text
stringlengths 198
630k
| id
stringlengths 47
47
| metadata
dict |
|---|---|---|
Russia is in the grip of a virulent new strain of the infamous potato late blight. The original strain, which caused the 19th-century Irish potato famine, was asexual, but more potent sexual strains reached Europe in 1976. The aggressive new strains found in Russian soil samples "are virulent, resistant to fungicides and are creating havoc", says K. V. Raman, a plant pathologist at Cornell University. Small Russian farms simply can't afford the heavy doses of fungicide needed to stop the blight.
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content. | <urn:uuid:06edd4a8-4d72-40c1-beaa-9b92642ee5db> | {
"date": "2014-10-22T08:28:33",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-42",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-42/segments/1413507446323.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20141017005726-00360-ip-10-16-133-185.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.951154351234436,
"score": 2.953125,
"token_count": 132,
"url": "http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16622320.600-virulent-blight.html"
} |
Websites encourage kids to learn about finance online
Virtual bank accounts allow parents to deposit allowance online and teach kids about spending and saving.
This is how allowance works in the Skyvara household: Each week, Suzanne Skyvara and her husband dole out $7 to each of their two sons. Except, like a lot of money these days, this isn't cash. It shows up as a number on a computer screen.
In their house near San Francisco, Suzanne and her 8-year-old son, Michael, are looking at a site called FamZoo on her laptop. It shows how much of Michael's allowance he's saved and spent, and no transaction goes unrecorded.
"Look! Lost bet with Tom, your big brother," says Skyvara.
"About a video game. We were betting what the name was," responds Michael.
These sites are kind of like online banking for kids, complete with graphs and charts. Skyvara had longed for something like this. She and her husband wanted to instill some financial responsibility in their kids, in part to make up for the mistakes of her younger years when she spent her entire paycheck each month.
"Nobody had ever told me or sat me down and said, 'OK this is what you have to do. You need to put this amount in your savings, and you should be thinking about this for the future.'" says Skyvara.
Some of these sites are designed to teach lessons about saving and charity. Michael deposits $1.75 into four categories in his virtual bank account.
"I have a quarter for college savings, a quarter for money for the poor," he says.
If you think that's responsible, Michael's older brother is even saving for a house. He's 10. So, each son can see exactly how much he's saved. And, when one wants something -- say, a soda at a restaurant or the latest video game -- Suzanne and her husband can pull up the FamZoo app on their phones, and show their sons the balances in their account. Then, Michael and his brother have to decide whether to spend or save.
This process doesn't just help kids, parents benefit too -- never forgetting to give an allowance. But because these accounts are virtual, Skyvara says she has to make sure she has real money to back the allowance savings.
"Once those numbers start getting bigger, you have to be prepared for them asking you for the $600 for something," she says.
It can get up to $600 because, to encourage savings, Skyvara pays her kids a stellar 5 percent interest rate per month.
But so far, the Skyvaras are mostly the exception. Despite the slew of start-ups offering allowance tracking, Stessa Cohen, a research director at the technology research firm Gartner, says they remain niche.
"What's the business model for it?" she asks. "But potentially, it's capabilities that banks could incorporate into their product offerings both existing and new."
For now, these stand-alone sites rely on subscriptions, advertising, or tie-ins with online stores. But Cohen expects these sites to take off once they're tied to real banks. One day, you might see your kid's allowance as a direct debit from your account.
But Beth Kobliner, author of "Get a Financial Life," is skeptical about this digitizing of the allowance. She says if you want to teach kids about money, use cash.
"I think there is a benefit for children maybe seeing a parent run out of cash one day, to realize, oh, I need more cash. I can't buy everything I want just because I have a piece of plastic. I have to have the money to pay for it." she says.
Kobliner worries some of these sites, which are connected with online stores, could lead kids to spend more and save less.
But Cohen sees the utility of the virtual bank account. Besides researching the industry for Gartner, she's realizing it could help in her family. Her son, Erez, says his mom is a bit behind on his allowance.
"Yeah, by about one year," says Erez.
He better hope she pays interest. | <urn:uuid:eb923339-a622-4816-b26c-4804dd9197fd> | {
"date": "2014-11-23T16:08:59",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-49",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-49/segments/1416400379546.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20141119123259-00004-ip-10-235-23-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9768531322479248,
"score": 2.9375,
"token_count": 876,
"url": "http://www.marketplace.org/node/66726/player"
} |
Bishop + Scholar
17 November 1253
Bishop + Protector of the Oppressed
17 November 1200
From the Satucket Lectionary
Robert Grosseteste. Had the leaders of the thirteenth century heeded this preacher, many of the disasters of the following three centuries might have been avoided. Robert was a peasant lad from Suffolk, born about 1175. He distinguished himself at Oxford in law, medicine, languages, natural sciences, and theology. He became what is now called Chancellor of Oxford University.
In 1235, he was elected Bishop of Lincoln, in area the largest diocese in England. He promptly visited all the churches in the diocese and quickly removed many of the prominent clergy because they were neglectng their pastoral duties. He vigorously opposed the practice by which the Pope appointed Italians as absentee clergy for English churches (collecting salaries from said churches without ever setting foot in the country). He insisted that his priests spend their time in the service of their people, in prayer, and in study. He went on a pilgrimage to Rome, where he spoke out boldly against ecclesiastical abuses. Back in England, he spoke against unlawful usurpations of power by the monarch, and was one of those present at the signing of the Magna Carta.
Grosseteste’s scholarly writings embraced many fields of learning. He translated into Latin the Ethics of Aristotle and the theological works of John of Damascus and of the fifth-century writer known as Dionysius the Areopagite. He was skilled in poetry, music, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, optics, and physics (one of his pupils was Roger Bacon). His writings on the first chapter of Genesis include an interesting anticipation of modern cosmological ideas. (He read that the first thing created was light, and said that the universe began with pure energy exploding from a point source.) He knew Hebrew and Greek, and his Biblical studies were a notable contribution to the scholarship of the day.
by James Kiefer
Note: There is a web site “dedicated to providing electronic access to the Latin works of Robert Grosseteste”.
photo courtesy Br. Lawrence Lew, OP
Hugh of Avalon. As a sign of his remorse for his role in the murder of the Archbishop Thomas a Becket, King Henry II founded the first house in England of the strict monastic order called the Carthusians. Difficulties arose with the first two priors, and a French noble recommended Hugh de Avalon, who at that time had been a monk at the mother house of the order for 17 years.
On his arrival in England in 1176, Hugh found that the building of the monastery had not begun. Worse, no compensation had been paid to those who would have to lose their lands and property to make room for it. Hugh refused to take office until these persons had been paid “to the last penny.” He intervened again on behalf of the builders, whose pay was not forthcoming.
Henry loved him for his plain speaking. “I do not despair of you,” Hugh said to him at their first interview; “I know how much your many occupations interfere with the health of your soul.” Henry, impressed by his frankness, swore that while he lived he should not leave his kingdom, and took so much pleasure in his conversation, and paid so much heed to his counsels, that a rumor arose that Hugh was his son. Hugh’s biographer wrote that “of all men only Hugh could bend that rhinosceros to his will.” When Henry was in danger of shipwreck, he cried out, “If only my Carthusian Hugh were awake and at prayer, God would not forget me.” This affection never diminished, though Hugh dared to oppose the king, particularly in the matter of keeping bishoprics vacant in order that their revenues might fall to the king’s treasury. One of the worst examples was Lincoln, which, except for a few months, had been without a bishop for eighteen years. Hugh was elected to the post in 1186, and his monastic superiors ordered him to accept. After so long a period of neglect, there was great need of reform. Hugh employed priests of great piety and learning, and made the fullest use of his authority in disciplining his clergy. He took a stern view of the ill-treatment of the poor by the royal foresters, and when a subject of the church of Lincoln suffered at their hands he excommunicated their chief.
He also refused to appoint a royal favorite to a meaningless but lucrative post. Henry was furious, and summoned him to his presence. He came, and Henry turned away his face and would not speak, but by way of ignoring his presence took out a torn glove and began to sew it. At last Hugh said, “How like you are to your relations at Falaise.” The king might have resented this allusion to the humble birth of William the Conqueror’s mother, the daughter of a glove-maker, but he only laughed, and the quarrel was made up.
Riots against the Jews broke out in England at the time of the Third Crusade. In defence of the persecuted, Hugh faced armed mobs in Lincoln, Stamford and Northampton and compelled their submission. Hugh refused to raise money for the foreign wars of King Richard the Lion-Heart, calmed the king’s rage with a kiss, and persisted in his refusal: this was the first clear example on record of the refusal of a money-grant demanded directly by the crown, and an important legal precedent. Richard said, “If all bishops were like my lord of Lincoln, not a prince among us could raise his head against them.”
His relations with King John were less happy. John showed him an amulet, which he said was sacred and would preserve him. Hugh replied, “Do not put your trust in lifeless stone, but only in the living and heavenly stone, our Lord Jesus Christ.” The following Easter he preached at length on the duties of kings, and the king slipped out partway through.
Devout, tireless, and forgetful of self, Hugh also had wit, a temper that he described as “more biting than pepper,” and a great love and concern for children and the defenceless. He visited leper-houses and washed the ulcerous limbs of their inmates. He was fond of animals, and they of him. Birds and squirrels came readily to his hand. He had a swan that would feed from his hand, follow him about, and keep guard over his bed, so that no one could approach it without being attacked.
In 1200 the king sent him on an embassy to France. His mission was a success, but he took ill and returned to England to die on 16 November 1200. John Ruskin called him “the most beautiful sacerdotal (priestly) figure known to me in history.” | <urn:uuid:056fb38d-7564-4889-8402-b0fb2a20a4c8> | {
"date": "2017-10-17T05:42:50",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-43",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187820927.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20171017052945-20171017072945-00176.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9896290898323059,
"score": 2.6875,
"token_count": 1444,
"url": "https://holywomenholymen.wordpress.com/2016/11/17/nov-17-robert-hugh-of-lincoln/"
} |
The US Environmental Protection Agency chalked elevated gamma radiation levels around America’s largest nuclear waste storage facility, the Hanford site, up to natural causes, but RT’s Alexey Yaroshevsky has found a few inconsistences in its claims.
RT has reported extensively on the situation at Washington State’s Hanford Nuclear storage facility since various leaks and injuries to workers were reported. An incident on May 5th covered by RT, when radiation levels in the area adjacent to the site skyrocketed, prompted a federal investigation.
However, following the RT report, a local newspaper urged its audience not to “believe everything on the Internet” in an article extensively quoting a statement from the EPA that claimed the elevated radiation levels had a natural cause and were not connected to the Hanford facility in any way.
“The US Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington State Department of Health agree that radiation from naturally occurring radon was measured on an EPA monitor,” the EPA statement reads.
“The scientists determined that the cause was a temporary elevation of radon levels from the natural decay of certain types of elements found in nearly all rocks and soil.”
The statement also stresses that the spike in radiation could not have been due to emissions from Hanford because the wind was blowing from the opposite direction at the time the measurements were taken.
“The Department of Health said that was not possible because the wind was blowing the wrong direction for the radiation to have come from Hanford at the time the reading was taken,” the EPA notes.
Yet RT America correspondent Alexey Yaroshevsky compared the graph of the radiation readings to wind maps provided by the US national weather service and discovered that the EPA’s findings may not be entirely correct, as the graph appears to show the wind circling around the Hanford site and the area where the readings were taken.
Meanwhile, health protection authorities seem to have quickly taken up the radon-related scenario, emphasizing that radon is common in the area, accumulating in places closer to the ground, and urging people with basements to get radon-measurement canisters to check their homes for excessive levels.
Radon gas is a natural byproduct of Uranium decay in the soil and considered a dangerous carcinogen that can cause lung cancer. Estimates state that outdoor radon levels cause some 800 of the 21,000 radon induced lung cancer deaths that occur in the United States every year.
However, according to a map of radon levels from the EPA’s own website, Benton County, in which the Hanford nuclear plant is located, has relatively low levels radon, even when compared to other American states.
The Hanford nuclear site, on the other hand, holds some 56 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in underground tanks that were built between the 1940s and 1970s. Those who used to work at the facility have told RT that vapor incidents are common when radioactive waste is being transported between tanks, which happens often, as the tanks are wearing out. | <urn:uuid:ffa70bfb-2e06-4861-86c8-71f4a37b5860> | {
"date": "2018-12-10T20:59:52",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2018-51",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-51/segments/1544376823442.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20181210191406-20181210212906-00176.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9704964756965637,
"score": 2.796875,
"token_count": 629,
"url": "http://www.intersol.dk/radiation-spike-near-hanford-nuclear-waste-site-natural-epa/"
} |
Springfield District 186 High Schools have come to a consensus to officially change the way semester grades will be determined and calculated. Rather than using the current letter grade scale as a basis to calculate the semester grade, all high schools will be calculating the grade using a new, mathematically correct percentage system. The new system will work using the same four to one ratio, with both of the quarter grades accounting for 80% of the grade and the semester final accounting for 20% of the grade. The updated grading scale will not harm any students, in fact, it should generally benefit students, giving them a grade that more accurately represents what they deserve.
The Math Behind The New System:
(% Grade of 1st Quarter × .4) + (% Grade of 2nd Quarter × .4) + (% Grade of Final × .2) = Semester Grade
Example: (89 × .4) + (89 × .4) + (94 × .2) = 90%
To earn credit for the class, a student must still pass two of the three.
(Q1, Q2, and Semester Exam)
All-in-all, the new grading scale is more mathematically correct.
“I think it’s a good idea because semester exams will actually be worth what they’re worth, rather than just being a letter grade. It will create more accurate grades for students,” stated Ms. Barbra Volkman.
What You Should Know: The biggest change in the grading scale is that it now differentiates grades based on a more mathematically correct system. So it is possible if a student earned a ‘B’ 1st quarter and a ‘B’ 2nd quarter, they could get an ‘A’ on the exam and still have a chance of earning an ‘A’ for the semester grade, whereas in the old system the student would still be stuck with a ‘B’ for the semester grade. However, is it important to note that if the new system hurts a student’s grade, their semester grade will be determined referring back to the old grading procedure. | <urn:uuid:4bdd0dfd-6f47-4dc6-8c97-4550af0653d2> | {
"date": "2018-01-18T14:04:02",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2018-05",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-05/segments/1516084887414.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20180118131245-20180118151245-00456.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9414296746253967,
"score": 2.984375,
"token_count": 444,
"url": "https://theroaronline.com/2017/12/18/semester-final-exams-changes-to-the-grading-scale/"
} |
By Zach D. Edgerton
Being a person living with mental illness, I know the importance of voting.
Legislators and politicians have an important stake in the quality of life for those of us with mental illness. Between now and Election Day, Nov. 6, let’s show them clearly that mental health care gets our votes.
There was a time when I was severely ill, not being able to function at anything. I would lie in my bed all day, barely leaving my house. I couldn’t go to school or work. I had no social life. I was scared, isolated and discouraged. I needed help.
Legislators and politicians have a strong influence on whether or not a person with mental illness recovers. Legislators and politicians make laws and determine the amount of spending for mental health care. Much of this funding is directed towards Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security income and Social Security Disability Insurance programs.
Without the funding for Medicaid, I would not have been able to afford the hospitalizations that I needed to restore my mental health. After my hospitalizations, I needed counseling and medication.
Without the funding for Assertive Community Team (ACT) services through Medicaid, I would have never been able to access my needed therapy. Without the funding for Medicare, I couldn’t have been able to afford my medications, which initiated remarkable progress of my mental health.
Without the Social Security Income program and the Social Security Disability Insurance program, I would have been unable to afford to live when I was so ill that I could not work.
Legislators and politicians have also influenced mental health parity, which makes it mandatory that mental health coverage in health insurance plans is no more limited than primary health care. Clearly, this was essential to recovering and having a greater hope for my future.
Legislators and politicians have influence on funding for research on mental illness and housing for those struggling with mental illness. Research leads to innovations in state of the art medications. Housing has always been important to me, being integrated into the community and asserting my independence in society.
I fear to think of where I would be without the needed funding for mental health care. Mental illness left untreated commonly results in unemployment, social isolation, homelessness and incarceration.
Though there is no cure for mental illness, recovery is always available to people living with the challenge of mental illness. Today I can say that I have been employed, graduated from high school and college, lived in the community, and have a bright future. Without proper mental health care funding, none of this would have been a possibility.
It is important that people with mental illness vote. Legislators and politicians have a great influence on the possibility of recovery that everyone struggling with mental illness deserves and is entitled to.
Zach Edgerton is a member of NAMI Michigan, the NAMI Consumer Council Advocacy Committee and the NAMI Restraint and Seclusion Committee. | <urn:uuid:9d3144df-0316-4aa0-9d0e-3e128cde5537> | {
"date": "2014-03-07T22:21:55",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-10",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-10/segments/1393999651529/warc/CC-MAIN-20140305060731-00006-ip-10-183-142-35.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9697038531303406,
"score": 2.515625,
"token_count": 599,
"url": "http://blog.nami.org/2012/09/mental-health-importance-of-voting.html?showComment=1348949688373"
} |
By 1967, Martin Luther King had already been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership in overturning the vicious Jim Crow laws that denied African-Americans their God-given freedom and equality by forcing them to live a separate and unequal existence, whether on buses, in schools or in most other public places. We know the story, Amen?
In the year 1967, US citizens who were previously denied the right to vote through all manner of unjust poll tests were now allowed to cast their ballot free of the raced-based discrimination that plagued many Southern precincts. We know the story, Amen?
In 1967, because of Martin’s movement, young African-American high school students could think, for the first time, about attending colleges and universities that previously had been off-limits. We know the story, Amen?
As a result of Martin’s success, he had the ear of presidents and kings; senior clergy and religious leaders of every creed; captains of industry and politicians and civic leaders of every rank and stripe. Indeed, even though he was only 38 years old, 1967 would have been an ideal moment for Martin to take the role of retired clergyman and national elder statesman and live a quiet existence with Coretta, perhaps serving in a minimal capacity assisting at a small church somewhere. We wouldn’t have been mad at him if he told us he wanted a break.
But God had different plans for Martin. In the Spring of 1967, Martin gave a speech out of his growing conviction that the United States government must immediately cease its efforts in the Vietnam War. And so on April 4th of that year, Martin ascended a pulpit not far from this one at the Church of St. Joseph, right here in Morningside Heights, the gateway to Harlem, in the famous Riverside Church, to deliver a speech entitled: “A Time to Break Silence.”
In this speech, in which he spoke out against the Vietnam War for the first time, Martin gives us more than simply a well-reasoned and rhetorically powerful argument against that awful conflict; on a deeper level, Martin defines for us the four-fold task of the prophet.
Now lest you believe that prophecy is a task reserved for religious leaders like Samuel, about whom we heard in today’s first reading, or John the Baptizer, whose prophetic ministry is described in the Gospel reading, or for well-known social activists such as Gandhi and King himself, let me remind you that our Church teaches that all of us who are baptized receive the office of prophet, and are given its responsibilities, duties and powers through the life-giving waters that washed over us the day of our baptism, and through the Spirit which eternally inhabits our believing hearts.
So Martin’s four tasks of the prophet are tasks that each of us—whether we enter this sanctuary as a student, a parent, grandparent, working or retired, married or single—each of us are called to embrace and live.
So what are these four prophetic tasks in Martin’s 1967 speech, and how can we incorporate them into our everyday lives?
The first task of any prophet
…is to allow the Spirit to help him see the truth of reality. The prophet has a responsibility to take off his blinders and see the truth of the situation for what it is.
Thus, in his biography of King To the Mountaintop, Stewart Burns describes how a change happened in Martin’s thinking about the Vietnam War:
The point of no return came in mid-January 1967. Martin was waiting for a plane at the Atlanta airport, flying to Jamaica for a month of rest and relaxation, and to write his fourth and final book, Where Do We Go from Here. He bought a copy of Ramparts, the glossy New Left magazine at a newsstand. Over lunch his eyes seized on an article, “The Children of Vietnam,” graphic photos of kids fiendishly burned by American napalm bombs. Martin’s aid Bernard Lee recalled that he ‘froze as he looked at the pictures from Vietnam. He saw a picture of a Vietnamese mother holding her dead baby, a baby killed by our military. Martin pushed his plate away from him. ‘Doesn’t it taste any good?’ Lee knew his boss loved to eat. ‘Nothing will ever taste any good for me,’ he replied testily, ‘until I do everything I can to end that war.’
Seeing the truth for what it is—prophetic vision—is also the task exemplified by John the Baptizer in today’s Gospel reading: “John was standing with his two disciples and as he watched Jesus walk by he said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God.'” Later in the in the reading, Jesus invites John’s disciples to come and see. Peter himself declares: we have found the messiah—again seeing in Jesus the Truth.
We, too are called to this task: we are called to see the Truth of Jesus, and to see the Truth of any and every situation in which we may encounter injustice or hatred that conflicts with the love that Jesus is and calls us to become. But this task requires us to take off our blinders, and see, as Martin did, injustice and hatred in a new situation—not just in the old one of racial discrimination that he had seen for so long in the South and northern American cities.
Because he allowed himself to see, he could identify the same hatred and violence thousands of miles away in the rice fields and villages of Vietnam, where the young and the innocent were being slaughtered for reasons not entirely clear, and motives not obviously just.
Thus, in our day, we too must see into the Truth of the situation, for example, that allowed so many of our impoverished African-American brothers and sisters to be so severely victimized by Katrina this past fall. We are called to allow those images to transform our thinking about race and poverty.
The second task of the prophet
…is to listen. Having recently spent so much of his time in the Northern cities which were burning out of control due to the riots of young African Americans who were impatient with his campaign of non-violent direct action, Martin was often despondent by their response and frustrated by their acts of destruction. And yet, he did, indeed listen to what they had to say. In fact, in his speech, Martin cites that one of his main reasons for opposing the war in Vietnam came through listening to these young disaffected perpetrators of urban violence:
As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked—and rightly so—what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home”
If we want to become the kind of prophet that our baptism calls us to, we must be willing to listen to those who are disaffected. We must be willing, as Samuel was in the first reading we heard, to shake off our slumber and hear God’s voice—no matter how strange it comes to us, and no matter how unlikely its source?
Like Martin and Samuel, we must avoid “selective hearing,” and be certain that we are listening for voices that challenge our own complacency, our own passivity, and our own hypocrisy.
The third task, after we see, after we listen
…is to speak out. Martin’s speech is nothing if not a call to, as his title elegantly puts it, “break the silence.” In this, of course, the challenge is greater, because, like Martin, we are required not simply to observe through sight and sound, but to give voice—to testify and to witness—to the Truth. In speaking out and calling for an immediate cease fire in Vietnam, Martin tells his audience that it is nothing less than his calling as a child of God that compels him to “speak for the weak, the voiceless, for victims of our nation and those it calls our enemies, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers or sisters.”
So this, then is the question for all of us prophets: do we speak out, at our schools and in our workplaces for those—usually the little people—who are in any way victimized and diminished by injustice or hatred or even careless neglect? Do we take an interest in those who marginalized by economic class, by gender, by sexual orientation?
Indeed, we can even apply this task of speaking out within the confines of our very Church, can’t we? For we have heard some of the most courageous voices in the past few years, as victims of clergy sexual abuse have told us their stories, and challenged the culture of power that allowed Church authorities to turn a blind eye and preserve their status rather than confront their peers who were destroying the lives of children and families.
Finally, Martin’s speech calls us to consider the fourth task of the prophet
…the call to action. As Martin exhorts his audience, “We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. And we must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.”
After seeing, listening, and speaking, we must not simply stay on the sidelines. As we hear in the letter of James, faith without works is dead. We are called to get into the game, and to act with justice.
Thus Martin began to organize all kinds of protests against the war. He encouraged young men to become conscientious objectors, and refuse to serve in the military.
Now there may be no protests on a grand scale today, however, we are nonetheless called to act in other ways. We are called to think about the companies we support with our shopping dollars. Do they pay their workers a just wage and provide them with healthcare? We are called to think about how we exercise that most precious right we have in our democracy, our vote. Do we vote for candidates whose policies uphold the dignity of every human being, from tomb to womb—especially, the unborn, the criminal on death row, and handicapped, and the elderly? Let’s commit ourselves to become prophets who act.
It’s not easy for us to see, to listen, to speak and to act as the prophets we are called to become; we need strength and nourishment.
That’s exactly why we come into God’s house, week after week. We gather so that we might find our strength and nourishment in the Word proclaimed; in the Bread of Life broken and shared; and in the Cup of Salvation poured out among us. Let’s pray this morning, that as we remember the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., that singular Christian prophet of our nation, we could find within our hearts—and within our sight, our hearing, our voices and actions—the same call to become prophets of God’s Truth. | <urn:uuid:3e9746ff-0464-40bb-ad91-dd21f18467c0> | {
"date": "2016-07-27T21:07:37",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2016-30",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-30/segments/1469257827079.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20160723071027-00071-ip-10-185-27-174.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9745444655418396,
"score": 2.828125,
"token_count": 2340,
"url": "http://bustedhalo.com/features/the-prophet-within"
} |
A total laryngectomy is a surgical procedure performed in advanced stages of cancer in or near the voice box.
During the surgery, the voice box known as the ‘larynx’ is taken out. After a laryngectomy, breathing happens via an opening in the neck instead of the nose and mouth.
Over 100,000 people worldwide are currently living with a laryngectomy and with today’s medical advances it is possible to return to a good life. Undergoing a total laryngectomy can be an overwhelming experience, but we want you to know that you are not alone.
It is a life-changing event, but it is possible to enjoy life again after a total laryngectomy. Coughing can be reduced to a minimum, you can learn to speak again and it is possible to enjoy scents and flavours again.
A laryngectomy does not come without consequences, and the voice box plays several important roles within the body, not just talking. It houses the vocal folds that make our voice sound. The larynx also helps us breathe and swallow. Therefore, removal of the voice box not only leads to changes in the voice, but also changes in for example breathing, swallowing, and smelling.
There are many things possible to people who have had a laryngectomy such as hands-free speech, returning to being physically active through sports and regaining a good social life.
After the operation you will most likely work with your Speech Language Therapist to learn to speak again.
Speaking following a Laryngectomy…
Our voice expresses our thoughts and feelings. In fact, it is a large part of our identity. Losing your natural voice can have a large impact on your ability to communicate. The good news is that there are several new ways of making a voice again. After the operation you will most likely work with your Speech Language Therapist (SLT) to learn to speak again.
There are basically three voicing methods that can be learned after surgery: oesophageal voice, electrolarynx, and tracheoesophageal voice (TE speech).
TE speech is the most common speaking method and considered to be the most successful. It creates the most natural sounding, fluent and easiest to understand kind of voice. In order to achieve TE speech, a voice prosthesis is placed in a small opening between your windpipe and food tube. The technique is usually learnt quickly and easily with help of the SLT.
You may also be given an electronic device called an electrolarynx. That is a device you place on your neck and when you press a button it generates an electronic sound that serves as your voice.
Finally, you may also learn oesophageal speech. This kind of speech requires that you swallow small amounts of air from your mouth into your food tube and “belch” the air up.
Can you still use your nose?
Your nose does more than just smell – it heats, humidifies, and filters the air you breathe.
That way, when the air reaches your lungs it has reached body temperature and contains the level of moisture needed for the lungs to function properly.
After the operation you breathe through the stoma in your neck so these heat and moisture functions of the nose are lost. Breathing through an open stoma causes the temperature and humidity in your lungs to drop. The lungs react to this by producing more mucous. This results in you having to cough more (like you have a cold) and your windpipe can feel irritated.
Heat and Moisture Exchangers (HMEs) help you to compensate for the functions of your nose. They help to rebalance the ‘climate’ in your lungs. They are worn day and night in front of your stoma and they help to maintain the heat and humidity of the air you breathe in. That way the mucous production normalizes and coughing decreases. HMEs are very important and also help you to occlude the stoma for speaking.
The freedom of hands-free speech
During the past years, one of the key areas of development has been hands-free speech. Special devices and attachments have been developed that make it possible to use the voice prosthesis without having to occlude the stoma by hand.
Smelling after laryngectomy...
The other important function of your nose is that it allows you to smell. After the operation you do not breathe in via the nose, so you will not smell automatically as you did before. Instead, you can learn to use a special technique called the NAIM (Nasal Airflow Inducing Maneuver) to get air into your nose and smell. | <urn:uuid:15d01528-29f9-40e8-86cb-639a6a054cbe> | {
"date": "2019-03-18T13:24:43",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2019-13",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-13/segments/1552912201329.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20190318132220-20190318153639-00007.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9580565094947815,
"score": 3.03125,
"token_count": 985,
"url": "https://www.countrywidesupplies.co.uk/support-services/laryngectomy"
} |
SEE LANGUAGE GUIDELINES BELOW!
“My husband and I were both a little perturbed at the fact that Sadie had been in close contact with a ton of professionals. She wasn’t progressing in therapies. Some even witnessed her regression in skills. Yet, no one hinted at autism. However, once we told (them) of her new diagnosis, they all were a little relieved themselves and even started doing some of the autism approach therapies to which she responded positively.”
“The last thing I wanted was another label or diagnosis for my precious girl, but when it was determined that autism was definitely part of my daughter’s challenges, I felt validated. I love my daughter and I want to do what’s best for her, so it was worth pushing for answers. I was also quite relieved that she would start receiving the understanding, services and attention that she deserves.”
As many as eighteen percent (some say more) of children with Down syndrome have an autistic spectrum disorder. Many parents have expressed that once their child received the additional diagnosis of autism, it became the most important issue.
BENEFITS OF KNOWING
A formal diagnosis could:
• Help get needed school and community services that are tailored to children with autism
• Explain why a child with Down syndrome and autism develops and acts differently
• Help parents to better understand, support and guide their child
BEHAVIORS TO NOTICE
Your child with Down syndrome may have an autism spectrum disorder if he or she:
• Does not orient to people (for example, often does not respond when you call his/her name)
• Stops using speech, signs, or other means of communication
• Seems happiest playing alone
• Lacks imaginative play, prefers repetitive play with objects
• Shows more interest in objects than people
• Eats only a small selection of foods and resists new foods
• Has unusual responses to pain, sound, light, or touch
• Rarely includes other people in his/her interests
• Rarely shows interest in what other people are doing
• Has great difficulty with transitions
• Works best with established structure and routines
• Has difficulty understanding gestures like pointing
• Doesn’t seem to automatically smile back at you when you smile at him/her
Many of these behaviors are normal for children with Down syndrome at certain points of development. Also, a child with Down syndrome may experience relatively normal development but then regress by developing these behaviors between the ages of three and seven. When one or two of these behaviors become predictable, extreme, or resistant to change, your child may benefit from a thorough evaluation for autistic spectrum disorders performed by a professional who is experienced in working with children with Down syndrome.
The following guidelines are presented to help you use the preferred verbiage when discussing DS-ASD:
In the United States, the term Down syndrome does not have an apostrophe ('s) after the word "Down". The D is capitalized, and the s in syndrome is lower case. A shortened version is DS.
Autism Spectrum Disorders are also called autism (lower case a), or ASD.
When a child or adult has both DS and ASD, we say they have a "co-occurring" diagnosis, or "co-occurring Down syndrome and autism". While some people use the term "dual diagnosis", we prefer to use "co-occurring" because the term "dual diagnosis" can be confused with how the behavioral health industry uses the term (psychiatric diagnosis plus chemical dependency). A shortened way to say it is DS-ASD.
Person First Language is preferred for all individuals with developmental/intellectual disabilities. This simply puts the individual first and is a matter of respect, not political correctness.
A person with DS-ASD is a person first. So, "she is a child with Down syndrome and autism", or "she has DS-ASD". Outdated language would include "she's a Downs baby", or "she's autistic". (She is not a "Downs student".) She has Down syndrome or she has autism. She also has brown hair and is an artist. Her DS-ASD is just one way to describe her. And the truth is, you don't even need to mention her disability at all unless it pertains to the conversation!
Use language that preserves the person's dignity. We do not use words that conjure up pity, such as "victim of, suffers from, afflicted by". DS-ASD is not a "disease".
Disability is a natural part of the human condition. There is nothing "wrong" with someone with DS-ASD. They are who they are!
See the child or adult with DS-ASD as a unique individual. No two people are alike. Everyone has his or her own personality, strengths and needs. We do not use stereotypes, such as "they are all so loving" or "they are always such difficult children". Focus on the person's unique and positive characteristics. Would you want people to focus on your challenges?
