance on the power of the market, strict entitlement rules and means-testing, low social welfare benefits, and a culture of individualism the United States was described as the archetypical liberal regime standing in stark contrast to most European nations.61 While Esping-Andersen’s work has been much criticized since—and revised by the author—the idea that the American welfare state is fundamentally different (indeed even exceptional) in size, purpose, and function from other developed Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) economies lives on both inside and outside academia. But what does the evidence actually show?
Traditionally, measures of welfare states and social protection look at the availability of social insurance (e.g., unemployment and health insurance) and availability of welfare and assistance programs, as well as labor market policies.62 More often than not these are measures of total public and government expenditure. Using these traditional measures of social spending as an initial gauge of the size of the welfare state it is clear that the United States has historically spent less than other developed countries on social and welfare services. For instance, OECD data from 2014 show public social expenditure in the United States totaled just over 19 percent of GDP.63 This is in comparison to an average of between 28 and 32 percent in France, Finland, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, and others. Clearly the United States is behind these countries. And for this year the United States was also below the OECD average of 21.62 percent but ahead of both Canada and Australia. But levels of public spending do not necessarily tell the whole picture.
Less attention has been paid to private or third-sector spending and activities and indirect variables such as the impact of tax laws. Regarding the latter, instead of authorizing direct social spending, American lawmakers have long used the federal tax code as a social policy tool. The most notable example in which the tax code works as a government subsidy by tax exempting certain types of benefits is the employer-based health insurance benefit, which is exempt from income and payroll taxation. While this benefit has been in place since the 1940s it was formalized into law in the 1954 Revenue Act.64 The growth and development of this benefit has profoundly shaped the American welfare state and while nominally in the nonpublic sphere of spending it is nevertheless a significant de facto concession of tax revenue for the federal government. In 2013 this was estimated to amount to a loss of revenue to the federal government of $250 billion or roughly 7 percent of the total 2013 federal budget.65 Moreover, if one looks beyond levels of public social expenditure and also include spending outside of government the U.S. position changes dramatically. Looking at the latest total public and private spending estimates by the OECD the United States actually has one of the highest rates of social expenditure—and biggest welfare states—in the world at close to 29 percent of GDP in 2011, behind only France.66 Table 1 shows this data for the United States and other OECD countries.
Table 1 Net total social expenditure (public and private), % of GDP, OECD countries 2011. 67
By comparison the country and welfare model the American welfare state is most often contrasted with, Sweden, is quite far behind with a rate of 24.6 percent of GDP net social expenditure in 2011. Furthermore, if one looks at the trajectory of public social expenditure over a longer time-frame it is not at all clear that the American postwar experience is any different from that of other developed countries or the EU. OECD data going back to 1960 suggest that while always lagging behind average public spending levels in the EU (which is explained by the higher levels of nonpublic spending) U.S. government expenditure has since the 1960s followed an almost identical trajectory. Table 2 shows public social expenditure from 1960 to 2014 comparing levels in the United States, Japan, EU21, and OECD.
Table 2 Public social expenditure, % of GDP, United States, Japan, EU-21, and OECD, 1960–2014. 68
As Table 2 shows, the spending patterns and trajectory are very similar across all countries and regions. Interestingly, the data in the table also suggest that social spending has over the long term, by and large been immune to changes in government and political affiliation. For example, except for the Reagan years, social expenditure in the United States grew quite markedly during periods of Republican administrations particularly in the 1970s and 2000s under presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. Indeed, the period in which the biggest difference between levels of social expenditure between the EU 21 and the United States can be seen is between the mid-1970s and early 1980s. During this time social spending continued to grow in the EU21 while in the United States it actually decreased under President Jimmy Carter.
The above statistics and data from the OECD show that measured as a share of economic output the United States invests a similar amount to other developed countries in social spending. They also show how since the 1960s and throughout most of the postwar period the trajectory of American public social expenditure has not been markedly different from other developed economies. Instead, the difference between the United States and other countries has been the presence of nonpublic entities. One of the key findings by political scientist Jacob Hacker in his 2002 The Divided Welfare State was that in the United States a large portion of social spending and the make-up of the American welfare state is nonpublic.69 Looking at the history of the American welfare state, there was no Beveridge report or equivalent starting point for a complete overhaul and introduction of a welfare model. The closest the United States came to this was during the New Deal era and World War II. Some have indeed argued that U.S. policy planners during the latter stages of the New Deal (and particularly during the course of WWII) were intent on moving America toward a Beveridge-style full-employment welfare state.70
The War on Poverty and the Great Society illustrate the development of the postwar American welfare state. The Community Action Program specifically offers an instructive historical example of the ways in which the modern American welfare state—the provision of public services through nonprofits—gradually and paradoxically developed over decades out of what was and has been widely regarded as a prime example of a failed social policy. Mirroring the broader organization of the American political system, with a relatively weak center of power and delegated authority and decision-making in fifty states, the welfare model has developed and grown over decades. Policies such as Community Action viewed in one era as unmitigated failures have instead over time evolved and become part of the fabric of the welfare state.
Discussion of the Literature
There is no distinct unitary historiography of all themes covered in this article, that is, Great Society liberalism, President Johnson, the War on Poverty, Community Action, and the American welfare state. Instead, broadly speaking, scholars have focused on various aspects within these topics, which, while although often overlapping, are often best viewed and understood as coming from discrete research silos. For example, studying the American welfare state has often been the purview of social scientists. Perspectives have ranged from the quantitative to sociological to political institutional to a more traditional history narrative.71 Looking at the Great Society, the Johnson administration, and the War on Poverty programs, this literature can roughly be divided into two categories: that which looks specifically at, say, the War on Poverty (or specific programs or components of the War on Poverty including Community Action, Legal Services, etc.), and that which looks at either of these within the context of bigger themes like the 1960s, Great Society liberalism, the Johnson presidency, or the evolution of the American welfare state. Since the 1970s more has been published on the latter than the former; consequently, books on these broader themes make up the larger and more well-established literature. They include textbook accounts and more traditional sweeping narratives, including biographies. Because Community Action and the War on Poverty never lived up to their political or policy expectations—neither vanquished poverty or revolutionized the way federal, state, and local anti-poverty efforts were coordinated—much of the general historiography about the two tends to emphasize failure—failure to fight poverty, failure to adequately plan programs, failure to foresee the conflict that the War on Poverty programs (in particular Community Action) are viewed as invariably leading to. There is also a strong tendency to view Community Action and the War on Poverty as targeting black poverty. These ideas are as common in specialist studies as in general surveys of American history and the 1960s. Examples where one or more of these perceptions are prominent include William Chafe’s The Unfinished Journey, Walter Trattner’s From Poor Law to Welfare State, Irving Bernstein’s Guns or Butter, and Judith Russell’s Economics, Bureaucracy, and Race: How Keynesians Misguided the War on Poverty. There are a few exceptions to this negativism, including Robert F. Clark’s 2002 The War on Poverty: History, Selected Programs and Ongoing Impact, Michael Katz’s The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare, and John E. Schwarz’s America’s Hidden Success: A Reassessment of Public Policy from Kennedy to Reagan. However, these have had a relatively limited influence on public or academic perceptions of the poverty programs.
Recently, a new generation of scholars have been examining the War on Poverty and local programs, often from a grass-roots perspective. Examples of these include Kent B. Germany’s 2007 New Orleans after the Promises, Robert Bauman’s 2007 Journal of Urban History article “The Black Power and Chicano Movements in the Poverty Wars in Los Angeles,” Noel Cazenave’s 2007 Impossible Democracy: The Unlikely Success of the War on Poverty Community Action Programs, Susan Youngblood Ashmore’s 2008 Carry It On: The War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, and Guian McKee’s 2008 The Problem of Jobs: Liberalism, Race, and Deindustrialization in Philadelphia.72 These studies are all of real importance, as they form part of a new historiography that in many respects challenges established perceptions about the War on Poverty. They provide an often detailed and rich account of a particular local anti-poverty effort and real insight into the local politics of a program. While many of these studies still focus on urban areas, there has also emerged a new sub-field in the study of anti-poverty programs that examines its rural component.73 Just as with their urban counterparts these studies are adding nuance and much needed detail to the War on Poverty scholarship. They are showing how rural anti-poverty efforts functioned and were part of wider historical processes that were changing the complexion of American society, in particular the advance of civil rights in the South and Southwest.
The National Archives, College Park, Maryland, and Lyndon Johnson presidential library in Austin, Texas, house the most important primary sources with regard to the federal and presidential aspects of the War on Poverty, Johnson administration, and Community Action Program. For the Community Action Program the most relevant archival records and record groups are: National Archives, College Park, Maryland, Records of the Community Services Administration, Record Group 381, Headquarters Records of the Office of Economic Opportunity 1963–1981. For the War on Poverty and administration of the OEO the most relevant files in the Johnson library archives are organized around the President’s key staffers.74 The Johnson Library also houses a number of important oral history interviews of the key figures in the War on Poverty. The Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Scripps Library and Multimedia Archive, houses a significant collection of oral history interviews and tape recordings from a number of postwar presidencies including the Johnson administration.75 Significantly, these collections are digital and housed in an online library accessible to all anywhere in the world.
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Davies, Gareth. From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996.Find this resource:
Davies, Gareth. See Government Grow: Education Politics from Johnson to Reagan. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007.Find this resource:
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Heale, M. J. “The Sixties as History: A Review of the Political Historiography.” Reviews in American History 33.1 (March 2005): 133–152.Find this resource:
Hecker, J. The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States. Washington, DC: New America Foundation, 2002.Find this resource:
Heidenhammer, Arnold J., Hugh Heclo, and Carolyn Teich Adams. Comparative Public Policy: The Politics of Social Choice in America, Europe, and Japan. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1990.Find this resource:
Hodgson, Godfrey. America in Our Time: From World War II to Nixon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.Find this resource:
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Jorgenson, Dale W. “Did We Lose the War on Poverty?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 12.1 (Winter 1998): 79–96.Find this resource:
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(1.) The Economist, Leader. “Is America Turning Left?” 11 August 2007.
(2.) Prominent critics have included Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, D. P. Moynihan, Irving Kristol, and George W. Bush.
(3.) Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 9.
(4.) See: William Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America since World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Walter Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America (New York: Macmillan, 1989); Ira Katznelson, “Was the Great Society a Lost Opportunity,” in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, ed. Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989); Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); and Robert F. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (London: Collins, 1982) and The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent (London: Bodley Head, 1990).
(5.) Chafe, The Unfinished Journey, 242; Allen J. Matusow, “The Great Society: A Twenty-Year Critique,” in Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism: A Brief Biography with Documents, ed. Bruce J. Schulman (Boston: Bedford Books, 1995), 186; and Judith Russell, Economics, Bureaucracy, and Race: How Keynesians Misguided the War on Poverty (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 5–15.
(6.) See, for example, a January 5, 2014, New York Times article on the fifty-year anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s launch of the War on Poverty. The New York Times asked a panel of opinion leaders a simple question: “Does the U.S. Need Another War on Poverty?” While the answers varied, all the invited debaters accepted the martial premise of the question. That a war on poverty had been fought and that eliminating poverty was a “fight” or a “battle” was not in doubt.
(7.) See, for example: National Public Radio “How America’s Losing the War On Poverty,” August 4, 2012; Robert Rector “How the War on Poverty Was Lost,” Wall Street Journal, January 7, 2014; Erika Eichelberger, Jaeah Lee, and A. J. Vicens, “How We Won—and Lost—the War on Poverty, in 6 Charts,” Mother Jones, January 8, 2014; and E. Porter, “The Measure of Our Poverty,” New York Times, September 20, 2013.
(8.) C. DeNavas-Walt and D. Bernadette, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60–249, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013 (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2014), 12.
(10.) Jeffrey Sachs, “The Social Welfare State, beyond Ideology,” Scientific American (November 2006), 3.
(12.) A. Alesina, E. Glaeser, and B. Sacerdote, “Why Doesn’t the US Have a European-Style Welfare State?” Harvard Institute of Economic Research, Discussion Paper Number 1933, Harvard 2001, 38–39.
(13.) Lyndon Johnson, Special Message to the Congress, March 15, 1965, Public Papers.
(14.) Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership, with Reflections on Johnson and Nixon (London and New York: Wiley, 1976), 34.
(15.) One of the biggest and most important differences between the Great Society and the New Deal was that the former was to be achieved by the harnessing of capitalism and free enterprise. See, for example, the importance attached to economic growth theory and tax cuts to LBJ’s domestic program. On the contrary, the latter was justified as a consequence of the negative impact of the Great Depression and the perceived failures of unfettered capitalism.
(16.) Quoted in Woods, LBJ, 843.
(18.) Time, “Poverty: Six-Star Sargent,” March 18, 1966, Time, online archive.
(19.) Ronald Reagan, Remarks at a White House briefing for members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, May 1, 1987, Public Papers of the President.
(20.) George Packer, “The Fall of Conservatism: Have the Republicans Run Out of Ideas?” New Yorker (May 26, 2008): 47–54.
(21.) John Myles, “Postwar Capitalism and the Extension of Social Security into a Retirement Wage,” in The Politics of Social Policy in the United States, ed. Margaret Weir, Ann Shola Orloff, and Theda Skocpol (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 268.
(22.) This was the version of Community Action that the Bureau of the Budget, Council of Economic Advisors, and President Johnson developed at the end of 1963 and early 1964. See D. P. Torstensson “The Politics of Failure, Community Action and the Meaning of Great Society Liberalism” (PhD diss., University of Oxford, 2009), chapter 2.
(23.) There did exist cases where the federal government gave money directly to individuals, bypassing state and local authorities. Examples of this were direct aid under the Office of Education, grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, programs administered by the Welfare Administration and Vocational Rehabilitation Agency, and the Federal Aviation Agency. For fiscal 1965 new obligations of these funds were $1.462 billion. See War on Poverty Microfilm, Part 1, WH Central Files, Reel 1, microfilm shot 389.
(24.) Sargent Shriver, Draft Document, “Charge to the Economic Opportunity Council,” December 7, 1964, War on Poverty Microfilm, WH Central Files, Reel 1, microfilm shots 452–455.
(25.) Albert Quie, April 30, 1969, LBJ Oral History, Miller Center.
(26.) Michael Gillette, Launching the War on Poverty: An Oral History (New York: Twayne, 1996), 125. Other Congressman, such as Phil Landrum, supported the EOA in 1964 and while Landrum became an outspoken critic of the OEO and Community Action he nevertheless supported the re-authorization of the EOA in 1967 with the insertion of the Green amendment. See Torstensson, “The Politics of Failure,” 231.
(27.) Only months after the first grants had been approved, Community Action was making the newspaper headlines for all the wrong reasons. In March 1965 the Washington Post ran a page 1 story entitled “Poverty-War Conflict Erupts over Local Control.” This report detailed how the poverty program was generating conflict over the participation of the poor, particularly in the “most sensitive battle-ground” of Community Action. This was described as taking place all over the country, with the problem being particularly acute in Louisiana and Alabama, where there was the added issue of racial discrimination. On cue, national columnists and D.C. insiders Rowland Evans and Robert Novak published an Inside Report, “George Wallace vs. the Poor,” a few days after this article detailing the local and national politics of Community Action. In this piece the duo argued that the “reliance on local leadership is the Achilles heel of the community action program” and the cause of so much of the trouble both in North and South: “In the big cities, patronage-hungry political bosses are muscling in … [and] Wallace-style segregationists are applying their deadening touch in the Deep South.” By the end of March, a mere seven months after the passage of the Economic Opportunity Act, the Washington Post declared that “Civil War Goes on in Poverty Plans.” See Washington Post, March 6, 11, and 22, 1965, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
(28.) Lyndon Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency 1963–1969 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 74.
(29.) Between 1965 and 1969 numerous management surveys of the OEO were carried out by the federal bureaucracy, private management consultants, independent groups, and the U.S. Comptroller General. With remarkable consistency, they all pointed to a similar set of problems the agency faced and over time failed to come to terms with: the inability to agree on and define what the War on Poverty and Community Action actually desired to achieve and an incapacity to draw clear lines of responsibility and communication between the different levels of the agency.
(30.) Sargent Shriver, Draft Document, “Charge to the Economic Opportunity Council,” December 7, 1964, War on Poverty Microfilm, WH Central Files, Reel 1, microfilm shots 452–455.
(31.) Norbert Schlei, May 15, 1980, LBJ Oral History, Miller Center.
(32.) Eric Tolmach, April 16, 1969, LBJ Oral History, Miller Center.
(33.) For example, in a bid to steer the political debate in a more liberal and for him personally more politically desirable direction, as member of the Kerner Commission Lindsay wrote the oft-cited report summary that gave a very polarizing view of the causes of rioting. The summary claimed baldly that America was moving toward two separate societies—one white, one black—and urgent, massive government action was required. From Gareth Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996), 204–205.
(34.) Ben Heinemann, April 16, 1970, LBJ Oral History, Miller Center.
(37.) Moynihan was fiercely critical of social scientists and sociologists whom he viewed as having played a key role in the poor performance of the War on Poverty. His criticism of the poverty program was part of a broader movement of former liberals moving away from the Democratic Party and the Great Society. By the late 1960s contemporary intellectuals and public policymakers were contributing to the popular chorus of critiques of the Great Society’s social programs, the War on Poverty chief among them. Many liberals like Moynihan and sociologists Nathan Glazer and Daniel Bell became associated with Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, founders of what would become labeled as neo-conservatism. Magazines such as Public Interest and Commentary—edited by Kristol and Podhoretz, respectively—began criticizing the Great Society and the very idea of transformative government social programs. Moynihan featured articles in both throughout the late 1960s in which he attacked the War on Poverty and Community Action.
(38.) Daniel P. Moynihan, “The Professors and the Poor,” Commentary (August 1968): 28, ProQuest Historical Magazines.
(39.) Alice O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 170–172.
(40.) See “Memo From: Frederick Bohen, To: Members of the President’s Task Force on Government Organization, Subject: The Attached Paper on the Poverty Program and the Office of Economic Opportunity, November 30, 1966,” War on Poverty Microfilm, WH Aides A-M, Reel 4, microfilm shot 634–675.
(41.) Letter from Ben Heinemann, December 15, 1966, with a summary statement and the full “Taskforce on Government Organization” report attached, War on Poverty Microfilm, WH Aides, A-M, Reel 6, microfilm shots 160–177.
(42.) Lyndon Johnson, State of the Union, January 10, 1967, Public Papers.
(43.) Only in the last few years has there been a sustained questioning of many of these negative policy conclusions. These newer studies are all of real importance precisely because they challenge established judgements about Community Action. See: Kent Germany, New Orleans after the Promises: Poverty, Citizenship and the Search for the Great Society (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2007); Robert Bauman, “The Black Power and Chicano Movements in the Poverty Wars in Los Angeles,” Journal of Urban History 33 (January 2007): 277–295; Noel Cazenave, Impossible Democracy: The Unlikely Success of the War on Poverty Community Action Programs (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007); Susan Youngblood Ashmore, Carry It On: The War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, 1964–1972 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2008); and Guian McKee, The Problem of Jobs: Liberalism, Race, and Deindustrialization in Philadelphia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
(44.) National Association for State Community Services Programs, Community Services Block Grant Annual Report, Analysis and State-level Data (Washington, DC: NASCSP, 2014), 43–46.
(49.) Marvin Olasky, Compassionate Conservatism: What It Is, What it Does, and How It Can Transform America (New York: Free Press, 2000), 6–7.
(51.) George W. Bush, “The Duty of Hope,” July 22, 1999, in Olasky, Compassionate Conservatism, Appendix B, 219.
(53.) New York Times, “Republicans Stalk a Slogan, Hunting for Themselves,” June 20, 1999, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
(54.) George W. Bush, Remarks on Compassionate Conservatism in San Jose, California, April 30, 2002, Public Papers.
(55.) Lester M. Salamon, Partners in Public Service: Government-Nonprofit Relations in the Modern Welfare State (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995). See also Peter D. Hall’s “The Welfare State and the Careers of Public and Private Institutions since 1945,” in Charity, Philanthropy, and Civility in American History, ed. Lawrence J. Friedman and Mark D. McGarvie (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 380–381.
(56.) For details of the growth in the grants-in-aid system see Ben Canada’s Federal Grants to State and Local Government: A Brief History, The Library of Congress, Report for Congress, Order Code RL30705.
(57.) S. Pettijohn, “Federal Government Contracts and Grants for Nonprofits,” Urban Institute Washington DC, 2013, 1.
(58.) J. McGinnis et al., Building Public Services through the Nonprofit Sector: Exploring the Risks of Rapid, Government Funded Growth in Human Service Organizations, American University School of Public Affairs Research Paper No. 2014-0010, 2014, 1.
(59.) Hall, “The Welfare State and the Careers of Public and Private Institutions since 1945.”
(60.) Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 27.
(62.) See: A. Hicks and L. Kenworthy, “Varieties of Welfare Capitalism,” Socio-Economic Review 1.1 (2003): 27–61; and Asian Development Bank, The Social Protection Index Assessing Results for Asia and the Pacific, ADB, 2013.
(63.) OECD, “Social Expenditure Update (November 2014),” OECD Social Expenditure database.
(64.) Jeremy Horpedahl and Harrison Searles, “The Tax Exemption of Employer-Provided Health Insurance,” Mercatus on Policy, July 2013, George Mason University, 3.
(65.) M. Rae et al., “Tax Subsidies for Private Health Insurance,” KFF, October 2014 Issue Brief. Federal budget numbers are from CBO (2014), “The Federal Budget in 2013: An Infographic,” April 18, 2014.
(66.) OECD, Net total social expenditure, % of GDP, OECD Stat.
(68.) OECD, Public social expenditure, % of GDP, OECD Stat.
(69.) Jacob Hacker, The Divided Welfare State The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
(70.) See Edwin Amenta and Theda Skocpol, “Redefining the New Deal: World War II and the Development of Social Provision in the United States,” in Weir et al., The Politics of Social Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).
(71.) See, for example, Arnold Heidenhammer, Hugh Heclo, and Carolyn Teich Adams, Comparative Public Policy: The Politics of Social Choice in America, Europe, and Japan, (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1990); Meg Jacobs and Julian E. Zelizer, “The Democratic Experiment—New Directions in American Political History,” in The Democratic Experiment—New Directions in American Political History, ed. Meg Jacobs, William J. Novak, and Julian E. Zelizer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 1–19; and Julian E. Zelizer, “Clio’s Lost Tribe: Public Policy History since 1978,” Journal of Policy History 12.3 (2000): 369–394. Julian E. Zelizer, “Beyond the Presidential Synthesis: Reordering Political Time,” in A Companion to Post-1945 America, ed. Jean-Christophe Agnew and Roy Rosenzweig (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 346–359; Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980) (first published 1979); Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997) (first published 1982); Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds; Hicks and Kenworthy, “Varieties of Welfare Capitalism”; Trattner, From Poor Law; and Edward Berkowitz, America’s Welfare State (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).
(72.) See Germany, After the Promises; Bauman, Black Power and Chicano; Cazenave, Impossible Democracy; Ashmore, Carry It On; and McKee, The Problem of Jobs.
(73.) See Robert Korstad and James Leloudis, To Right These Wrongs: The North Carolina Fund and the Battle to End Poverty (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Thomas Kiffmeyer, Reformers to Radicals: The Appalachian Volunteers and the War on Poverty (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008); Greta de Jong, A Different Day: African American Struggles for Justice in Rural Louisiana, 1900–1970 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); William Clayson, Freedom Is Not Enough: The War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010); Françoise N. Hamlin, Crossroads at Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta after World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012); and Annelise Orleck and Lisa Gayle Hazirjian, eds., The War on Poverty: A New Grassroots History, 1964–1980 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2011).
(74.) Papers of Bertrand Harding; LBJ, Papers, Confidential File, WE MC; Files of Marvin Watson; Files of Bill Moyers; Files of Frederick Panzer; Files of Harry McPherson; Files of Henry H. Wilson; Files of Charles H. Roche; Papers of Alfred H. Corbett; Papers of Bernard L. Boutin; LBJ Papers, Task Force Reports; Confidential Files, Agency Reports, OEO; Cabinet Papers; Legislative Background, Economic Opportunity Act.
(75.) Oral history interviews of key players in the War on Poverty and OEO housed at the Miller Center online collections include: Don Baker; John A. Baker; Ted Berry; Horace Busby; Edgar and Jean Cahn; William Cannon; Douglass Cater; Anthony Celebrezze; Jack T. Conway; James Gaither; Ronald Goldfarb; Kermit Gordon; Edith Green; Bertrand Harding; Ben W. Heinemann; Walter Heller; Harold W. Horowitz; Hubert Humphrey; Herbert Kramer; Frank Mankiewicz; Harry McPherson; Lawrence O’Brien; Ann Oppenheimer Hamilton; Robert C. Perrin; Albert Quie; Joseph Rauh; Norbert Schlei; Charles Schultze; Jule M. Sugarman; James Sundquist; Eric Tolmach; Jack Valenti; and Adam Yarmolinsky. | <urn:uuid:26dc4402-effa-46a8-9d79-bc28c296e8ef> | {
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Definition: In this kind of essay, we not only give information but also present an argument with the PROS (supporting ideas) and CONS (opposing ideas) of an argumentative issue. We should clearly take our stand and write as if we are trying to persuade an opposing audience to adopt new beliefs or behavior. The primary objective is to persuade people to change beliefs that many of them do not want to change.
Choosing an argumentative topic is not an easy task. The topic should be such that
X Marijuana should be considered illegal. (Not a good topic because it is too general. In some medical cases, marijuana is prescribed by the doctors and the patients are encouraged to use it in case of suffering from too much pain)
√ Selling and using marijuana in public places should be considered illegal.
X We should decide whether we want a bicycle or a car. (our stand is not clear: do we support having bicycles or cars?)
√ If we are under the age of 30 and want a healthy life, we should definitely get a bicycle instead of a car.
X Are you one of those who thinks cheating is not good for students? (a question cannot be an argument)
√ Cheating helps students learn.
X Considering its geological position,
√ Considering its geopolitical role, we can clearly say that the EU cannot be
X I feel that writing an argumentative essay is definitely a challenging task. (feelings cannot be supported; we cannot persuade other people)
If you believe that you can find enough evidence to support your idea and refute others effectively, you can choose challenging topics as well. You can enjoy writing about such topics:
Cheating is beneficial for students.
Murat 124 is a very good choice for conscientious drivers.
Stress is good for the human body.
Polygamy is quite natural.
For women, there is no need for men.
Organization: All argumentative topics have PROs and CONs. Before starting writing, it is imperative to make a list of these ideas and choose the most suitable ones among them for supporting and refuting.
There are three possible organization patterns:
PRO idea 1
PRO idea 2
CON(s) + Refutation(s)
CON(s) + Refutation(s)
PRO idea 1
PRO idea 2
CON idea 1 -----> Refutation
CON idea 2 -----> Refutation
CON idea 3 -----> Refutation
The sample essay has been written according to the third pattern.
Thesis: Do Reiki instead of taking medicine.
People should trust medicine since it is effective and scientifically proven.
Reiki is also scientifically proven and does not have side effects. (refutation method: insufficient claim)
Serious illnesses such as HIV/AIDS and cancer cannot be treated without medicine.
Medicine also cannot treat serious illnesses if not diagnosed at an early stage. (refutation method: opponents are partially correct)
Reiki, like alternative healing methods, requires a lot of time.
Reiki requires less time if done regularly. (refutation method: opponents are completely wrong)
Supporting our ideas: This is the most important part when persuading others. We are asking some people to change their beliefs or actions. We should be supporting our ideas with such facts, statistics and/or authorities that there should not be room for any doubts. Here are some faulty supports we should avoid:
Thesis: Leaving the university and starting to work is good for the adolescent because …
For more mistakes in the logic of arguments, see Fallacies.
Refuting opposing arguments: Before we start saying that the opponents are wrong, we should specify their opposing ideas. Otherwise, it would be like hitting the other person with eyes closed. We should see clearly what we are hitting and be prepared beforehand so that he cannot hit us back. We can do this by knowing what we are refuting.
e.g. X Some people may say that adolescents should not leave university education; however, they are wrong. (what they say is not wrong. Maybe their supporting idea is wrong /irrelevant /insufficient. We should state their supporting idea specifically to be able to refute it.)
√ Some people may say that adolescents should not leave university education because they are not physically and psychologically mature enough to cope with the problems of the real world. However, they forget one fact: adolescents can vote or start driving at the age of 18 (in some countries even before that age!), which proves that they are considered physically and psychologically mature at that age.
Language: Signposts gain importance in the argumentative essay. They enable the readers to follow our arguments easily.
When pointing out opposing arguments (CONs):
Opponents of this idea claim / maintain that …
Those who disagree / are against these ideas may say / assert that …
Some people may disagree with this idea.
When stating specifically why they think like that:
The put forward this idea because …
They claim that … since …
Reaching the turning point:
the other hand ,
When refuting the opposing idea, we may use the following strategies:
They have a point in thinking like that.
To a certain extent they are right.
After seeing this evidence, there is no way we can agree with what they say.
What we are discussing here is not what they are trying to prove.
Their argument is irrelevant.
HEALTH AND HEALING AT YOUR FINGERTIPS
Throw out the bottles and boxes of drugs in your house. A new theory suggests that medicine could be bad for your health, which should at least come as good news to people who cannot afford to buy expensive medicine. However, it is a blow to the medicine industry, and an even bigger blow to our confidence in the progress of science. This new theory argues that healing is at our fingertips: we can be healthy by doing Reiki on a regular basis.
of medical treatment argue that medicine should be trusted since it is effective and
scientifically proven. They say that there is no need for spiritual methods
such as Reiki, Yoga, Tai Chi. These waste our time, something which is quite precious in
our material world. There is medicine that can kill our pain, x-rays
that show us our fractured bones or MRI that scans our brain for tumors. We must
admit that these methods are very effective in the examples that they provide.