Finally, we ask that you never, ever use the R-word. The phrase "mental retardation" is considered a medical term but it, along with any variations used in a derogatory way, are considered extremely dehumanizing and offensive -- as offensive as any racial, ethnic or lifestyle slur. This is not a matter of politial correctness gone overboard; it's about a better R-word...RESPECT. In fact, we challenge you to take the pledge to end the R-Word by clicking HERE.
Look at the child or adult with DS-ASD in your life as an individual -- your child, your family member, your student, your client, or your FRIEND. Everyone wants to be loved and appreciated for the unique person they are. Everyone wants to be loved, appreciated and included! | <urn:uuid:98a68683-f5a1-4724-a4d0-c699044b9c04> | {
"date": "2014-11-25T00:15:17",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-49",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-49/segments/1416405325961.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20141119135525-00024-ip-10-235-23-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9667723178863525,
"score": 3.03125,
"token_count": 1224,
"url": "http://ds-asd-connection.org/About_DS-ASD.html"
} |
In 1968 NASA launched the first mission to send humanity beyond the Earth, Apollo 8. From that mission came one of the most reproduced and influential photographs of all time, Earthrise.
Apollo 8 was never even supposed to happen. The Saturn V which was slated to fly astronauts to the Moon was plagued with mechanical issues from previous test flights, and the Apollo 8 mission itself was originally to be an Earth orbital mission. However, after US intelligence got word that the Soviet Union might try to put a man around the Moon, NASA quickly changed gears and set forth to send Apollo 8 around the Moon first. Their lunar module wasn’t ready, and they had only months to prepare.
On December 21st at 6:31AM, Apollo 8 lifted off with astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, and Bill Anders. The first time humans had ever rode the great Saturn V rocket into space.
As Jim Lovell says in my interview with him “Of all the missions to the Moon…Apollo 8 was the most perfect.” Because everything worked, the launch was successful, and off they went to the Moon. But Apollo 8 was not as perfect as it seemed. Frank Borman became violently ill on the way to the Moon, and on the way back, an inputting error into the computer led the spacecraft to gimbal out of control as it thought it was back on the launch pad. But all was solved, and Apollo 8 made it home safely.
The long lasting effects of Apollo 8 are still felt today. After Apollo 8, environmental legislation began to appear in ways never before seen. Just two years after this mission we celebrated our first Earth Day. Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Air Act, from which came the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As we were still traveling to the Moon in the 70s, the Catalytic Converter was installed in vehicles to help eliminate toxic emissions. The Endangered Species Act is formed, the Clean Water Act is signed, and DDT is banned.
The sight of Earth sitting alone in space in the vivid color and amazing photography of the Earthrise photograph changed the perspective of everyone on Earth. Those who still believed that Earth was the center of the Universe or in some way a unique outpost of creation looked upon Earthrise with difficulty. For we were just one planet among many. While the Earth had been photographed before in 1967 by the lunar reconnaissance orbiter, a grainy black and white photo from a probe could not compete with the photo that Bill Anders took as the Earth appeared around the stark lunar surface.
The stories of these three astronauts is an exciting story, growing up in a time when aviation was new and exciting, they wanted to fly. Bill Anders was perhaps the first pilot to do the “Top Gun” maneuver as he gave a less than political salute to a Soviet bomber pilot. Frank Borman spent many of his years instructing Air Force pilots how to drop nuclear bombs, and Jim Lovell tells his story of an exciting Navy career.
The missions to the Moon not only inspired environmental change, but inspired many to peruse careers in science and engineering, building our current infrastructure. It has been over 45 years since any human has visited the Moon or gone beyond the confines of Earth’s gravity. Where will we go from here? NASA’s education budget is in danger of being completely cut and without the history of our greatest accomplishments, they may be forgotten.
Our new film “First to the Moon” tells the story of this amazing mission with new original interviews with the crew, rare archival film and photos, and new exciting animation depicting the flight around the Moon in 1968. | <urn:uuid:3bb8571c-e81d-41c3-870a-7b1a0768948a> | {
"date": "2019-07-21T07:17:49",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2019-30",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-30/segments/1563195526931.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20190721061720-20190721083720-00216.warc.gz",
"int_score": 4,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9739216566085815,
"score": 3.65625,
"token_count": 754,
"url": "http://www.firstmoonmovie.com/the-story-of-apollo-8/"
} |
Babies suffering from life-threatening bacterial infections such as sepsis could benefit from improved treatment, thanks to a groundbreaking study
Babies suffering from life-threatening bacterial infections such as sepsis could benefit from improved treatment, thanks to a ground-breaking study.
For the first time, researchers have been able to detect and decode a signal generated from a baby's DNA that can tell doctors whether or not a bacterial infection is present in the bloodstream.
The findings could help develop a test for bacterial infection in newborns, using a single drop of blood.
Immediate detection of such infections, which are a major cause of death among young children, is currently impossible as no simple test exists.
Accurate diagnosis of infection could limit overuse of antibiotics, which can lead to drug resistance.
The University of Edinburgh team has identified a signal consisting of 52 molecular characters – like a biological tweet – that is specific to bacterial infection.
The researchers, who have spent the past decade trying to unravel the complexities of blood poisoning and its treatment among premature and full-term babies, say that the genome's signal provides critical, immediate information on the infection.
Using blood samples from newborn babies in Edinburgh, the study investigated thousands of signals written in biological code known as messenger RNAs.
Through meticulous code-breaking the scientists were able to decipher with close to 100 per cent accuracy the signals generated by an infant's genome that specifically tell that they are suffering from sepsis.
Diagnosing sepsis in newborns is extremely difficult, as signs of infection, such as a high temperature, may not occur – or if they do, they may not be due to an infection.
Currently the most reliable way to detect infection is by detecting the bacteria in the blood but this requires a relatively large volume of blood.
An antibody test cannot be used as it only provides historical information about an infant's illness.
Professor Peter Ghazal, Professor of Molecular Genetics and Biomedicine at the University of Edinburgh's Division of Pathway Medicine, explained: "Just as a Twitter user can send a 140 character message so a baby's genome produces short messages or signals that produce code information to communicate with the infant's immune and metabolic systems so that it can fight the infection.
The 52-character 'tweet' or message that we have identified appears to be specific for bacterial but not viral infection. This type of signal could also be used to detect infection in children and adults. We are now working on ways of using a single drop of blood to detect this vital signal. This work is also leading us onto a response to tackling antibiotics resistance."
Dr Claire Smith, Consultant Neonatologist at the Simpson Centre for Reproductive Health, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, added: "This study has the potential to provide real clinical benefits in the future. Despite advances in neonatal care, infection in newborn babies remains a significant issue. Infection is responsible for a significant proportion of neonatal deaths worldwide, and also increases the risk of long-term disability in survivors.
There is a pressing clinical need for more accurate and rapid testing for neonatal infection than is currently available. This work is enabling us to move towards being able to distinguish between babies with true infection who need urgent treatment, and those who are not infected and therefore don't require antibiotics. The potential benefits to babies and their families are important. We are grateful to the families who consented to take part in the study."
The paper, which is published in Nature Communications, was supported by the Wellcome Trust, the Chief Scientist Office, EU-FP7, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Medical Research Council.
For more information please contact Eleanor Cowie, Press & PR Officer, on tel; +44 131 650 6382 / 0131 242 +44 7794 058 467
Eleanor Cowie | Eurek Alert!
Why cancer cells grow despite a lack of oxygen
25.11.2014 | Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
Biology trumps chemistry in open ocean
25.11.2014 | Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences
21.11.2014 | Event News
13.11.2014 | Event News
12.11.2014 | Event News
25.11.2014 | Physics and Astronomy
25.11.2014 | Information Technology
25.11.2014 | Trade Fair News | <urn:uuid:cc721f73-ad03-46d9-af51-00ce02887e16> | {
"date": "2014-11-26T07:43:17",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-49",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-49/segments/1416931006593.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20141125155646-00236-ip-10-235-23-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9190075993537903,
"score": 3.21875,
"token_count": 912,
"url": "http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/life-sciences/newborns-genetic-code-sends-infection-distress-signal.html"
} |
General Assembly 2012 Event 421
Speakers: Beth Brownfield, Rev. Colin Bossen, Rev. Clyde Grubbs, Bruce Knotts
In this program, participants learned about the historical impact of the Doctrine of Discovery on the world, the connections of the Doctrine to immigration issues, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as an antidote to the effects of the Doctrine, as well as gaining take-home resources to help introduce this topic to their congregations.
Download this flyer (PDF); it can be can be copied front-to-back and folded into thirds.
How can we respond to what we have learned about the Doctrine of Christian Discovery?
Show up at events open to the public Support by ‘partnering with’, not ‘helping’.
Comparative to all other ethnicities and races (Source: U.S. 2000 Census and Dept of Justice)
For more information contact socialjustice @ uua.org.
This work is made possible by the generosity of individual donors and congregations.
Please consider making a donation today.
Last updated on Thursday, September 26, 2013.
Sidebar Content, Page Navigation
More Ways to Search
Donate to Support This Program and the Ongoing Work of the UUA
Read or subscribe to UUA.org Updates for the latest additions to our site.
Learn more about the Beliefs & Principles of Unitarian Universalism, or read our online magazine, UU World, for features on today's Unitarian Universalists. Visit an online UU church, or find a congregation near you. | <urn:uuid:7afd2bb8-5173-4b36-9a69-602e82813a71> | {
"date": "2014-08-23T11:28:55",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-35",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1408500826016.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20140820021346-00060-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.8828091621398926,
"score": 2.65625,
"token_count": 331,
"url": "http://www.uua.org/multiculturalism/ga/200419.shtml"
} |
The robot, which can play the drums and exercise, is one of the most advanced "humanoid" robots in the world.
Called the iCub it has been designed so that its eye and head motion, leg movement and recognition of objects closely mirror those of humans.
Part of a £7.5 million five-year project, scientists want to create a robot that can crawl on all fours, sit up and handle objects with precision as well as see, move, hear and touch in a human-like way.
Prof John Gray, visiting professor in the Control Systems Centre at The University of Manchester, said: "It's a tremendous coup to have the iCub here in Manchester – this is the first time it has been seen publicly in Britain.
"One of the great things about the iCub is it is an open systems platform. Users and developers in all disciplines, from psychology, through to cognitive neuroscience, to developmental robotics, can use it and customise it freely.
"It is intended to become a research platform of choice, so that people can exploit it quickly and easily, share results, and benefit from the work of other users. This will lead to significantly greater community-wide progress in embodied cognition research.
"It's hoped the iCub will develop its cognitive capabilities in the same way as a child, progressively learning about its own bodily skills, how to interact with the world, and eventually how to communicate with other individuals."
The iCub can be seen at the University of Manchester on Thursday. | <urn:uuid:978e530f-0db7-428a-8f7e-b44076dea408> | {
"date": "2017-04-25T03:22:21",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-17",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-17/segments/1492917120092.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20170423031200-00175-ip-10-145-167-34.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9627066254615784,
"score": 2.796875,
"token_count": 313,
"url": "http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/4690061/Child-like-robot-that-plays-the-drums-makes-first-appearance-in-Britain.html"
} |
As I understand it the mechanism of death when a mammal is electrocuted is that the current disrupts the SAN/AVN in the heart causing it to fibrilate or arrest. That's on a macro scale, however. What damage, if any, does electricity cause on a cellular level? I've noticed some sort of moss or lichen growing on the third rail of the train lines so I'm aware that they must be able to cope with the current, do they have adaptations ot allow this or is it just that they are not connected to the earth?
Regarding the moss or lichen on the third rail on British train lines: there is no current passing through the moss/lichen as they are not completing a circuit. They are just sitting on one connector. If another connector passed over them, completing the circuit across them, then a current might pass across them for a very short time. But I doubt they grow on the top of the rail (which is the contact part in the UK system) as that is constantly being polished smooth by the contacts from trains sliding across it.
Regarding cell damage: Apart from fibrillation in animals, and burns caused by Joule heating, electricity does cause cellular damage.
At low frequencies (<10kHz), electricity disrupts cell membranes and makes them much more permeable (we actually harness this when we use electroporation to transform bacteria). All organisms rely on electrochemical potential differences across membranes for their metabolism (Berry, 2002). The exact effect is dependent on the previous electrical state of the cells, for example the electrical potential difference across the membrane, and on the surface area to volume ratio of the cell (greater volume relative to surface area leads to more disruption). In any case, extreme electroporation can cause solutes to flow in or out of a cell, and generally disrupt the balance of solute concentrations and cause organelles and other bodies to move out of a cell. When the electrical stimulation stops, the contents are then fixed in a disrupted state. The cell then has to expend enormous amounts of ATP using ion channels and transport proteins in an attempt to reinstate the necessary chemiosmotic potentials, and in doing so exhausts the entire ATP supply and goes into biochemical arrest (no metabolism occurs), which is when a cell is dead. Dead cells break apart because there are is no maintenance occuring.
At higher frequencies (10-100kHz) proteins become permanently denatured. Many proteins carry charges which give them an overall polarity. When placed in an electric field, the proteins reorient themselves and will undergo conformational change to achieve the optimum dipole moment in the direction of the field. Ion channels and pumps are particularly sensitive to these disruptions (since their charges are crucial to their function).
Rather than provide lots of references, there is one excellent review from which I drew all this information, and which you should read for more of the physical detail (Lee et al., 2000). | <urn:uuid:9f282971-b3a9-48f5-9853-f675ae432584> | {
"date": "2014-04-25T08:59:02",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-15",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-15/segments/1398223211700.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20140423032011-00195-ip-10-147-4-33.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9424095749855042,
"score": 2.78125,
"token_count": 604,
"url": "http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/960/does-electricity-cause-damage-on-a-cellular-level?answertab=active"
} |
Periodontitis, a severe form of gum disease, doesn't just cause soft-tissue inflammation and bleeding. It also destroys the bone that supports the teeth. If it progresses unchecked, it can lead to tooth loss and is even associated with systemic inflammatory conditions like atherosclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis.
A new study led by University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine researchers demonstrates that a protein called Del-1, can inhibit bone loss associated with periodontitis. They also found the protein curbs the activity of osteoclasts, cells that absorb bone tissue, leading to a mechanistic explanation of how Del-1 can prevent periodontal bone loss.
The finding paves the way for therapeutic interventions to treat periodontitis and possibly other conditions.
"This is not just important for periodontitis," said George Hajishengallis, senior author on the work and the Thomas W. Evans Centennial Professor in the Department of Microbiology at Penn Dental Medicine. "It could also have implications for other inflammatory diseases where bone loss is involved, like osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis."
Additional Penn Dental Medicine collaborators included co-lead authors Jieun Shin and Tomoki Maekawa, as well as co-authors Toshiharu Abe, Evlambia Hajishengallis, Kavita Hosur and Kalyani Pyaram. The Penn team collaborated with Triantafyllos Chavakis and Ioannis Mitroulis from Germany's Technical University of Dresden.
"The findings underline the therapeutic potential of this endogenous anti-inflammatory factor, Del-1, in further human pathologies where the levels of Del-1 are reduced," Chavakis said.
The paper appears in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Previous studies by Hajishengallis and colleagues have demonstrated the important role that Del-1 plays in inhibiting the movement and accumulation of neutrophils in gum tissue in mice, and they have found a similar mechanism occurs to reduce inflammation in the central nervous system. In both scenarios, Del-1 is able to restrain the recruitment of neutrophils, which prevents damaging inflammation. The Penn scientists demonstrated that applying Del-1 to the gums can inhibit inflammation and bone loss in a mouse model of periodontitis.
But evidence from those studies also suggested that Del-1's effect on bone loss was not solely due to its inhibition of neutrophil recruitment.
"When we compared Del-1 with a small-molecule inhibitor of neutrophil recruitment side by side, we found that Del-1 was much more effective at inhibiting bone loss," Hajishengallis said. "That suggested to us that Del-1 may have an additional mechanism to inhibit bone loss, perhaps by acting directly on the osteoclasts."
Del-1 is known to be expressed on various soft tissues, such as the gums, brain and lungs, but, to confirm their suspicions that it might also be involved in bone preservation, the research team stained bone tissue for the molecule. They found evidence of Del-1 in the same areas as osteoclast activity, then followed up by generating human and mouse osteoclasts in vitro and found Del-1 mRNA and protein expressed at high levels.
Osteoclasts from mice that lacked Del-1 or from cell lines lacking the protein could be differentiated faster and stronger.
"In fact, Del-1 doesn't block the formation of osteoclasts, but it does put the brakes on the process," Hajishengallis said.
Further experimentation in vitro with human osteoclasts and in vivo in mice identified a portion of the Del-1 protein that was particularly important for containing osteoclast activity, though additional parts of the molecule were needed to have the most potent inhibition of inflammation and bone loss. In further mechanistic experiments using different parts of the protein, the researchers were able to dissociate the anti-inflammatory action of Del-1 from its anti-osteoclastogenic action.
"Even when we administered Del-1 after the peak recruitment of neutrophils, we were still able to significantly inhibit bone loss," Hajishengallis said.
With this new understanding of how Del-1 can inhibit periodontal bone loss -- both by reducing inflammation and by restraining the activity of osteoclasts that resorb bone tissue -- the researchers tested it, in a preclinical model of periodontitis observing that Del-1 significantly reduced inflammation and tissue damage and that there was significantly less bone loss.
Hajishengallis and colleagues have implicated Del-1 in other inflammatory diseases, including multiple sclerosis, and are beginning to examine its possible involvement in rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis. Unlike some drugs used to treat these diseases, Del-1 is a protein that the human body already produces, so administration of a Del-1-based drug would likely be safer than some of the alternatives, especially for local inflammatory diseases.
"I'm convinced that this is a drug that could work in humans," Hajishengallis said.
Source: Penn Dental Medicine | <urn:uuid:998d0621-eb34-4db4-9949-057e71cc13f7> | {
"date": "2017-02-24T03:46:33",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-09",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171281.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00108-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9554474353790283,
"score": 2.6875,
"token_count": 1055,
"url": "https://www.dentalaegis.com/news/2015/10/2/Penn-Dental-Medicine-Study-Blocks-Inflammatory-Bone-Loss-in-Gum-Disease"
} |
Skip Counting Patterns
Lesson 2 of 14
Objective: SWBAT identify patterns in multiples of 2, 5, 10 and 100
I begin with a review today to connect to prior knowledge. Students are familiar with skip counting by 2, 5, 10 and 100. All of the children stand up and as I point to each child, they say the next number in the sequence. As we review today I am looking to see if students can attend to the structure of the skip counting we are doing and use it to help them find the next number. (MP7)
I begin with, "we are counting by 2s. I will begin with 2. As I point to you, you will say the next number." We go around the room twice. There are 19 children in the class so we get to 76.
Next we repeat the process starting at 3. Counting by 2s with odd numbers is much more difficult for students. They often want to revert back to the evens. I provide support as needed to remind students to skip one and go to the next number.
Next I say, "this time I will start with 100 and we will still count by 2s." I want students to realize that counting by 2s in the hundreds is the same sequence as counting in the ones.
I next begin with 5 and ask children to count by 5s. We begin with the number 85. I want to make suer that we have a chance here to cross over the 100 mark.
We count this time in unison by 10s beginning at 320. Again I want students to get experience with crossing over the into the next hundred. By counting in unison we are giving the students who struggle a chance to hear and participate without feeling singled out.
We count by 100s beginning at 100, and then at 230. Here students should see that we are changing only the digit in the hundred's place. We will cross into the thousands here. We count in unison.
I listen carefully to how students count across decades and centuries. I provide support as needed. It is challenging for students to make the change, especially across the hundreds. They often get to the 90s and then forget how to change into the next hundred even though they can count by hundreds starting at 100. It is harder to remember that I am at 690 counting by tens and I need to go to 700. They know that it is not 6hundred 100, but they have to stop and count up in their heads 500, 600, 700 to know what they need to do.
Looking for Patterns
I hand each student a blank sentence strip with a single line drawn lengthwise down the center. The sentence strip is 24 inches long. I ask students to mark the line every inch with a small mark. (They should be able to mark from 200 to 240 on the sentence strip). I give them each a ruler to mark the inches with. Next I ask the students to write the number 200 on the first mark. Now I ask them to look at the inch marks they have made. I want them to write the numbers starting at 200 and counting by 2s along the number line. This gives me a chance to check for understanding of their ability to count by 2s in the hundreds. I provide support for students who are struggling by providing them with a number line marked from 0 - 25. I ask them to think about what they are writing and see if they can find the pattern by using the lower numbered line. I point to how the pattern is the same but we have a 2 for the 2 hundreds in front of each number.
Students fill in 202, 204, 206, 208, 210, 212, 214… Now I ask them to look at the numbers in the hundred's place, what do they notice? What about the tens place? What about the ones place? Are there any patterns that they might notice? I want them to see that the number in the hundreds place does not change often, the number in the tens place goes up 0,1,2, etc. and the number in the ones place repeats 0,2,4,6,8,0..
I ask students to turn the sheet over and mark it again in inch marks. Now I ask them to begin with the number 145. I ask them to number the marks counting by 10s. Again we will share any patterns we see in the numbers in the hundreds, tens and ones place. This time they will see that there are more changes over 100 and no changes in the ones place because we are changing the tens and it is going up 4,5,6,7,8,9,,0,1,2,3,4,5, while the 5 in the ones place does not change at all, and the hundreds place stays the same for 10 numbers in a row.
I ask students to turn back to the first side. I ask them to start at the number 204 and to remember that they are counting by 2s. How many more to get to 226? Could anyone make a number sentence using 204, 226 and the difference? I repeat this with several other sets of numbers and then ask students to keep these number lines in their math suitcases for future use as a tool for adding or subtracting larger numbers.
I want students to look for more patterns in tens and hundreds. I give students a large piece of plain paper. I ask them to draw a road on the paper. Now I ask them to mark the road into squares that are about the size of 2 fingers. I tell them the road should be curvy so they can get about 30 squares or more on their road. Next I ask them to write a number between 100 and 900 that has a 3 in the tens place. Now I ask them to number the squares counting by 10. (See video below) Their road might be 231, 241, 251, 261, 271, 281, 291, 301, 311 321. etc.
I ask each student to take out colored pencils. They will use different colors to mark the squares in a pattern they notice in the ten's place (such as all numbers with a 1 in the tens place will be red, all with a 2 in the tens place will be yellow…) .
As students are working, I circulate around and ask them to explain the patterns they have identified. I also check for understanding of counting by 10s.
For some students this task may be too easy or too difficult. I will go and give them a starting number that will make the task easier, such as starting at 50 and counting up by tens, or make the task harder by giving them a number that will roll over into the thousands such as starting with 978.
Students use the roads to play a number guessing game. I explain to them that they will need to ask place value clues to find out what number their partner is thinking of. I bring students to the rug to demonstrate the game. I think of a number and ask students to ask questions about the numbers using place value questions such as, " Is there a 2 in the ten's place?", "Is the number greater than 426?", etc.
After students ask a question, I cover the numbers it can't be (such as all numbers with a 2 in the ten's place) with a counter. I take more questions and cover numbers until students guess the number.
I check that students understand the game and then partner them up to play for about 10 minutes. I circulate around during the game to make sure students are asking place value questions. Using Place Value Understanding
We will play a closing game of counting by 10s and 100s. I gather students in a circle. I tell them that we will play a game where every time a student calls out a number with a digit 2 in it, he or she must sit down. We start with the number 138. We count by 10s. Students hitting the 200s will realize that they all need to sit down. | <urn:uuid:d1d0f54d-b448-41ff-964d-75b7d20f1948> | {
"date": "2017-06-25T23:11:32",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-26",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128320593.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20170625221343-20170626001343-00377.warc.gz",
"int_score": 4,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9641806483268738,
"score": 3.921875,
"token_count": 1636,
"url": "https://betterlesson.com/lesson/reflection/8567/using-place-value-understanding"
} |
Key Concept #1: Neuroplasticity
Throughout life, our brains are continually remodeling themselves, based on experiences, behavior, genes, and so on. It's obvious that our brains keep changing, because otherwise how could you learn to play the drums or master your new IPhone?
In psychiatry, though, we doctors are only beginning to understand how neuroplasticity is involved in the development of psychiatric disorders-and in recovery from them. I trained in the 1980s and 1990s, and, frankly, back then, we never gave much thought to the ways in which the brain was affected by depression or by our treatments. We focused on treating 'symptoms' and 'disorders' with medication or psychotherapy, but didn't have any sense of whether these things had an effect on our patients' brains. Plus, hadn't we all learned in junior high school biology that we were born with a certain number of brain cells and that as we got older, they started to die? A knock on the head, a few too many beers, and you'd lose more brain cells. The best you could do was to try to slow the damage.
In the past decade, it has become clear, however, that the brain keeps remodeling itself throughout life. One amazing discovery is that parts of the brain (such as the memory center, the hippocampus) keep growing new brain cells even in adult life. Another finding is that disorders like depression and anxiety disorders cause damage to the brain, or a kind of 'negative plasticity.' Other research suggests that treatments of depression and anxiety can actually slow this damage, and possibly even stop and reverse it.
But the take-home message of the New Neuropsychiatry's understanding of neuroplasticity is that your day-to-day behaviors can have measurable effects on brain structure and function. One of my favorite examples is a study that University of London researcher Eleanor Maguire did of British taxi drivers. To get a London hack license, you have to memorize the map of the city of London-a massive project that takes many months. Prospective cabbies ride bicycles through the old city's tangled streets, trying to memorize an incredibly complex map. What Maguire found in a fascinating study published in 2000 was that there were physical changes in the hippocampi of London taxi drivers-with greatest enlargement in those who had been driving the longest!
Similar studies have been done with people learning to juggle, and with medical students in the 'preclinical years' of training, when they memorize huge quantities of facts about biology, chemistry, anatomy, etc. Such changes to specific brain areas happen quickly-in a matter of weeks to months.
So what? How is that relevant to depression or anxiety?
Obviously only a small percentage of us cram biochemistry texts into our brains or attempt to memorize the routes of hundreds of city streets. But studies of neuroplasticity have spread through psychiatry like wildfire, and have begun to have a huge impact on treatment of depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, substance abuse, and all the other major conditions treated by psychiatrists. Researchers are enthusiastically conducting studies, trying to find ways to interrupt 'negative neuroplasticity' that occurs in many psychiatric disorders, and to find ways to 'induce positive neuroplasticity' in treatment of these disorders. In some studies the goal is to increase activity of particular areas of the brain, such as the anterior cingulate (a key decision-making area) or the prefrontal cortex (a location of planning), or to decrease the activity of other areas, like the brain's fear center, the amygdala. In other studies, the goal is to actually get parts of the brain (like the hippocampus) to regrow.
In brief, we have realized that 'neuroplasticity,' the ongoing remodeling of brain structure and function, occurs throughout life. It can be affected by life experiences, genes, biological agents, and by behavior, as well as by thought patterns. Interestingly, exercise and physical activity in general have a major effect on 'neurotrophic factors'-chemicals that stimulate the growth and recovery of brain cells.
In thinking about neuroplasticity, a patient I call "Hannah W." comes to mind. She is described more fully in Heal Your Brain, but in brief she presented for treatment as a 27-year-old single woman who had a difficult early life with many losses and traumas, and who had experienced over fifteen years of severe depression and panic disorder. She also had a number of 'stress-induced' medical illnesses including colitis and severe asthma. Her depression and anxiety responded to medicine and psychotherapy, but to me the more interesting thing was that at a certain point she became passionate about yoga. She practiced yoga on average 2 to 3 hours a day, and after a few months, she described how she was able to feel sustained sense of calm and wellbeing for the first time in her life. For what it's worth, her asthma and GI symptoms became much less severe, perhaps a result of her physical changes.
I don't have MRI scans for Hannah W., but I'm willing to bet that treatment-and her regimen of intense yoga-caused measurable changes in her brain. Specifically, I think yoga allowed her to decrease the activity of her brain's fear center, the amygdala. I'd love to have anatomical and functional MRI scans of Hannah's brain to study what in the New Neuropsychiatry era has become what my colleagues at Columbia call a 'researchable question.' The fact is, we now have the tools to study the effects of treatment and behaviors like yoga on the brain-on the brain's anatomy and the function of specific centers.
For people with depression and anxiety disorders, I think the New Neuropsychiatry question has started to become, is it possible to interrupt processes of 'negative neuroplasticity' associated with these disorders? And through treatment and changes in behavior, is it possible to 'induce' a process of 'positive neuroplasticity'? In brief, is it possible to heal your brain?
* * * | <urn:uuid:fbf5ffc2-a68b-4146-ab0f-486d6d693091> | {
"date": "2014-04-19T17:18:04",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-15",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-15/segments/1397609537308.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20140416005217-00427-ip-10-147-4-33.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9701150059700012,
"score": 2.828125,
"token_count": 1254,
"url": "http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/heal-your-brain/201107/neuroplasticity-and-depression"
} |
How Safe Is Your Home?
A home should be a haven-a place where you rest and enjoy time with family-a place of safety and security. But that isn't always the case. According to a recent study, more than 30,000 people-more of them men-die every year from accidental injuries in and around their home. Fortunately, many of these deaths can be prevented with proper home safety.
Homing in on home injuries
In a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers explored the causes of fatal home injuries. Using a national database that includes death certification information, they found that such injuries rose steadily between 2000 and 2008. The top three home-safety offenses? Poisonings, falls, and fires/burns.
Poisonings have primarily accounted for the ballooning number of fatal home injuries. They have even outpaced car crashes as the leading cause of accidental deaths. Why? More people are overdosing on prescription drugs. The most common culprits are pain relievers containing hydrocodone and oxycodone.
After poisonings, falls claim the most lives in the home setting. Adults ages 65 and older suffer the majority of fatal trips and slips. In that age group and all others, men and boys are more often the victims of home accidents. Researchers found the largest gender divide among people ages 20 to 29. Young men in their 20s were three times more likely to die from a home injury than women of the same age.
Keeping your home safe
An accident can happen anywhere-even in your home. But you can help prevent serious injuries by making your home safer. Start by posting emergency phone numbers in a handy spot. And follow these tips to prevent the top three causes of fatal home injuries.
Always talk with your health care provider to find out more information.
(Our Organization is not responsible for the content of Internet sites.) | <urn:uuid:2a55f73a-47d0-4957-aaf8-2decb771b250> | {
"date": "2014-08-21T00:24:24",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-35",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1408500813241.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20140820021333-00280-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9451923966407776,
"score": 2.6875,
"token_count": 387,
"url": "http://www.nyhq.org/diw/Content.asp?PageID=DIW010650&More=DIW&language=Spanish"
} |
Redirects can be a common reason why websites feel slow. A single redirect can slow down an initial request with around 300-500ms and even more on a mobile device. This is close to unacceptable, especially when during this time nothing happens. The user starts to feel that loading is delayed. The first half second is very important when we need to draw something on screen as fast as possible. A site that reacts fast, but loads subsequent resources more slowly and transparently or only as needed may be perceived as being faster compared to one that is very slow to react, but then utilizes the available bandwidth better do download and present everything at once. As always, this depends on a many factors like the number of (blocking) resources, the availability of CDN, the state of the cache and others. Drawing on screen as fast as possible ensures that engagement is kept with the loading process. We may think that 300ms isn't much, but when we consider that one of the slowest parts of a site—the establishment of a connection to the database—can take around 40ms (PHP/MySQL, single connection) or that requiring a single file of 1000 lines with PHP can take around 10ms, whereas some built-in functions can execute in 1-2ms, we start to see the picture. Doing extra things on the network isn't the best use of our time budget. In fact, avoiding unnecessary requests remains one of the most efficient ways to speed up a site today.
Redirects may not always be obvious and even when we encounter them, we still may not know which part of the code is causing them, although we can assume that this will be an equivalent of the PHP's header function. To avoid a redirect, we can make the request more precise by using the right parameters, but this will needlessly grow our code and make it less portable. The slowest redirect is probably the one that comes from our own code as it gives a signal for the whole request body to be reloaded.
When a user types an address without the www prefix, the browser adds it, which can initiate a permanent (301) or temporary (302) redirect as the use of the Chrome add-on "Redirect Path" shows. This is a redirect initiated by the browser, but it happens so fast, that we barely notice it.
We can also think of URL rewriting as a form of redirect—one that happens on every request. Although the result is a clean URL with no evidence of the underlying technology, the use of regular expressions for matching and replacement can be slow (up to tens of ms) and adding more bytes to the .htaccess file makes the site slower while not adding much value to it. This is a redirect initiated by the web server. We should not forget that many people prefer clicking on links rather than specifying the correct URL structure. The latter makes them think and also adds to the perception of how fast the site feels.