However, there are some “every day complaints” such as back pains, headaches,
insomnia, which are treated currently with medicine. When you have a headache,
you take an Aspirin, or Vermidon, when you cannot
sleep, you take Xanax without thinking of the side
effects of these. When you use these pills for a long period, you become
addicted to them; you cannot sleep without them. We pay huge amounts of money
and become addicted instead of getting better. How about a safer and more
economical way of healing? When doing Reiki to yourself, you do not need
anything except your energy so it is very economical. As for its history,
it was discovered in
Opponents of alternative healing methods also claim that serious illnesses such as HIV/AIDS and cancer cannot be treated without drugs. They think so because these patients spend the rest of their lives in the hospital taking medicine. How can Reiki make these people healthy again? It is very unfortunate that these patients have to live in the hospital losing their hair because of chemotherapy, losing weight because of the side effects of the medicine they take. Actually, it is common knowledge that except for when the cancer is diagnosed at an early stage, drugs also cannot treat AIDS or cancer. Most of the medicine these patients use are to ease their pain and their sufferings because of the medical treatment they undergo. Instead of drugs which are expensive and have many side effects, you can use your energy to overcome the hardships of life, find an emotional balance, leave the stress of everyday life and let go of the everyday worries. Most of the chronic conditions such as eczema or migraine are known to have causes such as poor diet and stress. Deep-rooted anger or other strong emotions can contribute to viral infections as well. Since balancing our emotions and controlling our thoughts are very important for our well-being, we should definitely start learning Reiki and avoid illnesses before it is too late.
Some people may still maintain that in our material world, everything depends on time. It is even “lacking time” that causes much of the stress that leads to the illnesses we mentioned. How would it be possible to find time to do Reiki to ourselves and the people around us when we cannot even find time to go to the theater? This is one good thing about Reiki; it does not require more than 15 minutes of our time. There is no need for changing clothes or special equipment. It is a wonderfully simple healing art, an effective method of relaxation and stress-relief. Most important of all, it is less time consuming than medicine if we think of all the time we spend taking medicine for some complaints and taking some more for the side effects as well.
Having said these, resistance to Reiki would be quite illogical. Reiki is natural and drug-free. What is more, it is easy to learn by anyone, regardless of age and experience. It can be used anywhere, anytime. It also enhances physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being and the benefits last a lifetime. It is definitely high time to get away from the drug boxes we store in our drug cabinet!
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We have collected an easily accessible list on tips, instructions and tricks to help you with puppy training. Sometimes some retraining is needed with an older dog and these steps can well be applied to those cases as well. Let's get started!
The most important life skill is coming when asked to, it can end up saving your dog's life.
- Everything starts with trust: have fun with your dog (playing tips here!) and reward them instantly when they come to you.
- Practice the "come" command when there are the least amount of distractions and your puppy is on the right mood to obey your command.
- Slowly move outside and among the distractions of everyday life.
- Practice regularly with treats so that this command is solid when needed the most.
2. Walking on a Leash
- Teach your puppy to keep on eye on you and practice walking with a treat in your hand.
- Then move on to wearing a leash: when the leash tightens, stop, and as they look at you, ease the leash and reward verbally. Then continue walking. The idea is to teach the dog that pulling won't get them forward.
3. Potty Training
Remember that puppies are unable to hold their pee and poo, so take them outside often: after eating, drinking, playing and waking up.
- When accidents happen, don't give the dog attention, just quickly clean up and move on.
- Keep walks and going to the bathroom separate, puppies are too excited about world to stop and pee. So when going potty, stay within a close range, maybe walk in a circle, so they get to focus on doing their business. Reward when they go outside.
4. Calming Down
Asking your puppy to wait before giving them food, before opening doors and saying hello to someone teaches them patience. You want to also give your dog its own place to calm down, and where they are not disturbed. Remember to teach everybody in the family to leave the dog be, when they are on their bed or in their crate.
Use "no" carefully and remember to use the same command every time. The "no" command is best saved for situations when the dog is about to do something dangerous to them or people around. Avoid using the dog's name when rebuking them and offer something better as a reward when they obey. | <urn:uuid:4ba1a033-5366-4dc7-bc6c-e64de551b0ba> | {
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Asforth Surname History
The family history of the Asforth last name is maintained by the AncientFaces community. Join the community by adding to to our knowldge of the Asforth:
- Asforth family history
- Asforth country of origin, nationality, & ethnicity
- Asforth last name meaning & etymology
- Asforth spelling & pronunciation
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Asforth Country of Origin, Nationality, & Ethnicity
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No content has been submitted about the Asforth country of origin. The following is speculative information about Asforth. You can submit your information by clicking Edit.
The nationality of Asforth can be difficult to determine in cases which country boundaries change over time, leaving the nation of origin a mystery. The original ethnicity of Asforth may be difficult to determine based on whether the name originated naturally and independently in various locales; e.g. in the case of family names that are based on a profession, which can come into being in multiple countries independently (such as the family name "Brewster" which refers to a female brewer).
Asforth Meaning & Etymology
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The meaning of Asforth come may come from a trade, such as the name "Brewster" which refers to a female brewer. Some of these trade-based last names may be a profession in a different language. This is why it is essential to know the country of origin of a name, and the languages used by its ancestors. Many western names like Asforth originate from religious texts such as the Bible, the Bhagavadgītā, the Quran, and so on. Commonly these family names are shortened versions of a religious phrase such as "Lamb of God".
Asforth Pronunciation & Spelling Variations
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Last names like Asforth vary in their pronunciation and spelling as they travel across villages, family lines, and eras across time. In the past, when few people knew how to write, names such as Asforth were transcribed based on how they sounded when people's names were written in public records. This could have resulted in misspellings of Asforth. Understanding misspellings and spelling variations of the Asforth last name are important to understanding the possible origins of the name.
Last names similar to AsforthAsfotvkv, Asfouarrh, Asfour, Asfourdennis, Asfouri, Asfoury, Asfre, Asfreh, Asfrell, Asfrer, Asfrey, Asfshar, Asfur, Asfura, Asfuroglu, ASfzsfr, Asg, Asga, Asgaard, Asgadullina
asforth Family Tree
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The Rise and Fall of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a "Parable on Populism"
by David B. Parker
As published in the JOURNAL OF THE GEORGIA ASSOCIATION OF HISTORIANS, vol. 15 (1994), pp. 49-63.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is one of America's favorite pieces of juvenile literature. Children like it because it is a good story, full of fun characters and exciting adventures. Adults--especially those of us in history and related fields--like it because we can read between L. Frank Baum's lines and see various images of the United States at the turn of the century. That has been true since 1964, when American Quarterly published Henry M. Littlefield's "The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism." Littlefield described all sorts of hidden meanings and allusions to Gilded Age society in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: the wicked Witch of the East represented eastern industrialists and bankers who controlled the people (the Munchkins); the Scarecrow was the wise but naive western farmer; the Tin Woodman stood for the dehumanized industrial worker; the Cowardly Lion was William Jennings Bryan, Populist presidential candidate in 1896; the Yellow Brick Road, with all its dangers, was the gold standard; Dorothy's silver slippers (Judy Garland's were ruby red, but Baum originally made them silver) represented the Populists' solution to the nation's economic woes ("the free and unlimited coinage of silver"); Emerald City was Washington, D.C.; the Wizard, "a little bumbling old man, hiding behind a facade of paper mache and noise, . . . able to be everything to everybody," was any of the Gilded Age presidents.(1)
The Wonderful Wizard of Ozwas no longer an innocent fairy tale. According to Littlefield, Baum, a reform-minded Democrat who supported William Jennings Bryan's pro-silver candidacy, wrote the book as a parable of the Populists, an allegory of their failed efforts to reform the nation in 1896. "Baum never allowed the consistency of the allegory to take precedence over the theme of youthful entertainment," Littlefield hedged at one point; "the allegory always remains in a minor key." Still, he concluded that "the relationships and analogies outlined above . . . are far too consistent to be coincidental."(2)
It was an interesting notion, one scholars could not leave alone, and they soon began to find additional correspondences between Populism and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Richard Jensen, in a 1971 study of Midwestern politics and culture, devoted two pages to Baum's story. He implicitly qualified Littlefield by pointing out that not all pro-Bryan silverites were Populists. But Jensen then proceeded to add two new points to the standard Littlefield interpretation, finding analogies for Toto and Oz itself: Dorothy's faithful dog represented the teetotaling Prohibitionists, an important part of the silverite coalition, and anyone familiar with the silverites' slogan "16 to 1"--that is, the ratio of sixteen ounces of silver to one ounce of gold--would have instantly recognized "Oz" as the abbreviation for "ounce."(3)
A few years later, literary scholar Brian Attebery wrote that "it is too much to say . . . that The Wizard is a 'Parable on Populism,' but it does share many of the Populist concerns and biases." Like Jensen, Attebery cautioned against an uncritical acceptance of Littlefield; and again like Jensen, he went on to suggest an analogy of his own: "Dorothy, bold, resourceful, leading the men around her toward success, is a juvenile Mary Lease, the Kansas firebrand who told her neighbors to raise less corn and more hell."(4)
The most extensive treatment of the Littlefield thesis is an article by Hugh Rockoff in the Journal of Political Economy. Rockoff, who saw in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz "a sophisticated commentary on the political and economic debates of the Populist Era," discovered a surprising number of new analogies. The Deadly Poppy Field, where the Cowardly Lion fell asleep and could not move forward, was the anti-imperialism that threatened to make Bryan forget the main issue of silver (note the Oriental connotation of poppies and opium). Once in the Emerald Palace, Dorothy had to pass through seven halls and climb three flights of stairs; seven and three make seventy-three, which stands for the Crime of '73, the congressional act that eliminated the coinage of silver and that proved to all Populists the collusion between congress and bankers. The Wicked Witch of the East was Grover Cleveland; of the West, William McKinley. The enslavement of the yellow Winkies was "a not very well disguised reference to McKinley's decision to deny immediate independence to the Philippines" after the Spanish-American War. The Wizard himself was Mark Hanna, McKinley's campaign manager, although Rockoff noted that "this is one of the few points at which the allegory does not work straightforwardly." About half of Rockoff's article consisted of an economic analysis that justified Bryan and Baum's silver stance.(5)
In a recent history of the Populist movement, Gene Clanton wrote that while The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was "a classic parable on the silver crusade," Littlefield had gotten some of it confused. Clanton explained (as had Jensen) that not all pro-Bryan silverites were Populists. A number of reform Democrats shared the Populists' distrust of railroads and bankers,their support for inflation, and so forth, but the Democrats disagreed with the Populists' call for a strong and active government to solve those problems, and in fact they tended to see Populists as dangerous socialist radicals. Clanton suggested that if the Wicked Witch of the East was the forces of industrial capitalism, then Baum's Wicked Witch of the West was Populism itself. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz "mirrored perfectly the middle-ground ideology that was fundamental among those who favored reform yet opposed Populism," wrote Clanton. "Baum's story was an apt metaphor or parable of Progressivism, not Populism." This was hardly the death knell for Littlefield; he had simply confused pro-Bryan, silverite Democrats for pro-Bryan, silverite Populists.(6)
As scholars continued to extend and modify Littlefield's interpretation, laymen discovered it as well. Perhaps the best example was a widely-reprinted essay, first published in the Los Angeles Times in 1988, in which Michael A. Genovese described The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as "the story of the sad collapse of Populism and the issues upon which the movement was based." Genovese's brief analysis was pure Littlefield. But there was one notable (and somewhat disturbing) aspect of Genovese's piece: Littlefield's name was never mentioned. The phrase "according to one scholar" never appeared. Less than a quarter century after his article appeared, Littlefield had entered the public domain.(7)
Several factors help explain Littlefield's popularity. First, he produced an overwhelming number of correspondences, and others have added to the list. One would be hard pressed to find any character, setting, or event in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that does not have a "Populist parable" analogy.
Second, educators discovered Littlefield's usefulness in teaching Populism and related topics. (This was the reason Littlefield, at the time a high school teacher, developed his analysis in the first place; the correspondences between Populism and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, he wrote, "furnish a teaching mechanism which is guaranteed to reach any level of student.")(8) The journal Social Education suggested using The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to help secondary school students understand the issues behind Populism, and I myself proposed the Littlefield thesis as a possible lecture topic in an instructor's manual for a popular college-level textbook.(9) Another textbook contained a two-page "special feature" essay explaining The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a Populist allegory (although once again Littlefield's name was not mentioned).(10)
Third, many people in post-Watergate, post-Vietnam America were fascinated to learn that their favorite children's story was something of a subversive document, an anti-establishment fairy tale. Hence in 1988 the Utne Reader praised a newspaper article for "expos[ing] Oz as a parable on Populism," a movement that had been critical of "Eastern banks and railroads, which [Populists] charged with oppressing farmers and industrial workers."(11)
By the 1980s, Littlefield's interpretation had become the standard line on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.(12) Recently, however, one of his basic assertions--that the book was, like the Populist movement itself, a critique of American industrial capitalism--has been challenged by scholars who argue that the book actually celebrated the urban consumer culture of the turn of the century.
The best statement of this revisionist view is William R. Leach's two essays in a new edition of the book. Baum's masterpiece was popular, Leach explained, "because it met--almost perfectly--the particular ethical and emotional needs of people living in a new urban, industrial society." Leach pointed out that the book exalted the opulence and magic of the metropolis. The Emerald City, with its prosperous homes and luxurious stores, resembled nothing as much as it did the "White City" of Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893, which Baum had visited several times. Furthermore, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz reflected Baum's belief in theosophy, a spiritualist/occultist quasi-religious movement that was popular in the late nineteenth century. Specifically, the book emphasized an aspect of theosophy that Norman Vincent Peale would later call "the power of positive thinking": theosophy led to "a new upbeat and positive psychology" that "opposed all kinds of negative thinking--especially fear, worry, and anxiety." It was through this positive thinking, and not through any magic of the Wizard, that Dorothy and her companions (as well as everyone else in Oz) got what they wanted. "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was an optimistic secular theraputic text," wrote Leach. "It helped make people feel at home in America's new industrial economy, and it helped them appreciate and enjoy, without guilt, the new consumer abundance and way of living produced by that economy." Leach concluded that "the book both reflected and helped create a new cultural consciousness--a new way of seeing and being in harmony with the new industrial order."(13)
Leach's new look at Baum directly challenged much of what Littlefield wrote.(14) Furthermore, it was consistent with Baum's background. Before he became a professional writer, Baum worked as a traveling salesman and owned a dry goods store. In 1897, he founded The Show Window, the first journal ever devoted to decorating store windows, and in 1900 (the same year as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), he published The Art of Decorating Dry Goods Windows and Interiors, the first book on the subject. Furthermore, Baum's involvement in the theater, as everything from actor to producer and writer, taught him to appreciate the artistic lifestyle that only the big cities could offer.
Leach's essays did not necessarily overturn Littlefield, however. Baum might have been "a shopkeeper, a traveling salesman, an actor, a playwright, a windowdresser,"(15) but he was also a reform-minded Democrat who supported Bryan's pro-silver campaign in 1896. Given this, Littlefield's thesis still seems plausible.
For years after Baum's death in 1919, the best biography of him was a twenty-five-page sketch written by Martin Gardner for a new edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1957. Gardner wrote just two sentences on Baum's politics: "Aside from marching in a few torchlight parades for William Jennings Bryan, Baum was as inactive in politics as in church affairs [which is to say, pretty inactive]. He consistently voted as a democrat [sic], however, and his sympathies always seem to have been on the side of the laboring classes." Four years later, the first book-length study of Baum appeared. Written by Frank Joslyn Baum (Baum's son, who died during the project) and Russell P. MacFall, the biography did not go beyond Gardner in discussing Baum's politics.(16)
Baum's political affiliation was a big part of Littlefield's argument for seeing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a Populist allegory. Citing Gardner, Littlefield mentioned Baum's support for Democratic candidates and, of course, the torchlight parades for Bryan. "No one who marched in even a few such parades could have been unaffected by Bryan's campaign," Littlefield asserted.(17) If one begins with the assumption that Baum was a Bryan Democrat, it is easy to read a Populist (or at least a pro-silver) message into the book.
But was Baum a Bryan Democrat? In the summer of 1888, Baum moved his family to Aberdeen, South Dakota, where he opened a dry goods store. In January 1890, after the business failed, he bought a local newspaper, renaming it the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer. The Pioneer was obviously a Republican paper. During the municipal elections that spring, Baum editorialized in support of the Republican candidates; after they won, he wrote that "Aberdeen has redeemed herself . . . [a]fter suffering for nearly a year from the incompetence of a democratic administration." Later that year, Baum urged unity against the growing Independent movement: "We are all members of one great family, the family which saved the Union, the family which stands together as the emblem of prosperity among the nations--Republicanism!" Not only did Baum speak for the Republican party; he spoke against the movement that would soon evolve into the Populists.(18)
It must be admitted that the Pioneer had been a Republican paper before Baum bought it, and perhaps he had to maintain its partisan identification in order to maintain its circulation. Furthermore, Baum's Pioneer, while clearly Republican, was quite progressive: he wrote in support of women's suffrage, alternative religions, occultism, toleration, and so on. So perhaps Baum was a closet Democrat in Aberdeen, forced to hide his true political feelings.
But that appears not to be the case. In the summer of 1896, the year of the election that would mark what has been called "The Climax of Populism," Baum published a poem in a Chicago newspaper:
|When McKinley gets the chair, boys,|
|There'll be a jollification|
|Throughout our happy nation|
|And contentment everywhere!|
|Great will be our satisfaction|
|When the "honest money" faction|
|Seats McKinley in the chair!|
|No more the ample crops of grain|
|That in our granaries have lain|
|Will seek a purchaser in vain|
|Or be at mercy of the "bull" or "bear";|
|Our merchants won't be trembling|
|At the silverites' dissembling|
|When McKinley gets the chair!|
|When McKinley gets the chair, boys,|
|The magic word "protection"|
|Will banish all dejection|
|And free the workingman from every care;|
|We will gain the world's respect|
|When it knows our coin's "correct"|
|And McKinley's in the chair!|
Hardly the writings of a silverite! Michael Patrick Hearn, the leading scholar on L. Frank Baum, quoted this poem in a recent letter to the New York Times. Hearn wrote that he had found "no evidence that Baum's story is in any way a Populist allegory"; Littlefield's argument, Hearn concluded, "has no basis in fact." A month later, Henry M. Littlefield responded to Hearn's letter, agreeing that "there is no basis in fact to consider Baum a supporter of turn-of-the-century Populist ideology."(19)
Thomas A. Bailey once suggested that we set up a computer network to keep track of misinformation that has been corrected--sort of a national clearinghouse for discredited myths. Is it time to move Littlefield to the computer trashpile of misinformation? Given the mounting evidence against it--given that Littlefield himself has admitted that it has "no basis in fact"--should we forget the whole notion of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a parable on Populism? That would be a big mistake. Perhaps we can no longer say that Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz "as an allegory of the silver movement," but we can still read it as an allegory of the silver movement--or, as Henry Littlefield noted just two years ago, "we can bring our own symbolism to it." Recent scholarship might have taken away Baum's intent, but the images are still there, vivid as ever.(20)
And because the images are still there, the Littlefield interpretation (especially as modified by Clanton, Rockoff, and others) remains a useful pedagogical device. Baum gave us a delightful and unforgettable way of illustrating a number of Gilded Age issues, from Populism and the silver movement to the Gilded Age presidency, from the problems of labor to the insurrection in the Philippines.
Thirty years ago, Henry M. Littlefield looked at The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and saw things no one had seen there before. More recently, William R. Leach has shown us another new way of looking at the book, a way that emphasizes a different side of the Gilded Age--the fascination with the city and urban abundance, the rise of a new industrial ethic, and so on. Leach's argument is just as compelling as Littlefield's. "Factual" or not, both are impressive achievements.
But even more impressive is the achievement of L. Frank Baum himself. In the preface to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum stated that he wanted to write a new sort of children's story: a modernized, American story, shorn of all the Old World images and motifs. He was tremendously successful in this, producing not only the first real American fairy tale, but one that showed American society and culture in all its wonderful diversity and contradictions, a story so rich it can be, like the book's title character, anything we want it to be--including, if we wish, a parable on Populism.(21)
1. Henry M. Littlefield, "The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism," American Quarterly 16 (1964): 47-58 (quotation on 54); L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Chicago, 1900).
2. Littlefield, "Parable on Populism," 50, 58.
3. Richard Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896 (Chicago, 1971), 282-83.
4. Brian Attebery, The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guin (Bloomington, 1980), 86-87.
5. Hugh Rockoff, "The 'Wizard of Oz' as a Monetary Allegory," Journal of Political Economy 98 (1990): 739, 751.
6. Gene Clanton, Populism: The Humane Preference in America, 1890-1900 (Boston, 1991), 149-50. Fred Erisman, "L. Frank Baum and the Progressive Dilemma," American Quarterly 20 (1968): 616-23, made a similar point, but outside the context of Littlefield's analogies.
7. Los Angeles Times, 19 March 1988.
8. Littlefield, "Parable on Populism," 58. For a brief discussion of how he came to write the essay, see Henry M. Littlefield, "The Wizard of Allegory," Baum Bugle 36 (Spring 1992):24-25. The Baum Bugle is published by the International Wizard of Oz Club.
9. David W. Van Cleaf and Charles W. Funkhouser, "Inquiry, 'Oz,' and Populism," Social Education 51 (1987): 282-83; Thomas S. Morgan and David B. Parker, Instructor's Manual and Test Bank to Accompany America: A Narrative History, Second Edition, by George B. Tindall (New York, 1988), 213.
10. Robert A. Divine et al., America: Past and Present (Glenview, Ill., 1984), 594-95. The essay was retained in later editions of the textbook; the third edition was published in 1991. For other examples of educators and the Littlefield thesis, see Michael Gessel, "Tale of a Parable," Baum Bugle 36 (Spring 1992): 19-23.
11. Michael Dregni, "The Politics of Oz," Utne Reader 28 (July/August 1988): 32-33. The newspaper cited was In These Times, 18 Feb. 1987.
12. There have been other interpretations of the book--scholars have read it from psychoanalytical, feminist, theological/philosophical, mythological, and Marxist perspectives, among others----but Littlefield's was easily the best known and most widely accepted of the bunch.
13. William R. Leach, "The Clown from Syracuse: The Life and Times of L. Frank Baum," in L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Belmont, Calif., 1991), 2; Leach, "A Trickster's Tale: L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," in ibid., 168, 174. Stuart Culver discussed Baum's book as a reflection of the advertising that accompanied the consumer culture. Culver, "What Manikins Want: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Art of Decorating Dry Goods Windows," Representations 21 (1988): 97-116.
14. One could try to reconcile the differences by suggesting that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was not so much about the Populists themselves as it was about the culture that gave rise to the Populists. Midwestern farmers were well aware of the consumer paradise Leach described (through the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog, for example); perhaps their inablity to partake more fully in that paradise was one of the reasons for the agrarian discontent that led to the Populists. But this oversimplifies Littlefield's argument, which was about silver and gold, William Jennings Bryan and dehumanized factory workers, not just "agrarian discontent." I appreciate Robert C. McMath, Jr.'s and James Cassidy's helpful comments on this point.
15. Leach, "Clown from Syracuse," 3.
16. Martin Gardner, "The Royal Historian of Oz," in Gardner and Russel B. Nye, The Wizard of Oz and Who He Was (East Lansing, Mich., 1957), 29; Frank Joslyn Baum and Russell P. MacFall, To Please a Child: A Biography of L. Frank Baum, Royal Historian of Oz (Chicago, 1961), 85, 124. ("The Royal Historian of Oz" is a title L. Frank Baum himself had used.) Michael Patrick Hearn is preparing a new biography of Baum; for now, the most reliable source of information is Hearn, ed., The Annotated Wizard of Oz (New York, 1973).
17. Littlefield, "Parable on Populism," 49.
18. Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, 12 April 1890, 19 April 1890, 18 Oct. 1890. For more on Baum's editorship and political affiliation, see Nancy Tystad Koupal, "The Wonderful Wizard of the West: L. Frank Baum in South Dakota, 1888-91," Great Plains Quarterly 9 (1989): 207-8.
19. Robert F. Durden, The Climax of Populism: The Election of 1896 (Lexington, 1965); Chicago Times Herald, 12 July 1896, quoted in New York Times, 20 Dec. 1991; New York Times, 7 Feb. 1992.
20. Thomas A. Bailey, "The Mythmakers of American History," Journal of American History 55 (1968): 18; Divine et al., America, 594; Littlefield, "The Wizard of Allegory," 25.
21. When describing characters and settings that readers have never encountered before, writers (and especially writers of fantasy) might naturally use familiar imagery to help the reader along. This could explain why The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is richer and more vivid than Baum's later books in the series (he wrote 13 others, from The Marvelous Land of Oz to Glinda of Oz): after that original volume, the characters and settings were no longer unknown--from the second book on, readers had encountered them before--and so Baum had less reason to use American images as the basis for his descriptions. And as good as some of those later books are, an Ozian Oz(described on its own terms) was nowhere near as fascinating as an American Oz.
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Staph infections account for about 20 percent of all hospital visits related to infections each year. The name of the bacteria responsible for causing many a staph infection is staphylococcus, which is actually very common and lives on the skin of approximately 30 percent of even the healthy human population. That means there’s a good chance that staph bacteria is living on your skin from virtually your head to toes, possibly even residing within your mouth and nostrils.
Staph bacteria don’t normally have the chance to proliferate, however, or cause negative reactions, thanks to protection from the immune system.
When they do occur, staph infections can take many forms, ranging in symptoms and severity depending on what part of the body they affect and the strength of someone’s overall immune system. The National Institute of Health has found that most staph germs are spread through skin-to-skin contact, and yes, they’re usually contagious in nature. (1)
One finding that scares many experts who study bacterial infections is that more and more antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria are now being discovered. This means that certain blood-borne infections caused by resistant staph can’t be treated with a normal course of antibiotics or other medications and therefore pose serious risks due to this antibiotic resistance.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is the most common form of resistant staph bacteria that’s immune to many antibiotics. As you can see, because antibiotics are not always a reliable treatment option for infections, preventing infections from developing in the first place by increasing immunity, avoiding contaminated products and practicing good hygiene are your best forms of protection against staph infection.
What Is a Staph Infection?
Staph infections are bacterial infections that can result in problems ranging from minor skin reactions all the way to serious, life-threatening heart complications. Experiencing skin rashes or symptoms of food poisoning — such as blistering, vomiting and dizziness — are two of the most common ways that a staph infection presents itself. These staph infections result from staph bacteria making their way into the pores through punctured skin or to the gastrointestinal tract from contaminated food.
Staph infections caused by Staphylococcus bacteria only become a problem when they spread to deeper parts of the body where they normally aren’t found and then proliferate to high levels. Sometimes bacteria can reach the bloodstream, where they travel to connective tissue, joints, bones, and vital organs like the lungs or heart.
Because there are various body parts and conditions that can be caused by staph infections, symptoms and signs are different from person to person. While people staying in the hospital or recovering from surgery are usually the most susceptible to developing staph infections, those who seem otherwise healthy are still at risk. The skin is one of the most frequent body parts to show signs staph of infection in patients who are overall healthy.
Wondering if staph infections are contagious? It’s been found that some staph bacteria can be spread from person to person or carried on contaminated foods, linens and surfaces. This includes the resistant bacteria called MRSA. MRSA has been shown to be transmitted through bed linens, bed rails, bathroom fixtures, hospital and kitchen equipment, and surgical/medical tools — plus found on sick patients’ and doctors’ hands, in their homes and on their clothing.
Staph Infection Symptoms
Some of the most common staph infection symptoms that affect the skin can include:
- Developing an abscess that causes redness, swelling and pain: These can be in the form of a visible boil, infected hair follicle (which looks like an ingrown hair) or a bump that look like a cystic acne pimple. Many who develop a staph infection of the skin form of a visible swollen pocket that contains pus and feels tender when touched.
- Forming a painful rash: Several types of rashes can be caused by staph infections. One is called impetigo, which is a skin rash that’s contagious and causes large blisters to form. Blisters can sometimes form crust coatings or open up and release fluid. Another is called cellulitis, which is caused from an infection deeper beneath the skin’s surface. Cellulitis occurs most often on the legs or feet and can cause patches of visible ulcers that eventually ooze open.
- In infants or babies, a type of staph infection called staphylococcal scalded skin syndrome can cause a rash or blisters that open up and expose raw skin. Some also develop symptoms of a fever at the same time.
Bacteremia develops when staph bacteria reach the bloodstream. This can cause staph infection symptoms that affect digestion and the vital organs, including:
- Symptoms of food poisoning, such as nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration and dizziness
- Low blood pressure and feeling shaky
- Symptoms of a fever, such as having the chills, loss of appetite, shakiness, upset stomach or weakness
- High fevers can result from staph infections called toxic shock syndrome, which can cause toxicity, rashes, confusion, muscle pains and digestive upset
- Septic arthritis symptoms can also form, and this type of infection causes swelling and pain in the joints, especially the knees. Septic arthritis can also cause pain and inflammation in the spine, feet, ankles, hips, wrists, hands, elbows and shoulders.
- One of the most serious conditions caused by a staph infection is endocarditis, which affects the endocardium (the inner lining of the heart). (2) It’s been found that between 10 percent to 20 percent of people who undergo surgery to implant an artificial heart valve develop endocarditis within 60 days. (3) This can affect blood flow and sometimes cause symptoms like damage to the lungs, congestive heart failure or kidney problems.
What Causes Staph Infections?
Although many of us carry staph bacteria on our bodies, the skin and immune system usually protect us from infection by acting like natural barriers and regulators of bacterium. However, when you consume contaminated food, undergo surgery or get cut, for example, it’s possible for staph bacteria to enter into the body, make their way through the bloodstream and reproduce to high levels.