Redirects take many forms and we must learn to recognize and avoid them. The purpose of a website is to deliver the content, not to seek detours to do the same. Not considering the value we provide through our websites is a harmful thought redirect. | <urn:uuid:7a925e39-4993-4319-b02d-ab7ebff47405> | {
"date": "2018-08-16T22:16:52",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2018-34",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-34/segments/1534221211185.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20180816211126-20180816231126-00496.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9528511166572571,
"score": 2.71875,
"token_count": 655,
"url": "https://dummeraugust.com/main/content/blog/posts.php?pid=165"
} |
By Patrick D. Bonin
Branch, LA – Ever hear that old expression about needing to have “thick skin?”
Crawfish in ponds across south Louisiana seem to take it to heart every summer about this time, as their shells start to harden while the heat cranks up.
You might even notice some mudbugs are a bit tougher to peel this late in the season… but do you know why?
Mark Shirley, aquaculture specialist at the LSU AgCenter, said several factors influence the hardening of a crawfish’s shell, chief among them age.
“Immature crawfish go through a series of molts before finally becoming a mature animal,” Shirley said. “Once they reach sexual maturity later in the season, that shell will stay with them for several months before they molt again.
“It typically takes 12-15 molts for a crawfish to reach maturity, and sometimes they molt as often as every two to three weeks early on,” he said. “So at the start of the season, there’s a quick turnover with the shells: now there isn’t. That allows for a thicker, heavier shell.”
Shirley said most mature crawfish now won’t molt again until next fall when the ponds are flooded and they emerge from underground. In the meantime, their tough exteriors serve them well as they prepare to tunnel down to escape the summer heat.
“The harder shell enables them to dig a burrow better and easier, and gives them a better chance of surviving underground,” he said. “They’re sitting down there for all of July, August and September. Sometime in October they’ll typically emerge from their burrow not having molted since late spring. “
These mudbugs that survive a harvest season and are used to seed next year’s ponds are typically the really large crawfish you’ll notice in future boils.
“If you find a male with really big claws in December or January, he’s a mature crawfish who’s probably gone through a season,” Shirley said. “When they come out of their burrows next fall, they have to eat a lot for several weeks and they’ll finally molt again to get rid of that hard shell. They’ll get a ‘young crawfish’ look again, but they’re actually an older crawfish in a brand new greener, lighter-colored shell.”
So while thicker, harder shells might signal the “beginning of the end” of this season, as least we know Mother Nature is already at work preparing the mudbugs so they can make it through summer and emerge in the fall… with another brand new crop of live Louisiana crawfish for 2014! | <urn:uuid:d790faf3-b8d9-4a9c-aa66-62e54458e682> | {
"date": "2019-02-19T17:45:12",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2019-09",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-09/segments/1550247490806.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20190219162843-20190219184843-00616.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9618712067604065,
"score": 2.75,
"token_count": 604,
"url": "https://www.cajuncrawfish.com/blog/crawfish-shells-harden-up-as-summer-heats-up/"
} |
Home Healing & Spirituality
Meditation influences brain function
By Denise Ryan, Canwest News Service, October 7, 2009
Calgary, Canada -- Richard Davidson, one of the world's top brain scientists, believes mental exercise, specifically meditation, can literally change our minds.
"Our data shows mental practice can induce long-lasting changes in the brain," said Davidson, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
His startling scientific research on the impact of meditation on brain function has implications that go beyond the physical.
Buddhist monks believe mental attributes and positive emotions such as compassion, love, kindness and empathy are skills that can be cultivated.
And science is beginning to back that up.
Davidson started meditating in 1974, when he was a PhD student at Harvard. Back then, meditation was seen as a somewhat faddish eastern import.
"The culture at the time was not so receptive," Davidson said, "nor were the scientific methods so well-developed."
It was when he met the Dalai Lama in 1992 that he "decided to come out of the closet with my interest in meditation."
He became excited about the possibility of applying rigorous scientific study to the practice of meditation.
"I made a commitment to do my best to take the tools we have so well honed in studying fear and anxiety and apply them to kindness and compassion."
Davidson began an ongoing study of the brains of Buddhist monks, the so-called "Olympians" of meditation, each of whom had accomplished at least 10,000 hours of meditation.
"The work was framed within the research on neuro-plasticity, the understanding that the brain is built to change in response to experience," Davidson said.
Just as an injured brain can adapt by mapping out new neuron pathways to accomplish tasks, "brain circuits (for) regulation of emotion and attention are malleable by the environment and are potential targets of training," he said.
Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery (fMRI), Davidson showed compassion meditation, even in short-term practitioners, induced significant changes in patterns of functional activity in the brain.
"The most important thing is hard-nosed evidence," Davidson said. "We were able to measure the results through experiments we did."
Davidson, who has published his findings on meditation in the world's most prestigious science journals, believes that even the so-called "happiness set-point" of a person's brain can be altered for the better.
The potential applications include non-pharmacological interventions or supplemental treatment for depression, as well as behavioural and stress-related issues.
Davidson hopes to convince educators to include meditation training as part of core curriculum in kindergarten to Grade 12.
"It's very clear that disruptive behaviour--bullying, ADD --dramatically affect learning and have led to progressive declines in North American institutes," he said.
Dr. Adrianne Ross is a Vancouver mindfulness and meditation leader who first turned to the practice when she experienced a serious illness.
She has practised meditation in different forms for more than 30 years, studied with mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn and taught the practice for more than a decade.
"The mindfulness program is for people who aren't sure they're interested in Buddhism, but want to learn to meditate," Ross said.
"It helps you to be able to live more fully and more effectively, so you're causing less harm to yourself and the people around you and you're happier."
Mindfulness can be practised while driving, or standing in line at the bank, Ross said, but it is not a panacea.
"Some people have depression that comes back. Some of us have the chemistry or life experience that make (difficult) thoughts come, but it can help us work with the thoughts," Ross said.
"Some people have severe illness. It won't make the illness go away, but helps them live a full life."
Ross has seen patients become happier and more accepting, in spite of difficult circumstances.
It begins with "learning to be with the breath," Ross said. Bringing focus to the breath and body. You don't try to eliminate your thoughts, but focus with "loving kindness" and watch your habitual thoughts--the ones that might hijack you emotionally.
"You learn to recognize my mind is really spinning right now, you're aware of what it's doing, you're not lost in what's happening. Then if your mind is not going in a useful direction you have a choice."
Davidson, who still meditates regularly, said he doesn't measure his own brain systematically. He doesn't have to. "My practice has given me a kind of equanimity and balance," he said.
"It may be a period of time, but by 2050 I believe mental exercise will be understood as being as important as physical exercise." | <urn:uuid:ef5329a5-ae7c-4f3e-b3d3-28f968b7f837> | {
"date": "2014-10-22T04:51:01",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-42",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-42/segments/1413507445886.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20141017005725-00122-ip-10-16-133-185.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9723389148712158,
"score": 2.65625,
"token_count": 1009,
"url": "http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=7,8598,0,0,1,0"
} |
Google Glass, functioning as a sort of hands-free device, can help optimize medical data management…and tear down the walls of the operating theatre.
Only a few months after its beta version release, Google Glass has already penetrated the medical world. Even though it has generated heated debates and one could dub it as a futuristic gadget, its use could generate innovative applications for doctors. According to a recent survey by California-based Health IT company Augmedix it seems that patients are ready as wel as 98%of the people polled had no objection to their doctor using Google Glass. Now in fact a number of surgeons have actually been using this wearable device accessory during delicate operations. It has been shown in practice that these smart glasses not only facilitate remote collaboration between medical staff during difficult operations but enable them to stream this practical demonstration to students, connecting classrooms directly with the operating theatre.
Opening up the operating theatre
Operations have recently taken place in the United States and Spainwhere the surgeon used Google Glass. Recently the Ohio State University Medical Center conducted an open surgical operation, linking the operating theatre to a group of medical students and medical staff through the smart glasses worn by the chief surgeon. The glasses provide a direct surgeon’s-eye view of what he is doing, which means that he can call on the assistance of a consultant or colleague specializing in that specific field who is remotely following the operation on a continuous basis and receive much more detailed advice. In addition, the whole operation can be filmed and streamed live over the Internet to medical students around the world. During an operation filmed in Spain in June, students from Stanford University in the United States were able to monitor the operation and also interact with the surgeon, Dr Pedro Guillén, in order to gain a better understanding of the techniques he was using. Dr Guillén enthused that Google Glass could potentially serve as a “common university for medical schools around the world.”
AR surgery and sophisticated record-keeping?
The potential uses of Google Glass go beyond facilitating real-time communication between surgeons, consultants and students. Soon health practitioners will be able to retrieve patients’ medical files and call up such diagnostic data as X-rays, heart rate, MRI scans, etc. Such efficient data management would avoid interruptions during operations and increase the amount of information a surgeon would have at his/her disposal while operating. Developers have already come up with the MedRef for Glass app, which allows doctors and healthcare staff to create, update and consult medical records in a hands-free manner, based on facial recognition. In an era when masses of vital patient data are constantly being garnered, but there is as yet no sophisticated sharing and archiving system in existence, Google Glass has the potential to process the constant information flows. In addition to taking the operating theatre to a new dimension, these connected specs could well serve to streamline all those administrative tasks which today on average take up over 25% of a hospital doctor’s time. | <urn:uuid:ca480dec-e39a-44db-b70d-483f9f2b6603> | {
"date": "2019-05-27T11:06:16",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2019-22",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-22/segments/1558232262369.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20190527105804-20190527131804-00176.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9674718379974365,
"score": 2.59375,
"token_count": 604,
"url": "https://atelier.bnpparibas/en/smart-city/article/google-glass-helps-surgeons-work"
} |
This is the third in a series of blog posts, collecting links to websites that contain some interesting videos for teachers looking to “flip their classroom” without starting from scratch. (For more on what it means to flip a classroom, see Monday’s introductory post.) For each site below, I have tried to summarize by including information about
- content areas collected on the site,
- the intended grade level/age of viewers, and
- the type/style of video (e.g. lecture with written notes, music video, made-for-TV)
There should also be an example video posted along each title. Between the description, the links, and sample video, you should end up with a pretty good idea of what you’re getting into. (Note: after being organized into categories, these sites are listed alphabetically by title, not based on any evaluation of relative quality.)
Content Areas: Scientific process skills and engineering around a variety of topics
Intended Age Group: Most clips would be all right for ages 8+, though be sure to screen topics accordingly
Style of videos: Problem-focused vignette as two (or more) people try to design a solution
Sample video: Dimpled Car MiniMyth
Description: Mythbusters Jamie & Adam are at it again! As most know, these two (and their newly-formed team) challenge widely-held beliefs of all shapes and sizes, using science to debunk myth. Discovery.com has collected over 1,000 clips from the show on their website. The clips- ranging from 60 seconds to 5 minutes- could serve a great purpose as a focusing tool, or as a model for engineering, problem-solving, or investigation. The downside: the clips on this site are not really organized in any way. To find something of value to you in your classroom, be ready to do some searching and some bookmarking.
Content Areas: Physics (Science of NFL Football, Science of the WInter Olmpics), Chemistry (Chemistry Now!), and Earth Science (The Changing Planet)
Intended Age Group: I’ve used these resources with students as young as 3rd grade, as old as 12th.
Style of videos: What you might expect in a feature story on the news- interviews, stock footage, telestrated explanations over video.
Sample video: The Chemistry of Chocolate
Description: The team at NBC News got collected, produced, and archived these resources for the K-12 classroom. The subject matter of each collection puts the content into a context that matters to kids. (My pesonal favorite: Science of the Winter Olympics!) A select few videos (about 100 altogether) are free for use in classrooms, while the rest of the collection require a subscription.
One interesting tidbit: NBC Learn uses a media player called a Cue Card™ that supports various media besides video. It is also “flippable”: like a flash card, the media player provides bibliographic information, clickable keywords and a citation generator on the back, and a full transcript along the side.
Content Areas: Mostly physics, though several touch on biology- or chemistry-related topics
Intended Age Group: Like NBC Learn, I have used these with all ages of student.
Style of videos: TV scientists pose a question, and measure data from athletes’ performance in order to answer the question
Sample video: Jayron Hosley – Reaction Time and Speed
Description: John Brenkus and the SportScience team mix Mythbusters with SportsCenter to bring SportScience, a show that digs into the science behind the world of sports. In most situations, the clips consist of Brenkus posing a question about an athlete: “How does Rory McElroy drive the ball so far off the tee?” “How fast is Jayron Hosley?” “Can Chicago Bear Devin Heser outrun a real bear?” The team then goes into data collection mode, strapping high-tech probes and tracking equipment to the athlete in order to study his/her movements. The data is then analyzed in order to try and answer the initial question.
ESPN has collected about 100 3 to 5 minute clips on their website. Unfortunately, like the Mythbusters site, the organizational structure of this site leaves a bit to be desired- teachers will need to be ready to spend a little time digging here to find just the content they need. (Be sure to bookmark it in some way once you find it!)
Content Areas: Bit of a mixed bag, though there is a lot of physics.
Intended Age Group: Generally for older viewers, though I think everyone could be easily awed by the super high-speed camera. Given that explosions and fire are often a topic of conversation, be wary of the clip in its totality before assigning it.
Style of videos: Hosts Jeff Lieberman and Matt Kearney pose questions, and then film subjects with a super high-speed camera in order to see events in super slow motion (which hopefully helps to answer the question at hand).
Sample video: Nucleation in a Soda Geyser
Description: Like SportScience, Time Warp digs into the science behind that which happens too quickly for our eyes to see. Through the use of a high-speed camera, the hosts are able to capture many more frames per second than your average video camera, allowing us to receive much more information about what really happens in the blink of an eye! The site has two different video sets. One set of 20 videos from HowStuffWorks.com goes into more of an explanation for phenomena like bubbles, rockets, and fire walking. The other is a collection of interactive videos where the user controls the speed and direction of the playback- perhaps to answer a question of his or her own! While these vids may not be of enough substance to fly as flipped videos on their own, the interactive videos might cool enough of a resource to be used in the classroom during application time.
Content Areas: Biology, Chemistry, Earth Science, and Physics
Intended Age Group: These have different videos for all ages of students.
Style of videos: Most I have seen are documentary-style, with a single speaker scripted over archived footage from the BBC, NASA, etc.
Sample video: How Hot is the Earth’s Core?
Description: Twig Science is a company based out of the UK advertised as providing “outstanding short films on science…made with teachers, for teachers.” They are not lying. The videos I have seen are short (usually no more than 3 minutes or so), and outstanding in quality and clarity. As described about BrainPop in yesterday’s post, Twig Science also offers several supplementary resources that could be used in conjunction with these videos, including sample lesson plans, checks for understandings, The organizational mindmap is an impressive feature, as well. Also like BrainPop, Twig Science is a paid site. The free videos give a taste of what’s inside (including a nice categorization between “Core Concept” videos and “Extension” videos), but to get full access, there’s a fee involved.
If you know of any other resources that fit this description, please share them in the comments boxes. Happy flipping! | <urn:uuid:a22c2ec0-e095-4a48-8d42-40d63436e73d> | {
"date": "2017-03-25T15:34:37",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-13",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218188962.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212948-00111-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9344891905784607,
"score": 3.28125,
"token_count": 1510,
"url": "https://tborash.wordpress.com/tag/video/"
} |
PALUXY, TEXAS. Paluxy is on State Highway 51 fifteen miles southwest of Granbury in Hood County. It was in Erath County until 1866, when Hood County was carved out of the region. The Paluxy post office was established in 1858 and was still in operation in 1993. The town was named for the Paluxy River, which runs through it. There has been some dispute, however, on the origin of the word "Paluxy." Initially, the area was called Pulltight, because of the difficulty travelers had crossing the river. Later, it was referred to as Poloxeyville, Paluxieville, Baloxey, and finally, Paluxy. During the early 1860s Indian raids were common. John Meek helped establish the community and the county, and became one of the first four county commissioners. A gristmill was constructed by a man named Goather. He later sold it, and the mill was then run by Dan Himmens (Himmons) and J. H. Haley for many years. The business was utilized by many people in the area, and it brought new citizens to the community. There have been only a few small businesses in the town, and the surrounding area is farm and ranch land. In 1887 the population of Paluxy was estimated at 100. It was 164 from 1900 to 1970, when it decreased to seventy-six. This total remained the same through 2000. The residents of Paluxy are served by the Hood County News and KPAR-AM radio, both out of nearby Granbury.
Image Use Disclaimer
All copyrighted materials included within the Handbook of Texas Online are in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 related to Copyright and “Fair Use” for Non-Profit educational institutions, which permits the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), to utilize copyrighted materials to further scholarship, education, and inform the public. The TSHA makes every effort to conform to the principles of fair use and to comply with copyright law.
For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.Handbook of Texas Online, Kristi Strickland, "Paluxy, TX," accessed August 30, 2016, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hnp05.
Uploaded on June 15, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association. | <urn:uuid:35d3a2aa-afc2-4e8c-bb47-a9618a49866b> | {
"date": "2016-08-30T11:09:41",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2016-36",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-36/segments/1471982976017.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20160823200936-00130-ip-10-153-172-175.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9752031564712524,
"score": 2.609375,
"token_count": 570,
"url": "https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hnp05"
} |
Concerns About Medical Errors
The IOMís release
of To Err is Human brought medical errors and patient safety
the attention it has long needed but never had. The information
presented in the report is not new. Indeed, many studies, some as
early as the 1960s, showed that patients were frequently injured
by the same medical care that was intended to help them (Schimmel,
1964). While evidence of medical error has existed for some
time, the report succeeded in capturing the publicís attention by
revealing the magnitude of this pervasive problem and presenting
it in a uniquely compelling fashion. The IOM estimates that medical
errors cause between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths annually in the United
States. Using the more conservative figure, medical errors rank
as the eighth leading cause of death, killing more Americans than
motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. In addition to
this extraordinary human toll, medical errors result in annual costs
of $17 to $29 billion in the United States (Institute
of Medicine, 1999). Additionally, fear of becoming a victim
of medical error may lead patients to delay obtaining potentially
beneficial medical care, which may allow their illnesses to worsen.
harm as a result of receiving health care is a growing concern for
the American public. Front-page articles in newspapers, television
exposes, and cover stories in magazine have provided the stark details
of the latest and most dramatic examples of medical errors. Until
recently, the perception of medical errors among health care providers
and the public has been shaped by these anecdotes, and remedies
have focused on fixing blame on individual providers, including
health plans, hospitals, doctors, pharmacists, nurses, and other
caregivers. That approach, however, has proven ineffective in addressing
patient safety, as documented by the ongoing problems noted in the
IOM report. The IOMís recommended alternative approaches and other
ways in which the Federal agencies can work to reduce medical errors
are described in this report.
The lack of
standardized nomenclature and a universal taxonomy for medical errors
complicates the development of a response to the issues outlined
in the IOM report. A number of definitions have been applied to
medical errors and patient safety. In To Err is Human, the
IOM adopted the following definition:
is defined as the failure of a planned action to be completed
as intended or the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim.
In an effort
to thoroughly consider all of the relevant issues related to medical
errors, the QuIC expanded of the IOM definition, as follows:
is defined as the failure of a planned action to be completed
as intended or the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim. Errors
can include problems in practice, products, procedures, and systems.
acknowledgment of the broad scope of errors reflected in this definition
respects the responsibilities and capabilities of the Government
agencies and departments contributing to this report. The term "patient
safety" as used here applies to initiatives designed to prevent
adverse outcomes from medical errors. The enhancement of patient
safety encompasses three complementary activities: preventing errors,
making errors visible, and mitigating the effects of errors.
It is critical
to recognize that not all bad outcomes for patients are due to medical
errors. Patients may not be cured of their disease or disability
despite the fact that they are provided the very best of care. Additionally,
not all adverse events that are the result of medical care are,
in fact, errors. An adverse event is defined broadly as an injury
that was caused by medical management and that resulted in measurable
disability (Leape, 1991). Some
adverse events, termed "unpreventable adverse events,"
result from a complication that cannot be prevented given the current
state of knowledge. Many drugs, even when used appropriately, have
a chance of side effects, such as nausea from an antibiotic. The
occurrence of nausea would be an adverse event, but it would not
be considered a medical error to have given the antibiotic if the
patient had an infection that was expected to respond to the chosen
antibiotic. Medical errors are adverse events that are preventable
with our current state of medical knowledge. Figure
1 (16 KB) shows this set of possible outcomes of medical care.
In this report,
the consideration of errors is broadened beyond preventable adverse
events that lead to actual patient harm to include "near misses,"
sometimes know as "close calls." A "near miss"
is an event or situation that could have resulted in an accident,
injury, or illness, but did not, either by chance or through timely
intervention. Experience in other industries, including aviation,
manufacturing, and nuclear energy, demonstrates that there is as
much to learn from close calls as there is from incidents leading
to actual harm.
It is also important
to situate medical errors within the broader context of problems
in health care quality. These can be classified under three categories:
overuse (the service is unlikely to have net benefit), underuse
(a potentially beneficial service is withheld), and misuse (a service
is inappropriately used) (Chassin,
1998). The majority of medical errors fall into the category
of misuse, but some problems with overuse (e.g., when an unnecessary
therapy is prescribed, leading to harm) or underuse (e.g., when
an error in diagnosis leads to the failure to apply timely treatment)
blur these distinctions. These are related quality problems and
may be addressed, in part, by using some of the same approaches.
In some cases, however, distinct approaches may be required. That
is why the IOM has chosen to deal with the issue of errors separately
in its report and plans to issue future reports on underuse and
overuse quality problems. Our report will also focus exclusively
on errors. Nevertheless, the QuIC participants recognize that the
improvements made in patient safety will lay the foundation for,
and may encourage, other quality improvements.
for Thinking About Errors
There are many
possible ways to categorize medical errors, but no universally accepted
taxonomy. Classifications have included:
- Type of health
care service provided (e.g., classification of medication errors
by the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting
of the resulting injury (e.g., sentinel events, defined as "any
unexpected occurrence involving death or serious physical or psychological
injury" by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare
- Legal definition
(e.g., errors resulting from negligence [Institute
of Medicine, 1999]).
- Type of setting
(e.g., outpatient clinic, intensive care unit).
- Type of individual
involved (e.g., physician, nurse, patient).
the current variety of classifications is the understanding that
different types of medical errors are likely to require different
solutions and preventive measures. A single approach to error reduction
will fail because it does not account for important differences
in types of errors. For example, for the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA), product risk category may be a crucial dimension for shaping
regulatory policy, but a health care provider may see this dimension
as a minor consideration in shaping its error-control methods.
classification of errors would need to be well suited to the purpose
to which it is being applied, but there is no single classification
system that could be successfully applied to the full set of IOM
recommendations being addressed by the QuIC. A framework for reporting
may include considerations of the level of reporting (Federal versus
State versus organizational), the reasons for which the reporting
is being done (learning versus accountability), or the level of
injury (near-miss versus minor versus severe). A framework for developing
a research agenda may require more focus on the populations involved,
available data, and research tools that can be applied to the problem.
The experience with the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS),
which relies on narrative reporting without a formal framework,
demonstrates that rigorous classification may not be necessary at
all for some purposes.
The QuIC recommends
that the framework for analysis of errors in health care include
considerations of how to measure and improve patient safety. As
a result, the framework will evolve with each of the initiatives
outlined in this report, and the development of classifications
to deal with specific purposes will be part of the ongoing work
of the QuIC in addressing the IOM recommendations.
As noted in
the IOM report, health care is "a decade or more behind other
high-risk industries in its attention to ensuring basic safety"
(Institute of Medicine, 1999; p. 4).
Other sectors of the economy have made remarkable progress in error
reduction and safety assurance during the latter part of the 20th
century, much of which is attributable to industryís attention to
quality management and improvement. In 1986, Motorola instituted
a strategy called "Six-Sigma Quality," whose name refers
to the Greek letter used to represent standard deviation from the
mean of any normally distributed curve (Chassin,
1998). A company which has six-sigma quality experiences only
3.4 defects or errors per million products or events. This is the
equivalent of seeing only one misspelled word in about six typical
mystery novels or one fumble in 1,600 football games.
six-sigma quality strategy, Motorola, General Electric, and others
have substantially reduced their error rates. These companies have
systems in place to monitor and report errors and defects so that
proper action can be taken, and it is no surprise that these companies
are the leaders in their respective industries. Although originally
devised for reducing defects in manufacturing plants, the application
of the six-sigma quality approach has provided benefits to service
industries as well (Chassin, 1998).
Service industries have used the six-sigma strategy to analyze,
for example, the number of customer complaints that go unanswered
after 2 days (per million complaints) or the excess waiting time
over 5 minutes a customer encounters before being served (per million
In another example,
the aviation industry has adopted quality improvement, safety assurance,
and error reduction as its core mission. Currently, airline safety
is operating at a five-sigma level (Chassin,
1998). The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) strategic plan
targets a further 80 percent reduction in the airline accident death
rate, which would place it close to the six-sigma level. The cornerstone
of the FAAís safety initiative has been the ASRS, which was established
in 1975. Although the ASRS is funded by the FAA, it is administered
by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Many
believe that this separation of control over the reporting function
to improve safety from the enforcement function is a critical factor
in its success. It gives credibility and a sense of safety to the
system in the eyes of the many users, particularly those being asked
to report their errors and near misses. The ASRS is a vital link
between those who observe or experience errors and defects and investigators
who have the ability to research and disseminate information regarding
these errors. In January 2000 the President signed an executive
order providing further protections to reporters under the aviation
safety system to enhance information collection. The aviation community
(as well as nuclear power and the military communities) has demonstrated
the importance of looking critically at human factors and interface
design practices in preventing accidents and increasing operating
efficiency (Rouse, Kober, and Mavor,
A review of
the experience in non-health-care industries offers some lessons
that may be applicable to reducing medical errors. Characteristics
of error-reducing industries include:
- Not tolerating
high error rates, and setting ambitious targets for error reduction
tracking mechanisms that expose errors.
- Relying on
the abundant reports of errors and "near misses."
investigating errors, including a root causes analysis.
to error reduction a systems approach that embraces a wide array
of human factors, technical, and organizational remedies.
on systems solutions that do not seek to find individual
fault and blame.
the organizational culture so that it enhances safety and error
adequate resources to error prevention initiatives and the development
of the knowledge base to support them.
that solutions often come from unexpected sources, "out of
the box" thinking, and new combinations of disciplines (e.g.,
human factors psychology with aeronautical engineering).
The QuIC, in
reviewing the IOM report as well as these experiences in other industries,
has concluded that there is no single "magic bullet" approach
to reducing errors, but there is a generalizable approach (that
includes the strategies listed above) which, when applied vigorously,
is likely to yield favorable outcomes.
of Health Care Errors
of it sponsored by AHRQís predecessor, the Agency for Health Care
Policy and Research, documents that the rate of health care errors
is far higher than the error rate in other industries. In one study
of intensive care units, the correct action was taken 99.0 percent
of the time, translating to 1.7 errors per day. One out of five
of these errors was serious and/or potentially fatal. If performance
levels even substantially better than those found in the ICU (for
example, 99.9%, a 10-fold reduction in errors) were applied to the
airline and banking industries, it would still equate to two dangerous
landings per day at OíHare International Airport and 32,000 checks
deducted from the wrong account per hour (Leape,
1994). In these industries, such error rates would not be tolerated.
shares a number of characteristics with these other industries.
They all rely on systems which include the interaction of humans
and technology to perform a number of functions leading to an outcome
(e.g., a safe transcontinental flight, a check correctly deducted
from the right account, a patientís recovery from breast cancer).
However, health care is distinct in its complexity. For example,
a patient in an intensive care unit is the recipient of an average
of 178 different activities performed per day that rely on the interaction
of monitoring, treatment, and support systems (Leape,
1994). One observer noted that many medical errors can be attributed
to the simple fact that the knowledge base to effectively and safely
deliver health care exceeds the storage capacity of the human brain
and fragmented nature of the American health care industry contributes
to the problem of errors, and will make it a challenge to institute
the kind of comprehensive strategy to reduce errors and increase
patient safety that the IOM recommends in its report. The work of
federally-sponsored researchers such as Lucian Leape and David Bates
has illustrated the importance of focusing on the systems of health
care delivery in efforts to reduce medical errors. Prescription
and delivery of medications provides a dramatic example. It requires
the successful completion of at least five interdependent steps:
ordering, transcribing, dispensing, delivering, and administering.
Inattention to system design leads to numerous opportunities for
error in any one of these steps. One study on adverse drug events
showed that 78 percent of adverse drug events were due to system
failures (Leape, 1995).
factors are also a distinct challenge in addressing medical errors.
Within many hospitals, departments are only loosely linked, and
communications between primary care doctors and medical specialists
are notoriously poor. As a result, information on problems, as well
as improved practices to reduce errors and enhance safety, in one
department or one facility do not migrate quickly to others. The
variety of settings in which health care is provided (including
hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, ambulatory surgery centers, private
offices, and patientsí homes) and the transitions of patients and
providers among them provide additional challenges.
Errors may be
particularly difficult to recognize in health care because variations
in an individualís response to treatment is expected. In addition,
medical professionals may not recognize that a particular product
or procedure may have contributed to or caused the problem because
the patient is already ill, the product is not expected to work
perfectly at all times, or the event appears unrelated to the product
or procedure. Lack of recognition of a serviceís role in adverse
events reduces reporting of the association and the opportunity
to learn from previous experiences with the product. Because medical
errors usually affect only a single patient at a time, they are
treated as isolated incidents, and little public attention is drawn
to these problems when compared with aviation or nuclear power accidents.
Health care errors are also underreported due to liability and confidentiality
concerns. These factors explain, in part, the ongoing "invisibility"
of medical errors despite the existence of research which has documented
their high prevalence.
Organizational and Professional Culture
complexity of health care delivery systems is one of the factors
distinguishing health care from other industries, the professional
culture may pose an even greater challenge than does complexityto
improving patient safety. The "naming, blaming, and shaming"
approach to dealing with errors has hindered medical error reduction,
yet it is the most commonly used approach to addressing errors in
health care. In fact, this traditional approach has proven counterproductiveit
has driven the patient safety problem underground, leading to an
implicit "conspiracy of silence" where problems and close
calls are not discussed due to fear of reprisal (Koop,
events have existed since the beginning of organized medical practice,
but may not have been recognized at the time of their occurrence.
Bloodletting and toxic "therapies," such as mercurials,
led to premature deaths, but these deaths were seen as a reflection
of the patientís underlying illness rather than of harmful practice.
To some extent, that culture still persists in health care. Although
advances in medical technology and knowledge have eliminated these
historic practices, errors and mistakes continue to occur at an
unacceptably high rate in the delivery of health care. Contrary
to popular expectations, doctors, nurses, and other health care
professionals are inherently fallibleas are all humans.
The IOM report
notes that the majority of medical errors today are not produced
by negligence, lack of education, or lack of training. Rather, errors
occur in our health care systems due to poor systems design and
organizational factors, much as in any other industry. Health care
workers are placed in systems and settings where errors are bound
to happen. That is, the systems are designed to achieve a particular
set of goals, but inadvertently produce a certain level of errors.
For example, health care workers are sometimes expected to work
24-hour shifts to ensure patients are cared for and have some continuity
of care, although it is known that overwork and fatigue lead to
decreased mental concentration and alertness. These caregivers are
expected to function in an environment that is not ergonomically
designed for optimal work performance. They are expected to rely
on their memories and deliver safe care without substantial investments
in information technology or even the simple application of checklists.
They often deliver care through a set of complex processes, although
industry has shown that the probability of performing a task perfectly
decreases as the number of steps in the process increases. Finally,
they are expected to work in a climate where one error, even if
not preventable, may mean a catastrophe or the end of a career.
By not improving
the systems in which medicine is practiced, the health care industry
as a whole has not advocated a culture of safety and is not well
organized to tackle the challenge of improving patient safety. Only
when the entire industry is able to make patient safety and the
reduction of medical errors its first priority will errors in medical
practice be reduced.
errors epidemic is a global problem. The United Kingdom, for example,
has had some well-publicized difficulties with pediatric surgery
outcomes in Bristol. British authorities estimate that 40,000 hospitalized
patients die annually as a result of errors, which translates to
a 3.7 percent overall rate of errors. The Australian Review of Professional
Indemnity Arrangements for Health Care Professionals (Commonwealth
Department of Human Services and Health, 1995) also found error
to be a serious cause of morbidity and mortality. Australia, the
United Kingdom, and Sweden are among the countries that have begun
to address this issue. The British Ministry of Health is in the
process of making funds available to researchers to investigate
medical errors, and is re-engineering its clinical governance programs
to provide mechanisms to improve patient safety. Australia has included
medical errors as part of its focus on quality, and is initiating
a national system for error reduction with enhanced reporting mechanisms.