Staph bacteria can proliferate inside closed-off parts of the body, forming abscesses, allowing pus to accumulate, redness, heat, swelling and usually some pain. Staph bacteria are especially harmful when they enter parts of the body that are normally blocked from their presence, cut off from air flow and have poor circulation.
As staph bacteria continue to reproduce inside the affected area, the immune system responds by raising inflammation in order to attack the infection. Inflammation caused from a patient’s own immune system is part of what leads to destructive staph infection symptoms. Toxins released from staph bacteria can cause an excessive immune response that attacks the body’s own healthy tissue. For example, with endocarditis infections, inflammation causes capillary leakage, low blood pressure, shock, fever, destruction of the heart valves and sometimes strokes.
Risk factors for developing a staph infection include:
- Staying in a hospital or nursing home where bacteria can spread from patient to patient. People in the hospital are mostly likely to get an MRSA infection, especially if they already have a run-down immune system due to having another health problem or taking antibiotics.
- Being sick with another infection, autoimmune disorder or condition that causes low immunity.
- Spending lots of time in public settings where you might be around other sick children or adults, including daycare centers, schools or universities.
- Undergoing surgery, especially to implant an artificial device, joint, stent or pacemaker. Bacteria can sometimes accumulate around these foreign objects in the body or enter the bloodstream through surgical incisions.
- Having wounds, stitches, incisions or cuts that are left uncleaned and untreated.
- Using expired or contaminated tampons and feminine products, or not changing them often enough.
- Consuming foods that are more likely to be contaminated with bacteria that cause food poisoning. These foods include pork products, old vegetables or fruits that have been left out, and unrefrigerated meat or dairy products.
- Not washing your hands regularly after using public bathrooms, going to a health facility/gym, or sharing equipment that can carry sweat, blood or other fluids along with bacteria.
- Having low immune function due to a poor diet, nutrient deficiencies, allergies and an unhealthy lifestyle.
Conventional Treatment for Staph Infections
Diagnosis of staph infection or poisoning in an individual is usually based on observing signs and symptoms. Sometimes blood, stool or urine tests are also used to confirm diagnoses. The conventional way of treating staph infections is usually:
- Opening up the affected area up in order to reduce inflammation and drain out excess blood or dead cells (which form pus)
- Prescribing antibiotics
In many cases, abscesses caused from staph infections can be closed off from drainage and therefore cause pain and swelling. This can happen when cellular debris and pus are left behind by the immune system but have nowhere to go (much like an infected pimple that’s beneath the surface of the skin and doesn’t form a noticeable white head). In this case, doctors might open up the abscess, blister, ulcer, etc., in order to relieve fluid from the infection.
Antibiotics such as cephalosporins, nafcillin, sulfa drugs or vancomycin are commonly used to fight staph bacteria, however some strains of bacteria have now become resistant to these medications. (4) Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (usually called MRSA) is the most widespread type of staph that is antibiotic-resistant and causes serious infections in thousands of patients each year. (5) Although researchers continue to explore ways to treat MRSA infections with new types of antibiotics, some patients don’t respond and wind up needing surgery to remove MRSA abscesses.
Staph Infection Prevention and Natural Treatments
1. Strengthen Your Immune System
Avoid inflammatory and allergenic foods that disturb gut health and lower immune function, including packaged, processed foods; potential food allergens like conventional dairy, gluten, shrimp and peanuts; refined fats or fried foods; and added sugar.
Consider taking herbs and supplements to boost immune function, such as zinc; antioxidants like vitamin C, echinacea and vitamin D; and antiviral herbs for immunity like calendula, elderberry and astragalus. In addition, fill up on healing foods like fresh fruits and veggies, probiotic foods, bone broth, and healthy fats like coconut, nuts and seeds.
2. Practice Good Hygiene and Hand-Washing
Regularly wash all fabrics and linens (especially when they’re shared) using a natural antibacterial detergent. Ideally look for detergents containing essential oils that have antibacterial/antimicrobial properties, or make a homemade laundry soap yourself.
Be sure to wash all dirty clothes containing bodily fluids, towels and bedding, particularly after they come into contact with someone who has an infection.
Clean and disinfect all working surfaces thoroughly and regularly, including those in bathrooms and kitchens. Public surfaces that are used or touched daily carry the biggest risk for spreading staph bacteria, including doorknobs, phones, or surfaces in public restrooms and locker rooms.
Frequently disinfect shared items in your home or workplace using natural cleaning products, especially those regularly used with someone’s hands, such as phones, doorknobs, keys, cabinet handles and keyboards. Run any shared utensils and kitchen or cooking equipment through a dishwasher after use.
Food workers should always wash their hands thoroughly to prevent foodborne illnesses from spreading.
Avoid sharing personal items, such as towels or razors, that can carry bodily fluids.
If you go to a gym or exercise facility, make sure to clean equipment after use and shower once you leave. Try using a towel when putting your bare skin on any surface, such as a protective layer between you and mats or the gym floor. Wash your hands after lifting weights, touching machines or using the bathroom.
Employees who are sick or suffering from infections should avoid going to work, and children who are sick should stay home from school. In public settings where shared equipment is used, such as tools, computers, phones, uniforms, helmets and protective gear, all equipment should be regularly disinfected.
3. Clean and Protect All Open Cuts
Be sure to keep any cuts, incisions or wounds clean and covered using band-aids, bandages or another dressings. Use a natural antibacterial wash over skin when showering, and make sure to protect openings in the skin when in high-risk settings like hospitals or nursing homes. Be sure to let your doctor know right away if a cut shows signs of infection, including redness, swelling and oozing, since this can help prevent the infection from worsening.
4. Properly Store and Handle Food
Staphylococcal food poisoning is caused from staph bacteria entering the gastrointestinal tract after eating foods that are contaminated with toxins left behind from staph microbes. Staphylococcus aureus is mostly likely to affect food workers who can come into contact with staph bacteria when touching contaminated products or who pick up bacteria from employees or when working on dirty surfaces.
In most patients, symptoms like severe nausea and vomiting begin quickly after staph enters the digestive system, usually within two to eight hours. (6) To prevent staph food poisoning from spreading, employees in restaurants, grocery stores, butchers, etc., should always thoroughly wash their hands after touching food or after going to the bathroom, stay home when they’re sick, and refrigerate food properly.
Foods that have a higher risk for spreading staph bacteria include raw foods prepared with someone’s bare hands, unpasteurized milk and cheese products (especially when they sit out for long periods), salty pork products, processed meats, puddings or custards, and any food that’s prepared using contaminated equipment.
Will cooking food remove staph bacteria? Unfortunately, the CDC reports that toxins created in food by staph bacteria cannot usually be killed from cooking or heating food. This is why it’s still possible to get food poisoning from any type of prepared meal. Fortunately, food poisoning symptoms should go away within one to two days in most cases.
Food poisoning staph symptoms don’t respond to taking antibiotics, so unless you’re becoming very weak or dizzy, you don’t usually need to visit a doctor office.
In the case of food poisoning symptoms, to prevent symptoms of dehydration due to vomiting or diarrhea, try to consume fluids (such as coconut water or freshly made fruit/veggie juice for electrolytes), stay in a cool environment and get plenty of rest. If staph food poisoning affects infants, children or the elderly, it’s recommended you head to the doctor right away.
5. Treat Skin Rashes and Blisters
To help reduce pain from blisters or lower skin swelling due to a staph rash:
- Press a warm compress against the rash once or twice daily using a fresh, clean washcloth or towel. You can also take warm showers (but not too hot) or baths to reduce swelling and tenderness.
- Elevate painful or swollen areas to prevent too much fluid accumulation.
- Very gentle stretch stiff areas to keep them from getting even more stiff.
- Wear loose, breathable clothing.
- Avoid other skin irritants as much as possible while you heal, including scented body soaps, detergents, shampoos, perfumes and lotions.
- Speak to your doctor about applying a soothing essential oil, such as lavender, to the skin, combined with a carrier oil, such as coconut oil, several times daily.
Staph Infection Facts and Figures
- Staph bacteria is the most significant cause of serious infectious diseases in the United States every year. Every year about 1.2 million people visit a hospital due to various staph infections.
- Around one in three American adults carries staph bacteria on the skin or inside the airways, although most suffer no symptoms as a result.
- The type of staph infection called staphylococcal infective endocarditis, which affects the heart valves and is the most serious complication of staph bloodstream infection, kills approximately 20,000 Americans each year. (7) Staph endocarditis causes over 94,000 life-threatening infections yearly and has a death rate of about 50 percent. (8)
- Because antibiotic resistance has become a serious problem, only about 10 percent of today’s staph infections can be cured with penicillin antibiotics. Fortunately, however, a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association stated that rates of life-threatening MRSA infections in health care settings are now declining, with 9,000 fewer deaths reported in hospital patients in 2011 versus in 2005.
- About 2 percent of all staph infections are caused by MRSA bacteria. (9)
- On average, it costs about $6,400 to treat every MRSA infection in the U.S.
- Around 5 percent of people staying in American hospitals will develop some type of staph infection due to their stay. Proper hygiene and disinfection in hospitals can cut back on the amount of staph infections patients develop by around 40 percent, according to some studies.
- The country with the highest prevalence rate of serious staph infections is the U.K., while the Netherlands has the lowest rate.
Precautions When Treating Staph Infections
Because these infections can be serious and contagious, always consult with your doctor if you suspect you might have signs of have a staph infection. This is especially important in infants or children, the elderly, following surgery, or if you have another health condition that affects your immune system. Seek professional help if symptoms worsen and don’t go away within one week, or if they appear suddenly and cause very high fevers or swelling.
Final Thoughts on Staph Infections
- Staph infections are caused by a common bacteria called Staphylococcus. Some staph bacteria, including MRSA, are resistant to antibiotic treatments and therefore the biggest risk to public health.
- Symptoms of a staph infection can affect the skin, GI tract, heart, blood vessels, joints, lungs and bones. Some of the most common staph infection signs are food poisoning, skin rashes, forming blisters that ooze open, joint pain and fevers.
- Prevention and natural treatments for staph infections include boosting immunity with a healthy diet, washing your hands, cleaning and disinfecting your home/work environment regularly, reducing fevers naturally, and treating skin pain with heat and essential oils.
Read Next: Top 4 Antibacterial Essential Oils
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The Church of St. Gabriel is the Orthodox counterpart to the Catholic Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth. According to Orthodox tradition, the Virgin Mary first received the news from Gabriel that she would bear the Savior while she was out fetching water. The Orthodox Church of St. Gabriel is therefore located over the spring that fed Mary's Well, the traditional place where Mary fetched water for her household.
History of the Church of St. Gabriel
Although not recorded in the Bible, the tradition of Mary receiving the Annunciation while fetching water is ancient. It is written down in the 2nd-century Christian text known as the Protevangelium of James, which fills out the biblical story of Mary and the birth of Jesus with more details.
The Protevangelium (or Proto-Gospel of James) says that Mary was one of seven unblemished virgins from the line of David chosen to weave a new curtain for the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple. She was working on this task in her Nazareth home when she went out to fetch some water from the city well.
The biblical account in Luke 1:26-38 only says that "God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth" and that "the angel went to her." It does not record the place of the Annunciation or what Mary was doing at the time.
The Church of St. Gabriel is built over "Mary's Spring," a natural spring that feeds the nearby ancient well known as Mary's Well. There may have been a Byzantine church here by the 6th or 7th century, but the first certain mention of it is by Abbot Daniel in 1106-08.
St. Gabriel's Church was probably always an Orthodox church, but there is some historical uncertainty about what happened during the Crusades - a few years following the conquest, Crusader sources mention a Latin priory of St. Gabriel.
From the 14th century, the church fell into increasingly bad repair, but there was always access to the chapel containing the sacred spring. The site was owned by the Franciscans and Greek Catholics for some time, but in 1741 the Greek Orthodox community gained permission from Dahir al-Umar to take over the site.
In 1750, the Orthodox community built the present church on the south side of the chapel with the spring. The wooden iconostasis was added in 1767.
What to See at the Church of St. Gabriel
The upper church has a fine wooden iconostasis, with delicate carvings and painted icons.
From the north aisle of the 18th-century church, seven steps descend to the lower chapel of the spring. Here a narrow single aisle, sometimes crowded with pilgrims, is roofed by a barrel vault and lined with blind arcades decorated with colored marble and glazed ceramic from c.1750.
At the north end of the chapel, Mary's Spring runs beneath an altar and can be peered down into. The round stone well has a lamp hanging over it and many icons of Mary have been set up around its rim.
According to a 17th-century account (the Quaresmi), a now-blocked stair on the right originally led up to convent of nuns and there was an altar in the east wall (now covered with arcades). The remains of a Byzantine bath house have recently been uncovered in the area and can be seen in a nearby cafe.
Quick Facts on the Church of St. Gabriel
|Names:||Church of St. Gabriel|
|Categories:||churches; biblical sites|
|Visitor and Contact Information|
|Coordinates:||32.707057° N, 35.301587° E|
|Lodging:||View hotels near the Church of St. Gabriel|
- Kay Prag, Blue Guide Israel & the Palestinian Territories, 1st ed. (2002), 346-47.
- Mary's Well and The Greek Orthodox Church of St. Gabriel - Near East Tourist Agency
- St. Gabriel Church - Biblewalks
- The Protevangelium of James
- Photos of the Church of St. Gabriel - here on Sacred Destinations
Map of the Church of St. Gabriel, Nazareth
Below is a location map and aerial view of the Church of St. Gabriel. Using the buttons on the left (or the wheel on your mouse), you can zoom in for a closer look, or zoom out to get your bearings. To move around, click and drag the map with your mouse. | <urn:uuid:33b01d44-190f-4300-ab4c-24781d86ad64> | {
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Throughout time, people have dressed horses in different ways. Depending on the culture, this gear has been used for practical reasons, to reflect status or wealth, or both.
Play with paper cutouts of six riders and styles of horse gear from different world cultures. Just follow the instructions below!
After you've tried out different riders and styles of horse gear, answer these questions:
• What are some of the biggest differences you see between different styles of dress worn by horse and rider?
• Do you see similarities between the different horse gear? Are there parts of the gear that may have different styles, but could serve the same purpose in different cultures?
• Do you see any symbols that might relate to the status of the rider?
• Which features of the gear worn by horse and rider would be protective? Which ones would be more decorative?
• How is the dress of the thoroughbred racing horse and jockey different from the others? Why do you think this is? | <urn:uuid:8ad212f3-3dcc-4b43-bc48-e3fe26f70039> | {
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I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to include the word “amortize” more effectively in my title. 🙂
For my first post, I’m going to stick to a few general grammar tips, along with posting several vocabulary words. My goal, which I’d like to share with you as well, is to learn something new, relating to writing, everyday. Vocabulary words will not only increase my repertoire of words, but yours as well!
Vocabulary words of the day
[Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day:]
Canny [KAN-ee] — adjective— (1) Careful, cautious and prudent; (2)Astute, shrewd, knowing, sagacious, skilled, expert; (3) Quiet and snug.
Example: “A canny card player, good at psyching out his opponents,” or “Warm and canny under the woolen bed covers, we didn’t mind the chilly Scottish nights.”
[From Merriam-Webster’s Vocabulary Builder:]
Turbid [tər-bid] — (1) Thick or murky, especially with churned-up sediment; (2) Unclear, confused, muddled.
Example: “The mood of the crows was restless and turbid, and any spark could have turned then into a mob.”
Amortize [a-mər-tīz] — To pay off something, such as a mortgage, by making small payments over a period of time; it is most commonly used as a legal term.
Example: “For tax purposes, they chose to amortize most of the business’s start-up costs over a three-year period.”
Some Grammar Tips: The Semicolon
My 11th grade Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. History teacher said something in class one period that has remained with me to this day. She was discussing the horrible work that some students had turned in and decided it was time to offer some grammatical advice. It was on that day that I learned how to properly use a semicolon. Shocking, I know, seeing as how I managed to pass grade school and two years of honors high school English without ever being informed about the beautiful, fluid and useful nature of the semicolon. She taught us the basic use of a semicolon… wait, no she didn’t. All she told us what that we should put semicolons before “however” or “but,” and that was about it. She was also a big fan of Tab soda. The things that stick with you after almost 15 years.
Rules concerning the correct usage of grammar have changed since my days in high school. Hell, the world has done a complete 180° when it comes to communication and language, it seems. But, back to grammar: very few rules are set in stone these days, as we have let American language merge with popular culture to create an ever-changing vernacular. I consider myself a prescriptivist when it comes to language, so it makes me sad that the “pop culture” phenomenon has not only invaded our lives, but also our language. I could think of examples, but I think it’d be better if you did for yourself; then, you’ll be able to reflect upon how different groups and cultures within American have affected the English language.
Enough talking about language; now let us learn the proper way to use it. Semicolons separate two clauses that could normally stand on their own. As my beloved Grammar Girl refers to semicolons, this half-colon/half-comma symbol is used as a sentence-splicer; i.e., semicolons splice nasty sentences and turn them into pretty ones.
(A bad) example: “It was quite cold this morning, I wore my scarf to get warm.”
Why is this sentence in poor form? Upon further scrutiny, you can see that it contains two complete sentences on each side of the comma. A way of writing the sentence that utilizes the semicolon is to say, “It was quite cold this morning; I wore my scarf to get warm.”
If you have too many short sentences in a row, then you could benefit from changing things up a bit, such as by connecting the two shorter sentences by a semicolon. Semicolons can be effective tools: using a semicolon to join two sentences draws the reader’s attention to the relationship between the clauses.
However, the most important thing to remember when using a semicolon is to make sure that the main clauses you are joining together are closely related to one another. Surely, you would never be caught saying, “The milk in the fridge is bad; I need to vacuüm the living room” and expect not to get strange looks. While each sentence can stand on its own, joining them with a semicolon only leads to confusion for the reason that the two sentences are not related. You have to take an axe to bad sentences such as these joined by deceitful commas.
You may ask yourself, why not just use a period? A period would have sufficed in place of the semicolon, but wouldn’t you rather mix things up a bit? Nothing conveys that you are a good writer like the ability to successfully sprinkle uncommon punctuation throughout your paper, including semi-colons, colons and “em” dashes – each of which will be addressed in upcoming posts.
Atypical punctuation not only adds variety to your sentence structure, but it makes you sound smart, too. 🙂 And, to some women, having large vocabulary is a sexy.
That’s all for today. Tomorrow I’ll try to post from the book, “Getting the Words Right.” It’s more of style guide and is a great read!
Thanks for reading my first real post on my new blog. FEEDBACK is welcome aka I never get blog comments. haha.
PS. If you have any grammar questions that you would like answered, leave your question in one of the comment forms and I’ll be more than happy to solve them!!! I thrive off of challenge! | <urn:uuid:fc54ab85-367b-476f-8efd-9e01c4a15a22> | {
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Forgive me if this has been asked, but I searched for pi and Math.PI and class and float and couldn't find anything relevant.
Problem as follows:
a number which is a radius
area and circumference of the circle with input as radius
volume and surface area of the sphere with input as radius
I got a working class, but when I attempted to change the variables to floats, in the interest of learning, it errored out. The reason is that Math.PI yields a double. I tried:
float pi = Math.PIF
That doesn't work. The only way I was able to have a working class using floats, I had to initialize pi as follows:
pi = 22/7F
Is there a way to use Java's Math.PI as a float? | <urn:uuid:7e94977a-0c9a-4434-82c1-e95ffd1a1242> | {
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The U.S. Census Bureau administered the Survey on Sexual Violence for the first time in 2004 for the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). On September 4, 2003 the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 was signed into law. The legislation required the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to develop a new national data collection of sexual violence within correctional facilities. The 2004 survey was the first-ever survey of correctional systems and facilities, designed to measure the number of reported incidents of inmate-on-inmate and staff-on-inmate sexual misconduct through the use of 6 forms (SSV-1 through 6).
Data are collected from approximately 1066 correctional facilities.
The first two versions of the survey, the SSV-1 and SSV-2, are utilized for the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Adult State Prison Systems in all 50 states as well as in the territories and commonwealths. Prison administrators are directed to report only on incidents of sexual violence that occurred within publicly operated adult facilities. The State officials are instructed to report data representing all prisons in their state on one form. The Federal Bureau of Prisons official reports data representing all Federal correctional facilities in the country on one form.
The second two versions of the survey, the SSV-3 and SSV-4, are used for the Local Jail Jurisdictions and Other Correctional Facilities. Jail administrators are directed to report only on incidents of sexual violence that occurred within their adult facilities. The SSV-3 forms are sent to a selected sample of publicly operated jail facilities. The SSV-4 forms are sent to a sample of the following: privately operated prison facilities and jails; jails in Indian country; military operated facilities; and facilities operated by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The last two versions of the survey, the SSV-5 and SSV-6, are developed for the State Juvenile Systems and Locally or Privately-Operated Juvenile Facilities. The SSV-5 forms are sent to all State operated juvenile correctional facilities in 49 states and the District of Columbia (Arkansas is the only State that does not operate a juvenile facility). The State officials are instructed to report data representing all State juvenile facilities in their state on one form. The SSV-6 forms are sent to a sample drawn from the approximately 685 locally operated juvenile facilities and 2,275 privately operated juveniles identified in the 2006 Juveniles Residential Facility Census. Sample selection is the responsibility of the Office of Statistical Methods and Research for Economic Programs (OSMREP) under the guidance of BJS and the Criminal Justice Statistics Branch (CJSB) staff.
Data are collected on counts of sexual violence allegations for each year. If any allegations are substantiated, then victim and perpetrator demographics are collected, date of incident, location, any injuries, the nature of the allegation, and any sanctions imposed on the perpetrator.
This survey is collected annually since its inception in 2004. Data collection begins approximately one month after each reference year, and continue for about 6 months. For the SSV-1 through SSV-4 forms, data is requested by the middle of April each year. The sponsor may export data files via a secured website as needed prior to the final delivery date in June. For the SSV-5 and SSV-6 forms, data is requested by the middle of May each year.
Data collection methods include Web, fax and mail.
The sponsor may export data files via a secured website as needed.
Sexual Violence Reported by Correctional Authorities is a bulletin published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) approximately six months after the reference year. The bulletin presents data on administrative records collection of incidents of inmate-on-inmate and staff-on-inmate sexual violence reported to correctional authorities.
The report provides counts of sexual violence, by type, for adult prisons, jails, and other adult correctional facilities. The report provides an in depth analysis of substantiated incidents, including where the incidents occur, time of day, number and characteristics of victims and perpetrators, nature of the injuries, impact on the victims and sanctions imposed on the perpetrators.
Sexual Violence Reported by Juvenile Correctional Authorities is a bulletin published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) approximately a year after the reference year. The bulleting presents data on administrative records collection of incidents required under the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (Public Law 108-79) of youth-on-youth and staff-on-youth sexual violence reported to juvenile correctional authorities. The report provides counts of sexual violence by type, for juvenile correctional facilities.
The Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics uses the data to analyze sexual violence in correctional facilities. State administrators, researchers, and the general media use the data for statistical purposes.
There are tables with breakdowns of each facility included in the survey with their totals for all four types of allegations of sexual violence. | <urn:uuid:0241c2d7-0528-4f82-bea0-60449ab3629c> | {
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Anatomy of a Link
Hyperlink is The commonest analogy of the backlink would be to liken it to the vote. If webpage A one-way links to website page B then web page A is suggesting website page B is a good webpage, site A likes page B.
The sole slight complication could be the nofollow tag.
In a nutshell the nofollow tag permits inbound links to generally be added to some webpage that produce a click-in a position connection to another web page without the hyperlink passing a vote.
These are generally employed for text website link adverts one example is where by they can send out website traffic to another web page without passing a vote.
I am not going to enter any more detail around the nofollow tag in this article but I would strongly recommend looking at the WikiPedia website page for an in depth explanation. In a nutshell.
if you need to hyperlink from a web page on your web site to some site on An additional web-site with out inferring any sort of endorsement utilize the nofollow tag.
Why Links Are Important
Getting proven inbound links are like votes it's not also tough to understand why inbound links are essential.
The same as a politician wins an election by securing extra votes than other candidates.
Websites protected the main position in a search result by securing much more votes than other pages.
Having said that,
contrary to a political election in which all votes are equal, where by engines like google are worried this is not the case, and This is when most of the confusion occurs.
Why Links Are usually not All Equal
So that you can make clear this additional I will stick to the voting analogy and expand on it.
When considering one-way links as votes It really is practical to think about the expression block vote or block voting.
Most often related to unions a block vote infers upon just one person the voting rights of all associates of an organisation.
To illustrate there are 4 individuals within a area Each and every representing a single group of individuals.
- Mr Smith signifies a bunch of one thousand folks
- Mr Jones represents a gaggle of 1500 persons
- Ms Samson represents a gaggle of 2000 people today
- Mrs Collins represents a gaggle of 5000 persons
Raise internet search engine rankings
A proposal is put ahead of the group and Mr Smith, Mr Jones and Ms Samson all vote in favour with Mrs Collins voting towards.
On the facial area of it that is three in favour 1 against along with the proposal could well be carried. Even so, Mrs Collins represents a bunch of 5000 people, five hundred more than the quantity represented by Mr Smith,
Mr Jones and Ms Samson so in fact, the movement isn't really carried, It can be defeated by 5000 votes to 4500.
excellent backlink web-sites
This really is essentially similar to the way in which inbound links get the job done.
To put it simply hyperlinks have various voting legal rights and It is perfectly achievable for a page with only 3 or 4 hyperlinks to rank larger than a page with numerous hundred as well as numerous thousand one-way links.
It can be this facet of website link setting up which is so poorly misunderstood and the reason there is a full field giving to build links on The premise of X range of one-way links for Y range of dollars.
The best way to Secure the correct Form of Back links
There are many people that will argue any connection is well worth owning, They might be suitable.
However, provided that we now comprehend backlinks You should not all carry the exact same excess weight it ought to be clear that securing hyperlinks that carry plenty of fat could have a Considerably more substantial influence on your Web content than hyperlinks carrying little if any pounds.
So How are you going to secure backlinks that carry weight? Easy.
produce some thing well worth linking to!
The trouble is this is not uncomplicated, It can be tricky.
It requires imagined, preparing, analysis, creativity and exertions and due to this many people revert to link spam.
The vast majority of connection constructing firms run by developing link spam. In basic conditions they make backlinks from areas including community forums, website link farms.
directories, weblogs, hubs, social bookmarks and an ever rising variety of other strategies.
You can also find numerous posting directories who, not like EzineArticles take very low excellent automobile spun content in Trade for your connection.
finest spot to purchase backlinks
If you suspect all of that matters is connection quantity you truly are spoiled for alternative and you will discover 1000s of businesses who'll Develop you a established amount of back links for your set fee.
As a way to permit you to make an knowledgeable decision Let us take a look at a lot of the a lot more prevalent hyperlink constructing strategies and talk about why they will not be really worth the trouble.
Establish High quality Backlinks
- Community forums - The most typical url building approaches using boards are to create a profile web site along with a signature backlink.
- Signature inbound links permit hyperlinks to get established at the bottom of posts or remarks you permit within a Discussion board.
- Signature one-way links are at finest very reduced high-quality and While they may mail you some website traffic are unlikely to acquire any long lasting effect on the internet pages you website link to.
- It is because these one-way links usually are not advantage based, as is the case with all url spam methods.
- It truly is approved the various search engines are recuperating at disregarding these one-way links and assigning them no value.
- Link farms - They're utilized by a lot of url making providers.
- A backlink farm can usually Have a very large amount of websites and Web content in just it, all beneath the control of the hyperlink building company.
- By developing a url farm website link developing corporations have the ability to provide a established variety of hyperlinks for just a set cost as they've got loads of Net real estate on which to develop the backlinks.
- The situation with hyperlink farms is they are often found out by the search engines.
- the one-way links inside of them will stop to obtain any good effect on the web-sites they connection to.
- There are a variety of variants on this topic including a technique exactly where hyperlink creating firms get webpages inside of genuine Sites in an attempt to surface credible.
- Directories - These are practical and might develop back links carrying some price inside the sense of attracting visitors to your site. But, in another feeling, They're a method of spam.
- as with other spam approaches, backlinks from directories are frequently not merit dependent and as such not often have any pounds in terms of helping to enhance your position.
- There are actually, nonetheless, some noteworthy exceptions like the DMOZ Listing and Yahoo.
- Hubs - These are generally pages developed on providers for instance Squidoo.
Web optimization backlink
- Unfortunately the spammers have also realised It truly is an uncomplicated way to generate internet pages for backlink constructing
- so it is a reasonable assumption employing hubs for example this may not have any Long lasting or massively constructive impact on your website.
- Blogs click resources - Usually known as SPLOGS (spam blogs) blogs certainly are a favorite haunt of backlink spammers. They seek out out weblogs while in the hope of leaving a comment and affiliated backlink to their customer's Web site.
- Once more these are not benefit centered unless the blog is actively managed by its owner and well-liked weblog software program for instance Wordpress immediately nofollow inbound links in comments anyway.
- This can make the back links of minimal value apart from the tiny number of Internet website traffic they could crank out unless your remark is recognized over a significant site visitors well-known website.
- Social bookmarks - Inside their early days social bookmarking web sites could have already been a source of important inbound links although the url spammers have put an finish to that.
- Many of the credible bookmarking web sites (Digg, Sphinn etc) recognised their platforms have been becoming abused by website link spammers and as a result they nofollow inbound links to discourage them. | <urn:uuid:0acb7632-0e6d-4a4b-8f74-dbe2c6c218ba> | {
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How to Treat Common Running Injuries
Five of the most common running injuries are shinsplints, chondromalacia (runner’s knee), Achilles tendinitis, plantar fasciitis, and iliotibial band (ITB) syndrome. Stress fractures, which usually occur in small bones in the foot, leg or shin, also show up in runners who overtrain. Runners must constantly guard against blisters, strains, and other problems that can hinder their efforts.
Rapid increases in mileage — or intensity of workouts — can place a runner in the danger zone. That’s why sports medicine professionals refer to the vast majority of running injuries as overuse injuries. The good news is that most running injuries affect the soft tissue, meaning that the injuries are strains, as opposed to broken bones, and heal rapidly with simple treatment and rest.