However, efforts to actually translate the limited research available
into practice are still at an early stage, at best. Approaches are
likely to vary across nations because of differences in health care
organization, attitudes toward regulation, and views on patient
information and confidentiality. The evidence informing those approaches,
however, is likely to be more universal. As a global leader, the
United States has a responsibility to the many countries that do
not have the resources to devote to the study of this issue.
of Medical Errors
Errors and other
adverse events occur regularly in health care settings, but the
causes, frequency, severity, preventability, and impact of these
events on patient outcomes are not completely understood. A few
studies have found an alarmingly high prevalence of adverse events
and medical errors in some hospitals. In two large studies of hospital
admissions, one in New York using 1984 data and another in Colorado
and Utah using 1992 data, the proportions of admissions in which
there were adverse events (defined as injuries caused by medical
management) were 2.9 and 3.7 percent, respectively (Leape,
1991; Gawande, 1999). In the
New York study, errors (defined as avoidable "mistakes in performance
or thought") were determined to have caused more than half
of the adverse events. However, the absence of standardized definitions
of medical error, the lack of coordination and integration of systems
to report and monitor errors, and the difficulty in distinguishing
preventable errors from currently unavoidable adverse events hamper
our understanding of this problem. It is unlikely that we can ever
know the precise frequency with which errors occur in health care
settings because we must rely on people to recognize that errors
were made, to distinguish them from bad outcomes of appropriate
treatment, and then to report them.
Events and Medical Products Use or Misuse
injuries and deaths from pharmaceutical drugs are a growing problem
that, according to some studies, represents a leading cause of death
and patient harm in the United States (American
Hospital Association, 1999; Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, 1999; Leape,
1991). Although the methods used to measure the rate of errors
associated with the use of drugs have significant limitations, researchers
have estimated that more than 50 percent of prescriptions are used
incorrectly (Porter and Jick, 1977).
Problems related to the use of pharmaceutical drugs account for
nearly 10 percent of all hospital admissions, and significantly
contribute to increased morbidity and mortality in the United States
In the Harvard
Medical Practices Study of adverse medical events (Leape,
1991), which was based on 30,195 randomly selected records from
51 hospitals in New York State, the researchers found that drug
complications represented 19 percent of all adverse events. The
researchers concluded that 58 percent of injuries and deaths due
to drug reactions were preventable, and 27.6 percent of such complications
were due to negligence. According to this study, antimicrobial drugs
were the class of agents most commonly associated with adverse drug
events. Misuse of antimicrobial drugs not only exposes individual
patients to an increased risk of a poor treatment outcome, but also
leads to the emergence and spread of drug-resistant microorganisms,
which may place other patients and health care workers at risk of
problem of medication errors has drawn considerable public attention,
since all such errors are preventable. Medication errorsmistakes
in writing prescriptions, dispensing or administering drugsare
a subset of the larger category of errors involving drugs. In a
caseĖcontrol study covering a 4-year period at a single hospital,
it was determined that there was an almost 2-fold increase in the
risk of death attributable to such errors. In the previously cited
Harvard Medical Practice Study, 19.4 percent of all disabling adverse
events were caused by drugs, of which 45 percent were due to medication
errors. In that study, 30 percent of those with drug-related injuries
to drug-related injuries and deaths that occur in hospitals, information
is available indicating that preventable, drug-related injuries
are also occur at a high frequency among out-patients. In a study
of 1,000 ambulatory patients drawn from a community, office-based
medical practice (Burnum, 1976),
the researchers noted side effects from drugs in 42 patients (4.2
percent), including 23 who experienced preventable side effects.
Well-understood drugĖdrug interactions are preventable, but there
is evidence that physicians do not routinely screen for them, even
when a patientís medication history is readily available. In a study
of 424 randomly selected visits to a hospital emergency department
(Beers, 1990), 47 percent of visits
resulted in the patient receiving a prescription for a medication.
In 10 percent of these instances, the new medication could potentially
harm the patient due to an avoidable drug-drug interaction. In all
of these cases, a medication history had been recorded and available
to the prescribing physicians.
Thus, it can
be seen that preventable and avoidable injuries due to drugs constitute
a significant public health concern. The increasing use of drugs,
the growing fragmentation of health care delivery, and the competing
demands of an overburdened health care delivery system will, undoubtedly,
accentuate these problems.
to Prevent Errors
Measurement and Performance Improvement Systems. In the past
decade, health care facilities and health plans have placed an increasing
emphasis on improving health care quality. The impetus has come,
at least in part, from patients, purchasers, accreditation agencies,
and regulators determined to obtain the best value for the Nationís
health care dollars. Today, virtually all health care organizations
have programs to measure and/or improve health care quality.
and health plans collect and monitor data relevant to specific events
(e.g., patient falls, failure to appropriately administer beta-blockers
after myocardial infarction) or health outcomes (e.g., anesthesia
mortality, length of stay after total hip replacement), which may
or may not reflect medical errors. Hospitals commonly use these
data for performance measurement or continuous quality improvement.
Decisions about what will be monitored are usually based on the
nature, severity, and importance of perceived problems at the local
level, the feasibility of accessing data and formulating a response,
and related incentives (e.g., meeting standards required for accreditation,
anticipated cost-savings). Similarly, some hospital departments
(e.g., pharmacy, nursing) use performance measurement to target
treatment errors and other adverse events.
measurement and quality improvement programs are less common and
often less extensive outside of acute-care hospitals. Programs in
risk management as well as more recently developed programs in what
has been called "disease management" or "outcomes
management," although aimed at improving health outcomes, generally
have not specifically included error reduction in their scope. Occupational
health or employee health programs, in addressing risks to health
care workers, may also impact patient safety and quality of care.
Overall, the degree to which these local programs address medical
errors or other preventable adverse events and, more importantly,
the extent to which they motivate changes that improve the overall
heath status of patients, are not known. Part of the research agenda
will be to see if market forces favor those health care organizations
that improve patient safety.
infection prevention and control provide long-standing and successful
examples of health care programs specifically designed to prevent
adverse health events. These programs have been shown to reduce
morbidity and mortality due to health care-associated infections.
For this reason, infection control programs are mandated as a condition
of accreditation for health care facilities. In hospitals, accreditation
standards require a minimum number of trained infection control
personnel and delineate specific program components. Such programs
usually include ongoing monitoring (surveillance) of infection rates
by trained infection control personnel using standardized case definitions,
analysis of data with adjustment for facility and patient characteristics
known to affect risk, comparison of local rates to aggregate benchmark
data, prompt feedback of infection rates and trends to providers
and decisionmakers, and targeted interventions that address specifically
identified problems. This approach parallels that used in industrial
continuous quality improvement programs and in industrial quality
control. In nonhospital facilities, accreditation standards are
less rigorous, and the composition and quality of infection control
program is variable.
National Programs. Some regional and national external reporting
systems to monitor errors and adverse health events already exist.
FDA operates systems monitoring adverse events associated with drugs,
medical devices, vaccines (co-managed with CDC), and blood and blood
products. CDCís NNIS monitors health care-associated infections. Some
State health agencies (e.g., those of New York, Massachusetts, Florida)
also monitor targeted health events. Nongovernmental agencies (e.g.,
JCAHO and the U.S. Pharmacopeia, through their Sentinel Events and
Medication Errors Reporting Programs, respectively) also operate error
programs motivate local efforts to recognize and address problems,
provide norms to which local efforts can be compared, and identify
emerging problems (e.g., adverse drug events or manufacturing errors)
that may require governmental or other system-wide response. For
example, reported errors related to medical products can lead the
FDA to require changes in package inserts and promotional materials,
modifications in product packaging, and widespread dissemination
of information through letters to health professionals and published
systems have little or no enforcement authority to assure that reporting
of errors is occurring consistently and completely. A recent report
from the Department of Health and Human Serviceís (DHHS) Inspector
General found that there is widespread underreporting to FDA's drug
adverse event reporting system, despite the fact that more than
270,000 incidents are reported annually. In addition, even though
these programssome of which may be considered mandatorymay
promise the opportunity to report errors and near-misses confidentially,
those who submit reports (e.g., clinicians and hospitals) have expressed
concern about their legal vulnerability in these reporting systems.
Another reason for low rates of reporting in some systems is that
information on how to prevent similar errors in the future is not
fed back to the reporters. Therefore, these reporters see little
benefit in completing and submitting reports.
of Programs to Prevent Medical Errors
strikingly high incidence of medical errors documented in the IOM
report, and the difficulties in obtaining reports on errors and
near misses, there are remarkable examples of successful efforts
to improve patient safety. Surgical anesthesia, which once had an
error rate of 25 to 50 per million patients, reduced its error rate
nearly 7-fold. (Orkin, 1993). The
first step in reducing surgical anesthesia error rates was the collection
of data that permitted a systems analysis of errors, rather than
a hunt for "responsible" individuals. Through teamwork,
practice guidelines, automation, procedure simplification, and standardization
of many functions, anesthesiologists demonstrated that a properly
designed system can either prevent mistakes or prevent mistakes
from doing harm.
of success is the advances in patient safety that have been achieved
in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), through its Veterans
Health Administration. For instance, a hand-held, wireless bar-coding
system was introduced into VA and has reduced medication errors
by 70 percent at relatively low cost (Gebhart,
1999). It is particularly interesting that this approach was
adopted from a completely different industryfrom observation
of how Avis checked in returned rental cars. Similar behavioral
and cultural changes must occur in other segments of the health
care industry in order to address the patient safety issue fully.
agencies have learned that the creation of a comprehensive knowledge
base, rich in textual description of all aspects of errors occurrence,
must be developed if preventive efforts are to be targeted and effective.
One hopeful sign has been the development of private-sector organizations,
such as the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF), the National
Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention,
and JCAHO, which are promoting research and improvement initiatives
focused on systems approaches to error reduction.
health field has demonstrated that human factors engineering can
identify ergonomic concepts to prevent injuries to both patients
and workers. Examples include curving the design of hallway corners
to reduce the risk of injury from collisions, using mechanical lifts
to prevent patient falls and employee back injuries, and reducing
the number of scheduled work hours in a rotating shift to minimize
the likelihood of errors resulting from fatigue and sleep deprivation.
of Existing Programs
prevention systems need to be built on a foundation of locally directed
and managed programs within health care organizations, complemented
by coordinated, external support and guidance from Federal, State,
and nongovernmental agencies and organizations. Within this framework,
a comprehensive approach to error reduction would require specifically
designated personnel working in or consulting with each health care
and monitor the occurrence of errors in targeted patient populations
at greatest risk, and understand their root causes, especially
those that are preventable.
interpret, and disseminate data to clinicians and other stakeholders.
error reduction strategies based on reanalysis and reworking of
health care systems.
- As necessary,
call upon experts with clinical, epidemiologic, and management
training and experience for technical support and to conduct on-site
the impact of these programs on patient safety.
A number of
factors reduce the effectiveness of existing programs to prevent
medical errors. Performance measurement and improvement programs
within health care organizations do not directly address the problem
of medical errors. Programs that have been specifically developed
to prevent medical errors often operate in isolation. In addition,
programs such as infection control and employee health and safety
typically receive low priorities within health care centers.
Efforts by external
organizations to monitor errors also face limitations. A number
of different programs exist to detect adverse health events, although
no one system is designed to detect the full scope of medical errors.
systems, such as the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance Systemin
which health care providers and laboratories report incident cases
of diseases (mostly infectious) to the State health departmentwhile
broad in scope and coverage, are often hampered by collection of
incomplete data. Each State determines the diseases that are reportable,
resulting in some differences across States. Furthermore, health
care providers must remember which diseases are reportable, and
take the time to report them.
on the other hand, means soliciting case reports in a timely manner
directly from potential reporting sources. Examples of this type
of reporting include HIV/AIDS reporting, in which CDC provides funding
to State and local health departments to support the surveillance
process. These active surveillance systems provide more complete
and accurate information, but are expensive to implement and maintain.
Systems designed to hold organization or individual accountable
for bad outcomes are commonly limited by underreporting of adverse
improvement programs within health care organizations could be enhanced
or adapted to address errors, obstacles remain. The more serious
- Lack of awareness
that a problem exists.
- A traditional
medical culture of individual responsibility and blame.
- The lack
of protection from legal discovery and liability, which causes
errors to be concealed.
- The primitive
state of medical information systems, which hampers efficient
and timely information collection and analysis.
allocation of resources for quality improvement and error prevention
throughout the health care system.
knowledge about the frequency, cause and impact of errors, as
well as about evidence of effective methods for error prevention.
- Lack of understanding
of systems-based approaches to error reduction (such as those
used in aviation safety or manufacturing) and the perceived difficulty
of adapting those approaches to the health care sector.
There are even
greater barriers to error reduction in nonhospital settings, where
the general absence of organized surveillance systems and lack of
adequate personnel hinder local data collection, feedback, and improvement.
Lack of awareness.
As stated earlier, the existence of medical errors has been
known for some time. However, the fact that there has been very
little success in reducing errors suggests that a general lack of
awareness or alarm about errors is a factor in this failure. The
awareness of the problem of medical errors and any subsequent solutions
must be improved, not only among physicians, nurses, pharmacists,
dentists, and other health care providers, but also among patients,
policymakers, and the many other stakeholders of the health care
to partnership. The punitive and pejorative connotations of
"error" as the object of investigation pose a potential
barrier to the unfettered cooperation and collaboration of health
care providers in establishing and managing effective error control
programs. A cultural change needs to occur that will enable health
care providers and leaders, as well as the public, to talk about
errors and recognize that they are, in large measure, a result of
faulty systems and faulty system design, not of individual failures.
A system which supports learning from errors is dependent upon
reporting, but fear of reprisal or legal action will dissuade many
potential reporters. Assurances that the identity of reporters will
be masked or never collected at all have been shown to enhance reporting
in other industries (e.g., the ASRS). Disclosure of the individuals
or organizations involved in an incident could also discourage reporting.
There will remain instances, however, where criminal or negligent
acts demand appropriate disclosure. The legal issues surrounding
patient safety will have to be examined carefully to determine the
best mechanisms to promote learning from errors while protecting
systems and technical problems. To be practical, error prevention
will need to rely on sophisticated management and clinical information
systems, both as sources of data on adverse events and as a component
of interventions to reduce errors, such as through the adoption
of computer-based decision-support for health care providers. However,
information systems in most health care organizations are neither
sufficiently integrated nor flexible enough to serve either of these
purposes. Technical support and research into information system
desifgn will be required to address this problem.
structural concerns. Although considerable cost savings could
be realized by effective reduction in medical errors, instituting
such programs will require a substantial initial investment. In
addition, the relative autonomy of departments within some health
care institutions is a potential barrier to rapid organizational
change and the adoption of new models and procedures needed to prevent
in knowledge and understanding. The epidemiology of errors is
not well understood. Standardized definitions of errors and adverse
events need to be developed and the methods of collecting meaningful
data require further study. Research is needed to help distinguish
between adverse events due to errors, unavoidable consequences of
treatment, and complications caused by a patientís underlying disease.
The current paucity of fundamental and applied research on medical
errors limits the tool kit of effective interventions that can enhance
Lack of appropriate
collaboration among disciplines. Because of the nature of medical
errors, an effective response requires an integration of efforts
across traditional occupational and scientific boundaries. The nature
of the patient safety challenge requires synergy among scientific
and technical disciplines, from human factors psychology to product
design and delivery. This collaboration is needed at all stages
of the effort to reduce errors and enhance patient safetyfrom
research on its causes and remedies to implementation and partnership
in its reduction and elimination. The response to medical errors
by the health care system is hindered by the traditional focus of
single disciplines on individual providers or on products, and even
by poorly coordinated efforts among Government agencies and with
the private sector.
to apply a coherent strategy. The variety of medical errors
and the multidimensional nature of the patient safety challenge
demand a variety of approaches for improvement. Experience from
other industries demonstrates, however, that successful interventions
to address different types of errors can consistently result from
the application of a coherent strategy that includes intolerance
of high rates of error, development of tracking mechanisms, root
cause analysis, the application of innovative resources and relationships
to address the problem, and an institutional devotion to error prevention.
The QuIC concludes
that systems designed to facilitate quality improvement through
error reduction can generate effective, useful reporting if those
individuals who report are assured of confidentiality, protected
from legal liability resulting from the report, provided with timely
feedback on data from the system, and are not unduly burdened by
the effort involved in reporting.
Proceed to Next Section | <urn:uuid:110afc2a-7ee6-4751-b350-4c06f11db094> | {
"date": "2016-05-25T20:52:22",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2016-22",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-22/segments/1464049275328.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20160524002115-00156-ip-10-185-217-139.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9232975840568542,
"score": 2.75,
"token_count": 8812,
"url": "http://archive.ahrq.gov/quic/report/mederr4.htm"
} |
The new process could lead to the faster identification of dental implants that don't crack, tank armor that's more resistant to missiles, and other materials dependent on mechanical properties like stiffness and toughness.
The trick? The team, led by Assistant Professor Krystyn J. Van Vliet of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, miniaturized the process.
Van Vliet, MSE graduate student Catherine A. Tweedie, research associate Daniel G. Anderson of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Institute Professor Robert Langer describe the work in the cover story of the November issue of Advanced Materials.
In 2004 Anderson, Langer and a colleague reported using robotic technology to deposit more than 1,700 spots of biomaterial (roughly 500 different materials in triplicate) on a glass slide measuring only 25 millimeters wide by 75 millimeters long. Twenty such slides, or microarrays, could be made in a single day. | <urn:uuid:c2da4792-a7d6-42d3-abcd-bf67e73040af> | {
"date": "2016-02-13T19:29:04",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2016-07",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-07/segments/1454701167599.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20160205193927-00042-ip-10-236-182-209.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9115611910820007,
"score": 2.859375,
"token_count": 192,
"url": "http://nextbigfuture.com/2005/11/faster-analysis-of-materials.html"
} |
Download full-text PDF.. hobbyists as well as others who plan to develop commercial scale aquaponics. The guidelines are built on collaborative work between two European projects: the Leonardo.
Download An Introduction to Aquaponic gardening 2nd edition pdf diy aquaponic – diy aquaponics for beginners 2014, a how to guide to making your first ap system diy aquaponic – the aquarium garden diy aquaponics kit
(PDF) AQUAPONICS MAGAZINE | Rohit Paspule – Academia.edu – The No.1 Aquaponics magazine for the backyard enthusiast. Issue 2 Second Quarter 2008 Bringing Food Production Home Backyard Aquaponics Barramundi Aquaponic recipes A South African System Introduction Welcome.
Home aquaponics garden Imagine having a living ecosystem to grow, learn, and discover – all in your own home. The AquaSprouts Garden turns any standard 10-gallon aquarium into a self-sustaining ecosystem, using the beauty of aquaponics.Olomana gardens permaculture and aquaponics download Olomana Gardens | Aquaponics/ Permaculture experimental farm. – olomana gardens aquaponics/ permaculture experimental farm developing and teaching sustainable food growing systems.. it’s common to develop problems in your aquaponic system without even knowing it. Small issues, like plants too close to drains, can grow beneath the radar until all of a.
Monday 2019-03-25 20:41:15 pm | The Best hydroponic greenhouse plans Free Free Download. The Internets Original and Largest free woodworking plans and projects links database. Free Access. Updated daily. & Wood Letter
Visit INMED South Africa’s Health in Action web page for a free download of our Healthy Eating booklet: https://inmed.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/INMEDSouthAfrica-HealthyEating.pdf Healthy eating ..
Download the 180 page .pdf file HERE – Backyard Aquaponics
Olomana gardens permaculture and aquaponics Olomana Gardens – Permaculture and Auqaponics – "Olomana Gardens Permaculture and Aquaponics is a DVD revealing the beauty and inner workings of Olomana Gardens, a permaculture farm meant to serve as a model of a modern, sustainable food growing system that can be applied to small-scale farms, as well as food production for residential lots.
"Aquaponics design aquaponics systems for sale,aquaponics for beginners pdf aquaponics ohio,diy hydroponic greenhouse hydroponic system diy plans.". "Vertical aquaponics aquaponics for dummies,vertical backyard aquaponics aquaponics urban gardening,aquaponics hydroponics aquaculture buy.
The complex includes the medicinal garden, with plants from Asia, the Pacific Islands and America; an aquaponic system where fish help fertilize water-growing plants; and a bioprocessing trailer where.
Bbq Island Plans Do It Yourself Pest. The Best Bbq Island Plans Do It Yourself Pest Free Download PDF And Video. Get Bbq Island Plans Do It Yourself Pest: Find the.
His technique uses fish, circulated water, and gravel to grow vegetables in whatever space he can find; a farming method called aquaponics. The video after the break gives an excellent look at his.
Greenhouse Plants Pdf. The Best Greenhouse Plants Pdf Free Download PDF And Video. Get Greenhouse Plants Pdf: These free woodworking plans will help the beginner all the way up to the expert craft..Search For Greenhouse Plants Pdf. greenhouse plants pdf. greenhouse lighting – Cornell Greenhouse Horticulture1 .
Download free ebook:aquaponic gardening: A Step-By-Step Guide to Raising Vegetables and Fish Together – Free chm, pdf ebooks download ebook3000.com free ebooks download Home > eLearning > Hobbies & Leisure time >
My aquaponics garden What do i need for a five vertcal aquaponics garden We have built the foundation to position Crawford to achieve our goal of delivering 5% revenue growth and 15% earnings growth. while also improving our depth of service in the key geographies where. | <urn:uuid:4f3e00f9-3ae5-4f06-824d-97ea0fe9db36> | {
"date": "2019-06-26T13:03:29",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2019-26",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560628000306.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20190626114215-20190626140215-00336.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.7871829867362976,
"score": 2.5625,
"token_count": 897,
"url": "https://www.aquaponics4youreview.com/aquaponic-gardening-pdf-download/"
} |
Organic horticulture is a great way to grow your own food at home and anyone can enjoy it. But, when a person begins organic gardening, the various challenges of horticulture can seem insurmountable. How should someone who does not have any experience start getting involved with organic gardening? Read this article, of course!
Your plants need to adapt and must be gradually introduced to changes of environment. Put them outdoors in the sun for approximately one to two hours on the first day. Over one week, try gradually increasing the time they’re left outside. By the week’s end, your plants will be ready for their big move and should have no problems!
When gardening, particularly in the autumn months, particularly in the autumn. Stink bugs prefer peppers, and are especially fond of fruit, tomatoes, as well as many fruits. If they go unnoticed, the damage can be excessive, so take steps to cut down their population.
Most vegetables that can be grown need at least that much sun exposure to grow well and quickly. This arrangement will also benefit some flowers.
Moisture on plants is a sure way to attract parasites and parasites. Fungi is a common problem in the world of horticulture. It is possible to get rid of fungi after it appears with anti-fungal sprays, but the key is to treat your garden before any problems arise.
You should make sure to divide irises. You can increase the number of irises by dividing up overgrown clumps. The bulbs will naturally split in your hands, and when replanted, should easily split by hand – allowing you to replant them for even more blooms next spring. You can divide rhizomes with a blade. Cut the new pieces from its outside and dispose of each rhizome but save the older center. Each new piece needs one strong offshoot. Replant your new rhizome pieces right away.
Know the ideal times to harvest the vegetables in your garden. Each variety needs a slightly different amount of vegetables has its own ideal time for picking for the best flavor. For example, zucchini and baby peas will taste a lot better if you pick them when they are young. On the other hand, tomatoes shouldn’t be picked from the vine until they are ripe as can be.
Plant with fall color.Maple, beech, varying from bright yellow to rich crimson.When choosing shrubs, consider barberry, hydrangea and cotoneaster.
Horticulture is a relaxing activity. There are numerous ways that people find to relax. Gardening is a relatively easy way to achieve this satisfaction.It requires a small investment of money but has numerous returns. The best return is the emotional satisfaction of planting and tranquility you can get from growing your own.
Your children will enjoy being involved with you in the organic gardening endeavors. A garden can provide a wonderful learning experience for children, and it gives you a chance to bond while producing healthy food.
Pine is a surprisingly good source for mulch. Cover your beds with the needles, they will release acid into the soil and nourish your plants.
Coffee grounds are a great mixed in with your soil.Coffee grounds contain many of the essential nutrients that plants are able to use.
Spacing is essential when planning an organic garden.You can easily underestimate how much space plants will need until they begin to grow. Plan accordingly and leave enough space between seeds.
An old laundry basket works great for gathering produce from your harvest. The laundry basket is a makeshift strainer for the fruits and vegetables.
You need to mulch your garden and flowerbed using at least three inches of material that is organic. This will help your garden by adding nourishment to the soil, including enriching the soil, locking in moisture, and improving the overall appearance of the garden.
Now you can see how organic horticulture is so enjoyable. Watching your garden grow can be a source of great pleasure and joy. By applying the advice and insights of this article, you can garden as good as the professionals. | <urn:uuid:c44c54fb-77f3-4a56-9186-594979137805> | {
"date": "2017-12-14T09:56:17",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-51",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-51/segments/1512948543611.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20171214093947-20171214113947-00656.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9478030800819397,
"score": 2.984375,
"token_count": 847,
"url": "http://www.usefulgardenideas.com/tips-from-experts-on-a-healthy-garden-2/"
} |
Note: This message is displayed if (1) your browser is not standards-compliant or (2) you have you disabled CSS. Read our Policies for more information.
Watershed management planning is at the heart of successful water quality restoration and protection. It is the method to understanding how to address the needs of a complex system in the most effective manner possible.
If you were to build a home, you would start with a blueprint. This would not only ensure that you remembered necessary steps, but it would also communicate your intent. A Watershed Management Plan is just that: a means to gather information in one place, outline the structure or design, and identify the resources needed to move forward.
The Indiana Watershed Planning Guide [PDF] was developed to assist local groups in developing successful watershed plans and to establish a common approach for watershed planning throughout Indiana.
This guide is intended to steer you through the process of developing a watershed plan. Many similar documents exist; in fact nearly every state has some version. However, this guide is written for people in Indiana by people in Indiana. It applies to the kinds of plans you can expect to be involved with in partnership with agencies that provide funding in Indiana.
This guide is not intended to supersede existing watershed management grant guidance or the requirements of specific programs. However, it is intended to provide basic information that is compatible with Indiana’s watershed grant programs. | <urn:uuid:b9c063a8-61f4-4914-a8df-f2598e068e31> | {
"date": "2014-04-18T10:34:17",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-15",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-15/segments/1397609533308.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20140416005213-00395-ip-10-147-4-33.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9470247626304626,
"score": 2.625,
"token_count": 288,
"url": "http://www.ai.org/idem/nps/3464.htm"
} |
WikiDoc Resources for Blood transfusion
Evidence Based Medicine
Guidelines / Policies / Govt
Patient Resources / Community
Healthcare Provider Resources
Continuing Medical Education (CME)
Experimental / Informatics
Blood transfusion is the process of transferring blood or blood-based products from one person into the circulatory system of another. Blood transfusions can be life-saving in some situations, such as massive blood loss due to trauma, or can be used to replace blood lost during surgery. Blood transfusions may also be used to treat a severe anaemia or thrombocytopenia caused by a blood disease. People suffering from hemophilia or sickle-cell disease may require frequent blood transfusions.
The first historical attempt at blood transfusion was described by the 15th-century chronicler Stefano Infessura. Infessura relates that, in 1492, as Pope Innocent VIII]] sank into a coma, the blood of three boys was infused into the dying pontiff (through the mouth, as the concept of circulation and methods for intravenous access did not exist at that time) at the suggestion of a physician. The boys were ten years old, and had been promised a ducat each. However, not only the pope died, but so did the three children. Some authors have discredited Infessura's account, accusing him of anti-papalism.
With Harvey's re-discovery of the circulation of the blood (which was discoverd by Ibn al-Nafis in the 13th century), more sophisticated research into blood transfusion began in the 17th century, with successful experiments in transfusion between animals. However, successive attempts on humans continued to have fatal results.
The first fully-documented human blood transfusion was administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys on June 15, 1667. He transfused the blood of a sheep into a 15-year old boy, who recovered. Denys performed another transfusion into a labourer, who also survived. Both instances were likely due to small amount of blood that was actually transfused into these people. This allowed them to withstand the allergic reaction. Then, Denys performed several transfusions into Mr. Mauroy, who on the third account had died (read Blood and Justice). Much controversy surrounded his death and his wife was accused of his murder; it's likely that the transfusion caused his death.
Richard Lower examined the effects of changes in blood volume on circulatory function and developed methods for cross-circulatory study in animals, obviating clotting by closed arteriovenous connections. His newly devised instruments eventually led to actual transfusion of blood.
"Many of his colleagues were present. . . towards the end of February 1665 when he selected one dog of medium size, opened its jugular vein, and drew off blood, until . . . its strength was nearly gone . . . Then, to make up for the great loss of this dog by the blood of a second, I introduced blood from the cervical artery of a fairly large mastiff, which had been fastened alongside the first, until this latter animal showed . . . it was overfilled . . . by the inflowing blood." After he "sewed up the jugular veins," the animal recovered "with no sign of discomfort or of displeasure."
Lower had performed the first blood transfusion between animals. He was then "requested by the Honorable Robert Boyle . . . to acquaint the Royal Society with the procedure for the whole experiment," which he did in December of 1665 in the Society’s Philosophical Transactions. On 15 June 1667 Denys, then a professor in Paris, carried out the first transfusion between humans and claimed credit for the technique, but Lower’s priority cannot be challenged.
Six months later in London, Lower performed the first human transfusion in England, where he "superintended the introduction in his [a patient’s] arm at various times of some ounces of sheep’s blood at a meeting of the Royal Society, and without any inconvenience to him." The recipient was Arthur Coga, "the subject of a harmless form of insanity." Sheep’s blood was used because of speculation about the value of blood exchange between species; it had been suggested that blood from a gentle lamb might quiet the tempestuous spirit of an agitated person and that the shy might be made outgoing by blood from more sociable creatures. Lower wanted to treat Coga several times, but his patient wisely refused. No more transfusions were performed. Shortly before, Lower had moved to London, where his growing practice soon led him to abandon research.
The First Successes
The science of blood transfusion dates to the first decade of the 19th century, with the discovery of distinct blood types leading to the practice of mixing some blood from the donor and the receiver before the transfusion (an early form of cross-matching).
In 1818, Dr. James Blundell, a British obstetrician, performed the first successful transfusion of human blood, for the treatment of postpartum hemorrhage. He used the patient's husband as a donor, and extracted four ounces of blood from his arm to transfuse into his wife. During the years 1825 and 1830, Dr. Blundell performed 10 transfusions, five of which were beneficial, and published his results. He also invented many instruments for the transfusion of blood. He made a substantial amount of money from this endeavour, roughly $50 million in real dollars.
Development of Blood Banking
- See also: Blood bank
While the first transfusions had to be made directly from donor to receiver before coagulation, in the 1910s it was discovered that by adding anticoagulant and refrigerating the blood it was possible to store it for some days, thus opening the way for blood banks. The first non-direct transfusion was performed on March 27, 1914 by the Belgian doctor Albert Hustin, who used sodium citrate as an anticoagulant. The first blood transfusion using blood that had been stored and cooled was performed on January 1,1916. Oswald Hope Robertson, a medical researcher and U.S. Army officer, is generally credited with establishing the first blood bank while serving in France during World War I.
The first academic institution devoted to the science of blood transfusion was founded by Alexander Bogdanov in Moscow in 1925. Bogdanov was motivated, at least in part, by a search for eternal youth, and remarked with satisfaction on the improvement of his eyesight, suspension of balding, and other positive symptoms after receiving 11 transfusions of whole blood.
In fact, following the death of Vladimir Lenin, Bogdanov was entrusted with the study of Lenin's brain, with a view toward resuscitating the deceased Bolshevik leader. Tragically, but perhaps not unforeseeably, Bogdanov lost his life in 1928 as a result of one of his experiments, when the blood of a student suffering from malaria and tuberculosis was given to him in a transfusion. Some scholars (e.g. Loren Graham) have speculated that his death may have been a suicide, while others attribute it to blood type incompatibility, which was still incompletely understood at the time.
The Modern Era
Following Bogdanov's lead, the Soviet Union set up a national system of blood banks in the 1930s. News of the Soviet experience traveled to America, where in 1937 Bernard Fantus, director of therapeutics at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago, established the first hospital blood bank in the United States. In creating a hospital laboratory that preserved and stored donor blood, Fantus originated the term "blood bank". Within a few years, hospital and community blood banks were established across the United States.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Dr. Charles R. Drew's research led to the discovery that blood could be separated into blood plasma and red blood cells, and that the components could be frozen separately. Blood stored in this way lasted longer and was less likely to become contaminated.