The treatment methods listed below are commonly used on most of the injuries that you may encounter. Among the running set, RICE is the key word for dealing with injury. Here’s what that acronym stands for:
R is for Rest: Take time off! No dedicated runner likes downtime, but attempting to grit your teeth and train through a slight injury can, at best, hinder the natural healing process. At worst, the slight injury can become more serious and knock you out of running for weeks or even months.
I is for Ice: At the first twinge or hint of an injury, slap an ice pack on the hot spot. Just 15 or 20 minutes of the cold treatment will reduce inflammation. (Don’t keep the ice on much longer than 20 minutes in one spot because you can cause freezer burn to your skin.)
C is for Compression: For best results, wrap the ice pack right to your leg if it’s a hamstring or quadriceps muscle. Compression helps reduce swelling.
E is for Elevate: If possible, raise the injured area above your heart. Flop on the couch, an ice pack wrapped to the injured muscle, and prop the leg up on a couple of pillows.
If you don’t have an ice pack, try freezing some water in a small paper cup with a Popsicle-type stick. After it’s frozen solid, remove the ice from the cup and, using the pop stick as a handle, give your wounded area an ice massage for 15 to 20 minutes. A bag of frozen peas, wrapped tightly around a sore muscle, also works.
RICE is a good first counterattack choice for runners. It’s easy and cheap. But if after 48 to 72 hours of RICE (don’t cheat on the Rest part!) the injury isn’t responding (or seems worse), then seek professional medical advice. | <urn:uuid:2ddf4ba3-e98b-4fc3-8227-9d520d241cd4> | {
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Zereshk barberry, also known as common barberry or European barberry, is one of the most widely utilized barberry species in the world and its cultivation has spread to nearly every corner of the world. The thorny branches and dense growth have made it a top choice for edible hedges around the world and its bright red tart fruit can be eaten fresh, added to dishes, dehydrated, turned into a candy or made into jam. The recipes utilizing Zereshk barberry around the world are seemingly endless! The bright yellow flowers that appear in spring make quite the show and are also a tangy and delicious treat. Zereshk barberry is a deciduous shrub but before going dormant for the winter it puts on a psychedelic display of bright red foliage that is accented by any of the deep red berries that might have gone unharvested.
Latin Name: Berberis vulgaris
Site and Soil: Barberries like 1/2 day to full sun and well-drained soil.
Pollination Requirements: Barberries are self-fertile.
Hardiness: Zereshk Barberry is hardy to -40 ° F.
Bearing Age: 2 years after planting.
Size at Maturity: 8-12 feet in height
Bloom Time: April
Ripening Time: September
Yield: 8-10 lbs. per plant
Pests & Diseases: Barberry is not bothered by pests and diseases.
USDA Zone: 3-9
Sunset Western Zone: 4-9,14-24
Sunset Northeast Zone: 31, 32 | <urn:uuid:951d2947-3d4b-4f24-9cb3-db784be72830> | {
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sevelamer (generic name)
It binds phosphates in the stomach and prevents them from being absorbed into the body
(se VEL a mer)
Table of Contents
Top Learning Centers(Recursos en Español)
What is this medicine?SEVELAMER (se VEL a mer) is a polymer. It binds phosphates in the stomach and prevents them from being absorbed into the body. This medicine is used in patients with chronic kidney disease on dialysis to prevent dangerous increases in phosphates.
What should I tell my health care provider before I take this medicine?They need to know if you have any of these conditions:
How should I use this medicine?Take this medicine by mouth. Follow the directions on the prescription label. Take with meals. Take your medicine at regular intervals. Do not take your medicine more often than directed. Do not stop taking except on your doctor's advice.
Empty the entire contents of each packet into a cup and mix thoroughly with water. If you are using the 0.8 g packet, mix with 1 ounce (30 milliliters) of water. One ounce is equivalent to either 6 teaspoons or 2 tablespoons of water. If you are using the 2.4 g packet, mix with 2 ounces (60 milliliters) of water. Two ounces is equivalent to 4 tablespoons of water. Multiple packets can be mixed together with the right amount of water. The powder does not dissolve in water. Stir the mixture vigorously just before drinking. Drink entire mixture within 30 minutes.
Talk to your pediatrician regarding the use of this medicine in children. Special care may be needed.
Overdosage: If you think you've taken too much of this medicine contact a poison control center or emergency room at once.
What if I miss a dose?If you miss a dose, take it as soon as you can. If it is almost time for your next dose, take only that dose. Do not take double or extra doses.
What may interact with this medicine?Do not take this medicine with any of the following medications:
This medicine may also interact with the following medications:
What should I watch for while using this medicine?Visit your doctor or healthcare professional for regular check ups. Follow the diet as directed by your doctor.
If you are taking other medications, take them at least 1 hour before or 3 hours after taking this medicine.
What side effects may I notice from receiving this medicine?Side effects that you should report to your doctor or health care professional as soon as possible:
Side effects that usually do not require medical attention (Report these to your doctor or health care professional if they continue or are bothersome.):
Where should I keep my medicine?Keep out of the reach of children.
Store at room temperature between 15 and 30 degrees C (59 and 86 degrees F). Protect from moisture. Throw away any unused medicine after the expiration date.
Remember, keep this and all other medicines out of the reach of children, never share your medicines with others, and use this medication only for the indication prescribed. | <urn:uuid:245fe442-ba6e-4dc2-8afe-2b5c07047dcc> | {
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High blood pressure is a hypertensive condition with numerous contributing factors. It usually has no symptoms, but it can cause serious problems. It is important to monitor it and control it through various modalities. This article looks at the prescribed medications for high blood pressure and any adversary interactions or contraindications with herbs, supplements and food.
Blood pressure is the force that your blood exerts on the walls of your arteries. When your heart beats blood is pumped into the arteries (Medline Plus, n.d.). This is when your blood pressure is the highest, and it is called systolic pressure. When your heart is at rest or between beats, your blood pressure falls and is at its lowest. This is called the diastolic pressure. When you receive a reading of your blood pressure reading normally get two numbers, the systolic and diastolic pressures. Usually they are written one above or before the other. A reading of 120/80 or lower is considered as normal blood pressure, a reading of 140/90 or higher is considered high blood pressure, a reading of 120 and 139 for the top number, or between 80 and 89 for the bottom number is considered as prehypertension.
High blood pressure is a hypertensive condition as a result of physiological, emotional, and mental factors, nervous anxiety and lower serum cholesterol. It usually has no symptoms, but it can cause serious conditions such as stroke, heart failure, heart attack and kidney failure. It is important to monitor it and control it through a healthy lifestyle habits and taking medicines and/or herbs, if needed with the necessary knowledge of any adversary interactions or contraindications.
High blood pressure can sometimes be controlled by one medicine, but often a combination of 2 or 3 medicines is required. Here are some of the types of medicines currently used by health care providers (AHA, n.d.).
Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme (ACE) Inhibitors are used for high blood pressure. ACE Inhibitors lower blood pressure by blocking the production of a hormone (angiotensin II) that narrows blood vessels, allowing the blood vessels to widen and blood to flow more easily. An uncommon yet potentially serious adverse interaction of ACE inhibitors is an increased blood potassium level, and a harmless but persistent dry cough. ACE inhibitors are not suitable for pregnant women as they may damage the growing baby.
Angiotensin II receptor blockers work in a similar fashion as ACE inhibitors. They are used in heart failure and for preservation of kidney function. The adversary interactions with Angiotensin II blockers are that if taken with food, absorption of loatadine is decreases, therefore it should be taken one hour before food.
Calcium channel blockers, known as calcium antagonists, lower blood pressure by blocking the flow of calcium in the muscles of the heart and blood vessels, causing the blood vessels to relax and open up. They are often useful for older people and people with asthma or angina or peripheral vascular disease. Side effects vary among calcium channel blockers but can include flushing, swelling of the ankles, gastrointestinal upset (particularly with verapamil) and palpitations; however, generally these medicines are effective and well tolerated. Adversary interaction exists with pleurisy root as it contains cardiac glycosides.
Diuretics assist in lowering high blood pressure by helping the kidneys to pass accumulated salt and wáter and decrease the amount of fluid in the body. Diuretics also cause blood vessels to dilate (expand), which decreases the pressure on them. Some diuretics cause excess potassium to be excreted in the urine, which can cause problems in people with impaired kidney function. Other side effects of diuretics can include dizziness, weakness, excessive urination, a rare rash and gastrointestinal symptoms. People who have diabetes, liver disease or gout need to be closely monitored while taking diuretics as the medicines may aggravate these conditions. Adversary interactions exist with alder buckthorn, buckthorn as an increase loss of electrolytes occurs.
Adrenergic blockers (alpha-blockers and beta-blockers) assist in high blood pressure by reducing the number of nerve impulses that occur in the heart and blood vessels. Some alpha-blockers relax muscles in the walls of the blood vessels and reduce the resistance to blood flow thus allowing blood to flow more easily. Beta-blockers, work by blocking the action of adrenaline and noradrenaline in the heart. Adrenaline speeds up the heart and makes it pump harder, thus increasing blood pressure. Beta-blockers slow the heartbeat, and reduce the force of its contractions so less blood is pumped through the vessels. Beta Blockers increase potassium levels in the blood and can cause a dangerous condition called hyperkalemia (excess potassium). Adversary interaction exists with pleurisy root which contains cardia glycosides.
Beta-blockers are also used for angina, fast heartbeat and prevention of migraine. They are not suitable for people with asthma or certain heart conditions, and because they act on the nervous system they may cause lowered mood or lethargy in some people. They may sometimes cause narrowing of the airways, such as in asthma, and cold hands and feet. Unlike many other high blood pressure medicines, some beta-blockers are safe for use in pregnancy.
Centrally-acting antiadrenergic therapy lowers blood pressure by acting on the part of the brain that controls blood pressure, which expands blood vessels. Although very effective, they have more side effects than other antihypertensive medicines, including fatigue, dry mouth, depression, impotence and headache, so they are generally considered second- or third-line treatment. Methyldopa is still occasionally used to treat pregnant women who can’t take other blood pressure medicines because of the effect on the developing baby.
For high blood pressure the recommended herbs should possess hypnotic, hypotensive, nervine, sedative, antispasmodic characteristics. The following herbal formula contain herbs with the above characteristics, and cold infusion is used to prepare this mixture, as it is a quick and efficient method of preparing and administration and valerian root has volatile constituents and should not be heated (Tierra, 1998).
Garlic (Allium Sativum) has properties which lowers blood serum cholesterol levels. It has beneficial effects on heart disease due to allicin blocking the biosynthesis of cholesterol. Garlic lowers serum-triglycerides, beta lipoproteins, phospholipids and plasma fibrinogen levels. It helps to expand vessel walls due to methyl allyl trisulfide. Ajoene in garlic inhibits the tendency of blood cells to stick together (platelet aggregation), this reduces blood clotting. No adversary interaction exist with the prescribed medications for the high blood pressure condition.
Black Cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa) possesses properties for the high blood pressure and it contains resinous constituents which inhibit the vasomotor centers in the central nervous system. Black Cohosh should be avoided during pregnancy. No adversary interaction exists with the prescribed medications for the high blood pressure condition.
Cayenne (Capsicum anyym) lowers blood cholesterol therefore decreasing blood pressure. It contains capsaicin which prevents rise in liver cholesterol and increases excretions of free cholesterol. It also prevents absorption of cholesterol. Cayenne should be avoided during pregnancy, and it has an adversary drug interaction with ACE Inhibitors.
Valerian root (Valeriana officinalis) has properties that affect the higher brain centers. It suppresses and regulates the autonomic nervous system and has no side effects even at high doses. No adversary interaction exist with the prescribed medications for the high blood pressure condition.
Kelp (Laminara, Macrocystis, Ascophyllum) has hypotensive activity which improves blood pressure and cardiac efficiency through laminine and histamine substances. It produces no side effects and no adversary interaction exist with the prescribed medications for the high blood pressure condition.
Copyright © Robert Mijas 2011
American Heart Association (AHA). (n.d.). Types of Blood Pressure Medications. Retrived December, 10, 2010 from http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/HighBloodPressure/PreventionTreatmentofHighBloodPressure/Types-of-Blood-Pressure-Medications_UCM_303247_Article.jsp
Brinker, F. (1998). Herb Contraindications and Drug Interactions. Sandy, OR: Ecletic Medical Publications.
Gaby, A.R. (2006). A-Z Guide to Drug-Herb-Vitamin Interations. New York, NY: Three River Press.
Medline Plus. (n.d.). High Blood Pressure. Retrived December, 10, 2010 from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/highbloodpressure.html
Tierra, M. (1998).The Way of the Herbs. New York, NY: Pockets Books.
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Naga City - What makes the newly published book ?Balalong? unique is that it attempts to chronicle Bicol culture through proverbs.
?Balalong (stress on the second syllable) is a pre-colonial instrument made of bamboo, beaten by a stick and used by chieftains to summon the villagers. It?s apt as the title of this 118-page book, if only to make it known that Bicol has its own set of proverbs that reveal strands of its cultural fabric. This collection represents spoken Bicol in Naga City and most parts of Camarines Sur.
Sometimes witty and humorous, and at other times profound, the proverbs that author Fr. Philip Francis Reazon Bersabe compiled and classified provide windows to the wisdom and values of a class of Bicolanos through generations.
Classified into four categories?moral, psychological, religious and secular?the book tries to unravel the deeper meaning of each proverb in daily life.
Explained and illustrated, this collection of 100 proverbs, as in other cultures worldwide, expresses the perception of ideas and ideals that matter to people, based on the norms and traditions of their place.
With local color, Bersabe takes the reader to the ethnicity of Bicolanos, with influences of religion, life cycle and environment as backdrop.
Kun sa lubang ka mahayop, puling an saimong madadakop? (Blow into the mortar, and the dust will get into your eyes) conveys wisdom in simple terms.
Some proverbs are informal and hilarious, reflecting a contemporary outlook: An tawong matorognon, naagawan nin agom (A sleeping husband loses his wife). ?An babaeng mainikid-ikid, sa pungo nasasabit (A flirtatious woman gets caught in the protruding branch).
Bersabe has more of this kind of proverb that originated from Caramoan and Camarines Sur. Here?s one with Bicolano machismo: An lugad nin lalaki, tinatahi nin nawi (The wound of a man is sutured by a large strand).
Bersabe has achieved a work of Bicolano values and wisdom, adding to the body of Bicol literature ? a growing list seeking to define identity. Being a priest, however, he tends to frame his discussion with biblical passages, which could narrow the readers? appreciation.
It?s not remote that several of these proverbs evolved from pre-colonial times when animism was the dominant native worldview. Framing them in a Christian viewpoint alters their original context.
Take the proverb An harayo sa gatong, dai matotong (One who is far from the burning wood will not get burned). Bersabe explains this to mean that a person must avoid trouble by distancing himself from quarrels, dissensions, misunderstanding, and trouble.
He doesn?t stop there but concludes that this ?may positively refer to a person who runs away from the love of God and needs to be closer to Him again, to get burned by His love.?
While the book provides a historical context to some of the proverbs, much work is needed to find their original meanings. Language research can deconstruct the words for these meanings. Only thus can Bersabe unleash their universality. Still, ?Balalong must be appreciated for his intention to document these folk sayings before they?re totally forgotten.
Bersabe has earned two summa cum laude honors ? in 2000 when he finished his Bachelor in Sacred Theology and 2002, when he obtained his Licentiate Masteral in Sacred Theology at the University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Sacred Theology and Graduate School.
?Balalong" was printed at the Goldprint Publishing House in Naga City last June. | <urn:uuid:8e36dc88-1eae-4f82-84fd-e77542035b1a> | {
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Proscriptive literature aimed at women is often one of the few sources available to access women's lives in early medieval Europe. It is because of this that often-difficult texts such as penitentials and rules for nuns have assumed such importance among historians of early medieval women. Smith does not mine the texts she has chosen for what they might tell us about women's lives, and is explicit that the texts cannot do this. What she aims to do and does admirably is to examine each text closely, in its context, and then analyse its contents. As such this book substantially succeeds in its aims.
The book is divided into two sections, one for penitentials and one for nunnery rules. Each section commences with a chapter outlining the authorship, context of composition and transmission of each text. There are then two chapters in each section analysing the content of the textual groups. This is a sensible and easy to follow organisation of the material, though it does mean that some sections are rather descriptive.
Developments in penitential literature are followed from the early Irish texts, through the various Anglo-Saxon examples, including the ones ascribed to Bede, to the handbooks produced on the Continent such as Halitgar's ninth-century compilation and that of Burchard in the early eleventh century.
The substantive chapters on penance analyse how the penitentials deal with firstly sexuality, then with work and magic. As is abundantly clear from any reading of penitentials, the authors were concerned to ensure that priests using the texts had adequate information to hear confessions for the many troubling variations in human sexuality. Smith takes us through the various penitentials' attitudes to marriage, abduction, monogamy, deviant sexuality, as well as the sexuality of nuns. Smith's analysis suggests that these texts were not more concerned with female sexuality than male, and that the texts were part of an ongoing negotiation between clergy and laity to reformulate human sexuality along more Christian lines (70).
Her chapter on work and magic gives some interesting insights into the relationships between pre-Christian practices and the ways that Christian clergy viewed them, particularly as they related to women. The types of work and magic that Smith has identified are childcare, contraception and abortion, healthcare, love magic, food preparation, textile work, funeral practices and intentional evil magic. Her discussion of some of these is rather brief. I would, for example, have liked more information on funerary practices, where the references in penitentials are some of the few sources available on this aspect of social history.
The second and longer section of the book is on nunnery rules of the early medieval period. This section is an important contribution to the study of religious women in medieval Europe, as although the nunnery rules have been discussed in varying degrees of detail individually or as small sections in longer studies of nuns and convents, this is an extended analysis of the rules themselves. As such it will be welcome and necessary reading for any future researchers of medieval nuns and their convents.
Like the first section, the section on nunnery rules starts with a history of the rules and the contexts of their composition. This section is strongest when collating the background for each of the important nunnery rules, Caesarius of Arles, Augustine of Hippo, and Benedict's Rule, as well as some other more minor rules, such as that of Donatus of Besancon. A history of these rules, with specific emphasis on the expectations for women expressed in them is a most useful addition to the historiography of early medieval religious women. The section is less strong on the contexts for women's monasticism in individual geographical areas, where Smith has relied rather heavily on McNamara's monumental Sisters in Arms. This means that some of the nuances of the contexts of the convents for women have been smoothed over. Ireland is one example, where McNamara and Smith have relied on analyses of Irish monasticism that have been recently challenged. While this does not alter the value of the synthesis that Smith presents, it would have been even more helpful if she had been able to consult new works on the Irish context such as those by Colm Etchingham on Irish episcopal organisation or Christina Harrington on early medieval Irish religious women.
Perhaps the most fully developed and interesting chapter of this book is the one on enclosure, which uses the nunnery rules, and other texts such as vitae to sketch out textual evidence for the physical spaces of nunneries, reinforcing the inner spaces that the rules prescribe. Her analysis of the variations in expectations of enclosure in the early nunnery rules will inform discussions and analyses of the later thirteenth century changes to the rules of enclosure of nuns introduced by Boniface VIII. This chapter will prove especially valuable as there are more archaeological excavations of nunnery sites, when it will become possible to compare the physical remains of nunnery spaces with the expectations that were outlined in the rules.
The final substantive chapter is on the categories of work and abstinence in the various nunnery rules. In this chapter, Smith examines varieties of abstinence that are outlined in the rules, such as detachment from the secular world, relinquishment of status, poverty, avoidance of friendship, silence, simplicity of dress and fasting and food. Here her comparison of the rules and of their different proscriptions on these topics is clearly set out and again gives well-rounded background to the rules themselves. The section on work within the nunnery examines work in terms of prayer, domestic labour, reading and copying of manuscripts. While she makes some conclusions on the application of the rules, again this section will be most useful as background for further research on early medieval nunneries in their individual contexts. This section concludes with an examination on the provision for the different offices within nunneries, including the election and conduct of superiors.
In the early years of researching women's religious experiences in the medieval period, pioneering studies were conducted over wide geographical areas. More recently there has been a trend to more closely focussed studies of one geographical area, allowing for more nuanced contextual discussion. What such closely focussed studies often lose is the capacity for analysing the women and their religious practice within the wider context of European Christendom. Ordering women's lives is a welcome addition to the history of early medieval Europe because Smith takes texts from broad geographical areas and examines them together. This allows her to offer interesting and significant comparisons between the texts. It also means that future studies can use her wide ranging synthesis to situate closely focussed and detailed study of individual geographical areas or groups of religious women. | <urn:uuid:aebdc68b-da10-4444-8228-dfeae2375d58> | {
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Deserts and Desertification: Don't Desert Drylands!
The World Environment Day theme for 2006 was Deserts and Desertification and the accompanying slogan Don't Desert Drylands! The slogan emphasized the importance of protecting drylands, which cover more than 40% of the planet’s land area. This ecosystem is home to one-third of the world’s people who are more vulnerable members of society.
The main international World Environment Day celebrations were held in Algiers with the support of H.E Mr. Abdelaziz Bouteflika, President of the Democratic and People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria.
With the theme deserts and desertification, the choice of Algeria could not have been more appropriate. | <urn:uuid:920e96dc-f930-4004-9599-354505e6b9b7> | {
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The Maryland Lesson
Hawaii’s public schools clearly need to improve. We take a look at the No. 1 public education system in the nation, to see what success looks like. What can we learn from Maryland’s example?
(page 1 of 4)
It's been a rough year for public education in Hawaii. State leaders responded to a budget crunch by killing 17 days of instruction, and then bickered the rest of the school year away. The situation made national news, prompting headlines like, “Hawaii’s Children, Left Behind.” We’ve been near the bottom of national student performance rankings for years; going from mediocre to laughingstock certainly wasn’t the change anyone hoped for.
Hawaii’s Department of Education has been promising reform and then failing to deliver it for so long that it seems sometimes that people have forgotten things don’t have to be this way. We might be falling short in our goals, but other states have managed to turn things around, and built public education systems of which they can be proud, or at least not ashamed.
We decided this year to take a look at one of these states, to see how things get done in a functional department of education, and to gather lessons we could apply here in Hawaii.
American education’s newspaper of record, Education Week, has for two years in a row ranked Maryland’s public education system No. 1 in the nation in its “Quality Counts” Annual Education Report. The report card grades states on both their education policies and their performances—a big-picture look at how well each system is doing. And Maryland is doing great.
How did they get to the top slot? How can we get there too?
• Hawaii and Maryland have a lot in common.
At first glance, it might not make sense to compare Maryland with Hawaii. It has more than four times as many people, after all, and boasts a diversified economy with strong transportation, tech and manufacturing sectors.
But start looking at the factors that always get cited as reasons for Hawaii’s lagging performance, and there are a surprising number of similarities.
The percentage of Maryland families below the poverty level in 2007, according to the U.S. Census? 5.4. The percentage of Hawaii families? 5.4.
The percentage of Maryland children who have difficulty speaking English? 3. Hawaii’s? 4.
Both states even have the same above-average rate of school-age children attending private schools: 18 percent each, compared with 11 percent, nationally.
And perhaps most importantly, Maryland has risen to the top of the public education pile while spending $600 less on each student than Hawaii. Education Week found that, adjusted for regional cost differences, Maryland spent $11,074 per pupil in 2007, while Hawaii spent $11,676. (Per-pupil expenditure is a tricky statistic, because it depends on whether you include costs such as employee benefits. Dividing the DOE’s total expenditures by total enrollment gives a figure closer to $16,000.)
What’s the secret? Why do Maryland schools succeed while Hawaii’s languish? To find out, we spoke with Maryland state Department of Education employees at all levels, from the state superintendent to the principal of a local high school. We found six things key to Maryland’s success that Hawaii is either not doing well, or not doing at all.
• Maryland takes accountability seriously.
Everyone says they care about accountability, but Maryland has been demanding it for years.
State superintendent Nancy Grasmick says Maryland’s turnaround started in 1993, when the state established its own statewide standards and created a reporting system called the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program.
The program predated the national No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program in tracking individual school performance and breaking out data for subgroups such as ethnic minorities and economically disadvantaged students. Underperforming schools were targeted with improvement efforts, up to, and including, restructuring.
“For the first time, we were able to measure the progress of schools with a consistent set of standards,” says Grasmick. “It was an important event in the educational history of Maryland.”
When NCLB went into effect in 2001, Maryland simply retooled its assessment program to meet the federal requirements. | <urn:uuid:851d15cc-5734-4703-9fd7-17ef83a8d7f3> | {
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Iron Age Merseyside
Aerial photograph of an Iron Age oval ditched enclosure, visible in the centre of the image, near Irby, Wirral
700BC - 43AD
Until recently this period was not represented in the county and only barely known in the rest of the region. However a picture of life during this period has now started to appear.
It is a significant period in the development of the settlement pattern and human landscape in the region. It was this period that saw the first widespread occurrence of permanent farmsteads in the northwest. With them came the associated agricultural landscape of ditched fields and boundaries. These transformed the British landscape by about 300 BC.
In north west England however, these sites are very difficult to locate. Sometimes the typical form of the farmstead, often contained within an encircling oval or sub-rectangular ditch, can be recognised from the air. If ground conditions are not good for aerial photography, which is often the case, or the farmstead was not enclosed by a ditch, then other methods are necessary. Unfortunately, metalwork is very rare on these sites and neither does pottery appear to have been used much. This makes it very difficult to find them by fieldwalking surveys. However, as local archaeologists become more experienced at spotting the traces left by these sites, more are being found.
National Museum Liverpool has excavated three significant Iron Age sites:
- Brook House Farm at Halewood, Liverpool, which was located through aerial photography
- Lathom, in West Lancashire, found when a gas pipeline cut through a Roman site
- Irby, on the Wirral, where Roman pottery was reported coming from the site owner's back garden.
The gas pipeline from Kirkham to Ormskirk as it cut through Lathom
Similar farmstead sites have recently been excavated by other archaeological organisations in the region. These include Great Woolden in Cheshire, near Urmston, a site near Stapleford, in Cheshire and a site at Mellor near Stockport.
There are a few defended, hill-fort type sites in the region. In general this type of site is not very common, unlike north Wales and the mid-Welsh borders with England. In north-central Cheshire they are found approximately between Frodsham and Bickerton. The only extensively excavated example, however, is at Beeston. In Lancashire, only two smaller examples are known, near Whalley and near Nelson, although these resemble the site at Mellor more than they do the Cheshire hill-forts.
Virtually all the excavated farmstead sites have Roman evidence on them as well. This shows one cannot make sharp distinctions between the archaeological terms Iron Age and Roman period. Even though Britain became part of the Roman empire, starting with the Emperor Claudius' invasion of 43 AD, life in the north west would hardly have changed for several decades. Native farmers in the countryside only slowly assimilated Roman customs and culture. Outside legionary fortress towns such as Chester and Manchester, few adopted Romanised life to the same extent as in southern England. | <urn:uuid:e930ef34-6f17-4009-a3ce-59d17394ece6> | {
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If 2019 is the year you finally decide to do something about your carbon footprint, your timing couldn’t be better.
Over the last few months, several major reports came out linking climate change to disastrous social, environmental, and economic consequences. The United Nations, for instance, brought together 91 scientists from 40 countries who analyzed 6,000 scientific studies and concluded that many earlier predictions were wrong. If we continue at our current pace of greenhouse gas emissions, we will face a full-on crisis by 2040, including massive food shortages, wildfires, and the end of the coral reefs. If you are the parent of a toddler right now, that is the year your child will be entering the workforce.
Then, in November, the Trump administration released a separate climate report that made it clear that the United States is already facing the deadly and devastating effects of climate change. Wildfires, hurricanes, and heat waves are already affecting large swaths of the American population, and these disasters are only going to become more frequent and severe.
Experts say that it is possible to reverse course, but it will take significant effort. Governments and companies have much of the power to change the future by creating policies that will curb carbon emissions at a large scale, but everyday consumers like you and me have a role to play as well.
Most of us living in the modern, developed world have gotten used to producing a large carbon footprint. Consider the massive quantities of household trash we generate every day, which adds up to 6,351 pounds a year per family. Each year, consumers around the world toss out 21.9 billion plastic bottles, 28 billion glass jars, 26 billion pounds of clothing and textiles, and 68.6 million tons of paper. All of these materials took energy to make and transport, only for it to land in our homes, where we promptly throw it in the trash can.
There are small, simple, inexpensive lifestyle changes we can make to be more responsible consumers. Scientists acknowledge that corporations have a far greater impact on remedying the problem than individuals, but a study published last year in the scientific journal Nature found that substantial, sustained efforts by consumers could help achieve the target of reducing the earth’s temperature by 1.5°C. Just as importantly, researchers have found that one person’s personal decision to live more sustainably is very likely to inspire other people to do so as well, creating a ripple effect throughout a community. This will accelerate the pace of change, and crucially, send a signal to governments and companies that we demand better of them.
Use Refillable Glass Soap Bottles
If you quickly survey your home with sustainability in mind, you’ll notice plastic bottles everywhere. While many of us have ditched plastic bottles for drinking water in favor of reusable bottles, we still use tons of plastic bottles throughout our house, in things like dish soap, laundry detergent, and shampoo.
There are two things you can do here. First, fill your home with glass pump bottles. The home brand Grove sells bottles for hand soaps and bathroom products, dish soaps, and sprays. They cost about $11 each. Once you’ve made that investment, you’ll be extra motivated to buy your household products in bulk-size pouches, which cost less per ounce and use less plastic. The brand also sells tubes of concentrated surface cleaners that you mix with water in spray bottles.
For laundry, use highly concentrated formulas, like Seventh Generation‘s 4X solution, which requires you to use only a quarter of what you would use ordinarily. The main ingredient in laundry detergent is water, which is what you wash you clothes with, so it makes all the sense in the world to do away with water in the bottles. Using a concentrate means your laundry bottle will last longer, reducing your consumption of plastic.