Another important breakthrough came in 1939-40 when Karl Landsteiner, Alex Wiener, Philip Levine, and R.E. Stetson discovered the Rhesus blood group system, which was found to be the cause of the majority of transfusion reactions up to that time. Three years later, the introduction by J.F. Loutit and Patrick L. Mollison of acid-citrate-dextrose (ACD) solution, which reduces the volume of anticoagulant, permitted transfusions of greater volumes of blood and allowed longer term storage.
Carl Walter and W.P. Murphy, Jr., introduced the plastic bag for blood collection in 1950. Replacing breakable glass bottles with durable plastic bags allowed for the evolution of a collection system capable of safe and easy preparation of multiple blood components from a single unit of whole blood. Further extending the shelf life of stored blood was an anticoagulant preservative, CPDA-1, introduced in 1979, which increased the blood supply and facilitated resource-sharing among blood banks.
Great care is taken in cross-matching to ensure that the recipient's immune system will not attack the donor blood. In addition to the familiar human blood types (A, B, AB and O) and Rh factor (positive or negative) classifications, other minor red cell antigens are known to play a role in compatibility. These other types can become increasingly important in people who receive many blood transfusions, as their bodies develop increasing resistance to blood from other people via a process of alloimmunization.
Screening for Infection
- See also: HIV blood screening
A number of infectious diseases (such as HIV, syphilis, hepatitis B and hepatitis C, among others) can be passed from the donor to recipient. This has led to strict human blood transfusion standards in developed countries. Standards include screening for potential risk factors and health problems among donors by determining donor hemoglobin levels, administering a set of standard oral and written questions to donors, and laboratory testing of donated units for infection. The lack of such standards in places like rural China, where desperate villagers donated plasma for money and had others' red blood cells reinjected, has produced entire villages infected with HIV.
As of mid-2005, all donated blood in the United States is screened for the following infectious agents:
- HIV-1 and HIV-2
- Human T-lymphotropic virus (HTLV-1 and HTLV-2)
- Hepatitis C virus
- Hepatitis B virus
- West Nile virus
- Treponema pallidum (the causative agent of syphilis, usually used as more of a screening test for high risk lifestyle, the last case of transfusion transmitted syphilis was in 1965.)
When a person's need for a transfusion can be anticipated, as in the case of scheduled surgery, autologous donation can be used to protect against disease transmission and eliminate the problem of blood type compatibility.
Processing of Blood Prior to Transfusion
Donated blood is sometimes subjected to processing after it is collected, to make it suitable for use in specific patient populations. Examples include:
- Leukoreduction, or the removal of stray white blood cells from the blood product by filtration. Leukoreduced blood is less likely to cause alloimmunization (development of antibodies against specific blood types), and less likely to cause febrile transfusion reactions. Also, leukoreduction greatly reduces the chance of cytomegalovirus (CMV) transmission. Leukoreduced blood is appropriate for:
- Chronically transfused patients
- Potential transplant recipients
- Patients with previous febrile nonhemolytic transfusion reactions
- CMV seronegative at-risk patients for whom seronegative components are not available
- Irradiation. In patients who are severely immunosuppressed and at risk for transfusion-associated graft-versus-host disease, transfused red cells may be subjected to irradiation with at least 25 Gy to prevent the donor T lymphocytes from dividing in the recipient. Irradiated blood products are appropriate for:
- CMV screening. Cytomegalovirus, or CMV, is a virus which infects white blood cells. Many people are asymptomatic carriers. In patients with significant immune suppression (e.g. recipients of stem cell transplants) who have not previously been exposed to CMV, blood products that are CMV-negative are preferred. Leukoreduced blood products can substitute for CMV-negative products, since the complete removal of white blood cells removes the source of CMV transmission (see leukoreduction above).
To ensure the safety of blood transfusion to pediatric patients, hospitals are taking additional precaution to avoid infection and prefer to use specially tested pediatric blood units that are guaranteed negative for Cytomegalovirus. It is uncertain whether leukodepletion can be adequate for the prevention of CMV, and therefore most guidelines recommend the provision of CMV-negative blood components for newborns or low birthweight infants in whom the immune system is not fully developed. These specific requirements place additional restrictions on blood donors who can donate to babies.
The terms type and screen are used for the testing that (1) determines the blood group (ABO compatibility) and (2) checks for alloantibodies. It takes about 45 minutes to complete.
If there is no time the blood is called "uncross-matched blood". Uncross-matched blood is O-positive or O-negative. O-negative is usually used for children and women of childbearing age.
Blood transfusions can be grouped into two main types depending on their source:
- Homologous transfusions, or transfusions using the stored blood of others.
- Autologous transfusions, or transfusions using one's own stored blood.
Blood can only be administered intravenously. It therefore requires the insertion of a cannula of suitable caliber. Before the blood is administered, the personal details of the patient are matched with the blood to be transfused, to minimize risk of transfusion reactions. With the recognition that clerical error (eg administering the wrong unit of blood) is a significant source of transfusion reactions, attempts have been made to build redundancy into the matching process that takes place at the bedside.
A unit (up to 500 ml) is typically administered over 4 hours. In patients at risk of congestive heart failure, many doctors administer furosemide to prevent fluid overload. Acetaminophen and/or an antihistamine such as diphenhydramine are sometimes given before the transfusion to prevent a transfusion reaction.
Blood is most commonly donated as whole blood by inserting a catheter into a vein and collecting it in a plastic bag (mixed with anticoagulant) via gravity. Collected blood is then separated into components to make the best use of it. Aside from red blood cells, plasma, and platelets, the resulting blood component products also include albumin protein, clotting factor concentrates, cryoprecipitate, fibrinogen concentrate, and immunoglobulins (antibodies). Red cells, plasma and platelets can also be donated individually via a more complex process called apheresis.
Donations are usually anonymous to the recipient, but products in a blood bank are always individually traceable through the whole cycle of donation, testing, separation into components, storage, and administration to the recipient. This enables management and investigation of any suspected transfusion related disease transmission or transfusion reaction.
Contraindications to being a Blood Donor
Blood donation centers in different countries may have different guidelines about who can serve as a blood donor. Common contraindications to being a blood donor fall into two main groups: conditions which might cause a problem for the recipient and conditions which might cause a problem for the donor. A donor who is found ineligible is "deferred" from donation, though in some cases this may be a permanent deferral and the donor is not expected to return.
For recipient safety:
- Donors who recently received a blood transfusion: All recipients of blood have potentially been exposed to a source of transfusion transmitted infections. Additionally, alloimmunization can occur which can lead to positive antibody testing, which can cause significant problems in crossmatching.
- Recent pregnancy: Pregnancy can also cause alloimmunization, and donors are deferred for the same reason.
- History of cancer: Although no blood cancers have ever been transmitted through blood transfusions, any patient who has ever had leukemia or lymphoma or other neoplastic diseases involving blood is permanently excluded. Other cancer patients are typically excluded for five or more years.
- Any current infection or acute disease: Even a minor infection, such as the common cold, could be dangerous to some recipients.
- Current disease or at high risk for a disease that can be transmitted by transfusion:
- Malaria: Donors are considered to be at high risk for malaria if they live in or have recently traveled to a malarial risk area. This is far more difficult to implement in countries that are endemic for malaria and all residents are considered to be high risk.
- Hepatitis (B or C): Donors are considered to be at high risk for hepatitis if they live with a person who has hepatitis, have recently had a non-sterile tattoo or piercing, or have ever used intravenous drugs (other than prescribed medications).
- HIV: Donors are considered to be at high risk for HIV if they have ever used intravenous drugs (other than prescribed medications), have been in certain African countries where HIV is extremely common, engaged in high-risk sexual behaviors, or had sex with anyone who is in any of those risk groups. High-risk sexual behaviors include prostitution and men who have sex with men (MSM). The deferral of every man who has had sex with another man since 1977 is controversial. Donors who have had a recent needlestick injury are also deferred.
- CJD and vCJD: Donors who have spent substantial time in areas at high risk for vCJD (typically the United Kingdom and Europe) are typically excluded, though like malaria this is difficult to implement in the countries that are at risk. Donors who have ever received human pituitary growth hormone are also excluded because of their higher risk for these diseases.
- Chagas Disease, Babesiosis, and Leishmaniasis are also causes for deferral.
- Some medications remain in the bloodstream for a long time and can cause complications for a recipient. For example, Avodart causes birth defects and transfusing a blood product containing it to a pregnant woman could have serious adverse effects.
For donor safety:
- Donors who are not healthy enough to tolerate the process are generally excluded. Conditions of concern include cardiovascular disease, current pregnancy, high blood pressure, tuberculosis, a history of seizures, and many others. Some blood banks will simply refuse to accept donors over a certain age because of possible health risks.
- Before donation, a blood sample is taken to check the iron level (i.e. hematocrit) to ensure that the donor will not be made anemic by the donation. This is a common reason for deferral, especially in pre-menopausal women.
- Younger donors are excluded from donating allogeneic blood because they cannot give legal consent for the process. Very young donors also may not understand the process and may injure themselves.
Complications and Risks
For the Donor
Donating whole blood at a modern, well-run blood collection center is safe. The biggest risk is probably that of vasovagal syncope, or "passing out". A large study, involving 194,000 donations during a one-year period at an urban U.S. blood center, found 178 cases of syncope, for an incidence of 0.09%. Only 5 of these incidents required emergency room attention, and there was one long-term complication. Most syncopal episodes occurred at the refreshment table following donation, leading the authors to recommend that donors spend at least 10 minutes at the refreshment table drinking fluids after donation. A Greek study of over 12,000 blood donors found an incidence of vasovagal events of 0.89%. Another study interviewed 1,000 randomly selected blood donors 3 weeks after donation, and found the following adverse effects:
- Bruise at the needle site — 23 percent
- Sore arm — 10 percent
- Hematoma at needle site — 2 percent
- Sensory changes in the arm used for donation (eg, burning pain, numbness, tingling) — 1 percent
- Fatigue — 8 percent
- Vasovagal symptoms — 5 percent
- Nausea and vomiting — 1 percent
None of these were severe enough to require medical attention in this study. There is no risk of acquiring an infection at a modern, well-run blood donation center.
Donation of blood products via apheresis is a more complex procedure and can entail additional risks, although this procedure is, overall, still very safe for the donor.
For the Recipient
There are risks associated with receiving a blood transfusion, and these must be balanced against the benefit which is expected. The most common adverse reaction to a blood transfusion is a febrile non-hemolytic transfusion reaction, which consists of a fever which resolves on its own and causes no lasting problems or side effects.
Hemolytic reactions include chills, headache, backache, dyspnea, cyanosis, chest pain, tachycardia and hypotension.
Blood products can rarely be contaminated with bacteria; the risk of severe bacterial infection and sepsis is estimated, as of 2002, at about 1 in 50,000 platelet transfusions, and 1 in 500,000 red blood cell transfusions.
Transmission of viral infection is a common concern with blood transfusion. As of 2006, the risk of acquiring hepatitis B via blood transfusion in the United States is about 1 in 250,000 units transfused, and the risk of acquiring HIV or hepatitis C in the U.S. via a blood transfusion is estimated at 1 per 2 million units transfused. These risks were much higher in the past before the advent of second and third generation tests for transfusion transmitted diseases. The implementation of Nucleic Acid Testing or "NAT" in the early 00's has further reduced risks, and confirmed viral infections by blood transfusion are extremely rare in the developed world.
Transfusion-associated acute lung injury (TRALI) is an increasingly recognized adverse event associated with blood transfusion. TRALI is a syndrome of acute respiratory distress, often associated with fever, non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema, and hypotension, which may occur as often as 1 in 2000 transfusions. Symptoms can range from mild to life-threatening, but most patients recover fully within 96 hours, and the mortality rate from this condition is less than 10%.
Other risks associated with receiving a blood transfusion include volume overload, iron overload (with multiple red blood cell transfusions), transfusion-associated graft-vs.-host disease, anaphylactic reactions (in people with IgA deficiency), and acute hemolytic reactions (most commonly due to the administration of mismatched blood types).
Transformation from One Type to Another
Scientists working at the University of Copenhagen reported in the journal Nature Biotechnology in April 2007 of discovering enzymes, which potentially enable blood from groups A, B and AB to be converted into group O. These enzymes do not affect the Rh group of the blood.
Objections to Blood Transfusion
Objections to blood transfusions may arise for personal, medical, or religious reasons. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses object to blood transfusion primarily on religious grounds, although they have also highlighted possible complications associated with transfusion.
Animal Blood Transfusion
Veterinarians also administer transfusions to animals. Various species require different levels of testing to ensure a compatible match. For example, cats have 3 blood types, cattle have 11, dogs have 12, pigs 16 and horses have 34. However, in many species (especially horses and dogs), cross matching is not required before the first transfusion, as antibodies against non-self cell surface antigens are not expressed constitutively - i.e. the animal has to be sensitized before it will mount an immune response against the transfused blood.
The rare and experimental practice of inter-species blood transfusions is a form of xenograft.
Blood Transfusion Substitutes
As of mid-2006, there are no clinically utilized oxygen-carrying blood substitutes for humans; however, there are widely available non-blood volume expanders and other blood-saving techniques. These are helping doctors and surgeons avoid the risks of disease transmission and immune suppression, address the chronic blood donor shortage, and address the concerns of Jehovah's Witnesses and others who have religious objections to receiving transfused blood.
A number of blood substitutes are currently in the clinical evaluation stage. Most attempts to find a suitable alternative to blood thus far have concentrated on cell-free hemoglobin solutions. Blood substitutes could make transfusions more readily available in emergency medicine and in pre-hospital EMS care. If successful, such a blood substitute could save many lives, particularly in trauma where massive blood loss results.
Blood Transfusion Safety
As mentioned above, the major risks that the patient (donors and receivers) may have encountered are the transmission of HIV or hepatitis and immunological transfusion reactions. Most of these problems are risky possibilities and cannot always be effectively treated with appropriate medical care. In many cases, donors are either screened to reduce risks of these contaminations, the blood is tested, or both.
- Hepatitis A and Hepatitis E can be transmitted in blood. Unlike B and C, however, the donor will be obviously ill at the time of donation. Note that Hepatitis D or "Delta Agent" can be transmitted in blood, but the donor will also have Hepatitis B and screening for B adequately addresses this risk.
- Malaria - Donors in the United States and Europe are screened for travel to malarial risk countries, and in Australia donors are tested for malaria.
- Chagas Disease - A screening test has been implemented for this disease in the United States, but is not yet required.
- Simian foamy virus - While this virus can be transmitted by blood transfusion, there is no evidence that it causes disease in humans.
- Myocardial ischaemia - if the patient has a non-ST-segment elevation acute coronary syndromes (NSTE-ACS).
- Some medications may be transmitted in donated blood, and this is especially a concern with pregnant women and medications such as Avodart and Propecia.
- vCJD or "Mad Cow Disease" has been shown to be transmissible in blood products. Potential donors who have spent time in the United Kingdom or Europe may not be allowed to donate due to this risk.
- Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease or CJD is a separate disease from vCJD that is extremely rare.
- Bacterial contamination is a concern with any intravenous product, and is especially problematic with blood products stored at room temperature (i.e. platelets).
- Cytomegalovirus or CMV is a major problem for patients with compromised immune systems and for neonates, but is not generally a concern for most recipients.
- Epstein-Barr Virus or EBV is very common, but rarely causes clinical symptoms.
- See Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal. New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche to Stalinism, Pennsylvania State University, 2002, ISBN 0-271-02533-6 pp. 161-162.
- American Association of Blood Banks. Standards for Blood Banks and Transfusion Services, 18th ed. American Association of Blood Banks, Bethesda, MD.
- Evidence-based recommendations for the use of WBC-reduced cellular blood components. Ratko TA; Cummings JP; Oberman HA; Crookston KP; DeChristopher PJ; Eastlund DT; Godwin JE; Sacher RA; Yawn DH; Matuszewski KA. Transfusion 2001 Oct;41(10):1310-9.
- Quality control of blood irradiation: determination T cells radiosensitivity to cobalt-60 gamma rays. Goes EG; Borges JC; Covas DT; Orellana MD; Palma PV; Morais FR; Pela CA. Transfusion. 2006 Jan;46(1):34-40.
- "Red blood cell transfusions in newborn infants: Revised guidelines". Canadian Paediatric Society (CPS). Retrieved 2007-02-02.
- Blood Processing. University of Utah. Available at: http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/TUTORIAL/BLDBANK/BBPROC.html. Accessed on: December 15, 2006.
- Newman B, Graves S (2001). "A study of 178 consecutive vasovagal syncopal reactions from the perspective of safety.". Transfusion. 41 (12): 1475–9. PMID 11778059.
- Zervou E, Ziciadis K, Karabini F, Xanthi E, Chrisostomou E, Tzolou A (2005). "Vasovagal reactions in blood donors during or immediately after blood donation.". Transfus Med. 15 (5): 389–94. PMID 16202053.
- Newman B, Pichette S, Pichette D, Dzaka E (2003). "Adverse effects in blood donors after whole-blood donation: a study of 1000 blood donors interviewed 3 weeks after whole-blood donation.". Transfusion. 43 (5): 598–603. PMID 12702180.
- Blajchman M. "Incidence and significance of the bacterial contamination of blood components.". Dev Biol (Basel). 108: 59–67. PMID 12220143.
- Silliman C, Paterson A, Dickey W, Stroneck D, Popovsky M, Caldwell S, Ambruso D (1997). "The association of biologically active lipids with the development of transfusion-related acute lung injury: a retrospective study.". Transfusion. 37 (7): 719–26. PMID 9225936.
- Popovsky M, Chaplin H, Moore S. "Transfusion-related acute lung injury: a neglected, serious complication of hemotherapy.". Transfusion. 32 (6): 589–92. PMID 1502715.
- Liu QP, Sulzenbacher G, Yuan H, Bennett EP, Pietz G, Saunders K, Spence J, Nudelman E, Levery SB, White T, Neveu JM, Lane WS, Bourne Y, Olsson ML, Henrissat B, Clausen H (2007). "Bacterial glycosidases for the production of universal red blood cells". Nat Biotechnol. PMID 17401360.
- BBC: Blood groups can be converted]
- Transfusion, ISSN: 1537-2995 (electronic) 0041-1132 (paper)
- Blood transfusion safety
- BBC article on blood substitute
- The Serious Hazards of Transfusion (SHOT)
- New Scientist article on transfusion-associated lung injury
- Breakthrough makes all blood types universal - Joyce Howard Price, The Washington Times - April 4, 2007
- Transfusion Medicine: The Basis and the Future - A Review from the Science Creative Quarterly
- Blood Transfusions After Cardiac Surgery Discredited
- Circular of Information, the US standards for blood and blood components for transfusion.
bs:Transfuzija krvi bg:Кръвопреливане cs:Krevní transfúze da:Blodtransfusion de:Bluttransfusion dv:ލޭއެޅުން el:Μετάγγιση αίματος hr:Transfuzija krvi id:Transfusi darah it:Trasfusione di sangue he:עירוי דם lv:Asins pārliešana nl:Bloedtransfusie no:Blodtransfusjon simple:Blood transfusion sr:Трансфузија крви fi:Verensiirto uk:Переливання крові | <urn:uuid:1cab989c-5db3-479c-8341-c9ba38c35db1> | {
"date": "2018-11-15T07:02:57",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2018-47",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-47/segments/1542039742567.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20181115054518-20181115075745-00036.warc.gz",
"int_score": 4,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9273028373718262,
"score": 3.71875,
"token_count": 6887,
"url": "http://es.wikidoc.org/index.php/Blood_transfusion"
} |
Find Command (Edit Menu)
Searches for the specified text in a search range specified in the Find dialog box.
If a search is successful, the Find dialog box closes and Visual Basic selects the located text. If no match is found, Visual Basic displays a message stating that the text was not found.
Toolbar shortcut: . Keyboard shortcut: CTRL+F.
Finds and selects the next occurrence of the text specified in the Find What box of the Find dialog box.
Toolbar shortcut: . Keyboard shortcuts: SHIFT+F4 (Find Next) or SHIFT+F3 (Find Previous).
Dialog Box Options
Type or insert the information you want to find, or click the down arrow and select from the last four entries. If any text is selected or the cursor is on a word when you choose the command, this text is displayed in the Find What box.
Specifies the search range.
- Current Procedure — Searches only the current procedure.
- Current Module — Searches only the current module.
- Current Project — Searches all the modules in your project.
- Selected Text — Searches a selected range of code in your project.
Sets the direction of the search to Down or Up from the location of the cursor, or All in the selected search range.
Find Whole Word Only
Searches for the full word by itself and not as part of a larger word.
Finds all occurrences with the exact combination of uppercase and lowercase letters specified in the Find What box.
Use Pattern Matching
Searches using pattern-matching characters.
Finds and selects the next occurrence of the text specified in the Find What box.
Closes the dialog box without performing the search.
Displays the Replace dialog box, retaining the information typed in the Find What dialog box. | <urn:uuid:8f495d73-ff5e-4b0d-a621-32430dd76ed0> | {
"date": "2014-11-27T20:07:05",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-49",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-49/segments/1416931009084.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20141125155649-00180-ip-10-235-23-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.7004801630973816,
"score": 3.296875,
"token_count": 384,
"url": "http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee440760(v=office.12).aspx"
} |
- Rothmund-Thomson Syndrome Center
- Adult Skin Problems Slideshow
- Quiz: Is Ringworm Contagious?
- Gallery of Skin Problems Pictures
- What is Rothmund-Thomson syndrome (RTS)?
- What are the signs and symptoms of Rothmund-Thomson syndrome?
- How common is Rothmund-Thomson syndrome?
- What genes are related to Rothmund-Thomson syndrome?
- How do people inherit Rothmund-Thomson syndrome?
- What other names do people use for Rothmund-Thomson syndrome?
- Where can I find information about treatment for Rothmund-Thomson syndrome?
What is Rothmund-Thomson syndrome (RTS)?
Rothmund-Thomson syndrome is a rare condition that affects many parts of the body, particularly the skin.
What are the signs and symptoms of Rothmund-Thomson syndrome?
People with this condition typically develop redness on the cheeks between ages 3 months and 6 months. Over time the rash spreads to the arms and legs, causing patchy changes in skin coloring, areas of skin tissue degeneration (atrophy), and small clusters of enlarged blood vessels just under the skin (telangiectases). These skin problems persist for life, and are collectively known as poikiloderma.
Rothmund-Thomson syndrome is also characterized by:
- sparse hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes;
- slow growth and small stature;
- abnormalities of the teeth and nails; and
problems in infancy, such as chronic
diarrhea and vomiting.
- Some affected children develop a clouding of the
lens of the eye (cataract), which affects vision.
- Many people with this disorder have
skeletal abnormalities including absent or malformed bones, delayed bone formation, and low
bone density (osteopenia). Some of
these abnormalities affect the development of bones in the forearms and the
thumbs, and are known as radial ray malformations.
- People with Rothmund-Thomson syndrome have an increased
risk of developing cancer, particularly a form of
bone cancer called
osteosarcoma. These bone tumors most often develop during childhood or adolescence.
- Several types of skin cancer are also more common in people with this disorder.
The varied signs and symptoms of Rothmund-Thomson syndrome overlap with features of other disorders, namely Baller-Gerold syndrome and RAPADILINO syndrome. These syndromes are also characterized by radial ray defects, skeletal abnormalities, and slow growth. All of these conditions can be caused by mutations in the same gene. Based on these similarities, researchers are investigating whether Rothmund-Thomson syndrome, Baller-Gerold syndrome, and RAPADILINO syndrome are separate disorders or part of a single syndrome with overlapping signs and symptoms.
How common is Rothmund-Thomson syndrome?
Rothmund-Thomson syndrome is a rare disorder; its incidence is unknown. About 300 people with this condition have been reported worldwide in scientific studies.
What genes are related to Rothmund-Thomson syndrome?
Mutations in the RECQL4 gene cause about two-thirds of all cases of Rothmund-Thomson syndrome. This gene provides instructions for making a protein whose function is not well understood, although researchers believe that it helps stabilize genetic information in the body's cells. This protein probably also plays a role in copying (replicating) and repairing DNA.
RECQL4 mutations lead to the production of an abnormally short, nonfunctional version of the RECQL4 protein or prevent cells from making any of this protein. A shortage of the RECQL4 protein may prevent normal DNA replication and repair, causing widespread damage to a person's genetic information over time. It is unclear how a loss of this protein's activity leads to the specific features of Rothmund-Thomson syndrome.
In about one-third of individuals with Rothmund-Thomson syndrome, no mutation in the RECQL4 gene has been found. The cause of the condition in these individuals is unknown; however, researchers suspect that these cases may result from mutations in a gene related to RECQL4.
In some cases, chromosomal abnormalities have been identified in people with Rothmund-Thomson syndrome. These abnormalities include extra or missing genetic material, usually from chromosome 7 or chromosome 8, in some of an affected person's cells. Researchers believe that these chromosomal changes are related to the overall instability of an affected person's genetic information.
How do people inherit Rothmund-Thomson syndrome?
This condition is inherited in an autosomal recessive pattern, which means both copies of the gene in each cell have mutations. The parents of an individual with an autosomal recessive condition each carry one copy of the mutated gene, but they typically do not show signs and symptoms of the condition.
What other names do people use for Rothmund-Thomson syndrome?
- Congenital poikiloderma
- Poikiloderma atrophicans and cataract
- Poikiloderma Congenitale
- Poikiloderma congenitale of Rothmund-Thomson
Where can I find information about treatment for Rothmund-Thomson syndrome?
Gene reviews: Treatment for Rothmund-Thomson Syndrome
SOURCE: Genetics Home Reference, National Institutes of Health
Quick GuideRingworm: Treatment, Pictures, Causes, and Symptoms
Health Solutions From Our Sponsors
Top Rothmund-Thomson Syndrome Related Articles
Birth DefectsBirth defects have many causes and currently, are the leading cause of death for infants in the first year of life. Some of the causes of birth defects include genetic or chromosome problems. Exposure of the mother to rubella or German measles during pregnancy, or using drugs or alcohol during pregnancy. The treatment for birth defects depends upon the condition of the effected child.
DiarrheaDiarrhea is a change is the frequency and looseness of bowel movements. Symptoms associated with diarrhea are cramping, abdominal pain, and the sensation of rectal urgency. Causes of diarrhea include viral, bacterial, or parasite infection, gastroenteritis, food poisoning, and drugs. Absorbents and anti-motility medications are used to treat diarrhea.
Genetic CounselingYour health care provider may refer you to a genetic professional. Universities and medical centers also often have affiliated genetic professionals, or can provide referrals to a genetic professional or genetics clinic. Genetic counseling provides patients and family members the tools to make the right choice in regard to test for a disease or condition.
The definition of a genetic disease is a disorder or condition caused by abnormalities in a person's genome. Some types of genetic inheritance include single inheritance, including cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, Marfan syndrome, and hemochromatosis. Other types of genetic diseases include multifactorial inheritance. Still other types of genetic diseases include chromosome abnormalities (for example, Turner syndrome, and Klinefelter syndrome), and mitochondrial inheritance (for example, epilepsy and dementia).
MicrocephalyMicrocephaly is a genetic condition where the circumference of the head is smaller than normal due to underdeveloped brain. Microcephaly is caused by genetic abnormalities, abuse of alcohol or drugs, infection (for example, Zika virus, German measles, or chickenpox), exposure to toxins, or PKU while the mother is pregnant. Symptoms of microcephaly depend upon the severity of the accompanying syndrome. There is no treatment for microcephaly.
Nausea and Vomiting
Nausea is an uneasiness of the stomach that often precedes vomiting. Nausea and vomiting are not diseases, but they are symptoms of many conditions. There are numerous cases of nausea and vomiting. Some causes may not require medical treatment, for example, motion sickness, and other causes may require medical treatment by a doctor, for example, heart attack, lung infections, bronchitis, and pneumonia.
Some causes of nausea and vomiting may be life threatening, for example, heart attack, abdominal obstruction, and cancers.
Treatment of nausea and vomiting depends upon the cause.
Pregnancy Planning (Preparing for Pregnancy)
Pregnancy planning is an important step in preparation for starting or expanding a family. Planning for a pregnancy includes taking prenatal vitamins, eating healthy for you and your baby, disease prevention (for both parents and baby) to prevent birth defects and infections, avoiding certain medications that may be harmful to your baby, how much weight gain is healthy exercise safety and pregnancy, travel during pregnancy.
RashThe word "rash" means an outbreak of red bumps on the body. The way people use this term, "a rash" can refer to many different skin conditions. The most common of these are scaly patches of skin and red, itchy bumps or patches all over the place.
Rothmund-Thomson Syndrome PictureErythema and poikloderma on the cheek of a child. See a picture of Rothmund-Thomson Syndrome and learn more about the health topic.
Skin Cancer OverviewSkin cancers occur when skin cells undergo malignant transformations and grow into tumors. The most common types of skin cancer, basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma, are highly curable when they are diagnosed and treated early. Sun exposure, tanning beds, depressed immune system, radiation exposure, and certain viral infections are risk factors for skin cancer. Skin cancers are treated with surgery or radiation. The prognosis of nonmelanoma skin cancers is generally very good. | <urn:uuid:0bdb6e05-43f1-4c00-8b04-029be17f5043> | {
"date": "2019-02-18T16:36:38",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2019-09",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-09/segments/1550247487595.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20190218155520-20190218181520-00296.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9113709330558777,
"score": 3.203125,
"token_count": 1981,
"url": "https://www.medicinenet.com/rothmund-thomson_syndrome/article.htm"
} |
It’s never too early to start saving money for college. We want all families to be prepared to handle the rising college by saving early and consistently. No matter how little you save, every cent makes a different in affording your student’s higher education. Counselors assist students in achieving future academic and career goals and funding their college dreams. Students are encouraged to meet with their counselors early and often to discuss scholarship searches and funding for quality post-secondary credentials. Counselors are trained to assist students and families in completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
For the 2015-16 academic year, the financial aid activities are as follows:
Thursday, October 1, 2015 at 6 p.m. - Squalicum High School
Sunday, January 10, 2016 at 2 p.m. – Squalicum High School
Thursday, January 14, 2016 at 6 p.m. – Sehome High School
When it comes to paying for school, you’re not alone. Grants, work-study, and low interest loans help make college affordable. Financial aid is available from a variety of sources for college, career school, graduate school and professional/technical school.
Federal student aid includes:
Grants – Grants are often called “gift aid” because they are free money—financial aid that doesn’t have to be repaid. Grants are often need-based. They can come from the federal government, state government, your college or a private or non-profit organization. Occasionally you might have to pay back part or all of a grant if, for example, you withdraw from school before finishing an enrollment period such as a quarter.
Scholarships – Scholarship are also free money that does not have to be repaid. Scholarships are often merit-based. There are thousands of them, offered by schools, employers, individuals, private companies, nonprofits, communities, religious groups, and professional and social organizations. Find and apply for as many scholarships as you can! Check with your school’s Career Center for opportunities.
Loans – Federal student loans for college or career school are an investment in your future. You must repay your loan, so be sure you understand all your options and responsibilities. A loan is money that you borrow and must pay back with interest. Student loans can come from the federal government or private sources such as a bank or financial institution. Federal student loans usually offer borrowers lower interest rates and have more flexible repayment options than loans from banks.
Work-Study – Federal work-study jobs help students earn money to pay for college or career school. Undergraduate students with work-study jobs will work part-time on or off-campus while enrolled. Work-study jobs are typically reserved for students with financial need, allowing them to earn money to help pay education expenses. The program encourages community service work and work related to the student’s course of study.