Vow Never To Use Ziploc Bags Again
Using disposable plastic baggies around the house can get addictive. Brands like Ziploc and Hefty create bags in every size imaginable, at such a cheap cost, that you begin to use them for everything. Your kid needs a snack in the car? Worried about leaky toiletries on a trip? Need to bring a sandwich for lunch? There’s a bag for that.
Sure, it’s convenient. But you’re chucking out tons more plastic that you need to. The good news is that brands have developed reusable versions of the classic baggie. Take Stasher, a startup that has created silicone bags in the same size and shapes as the disposable ones we’re used to. They cost between $10 and $20, which seems expensive until you consider how much you spend on disposable bags. The bags have a leakproof seal, and they’re dishwasher and microwave safe. And they come in fun colors, including shimmery ones perfect for makeup and toiletries.
Use Recycled Paper In Your Kitchen And Bathroom
We’re equally addicted to disposable paper towels. Any time there’s a spill or a splash of water from the sink, we reach for a paper towel and throw it in the trash. The first order of business here is to stock your kitchen with dish cloths. If you have one handy, you’re more likely to use it.
But if you absolutely cannot do without paper towels, buy the kind made from recycled paper. Seventh Generation sells them in both bleached and unbleached versions. The brand also sells toilet rolls made from recycled paper. They are just as absorbent as conventional paper towels and toilet paper, if not as soft and plush. One happy consequence of the paper’s texture? You tend to use less of it.
Figure Out Some Meatless Meals You Will Actually Eat
I’ll admit I’m a full-blown carnivore. If there’s steak or lamb on the menu, I’ll probably order it. But meat is a major source of greenhouse gas. If we all became vegetarian, we would cut global food-related emissions by a whopping 63%.
I’ve never in my life been tempted by the vegetarian lifestyle. But over the last couple of months, I’ve realized that this is partly because all of the meat-free food I have tried is boring and tasteless, and I often feel hungry later. There is a reason for this. Vegetarians make up only 3.2% of the American population, so many restaurants and grocery stores aren’t incentivized to cater to this sliver of the population.
The secret to changing your behavior is to spend some time finding vegetarian dishes that you find filling and delicious. Once you have a couple of meals you really enjoy, you can keep them on regular rotation. I’ve enjoyed Mark Bittman‘s couscous salad, which is full of chickpeas. I also started making a polenta and roasted mushroom dish, when a friend of mine posted a picture of it online. When I order from Asian restaurants, I pick tofu dishes, and palak paneer (a kind of Indian cheese), instead of beef or chicken. I’ve found that I enjoy oat or almond milk in my coffee more than regular cow’s milk.
The next time you open a cookbook or dine out, try something from the vegetarian section. It might surprise you. You may never become a full-time vegetarian, but your diet could become less meat-heavy, which is better for the environment (as well as your own health).
Enough With The Two-Day Shipping
Amazon got us hooked on two-day delivery. This pressured other e-commerce companies to keep up. As consumers, we now have no tolerance for delayed gratification: We want our stuff delivered as soon as possible.
Except: Do you really need every single item delivered in two days? As a Prime member, I often turn to my app when I remember I need something. One week it was hair ties, and the next, it was travel-size contact solution. Neither purchase was pressing, but Amazon made it so easy for me to click the “buy now” button. But this meant that rather than bundling many products into a single box, products were sent out one at a time, creating more packaging than necessary. And the company also shipped the products quickly, likely by air rather than ground transportation, which generates far more greenhouse gases. All so that I could replenish my jar of hair ties.
Amazon and many other retailers offer no-rush shipping. So these days, I opt for that, if I don’t need a product quickly. I’ve also gotten into the habit of putting products in my cart and purchasing several at a time, which I’ve found leads to Amazon delivering them all together in a single box. These are simple ways to train yourself not to give in to the instant gratification so many online retailers are pushing on you.
Leave Reusable Bags Absolutely Everywhere
We all know we should be using reusable shopping bags, but most of us don’t do it. Why? Because we forget to bring them to the store. We might carry our groceries home, unload them, and forget to bring the bags to the car. We might make an unplanned trip to the store, and not have a bag handy.
The solution is simple. Strategically plant reusable bags in all the spaces you inhabit. I have a set of five reusable plastic bags in my car, and more heavy-duty canvas bags in the trunk. I rarely use more than two bags at any one time, which means I always have a couple on hand. I also have a cute Baggu stashed in each one of my purses. And finally, when I am traveling, I carry my beloved New Yorker tote in my suitcase, just in case I need to make a stop at a store, which happens surprisingly often on business trips.
Buy Fewer Clothes, And Only From Sustainable Brands
Most people have too many clothes, and most of these clothes are made cheaply, using inexpensive labor and low-quality materials. Fast fashion helped create the notion the clothes are disposable. You can buy them one season and chuck them the next. This, of course, generates massive amounts of waste.
But we don’t have to live like this. After all, surveys show that we only wear 20% of the clothes in our closets regularly. These are probably your most comfortable jeans, your soft black T-shirts, and your most flattering blazer. Focus on buying classic, high-quality clothes. They may cost more up front, but over time, you will save money, and the earth, by investing in pieces that you wear over and over for years.
When you’re shopping, seek out brands that are committed not just to creating beautiful, well-made clothes, but also making them sustainably. Take workwear brand Dai, for instance. It has just released a classic $135 black turtleneck made largely from the pulp of wood regenerated into fibers, and is 100% biodegradable. It’s a soft, versatile piece that you can wear all the time, but when it’s finally reached the end of its life-span, it will return to the earth. Allbirds creates sneakers made from sustainable wool and bamboo, and soles made from renewable sugar, rather than petroleum-based polyurethane. Womenswear brand Aday has developed three shirts made entirely from plant-based materials, including seaweed.
If you buy from startups like these, they’re more likely to stay afloat and create more sustainable products for you to wear.
Carry Around Reusable Straws In A Little Case
Last year was the beginning of the end for plastic straws. Some cities have banned them completely. Some brands, like Starbucks, are developing new containers that don’t require the use of a straw. While this sounds like good news, the fact is that the majority of the country is still blissfully loading up on straws when they go out to eat. As consumers, we’re using millions a day.
You don’t have to be among them. You can buy a small pack of reusable straws easily. Metal and bamboo straws are abundant on Amazon. But like reusable bags, the trick is to remember to bring your straws with you when you’re going out. This may sound a bit silly, but my solution has been to carry my straws around in my car and purses in little carrying cases, which can be purchased on Amazon or Etsy. They keep the straws clean, and mean you always have a couple handy when you really need one, like when you’re picking up your (vegetarian) food at a drive-through. | <urn:uuid:b039bc1b-d713-4730-a84b-454e6ae2dd44> | {
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A century of human impact on Arctic climate indicated by new models, historic aerosol dataSeptember 12th, 2013 in Earth / Earth Sciences
This image shows an ice core sample melting on a continuous system inside the ultra-trace ice core analytical laboratory at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada. Credit: Desert Research Institute - Sylvain Masclin
The Arctic is the most rapidly warming region of the globe, but warming has not been uniform and the drivers behind this warming not fully understood even during the 20th century.
A new study authored by Canadian and American investigators and published in Scientific Reports, a primary research publication from the publishers of Nature, suggests that both anthropogenic and natural factors – specifically sulphate aerosols from industrial activity and volcanic emissions, in addition to greenhouse gas releases from fossil fuel burning – account for Arctic surface temperature variations from 1900 to the present.
Using new climate model simulations evaluated alongside the most recent surface temperature records and historical aerosol records contained in ice cores (collected and analyzed by an international team of researchers working at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada) the authors demonstrate that contributions from greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions, along with explosive volcanic eruptions, explain most of the observed variation in Arctic surface temperature over the last century.
"Unlike greenhouse gases, aerosols are short-lived in the atmosphere." said Joe McConnell, a research professor at the Desert Research Institute who oversees DRI's unique ultra-trace ice core analytical laboratory. "In order to understand their role in global climate you have to employ an array of sample sites and measurements. The records used in this study are part of a much larger array of historical aerosol records we are developing from ice cores collected from throughout the polar regions."
McConnell adds that this new study, resulting from collaboration between Canadian and American environmental researchers utilizing state-of-the-art climate models and ice core analytical techniques, demonstrates the importance of aerosols in climate forcing.
The authors attribute warming from 1900-1939 to rapidly rising black carbon emissions, diminishing influence of the Santa Maria volcanic eruption in 1902, and warming North Atlantic sea surface temperatures. Cooling from 1939 to 1970 is attributed to cooling from anthropogenic sulfate aerosol emissions the Agung volcanic eruption in 1963, and falling North Atlantic surface temperatures.
More recently, the authors attribute warming from 1970 to present to increased anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, with a smaller contribution from warming North Atlantic sea surface temperatures.
Understanding the causes of Arctic climate change during this period is critical, said McConnell, because of the associated environmental and economic impacts.
More information: The paper is titled "One hundred years of Arctic surface temperature variation due to anthropogenic influence".
Provided by Desert Research Institute
"A century of human impact on Arctic climate indicated by new models, historic aerosol data." September 12th, 2013. http://phys.org/news/2013-09-century-human-impact-arctic-climate.html | <urn:uuid:7943e85d-30c8-454c-8ec4-6e4abc70ce3a> | {
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If people ask you what the biggest city in China is and you answer "Chongqing", you might be correct. This huge city, both in terms of land size and total population, is near the end of the navigable part of the Yangtze River for large ships.
Chongqing was a part of Sichuan Province, but it was made a "municipality" in 1997. In China, a municipality is a big city with a big territory. Chongqing is one of four municipalities in the country. It is a city with a long history, and it was important as an inland port near the rich Sichuan region. Traders came overland or by river.
It is located at the place where the Jialing River meets the Yangtze River. Perhaps because the Chongqing area was out of the usual travel routes, the fragile rock carvings at Dazu and the fragile natural cave scenery at Wulong remained comparatively unspoiled. Around the Chongqing urban area, there are some scenic and historical highlights such as Dazu County with ancient rock carvings and art, the rocky scenery at Wulong, the Zigong Dinosaur Museum, the Yangtze River and the 3 Gorges Dam.
Chongqing’s territory is mainly between Sichuan Province in the north and Guizhou Province in the south. It also touches three other provinces. This gives an idea of about how extensive the territory is.
It covers about 82,000 square kilometers, and about 34 million people live in the entire territory. The Chongqing urban area has about 8,000,000 people. This puts it at about the same size as Wuhan down the river. Chongqing is quickly growing. Along with the main city, there are smaller cities and towns.
Chongqing Municipality is divided into 38 subdivisions: 21 districts, 13 counties, and 4 autonomous counties.
Now it is known as a big industrial city close to oil fields and iron mines that is benefiting from the supply of cheap electricity from the newly opened 3 Gorges Dam nearby that is designed to put out the power of 15 nuclear power plants. It has a big shipbuilding industry and a big automobile industry. The city wants to develop a big hi-tech and electronics industry. The government wants to develop China's western region that is sparsely populated. People displaced from the dam construction have been moved to Chongqing. The dam produced one of the world’s biggest artificial lakes and displaced hundreds of thousands.
Highlights in the region include seeing the 3 Gorges Dam and reservoir, taking a cruise on the Yangtze, visiting some of the small ethnic towns like Laitan, going to natural areas, and seeing the Dazu frescoes and statues. The ancient art sites in Dazu Country are on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
A newly opened-up area for hiking and sightseeing near Chongqing is the Wulong South China Karst that was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2007. There are natural towers of limestone, stone bridges and limestone caves. The area was seldom traveled by tourists until recently. Wulong karst landscape is around 205 kilometers' away from Chongqing. A day trip is possible but a little busy. Contact China Highlights to tailor make a trip to explore this karst region.
Visitors can also see giant pandas at Chongqing Zoo. Chongqing is close to the city of Chengdu, which is one of the major habitats of giant pandas. Please click the picture below to see our Giant Pandas Special Report. | <urn:uuid:bceacd3c-8c90-41f5-bb7a-920fe5cf66a5> | {
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Picea sitchensis (Bong.) Carr.
Pinaceae -- Pine family
A. S. Harris
Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), known also as tideland spruce, coast spruce, and yellow spruce, is the largest of the world's spruces and is one of the most prominent forest trees in stands along the northwest coast of North America. This coastal species is seldom found far from tidewater, where moist maritime air and summer fogs help to maintain humid conditions necessary for growth. Throughout most of its range from northern California to Alaska, Sitka spruce is associated with western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) in dense stands where growth rates are among the highest in North America. It is a valuable commercial timber species for lumber, pulp, and many special uses (15,16).
Sitka spruce grows in a narrow strip along the north Pacific coast from latitude 61° N. in southcentral Alaska to 39° N. in northern California. The most extensive portion of the range in both width and elevation is in southeast Alaska and northern British Columbia, where the east-west range extends for about 210 km (130 mi) to include a narrow mainland strip and the many islands of the Alexander Archipelago in Alaska and the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia (24). North and west of southeast Alaska, along the Gulf of Alaska to Prince William Sound, the range is restricted by steep mountains and piedmont glaciers edging the sea. Within Prince William Sound, the range again widens to about 105 km (65 mi) to include many offshore islands. Westward, the range again narrows. It extends across Cook Inlet to Cape Kubugakli and across Shelikof Strait to the islands of the Kodiak Archipelago where the range continues to advance to the southwest.
In southern British Columbia, the range includes a narrow mainland strip and offshore islands, but the best development occurs on the northern tip and west side of Vancouver Island. On the east side of Vancouver Island and on the mainland south to Washington, the range tends to be restricted to sea-facing slopes and valley bottoms.
In Washington, the range includes a narrow mainland strip along the Strait of Georgia, around Puget Sound, up valleys to the east, and on the Olympic Peninsula. On the west side of the Olympic Peninsula, the range broadens to include the extensive coastal plain and seaward mountain slopes. It narrows southward along the Washington and Oregon coast but extends inland for several kilometers along the major rivers. In northern California, the range is more attenuated and becomes discontinuous. A disjunct population in Mendocino County, CA, marks the southern limit of the range.
- The native range of Sitka spruce.
Sitka spruce is restricted to an area of maritime climate with abundant moisture throughout the year, relatively mild winters, and cool summers. Summer temperatures decrease northward and lack the extremes found in more continental locations. In terms of growing degree days, annual heat sums (based on a threshold of 5° C or 41° F) range from 2511° C (4,552° F) at Brookings, OR (lat. 41° 03' N.) to 851° C (1,564° F) at Cordova, AK (lat. 60° 30' N.) (8). The number of frost-free days varies locally but generally declines northward; averages range from about 294 days at Brookings, OR, to 111 days at Cordova, AK
Annual precipitation varies within the range of Sitka spruce and is influenced greatly by local topography. Annual precipitation of 2950 mm (116 in) at Forks, WA, and 5615 mm (221 in) at Little Port Walter, AK, contrasts with 635 mm (25 in) at Anacortes, WA, and 660 mm (26 in) at Skagway, AK Summer precipitation is greater toward the north, where light drizzle and fog are frequent. At Cordova, AK, from June to September, at least a trace of precipitation occurs during 22 to 24 days each month. In contrast, at Otis, OR, a trace or more of precipitation occurs on only 8 to 15 days each month. Toward the south, fog and moist maritime air are important in maintaining moisture conditions needed for growth; most winter precipitation is in the form of rain. Depth of snowfall increases northward. Average annual snowfall at sea level is 1 em (0.5 in) at Brookings, OR; 58 cm (23 in) at Quatsino, BC; and 340 cm (134 in) at Cordova, AK
Sitka spruce grows on Entisols, Spodosols, Inceptisols, and Histosols, on soils derived from a wide variety of parent material. The species requires relatively high amounts of available calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus, and grows best where soils are derived from rocks rich in calcium and magnesium (19). Best development is on deep, moist, well-aerated soils. Drainage is an important factor, and growth is poor on swampy sites. Sitka spruce commonly occupies alluvial soils along streams, sandy or coarse-textured soils, or soils having a thick accumulation of organic material. Soils are usually acidic, and pH values of 4.0 to 5.7 are typical. Spruce is an early pioneer on immature soils recently exposed by glacial retreat or uplift from the sea. It is more tolerant of ocean spray than are associated trees and often occupies a prominent position on exposed headlands and beaches along the outer coast (2). In Oregon and Washington, spruce follows lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) in succession on coastal sand dunes as they become stabilized by vegetation. On highly disturbed sites, it frequently becomes established concurrently with red alder (Alnus rubra) or Sitka alder (A. sinuata), gradually succeeding the alder as stands are eventually overtopped.
Sitka spruce grows from sea level to treeline in Alaska, at elevations ranging from 910 m (3,000 ft) in southeast Alaska to 300 m (1,000 ft) in Prince William Sound. High mountains of the coast ranges lie close to the sea, forming a barrier to moist, onshore winds and providing abundant moisture during the growing season. Spruce is limited in elevation by the short growing season at treeline. South of northern British Columbia, spruce is restricted to low elevations near the sea where moist maritime air and fog help provide moisture during summer. For the most part, high mountains that otherwise might offer suitable habitat lie farther inland where more continental conditions of summer drought and warmer temperatures are unsuitable for growth. Exceptions are on the Olympic Peninsula and in valleys in the Cascade Range off Puget Sound in Washington, and on isolated peaks in Oregon. On the Olympic Peninsula, Sitka spruce rarely grows above 610 rn (2,000 ft) in elevation (1).
Sitka spruce is commonly associated with western hemlock throughout most of its range. Toward the south, other conifer associates include Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), Port-Orford-cedar (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana), western white pine (Pinus monticola), and redwood (Sequoia sempervirens). Shore pine (P. contorta var. contorta) and western redcedar (Thuja plicata) are also associates that extend into southeast Alaska. Toward the north, conifer associates also include Alaska-cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis), mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana), and subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa)-trees that are usually found only at higher elevations toward the south. In central and northern British Columbia and Alaska, however, these species are found with Sitka spruce from sea level to timberline. White spruce (Picea glauca) is also associated with Sitka spruce in Alaska, and hybrids occur. The most important hardwood associates are red alder and bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) in the south and red alder and Sitka alder toward the north. Black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa) is an associate throughout the range.
Stands stocked with at least 80 percent Sitka spruce are identified as the forest cover type Sitka Spruce (Society of American Foresters Type 223) (6). Sitka spruce is also a component of 10 other forest cover types:
221 Red Alder
222 Black Cottonwood-Willow
224 Western Hemlock
225 Western Hemlock-Sitka Spruce
227 Western Redcedar-Western Hemlock
228 Western Redcedar
229 Pacific Douglas-Fir
230 Douglas-Fir-Western Hemlock
Sitka spruce usually grows in mixed stands, less often in pure stands. Pure stands usually occur in early successional situations and as tidewater stands influenced by salt spray. The most extensive pure stands are found on the Kodiak-Afognak Archipelago at the extreme west extension of the range. Sitka spruce is the only conifer present on this group of islands. A relatively recent invader there, spruce is expanding its range to the southwest, invading a tundra complex at the rate of about 1.6 km (1 mi) per century (14).
In Oregon and Washington, common understory species associated with Sitka spruce include swordfern (Polystichum munitum), Oregon oxalis (Oxalis oregana), false lily-of-the-valley (Maianthemum dilatatum), western springbeauty (Montia sibirica), three-leaved coolwort (Tiarella trifoliata), evergreen violet (Viola sempervirens), stream violet (V. glabella), Smith fairybells (Disporum smithii), red huckleberry (Vaccinium parvifolium), and rustyleaf menziesia (Menziesia ferruginea). On drier sites, salal (Gaultheria shallon), Pacific rhododendron (Rhododendron macrophyllum), and evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum) are common. On wetter forest sites, the previously mentioned species are found, along with devilsclub (Oplopanax horridum), ladyfern (Athyrium filix-femina), deerfern (Blechnum spicant), mountain woodfern (Dryopteris austriaca), and Pacific red elder (Sambucus callicarpa) (11).
In Alaska, the more common understory plants include devilsclub, skunkcabbage (Lysichitum americanum), ovalleaf huckleberry (Vaccinium ovalifolium), red huckleberry, Alaska blueberry (V. alaskaense), rustyleaf menziesia, salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis), five-leaf bramble (R. pedatus), thimbleberry (R. parviflorus), bunchberry (Cornus canadensis), stink currant (Ribes bracteosum), and trailing black currant (R. laxiflorum) (32). Cryptogams are abundant throughout the range of Sitka spruce. The Olympic Peninsula is especially noted for mosses, many of which occur as epiphytes on living trees.
In Oregon and Washington within the Sitka spruce forest zone, important plant communities include Tsuga heterophylla-Picea sitchensis/Gaultheria shallon/Blechnum spicant, Tsuga-Picea/Oplopanax horridum/Athyrium filix-femina, or Tsuga-Picea/Polystichum munitum-Oxalis oregana (11). Similar communities can be found in southern British Columbia within the "fog western hemlock/Sitka spruce subzone" (23). In Alaska, some of the more common communities include Picea sitchensis/Oplopanax horridum-Rubus spectabilis/Cornus canadensis, Picea sitchensis-Tsuga heterophylla/Lysichiton americanum/Sphagnum spp., and Tsuga heterophylla-Picea sitchensis-(Thuja plicata)/Vaccinium ovalifolium-V. alaskaense/Rhytidiadelphus loreus (32).
Flowering and Fruiting- Individual Sitka spruce may occasionally produce cones before 20 years of age, but cone bearing in stands usually does not begin until ages 20 to 40 (24). Sitka spruce is monoecious; female strobili (cones) are usually produced at the ends of primary branches near tops of trees; male strobili are usually produced at the ends of secondary branches lower in trees. Both may be on the same branch. Reproductive buds are initiated in early summer of the year preceding pollination and seed ripening, and heavy cone crops have been explained in terms of early summer drought the preceding year. Cones ripen in the year they were pollinated. Pollen is shed from the last week in April in the southern portion of the natural range through early June in the extreme northwest part of the range. Time of flowering is mainly related to temperature.
Seed Production and Dissemination- Seeds of Sitka spruce are small, averaging 463,000/kg (210,000/lb) (26). Seeds ripen in southeast Alaska during late August or early September, and dispersal usually begins in October. Cones open during dry weather, release seed, and reclose during wet weather. One study showed that 73 percent of the seed was released within 6 weeks of the first dispersal date, and the remainder was released over 1 year (15). Good crops occur at 3- to 5-year intervals in the southern part of the range and at 5- to 8-year intervals in Alaska. Cone and seed production in seed orchards can be increased by treating trees with gibberellin (31). Dispersal distance depends on several factors, including height and location of the seed source, local topography, and wind conditions. Reported dispersal distances range from 0.8 km (0.5 mi) when a seed source was on high ground, to 30 m (100 ft) when seed was released from the edge of a clearcut area (15).
Seedling Development- Under natural conditions, seed germinates on almost any seedbed, but survival may be low. Germination is epigeal (26). A mineral soil or mixed mineral and organic soil seedbed is usually considered best for germination, especially under light shade, as long as drainage is adequate and the soil provides sufficient nutrients for tree growth. Fine-textured soils combined with a high water table are suitable for germination but may be unsuitable for seedling establishment because of frost heaving. Coarse-textured mineral soils in unshaded conditions may dry out excessively but may improve after invasion by hair mosses that bind the soil surface and provide shade. Organic seedbeds are suitable in shade but are unsuitable in the open if subject to severe moisture fluctuations. On alluvial sites having high water tables and subject to frequent flooding, where competition from brush is severe, rotten wood may be the only suitable seedbed.
Vegetative Reproduction- Asexual reproduction by layering occurs under natural conditions and in plantations, but layering is most likely to occur on very moist sites at the edges of bogs or near timberline. Asexual propagation can be done by air-layering or rooting of stem cuttings. Clones differ in their ability to root or graft, and clones that graft easily do not necessarily root easily and vice versa. Cuttings from shoots of the current year root more easily than cuttings from older branches (15).
Growth and Yield- Height growth is slow for the first few years but increases rapidly thereafter. On average sites in southeast Alaska, trees can be expected to reach about 27 m (90 ft) in height within 50 years after attaining breast height (7). Average site index at elevations near sea level varies inversely with latitude, declining from 48 m (158 ft) at base age 100 years in Lincoln County, OR, to 33 m (108 ft) in southeast Alaska, at the rate of about 1 m (3 ft) per degree of latitude (8). Observations within the natural range of spruce show that growth rate also declines with increasing elevation.
Height growth of Sitka spruce and western hemlock are nearly equal during the period of most rapid growth, but spruce grows more rapidly in diameter. Consequently, thinning from below tends to favor spruce. Spruce continues to maintain height growth longer than hemlock and lives longer. Few hemlock live more than 500 years; Sitka spruce may live to 700 or 800 years. Very old spruces eventually assume a dominant position in old-growth hemlock-spruce stands.
Sitka spruce trees often attain great size. In Alaska, mature trees near sea level may exceed 61 m (200 ft) in height and 3 m (10 ft) in d.b.h. In Oregon, a tree 87 m (286 ft) tall was reported (24). The largest tree on record is located near Seaside, OR. It is 5.1 m (16.7 ft) in d.b.h. and 65.8 m (216 ft) tall and has a crown spread of 28 m (93 ft) (17).
Stands in which Sitka spruce is a major component tend to be dense, and yields are high (21,30). Stand volumes can be impressive. One plot in a 147-year-old hemlock-spruce stand in coastal Oregon contained, on an area basis, 188 spruce and 32 hemlock/ha (76 spruce and 13 hemlock/acre). Total volume was 2380 m³/ha (34,000 ft³/acre). Spruce averaged 64 m (210 ft) in height and 86 cm (34 in) in d.b.h., and hemlock averaged 44 m (144 ft) in height and 46 cm (18 in) in d.b.h (24).
Rooting Habit- Roots will grow where moisture, fertility, aeration, and mechanical soil properties are favorable. Consequently, there is great variability in root form-from flat platelike roots to deep, narrow-spreading roots (12). Where soils are shallow, soil temperature and fertility low, and water tables high, shallow rooting is by far the most common form. Deeper rooting does occur, however, where soils have good drainage and depth to water table. Rooting to depths of 2 m (6 ft) has been reported (5).
Sitka spruce commonly produces long lateral roots with few branches and rapid elongation (20). Annual elongation rates of 42 to 167 cm (16 to 66 in) have been reported (3). Lateral roots up to 23 m (75 ft) in length have been observed in Alaska (15). Root grafting occurs between roots of the same tree and between adjacent trees. It is fairly common to find living stumps sustained by root grafts from adjacent trees. Adventitious roots develop on trees growing along streams where alluvium is deposited by periodic flooding. Roots are vulnerable, however, to compaction and lack of aeration. Spruce are frequently killed by permanent flooding caused by beavers, and often valuable ornamental and roadside trees are killed when landfill is deposited around them. Containerized nursery stock has been successfully inoculated with the mycorrhizal fungi, Laccaria laccata and Cenococcum geophilum (29).
Reaction to Competition- Sitka spruce is more tolerant of shade than Douglas-fir but less tolerant than hemlock. Depending on latitude, Sitka spruce has been described as being in the tolerant and intermediate shade-tolerant classes. Overall, it probably can most accurately be classed as tolerant of shade. Since reproduction under mixed stands is predominantly hemlock, there is a tendency for this more tolerant species to eventually dominate the site. Few climax stands proceed to pure hemlock, however; in time, small openings, usually caused by blowdowns, develop, allowing reproduction of spruce. The combination of greater stature, greater longevity, and occasional stand disturbance is enough to assure a scattering of spruce in the overstory of most climax hemlock-spruce stands.
Sitka spruce is one of the few conifers that develop epicormic branches along the stem. Production of these sprouts is related to light intensity, and roadside trees often develop dense new foliage from base to crown. Thinning stimulates epicormic branching and could decrease the quality of the wood, although this is not a problem in production of pulp or dimension lumber. In deep shade, lower limbs soon die, decay, and break off, but the resinous branch stubs remain for many years.
Damaging Agents- Blowdown is probably the most serious damaging agent of Sitka spruce, but the species is attacked by a number of pests-insects, disease organisms, and animals. In general, problems tend to be more severe toward the south. The white pine weevil (Pissodes strobi) is the most serious insect pest in Oregon, Washington, and southern British Columbia; weevil damage has been the most serious deterrent to management of Sitka spruce in the southern part of its range. Damage is most severe on young trees 3 to 6 in (10 to 20 ft) tall. The weevil is not a problem on the Queen Charlotte Islands or in Alaska, possibly because there is insufficient summer heat to allow its development (22). The spruce aphid (Elatobium abietinum) feeds on Sitka spruce from California to Alaska and is a pest of ornamental trees. Epidemics are sporadic and short lived. A root-collar weevil (Steremnius carinatus) girdles l- and 2-year-old seedlings, causing some losses. The spruce beetle (Dendroctonus rufipennis) periodically damages stands throughout the range and is a major pest of spruce in British Columbia. In addition, damage from a number of defoliators and other insects is common (13).
Sitka spruce is highly susceptible to decay when injured (18). In the past, most emphasis has been on studies of decay in old-growth stands, but currently interest is shifting to young, managed stands. Some of the organisms causing decay in old growth (for example, Heterobasidion annosum and Armillaria mellea) can also cause root rot in young stands. Heterobasidion annosum infects freshly cut stump surfaces, and in Europe the tendency for plantation-grown Sitka spruce to develop H. annosum butt rot is well known.
Foliage and stem diseases are usually of minor importance. Several rusts cause occasional light to moderate defoliation, witches' brooms, or loss of cones. Seed and seedling diseases are probably most important in production of containerized seedlings in greenhouses.
Sitka spruce is damaged at various locations by animals such as elk, bear, deer, porcupines, rabbits, hares, and squirrels. In general, these problems are more serious in the southern part of the range. Deer are generally more troublesome in the southern part, porcupines in the northern part (25). Spruce is often less damaged than its associates.
Few growth abnormalities have been reported, although large tumorlike growths on stems have been reported in Washington, and they occur in Alaska as well. The causal agent is not known.
High strength-to-weight ratio and resonant qualities of clear lumber are attributes that have traditionally made Sitka spruce wood valuable for specialty uses, such as sounding boards for high-quality pianos; guitar faces; ladders; construction components of experimental light aircraft; oars, planking, masts, and spars for custom-made or traditional boats; and turbine blades for wind energy conversion systems.
In addition to the clinal latitudinal difference in growth rate, cone characteristics such as size, length-to-width ratio, angle of sterigma, and phylotaxy also vary with latitude (4).
Variation in wood characteristics has been reported by provenance, region, site, and individual trees. Although no comprehensive heritability studies have been completed, Sitka spruce shows considerable variation in wood density, tracheid length, and grain angle. Improvement in these characteristics through breeding appears feasible. Selection for vigor tends to favor trees of lower-than-average specific gravity but has no effect on tracheid length (15).
Provenance studies show that- at a given planting site- northern, inland, and high-elevation sources are the first and the most variable in breaking dormancy. Dormancy appears to be influenced by photoperiod, and northern provenances are the first to enter dormancy. Total seasonal height growth is positively correlated with the time interval between flushing and dormancy. When moved north, introduced southern sources make better height growth, but they may be subject to frost damage if moved too far or planted on exposed sites. Once dormant, Sitka spruce is able to endure very low temperatures without damage. Sitka spruce from northern provenances may be more resistant to freezing than those from southern provenances. Dormant leaves from a Bellingham, WA, source withstood temperatures to -30° C (-22° F), whereas a Juneau, AK, source withstood temperatures to -40° C (-40° F). Twigs of the two sources withstood temperatures to -40° C and -60° C (-40° F and -76° F), respectively (27).
Only limited data are available on genetic variation between individual trees. Assessment of first-year characteristics of progeny from a diallel cross among six trees showed that characters affecting tree form were inherited in a predominantly additive fashion; characters reflecting tree vigor were under "additive, dominance, and maternal control" (28). Self-pollinated progeny showed growth depression caused by inbreeding (28).
Biochemical variation between populations of Sitka spruce from various parts of its natural range has been studied for polyphenols, isoenzymes, and terpenoids. Differences in polyphenol concentrations have been found between different origins, and a high degree of variation in monoterpene concentrations has been shown between trees in stands and by stand origin. Polyphenol, isoenzyme, and terpenoid analyses have been used in studying the introgression between Sitka spruce and white spruce (9).
Variation is known to occur within the cell nucleus. The length of the haploid complement and the nuclear volume increase with latitude of seed origin. Seeds from northern sources have more DNA per cell than those from southern provenances. Super-numerary (B) chromosomes have been found in seeds from eight provenances (15).
Genetic tree improvement programs are progressing in Britain and in Denmark. In North America, efforts toward tree improvement have been concerned primarily with developing procedures for control of indiscriminate transfer of seeds and plant materials. Efforts are being made to locate plus-trees, primarily by private industrial forest organizations, and seed orchards are being established.
A natural hybrid between Sitka spruce and white spruce (Picea x lutzii Little) occurs in the Skeena River Valley, BC, and on the Kenai Peninsula, AK. The hybrid shows some resistance to the white pine weevil. Sitka spruce is also known to cross with Yezo spruce (Picea jezoensis), Serbian spruce (P. omorika), and Engelmann spruce (P. engelmannii) (33). The cross black spruce (Picea mariana x Sitka spruce) on black spruce strobili has yielded viable seed. Crossability averaged 5 percent; this low average suggests that black spruce does not share the same phylogenetic relationship with the more easily crossed Sitka, white, and Engelmann spruces (10). | <urn:uuid:0c43d274-e0ba-4519-951b-872d613c13f3> | {
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It’s 7pm. The .Net programming project you were supposed to be working on all week is due at 8am the next morning. You haven’t even started it. This is when an all-nighter is the only option.
University can be tough, but situations like that described above can also happen to you when you enter the workforce. Deadlines arrive sooner than you expected. Project timelines can push you right to the brink. While it’s not at all healthy to do very often, sometimes pulling an all-nighter to hit those deadlines or to finish that college project is the only option you have left.
Unfortunately, this is more commonly an issue for Computer Science students who have complex programming projects to work on. It’s far too easy at University to get distracted by parties, pizza-deliveries, and romantic pursuits. Many times, those time-intensive programming projects get put off to the last minute. Here are the most effective techniques to push away the cobwebs and awaken your mind for a night of intense coding.
Transform Your Environment
Programming involves intense focus and concentration, which means that you need to have an environment that is conducive to that. Before we get to how you can prepare your body for an all-nighter, it’s important to consider your environment first.
A 1993 study published in the Journal of Obesity & Health found that TV viewing significantly lowered metabolic rate. You may have witnessed this yourself when watching TV for a long time caused you to become groggy. So first, turn off your TV, or trust me – you’ll be drawn into an unfortunate slumber!
Second, turn up the AC. Cold air increases your heart rate to improve circulation, and in effect gives you a boost of energy. At the same time, turn up all of the lights in the room and make sure the entire room you’re studying in is fully lit. Studies have found that brightly lit rooms helped peopel feel more alert and energized. This is even more true if you’re exposed to natural light, so if you can afford to buy a full-spectrum light bulb for your desk lamp – do it.
Finally, if you can manage it, work on your programming project with a friend, or work on your individual projects together. It is much more invigorating to study with a friend who you can bounce ideas off of occasionally, rather than working alone in a quiet room. Just make sure to avoid getting distracted by long conversations that make the hours slip away.
Awaken Your Body
The most effective tricks to pull an all-nighter are physical. The key is that you need to make sure your body and your mind are fully alert during the critical hours. This is especially true for programmers, who need to be able to focus not only on developing complex code, but also need to be alert enough to spot software bugs inside of that code.
Step 1 is to have a very big breakfast. Eat well, have a normal lunch, and then in the lead-up to your all-night session, only eat snacks when you feel hungry – and only enough to curb your appetite. You don’t want to divert any blood flow from your brain or your body to your stomach for digestion as you enter your programming cram-session.
Step 2 is to schedule about an hour during the day of the all-night session to take a nap for roughly 30 minutes. Make sure you schedule it at least 8 hours before you’d normally go to bed.
This will rejuvenate your mind and body in the lead-up to the all-nighter.
Step 3 – About two hours before the all-nighter, go to the gym and do a light workout session. This should be 30-60 minutes of an aerobic activity that gets your blood flowing and energizes you. Once you shower up, you should be about an hour away from the start of your study time.
Step 4 – On the way to wherever you’ll be working on your project, pick up fruits to snack on, as well as peppermint gum. Also make sure you have a good supply of coffee or caffeinated tea, and a good supply of cold water (or a source of cold water where you’ll be working).
Now it’s time to dive into your all-night programming session.
Awaken Your Mind
Anything as tedious as writing software can dull the mind and put you to sleep, so right before diving into a project like this, you need to invigorate the mind. Find a video on YouTube that will get you absolutely inspired to succeed with your project. There are a lot of great motivational videos out there – find a good one and watch it roughly 15 minutes before you’re ready to get to work.
One of my favorites was definitely Rocky Balboa’s inspirational speech to his son.
By this point, trust me, you’re going to be well rested, energized from your workout, and completely pumped — ready to take on your project like nothing else. Awesome. Dive into it, but understand that it’s only the beginning of a very long night. There are still things you need to do to maintain this level of energy through the night.
Aside from setting up the environment lighting and temperature, you’re also going to want to have something available other than your project that keeps your mind engaged. This will be different for everyone. Some people like to have music in the background for this. Other people will listen to a podcast or a radio talk show. Another idea is to set up frequent breaks every 30 minutes to get on Facebook or Twitter to interact with friends. Or pick up the phone and call a friend who you know is staying up all night too. Play a few minutes of a video game. Just limit these breaks to a few minutes, or you’ll lose track of time and blow your schedule.
While you’re working, don’t forget to:
- Drink coffee at the very start of your study session. This should kick in about an hour into your programming binge, and last a couple of hours.
- After your first coffee, start drinking cold water constantly. Not only does the cold fluid keep your blood vessels hydrated and your circulation up, but it’ll have the fortunate side effect of forcing you to get up and walk to the bathroom every 15 minutes or so. That brief activity will also help you stay awake.
- Avoid energy drinks. They typically provide a nice initial boost, but the extra ingredients – and usually extra caffeine – will result in an earlier and more dramatic “crash”.
- Snack on fruits – preferably citrus like oranges – but apples, pears or similar fruits will do. You’re looking for a healthy sugar rush that will also keep your stomach satiated enough so you don’t get hungry.
Once the morning arrives and you’re approaching the end of your programming project, slow down on the fruit, don’t drink any more coffee or water, and slow down on the mental and physical breaks. You want to allow your body to wind down so you can unwind (but don’t fall asleep). Get to class in time to submit your finished project!
Set Up a Recovery Period
Once you’ve accomplished your goal and your project is submitted, you’re obviously going to feel exhausted. You were up all night, and now you’re up all of the next day. Why not just go to bed at 2-3pm?
The reason is that if you do, your entire circadian rhythm is going to be messed up. One trick that I’ve learned from fellow travelers who often have to overcome big time-zone shifts, is a fast method to “reset” your sleep cycle. This involves forcing yourself to stay up the entire next day (after your all-nighter) and going to bed as close to your normal sleep time as possible.
Whatever you do, avoid driving during the later part of that second day. Understand that the moment you close your eyes, you’re likely to fall asleep, so avoid any activity that requires your full attention. Just reach your bed time, curl up under the covers, and dive into 8-10 hours of deep, uninterrupted sleep.
You could also try the food-fasting circadian clock reset that Harvard Medical School researchers discovered in 2009. I’ve never tried it myself, but I’ve heard it works wonders.
Finally (and probably most importantly), the fact that you were just forced to pull an all-nighter should serve as an indication that you need to re-think your time management skills. Consider techniques and tools like Pomorodo or other time management tools that will help you avoid this last-resort type of scenario. The last thing you want to do is pull this kind of all-nighter often, or you could end up with serious physical and psychological side-effects over the long term.
Have you ever had to pull off one of these all-night sessions? What other tips and techniques have you used to keep yourself awake? Share some of your advice in the comments section below.
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The Chachapoyas, also called the Warriors of the Clouds, was a culture of Andean people living in the cloud forests of the Amazonas Region of present-day Peru. The Incas conquered their civilization shortly before the arrival of the Spanish in Peru. When the Spanish arrived in Peru in the 16th century, the Chachapoyas were one of the many nations ruled by the Inca Empire. Their incorporation into the Inca Empire had not been easy, due to their constant resistance to the Inca troops.
Since the Incas and the Spanish conquistadors were the principal sources of information on the Chachapoyas, there is little first-hand or contrasting knowledge of the Chachapoyas. Writings by the major chroniclers of the time, such as El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, were based on fragmentary second-hand accounts. Much of what we do know about the Chachapoyas culture is based on archaeological evidence from ruins, pottery, tombs and other artifacts. Spanish chronicler Pedro Cieza de León noted that, after their annexation to the Inca Empire, they adopted customs imposed by the Cuzco-based Inca.
The name Chachapoya is in fact the name that was given to this culture by the Inca; the name that these people may have actually used to refer to themselves is not known. The meaning of the word Chachapoyas may have been derived from sach'a-p-qullas, the equivalent of "qulla people who live in the woods" (sach'a = tree p = of the qulla = nation in which Aymara is spoken). Some believe the word is a variant of the Quechua construction sach'a phuya (tree cloud).
The Chachapoyas were devastated by the 18th century and remain as a strain within general indigenous ethnicity in modern Peru.
The Chachapoyas' territory was located in the northern regions of the Andes in present-day Peru. It encompassed the triangular region formed by the confluence of the rivers Marañón and Utcubamba in the zone of Bagua, up to the basin of the Abiseo River, where the ruins of Pajáten are located. This territory also included land to the south up to the Chuntayaku River, exceeding the limits of the current Amazonas Region towards the south. But the center of the Chachapoyas culture was the basin of the Utcubamba river. Due to the great size of the Marañón river and the surrounding mountainous terrain, the region was relatively isolated from the coast and other areas of Peru, although there is archaeological evidence of some interaction between the Chachapoyas and other cultures.
The contemporary Peruvian city of Chachapoyas derives its name from the word for this ancient culture as does the defined architectural style. Garcilaso de la Vega noted that the Chachapoyas territory was so extensive that
|“||We could easily call it a kingdom because it has more than fifty leagues long per twenty leagues wide, without counting the way up to Muyupampa, thirty leagues long more (...)||”|
(The league was a measurement of about 5 km (3.1 mi).)
The area of the Chachapoyas is sometimes referred to as the Amazonian Andes, due to its being part of a mountain range covered by dense tropical forest. The Amazonian Andes constitute the eastern flank of the Andes, which were once covered by dense Amazon vegetation. The region extended from the cordillera spurs up to altitudes where primary forests still stand, usually above 3500 m. The cultural realm of the Amazonian Andes occupied land situated between 2000 and 3000 m altitude.
Appearance and origins
Cieza de León remarked that, among the indigenous Peruvians, the Chachapoyas were unusually fair-skinned and famously beautiful:
|“||They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen in Indies, and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas' wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple (...) The women and their husbands always dressed in woolen clothes and in their heads they wear their llautos, which are a sign they wear to be known everywhere.||”|
These comments have led to claims, not supported by Cieza de León's chronicle, that the Chachapoyas were blond-haired and European in appearance. The chronicle's use of the term "white" here pre-dates its emergence as a racial classification. Another Spanish author, Pedro Pizarro, described all indigenous Peruvians as "white." Although some authors have quoted Pizarro saying that Chachapoyas were blond, these authors do not quote him directly; instead they quote remarks attributed to him and others by Nazi race scientist Jacques de Mahieu in support of his thesis that Vikings had brought civilization to the Americas. Following up on these claims, anthropologist Inge Schjellerup examined the remains of Chachapoyans and found them consistent with other ancient Peruvians. She found, for example, a universal occurrence of shovel-shaped upper incisors and a near-complete absence of Carabelli's cusp on upper molars — characteristics consistent with other Amerindians and inconsistent with Europeans.
According to the analysis of the Chachapoyas objects made by the Antisuyo expeditions of the Amazon Archaeology Institute, the Chachapoyas do not exhibit Amazon cultural tradition but one more closely resembling an Andean one. Given that the terrain facilitates peripatric speciation, as evidenced by the high biodiversity of the Andean region, the physical attributes of the Chachapoyas are most likely reflecting founder effects, assortative mating, and/or related phenomena in an initially small population sharing a relatively recent common ancestor with other Amerind groups.
The anthropomorphous sarcophagi resemble imitations of funeral bundles provided with wooden masks typical of the Horizonte Medio, a dominant culture on the coast and highlands, also known as the Tiahuanaco–Huari or Wari culture. The "mausoleums" may be modified forms of the chullpa or pucullo, elements of funeral architecture observed throughout the Andes, especially in the Tiahuanaco and Huari cultures.
Population expansion into the Amazonian Andes seems to have been driven by the desire to expand agrarian land, as evidenced by extensive terracing throughout the region. The agricultural environments of both the Andes and the coastal region, characterized by its extensive desert areas and limited soil suitable for farming, became insufficient for sustaining a population like the ancestral Peruvians, which had grown for 3000 years.
This theory has been described as "mountainization of the rain forest" for both geographical and cultural reasons: first, after the fall of the tropical forests, the scenery of the Amazonian Andes changed to resemble the barren mountains of the Andes; second, the people who settled there brought their Andean culture with them. This phenomenon, which still occurs today, was repeated in the southern Amazonian Andes during the Inca Empire, which projected into the mountainous zone of Vilcabamba, raising examples of Inca architecture such as Machu Picchu.
Inca occupation and forced resettlement
The conquest of the Chachapoyas by the Incas took place, according to Garcilaso, during the government of Tupac Inca Yupanqui in the second half of the 15th century. He recounts that the warlike actions began in Pias, a community on a mountain on the edge of Chachapoyas territory likely to the southwest of Gran Pajáten.
According to de la Vega, the Chachapoyas anticipated an Inca incursion and began preparations to withstand it at least two years earlier. The chronicle of Cieza also documents Chachapoya resistance. During the time of Huayna Capac's regime, the Chachapoyas rebelled:
|“||They had killed the Inca's governors and captains (...) and (...) soldiers (...) and many others were imprisoned, they had the intention to make them their slaves.||”|
In response, Huayna Capac, who was in the Ecuadorian cañaris land at the time, sent messengers to negotiate peace. But again, the Chachapoyas "punished the messengers (...) and threatened them with death". Huayna Capac then ordered an attack. He crossed the Marañón River over a bridge of wooden rafts that he ordered to be built probably near Balsas, next to Celendín.
From here, Inca troops proceeded to Cajamarquilla (Bolivar), with the intention of destroying "one of the principal towns" of the 'Chachapoyas. From Cajamarquilla, a delegation of women came to meet them, led by a matron who was a former concubine of Tupac Inca Yupanqui. They asked for mercy and forgiveness, which the Inca granted them. In memory of this event of a peace agreement, the place where the negotiation had taken place was declared sacred and closed so from now on "neither men nor animals, nor even birds, if it were possible, would put their feet in it."
|“||It gave them grounds to work and places for houses not much far from a hill that is next to the city (Cuzco) called Carmenga.||”|
The architectural model of the Chachapoyas is characterized by circular stone constructions as well as raised platforms constructed on slopes. Their walls were sometimes decorated with symbolic figures. Some structures such as the monumental fortress of Kuelap and the ruins of Cerro Olán are prime examples of this architectural style.
Chachapoyan constructions may date to the 9th or 10th century; this architectural tradition still thrived at the time of the arrival of the Spanish until the latter part of the 16th century. To be sure, the Incas introduced their own style after conquering the Chachapoyas, such as in the case of the ruins of Cochabamba in the district of Leimebamba.
The presence of two funeral patterns is also typical of the Chachapoyas culture. One is represented by sarcophagi, placed vertically and located in caves that were excavated at the highest point of precipices. The other funeral pattern was groups of mausoleums constructed like tiny houses located in caves worked into cliffs.
Chachapoyan handmade ceramics did not reach the technological level of the Mochica or Nazca cultures. Their small pitchers are frequently decorated by cordoned motifs. As for textile art, clothes were generally colored in red. A monumental textile from the precincts of Pajáten had been painted with figures of birds. The Chachapoyas also used to paint their walls, as an extant sample in San Antonio, province of Luya, reveals. These walls represent stages of a ritual dance of couples holding hands.
Although there is archaeological evidence that people began settling this geographical area as early as 200 CE or before, the Chachapoyas culture is thought to have developed around 750-800 CE. The major urban centers, such as Kuélap and Gran Pajáten, may have developed as a defensive measure against the Huari, a Middle Horizon culture that covered much of the coast and highlands.
In the fifteenth century, the Inca empire expanded to incorporate the Chachapoyas region. Although fortifications such as the citadel at Kuélap may have been an adequate defense against the invading Inca, it is possible that by this time the Chachapoyas settlements had become decentralized and fragmented after the threat of Huari invasion had dissipated. The Chachapoyas were conquered by Inca ruler Tupac Inca Yupanqui around AD 1475. The defeat of the Chachapoyas was fairly swift; however, smaller rebellions continued for many years. Using the mitmac system of ethnic dispersion, the Inca attempted to quell these rebellions by forcing large numbers of Chachapoya people to resettle in remote locations of the empire.
When civil war broke out within the Inca empire, the Chachapoyas were located on middle ground between the northern capital at Quito, ruled by the Inca Atahualpa, and the southern capital at Cuzco, ruled by Atahualpa's brother Huáscar. Many of the Chachapoyas were conscripted into Huáscar's army, and heavy casualties ensued. After Atahualpa's eventual victory, many more of the Chachapoyas were executed or deported due to their former allegiance with Huáscar.
It was due to the harsh treatment of the Chachapoyas during the years of subjugation that many of the Chachapoyas initially chose to side with the Spanish colonialists when they arrived in Peru. Guaman, a local ruler from Cochabamba, pledged his allegiance to the conquistador Francisco Pizarro after the capture of Atahualpa in Cajamarca. The Spanish moved in and occupied Cochabamba, extorting from the local inhabitant whatever riches they could find.
During Inca Manco Cápac's rebellion against the Spanish, his emissaries enlisted the help of a group of Chachapoyas. However, Guaman's supporters remained loyal to the Spanish. By 1547, a large faction of Spanish soldiers arrived in the city of Chachapoyas, effectively ending the Chachapoyas' independence. Residents were relocated to Spanish-style towns, often with members of several different ayllu occupying the same settlement. Disease, poverty, and attrition led to severe decreases in population; by some accounts the population of the Chachapoyas region decreased by 90% over the course of 200 years after the arrival of the Spanish.
The Chachapoyas people built the great fortress of Kuélap, with more than four hundred interior buildings and massive exterior stone walls reaching upwards of 60 feet in height, possibly to defend against the Huari around 800 AD. Referred to as the 'Machu Picchu of the north,' Kuélap receives few visitors due to its remote location.
Archaeological sites in the region include the settlement of Gran Pajáten, Gran Saposoa, the Atumpucro complex, and the burial sites at Revash and Laguna de los Condores (Lake of the Condors), among many others. It is estimated that only 5% of sites of the Chachapoyas have been excavated according to a recent documentary on the BBC. (January 2013).
In popular culture
- Ibarra Grasso, Dick Edgar (1997) Los Hombres Barbados en la América Precolombina p. 66
- Llanos, Oscar Olmedo (2006) Paranoia Aimara p. 182
- Schjellerup, Inge (1997) Incas and Spaniards in the Conquest of the Chachapoya
- von Hagen, Adriana. An Overview of Chachapoya Archaeology and History from the Museo Leymebamba website.
- Hemming, John. Conquest of the Incas. Harcourt, 1970.
- Muscutt, Keith. Warriors of the Clouds. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1998.
- Savoy, Gene. Antisuyo: The Search for the Lost Cities of the Andes. Simon & Schuster, 1970.
- Schjellerup, Inge R. Incas and Spaniards in the Conquest of the Chachapoyas. Göteborg University, 1997.
- New Chachapoyan archaeological site discovered, September, 16 2010
- Giffhorn, Hans. Was America Discovered in Ancient Times?. C. H. Beck, 2013, 2nd revised edition March 2014. Published in the German Language as Wurde Amerika in der Antike entdeckt? Karthager, Kelten und das Rätsel der Chachapoya
- Ethnography and Archaeology of Chachapoyas
- Chachapoyas: Cultural Development at a Cloud Forest Crossroads
- Tomb Raiders of El Dorado: Archaeological conservation dilemmas in Chachapoyas
- Peru North map including Chachapoyas | <urn:uuid:860ee3d2-225f-4453-99e8-5fbd59af2867> | {
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The new policy will theoretically add more scrutiny for wind tower applications. Power companies would have to account for impacts to wildlife and scenery, as well as noise and light pollution in their applications. Visual impacts will supposedly be taken seriously, as will towers proposed in high-traffic bird migration routes.
The new policy would require wildlife monitoring by the power company before and after the tower is built, particularly to assess the deaths of birds and bats caught in the blades of the turbines. Power companies will have to chart changes in the presence or abundance of all wildlife due to the tower. Regular sweeps around the tower to look for carcasses will be required, and when endangered or threatened species are found, the carcasses must be turned over to wildlife agents.
The forest service has some difficult marching orders in the new policy, some of which could be considered mutually exclusive. The new policy clearly embraces wind towers as both acceptable and compatible with national forests, calling for the permitting of wind towers “to help meet the nation’s energy needs.”
But the policy stipulates that wind towers should be placed on sites where their “detrimental social and environmental impacts” will be minimized.
“In siting wind energy facilities, consider unique local factors, such as differing landscapes, habitats, wildlife or rare plant populations, and public concerns,” the policy states.
When a wind tower is not compatible with other forest uses, the application is not an automatic no-can-do, but the forest service will attempt to “find solutions” or mitigation for the negative impacts on other users, according to Paul Johnson with the U.S. Forest Service.
Exactly how a power company could mitigate for visual impacts to ridge tops or deaths of endangered bats is not included in the policy. Giant sequoyahs and bat Viagra perhaps? | <urn:uuid:42354d8f-b219-487e-b4f0-5da16ca48e63> | {
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The Giant Sequoias that stand in Yosemite’s Mariposa Grove are among the largest on earth. Some of them are over 2,000 years old. This one fell 300 years ago, and generations of visitors have inscribed their names on the curving surfaces of its ancient roots. I moved the camera close to a few of those inscriptions. Time has made most of them illegible. The fallen Sequoia proves that even the oldest living things eventually fall and die. Yet this tree managed to survive far longer than the faded inscriptions carved into its roots. | <urn:uuid:71242272-77a5-43b7-8c38-079fb2ba71f8> | {
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Interest in developing an effective communication interface connecting the human brain and a computer has grown rapidly over the past decade. The brain-computer interface (BCI) would allow humans to operate computers, wheelchairs, prostheses, and other devices, using brain signals only. BCI research may someday provide a communication channel for patients with severe physical disabilities but intact cognitive functions, a working tool in computational neuroscience that contributes to a better understanding of the brain, and a novel independent interface for human-machine communication that offers new options for monitoring and control. This volume presents a timely overview of the latest BCI research, with contributions from many of the important research groups in the field.
The book covers a broad range of topics, describing work on both noninvasive (that is, without the implantation of electrodes) and invasive approaches. Other chapters discuss relevant techniques from machine learning and signal processing, existing software for BCI, and possible applications of BCI research in the real world. | <urn:uuid:a6f40dbb-547f-4169-84b2-a5ee34a408c4> | {
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The Network of Alliances for Geographic Education has an exciting new national initiative for 2017: the State Giant Traveling Map Program. At least two giant maps of California (17 x 21 feet, so not as large as the giant continent maps) will be circulating the state beginning in January. The maps are specifically designed for use by 3rd and 4th grade students, and they come with lesson plans designed by National Geographic and tied to standards for those grades.
Three teachers from California went to Denver, Colorado this past summer to receive training from National Geographic staff. They have also developed lesson plans specific to our state standards, which they have begun piloting with teachers and students. The CGA wants to thank Stephanie Buttell-Maxin, Mandi Marcus, and Josh Bess for their support of the National Initiative in California. We will all benefit from their thoughtful leadership.
Interested in getting the California Giant Traveling Map to your school? Click on this link to provide your name, school details, and contact info: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6WJM6HP and someone will be in touch with you soon. | <urn:uuid:77f4a918-ebfa-4fee-802c-ca993b89cc13> | {
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Stretches are essential for rowers. These movements can help improve body strength and flexibility as well as prevent injuries. Rowers need to maintain proper body postures and rhythmic movements of joints and muscles when they are rowing. To be able to do this without much strain or injury, stretching exercises should be performed on a regular basis.
Importance of Stretches
Stretches are often considered trivial forms of exercises, but a little stretching can go a long way toward improving overall performance. Many muscles in the body, particularly in the legs and arms, are used while rowing. These include deltoid, triceps, biceps, abdominal, pectoral, par spinals, trapeziums and also lower oblique.
There are dozens of stretching exercises that can be performed to train the appropriate muscles. A balanced set of exercises has to be chosen, so that all of the muscles that are used during rowing will be trained proportionately. Here are four essential stretching exercises for rowers: two for the torso and two for the lower body.
1. Ankle and Quadriceps Stretch
The ankle and quadriceps stretch affects the muscles of the thigh and the ankle. To perform this stretch, lie down sideways with the upper leg folded backwards at the knee. The head should be rested on one hand, and the other hand should be used to pull the upper leg backwards and up from the ankle. The exercise should be repeated to stretch the other leg.
2. Standing High-Leg Bent Knee Hamstring Stretch
This exercise is useful for stretching the muscles of the leg and knees. To begin, raise one foot onto a table while standing with the knees bent. Then move the chest towards the bent knee. Do the same for the other foot.
3. Arm-up Rotator Stretch
The arm-up rotator stretch is aimed at improving flexibility of biceps and wrist muscles. To perform this, stand straight and stretch your right arm out until it is parallel to the ground. Bend the elbow at a right angle, so that the forearm is pointing upward. Then, place the end of a stick into the right hand. The stick should be behind the biceps and pointing to the ground. With the left hand, pull the the stick forward from below the right arm. Switch from the right hand to the left hand and repeat the exercise. This exercise is good for the muscles and ligaments in the arms and the wrist.
4. Reaching-Up Shoulder Stretch
The reaching–up shoulder stretch is another exercise that can help improve the muscles in your arms and wrist. You can do this by standing straight and placing one hand behind your back. Make sure that your finger tips are pointing upwards, with only the little and the ring finger touching the back. Then, try to reach your shoulder blades with the hand. Repeat the same process with the other hand. | <urn:uuid:4f59d626-0ab9-4944-8cc2-b910adda6ba2> | {
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A vibration of a system in which some particular points remain fixed while others between them vibrate with the maximum amplitude. Compare with travelling wave.
More example sentences
- If two counter-propagating lasers were set up to create a standing wave, the resulting electric field gradient would direct particles toward the wave's nodes.
- In effect, they trade the translational kinetic energy of a traveling wave for more displacement energy in a standing wave.
- A dipole force of the standing wave generated by the laser focused the atom beam.
Definition of standing wave in:
- The US English dictionary | <urn:uuid:8cbd98bc-538e-4414-817f-658519303fe9> | {
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In Philadelphia the second Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, which the Pennsylvania delegation, excepting Franklin, thought premature at the time, but which was well supported by Pennsylvania afterwards.
Jonny's gaze went upwards, as if he could see through the ceiling to the second floor.