In order for students and families to access grants, loans or work study, students and their parents/guardians need to complete the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid): http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/. Schools plan financial aid activities for seniors and their parents/guardians during the fall and winter of each school year. | <urn:uuid:5174a2c5-ab3d-433b-9c7e-efce8840bbfc> | {
"date": "2016-06-27T09:20:47",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2016-26",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00188-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9726967215538025,
"score": 2.921875,
"token_count": 673,
"url": "http://bellinghamschools.org/financial-aid"
} |
Another Intelligent Design Prediction Fulfilled: Function for a Pseudogene
Darwinists have long made an argument from ignorance, where our lack of present knowledge of the function for a given biological structure is taken as evidence that there is no function and the structure is merely a vestige of evolutionary history. Darwinists have commonly made this mistake with many types of "junk" DNA, now known to have function. In contrast, intelligent agents design objects for a purpose, and therefore intelligent design predicts that biological structures will have function.Â
Here's where it gets interesting: Functionless structures may have been originally designed but were later rendered functionless by natural processes. For example, if you leave a laptop computer on the top of a mountain for 1000 years where it is exposed to the natural elements, it likely will no longer work. But that does not mean the laptop was not originally designed. In the same way, examples of loss-of-function in organisms may be best explained by natural processes of random mutation and natural selection. In this regard, features like functionless eyes on blind cave fish are probably best explained by Darwinian evolution. This poses no challenge to the validity of intelligent design in other cases. ID is far more interested in explaining the GAIN of biological function rather than loss of function.
Like other types of "junk" DNA, Darwinists have almost universally considered pseudogenes to be evolutionary garbage--once-functional genes that were rendered functionless by random mutations. But a recent article in Nature concludes the following:
"Our findings indicate a function for pseudogenes in regulating gene expression by means of the RNA interference pathway."The article of course seeks to retain an evolutionary interpretation of the data, but ID proponents find this scientific evidence unsurprising. To be sure, there are still pseudogenes for which no function is known, but it will be interesting to watch and see if future research crosses more and more pseudogenes off the list of "junk" DNA. | <urn:uuid:621c020f-ada5-42c6-a0c6-046ee813f23d> | {
"date": "2014-08-23T15:21:33",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-35",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1408500826259.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20140820021346-00112-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9329097270965576,
"score": 2.890625,
"token_count": 406,
"url": "http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/05/another_intelligent_design_pre005859.html"
} |
Western Swamp Tortoise Conservation
(1) - (3) © Perth Zoo
To breed and reintroduce western swamp tortoises into their former range in Australia
The western swamp tortoise or short-necked freshwater tortoise (Pseudemydura umbrina) is Australia's most critically endangered reptile. The western swamp tortoise has only been recorded in scattered localities in a narrow, 3–5 km strip of the Swan coastal plain in Western Australia. It is believed that their original habitat was in the clay soil areas of the Swan Valley to the north of Perth. This area was one of the first to be developed for agriculture after the arrival of European settlers in 1829.
The western swamp tortoise's lifecycle requires shallow winter and spring wet ephemeral swamps with clay or clay overlayed with sand substrates. The small remaining areas of this specialised habitat are close to urbanisation. Between 1963 and 2001, the numbers of these tortoises known to be alive in the wild fluctuated between 40 and 120. Without a recovery programme and significant efforts to restock the population, this tortoise would likely have become extinct.
In 1988, a conservation breeding programme was initiated by Dr Gerald Kuchling from the University of Western Australia and was taken over by Perth Zoo in 1989. A Recovery Team was established in 1990. In July 1991, responsibility for conservation breeding passed from the Western Swamp Tortoise Captive Breeding Project Management Committee to Perth Zoo.
A number of management tools were developed to ensure successful breeding. The diet was re-evaluated and a series of special "puddings" developed, consisting of marron, yabbies, fish, egg yolks and vitamin and mineral supplements in gelatine. This diet improved the condition of the females that started to ovulate. Over the years, genetic management has been a critical factor due to the small size of the original population.
One of the key factors in breeding western swamp tortoises is to allow them to aestivate. This happens naturally in the wild from November to June each year (although the exact time frame varies with the amount of rain and time of year the region receives the rainfall). Perth Zoo encourages this natural behaviour as it is essential for breeding. When the tortoises reach 100 g in weight (about three years of age), they are released into managed wild habitats by the Western Australian Department of Parks and Wildlife.
In combination, these tools have resulted in a very successful breed-for-release programme. Since 1988, Perth Zoo has bred more than 900 western swamp tortoises of which more than 638 have been released (figures as at 2014).
WAZA Conservation Project 05028 is implemented by Perth Zoo in partnership with the Western Swamp Tortoise Recovery Team members, with input from Dr Gerald Kuchling of the Western Australian Department of Parks and Wildlife, the World Wildlife Fund and Friends of the Western Swamp Tortoise. Boral Midland Brick has been a valued project sponsor, supporting the project by supplying many of the bricks used in the construction of the new western swamp tortoise facility. The facility is due for completion in November 2014. Adelaide Zoo has successfully developed a second insurance population to ensure that all the western swamp tortoise "eggs" are not in one basket.
> to project overview
(1) - (3) © Perth Zoo | <urn:uuid:8257395d-ec58-4721-b42e-38633db458ea> | {
"date": "2015-03-28T05:15:39",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2015-14",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-14/segments/1427131297281.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20150323172137-00206-ip-10-168-14-71.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9519648551940918,
"score": 3.328125,
"token_count": 692,
"url": "http://www.waza.org/en/site/conservation/waza-conservation-projects/overview/western-swamp-tortoise-breeding-for-release-programme"
} |
Regional Patterns in India’s 2014 General Election
To illustrate the main geographical patterns in the election, I have posted the Wikipedia map (originally in German) of the results above. The numerical data provided in this post come from the same source. I have also outlined some of the regional results found on this map to create a series of more simplified maps, with stylized boundaries. These maps, unfortunately, are rather crude, due to time constrains. In some cases, I have juxtaposed these maps with maps showing the results of the previous national election (2009).
The main national pattern, clearly evident on the first map posted here, is a new electoral split between greater northwestern India, where the BJP dominated, and the south and east, where regional parties prevailed. The BJP’s current zone of support spans some of the deepest economic and cultural divides in India. It includes many of the country’s most prosperous and socially developed areas as well some of its poorest regions. It also bridges the gap between the Indo-Aryan-speaking north and the Dravidian-speaking south; although the south largely supported regional parties, most of Karnataka opted for the BJP.
The zone of BJP support expanded greatly from 2009 to 2014. Its main new areas of electoral success include the mountainous north (Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir), impoverished and densely populated Uttar Pradesh, prosperous Haryana, and relatively poor and arid Rajasthan. Congress and its allies in the United Progressive Alliance saw major declines in these same areas, but their most spectacular drop was in the southeast. Here regional parties unaffiliated with their alliance did particularly well. In Andhra Pradesh, the INC was undermined in part by the controversies surrounding the creation of the new state of Telangana.
The paucity of districts taken by the Indian National Congress is striking. The only sizable areas in which the party was victorious were the lightly populated and peripheral far northeast and a few mostly rural zones in south-central India. Although southeastern Karnataka constitutes one of the largest remaining Congress strongholds, Bangalore—the regional metropolis and center of India’s high tech industry—surprised some observers by voting for the BJP. The INC’s allies in the United Progressive Alliance also performed poorly, with the Maharashtra-based Indian Nationalist Congress—which had been “expelled from the Indian National Congress … for disputing the right of Italian-born Sonia Gandhi to lead the party”—losing three seats to take only six, and the Bihar-based Rashtriya Janata Dal taking only four. In West Bengal, the All India Trinamool Congress, which broke away from the INC in 1989, triumphed handily, but it also dropped its connection with the broader United Progressive Alliance two years ago.
India’s Third Front alliance, dominated by parties of the far left, also suffered a sharp loss in the election of 2014. This coalition saw a significant loss of representation in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu. India’s two major communist parties triumphed only in the small state of Tripura in the far northeast and in a few scattered districts of Kerala and West Bengal. Marxism’s electoral decline has been steep; as recently as the 2004 contest, most districts in West Bengal and Kerala supported communist parties. Nationally, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) dropped seven seats and retained only nine, whereas the Communist Party of India lost three seats and kept only one. Several other parties in the Third Front alliance saw even larger declines. The Uttar Pradesh-based Samajwadi Party dropped 18 seats and kept only five, and the Bihar-based Janata Dal (United) Party lost 18 seats and retained only two. (Curiously, Janata Dal [United] is a secularist, socialist party, yet it had previously been in an alliance with the BJP, which it dropped “in protest against the elevation of Narendra Modi.”) One party in the Third Front, Odissa-based Biju Janata Dal, gained both seats and votes. But this social-democratic party joined the Third Front only in 2009, having previously been affiliated with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. In India, political parties and especially party alliances do not always follow clear ideological lines.
Several parties allied with the BJP in the National Democratic Alliance also gained representation. Maharashtra-based Shiv Sena, a hard-core Hindu Nationalist party, added seven seats for a total of 18, and the populist Andhra Pradesh-based Telugu Desam Party gained 10 for a total of 16. In Bihar, the Lok Janshakti Party—which is officially described as secularist and socialist—went from zero seats to six. In Punjab, the Sikh-oriented Shiromani Akali Dal held even at four seats, although its share of the popular vote dropped.
Several central portions of Punjab, on the other hand, supported the new anti-corruption Aam Aadmi Party. In India overall, this party performed much worse than had been expected in late 2013, when its leader, Arvind Kejriwal, was elected chief minister of Delhi. Kejriwal, however, stepped down several months after his victory due to his frustration with the lack of progress against graft, a move that was evidently costly to his party. Nationally, Aam Aadmi took only two percent of the vote.
Several non-aligned regionalist parties did extremely well. The centrist, Tamil Nadu-based All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam gained 28 seats for a total of 37. In the emerging state of Telangana in the south-center, the center-right Telangana Rashtra Samithi went from two seats to 11. In southern and northeastern Andhra Pradesh, the new YSR Congress Party, which recently broke from both Congress and the United Progressive Alliance, gained nine seats.
Two major regional parties crashed. In Tamil Nadu, the democratic-socialist Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam went from 18 seats to none, taking only 9.6 million votes as opposed to the 18 million that went to the more conservative All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Party. In Uttar Pradesh and environs, theBahujan Samaj Party lost all 21 of its seats. Despite this gargantuan drop, the party still took 23 million votes—four percent of the total—putting it in third place in the popular count. Such a discrepancy between votes and seats reflects in part the huge population of the central Ganges Valley. In 2009, Bahujan Samaj had taken ten per cent of the vote nationwide. This party gains its strength primarily from the Dalit (“untouchable,” formerly) community and the so-called Other Backwards Castes (OBC). The fact that the BJP’s leader, Narendra Modi, is himself a member of an OBC may have helped siphon off some support from Bahujan Samaj Party.
Modi’s membership in an OBC, however, has been the subject of controversy. As was reported in DNA, Congress Party representatives recently claimed that:
Narendra Modi doesn’t belong to any backward caste, but was in fact born into an upper caste “Vaishya” family, that is given title of “Modh”, for being super rich, like Mod Brahmin and Modh Bania. Alleging Modi was a “fake OBC”, former Gujarat Assembly opposition leader Shaktisinh Gohil armed with documents said Modi belonged to a Vaishya sub-caste the “Modh Ghanchi”, a microscopic minority found only in Gujarat. “He, in fact, belongs to the upper caste since he comes from a prosperous business community,” said Gohil.
Modi’s proponents, as well as some of his local opponents, disagree. As reported in RediffNews:
The moot question is — is Modi an OBC?
“Yes!” says Achyut Yagnik, co-author of The Shaping of Modern Gujarat and a staunch critic of Modi.
Yagnik, an Ahmedabad-based thinker and social activist, says, “The Modh Ghanchi community is part of the Other Backward Classes in Gujarat. They are NOT upper castes.”
It will be interesting to see if Modi’s caste positions continues to be discussed.
The discussion on India’s 2012 election will continue with additional posts later this week. Maps showing the success of the major regional parties, along with state boundaries, will be posted.
« Dark Areas on the Earth at Night Map
A New Political Bifurcation of India? » | <urn:uuid:d7f09b6e-e98f-4efa-b724-62deb1c46205> | {
"date": "2016-02-10T10:43:15",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2016-07",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-07/segments/1454701159155.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20160205193919-00304-ip-10-236-182-209.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9612279534339905,
"score": 2.8125,
"token_count": 1826,
"url": "http://www.geocurrents.info/geopolitics/elections/regional-patterns-indias-2014-general-election"
} |
Experts have said that untreated Sexually Transmitted Infections could result in long-term health and socio-economic problems in adolescent girls and young women.
Site Coordinator of the Aids HealthCare Foundation, Dr. Kema Onu, told the News Agency of Nigeria on Monday in Abuja that STIs refer to more than 25 infectious organisms transmitted primarily through sex.
He said STIs were largely preventable despite the burdens, costs and complications yet remain a significant public health problem in Nigeria due to ignorance, poverty and stigmatisation.
Onu said when compared to older women, teenagers and young women were more prone to STIs because of their tender tissues, and that early exposure to sex could bruise the fragile skin of the vagina, heightening their risks of infections.
He said, “Teenagers and young women present STIs such as HIV, Chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, among others early clinically, while there are delayed presentations in men.
“This, however, can affect their ability to conceive, because poorly treated STIs could block the fallopian tubes and further result in social neglect.
“Some women smell and constantly use sanitary pads due to discharge from the vagina caused by repeated infection contracted from their sex partners or spouses.”
Onu stated that such challenges were largely unrecognised by the public and some healthcare facilities, adding that STIs cause harmful, often irreversible, and costly clinical complications.
Such complications, he said, include reproductive health problems, foetal and perinatal health problems, cancer and facilitation of sexual transmission of HIV infection.
He said education, sensitisation and prevention were essentially the primary care strategy for improving reproductive health. (NAN) | <urn:uuid:93af5c18-7634-4e5a-a7da-4705717bc52b> | {
"date": "2017-03-24T21:55:14",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-13",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218188623.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212948-00096-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.962399959564209,
"score": 2.78125,
"token_count": 354,
"url": "http://punchng.com/untreated-sexual-infections-affect-women-expert/"
} |
NCAR archivist Diane Rabson sheds light on our institutional history in this bimonthly series.
Nowadays, when I talk to my own family at dinnertime about my job, I can tell they're still wondering what I do all day. An answer like, "I preserve the institutional history of NCAR and UCAR," hardly illuminates the matter.
A friend recently quipped, "I think an archives is halfway between an attic and a hard place." ("Archives" can be either a singular or a collective noun.) Attics, of course, connote the idea of stuff put away and forgotten, like the Velveteen Rabbit or the Lost Ark that Indiana Jones sought. But archives are not warehouses for "forgotten stuff." Rather, materials are evaluated for their potential historic significance, and the selected material (usually paper documents or "records"--the more formal designation) generally is arranged and preserved by filing in acid-free folders and boxes. Archivists write descriptions of the contents of the boxes, either as brief summaries or as longer inventories. Many institutions' archives provide public access to their collections through these descriptions, available in paper format or through computerized catalogs.
In Western civilization, not surprisingly, archives have existed since antiquity, mainly to preserve incoming correspondence, such as it was. In medieval Europe, an archives might preserve sacred relics and correspondence as well as a king's treasury. It wasn't until the French Revolution that archives took on a more modern character. A centralized Archives Nationales was created in Paris in 1794; the new government began actively preserving historic documentation and, for the first time, legally opened the archives to the public, providing a civic model for other countries, including the United States. (Our National Archives was founded in 1934, rather on the late side.)
The NCAR/UCAR Archives has a bit of history as well. The half-time archivist position began in 1984, in part to assist in planning for UCAR's extensive 25th-anniversary celebration in 1985. Many of the original scientific staff were beginning to look toward retirement in those years, and there was concern about losing the institutional memory. In the broader sphere, the explosive growth of postwar U.S. science and technology, in both the private and public sectors, was woefully undocumented until various archival programs were established in the '70s and '80s (notably at U.S. Department of Energy laboratories, such as Sandia.)
Currently, our archives holds more than 50 discrete collections; most document the workings of various divisions and sections. We have recently begun to solicit the papers of individuals, mainly scientists who have spent a significant portion of their careers at NCAR. The story of the Phil Thompson collection, which the archives acquired in 1994 shortly after Phil's death, provides an excellent example of the complexities of processing--or preparing--an archival collection for public research. (It also shows just what archivists do all day.)
Philip Duncan Thompson was NCAR's first associate director, responding to Walt Roberts's invitation in 1960 to help build the intellectual base and staff for the new national center. Prior to that, Phil was a career Air Force officer who had distinguished himself in pioneering numerical weather prediction research and projects. Phil kept most of his records intact, starting about 1944, and moved them from office to office as necessary. After packing the documents from his last office, in the Climate and Global Dynamics Division, the archives ended up with 43 archives boxes--containing approximately 10,000 sheets of paper.
The first step was to look through the entire collection, item by item. This took several months, part time, as more pressing tasks allowed; mostly we looked for duplicate records and for badly deteriorated paper that needed to be photocopied, and gained a general sense of how things were organized. We also created a brief inventory, box by box, that highlighted the types of records within (letters, publications, data, etc.), their subject matter, and their date range(s). While some boxes contained records in good chronological order, many others contained a jumble of documents out of sequence, reflecting the many office moves.
One of the principles that archivists live by is to retain the original order of records, as much as possible, in order to preserve the context in which the records were created. At the same time, some rearrangement of records is necessary to make them useful to researchers. The next phase of processing should take an additional several months--again, amid other tasks. Keeping original order in mind, we plan to organize the Thompson records into categories such as correspondence, biographical information, travel, data, and writings. All paper is to be refiled in archival folders; rusty staples, paper clips, old cellophane tape, and rubber bands will be replaced by stainless steel clips and rustfree staples. In addition, we hope to prepare an exhaustive inventory (or "finding aid") that will be published on the archives' Web site in XML (the Web's "next" markup language). The inventory will provide a detailed guide to the contents of this highly significant collection.
If you have questions about the NCAR/UCAR Archives, or have an interest in donating something, please contact us (ext. 8508, [email protected]). Diane Rabson | <urn:uuid:8786f71a-15d6-499e-9513-9d5a7cc99476> | {
"date": "2015-08-28T19:12:49",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2015-35",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-35/segments/1440644063881.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20150827025423-00173-ip-10-171-96-226.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.957795262336731,
"score": 2.65625,
"token_count": 1095,
"url": "http://www.ucar.edu/communications/staffnotes/9808/here.html"
} |
By Drs. Robert & Sonia Vogl
President and Vice President,
Illinois Renewable Energy Association
As of this February twenty-three American cities have committed themselves to utilize 100 percent renewable energy. Moab, Utah intends to reach its goal by 2032. The renewable energy revolution is global in scope.
Andrew Blakers, an Australian energy engineer, reminds us that wind and solar are already cost competitive with fossil fuels. They will become even cheaper as their manufacturing achieves enormous economies of scale. He estimates Australia can meet 50 percent of its electrical needs with renewable energy sources without building any new backup capacity.
Improved weather forecasting allows us to know a day in advance how much wind and solar output will be available. If reductions in demand are required, contractual load sharing, using existing coal and gas generators to pump additional water into elevated hydro storage reservoirs and controlled charging times for EV batteries can be implemented.
It is relatively easy to install heat pumps in urban areas to meet heating and hot water demand in buildings, provide large scale energy storage in batteries of electric vehicles and utilize the thermal inertia in water and buildings. Battery storage can occur at different sites including homes, businesses and adjacent to wind and solar farms to stabilize the electrical output from the installations.
Renewable energy sources alone will not solve the climate problem. It will require other measures including curtailing demand and capturing and storing carbon. The transition to renewable energy sources and electric vehicles will increase demand for metals and minerals. Securing them has adverse environmental impacts which will need to be managed.
A homeowner with a solar system and a modest amount of battery storage could provide a couple of days of power during cloudy weather. The batteries could be charged at night at a low cost and the electricity sold back to the grid at a higher price during times of peak demand. An owner of an electric vehicle such as a Nissan Leaf could draw power from the vehicle’s 24 kWh battery capacity to serve as backup power.
Blakers describes an off-river pump storage system which could provide an additional source of electricity. It involves the creation of two hectare sized reservoirs, one at the river and another at least 200 meters above the first one with a pipe to carry water up and down the incline. The stored water would be released during times of high electrical demand to generate electricity and replenished using electricity during times of low demand.
If the system performs as projected it could be applied to other areas with substantial river flows and sufficient elevation differences to provide backup power to meet peak demand.
If Australia installs wind and solar systems at a rate of 1 GW each year starting in 2020 as projected they could meet 40 percent of their energy needs with renewable energy sources by 2030. By installing 2 GW of wind and solar annually they could meet 80 percent of their needs, or 94 percent if they installed 2.5 GW/year by 2030.
Wind, solar and heat pumps are also cost competitive in many parts of the United States. Steve Hanley states that Ward’s Auto reports EV battery prices are falling more rapidly than expected and could be lower than $100/kWh by 2020. At that price the cost of electrical propulsion is slightly less than the cost of propulsion via an internal combustion engine. Falling battery costs will make the option of battery backup systems more appealing to homeowners with PV systems.
The cost reductions of renewable energy sources and batteries result from successful research done a decade ago. Over this next decade another wave of successful research projects will be integrated into commercial renewable energy projects accelerating technological improvements and falling costs.
As many others have pointed out, the technology is ready. The challenge is implementing it. | <urn:uuid:4dba0c29-4071-401d-96b4-1780c1a1d602> | {
"date": "2017-03-30T18:57:31",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-13",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218199514.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212959-00216-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9532837867736816,
"score": 3.34375,
"token_count": 739,
"url": "http://rockrivertimes.com/2017/02/21/going-100-percent-renewables-is-gaining-momentum/"
} |
HUGE advances have been made in reducing cancer deaths over the last generation but more still needs to be done to tackle the growing number of new cases of the disease, campaigners said yesterday.
Cancer Research UK said there had been a 12% drop in the rate of cancer deaths in the UK in the last 30 years, thanks to improvements in detection and treatment.
But more funding was needed to help scientists progress with their work, so that the next generation saw survival rates increase further, the charity said.
The figures were released as CRUK launched its All Clear advertising campaign to raise more funds for research projects, which could give more patients hope of getting the all-clear.
Between 1972 and 2002 cancer deaths among men fell by 18% and by 6% in women.
Some cancers saw dramatic increases, including oesophagus cancer, where deaths rose by around 65% in 30 years, helped by smoking and increased alcohol consumption.
While lung cancer deaths in men dropped by almost 50%, the incidence in women increased by around 55%.
Professor Michel Coleman, head of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, put this difference down to smoking habits.
"Men started smoking earlier and stopped earlier than women. Women didn't start smoking in such numbers until later and still haven't cut down as the men did," he said.
Big decreases were seen in stomach and bowel cancer deaths over 30 years - down by 27% in men and 43% in women for bowel cancers.
Breast cancer cases have dropped by 20% and testicular cancer deaths have fallen by 37%. Hodgkin's disease deaths fell by 74%.
While deaths have decreased, the number of people being diagnosed with cancer each year has steadily increased.
Professor Robert Souhami, CRUK's director of clinical and external affairs, said with its latest campaign it wanted to "emphasise progress has been made rather than dwell on the sense of anxiety and loss cancer usually inspires".
"We want the public to know of this success.
"It doesn't mean anyone is complacent about what has happened.
"There is an enormous amount to be done but things are moving and a lot more progress is anticipated over the next few years," he said.
Professor Coleman said reductions in death rates were "very encouraging".
"Progress is being made but there are still, on average, more than 400 people dying from cancer every day in the UK. | <urn:uuid:94366f8f-9b54-48d6-8a8c-1a5d7b4357fb> | {
"date": "2017-09-20T23:11:48",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-39",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-39/segments/1505818687484.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20170920213425-20170920233425-00376.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.983712911605835,
"score": 2.765625,
"token_count": 498,
"url": "http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/fall-in-cancer-deaths-2448271"
} |
The Maverick's development history began in 1965, when the United States Air Force (USAF) began a program to develop a replacement to the AGM-12 Bullpup. With a range of 16.3 km (8.8 nmi), the radio-guided Bullpup was introduced in 1959 and was considered a "silver bullet" by operators. However, the launch aircraft was required to fly straight towards the target during the missile's flight instead of performing evasive maneuvers, thus risking the crew.
From 1966 to 1968, Hughes Missile Systems Division and Rockwell competed for the contract to build the new missile. Each were allocated $3 million for preliminary design and engineering work of the Maverick in 1966. In 1968, Hughes emerged with the $95 million contract for further development and testing of the missile; at the same time, contract options called for 17,000 missiles to be procured. Hughes conducted a smooth development of the AGM-65 Maverick, culminating in the first, and successful, firing of the AGM-65 on a tank at Air Force Missile Development Center at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, on 18 December 1969. In July 1971, the USAF and Hughes signed a $69.9 million contract for 2,000 missiles, the first of which was delivered in 1972.
Although early operational results were favorable, military planners predicted that the Maverick would fare less successfully in the hazy conditions of Central Europe, where it would have been used against Warsaw Pact forces. As such, development of the AGM-65B began in 1975 before it was delivered during the late 1970s. When production of the AGM-65A/B was ended in 1978, more than 35,000 missiles had been built.
More versions of the Maverick appeared, among which was the laser-guided AGM-65C/E. Development of the AGM-65C started in 1978 by Rockwell, who built a number of development missiles for the USAF. Due to high cost, the version was not procured by the USAF, and instead entered service with the United States Marine Corps (USMC) as the AGM-65E.
Another major development was the AGM-65D, which employed an imaging infrared (IIR) seeker. By imaging on radiated heat, the IIR is all-weather operable as well as showing improved performance in acquiring and tracking the hot engines, such as in tanks and trucks, that were to be one of its major missions. The seekerhead mechanically scanned the scene over a nitrogen-cooled 4-by-4 pixel array using a series of mirrored facets machined into the inner surface of the ring-shaped main gyroscope. The five-year development period of the AGM-65D started in 1977 and ended with the first delivery to the USAF in October 1983. The version received initial operating capability in February 1986.
The AGM-65F is a hybrid Maverick combining the AGM-65D's IIR seeker and warhead and propulsion components of the AGM-65E. Deployed by the United States Navy (USN), the AGM-65F is optimized for maritime strike roles. The first AGM-65F launch from the P-3C took place in 1989, and in 1994, the USN awarded Unisys a contract to integrate the version with the P-3C. Meanwhile, Hughes produced the AGM-65G, which essentially has the same guidance system as the D, with some software modifications that track larger targets, coupled with a shaped-charge warhead.
In the mid-1990s to early 2000s, there were several ideas of enhancing the Maverick's potential. Among them was the stillborn plan to incorporate the Maverick millimeter wave active radar homing, which can determine the exact shape of a target. Another study called "Longhorn Project" was conducted by Hughes, and later Raytheon following the absorption of Hughes into Raytheon, looked a Maverick version equipped with turbojet engines instead of rocket motors. The "Maverick ER", as it was dubbed, would have a "significant increase in range" compared to the Maverick's current range of 25 kilometres (16 mi). The proposal was abandoned, but if the Maverick ER had entered production, it would have replaced the AGM-119B Penguin carried on the MH-60R.
The most modern versions of the Maverick are the AGM-65H/K, which were in production as of 2007. The AGM-65H was developed by coupling the AGM-65B with a charge-coupled device (CCD) seeker optimized for desert operations and which has three times the range of the original TV-sensor; a parallel USN program aimed at rebuilding AGM-65Fs with newer CCD seekers resulted in the AGM-65J. The AGM-65K, meanwhile, was developed by replacing the AGM-65G's IR guidance system with an electro-optical television guidance system. | <urn:uuid:ce4ddef0-8b78-4757-b26f-7be82e07869a> | {
"date": "2018-04-25T14:09:05",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2018-17",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-17/segments/1524125947822.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20180425135246-20180425155246-00456.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9731454849243164,
"score": 3.09375,
"token_count": 1042,
"url": "https://www.onwar.com/weapons/rocket/missiles/USA_AGM65.html"
} |
On June 19, 2009 Pope Benedict XVI commemorated the official start of The Year Of The Priest. This year is dedicated to increasing spiritual perfection in priests, but it is also a time for the both the clergy and laity to reflect on the importance of the priesthood. In order to better appreciate the Catholic priesthood, lets look at its origin, purpose and impact on our lives.
The Catholic priesthood has its roots in the priesthood of the Old Covenant. The great Jesuit theologian, Fr. John Hardon, observed that the priest of the Old Covenant was a mediator between the people and God as he would offer the peoples adoration to God and beg His mercy for the peoples sins. Despite being authorized to offer sacrifices to God on behalf of mankind, however, the Levitical priesthood remained powerless to bring about salvation and needed to repeat its sacrifices ceaselessly. It wasnt until the priesthood of Jesus Christ that ultimate sanctification was achieved.
Unlike the priests of the Old Covenant, Jesus was both priest and victim. His unique sacrifice to the Father at Calvary was accomplished once for all, but is made present to us today in each Holy Mass. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), this same priestly function continues to be carried out through the ministerial priesthood without diminishing the priesthood of Christ (CCC 1545). Instead, Christ uses this ministerial priesthood to build up His Church. In his Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas elaborates on the priesthood by stating, Christ is the source of all priesthood: the priest of the old law was a figure of Christ, and the priest of the new law acts in the person of Christ.
In his book The Priest Is Not His Own, the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen observed, Each time the priest speaks the words of consecration, he applies Calvary and its fruits to a particular place and a particular time The priest takes the Cross of Calvary with Christ still hanging on it, and he plants it in New York, Paris, Cairo and Tokyo and in the poorest mission in the world. Considering this supernatural aspect of the priesthood makes it apparent that the priest is not just another guy. As Sheen further observes, We become significant to our fellow men not by being a regular guy, but by being another Christ.
In addition to offering the Sacrifice of the Mass, participation in the priesthood of the New Covenant (or ministerial priesthood) also involves administering the other Sacraments instituted by Our Lord. Have you ever stopped to think where we would be without the priesthood? There would obviously be no Eucharist, no forgiveness of sins in Confession or Anointing of the Sick. Without the priesthood there would be no Confirmation, thus limiting the growth of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. There would also be no bishops or pope to guide the Church. The priesthood allows Jesus to continue working in His Church for when a priest administers any one of the Sacraments, it is actually Christ Who is performing the action (CCC 1120).
One aspect of the Roman Catholic priesthood that is misunderstood by many in todays society is the discipline of celibacy. While not wanting to turn this into a personal crusade for mandatory celibacy, I would be remiss in not addressing the importance of this gift to the Church. The Vatican II document Presbyterorum Ordinis did a wonderful job explaining the value of celibacy, while still acknowledging the validity of married Eastern rite Catholic priests.
While not definitively stating that celibacy is mandatory for the priesthood, the above document acknowledges the fact that it is a praiseworthy and noble practice. In his aforementioned book on the priesthood, Archbishop Fulton Sheen observed, Consecrated virginity is the highest form of sacral or sacrificial love; it seeks nothing for itself but seeks only the will of the beloved God has allowed creatures to share in his creation The ambassador of Christ (the priest) is called to another type of creativeness he begets souls. Scriptural endorsement for the practice of celibacy can be found in 1 Cor 7:32-35. Refusing to acknowledge its value to the service of Gods people is doing a great disservice to this supernatural gift.
Celibacy is a discipline (not a dogma) of the Roman Catholic priesthood and could possibly be eliminated someday, but it frustrates me to hear the constant attacks by those who dont understand its value. It is generally blamed (by the mainstream media) for every priestly sexual indiscretion imaginable. The desire to quickly condemn celibacy whenever a priestly scandal occurs ignores the fact that the vast majority of priests fulfill their promise of celibacy with honor and integrity. Those who take advantage of such situations to promote an anti-celibacy agenda perform an injustice against these holy men who embrace abstinence for the sake of the Kingdom.
Looking at the priesthood purely in human terms will cause much of its meaning and importance to be missed. We will have difficulty understanding supernatural concepts such as celibacy and transubstantiation (the transformation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ). We begin to look at the Sacrament of Confession as nothing more than a counseling session and eventually abandon it altogether, choosing instead to confess our sins directly to God. It becomes too easy to concentrate on a priests personality flaws or lack of stage presence and we begin to compare priests and choose our favorite. Looking at the priesthood in Divine terms, however, helps us to keep our focus on its true meaning and its importance in helping us to attain Eternal Life in Heaven.
The next time that you feel your priests homily is too long or youre tired of him asking for money, take a minute and remember that, by virtue of his ordination, he is acting in the person of Our Lord. Looking at him in this way should make it easier to see past any personality defects and see, not the imperfect human, but our ultimate High Priest Jesus Christ. | <urn:uuid:f5884119-a760-47c4-8059-2529fe57734c> | {
"date": "2016-08-31T05:42:15",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2016-36",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-36/segments/1471983577646.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20160823201937-00150-ip-10-153-172-175.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9561941623687744,
"score": 2.796875,
"token_count": 1212,
"url": "http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2827743/posts?page=6"
} |
From a humble green alga, California researchers envision a new world of vegetarian steak, green oil, and non-petroleum-based plastic.