The sternness of certain passages, which has led some critics to imagine that he was an Ebionite, is mainly, if not entirely, due to his faithful reproduction of the language of the second document.
The second was closer to Han's age with midnight hair and eyes.
A true disciple of Pitt, he came to the congress with an overwhelming distrust of the growing power of Russia, which was only second to his hatred of revolutionary France.
Female; b, first larval stage (Nauplius); c, second larval 3, Lepidurus Angassi: a, dorsal stage.
In 1813 he exchanged shots with Thomas Hart Benton and his brother Jesse in a Nashville tavern, and received a second wound.
Inside, the first and second levels had been combined to create a large, tall space whose walls and ceilings were lined with paintings.
By this act proportional representation was established for both chambers, together with universal manhood suffrage at elections for the Second Chamber, a reduction of the qualifications for eligibility for the First Chamber and a reduction of the electoral term of this chamber from nine to six years, and finally payment of members of the First Chamber, who hitherto had not received any such emolument.
Drake, History of Middlesex County (2 vols., Boston, 1880); Conyers Francis, A Historical Sketch of Watertown to the close of its Second Century (Cambridge, 1830); S. | <urn:uuid:3be3f1b9-f716-4ffd-862a-58d5c5671c8b> | {
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Remember Faces iMake - Right Brain Creativity? A few months ago, I raved about this creation-based app that lets you make faces out of food items. Well, the developer has now released a new app called Faces iMake - ABC. Created in collaboration with mixed media artist Hanoch Piven, the app focuses on getting juniors to learn and remember the alphabet through creative puzzle solving.
My Head is a Button!
Like most alphabet apps, Faces iMake - ABC pairs each letter with a word and an illustration. But instead of static images, you get silly collages made out of household objects like buttons, bananas, plates, etc. These collages fall apart every time you play, and must be put back together by dragging and dropping the pieces into their rightful spots.
It is worth noting that the collages/puzzles are composed of an average of 10 pieces each. Some are more complex than others, requiring you to overlay objects on top of others to create facial expressions or body parts. The app provides you with a guideline to let you know which items goes where, but there are no other hints.
All the while you're assembling your collage, the app accompanies you with silly sound effects supplied by Hanoch Piven himself. He also acts as the narrator who reads out the name of the letter and its associated word.
Upon successful completion of a collage, the app congratulates you and encourages you to choose a new letter using the scroller interface at the bottom. You can go the traditional route and go from A to Z, or jump to any letter that you like.
Parents Need to Know
Faces iMake - ABC is part-alphabet, part-puzzle app that fits juniors as young as three years old. The idea of the app is to introduce learning by doing, in which juniors try to remember the letters by solving puzzles. The app also hones spatial skills and helps practice hand-eye coordination.
In addition to the letters of the alphabet, the app introduces simple everyday vocabulary that spans from vehicles to animals. Some example words that you can find in the app are airplane, girl, kid, monkey, and—kids will love this—underpants. You can see the complete list of letter/word pairs on the developer's blog.
Things I Like
Faces iMake - ABC is a delightful app that allows children to learn their ABCs while solving problems and creating things. Like other apps in the Faces iMake series, I like how the app tries to spark creativity and imagination by showing that ordinary household objects can be used to create beautiful things. It is even more of a bonus that the app uses this method to teach the alphabet.
In addition to the colorful collages, I like the silly sound effects and encouraging narration that accompany you as you play. I had a grin plastered on my face the whole time I played. Honestly, the app will not be the same without the sounds! I also like the use of ABC song (or Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, if that is how you hear it) in the background.
I do have to nitpick on the fact that as of the current version (1.01), bigger objects can sometimes obstruct shapes where smaller objects are supposed to go. I realize that this was the developer’s intention to hone the learner's problem solving skills, but I would prefer to have a hint system to help you when you are stuck.
Faces iMake - ABC provides a creative and entertaining way to remember the alphabet, learn new words, and practice their spatial skills. The app’s imaginative collages and charming soundtracks will amuse both juniors and parents. It is a unique app, and I would recommend adding it to your alphabet apps collection.
Get Faces iMake - ABC on the App Store.
Note: Thank you to iMagine Machine for providing us with a promo code for Faces iMake - ABC. It was really cute! | <urn:uuid:7a571d0d-e47b-4e70-910c-1eb2b5553fc6> | {
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RealFlow Glossary: Time Steps and Fluid-Object Collision
It is a phenomenon you have certainly seen already: a fluid goes through a solid wall, glasses and bottles have leaks, isolated particles leave closed objects, and thin objects appear as if they are not there.
A few stray particles are no problem, because RealFlow provides a wide range of daemons like “k Volume” to delete them, but sometimes the loss of particles is so high that it will affect the final result. The question is what can be done to avoid this behavior, and what is the reason for a failing collision detection? The answer lies in the way how computer simulations work.
Time and Time Steps
When we start a computer simulation we basically want to see how things move and behave over time. In reality, time appears to be continuous, like a stream. This means that events do not happen suddenly. When you travel by car, for example, then you have to go the entire way from A to B – you do not start at point A and all of a sudden you arrive at point B:
What appears to be impossible in daily life is exactly what computer simulations do. Simulation programs subdivide time into small steps and calculate how the involved objects behave. In RealFlow, these time steps are known as “sub-steps”. Between these steps there is nothing and an object literally jumps from point A to B:
Put together, all these time steps create the impression of a motion. As you can imagine, the number of steps makes the difference. More steps give better, more accurate results, but at the cost of longer simulation times. It is not the same if we simulate 5 time steps per frame or 500.
But these mentioned jumps make it so difficult to get watertight bodies and prevent particles from going through an object, especially when it is very thin:
The illustration shows a particle at point A at 0 m. After a simulation step, the particle has moved (jumped) to point B at 1 m. The distance, covered during the time step, is exactly 1 m. The problem is that the simulation did not consider intermediate distances of, lets say, 0.25 m, 0.50 m, and 0.75 m.
Problems and Solutions
And now imagine an object in the middle between A and B with a thickness of 0.1 m. The consequence of our simulation with a single time step is that the object literally does not exist for the particle. In order to see what is happening at these positions we need more time steps.
RealFlow’s “Simulation Options” is where sub-steps can be changed:
Increasing time steps is a very good solution, but at the cost of longer simulation times. Fortunately, you have some more options:
- Make the object thicker. This is not always possible, but for objects like ground areas it is definitely a good idea. In other words: avoid very thin planes as floors and always make your objects as thick as you can.
- Reduce the particle’s speed, because then the covered distance will be smaller. Instead of 1 m/frame, decrease speed to 0.2 m/frame, for example.
- Create a virtual offset around the object without changing its physical dimensions. This way, the object will appear inflated and the particle will “see” the object earlier. As a consequence there is always a gap between particle and object.
- Change scale to make the object appear bigger.
RealFlow provides tools and solutions for all four options:
• With an object’s “Scale” parameter is possible to change its physical dimensions.
• Speed can be limited with a “k Speed” or a “Drag Force” daemon.
• An object’s “Surface offset” lets you create a virtual buffer around an object.
• The “Geometry scale” option is used to adjust simulation scale.
Here is where to find the “Geometry scale” parameter:
RealFlow’s Dyverso and Hybrido simulation engines work with very large sub-steps by default. This makes them extremely fast, but also vulnerable to errors in terms of fluid-object collision.
For Dyverso there is another way to improve the collision between particles and objects: “Continuous Collision Detection”. This option is available for any object in the “DY – Particles Collision” tab (only visible when there is at least one Dyverso domain in the scene):
Turning on “Continuous Collision Detection” is the first thing you should do when you experience problems with Dyverso and objects. | <urn:uuid:0756a043-93c4-4bb2-9928-555af2932103> | {
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From the The Educational Technology: ICT in Education website
Articles on e-learning and information & communication technology containing practical advice
Storybook Settings by Satellite: Google Earth for Language Arts & Reading Class
By Mechelle M. De Craene
Fri, 19 Jan 2007, 00:07
Mechelle De Craene describes how Google Earth can help you make your
lessons come alive, in this chapter from the forthcoming second edition
of Coming of Age: An Introduction to the New Worldwide Web.
While reading a story with my students I am often surprised how little
geography my middle school students know. Stories travel from place to place and
when students don't know the geography of a story it hinders the meaning.
Therefore, explaining the setting of a story is very important to reading
context and ultimately reading comprehension. Before Google Earth I'd pull out
the handy dandy globe or pull down the maps rolled up over my board and we'd map
out our stories together. Now I just click and fly.
Google Earth lets my students and me explore various settings in a fun,
engaging way like no two-dimensional map or plastic globe can. With that, here
are the basics when using Google Earth in language arts and reading classes:
Getting Google Earth Started at School:
First take the virtual product tour at the following address: http://earth.google.com/tour/. This site is an
introductory site that shows how to fly to an address, zoom, tilt, and rotate,
driving maps, emailing images, layers of mapping, 3D buildings and terrain, and
measuring distances. Along the way you can click on the right and it will take
you to the top 10 places from the Grand Canyon to the wonderfully magic sinking
city of Venice, Italy. After you've jetted for a while, click on the upper
right-hand corner of the page where it says "Get Google Earth Free Version".
Note: the images are not in real time, but within a 3 year time frame with city
satellite images being updated more readily than rural areas.
On this page it has the PC, Mac, and Linux configurations. There are several
versions, but for schools free is best. However, please note that school desktop
computers older than 4 years old may not be able to run it and notebook
computers older than 2 years old may not be able to run it.
Next, before you hit the download button click and check on the 'send me "The
Sightseer" - Google Earth's Monthly Highlights, Tips, and Update News.' Next
click download and go sightseeing. Note: some school computers may say "access
denied" when you try and install it. Then, you have to try and track down the
tech person at your school to either give you the administrative code, or
install it on your behalf. In the case where your school district won't allow
teachers to install it at all on school computers, you may have to bring in your
own laptop if you have one. If you've got a projector at school then you can
project Google Earth so that the whole class can see the images.
Take your students on a virtual tour of your students' book. First, like any
field trip start with your school. Type in your school's address and watch your
studentsí eyes light up as they see their school via satellite. Now you are
ready to go around the world with each of the characters in the books your
students are reading. Additionally, you can see where the settings of various
authorsí plays are located. For example, Google Earth already has 89 placemarks
showing almost all the places quoted in Shakespearean plays.
With my class, I had my middle school students travel to each storybook
setting. Moreover, I asked them to find things at each setting as described by
each author: similar to a scavenger hunt. Next, I asked them to compare and
contrast (eg Venn Diagram) the satellite images with that of the storybook
setting. Comparing and contrasting historical fiction is especially interesting.
3D Sketching the Storybook Setting
You can extend the lesson by having students sketch up the Google Earth
images to make them similar to the story settings to make 3D settings. Here is
the Sketch-up link: http://sketchup.google.com/product_suf.html.
Students will click from window to window as they model their storybook setting.
Google Earth Snapshots & Storytelling
Moreover, you can further extend your students' projects by taking Google
Earth Snapshots. These can be imported into a PowerPoint presentation or into
digital stories. I used to have my students do PowerPoint book reports. However,
I must admit I've become a little bored with PowerPoint as a medium and much
prefer digital storytelling in the classroom. On the other hand, not all
students may know how to use PowerPoint. Therefore, having your students do a
PowerPoint book report can help students learn the medium, which will be an
important skill to have, especially prior to high school. Furthermore, you can
turn your travels of storybook settings into a digital storytelling book report.
This is a really fun activity.
Snag It and Camtasia are tools that can help you screen capture edit
and share images. I really like Camtasia because you can easily record your
screen movements, which is great for presentations. They offer a free 30 day
trial at http://www.techsmith.com/download/trials.asp.
If you like it try and write up a grant application and buy it for your school.
It's a great asset for any school. Next, once you've video captured the images
you can import them into iPhoto and iMovie if you have a Mac at school. You can
even have your students use GarageBand to add sound effects and music to their
Google Earth Community
For additional resources on Google Earth check out the Google Earth Community
Overall, the Google Earth Community contains loads of information. One caveat is
that the community is not well organized for busy students and teachers. They
do, of course, have Google search which may help you narrow your search if you
type in the correct keyword. However, it would be wonderfully helpful if they
categorized various post by subject areas such as science, mathematics, language
arts and reading etc. (hint hint, Google folks ; )).
Overall, Google Earth can help your students to learn geography and add new
perspectives to storybook settings. Who would have thought that satellites can
help stories come alive?(c) 2007 Mechelle M. De Craene
Mechelle De Craene loves being a special education teacher
in Florida. She is also a
MirandaNet Scholar researching child development and ICT (i.e.Cybernetic
Developmental Theory) with the MirandaNet
Academy. She has an undergraduate
degree in psychology and a Masters Degree in Special Education with a Gifted
© Mechelle M. De Craene Fri, 19 Jan 2007 | <urn:uuid:012b08a7-6825-4edb-a9bc-83097bd4a023> | {
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Saints Herodion (Rodion), Agabus, Asyncritus, Rufus, Phlegon and Hermes are among the Seventy Apostles, chosen by Christ and sent out by Him to preach (Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles: January 4).
The holy Apostle Herodion was a relative of Saint Paul, and his companion on many journeys. When Christianity had spread to the Balkan Peninsula, the Apostles Peter and Paul established Saint Herodion as Bishop of Patara. Saint Herodion zealously preached the Word of God and converted many of the Greek pagans and Jews to Christianity.
Enraged by the preaching of the disciple, the idol-worshippers and Jews with one accord fell upon Saint Herodion, and they began to beat him with sticks and pelt him with stones. One of the mob struck him with a knife, and the saint fell down. But when the murderers were gone, the Lord restored him to health unharmed.
After this, Saint Herodion continued to accompany the Apostle Paul for years afterward. When the holy Apostle Peter was crucified (+ c. 67), Saint Herodion and Saint Olympos were beheaded by the sword at the same time.
The holy Apostle Agabus was endowed with the gift of prophecy. He predicted (Acts 11:27-28) the famine during the reign of the emperor Claudius (41-52), and foretold the suffering of the Apostle Paul at Jerusalem (Acts 21:11). Saint Agabus preached in many lands, and converted many pagans to Christ.
Saint Rufus, whom the holy Apostle Paul mentions in the Epistle to the Romans (Rom. 16:11-15), was bishop of the Greek city of Thebes. Saint Asyncritus (Rom. 16:14) was bishop in Hyrcania (Asia Minor). Saint Phlegon was bishop in the city of Marathon (Thrace). Saint Hermes was bishop in Dalmatia (there is another Apostle of the Seventy by the name of Hermas, who was bishop in the Thracian city of Philippopolis).
All these disciples for their intrepid service to Christ underwent fierce sufferings and were found worthy of a martyr’s crown. | <urn:uuid:94281786-9db5-4f82-a242-3e52e121584c> | {
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Normal force acting on a surface divided by the area of that surface. For a mixture of gases the contribution by each constituent
is called the partial
is the amount fraction
is the total pressure.
PAC, 1996, 68, 957
(Glossary of terms in quantities and units in Clinical Chemistry (IUPAC-IFCC Recommendations 1996))
on page 987
IUPAC. Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 2nd ed. (the "Gold Book"). Compiled by A. D. McNaught and A. Wilkinson. Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford (1997). XML on-line corrected version: http://goldbook.iupac.org (2006-) created by M. Nic, J. Jirat, B. Kosata; updates compiled by A. Jenkins. ISBN 0-9678550-9-8. doi:10.1351/goldbook | <urn:uuid:9f8b63e4-f750-4bb1-a252-af6a290e679e> | {
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Geologically, marble was once limestone that achieved metamorphosis from intense pressures and high temperatures within the earth. This process altered its crystalline structure and introduced other minerals that produced the valuable colors and veining so coveted.
Commercially, any stone capable of taking a polish – with the exception of granite – is known as marble. This includes travertine, onyx, serpentine, and limestone.
The most common uses of marble include interior and exterior wall cladding, paving, fireplace and hearth, lavatory tops, counter tops, table tops, statuary, and novelty items. It also has many non-architectural uses such as paint whitening and agricultural lime.
Onyx marble is a translucent, layered calcitic stone in pastel shades. It is typically formed in caves as stalactites and stalagmites by the slow precipitation of cold, mineral-rich water.
Onyx is commonly used for interior wall coverings. It can also be used on the exterior in warm environments or for light duty residential flooring. Onyx table tops and other novelty items such as lamps and vases exhibit unusual beauty, and are very popular in many parts of the world.
Limestone is a sandy sedimentary rock formed closer to the earth's surface; it often captures fossilized plant and animal life, such as skeletons and shells of sea creatures that lived in vast, warm seas millions of years ago. When the mineral dolomite is present, it makes the limestone harder and capable of being polished in the same manner as metamorphic marble.
Limestone is widely used as a building stone because it is readily available and easy to work with. Similar to marble and granite, limestone is processed for a wide range of interior and exterior building applications, including floor tiles, wall tiles, vanities & other surfaces, fireplaces, columns, balustrades, water tables, steps, thresholds & windowsills. Limestone can be polished to a high gloss finish, but is more commonly known for its honed (matte), tumbled (antique or acid washed), and natural (split face or rough) finishes, typically in neutral tones.
The type of stone one falls in love with is a matter of personal taste; the choice though is almost never wrong. | <urn:uuid:2624aaeb-5676-463d-865f-099bbfe5b2d7> | {
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This article tests Americanist claims about Edgar Allan Poe's racism against Latin American, Caribbean, and contemporary African-American literature written under his influence. I start with a discussion of Toni Morrison's agenda-setting reading of Poe in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992). I show how Poe's only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), resists Morrison's interpretation by playing ironically on white anxiety and Black creativity. I then follow this mode along an international itinerary of authors working in styles and modes pioneered by Poe: Comte de Lautréamont, Ruben Darío, the Negritude poets, and the contemporary African American novelist Mat Johnson. I submit that these later writers exploit Poe's formal strategies for more explicitly anti-racist and anti-colonial aesthetics.
- Views Icon Views
Matt Sandler; “Negras Aguas”: The Poe Tradition and the Limits of American Africanism. Comparative Literature 1 December 2015; 67 (4): 415–428. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00104124-3327542
Download citation file:
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Unranked clade (stem group ctenophores)
Ctenorhabdotus is regarded as a very primitive ctenophore, possibly representing a stem-group member (Conway Morris and Collins, 1996).
Conway Morris and Collins
Ctenorhabdotus – from the Greek ktenos, “comb,” and rhabdotos, “striped,” in reference to the pronounced striped-like appearance of the comb-rows.
capulus – from the Latin capulus, “a handle,” in reference to the prominent aboral capsule-like element.
Holotype –ROM50822 in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada.
Burgess Shale and vicinity: none.
Other deposits: none.
Middle Cambrian, Bathyuriscus-Elrathina Zone (approximately 505 million years ago).
The Walcott and Raymond Quarries on Fossil Ridge.
Brief history of research:
Ctenorhabdotus capulus was described by Conway Morris and Collins in 1996 and no additional studies have been published since then.
Ctenorhabdotus is ovoid in shape and bears 24 comb-rows. The top (aboral) and bottom (oral) surfaces are relatively flat. The comb-rows are organised in 8 sets of three, with the central row being much shorter than the two flanking ones. Each group of three comb rows converges towards the aboral side to form 8 strands. The oral region is well developed with an undulating margin. There is a small capsule-like structure on the aboral side of the animal which is thought to include an apical organ and statocysts.
Ctenorhabdotus is rare, known from about two dozen specimens, mostly from the Raymond Quarry. In the Walcott Quarry, this species comprises only 0.01% of the specimens counted (Caron and Jackson, 2008).
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Water cooperation is a foundation for peace and sustainable development. Water cooperation contributes to poverty reduction and equity, creates economic benefits, helps preserve water resources and protect the environment, and builds peace.
To focus attention on this important subject, celebrations for this year's observance of World Water Day, on 22 March 2013, took place under the theme of water cooperation.
To mark the observance, students from UCA Farnham contributed a video animation in four languages.
The Brussels based United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe - UNRIC provides information on UN activities to the countries of the region. It also provides liaison with institutions of the European Union in the field of information. Its outreach activities extend to all segments of society and joint campaigns, projects and events are organized with partners including the EU, governments, the media, NGOs, schools and local authorities.
United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe (UNRIC Brussels)
Residence Palace, Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 155, Block C2,7th and 8th floor, Brussels 1040, Belgium
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Skateboarding can be a fun way to get around town, and electric skateboards make commuting via skateboard a more viable option for many. But as a recent Wired article reminds us, electric skateboards are effectively computers on wheels, and unless they’re properly secured, they too can be vulnerable to hacking.
According to Wired, security researchers Richo Healy and Mike Ryan hacked a motorized longboard-style skateboard from Boosted to control it remotely from a nearby laptop. Their exploit, which they fittingly named FacePlant, takes advantage of the unsecured Bluetooth connection between the board and the remote control you use as you ride.
With FacePlant, Healy and Ryan interrupt the unencrypted Bluetooth connection between the remote and the board. As a result, they are able to commandeer the board and cause it to abruptly roll backwards. As a result, the rider gets thrown off the board and, you know, faceplants.
Healy and Ryan tell Wired that the board slows briefly before it begins to roll backwards, so if you’re alert enough, you can prepare yourself. But if not, you’ll likely end up eating asphalt.
According to Wired, the researchers reported this issue to Boosted back in September of last year, but the company has yet to address the flaw. Healy and Ryan say that other electric skateboards—and electric bikes—may be vulnerable to other flaws.
Head on over to Wired for the full skinny on the Healy and Ryan’s hack, and to see a video of the hack in action. It might be enough to make you stick to pushing around the old-fashioned way.
At the moment, you probably don’t need to worry too much about mischief-makers hacking into your electric skateboard as you cruise down the street, but Healy and Ryan’s work serves as another reminder that transportation tech companies need to take security more seriously before someone gets hurt.
This story, "Hacked electric skateboards could send riders flying" was originally published by PCWorld. | <urn:uuid:5a32e013-b528-48be-aed3-0164b374a6b5> | {
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There are several species of Pack rats and their coloring varies from gray to brown to cream with an underside that is lighter. Some have tails that look like the common rat while others have bushy tails. Pack rats are nest builders and will make homes in burrows, caves, trees, cactus and under dense brush.
Pack rats get their name from their habit of taking things back to their nests. They build intricate nests with separate spaces for sleeping, storing food and discarding things they have collected. Often several pack rats will live together in one nesting site.
Pack rats that come indoors are usually looking for a nesting location in fall or winter and will usually choose a space in the attic or a hard to reach crawl space.
Seal openings to your home, use airtight containers when storing fabrics in basements, garages or attics. Cut tree limbs back away from the house. Packrats are excellent climbers.
The Pack rat is most active in winter, spring and fall. | <urn:uuid:ab22af99-f8e5-494e-98a6-7509f20c6536> | {
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|Biological type:||silicon-based lifeform|
|Appearance:||Under the Volcano|
Chalderans were a silicon-based species. They had flame-red skin, horns and extremely high body temperatures. They had three weaknesses: extreme heat, water and stupidity. They mined planets for lava, emptying the core and leaving them totally dead.
A Chalderan expedition came to Earth in 1883 to mine Krakatoa, angering the natives, who saw them as defiling the mountain. The Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler discovered the Chalderans' base and were captured by them. After tricking the aliens into arguing amongst themselves, the Doctor and Rose escaped. The pursuing Chalderans were killed after running into a waterfall. The rest perished in the island's explosion. (COMIC: Under the Volcano) | <urn:uuid:8badfa5a-6a79-4f72-9e17-b520a253389f> | {
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THE HOBOKEN FREEWAY: In 1956, the New Jersey State Highway Department, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority and the Port of New York Authority reached a tentative agreement to construct the Hoboken Freeway. The Hoboken Freeway, a continuation of the New Jersey Turnpike-Newark Bay Extension (I-78), was to connect the Holland Tunnel and Lincoln Tunnel, and provide service to the Port Authority piers in Hoboken. At the time, construction of the freeway was estimated to cost $9 million.
One year later, the state highway department proposed that the Hoboken Freeway be included in the Interstate highway system. This route, along with the Essex Freeway (I-280), were to be granted Federal-aid (90-10) status in exchange for the previously granted NJ 3 corridor. Despite pleas from state highway officials that the road would serve commercial, industrial and defense interests, the Federal Bureau of Public Roads denied Interstate funding for the Hoboken Freeway. (However, the bureau did grant the exchange for the I-280 corridor.)
Transportation officials continued to push for the 2.2-mile-long, six-lane Hoboken Freeway well into the 1960's. The New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) and the Tri-State Transportation Commission described the freeway, now officially designated as the NJ 85 Freeway, as follows:
Beginning at the Holland Tunnel approach roads, the NJ 85 Freeway will extend north through Jersey City, Hoboken and Weehawken to the Lincoln Tunnel. Alignment is in the planning stage.
This north-south route along the Hudson River waterfront will serve heavy industry, high-density residential areas and waterfront redevelopment areas. When completed, it will provide a needed controlled-access route along the Hudson, and an alternate route to the West Side Highway. This will allow better distribution of traffic to the river crossings. Finally, this route will relieve local arterials of congestion.
Most likely, the NJ 85 Freeway would have run north-south along the Palisade Avenue alignment between Jersey City and Weehawken. Construction of the freeway through this urbanized area was estimated to cost $110 million in 1969.
In the late 1960's, two separate planning agencies, the Regional Plan Association and the Tri-State Transportation Commission, recommended not only construction of the NJ 85 Freeway, but also an extension of the freeway north to the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee. The Hoboken Freeway was seen as integral in the redevelopment of Hudson River communities and in the protection of the Hudson River palisades. Nevertheless, the engineering, economic and political challenges of constructing a six-lane freeway through established communities were daunting.
THE HUDSON FREEWAY: In 1972, officials from NJDOT revived plans for the NJ 85 Freeway. Designed to relieve north-south traffic on Tonnelle Avenue (US 1 and US 9), the proposed freeway was to serve a two-mile-wide corridor stretching from Jersey City north to Fort Lee. Six different alignments were recommended for the proposed freeway, all of them west of the original alignment along the Hudson River.
The NJDOT report Master Plan for Transportation described the 7.6-mile-long route as follows:
At the present time, US 1-US 9 in Hudson and Bergen counties is a heavily traveled land service highway running along the west base of the Palisades Range. A combination of through trips and the demand for access to the industrial and commercial development along its length has led to frequent breakdowns in service. Although some measures have been taken to improve vehicular movement and improve safety by the installation of traffic signals, jughandles and center barrier curbs, the only long-range solution can be a freeway on new alignment. | <urn:uuid:156abbc4-5c9f-4ec3-84ec-61859c1cde37> | {
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Hey, <br /><br />you noticed the sound-changes very well. There are entire books about it. You can also see the changes from old-Latin to Classical Latin and Medieval Latin. Most of the sound changes you can check in a historical grammar, like Niederman, Phonétique historique du Latin. Or in English: Palmer, The Latin language. The first is an entire book about it. <br />If you only want to see the changes in classical Latin, you can also find them sometimes in regular grammars. <br /><br />With 'abesse' you have absum, afui, (afuturus)<br /> 'adesse' you have adsum, sometimes assum, adfui and sometimes affui. <br />Obesse = obsum, obfui <br /><br />In Rome with most words you had two manners of orthographe; a conservative and a progressive. The conservative was the etymological one and in the progressive way they wrote nearly like they spoke. <br />There was always one orthography the most cummon one.<br />Besides obtineo, sometimes we also find optineo, cause that was how they pronounced it! <br />If you really want to be sure, you can always see in a dictionnary or in one of the books mentioned above. <br /><br />Greetz, <br />Moerus. | <urn:uuid:650cf07c-fbe9-44b7-80e5-0cfd6ef53031> | {
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American education is at a crossroads. Over the past decade, standardized testing has taken over our schools. In America’s largest public schools, the average student takes some 112 mandatory standardized tests between pre-kindergarten and the end of 12th grade. Yet two-thirds of American students are still performing below their grade level on standardized reading and math exams.
There is little support for the idea that such testing is even desirable: a majority of Americans believe there is already too much emphasis on standardized tests, and the failures of No Child Left Behind—which ushered in the most recent era of standardized testing—have been acknowledged across the political spectrum.
Our current education model simply is not suited to benefit students, particularly in the modern economy. Our schools are run with factory-style conditions, appealing only to the most conformist of students. Schools may tweak and modify their programs, but these changes do nothing to address the fundamental failures of a system based on student acquiescence.
Rather than foster the creativity that drives happiness and satisfaction and moves our world forward, schools kill creativity. And with automation increasingly taking over manual tasks, it is the creative economy that will have to drive human employment through the 21st century. While school districts spend their time debating potential reforms and arguing over the allocation of funds, it’s increasingly evident that the systems in place no longer serve the purposes for which they were created. In a dynamic world, young people need a dynamic learning environment. Instead of training our students to be compliant robots, humanity must harness the trait that separates us from the machines we are building: creativity.
For years, American students were told to simply follow the path—it was assumed that the road to success ran through a college degree, regardless of the type of degree or its cost. Students took on thousands of dollars in debt to earn their degrees, yet many struggle for years to find decent-paying jobs. Young Americans are increasingly depressed, anxious, and stressed. Something about our system is not working.
It’s no surprise that some of the most creative members of our society were misfits in school. Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence was put on anxiety medication as a child because she felt so miserable in school. But once Lawrence found her creative outlet, her parents realized she no longer needed the medication. Countless entrepreneurs—including Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Richard Branson—dropped out of school when they realized their formal education was hindering their growth. Albert Einstein, who was himself a rebellious student, once wrote, “It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.” Many of these individuals, when asked to describe themselves, use the same word: self-taught.
The future will need more people with the skillsets of creative thinkers. People who can adapt to the changing world, who will know how to forge their own path. People who know how to teach themselves.