“We want to make synthetic meat substances using algae protein,” said Stephen Mayfield, a biology professor and algae geneticist at the University of California San Diego. “If we could do that and make stuff that actually tasted good, now you’ve got a game-changer for the planet. Then we could stop cutting down all the rainforests and stop overfishing.”
On Thursday, Mayfield and his colleagues published test results showing genetically modified algae thriving in the wild, but not harming the environment. Detailed in the journal Algal Research, the Department of Energy-funded experiment hints at a path to eventually cultivating vast amounts of algae that might replace carbon-based products.
Science has already shown that algae can produce protein — from “green machine” juices to fish and chicken feed — as well as biofuels called alga oil and polymers, or algae-based plastic.
But to industrialize production for mass consumption, scientists need to produce higher quality algae than currently exists in the wild, said Mayfield. Rather than laboriously breeding algae, he and researchers from Sapphire Energy, a San Diego-based company, opted to genetically engineer strains of algae that they then subjected to Southern California lake water inside a lab in order to test their viability.
“We need to domesticate algae in order to make them productive enough so they can compete and make sustainable renewable products,” said Mayfield, noting that most Americans consume genetically modified corn, beef, and other foods. “We need increased efficiencies in these organisms.”
RELATED: This Caterpillar Could Aid in Ridding the World of Plastic Waste
Mayfield also helped develop surfboards made from algae plastic with a Southern California company called Arctic Foam.
It was important that the genetically modified algae didn’t harm native plants, researchers said.
"If we are going to maintain our standard of living in the future we are going to need sustainable food and energy, and ways of making those that do not disrupt the environment,” said Jonathan Shurin, a study co-author and ecologist at UC San Diego.
The market in algae products is now around $14.5 billion a year, said Mayfield. Much of that money was in the health food business. But he expected it to grow.
With the price of oil hovering around $50, algae-based biofuels aren’t competitive now. Algae-based surfboards and other plastics have yet to take off. But there’s one use for algae that’s already in high demand: It packs a lot of protein.
As billions of low-income people in countries like China and India start ascending into the middle class, they’ll likely be craving richer diets that will be hard to satisfy without new sources of protein like algae, argued Mayfield.
“When you get more money, you start eating less grains and eating more meat,” he said. “That’s not going to work out. If 7.5 billion people on the planet were eating like Americans do today, there would be nothing left on the planet. We’d take all the cattle, all the fish. They’d be done.”
It’s not hard to grow algae, either, added Mayfield.
“You see this stuff in your swimming pool and all around. It’s sort of like weeds,” he said. “The reason they are ubiquitous is exactly the reason we need to work with them. They are survivors. We don’t need pristine farmland to grow these things. We can grow them with wastewater and ditches dug in the desert.”
WATCH: This Building Is Completely Powered by Algae | <urn:uuid:b6dbb480-7014-4598-9da2-159ea3a1584a> | {
"date": "2017-06-27T07:00:42",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-26",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128321025.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20170627064714-20170627084714-00697.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9557214975357056,
"score": 2.796875,
"token_count": 815,
"url": "https://www.seeker.com/health/biotech/field-test-of-genetically-modified-algae-highlights-its-vast-potential-researchers-say"
} |
Heo Mok was also well traveled and a fairly prolific writer. Among his works were the Cheokjuji (陟州誌) and Gi-eon (記言). The Gi-eon was a 67-volume set of writings on his studies of famous scholars and philosophers. One of the scholars written about in the Gi-eon was Kim Si-seup (金時習), who was a famous Korean scholar and government official who lived from 1435 to 1493.
According to the Gi-eon, Kim Si-seup could read by the time he was eight months old and could read and understand the Taehak (大學) and the Junyong (中庸) by the time he was five, which earned him the nickname "Ose-dongja" (五歲童子 - "the 5-year-old child"). He was so famous, in fact, that he got the attention of King Sejong (世宗), who sent a messenger with royal gifts and the message, "Raise him well because he will be of great service someday" (善養之 當大用也). By the time of King Munjong (文宗 : 1450 - 1452), Si-seup had already grown into a well-respected scholar with vast knowledge and extraordinary talent, but with the abdication of King Danjong (端宗) in 1455, Si-seup was forced to flee and begin a life as a wanderer. He took advantage of the situation, however, to visit many temples and famous places around the country. Among the famous places he visited was Weolsong Pavilion (越松亭), on the east coast of Korea, from which he viewed Ulleung/Usan. Here is the relevant passage:
登臨楓嶽五臺 窮海堧The above sentence is quite important in the Dokdo-Takeshima debate because, as you can see from the above quote, both Ulleungdo (鬱陵島) and Usando (于山島) were described as being visible from Weolsong (越松), which is on the east coast of Korea near Uljin. This quote is important because it is more evidence that the Usando in old Korean documents was not referring to Liancourt Rocks (Dokdo/Takeshima), which is much too far away to be viewed from the east coast of Korea. It is also evidence that the phrase "Ulleung/Usan" (鬱陵于山) was used to refer to the two islands as an "island group." In other words, the passage did not mean that both islands of Ulleungdo and Usando were seen from Weolsong, but that the Ulleung-Usan island group was seen.
He climbed (登臨) Mount Pung-ak (楓嶽) and Mount Odae (五臺), and the vast sea (窮海) was empty (堧).
He traveled (遊) to Weolsong (越松) and viewed (望) Ulleung/Usan (鬱陵于山).
The Ulleung-Usan island group is also what was being referred to in the following passage from King Sejong's 1454 geography text, which was describing the county of Uljin (蔚珍) and its surrounding area:
于山武陵二島在縣正東海中 二島相去不遠 風日淸明 則可望見Korean historians try to claim that the distance mentioned in the above passage was referring to the distance between the two islands, not to the distance between Uljin and the two-island group, but since the passage was among others giving distances and bearings from Uljin to places in the surrounding area, we know that the distance referred to was the distance from Uljin to the Ulleungdo-Usando island group. In the case of Ulleungdo and Usando, the bearing was given as "in the sea due east of Uljin," and the distance was given as "the distance to the two islands is close enough that they are visible on clear days when the wind in blowing" (二島相去不遠 風日淸明 則可望見).
The two islands of Usan and Muleung (于山武陵二島) are in the sea due east of this village (在縣正東海中). The distance to the two islands is close enough (二島相去不遠) that they are visible on clear days when the wind is blowing (風日淸明 則可望見).
Korean maps even showed the two islands as an island group. For example, the following Korean map of Gangwon Province from the mid-1700s showed Ulleung/Usan (鬱陵于山) as one island off the east coast of Uljin (蔚珍), but it was labeled as 鬱陵于山兩島, which means "the two islands of Ulleung and Usan."
As you can see from the above, the "Ulleung/Usan" reference in Heo Mok's story about Kim Si-seup was consistent with other Korean documents and maps, which means that the Usando (于山島) mentioned in old Korean documents and maps was not a reference to Liancourt Rocks (Dokdo/Takeshima), but rather was just a reference to a neighboring island of Ulleungdo. The neighboring island was almost certainly Ulleungdo's neighboring island of Jukdo (竹島), which is about 2.2 kilometers off Ulleungdo's east shore. By the way, in the above map, you can see Port Weolsong (越松浦) just to the lower right of Pyeonghae (平海), which is the lower green circle. Weolsong (越松) was mentioned in Heo Mok's story as the place from which Kim Si-seup saw Ulleung/Usan (鬱陵于山) .
Below is a copy Heo Mok's story of Kim Si-seup, under the title of "Cheongsa Yeoljeon" (淸士列傳), from the 11th volume of the Gi-eon (記言). The passage that mentions Ulleungdo and Usando is outlined in red. (Click on the images to enlarge.) | <urn:uuid:459be183-fc56-45e0-9539-d2e5e471a9de> | {
"date": "2017-07-24T06:36:37",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-30",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549424756.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20170724062304-20170724082304-00656.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9531723856925964,
"score": 2.890625,
"token_count": 1555,
"url": "http://dokdo-or-takeshima.blogspot.jp/2008/05/mid-1600s-1682-gi-eon-kim-si-seop-from.html"
} |
Introductioncoconut, fruit of the coco palm ( Cocos nucifera ), a tree widely distributed through tropical regions. The seed is peculiarly adapted to dispersal by water because the large pod holding the nut is buoyant and impervious to moisture. The trees therefore establish themselves naturally on small islands and low shores bordering the tropical seas. The tree grows to a height of 60–100 ft (18–30 m), with a smooth cylindrical stem marked by the ringlike scars of former leaves. It bears at the top a crown of frondlike leaves and yellow or white blossoms.
The number of nuts varies; a well-cared-for tree may yield 75 to 200 or more annually. The mature fruit as it comes from the tree is encased in a thick, brown fibrous husk. The nut itself has a hard woody shell, with three round scars at one end; the embryo lies against the largest scar and emerges through it as a developing plant. Through this easily punctured spot the "milk" of the young coconut may be drained.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Plants | <urn:uuid:631a40b5-72d1-4f57-a70b-1eef303a73f8> | {
"date": "2014-08-23T11:35:45",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-35",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1408500826016.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20140820021346-00060-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 4,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9131571054458618,
"score": 3.84375,
"token_count": 253,
"url": "http://www.factmonster.com/encyclopedia/science/coconut.html"
} |
These are poly-aromatic compounds, insoluble in n-heptane, with a number of carbon atoms greater than 50. The asphalthene content of a crude may be the cause of deposits in inter-changers and/or lines. In fact, the mix of a crude having a high asphalthene content with a paraffinic crude can displace the balance of the asphalthenes, precipitating them. A high asphalthene content ensures that the vacuum pitch will be suitable for producing asphalt.
ASTM D86 distillation is a test that measures the volatility of gasoline, kerosene and diesel.
Basic Sediment and Water (BSW)
The BSW relates to the content of free water (not dissolved) and sediments (mud, sand) in the crude. It is important that its reading is low in order to avoid dirtiness and difficulties during the crude processing, in which the steam produced by the free water can damage the oven. It is reported as a percentage in volume over the crude.
This is the weight of the residue remaining after the combustion of a fuel sample. It represents the facility of a heavy fuel to produce particles during combustion.
This is the measurement of the mass of a volume. It is expressed in kilograms per liter, or grams per cubic centimeter. Density depends on the temperature as this affects the volume of the substances.
Temperature at which a liquid stops flowing when cooled, through the precipitation of crystals of solid paraffin.
The draining temperature is very important as, in the unloading of paraffinic crudes using sea terminals with underwater pipelines of a certain length, the temperature of the crude can fall below the draining point, creating deposits of wax or solid paraffin in the pipelines, thus obstructing the flow.
This is the minimum temperature at which the vapors of a product flash or detonate momentarily when a flame is applied in controlled conditions. It represents the maximum temperature at which a product can be stored or transported in safe conditions.
This is the temperature at which the crystals formed during the cooling of a product sample disappear completely when the temperature rises in a controlled way
The metals content of a crude, vanadium and nickel, gives us an indication of their content in the heaviest products obtained in the refining. This is important because, for example, the metals in gas oil in vacuum are poison for the catalytic and hydro-cracking catalysts. A high vanadium content or metals in the combustible oil may cause oven and boiler tube breakage problems because they form corrosive products during combustion.
Number of cetane
This measures the ease with which the spontaneous ignition occurs of diesel oil using a standardized engine and a reference fuel.
The cetane rating is determined by making a comparison of the ignition time of a mix of cetane (C16)) and hepta-methyl-nonane (C 15), which has the same delay time in ignition as the fuel being examined. The cetane rating measured is the percentage of the cetane compound in the cetane/hepta-methyl-nonane mix.
The C16 has a cetane rating equal to 100 (it is an easily-ignited paraffin) and C15 has a cetane rating equal to 0 (as being a slow-combustion aromatic).
A high cetane rating represents a high ignition quality or a short delay time between the fuel injection and the start of combustion.
The diesel engine uses a high compression ratio to produce the spontaneous ignition of the diesel, instead of a spark as in the case of the internal combustion engine. The compressed air temperature in the diesel engine is sufficiently high to fire the diesel.
The lineal paraffins have a high cetane rating and therefore burn well; on the other hand, the aromatics are of a low cetane rating and burn badly, producing deposits of carbon and the production of black smoke. For that reason, high-quality diesel should have an aromatic content compatible with the specified cetane rating.
The cetane rating can be calculated based on the volatility (corresponding to the temperature of 50% distilled) and the density of the diesel and is called Calculated Cetane Rating. The reason for using the formula is the high cost of the cetane engine.
Octane number (NOR)
The RVP and NOR are the most important parameters of gasoline quality. The NOR measures the resistance of the gasoline to self-ignition or premature detonation in an engine's functioning conditions.
Self-ignition is noted for the hammering or noise produced when the gasoline self-ignites, detonating before the cylinder compresses all the gasoline and air mixture, losing power. The detonation produces sound waves that are detected using special microphones.
The octane rating is measured by comparing the noise of the detonation made by a reference fuel mixture in a standardized engine with that for which the fuel examined is made. The reference fuels are iso-octane (2, 2, 4 trimethyl pentane), with an octane rating equal to 100 (high resistance to hammering) and the n-heptane which has an octane rating of zero (very low resistance). The octane rating determined is the percentage in volume of iso-octane in the iso-octane/heptane mixture.
Fuels with a high octane rating have greater resistance to premature detonation than those of a lower octane rating. In addition, fuels with a high octane rating can be used in engines with a high compression ratio, which are more efficient.
There are two types of engine for the determination of the octane rating of gasoline. One uses the Research method and the other the Motor method.
The Research method represents the behavior of an engine in cities at low and moderate speeds. The Motor method represents situations with fast acceleration, like climbing gradients or overtaking.
There is another way of expressing the octane rating of a gasoline which is called Highway Octane. The Highway Octane rating is expressed as the sum of the Research octane and the Motor octane ratings divided by 2. The Highway Octane rating is used in the United States while the Research method is used in Chile.
Reid Vapor Pressure (RVP)
The Reid vapor pressure is an empirical test that measures the pressure in pounds per square inch (psi) exercised by the vapors or light components of the crude or of an oil product, in a closed container at a temperature of 100 °F (38 °C).
A high vapor pressure of the crude tells us that light products are present in it and that they will burn in the torch in the processing if there is no suitable recovery system. In the case of an internal combustion engine, excessive vapor pressure will cause a blockage which will impede the flow of gasoline.
Crude oil contains salt (NaCI) which comes from the oil fields or the sea water used as ballast by oil tankers. It is necessary to extract the salt with desalination equipment before the crude oil can enter the atmospheric distillation oven in order to avoid corrosion that is produced in the upper part of the atmospheric tower. The salt decomposes and produces chlorhydric acid. It is expressed in grams of salt per cubic meter of crude.
The temperature at which some products inflame spontaneously in contact with the air (without flame), probably due to the heat the show oxidation produces, which accumulates, raising the temperature to the inflammation point. Fortunately, the oil distillers have very high self-ignition temperatures and are therefore difficult to achieve; this is 450ºC in gasoline. Oily rags, on the other hand, self-ignite easily and cause fires and so should be suitably destroyed.
The ratio of the weight of a substance and the weight of an equal volume of water at the same temperature. In oil, the API specific gravity is used which is measured with hydrometers that float in the liquid. The API grades are read directly on the scale that stands above the liquid at the flotation line point. The API scale arose from the facility of graduating the hydrometer rod uniformly.
°API =141.5/(specific gravity) -131.5
The °API determines whether the crude or product is light or heavy and enables us to calculate the tons of this unloaded. A light crude has an API of 40-50 while a heavy one has 10-24.
Sulfur and the API are the properties with the greatest influence on the price of crude.
This is the resistance to degradation through heat or oxidation of an oil product. Products containing olefinic material are unstable and susceptible to degradation.
The sulfur content permits the foreseeing of difficulties in meeting product and atmospheric emission specifications, as treatment units are needed to meet these; it is also poison for some catalysts. It also enables us to see whether the plant metallurgy is the most suitable for processing it. It is expressed as a percentage in weight of sulfur.
Sulfuric acid (H2S)
A prior knowledge of the sulfuric acid content of the crude permits preventive actions and avoids accidents to people. The sulfhydric acid is very dangerous because it anesthetizes the olfactory nerve which prevents people from being aware of the situation and is mortal in small quantities. Personnel working in contact with the crude have therefore to wear protection equipment and personal sulfhydric acid sensors.
This is the degree of resistance of a liquid to flow. The greater the viscosity, the greater the resistance to flow. Viscosity is affected by the temperature, reducing it when the latter rises. It is measured by using special viscosimeters and is expressed in USS (Universal Saybolt Seconds), FSS (Furol Saybolt Seconds) and in centi-stokes.
Viscosity is important for fuel injection in engines and burners. It is also critical in the pumping of crude oil and products by pipeline. A higher viscosity than that designed for will reduce the desired flow and make a greater pump motor capacity necessary. The viscosity also affects measuring instrument factors, altering the readings.
The measurement of the facility with which a product vaporizes. Volatile products have high steam pressure and a low boiling point. It is measured through the ASTM D86 test and is expressed as the temperature at which certain volumes are distilled. | <urn:uuid:af7864c1-8a24-425f-8b7a-b3fc220bcc94> | {
"date": "2013-05-24T23:05:37",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2013-20",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9173281192779541,
"score": 2.796875,
"token_count": 2152,
"url": "http://www.enap.cl/english/glosario/"
} |
Photo from : www.michigan.gov
Female mosquito lay eggs a day or two after having a blood meal, this the case for mosquito like Aedes which can cause Dengue fever. Female mosquito need stagnant water for eggs laying.
While practicing Aquaponics, the time that I use solid swirl filter I found thousands of dead mosquito trapped in the dry upper part of the filter housing. This lead me to believe that mosquitoes lay eggs in my Aquaponics set, and somehow the eggs are then suck up by pump to be delivered into the swirl filter and trapping them there till they form adult mosquito and since the chamber is sealed, no mosquito can escape.
Thank god for this, imagine thousands of mosquito make their way out over period of time if not for the sealed housing.
What happen if you do not have swirl filter where the mosquito eggs, larva and pupa goes, the answer is simple - Fish Food. Eggs, Larvae and Pupa is a source of food to fish. Once Mosquito lay their eggs in the fish tank, they can be eaten by fish and if not, once developed into larva its then a better option for most fish.
So having fish pond or Aquaponics set near your house is a good thing in Mosquito control, adult female will lay eggs in these set and it will then be consume by the fishes keeping mosquito under checked.
Quote from HowStuffWork
Eradicating the female mosquitoes and their eggs is essential to mosquito control. Since mosquitoes lay eggs in water, you should eliminate all sources of standing water, such as watering cans or old tires. Cover any rain barrels, and if you have a pond, stock it with fish that will eat the mosquito larvae.So take up Aquaponics, its a good way to reduce Mosquito in you area. It will do the community good. | <urn:uuid:6fed8301-f072-43da-8b13-3d3119ceb985> | {
"date": "2015-11-30T22:25:12",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2015-48",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-48/segments/1448398464253.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20151124205424-00139-ip-10-71-132-137.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9464439153671265,
"score": 2.859375,
"token_count": 384,
"url": "http://www.affnanaquaponics.com/2013/04/aquaponics-and-mosquitoes.html"
} |
Wed October 16, 2013
When Will The Government Run Out Of Money?
Originally published on Wed October 16, 2013 11:19 am
In the course of any given month, the government collects billions of dollars in taxes, spends billions more, and borrows money to cover the difference between what it collects and what it spends.
If Congress doesn't raise the debt ceiling soon, the government won't be able to borrow money to cover the difference anymore and won't be able to pay all of its bills.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has said that, after Oct. 17, the government can't guarantee that it will be able to make all its payments. But the government won't run out of money Thursday; it will still have about $30 billion left.
The Bipartisan Policy Center predicts the money will run out some time between Oct. 22 and Nov. 1. This graph shows some major payments the government has to make during that window. Note the pile of bills due on Nov. 1.
It's unclear exactly when the government will run out of money. That's because the amount of money the government collects in taxes on any given day can vary a lot. Spending can vary, too.
As the Bipartisan Policy Center wrote recently:
"For example, in October of last year, about $3 billion in revenue was collected on one Tuesday, just over $6 billion was received on another Tuesday, and almost $11 billion arrived on yet another Tuesday. Furthermore, while spending is subject to less uncertainty than revenue, it still varies. For example, on some days, Medicare spending can exceed $2.5 billion while on other days, it is closer to $1 billion."
NPR's John Ydstie has more on this story today on Morning Edition. | <urn:uuid:4adbe365-87a9-4aad-b2cd-0c4b27ec7791> | {
"date": "2015-01-26T22:41:47",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2015-06",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-06/segments/1422121914832.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20150124175154-00008-ip-10-180-212-252.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9692802429199219,
"score": 2.75,
"token_count": 366,
"url": "http://kttz.org/post/when-will-government-run-out-money"
} |
Discover the difference between Phase I and Phase II braces.
Want to give your child a head start to a happy smile? Consider Phase I orthodontic treatment. It will give your youngster the edge he needs to make Phase II (traditional braces) go quicker and easier. Here’s what you need to know about Phase I and Phase II treatment.
Phase I fixes problems before they get worse.
Phase I treatment is geared toward children between the ages of 4 and 12 who still have baby teeth. It’s used to correct problems early on so your child can spend less time in traditional braces, avoid extractions and eliminate the need for headgear.
Younger children may benefit from Phase I treatment if they have:
- Gaps between their upper and lower teeth.
- Skeletal problems that affect chewing, speech and facial appearance.
- An anterior crossbite also called an underbite.
- Upper jaw issues that cause crowded teeth.
- Bad habits that lead to open bites such as thumb-sucking, teeth grinding, mouth breathing and holding the tongue between teeth.
As a parent, you may worry about your little boy or girl undergoing treatment so young. But consider these advantages:
- Younger children adapt more easily to corrective appliances.
- Younger tissue responds better to treatment.
- Kids feel better about themselves when their mouth and jaw issues are corrected.
- Starting young improves long-term stability.
- Phase I patients spend less time in full braces (Phase II treatment) when they’re older.
Phase II puts the finishing touches on a perfect smile.
Traditional orthodontic treatment is called Phase II. It usually begins when your child is around 11 or 12 and all of his adult teeth have erupted. The focus of Phase II is to straighten teeth to make them easier to clean and correct bite problems.
Straight teeth offer your child several advantages. They:
- allow your child to chew food properly.
- lower the risk of cavities and gum disease.
- enable your child to speak comfortably.
- raise your adolescent’s self-esteem.
Learn more about Phase I and Phase II orthodontic treatment. Schedule an appointment with an orthodontist today. Let’s work together to give your child a happy, healthy smile for a lifetime. | <urn:uuid:f77182ec-54d7-4721-97aa-f317412b5c75> | {
"date": "2019-12-12T19:17:54",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2019-51",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-51/segments/1575540545146.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20191212181310-20191212205310-00096.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9213213920593262,
"score": 2.828125,
"token_count": 483,
"url": "https://ashbyparkortho.com/give-your-child-a-head-start-to-a-happy-smile/"
} |
One thing I notice was missing in this write up is the software that the Raspberry Pis are running. The students are learning programming using MIT's Scratch platform (https://scratch.mit.edu/) and are learning numeracy, math, and science using KA Lite (https://learningequality.org/ka-lite/) a platform designed to give offline access to Khan Academy exercises and videos, in an environment that provides some of the motivational features and coach reporting tools that Khan Academy has available for teachers. Both of these tools are free and open source.
(Note: I am one of the developers of the KA Lite platform and part of the organisation that develops and maintains it, Learning Equality).
KA Lite is also currently evolving into a broader platform for content distribution, with a deployment to provide customized teacher training materials in South Sudan (through War Child, and again UNICEF). | <urn:uuid:742dda01-b2b6-419d-b624-4a6fb77d7e23> | {
"date": "2018-02-23T04:37:36",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2018-09",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-09/segments/1518891814393.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20180223035527-20180223055527-00656.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9478301405906677,
"score": 2.5625,
"token_count": 181,
"url": "https://challenges.openideo.com/profiles/1016809493447894467761"
} |
Since 1891, a gigantic jet of water has been Geneva’s most important landmark. This narrow column of water shooting straight up to a staggering height of 140 meters is one of the most recognizable part of Geneva’s skyline. It has some pretty impressive stats: every second, five hundred liters of water exit the 4-inch diameter nozzle at speeds of 200 km per hour. At any given moment, there are about 7,000 liters of water are in the air.
Called Jet d'Eau, which means ‘Water-Jet’ in French, the fountain is located on Lake Geneva at the point where the lake empties into the Rhône river. There is a narrow stone jetty, dating to the same year the fountain was installed, that takes visitors from the shores of the lake right to the nozzle where the fountain begins.
Photo credit: Bradwin Cruz/Flickr
This famous Swiss landmark originally began as a safety valve to reduce excess pressure that would build up on the city’s hydraulic power network. A hydraulic power network uses pressurized water to transmit mechanical power from a large central pump to workshops and factories around the city through a network of pipes, just like the electrical grid transmits power from a generating station to end-users.
The idea of a public hydraulic power network was first suggested by Joseph Bramah in the early 1800s, and the first low-pressure system began appearing in England in the 1840s, but the real breakthrough occurred in 1850 with the introduction of the hydraulic accumulator, which allowed much higher pressures to be used. By the end of the 19th century, many cities around the world had working hydraulic power networks. These included London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Antwerp, Melbourne, Sydney, Buenos Aires and Geneva.
The Geneva hydraulic power network was set up in 1879 with a 300 HP steam engine pumping water from Lake Geneva both for drinking and pressurized water supply. Increased demand prompted the city to install a new pumping plant in 1886 using the water power of the river Rhône. The water pressure was used to power machines in more than a hundred workshops and factories. At the end of each workday, as the factories switched off the machines one at the time, excess pressure would build up in the system, and so a safety valve was needed to release this pressure. This safety valve became Geneva’s first fountain creating a water plume 30 meters high.
Soon the tall fountain became a landmark of the city. Seeing how popular the fountain had become, the city decided to move the fountain to its present location in 1891 for the sole purpose of attracting tourist. More power was added to it so that water rose to 90 meters. In 1951, the power was notched up once again to its current height of 140 meters —the sixth tallest fountain in the world.
Today, the fountain operates throughout the day all year round, and at evening it’s lit up by colorful lights.
The first Jet d'Eau in Geneva, circa 1886. Photo credit: public domain
Photo credit: edouardv66/Flickr
Photo credit: Birambole/Wikimedia
Photo credit: edwademd/Flickr
Photo credit: Brigitte Djajasasmita/Flickr
Photo credit: Alexey M./Wikimedia
Other tall fountains in the world:
King Fahad’s Fountain or Jeddah Fountain in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (260 meters). Photo credit: Tofazzal Hossain Raju/Flickr
World Cup Fountain in Seoul, South Korea, built to commemorate the 2002 FIFA World Cup (202 meters). Photo credit: Doo Ho Kim/Flickr
Gateway Geyser in East St. Louis, Illinois, United States (192 meters)
The fountain of Fountain Hills, Arizona, United States (171 meters). Photo credit: Tom McCabe/Wikimedia
Port Fountain of Clifton Beach, Karachi (152 meters)
Subscribe to our Newsletter and get articles like this delieverd straight to your inbox | <urn:uuid:06645f7d-2a7d-4c42-8d69-a1cdf8d6a564> | {
"date": "2017-02-21T01:04:57",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-09",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170614.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00624-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9397335052490234,
"score": 3.3125,
"token_count": 840,
"url": "http://www.amusingplanet.com/2016/12/jet-deau-lake-geneva-fountain.html"
} |
More and more couples are considering surrogacy and for some it may be their only chance to have a child.
There are two types of surrogacy. Straight (traditional) surrogacy uses the egg of the surrogate mother and the sperm of the intended father. This means the baby is biologically related to the intended father and the surrogate mother. Host (or gestational) surrogacy uses the egg of the intended mother and the sperm of the intended father. Sometimes donor sperm is used. A baby conceived in this way is not biologically related to the surrogate mother.
It is very important to be aware of the law surrounding surrogacy and we would recommend you contact the voluntary organisations which work in the field for advice on the legal issues. | <urn:uuid:6a137f71-fade-407d-97fa-9e5f31a601bc> | {
"date": "2017-05-29T22:40:24",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-22",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-22/segments/1495463613135.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20170529223110-20170530003110-00364.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9612691402435303,
"score": 2.59375,
"token_count": 147,
"url": "http://fertilitynetworkuk.org/for-those-trying-to-become-parents/information/fertility-treatment-options/surrogacy/"
} |
A histogram is a bar graph that represents a frequency distribution -- organized to show how often each possible outcome of a repeated event occurs. A manpower histogram can show how many people or hours are needed to get a job done over time, so you can schedule the right number of workers for each stage of a project.
Manpower histograms are likely to be most useful in situations where the project is going to go through predictable stages: preparing and ramping up, peak activity and ramping down. Construction projects are a good example. Creating the histogram is a way of predicting the need for labor at each stage so you don’t have people waiting around for work or delays caused by being understaffed. In a factory that is producing a product on a continuing basis, such a histogram would most often show a straight line, so it would not produce a lot of useful information.
To create the histogram, one axis, the horizontal line at the bottom of the graph, for example, can show the time line for the project, and the vertical axis can plot the number of workers or the number of hours they are going to be working. The bars' height corresponds to the number of people needed and where they stand on the time line represents where they are needed at that stage of the project. The typical distribution for this kind of project is an “S” curve, with a few workers at the start, sweeping up as the number of people and hours rises to the top, when most of the work is being done, and finally leveling off and declining when there is just a little is left to be done.
You can use Excel or another spreadsheet program to produce a histogram. From the pull-down menus, select “Edit," "Fill" and "Series” to create the bins. For frequencies, choose “Tools," "Data," "Analysis" and "Histogram.” Alternatively, you can use a histogram creation program such as SBHisto Histogram Generator 1.2. This is a free basic program that can create histograms from plain text (ASCII) data files, without a lot of bells and whistles.
- construction worker in uniform at work image by dinostock from Fotolia.com | <urn:uuid:c394a392-384e-450c-8377-113281361cd1> | {
"date": "2017-11-25T09:58:34",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-47",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-47/segments/1510934809746.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20171125090503-20171125110503-00656.warc.gz",
"int_score": 4,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9424079656600952,
"score": 3.59375,
"token_count": 464,
"url": "https://bizfluent.com/way-6330412-creating-manpower-histogram.html"
} |
Mentioned in ?
References in periodicals archive ?
Selon un passager ayant effectue son enregistrement depuis 12h30 et jusqu'a 19h00, aucune explication ni information n'a ete donnee aux passagers dont le nombre est estime a une cinquantaine de personnes.
Developing a satisfying NSM explication, especially for a very complex concept, involves a protracted struggle to find ways of formulating ideas in the small vocabulary of the simple translatable metalanguage.
Relentless, the beat of explication goes on to this day: Sloterdijk highlights a project paper, developed by the US Department of Defense in 1996, titled "Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025," which looks forward to "battlefield dominance" through ionosphere control.
This is a richly rewarding explication of American myth and racial politics that speaks to our time as well as to the century-old record it examines.
Though played amiably by Jason Graae, this nonsinging role stops the action only to offer obvious plot explication and useless details about the composer's life.
The tenuous relationship between John Leland and the Primitive Baptists needs further explication.
It shines in the authors' explication of Tillich's thought on idolatry and the very adept application of that critique to the Christian tradition, including Tillich's own neglect of the potential for hidden idolatry in God-language.
Bloom puts it succinctly: "[Shakespeare] wrote the text of modern life and he defies explication.
Schwartz's text, written for college students, tends to sacrifice rasa, of flavor, for explication.
Covey breaks this down in a step-by-step explication that goes on for nearly 400 pages and supplements that with a DVD that provides narratives related to his instruction.
She eschews anything that resembles explication de texte and instead relies upon the prosecutorial-conspiratorial musings of Semyon Reznik.
Although Lhamon's explication of Jim Crow's evolution into a nineteenth-century "hip-hop" rebel is beautifully developed, the book could benefit from a documented history of how the "rebel" image of Jim Crow the integrationist became the symbol for segregation.
Legal browser ?
- explain incorrectly
- explain the meaning
- explain the nature of
- explain wrongly
- explanation for some delinquency
- Explanation of terms used in legal context
- explanatory comment
- explanatory note
- explanatory remark
- explicators of the law
- explicit utterance
- explosive device
- export and import
Full browser ?