This happens to be a deeply personal issue for me—as a child, I loved learning but struggled in school. My long-suffering parents collected a tower of notes sent home from my teachers. My classroom behavior was labeled “immature.” I was deemed unfocused. On my sixth-grade social studies report card, my teacher was tasked with assessing my “reaction to authority.” She had three options: accepts, varies, or resists. She circled all three and wrote “depends” (apparently, “varies” was too concrete a description of my behavior.) In high school, I found myself in detention multiple times a week.
My bedroom was surrounded with books I had read, yet I was barely pulling Cs in some of my classes. I sought out knowledge as subjects piqued my interest, and I was lucky that my parents let me feed my unique curiosities. After 9/11, I was frustrated that my middle-school teachers barely talked to us about the events that were unfolding around the world. I thus sought out my own resources to understand. Similarly, I was in the middle of an economics degree during the 2008 financial crisis. When none of my professors would deviate from their planned curriculum to cover the crisis, I turned to online resources to help me make sense of the latest developments.
For years, I thought that my failures in school meant I was lazy. It was only recently, after reading the work of people like John Taylor Gatto and William Deresiewicz, that I realized I simply learned better when learning on my own. More than anything I learned in school, it was this ability to seek out knowledge and learn for myself that I use to solve the problems I face today.
Self-learning has never been easier than it is today. I’m exceedingly jealous that a recent article titled “What To Do if School Bores You Out of Your Mind,” which outlines how students can self-learn a classical education, wasn’t written when I was in high school. I can’t even begin to list the various educational outlets available online that are a fraction of the price of college tuition. People everywhere now have access to the brightest minds in the world. We must embrace this revolution in our ability to educate ourselves.
Conservatives often show antipathy towards the creative class—and the feeling can certainly be mutual. But on the issue of education, the message should be a universally American one: people, especially young people, need to be encouraged to pursue their happiness and discover where they fit into society. It is nearly impossible for this process to take place within the current school system. Only by empowering students to self-learn will we be able to unshackle the creativity necessary to solve the problems of the 21st century. | <urn:uuid:56b6bbc5-dcd9-42a7-9bde-40b7ef2ccf4c> | {
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March To The Sea
U.S. General William Tecumseh Sherman captured Atlanta in September 1864 and two months later was ready to move. He sent General George Thomas to deal with the Confederate Army moving toward Nashville, while he took the rest of his men—60,000 strong—on an overland march toward Savannah in hopes of dealing a psychological blow to the heart of the Confederacy.
Sherman would prove to the people of Georgia that the Confederate government was powerless to protect them, and would shorten the war by forcing soldiers in Lee’s army in Virginia to desert and come home to protect their families.
The army foraged its way across Georgia, leaving hungry and demoralized white civilians in its wake while liberating many black Georgians from bondage.
Savannah surrendered peacefully three days before Christmas. Sherman famously said, “War is the remedy our enemies have chosen, and I say give them all they want.”
Georgia found out what he meant when the March to the Sea began on November 15, 1864, Today in Georgia History.
Henry Clay Walker wrote the song "Marching Through Georgia" about Sherman's March to the Sea | <urn:uuid:0ba0e208-5fea-4d37-9f18-c4417f2460b6> | {
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Ultrasounds are acoustic waves with frequencies that are higher than the human detectable range, which are used to detect objects and distances. This technology is used in a wide range of applications including medical imaging, detection of flaws in objects, oil and gas exploration and in many other chemical processes. The non-destructive nature of this technology makes it extremely unique.
Ultrasound uses a piezoelectric actuator that generates the sound waves. These waves are then directed by an acoustic lens, filtered and matched through a backing layer and then detected to form an image. Such systems require special properties and Master Bond makes a wide range of products that are used in these specialty applications. Our custom formulated products are used for acoustical matching and blocking, thermal management, chip bonding, underfill as well as potting and coating PZT structures. Proper compounding with special resins, acoustic fillers will affect the product density, leading to improved image resolution for sensitive probes. These products are available in varying viscosities and hardness to meet the precise needs of acoustical engineers. | <urn:uuid:f2ec28ce-6172-43af-a94f-ea4ae9d7d583> | {
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Talking Blackness with Marianetta Porter
In Color Code, Porter explored the conundrums and complexities of the color question, exploring the codes (social, racial, legal, etc.) that frame racial identity and define blackness in our everyday lives. The exhibition was accompanied by a full-color catalog, featuring work from the show, essays, and a conversation between Marianetta Porter and David T. Doris, Associate Professor in the U-M Department of the History of Art, the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, and the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan.
Portions of Marinetta's conversation with David T. Doris are reprinted here with permission. The catalog can be purchased from the University of Michigan Museum of Art store.
Marianetta Porter: Ideas for the Color Code exhibition began with a quote from Hélène Cixous: “I say blackness and not: black. Blackness isn't black. It is the last degree of reds. The secret blood of reds. There are so many blacks… Twenty-four, they say.” Cixous's words refer to the darkness in Rembrandt's painting, Bathsheba at Her Bath (1654).
David Doris: What about the phrase compelled you?
The mix of black and red and blood and secrets. “There are so many blacks…Twenty-four, they say.” Who is the “they”? Why twenty-four? That quote raises so many questions. It made me think of the relationship of Africans, African Americans and Native Americans; psychologically, we are connected through blood. Not just in genetic terms, but also in the blood we spilled making this empire we call America. Our blood was the mortar for those building blocks. There's a shared history.
Rembrandt could hardly have reckoned with that. So he's using twenty-four different blacknesses in his work?
Perhaps. As you know, the principle of simultaneous contrast tells us no color is ever true or pure color; we read it only in relation to another color, in context. If you put one color against another color, it may seem warmer or cooler or lighter or darker. In some ways, blackness itself has that kind of slippage.
So, the blackness of the color black is that it is many colors. I'm wondering how the coloring of surfaces relates to a “racial” conception of blackness, which you seem to suggest is also diverse.
When we talk about blackness, we immediately think of surface: the epidermis, the amount of melanin in someone's skin, how dark or light they are. But blackness goes far deeper than the skin. Certainly within the history of this country, there are very light-skinned people who define themselves as black. So what makes a black person black beyond skin color, beyond the surface?
Is blackness a color, then, or a set of relationships? You're speaking to a kind of epidermal diversity among people who are, in one way or another, related to this notion of blackness. What unifies them as “black”?
My work remains grounded in the study of African American history, culture, and representation. For me, the work has been wrapped in the stories and history of what I've called the black experience. This new body of work, however, marks a shift in my thinking; it's less about the black experience, and more about the experience of blackness. DuBois' concept of “double consciousness,” Ellison's notions of invisibility, these are still part of our landscape today. In literature and the arts the idea of “post-blackness” is increasingly important. What is “authentically black,” particularly when there is no single, common “black experience”? So much of African American history has been tied to the Middle Passage, but what does it mean today when an African cab driver and a black cab driver from Harlem talk about their blackness? What is “authentic”? Is Obama “black” or not? With increasing numbers of mixed-race people, the diasporic influx of black- and brown-skinned people from around the world, “black” experiences don't just arise out of the Middle Passage. So how do we think about blackness today?
Recent immigrants from Africa, even with their green cards in hand—are they “African American”?
It's a fascinating time to ponder these conundrums.
Oh yes. So here's a timely conundrum. Last summer there appeared a face — regarded as a black face, or not — that belonged to a certain Rachel Dolezal. That face generated a lot of intense commentary, reaction, reflection, regarding what constitutes “authentic blackness” — genetic, historical, or cultural. Self-identification and performance were key. Dolezal associated herself with blackness at so many different levels, embraced it as hers. Was it ever hers? Was it not? Was the masquerade necessary so she could get over? Or was it somehow the expression of a deeper self, as masquerades often are — a fuller self that couldn't otherwise be expressed? Genetics may not have figured into the mix, but cultural performance did. So many individual associations of what constitutes some sort of a core “black” cultural experience. Is there one?
In the '90s Robert Douglas wrote an article in New Art Examiner called “Formalizing an African-American Aesthetic.” He talked about aesthetics and the expression of blackness in music, dance, performance, speech, literature, and the visual arts. He speculated that if there were one thing that might be considered a predisposition, it would be in what he called the presence of “multi-dominant elements within a single composition.” In music it's a poly-rhythmic cadence, achieved through the superimposition of several lines of meter. In dance, it's the ability to move individual parts of your body to distinctly different rhythms. In the visual arts, it's a tendency to use multiple textures, patterns, colors, and shapes, all together. And in language and storytelling, the multiple meanings embedded within a single text are revealed through elaboration or embellishment, more and more layers…
So one thing is also many, opens up to expansion and intricacy. Zora Neale Hurston spoke of it as “decorating the decoration.”
Yes! There's improvisation, taking a refrain and embellishing it, adding, exaggerating, distorting it. Douglas speaks of call-and-response dialog; a congregation doesn't just sit back and listen to the preacher, they talk back to him, he returns their response, an elaborated conversation. The same with storytelling: communal response is expected, even encouraged.
Layerings across space, for sure, and also through time. Puts me in mind of Hurston's efforts to codify the “Characteristics of Negro Expression” in the 1930s; as well as Richard Waterman's article of the late 50s, where he traced similar characteristics in music, in both African and African American contexts. Later, Robert Farris Thompson used these to outline some underlying tendencies of a “Black Atlantic Visual Tradition.” Critical questions have arisen around whether this is some kind of essentialism.
I've been reading Physics of Blackness, by Michelle Wright. She talks about a shifting of consciousness regarding what is black within contemporary contexts. My students' notions of blackness certainly don't mirror mine or my parents.' The boundaries are loosening, falling apart — for good or for bad.
There's a demand for those bonds to be loosened, an expression of ongoing frustration. Touré's book on post-blackness, for instance, calls black Americans to move beyond constraints or expectations of what has constituted blackness. There's no prescription, no compelling reason for blackness to be performed at all, let alone in any particular fashion. Instead, infinite possibilities of expression — the desire for liberation, always, but inevitably constrained within its political moment, its historical circumstances.
We can go back for a moment to Robert Douglas's African American aesthetic, which we agree not all African Americans share. It's an observation of expressive tendencies; some would say affirming a sense of shared African American identity over time. Where do you locate yourself in relation to this whole spectrum of black possibilities?
There are always multiple meanings that can be ascribed to any piece I make — it depends on who's looking at it, reading it. There are references to black history, black culture, outside knowledge, and inside understanding — where the viewer is coming from shapes the work.
So you include many possibilities, layers, within each work. Would you give an example from the works in the exhibition?
I have constructed a series of diptychs, pairing everyday objects with short text reflections. The objects come out of my personal narratives, and are also tied to collective histories and cultural knowledge. One composition is titled Hot Comb. The object is the lid to a can of Royal Crown pomade. For some viewers, it may recall memories of sitting in the kitchen, getting their hair straightened, listening to “women's talk,” a simple domestic experience. For others it may recall notions of a royal crown, an important code word, with multiple meanings in black culture.
Shani Peters recently did an exhibition at GalleryDAAS celebrating the crown as a potent image in black cultural history. So, in these diptychs, the text and image together constitute the work?
Yes, the text accompanying Hot Comb reads:
Beeswax honeycomb catches/ at the nappy edges/ of her neck / the kitchen it is called / tender, tough corners/ that twist and tear / teardrops gather/ spill then splash/ as coal black iron smoothes the snarly crinkles/ of her hair
Now the kitchen is both a physical structure, the room where you get your hair styled; and in black culture, a code word for the nape of the neck, where the hair is nappiest. Henry Louis Gates Jr. has written an essay called “In the Kitchen” that talks about our attention to and obsession with “good” hair/“bad” hair.
In many cultures, the nape of the neck is a notorious erogenous zone, where things get, you know… heated up. Concealing it and revealing it can be quite a big deal.
Yes! In times when women got their hair straightened with a hot-comb, when you started to sweat, when the body heated up, the first place the hair would revert to its natural state would be “the kitchen.” Heat in the kitchen, could be!
Another is titled One Drop Period. The words “one drop” appear on one page, and a red period floats in the middle of the opposite page. On one hand, One Drop references the legal code asserting that one drop of sub-Saharan African blood classified you as black. But it also speaks at the level of scale, of measurement — how things become significantly this or that. One drop, floating in a sea of whiteness. Though the drop is red, it relates to the notion of blackness. And that drop is not just a drop, it's a punctuation mark, a period, the definitive end to a statement.
It refers us back also to the history of concrete poetry, too; words as material things exemplifying the very concepts they express. A period, as you say, is a stopping point. The title of the work includes a period after the words “one drop,” but in the work itself the period is dissociated from the words, floating, as you say. How does this drop function then as a period?
The period, made by letterpress type, is very carefully inked and then embossed into the paper. It is literally a period, yet disconnected from the letterforms on the opposite page. A period signifies the end of something, a boundary. But if we think about codes of blackness, is there a definitive stopping point or boundary?
Since we're talking about red and black, let's return to this scale you've established, with black as the superlative red, “the secret blood of reds.” In Blackness, panels of reds engage with each other. Each panel, regarded in isolation, is a stopping point; but together they are moments within a spectrum.
When you move from black to red, you establish the range of browns in between. This is a subtle reference to skin color: between the blackest black and the reddest red, there is a slippery slope that moves beyond skin color as a defining element.
In that scale of black and red you establish, white comes in — or doesn't come in — as a third element. It's excluded, in a way. It's interesting: mixing red with black really produces a convincing range of approximate skin-tones.
Yes, visually as we move along the spectrum, black becomes brown, brown becomes red, and metaphorically red becomes blood — a measure of one's whiteness. So there is no white in the panels, but it's implied, unspoken, floats like a ghost at the edges of the piece.
What's visible and invisible? What's spoken and unspoken? Two human-scaled portraits of young black men. If you look at the faces directly, they're simply portraits. But look at them from an angle, askew, and text becomes visible. These Presence of Absence portraits address invisibility, being at once here and not here, physically present but not perceived — like Ellison's Invisible Man. To view the text, you must step to the side. Sidestepping is a particularly human gesture we make when we're assessing a situation, especially one perceived as dangerous. These text-portraits implicate you, the viewer, obliging you to reflect on your own predispositions and automatic assumptions.
So blackness, as you've been addressing it, is a kind of code, or a set of codes. There are codes of behavior, codes of thought, codes of appearance, gesture, even codes of sound, which are enacted and are readable. And blackness as a code appears in relation to other codes, most typically the unspoken, “neutral” codes that comprise whiteness. There are levels to which those codes are meant to be secret, interior; but they are also the calligraphy, if you want, by which communication is established with an “outside.”
There are cultural codes, understandings expressed in gesture, speech patterns, rhythms. There are codes that relate to regulations, rules placed by a dominant culture on people determined to be “black.” There are also self-regulatory codes understood within the black community. For instance, “the N-word” is deeply coded.
Navarone? Nice? Nefarious?
The word “nigger.” Episode 1 of the second season of the television show Blackish was all about that word — who can say it, who can't say it, in what contexts can it be said. Almost any black person can say it, except a black cop. It never should be spoken in mixed company. Certain brown people can say it but others can't. As black people, we use codes to regulate and measure ourselves, to define people, to regard our racialized selves.
So what's at stake in these codes is in part a shared identity, something comprising an “inside” of a group as it names and determines itself. But there's also the “Thou art that” moment of an identity bestowed from the “outside.” And these moments are flipped, incorporated into each other.
Two sides of the same coin. I remember the first time I was made aware of my blackness, as a young child. It was at a swimming pool. I was so happy. The water was blue, and I climbed up onto the diving board and leaped off. You know, the pure joy that only a kid can have in a pool on a hot summer's day. Hit the water, PSHHHH!! and went under for a moment. As I came up and my head broke the surface, I heard two boys at the other end of the pool shouting at me, “Get out of the pool, you dirty nigger!” And I was just…the shock of the cold water, the shock of those cold words. That was the first time I became aware of an outside perception of my blackness. Nobody ever talks about those times. Nobody ever talks about the first time you realized that you were white or the first time you realized you were a girl and not a boy. Those are profound psychological experiences. Pool expresses my first realization that others see me differently than who I am.
I've had my moments, too. We're all somebody's other.
You mentioned the word “nigger” before, it seemed you wanted to rename it entirely, or displace it. “The N-word” is so weird and uncomfortable; it grants power to “nigger” by highlighting its absence. But how do we not reckon with it? And then, how do we? “Nigger” is a killer word — I mean literally, it kills — but it's also a name of highest praise. Again, who can and can't use it? Even “black” is uncomfortable — I've seen many white students lower their voices when they refer to “black” people, because they know that word's loaded, too, and they don't want to cause hurt. But black, I tell them, is a glorious term — use it! It harbors an entire spectrum of meanings, extending way beyond that… unspeakable negation of white. In a way, black is the ever-increasing sum of all its uses, ongoing from moment to moment.
Your work seems to address this spectral aspect of black, its multiplicity. You code it and empower it through red, which Levi-Strauss called “the supreme presence of color,” the color of blood and fire, and of suffering, too. So these pure blacks and reds come to imbue each other, multiplying possibilities way beyond Rembrandt's twenty-four blacks.
That's where it really begins for me. My hope is that the Color Code exhibition creates a space for people to consider the blessings and baggage of heritage and skin color. I'm asking them to think critically about race, and about the structures — social, political, educational, environmental, etc.— that create, perpetuate, and manage society through an unbalanced distribution of wealth, power, and opportunity. And I want people to think creatively about how to shift this dynamic.
Amen to that.
Interview by David T. Doris.
Title Image: Marianetta Porter, Presence of Absence II (Am I a Figment of Your Imagination?), 2013.
- Hélène Cixous, “Bathsheba or the Interior Bible,“ in Stigmata, trans. Catherine A. F. MacGillivray (New York and London: Routledge, 1998), 4.
- Robert Douglas, “Formalizing an African-American Aesthetic,“ New Art Examiner 18 (1991):18–24.
- Zora Neale Hurston, “Characteristics of Negro Expression,“ in Negro: An Anthology, ed. Nancy Cunard (London: Wishart, 1934), 39–46.
- Richard Alan Waterman, “African Influence on the Music of the Americas,“ in Acculturation in the Americas, ed. Sol Tax (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 81–94.
- Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy (New York: Vintage, 1983), xiii.
- Michelle M. Wright, Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2015).
- Touré, Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now (New York: Free Press, 2011).
- Henry Louis Gates, “In the Kitchen,“ New Yorker, April 18, 1994, 82–86. | <urn:uuid:9592269f-1e4a-4991-95d5-62346b814f85> | {
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Tubular homo polar generator
Date: Sunday, April 01, 2018 @ 12:07:07 EDT
Poleorketes writes: To those who have an interest in homo polar generators of the type experimented with by Tewari, Trombly-Kahn, DePalma and others:
What if there were another configuration to the engineering of a homo polar generator than the standard method of running a magnetic field parallel to a rotating shaft and through a conducting spinning disk? Though someone may have formulated this alternate type of a homo polar generator, I have never read nor am I aware of anyone having put forth this idea nor having constructed any such homo polar generator mentioned below. It is my intention that the below information will serve as a public domain information. Any are free to make and make use of this information as they wish without royalty demands of another. In principle it is no more complex than the Faraday model.
Having made some study of these above mentioned devices by Tawari and De
Palma and learning of some of their short comings I kept wondering why
it is that at this point in time (since the coming of the age of
neodymium magnets and not available in their time) no one has considered
their use in an alternate configuration. Neodymium magnets can be had
in what is termed as arc magnets. The magnets are designed for use to be
mounted on drums or cylinders to serve as poles on a rotor in a motor
or generator. The Faraday Dynamo or standard homo polar generator was
made such that the magnetic field is parallel to the rotating axle
through a rotating and conducting disc. With arc magnets we can mount
them such that the field is now perpendicular to the axle, in other
words on a drum circular about the axle with one magnetic field directed
outward and the other inward toward the axle.
Let us say the north pole
going outward and the south pole going inward toward the axle and then
curving out the ends of the drum. (note figure 1). At this point it is
interesting to note that the axle is serving as a magnet and since the
south pole is directed out the ends of the drum the axle itself has
become like a magnet that has a south pole at each end of the axle.
Where the north pole might be in the axle I‘ll leave to the debating
A tubular conductor is placed over or under the magnets (the
magnets can be difficult to mount in this fashion as they will not want
to be mounted that way) the charge (also referenced to as a space
charge) will separate to the ends of a conducting tube or copper sheet
wrapped over or under where brushes at the ends can tap the current when
the device is rotated. This new arrangement opens up all manner of
possibility. It can allow for a lengthy drum - the addition of added
drum segments of magnet sets which should increase voltage like stacking
batteries in a flashlight.
It is should also be possible to mount
magnets on the drum that alternate magnetic poles - in common fashion
similar to a common motor and use back and forth wiring over the poles
faces to multiple voltage, of course this can not be considered homo
polar but rather poly polar (note figure 2). The reason for attempting
this is to raise voltage to the point that exotic brushes need not be
considered since much higher voltages can be achieved.
those not familiar with this form of homo polar generator the reason for
rotating the conductor with the field is to overcome the effect of the
counter electro-motive force of the generator or circumvent undesired
effect of Lenz‘s Law.
While I do not have the machine tools to
make a good homo polar generator I was able to hand make parts that I
assembled into a proof of concept generator. I was able to prove to my
satisfaction that this tubular type of homo polar generator does work
but can not say how well, I have no reason to think otherwise that it
should prove just as valid a method as the Faraday Dynamo. Anyone with
the tools is free to make their own.
There is another comment that I might make regarding the construction of these generators which the thoughtful experimenter will probably be aware of. The magnets themselves serve as conductors. It probably does not mater if the magnets of the homo polar generator are insulated from one another, the charge will separate to the ends. When it comes to the poly polar generator (fig.2) it may be best to insulate the magnets form one another as the charges in the juxtaposed magnets will go in conflicting directions and there will likely be eddy currents set up in un-insulated magnets that might cause some unwanted heating. And of course balance your rotor.
I do not know what speeds the experimenter will run these engines but I would encourage safety. If you are going to run these at very high speeds consider using carbon fiber as a reinforcement. When Balcones Research was doing their testing they did so in pits in the ground. If they fail, they explode and could kill or injure at high speeds. Hopefully no one is going to run them at such high speeds. | <urn:uuid:5b61bfe5-9fca-498e-a09a-8a662d660a4c> | {
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- Cretaceous Age
- Hell Creek Formation
- South Dakota
- Specimen measures approx. 3/16″ long and will come in the 3.25″ x 4.25″ Riker Mount with Label as Shown
Parksosaurus (meaning “William Parks’s lizard”) is a genus of hypsilophodont ornithopod dinosaur from the early Maastrichtian-age Upper Cretaceous. It was originally found in the Horseshoe Canyon Formation of Alberta, Canada. It is based on most of a partially articulated skeleton and partial skull, showing it to have been a small, bipedal, herbivorous dinosaur. It is one of the few described non-hadrosaurid ornithopods from the end of the Cretaceous in North America, existing around 70 million years ago. | <urn:uuid:555b69a3-4457-4434-ab1d-9c244e228070> | {
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BO VEISLAND / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY BO VEISLAND / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Heart. Artwork of a vertical-diagonal cross- section through the heart showing the two right- hand-side chambers. The top chamber (upper left) is the atrium. It receives deoxygenated blood from the body via the vena cava (blue, upper left), the body's main vein. The blood is pumped into the lower chamber (lower right), the ventricle, and then to the lungs, via the pulmonary artery (blue, upper right), to be oxygenated. From the lungs the blood enters the left side of the heart and is pumped around the body via the aorta (red, upper left).
Model release not required. Property release not required. | <urn:uuid:2b5f3a36-e222-4da2-b5f5-11037b61e508> | {
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- Explain the function of nouns ... in general and their functions in particular sentences.
- Form and use regular and irregular plural nouns.
- Use abstract nouns (e.g., childhood)
In our Primary Years Program (PYP), "learners' needs are best served when they have opportunities to engage in learning within meaningful contexts," (p. 68 of Making the PYP Happen). The authors go on to explain that it is the school's responsibility to provide authentic contexts for language teaching and learning in all areas of the curriculum. Not only is this a requirement of the PYP, but teaching literacy concepts, processes, strategies, and skills in meaningful, authentic, relevant, engaging, and challenging contexts is considered best practice. After all, it is in authentic contexts that we adults actually use those literacy processes that we learned in primary school, so why shouldn't our students learn them in this way?
In their current unit of inquiry, Who We Are, students are constructing an understanding of the central idea that community forms when people realize they have things in common. During the unit, students study those who have left their community to come to a new one.
One way students learn about this is by reading the book The Long Way to a New Land by Joan Sandin. Since students were already reading the book, the teacher had the students use the text to learn more about common and proper nouns. Students were instructed to read through the book, identifying common and proper nouns by sorting them onto a t-chart that the students created from a blank sheet of paper. Common nouns on one side and proper nouns on the other.
When the students were given the chance to develop this literacy skill in a meaningful context they were motivated and engaged. And because the task was relevant, significant, and tied to the other learning that they were doing, students learned! When the teacher tested the students ability to identify and create common and proper nouns, all of her students (100%) demonstrated proficiency.
After reading about how one teacher successfully taught literacy, specifically grammar, in authentic context, how could you or have you explicitly taught literacy concepts, processes, strategies, or skills in authentic contexts? | <urn:uuid:d4e9adad-a3d9-4033-b774-6fbb411113c3> | {
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It provides a way to give new beats that aren't normally available to regular instruments like a trumpet or a flute. They can turn sixteenth notes into 64th notes and even more than that. They can also provide a way to express oneself through a place of repeating over and over again that would be extremely difficult on a person playing themselves.
A musical instrument is something that is used to create music. Synthesizers do exactly that. Songs can be performed with them just like a guitar or the human voice. It may not be a conventional instrument that the majority of people are familiar with, which is probably why this question arose, but there is no denying that the synthesizer is a real, viable instrument.
A musical instrument is "a device created or adapted to make musical sounds". A synthesizer fits the mold.
The synth is used in many musical styles, and can even spice up a remix of Beethoven. Its sound is not alien if you know what you are doing. They are also very adaptable. As musical tastes change, so do synthesizer presets. A C chord on a piano sounded exactly the same then as it does now. Blah. A keyboard can create new sounds that people once only dreamed of. | <urn:uuid:3c3ae1df-ebc0-4319-bc3b-ee810235e054> | {
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Along with temperature, another factor that affects the physical characteristics of water is salinity. The salinity of Vanhankaupunginlahti fluctuates heavily due to run-off from the river Vantaanjoki and the more saline waters pushing in from the sea. Early in the year, the surface water is composed almost entirely of fresh river water, with salinity increasing towards the summer as run-off from the river decreases. As is typical in estuaries, the waters of Vanhankaupunginlahti occasionally form layers, so that the water near the bottom of the bay is much more saline than the surface water. This is caused by the fact that saline seawater flows into the bay along the bottom, while the fresh river water drains out of the bay along the surface.
The long-term development of Vanhankaupunginlahti’s summertime salinity follows the development of the salinity of other water areas off the coast of Helsinki. Water salinity was at its highest in the 1960s and 70s and has been decreasing since the 1980s. However, the fluctuation in summertime salinity is considerably higher than in Helsinki’s other sea areas. The low salinity and its fluctuation limit the occurrence of aquatic species in Vanhankaupunginlahti, and is an indicator of the impact that the variation in the ratios of river water and seawater has on the area. | <urn:uuid:b7d669ad-994a-4202-803b-99b4888b207e> | {
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The Czech Republic has been hit with a severe heat wave. Currents of hot air coming from north Africa via France and southern Germany raised temperatures by to record-breaking highs this week, with a new record of 40.4 degrees Celsius registered outside Prague on Monday. While doctors advise people to take extra caution to avoid problems, meteorologists warn the heat will soon give way to heavy storms expected later on Tuesday.
Many places around the Czech Republic were hotter on Monday than Dubai, Tunisia and Hawaii. Around three dozen temperature records were broken on that day, with the highest ever temperature of 40.4 degrees Celsius, or 105ºF recorded in Dobřichovice, just west of Prague. I asked some of the people on the streets of the capital about how they dealt with the extreme heat.
“I was at work till 2, and then I went to the swimming pool and spent three and half hours there. But then, I had to go a floorball practice and the gym felt like the Sahara.”
“We went out, had ice cream, and visited some monuments. We drank a lot.”
“It was very hot. Too hot. But great.”
In many cases, the severe conditions called for special measures: some employers offered workers cold drinks and let them go home early; the authorities sprayed the streets with water while police were instructed to check parked cars for children and pets.
In Prague, the Castle Guards were ordered out of their booths to patrol the grounds on foot. The tropical heat even made organizes of a circus festival in the capital pour water on the tents to avoid overheating.
Doctors warn that the extreme temperatures could affect young children and the elderly as well as those with severe asthma or high blood pressure. However, ambulance services say they registered no significant rise in numbers of patients brought in because of the heat.
Summer heat waves are not unknown in the Czech Republic. According to deputy head of Czech Hydrometeorological Institute Radim Tolasz, the conditions of Central European make it prone to extremities both in summer and winter, and the current heat wave is not necessarily linked to the disputed phenomenon of global climate change.
“From the meteorological point of view, Central Europe is prone to heat waves in the summer and severe frost in the winter. It does not happen each year but every 10 or 20 years, the situation can get extreme.
“But I don’t think it’s a result of global climate change; it’s a result of standard weather conditions as monitored for hundreds of years.”
However, Mr Tolasz says the results of a recent study by the institute suggest that such extreme conditions are set to become more frequent in the future.
“One of the results of that study was that we will expect more extreme weather, more extreme situations in the coming years, not only in the summer but in the winter, too, and not only in temperatures but also in precipitation, storms, wind, and so on. So in the coming years, Czechs should expect more extreme weather.”
Those who find it difficult to cope with tropical heat will be relieved to know that the current heat wave seems to be on the way out. Instead, meteorologists warn that the country will be hit by severe storms later on Tuesday and Wednesday.
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Jágr: Czechs among favourites for ice hockey gold in Pyeongchang | <urn:uuid:3767789a-9925-497d-85e6-a3d9980e8370> | {
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