- explication de texte
- explications de texte
- explicators of the law
- Explicit Algebraic Number Theory
- Explicit Algebraic Stress Model
- Explicit and Fair Window Adjustment
- Explicit Bankruptcy Cost
- Explicit Bankruptcy Costs
- Explicit Call Transfer
- explicit collusion
- Explicit Congestion Echo
- Explicit Congestion Notification
- Explicit Congestion Notification-Echo
- explicit consent | <urn:uuid:5716a95c-a062-4264-9a4d-74cbca6d79c5> | {
"date": "2018-10-18T17:19:23",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2018-43",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-43/segments/1539583511889.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20181018152212-20181018173712-00336.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.7996431589126587,
"score": 2.8125,
"token_count": 667,
"url": "http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/explication"
} |
Flores Island Geography
The island of Flores, with an area of 55 square miles (143.11 km2), is 11 miles (17 km) long and 7 miles (12.5 km) at its widest point. The highest part of the central plateau is Morro Alto with an altitude of 3,000 feet (914 m). The island is situated on 31º 59′ west longitude and 39º 25′ north latitude.
Flores developed initially from a submarine volcano from the Pleistocene period that constructed small calderas and numerous volcanic cones. Following a long period of quiescence beginning about 200,000 years ago, several young craters and associated lava flows erupted during the Holocene period including two about 3,000 years ago. The “Funda de Lajes” tuff ring formed about 3150 years ago was accompanied by a lava flow that traveled toward the southeast reach the area of Lajes.
The Island has deep valleys and high peaks. Morro Alto is the highest peak of the island reaching an altitude of 915 meters. It has several inactive volcanoes including “Caldeira Funda das Lajes” last erupted in 1200 BC, and “Caldeira Comprida” last erupted in 950 BC. Some of these volcanoes have calderas (“caldeiras” in Portuguese) in which water has collected to form lakes. There are seven of these lakes on the island. The caldera “Lagoa Funda” is considered the best. “Aguas Quentes” are small hot springs of boiling sulfurous water. “Gruta de Enxareus” is an enormous grotto, about 50 meters long and 25 meters wide. | <urn:uuid:b1fd3169-cf8c-472a-bec6-7223df09f803> | {
"date": "2018-10-20T10:26:40",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2018-43",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-43/segments/1539583512693.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20181020101001-20181020122501-00136.warc.gz",
"int_score": 4,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.927498996257782,
"score": 3.625,
"token_count": 370,
"url": "https://azores.com/azores/islands/flores/geography"
} |
Researchers identify plasma-based biomarkers that may one day be used to diagnose Parkinson’s disease
Grand Rapids, Mich. (Jan. 22, 2013) – Van Andel Institute researchers have identified plasma-based molecular biomarkers that may one day lead to a blood test to diagnose Parkinson’s disease.
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common degenerative disorder of the central nervous system. In the early stages of the disease, its most obvious symptoms generally, though not always, include tremor, rigidity, slowness of movement and difficulty with gait.
Current Parkinson’s disease diagnosis is based primarily on subjective physical examinations related to patient motor function. Molecular biomarkers that are objective and quantifiable would be highly useful as clinical tools to detect PD prior to the development of the disease’s motor symptoms.
“A diagnostic test to determine the status of a patient’s disease onset would provide crucial data for more timely, efficient, and successful therapeutic interventions,” said Patrik Brundin, M.D., Ph.D, Director of Van Andel Institute’s Center for Neurodegenerative Science. “There is an urgent need to develop objective, measureable biomarkers to improve PD diagnostics and help define its subtypes, and Dr. Khoo’s interesting study is an important step in that direction.”
According to the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, as many as one million Americans live with Parkinson’s disease, with approximately 60,000 new cases diagnosed each year. An estimated seven to 10 million people worldwide are living with Parkinson’s disease.
The proof-of-concept study, published in December in the Journal of Parkinson’s Disease, aimed to identify, develop, and validate plasma-based circulating microRNA (miRNAs) as biomarkers for PD.
Although clinical diagnostic tests based on biochemical analysis of biofluids from PD patients have yet to be established, biofluids such as blood plasma and serum could provide an ideal resource for development of such biomarkers, since the miRNAs detected in various cells and tissues can also be found in them.
“The ideal biomarker should be minimally-invasive, cost efficient, quantifiable, reproducible, specific, and sensitive,” said Van Andel Institute Research Scientist Sok Kean Khoo, Ph.D., the study’s lead author. “The miRNAs identified in the study fit all of the criteria of high-quality biomarkers.”
“Patients have been hoping for an accurate test to confirm the clinical diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease,” said Leslie A. Neuman, M.D., a Neurologist at Saint Mary’s Health Care and collaborator on the study. “A sensitive and reliable biomarker would be invaluable to the diagnostic process, especially as we get into the areas of disease modification and neuroprotection.”
“This project required the collaborative effort of both scientists and clinicians to make it a success,” Khoo added. “I’d like to thank The Michael J. Fox Foundation for partially funding this project and the Grand Rapids, Michigan and Ume˚a, Sweden communities for participating in this important study.”
The study was carried out in partnership with researchers from the Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorder Center at University of Chicago; The Neuroscience Program of Saint Mary’s Health Care; the Department of Pharmacology and Clinical Neuroscience, Ume˚a University, Sweden; and the School of Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
Research was supported by Van Andel Institute, Van Andel Institute’s Purple Community: 100% Hope, the Swedish Medical Research Council, the Erling-Persson Family Foundation, the Swedish Parkinson Foundation, the Swedish Parkinson’s Disease Association, and The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research Rapid Response Innovation Award. Special thanks also to Parkinson’s patient Steve Majerle for his support of the project.
About Van Andel Institute
Established by Jay and Betty Van Andel in 1996, Van Andel Institute (VAI) is an independent research and educational organization based in Grand Rapids, Mich., dedicated to preserving, enhancing and expanding the frontiers of medical science, and to achieving excellence in education by probing fundamental issues of education and the learning process. Van Andel Education Institute (VAEI) is dedicated to strengthening science education and preparing and motivating individuals to pursue science or science-related professions. Van Andel Research Institute (VARI), the research arm of VAI, is dedicated to probing the genetic, cellular and molecular origins of cancer, Parkinson’s and other diseases and working to translate those findings into effective therapies. This is accomplished through the work of over 200 researchers and in collaborative partnerships that span the globe. | <urn:uuid:0cdf3927-27bc-4691-b6b3-e6c4e28b857a> | {
"date": "2018-06-19T12:12:08",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2018-26",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-26/segments/1529267862929.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20180619115101-20180619135101-00256.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9231352210044861,
"score": 2.671875,
"token_count": 1018,
"url": "https://vari.vai.org/press-release-1-22-2013-2/"
} |
In the MEME programme, “evolution” is studied in all its facets. As a consequence, MEME has a very broad multi-disciplinary focus.
Evolutionary biology seeks to understand the functioning of the living world (from bacteria to humans) by viewing organisms and their interactions as the result of a historical process that is driven by natural and sexual selection, the interplay of genetics, epigenetics and development, the interactions of organisms with their biotic and abiotic environment, biogeography, and macro-evolutionary processes like speciation. Modern evolutionary biology is not primarily focused on understanding the history of life and the course of evolution in the past, but mainly addresses evolution as it is happening now.
Only few scientific theories have been as influential as Darwin’s theory of evolution. As it became obvious that many biological processes are better understood in their evolutionary context, evolutionary thinking became an integral part of disciplines such as ecology, developmental biology, biogeography, phylogenetics and, more recently, epidemiology, immunology, genomics, bioinformatics, and systems biology. In addition, evolutionary thinking is gaining a strong foothold in non-biological disciplines such as economics, informatics, robotics, medicine, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, psychology and even philosophy. For example, evolutionary principles help us to understand why we get ill and how to protect against diseases (“Darwinian Medicine”); they help us to understand the human mind (“Evolutionary Psychology”), and they provide an explanation for the functioning of organisations and markets (“Evolutionary Economics”). | <urn:uuid:a3a2adc5-a561-4d47-a10b-64e9fe3678ad> | {
"date": "2017-07-25T00:45:21",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-30",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549424945.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20170725002242-20170725022242-00176.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9473174810409546,
"score": 2.8125,
"token_count": 333,
"url": "http://www.evobio.eu/evolutionary-biology"
} |
“What makes a desert beautiful is that it hides a well somewhere.”
Author Antoine De Saint Exupery was an aviator for many years. In December 1945, his plane went down in the Sahara desert. With only one day’s worth of liquid, he and his mechanic/navigator survived for four days. Their lives were saved by a Bedouin who discovered them and administered life-saving rehydration.
Once upon a time, there was a little prince who lived on a planet that was barely larger than he, and who needed a friend.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry published The Little Prince in 1943. (The story doesn’t begin with the above sentence, but it might have, if the Brothers Grimm had written it.)
Some big lessons from the little prince ~
Remember to look beyond the surface.
Don’t hide your true feelings; it will cost you everything that is important.
Judge yourself before you judge others.
There is very little substance in coveting the admiration of others.
You should never take yourself too seriously.
Don’t forget to enjoy your life — take a moment and take it all in.
Follow your instincts to explore.
Care for the the things you have, for they cannot be replaced.
Sometimes you have to let those you love fly free.
Think back to when you were a curious imaginative tyke. I bet you can remember a lot ~ houses and cars in your neighborhood, peculiarities of your neighbors, where you played, where you walked, where you dared not go. As grownups, we aren’t nearly as aware, our child-like joy of living a wide-awake life flattened, and so, we ‘see’ less and less. Been there, done that.
*OK,what do you see?
All grown-ups were once children … but only few of them remember it.
*It’s a boa constrictor that has eaten an elephant.
In this slim volume, The Little Prince teaches kids about being les grandes personnes, grownups. But, truly, it teaches Big People about how to be Better Big People. At the end of the day, isn’t that all that really matters? | <urn:uuid:452e5785-aca0-4a16-a6c1-21a04d9f991b> | {
"date": "2018-01-16T09:30:21",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2018-05",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-05/segments/1516084886397.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20180116090056-20180116110056-00256.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9576774835586548,
"score": 2.59375,
"token_count": 478,
"url": "https://wordswewomenwrite.com/2016/03/24/did-someone-say-tbt-59/"
} |
On this day in 2005, a massive 7.6-magnitude earthquake strikes the Kashmir border region between India and Pakistan. An estimated 70,000 people—nearly half of them children—were killed and 70,000 more were injured. More than 3 million were left homeless and without food and basic supplies.
Kashmir is located at the juncture of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates—the collision of which caused the formation of the Himalayas—making it prone to intense seismic activity. The 2005 earthquake, classified as major by the U.S. Geological Survey, may have been the worst to ever hit the region. It caused extensive destruction in Pakistan-administered Kashmir; Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province; the western and southern regions of the Kashmir Valley, part of India-administered Kashmir; and northern Pakistan. Damage was also reported in northern India and Afghanistan. More than 140 aftershocks rocked the area in the hours after the quake. In some places, whole sections of towns slid off cliffs and entire families were killed. The provincial capital of Muzaffarabad suffered severe devastation and the town of Balakot was almost completely wiped out. In all, hundreds of thousands of buildings were destroyed.
The earthquake occurred just before the onset of the region’s harsh winter, exacerbating the disaster’s effects. Within a week, snow started to fall in some of the affected areas. In addition, landslides wiped out large numbers of the region’s roads, making many of the damaged areas inaccessible to relief workers in the immediate aftermath.
Damages from the earthquake were expected to exceed $5 billion. The outpouring of aid was generous, with pledges totaling more than $5.5 billion. | <urn:uuid:4ed95f11-acc1-456d-800f-cc9dba11749c> | {
"date": "2015-12-02T05:12:48",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2015-48",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-48/segments/1448399326483.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20151124210846-00070-ip-10-71-132-137.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 4,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.967879593372345,
"score": 3.875,
"token_count": 359,
"url": "http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/massive-earthquake-hits-kashmir-region"
} |
LONDON (AP) - In a cramped, humid laboratory in London, mosquitoes swarming in stacked, net-covered cages are being scrutinized for keys to controlling malaria.
Scientists have genetically modified hundreds of them, hoping to stop them from spreading the killer disease.
Faced with a losing battle against malaria, scientists are increasingly exploring new avenues that might have seemed far-fetched just a few years ago.
"We don't have things we can rely on," said Andrea Crisanti, the malaria expert in charge of genetically modifying mosquitoes at London's Imperial College. "It's time to try something else."
Malaria kills nearly three million people worldwide every year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Millions of bed nets have been handed out, and villages across the continent have been doused with insecticide. But those measures haven't put a significant dent in malaria cases.
After a string of failed initiatives, the United Nations recently announced a campaign to provide bed nets to anyone who needs them by 2010.
Some scientists think creating mutant mosquitoes resistant to the disease might work better.
"We still have a malaria burden that is increasing," said Yeya Toure, a tropical disease expert at the World Health Organization.
"Under such circumstances, we have to investigate whether genetically modified mosquitoes could make a difference," said Toure, who is not involved in the Imperial College research.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has found the work so promising it has invested nearly $38 million into genetic strategies to stop mosquitoes from transmitting diseases like malaria and dengue fever.
"This is one of those high-tech, high risk innovations that would fundamentally change the struggle between humans and mosquitoes," said Dr. Regina Rabinovich, director of infectious diseases development at the Gates Foundation.
Mosquitoes bred to be immune to malaria could break the disease's transmission cycle. "That is the nirvana of malaria control," said Rabinovich. "It would potentially transform what the field looks like."
In 2005, Crisanti proved it was possible to create a genetically modified mosquito by inserting a gene that glowed fluorescent green in males.
Among other possibilities, he and his team are now planning to create sterile male mosquitoes to mate with wild female mosquitoes, thus stunting population growth. They are also trying to engineer a malaria-resistant mosquito.
Last year, American researchers created mosquitoes resistant to a type of malaria that infects mice. Others are altering the DNA of the mosquitoes that spread dengue.
But not everyone thinks these super mosquitoes are such a good idea. Some scientists think there are too many genetic puzzles to be solved for modified mosquitoes to work.
The malaria-causing parasite, which mosquitoes then transmit to humans, is simply too good at evading anything scientists might devise to protect the mosquito, argued to Jo Lines, a malaria expert at London's School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
"It's a series of arms races that the parasite has consistently won," Lines said. Whenever mosquitoes have developed genes resistant to the malaria-causing parasite, the parasite has always found a way around it, Lines said.
Quantity might also be a problem. "You are going to need to produce billions of these mosquitoes if this is ever going to work," Lines said.
Some environmentalists worried that genetically modified mosquitoes might wreak havoc in the ecosystem.
"Can't we just give mosquito nets to people instead of looking at these really complex technological fixes that mess with the very delicate balance of nature and evolutionary history?" asked Gillian Madill, a genetic technologies campaigner at Friends of the Earth in Washington.
Rabinovich said rigorous testing would be done before releasing any genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild.
"It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature," she said. "But if you can come up with another way of tackling (malaria), this is not something that one walks away from without fully evaluating it."
Over the next year, Crisanti hopes to finalize plans for a test release of genetically modified mosquitoes in southern Italy. There, millions of the insects will be set loose in large cages to determine things like how they might interact with wild mosquitoes and how many would be needed to knock out malaria.
Crisanti acknowledged there might be unintended consequences of releasing genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild, although he could not predict what they might be.
The scientist said it was a risk worth taking.
"I think there is a moral good to doing it," he said. "If we do this right, the mosquitoes will get rid of malaria for us."
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) | <urn:uuid:7da1033f-1560-4014-ae6e-99030747fc72> | {
"date": "2016-02-11T07:10:02",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2016-07",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-07/segments/1454701161718.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160205193921-00163-ip-10-236-182-209.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9557012319564819,
"score": 3.296875,
"token_count": 948,
"url": "http://abcnews.go.com/Health/GlobalHealth/story?id=5202064&page=1&singlePage=true"
} |
by Bob Thomas
Our most common orchid is so non-descript and camouflaged in its aquatic habitat that it is seldom seen, even by avid naturalists.
The plant is the water-spider orchid, Habenaria repens. For years I've considered it a plant that thrives in acidic waters with loads of tannins, such as the lake at Percy Quin State Park in Mississippi. Although I've occasionally found it spottily distributed in Louisiana, I could always find it when my family spent time in Percy Quin. It ranges from Texas to North Carolina.
I was recently pleasantly surprised to find this orchid thriving in a small, yet very healthy, cypress swamp. It is abundant at the Jean Lafitte Nature Study Park, adjacent to Fisher Middle High School in the Town of Jean Lafitte, Louisiana.
This sensational nature area (replete with a 0.8 mile-long boardwalk) has cypress of all sizes, from seedlings to mature trees. Due to the presence of a thin canopy, the water surface sports a dense growth of many marsh plant species. In fact, the plants form a floating mat with the green water-spider orchids laced into the dense growth. You can easily follow the boardwalk and enjoy the cypress, heron rookery, the occasional alligator, and more, and not see the orchids at all.
The floating mat is perfect for water-spider orchids, because the species may set seeds and/or propagate by runners (stolons) that spread in all directions.
Water-spider orchids appear as one- to two-foot high stalks protruding from the surface. On close examination, the stalks are covered with greenish white orchid flowers that have the perianth (the sepals and petals together) divided into small elongated lobes that are reminiscent of spiders - thus the name. Their leaves are about ten inches long, and one inch wide.
In the evenings, the flowers emit a strong fragrance, which evidently attracts its pollinators - night-flying moths.
Habenariol is a chemical produced by water-spider orchids that deters feeding activities by red crawfish, Procambarus clarkii.
Joe Baucum, one of the founders of the nature study park and an avid local naturalist, introduced me to this gorgeous nature reserve. He and his colleagues maintain and monitor its health and well-being. Having water-spider orchids so common along the boardwalk is an added thrill.
DIRECTIONS TO THE JEAN LAFITTE NATURE STUDY PARK: On Jean Lafitte Boulevard (LA 45) in Lafitte (the town, not the national park), turn left on City Park Drive (the first street after you pass Fisher Middle High School). Drive the short distance to the levee, park, walk over the levee, and you are on the boardwalk.
Water-spider orchids, Habenaria repens, Water-spider orchids.
growing densely in a floating marsh at Jean Photo by Bob Thomas.
Lafitte Nature Study Park.
Photo by Bob Thomas.
Water-spider orchid flowers. Water-spider orchid spike (raceme)
Photo by Bob Thomas. of flowers.
Photo by Bob Thomas.
Habitat of water-spider orchids, Jean Joe Baucum at the entrance of the
Lafitte Nature Study Park. Jean Lafitte Nature Study Park.
Photo by Bob Thomas. Photo by Bob Thomas. | <urn:uuid:1d383fc1-d6b8-4a0a-b27a-678fad783aa4> | {
"date": "2016-10-26T11:16:55",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2016-44",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720941.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00500-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9267066121101379,
"score": 3.03125,
"token_count": 753,
"url": "http://loyno.edu/lucec/natural-history-writings/water-spider-orchid-habenaria-repens"
} |
Regulation of Cannabis sativa L. is complicated by the fact that there are two common varieties of the plant with very different properties: the agricultural variety, known by the common name hemp, and the pharmacological variety, marijuana. Prior to prohibition in the United States, industrial hemp was the subject of considerable excitement and speculation. The same is true today, as lawmakers and stakeholders in many states are considering the potential for reintroducing industrial hemp into the domestic economy.
The environmental performance of industrial hemp products is of particular interest because, to a large degree, environmental inefficiencies impose costs on society as a whole, not just on the producers and consumers of a specific good. Many commodities which came to replace traditional uses of industrial hemp in the United States in the last century and a half have created significant environmental externalities.
Assessments of industrial hemp as compared to hydrocarbon or other traditional industrial feedstocks show that, generally, hemp requires substantially lower energy demands for manufacturing, is often suited to less-toxic means of processing, provides competitive product performance (especially in terms of durability, light weight, and strength), greater recyclability and/or biodegradability, and a number of value-added applications for byproducts and waste materials at either end of the product life cycle. Unlike petrochemical feedstocks, industrial hemp production offsets carbon dioxide emissions, helping to close the carbon cycle.
The positive aspects of industrial hemp as a crop are considered in the context of countervailing attributes. Performance areas where industrial hemp may have higher average environmental costs than comparable raw materials result from the use of water and fertilizer during the growth stage, greater frequency of soil disturbance (erosion) during cultivation compared to forests and some field crops, and relatively high water use during the manufacturing stage of hemp products.
Overall, social pressure and government mandates for lower dioxin production, lower greenhouse gas emissions, greater bio-based product procurement, and a number of other environmental regulations, seem to directly contradict the wisdom of prohibiting an evidently useful and unique crop like hemp. | <urn:uuid:bb263078-58c4-49a8-ad37-b13497a28718> | {
"date": "2014-04-23T18:59:01",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-15",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-15/segments/1398223203235.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20140423032003-00155-ip-10-147-4-33.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9372676014900208,
"score": 3.171875,
"token_count": 415,
"url": "http://reason.org/news/show/1002980.html"
} |
Race to Save the Planet
Collaboration is key to solving some of the world’s most challenging issues. Race to Save the Planet is a unique learning option offered by MCTC that gives students an opportunity to collaborate and deeply engage with their instructors—and each other—while learning about issues involving our environment and planet.
This interdisciplinary block of courses offered this fall is set up as an intentional learning community in which students meet three days a week for a block of time each day and earn eight credits across two disciplines: Biology and Political Science.
The lectures, assignments and activities are integrated by the instructors to give students a holistic look at the environment from a broad range of perspectives. The coursework includes public work projects where students apply what they learn in class to actions in their own community.
“I’ve never had a class where people were so willing to open up to each other,” said Kristin Lessard, a former student who took the classes. “Before enrolling in the course, I never had any serious environmental focus, but now I’m going to major in environmental science. It’s the best class I’ve ever had!”
Students will earn credits in Race to Save the Planet that satisfy four Goal Areas of the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum (Goal Areas 3,5,9,10), providing a pathway to graduation/transfer. | <urn:uuid:b6f744f7-db12-4f68-803b-69d7285527a4> | {
"date": "2016-09-28T06:50:06",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2016-40",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-40/segments/1474738661326.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20160924173741-00282-ip-10-143-35-109.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9622377157211304,
"score": 2.84375,
"token_count": 290,
"url": "http://www.minneapolis.edu/About-Us/News/2014/July/Race-to-Save-the-Planet"
} |
Through the history of art, saints are routinely depicted with a human skull. St. Francis is one of the more notable saints who is often depicted holding a human skull. As morbid as this might be, the human skull serves a purpose in the art depicting the saints. The purpose of the human skull in the artistic rendition of saints is to remind the on looker of death — true to its form and meaning as found on pirate flags and bottles of poison. However, the skull in relation to the saints contains an addition meaning. The second meaning of the human skull is to remind the onlooker not only of death but also that all things pass away, and one day everyone will pass from this life into the next. Death will happen to everything that lives. Death is unavoidable. Death is real.
The human skull pictured with the saints, not meant as a macabre fetish, acted as a catalyst for the saint and sinner to contemplate his or her own death and life after death. It allowed the saint and sinner to consider all of life in relation to grander schemes of infinity and finitude and temporality and eternity, for as Shakespeare alluded to in so many of his tragedies that even a king can pass through a beggar’s bowels. Moreover, it is like the words written on a wall made of the skulls of some 4,000 Capuchin monks in the Capuchin Bone Chapel in Rome as if each departed monk who left behind his skull resounds softly the phrase inscribed on the wall “What you are now we used to be; what we are now you will be.”
In his book, The Last Day of My Life, newsman Jim Moret picks up the artistic rendering of holding a human skull and does a spiritual exercise by proposing the question to himself, “What if I only had one day to live? How would I live it?” Though the question itself is cliché, the practice of seriously considering the question is not. Jim Moret, seriously considers and meditates on living the last day of his life. Like all the deep questions of life which are spurned on by tragedy, Jim, after years of ill content with life, depression, and financial troubles, contemplates driving off a cliff one sunny day in California. For an instance the thought of a world without Jim Moret, a world left with the broken lives and misery Jim Moret caused, and a world in which Jim Moret is without the world, and though only a fleeting thought for Moret, it is a powerful thought that brings Jim to his senses.
The wisdom and sobering reality that follows contemplating death or even reading the account of another person is a lesson from which many can learn. Though a few chapters miss their mark by the author not bearing enough of himself, there are a number of chapters that should be required reading for a consumer society. One such chapter is the one on Possessions, where Jim puts his life in perspective and realizes that material goods have not brought him the happiness the goods promised and that true happiness resides outside of material goods. Other chapters that hit their mark for required reading are the chapters on Love and Sacrifice. In the chapter on Love Jim shares the hard moments of his marriage and how he goes about repairing a broken relationship with his wife and the only way he was able to do this is by swallowing his pride and learning to communicate with his wife more openly. In the chapter on Sacrifice, Jim discusses an important value that is all of absent in today’s society, for as one learns by acquiring wisdom that Love and Sacrifice and bedfellows. To remove sacrifice from love is to make Love unloving and selfish.
In the broad stretch of literature of this sort, it is not the best book on the subject, for Jim Moret is not St. Agustine and pales in comparison to Augustine’s Confessions; however, Jim’s book is more easily accessible to the common reader than Augustine and therein lies it’s real worth. Jim’s book is a modern approach to an ancient question fit with timeless answers.
If a person has ever thought “What if I had only one day left to live?” and wanted to follow it up with a serious consideration, “The Last Day of My Life” provides a framework for the exercise.
The Greek lover of wisdom Aristotle once said, “the unexamined life isn’t worth living.” Jim Moret examines life and learns that life is worth living, and he invites others to do the same. | <urn:uuid:8933dcd4-3c48-4361-8bb3-43c9df85095d> | {
"date": "2013-05-23T11:27:29",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2013-20",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9681466221809387,
"score": 2.828125,
"token_count": 934,
"url": "http://catholicexchange.com/book-review-the-last-day-of-my-life/"
} |
Australian rocks and mountains
Australia is a very flat continent where the average elevation is just 330 metres, the lowest in the world. What Australia lacks in height is more that made up for in the variety, geological age and unique appearance of its mountains and rocky outcrops - some of the oldest and most interesting exposed rocks in the world.
The highest point in Australia is Mount Kosciuszko (named by Sir Paul Edmund de Strzelecki in 1840 after the Polish patriot and democratic leader Tadeusz Kosciuszko) in New South Wales, at 2,228 metres above sea level. Mount Kosciuszko is part of the Great Dividing Range.
The Great Dividing Range
The Blue Mountains, New South Wales. Image courtesy of Tourism New South Wales
The Great Dividing Range is one of Australia's most important geographical features. It divides the east coast from the inland and has a major influence on our climate, population spread and settlement patterns, economics and agriculture. It is home to an amazing array of plants and animals that don't exist anywhere else on earth. It is the source of our longest rivers and our highest mountains.
The range runs parallel to the east cost of Australia, from Cape York in the North to Western Victoria in the south. Tasmania, Australia's island state which lies even further south, is also a part of this massive and ancient mountain range.
The Great Dividing Range has it origins many millions of years ago when the continents of earth were fused together as the Gondwana land mass. A huge uplift in the earth's crust occurred over millions of years, during the Pliocene and the Pleistocene Epochs (between 5.4 million to 10,000 years ago). This was just after the extinction of the dinosaurs and during the time that modern humans first appeared.
As the ranges eroded over millions of years, the high mountain tops became islands. Populations of animal species which used to live across large areas became concentrated on the mountains and groups became isolated from each other. Over many thousands of years, this isolation meant that species evolved independently and this led to many variations in species.
The ranges are also home to some amazing species of animals and plants that are survivors of Gondwana. The Wollemi Pine, recently found growing in a gorge of the Blue Mountains, is a living dinosaur of the plant world. Twenty-three of the 35 known species of the carab beetle live on just one mountain top in northern Queensland, at the top of the Great Dividing Range.
Other rock structures in Australia, like Uluru, Mount Augustus and Bald Rock, have been described as monoliths. However the term monolith, primarily used to describe buildings, is considered by geological experts to be inappropriate in describing these structures, as they do not meet the strict scientific geological criteria of it being made only of one stone and standing alone as demonstrated in the Sardires peak in the Vanoise massif of the Western French Alps.
Uluru, Northern Territory. Photo courtesy of GeoScience Australia
Uluru is located in the National Heritage Listed Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park about 335km to the south-west of Alice Springs in Northern Territory, Australia. It is part of a massive rock feature that stretches underground for many kilometres, and is part of the Kata Tjuka (Olgas) outcrop.
Uluru is 9.4km around the base, and about 345 metres high (and is thought to be the tip of an old silt fan formation tilted up by geological movement, which extends kilometres below the surface). Above the ground it is 3.6km long, 2km wide, and is roughly oval in shape. It is made of sedimentary arkosic sandstone (less than 75% compressed lithified sand and more than 25% feldspar), and is renowned for the way it changes colour in the light and is particularly spectacular at sunrise and sunset.
The colonial explorer William Gosse, who visited the area in 1873, named the rock feature Ayers Rock after Henry Ayers, then Governor of South Australia.
Uluru was returned to the care and control the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people (also known as Anangu) in 1985 to whom it had been home for tens of thousands of years. In 1995 the name of the National Park was changed from Ayers Rock-Mount Olga National Park to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park to acknowledge Anangu control and their relationship with the area.
Mount Augustus, Western Australia. Photograph by Malcolm Wells.
The visible portion of the sandstone and conglomerate structure which makes up Mount Augustus, is twice the size of Uluru. Sitting on a bedrock of granite, the mountain stands 858 metres above the surrounding plain and 1105 metres above sea level and is eight kilometres long. It can be seen clearly from 160 kilometres away and is sometimes described as the world's largest monocline, part of Mount Augustus National Park.
It is estimated that the rock of the mountain is some 1000 million years old. It was formed from an uplift which raised an ancient seabed of sandstone conglomerate and folded it into a dramatic anticline (like an inverted V shape). The granite rock which lies beneath Mount Augustus is said to be 1650 million years old.
Francis Gregory, on his journey through the Gascoyne, became the first European to climb the mountain in 1858, and he named the rock after his brother, Sir Augustus Charles Gregory (1819-1905). It is called Burringurrah by local Wadjari people after a Dreamtime figure, a young boy, who was speared and turned into a rock.
More than 100 species of birds can be seen on and around Mount Augustus. There are also many watering holes near Mount Augustus. Like Uluru, the colour of the rock changes during dawn and dusk. Bright pink, orange and red with the occasional green reflect the changes of its mood. Unlike Uluru, there is a great deal of plant growth on and around the mountain, dominated by wattles, cassias and eremophilas.
Bald Rock. Photo used with permission from Henry Gold.
Bald Rock is situated in Bald Rock National Park on the New South Wales-Queensland border. The park is accessed via the Mt Lindesay Highway.
The ' Rock' is Australia's largest exposed granite surface, and rises to 1277 metres above sea level. It towers about 200 metres up out of the surrounding bushland, is 750 metres long and 500 metres wide.
Geography, geology and formation
- ABS Year Book - Mountain Systems of Australia
- Highest mountains - Geoscience Australia
- Significant rock features - Geoscience Australia
- Great Dividing Range - Wikipedia
- Taming the fire: the first wave 40,000 - 60,000 years ago
The Wollemi Pine
- Wollemi Pine - Australian National Botanic Gardens
Last updated: 18th June 2007
Creators: Mijo Consulting, Kathryn Wells | <urn:uuid:0ed21418-9c14-4d96-80f7-3875f40f5df3> | {
"date": "2017-07-23T06:52:21",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-30",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549424287.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20170723062646-20170723082646-00296.warc.gz",
"int_score": 4,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9464389681816101,
"score": 3.65625,
"token_count": 1471,
"url": "http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/austn-rocks-and-mountains"
} |
Academic Year 18/19:
74% of children achieved a Good Level of Development. This is the expected level of ability for children at the end of Reception. (National - TBC)
88% of children were working at the required standard in phonics. (National - TBC)
End of Key Stage 1 Year 2
Notes to help you -
ARE - Age related expectations. This is the level that the national curriculum expects each child to achieve for their age.
LA - Local Authority - Cambridgeshire
|School % Working at ARE||LA||National|
Key Stage 2 Results - Year 6
GD - - Greater Depth
|School % achieved or Exceeded ARE||National % ARE||School Scaled score||National scaled score|
|Reading||79% (48% GD)||73%||TBC||TBC|
Grammar, Punctuation & Spelling
The school's combined score for children reaching the age related expectation in all core subjects (reading, writing and maths) is 77%. The national figure is 65%. | <urn:uuid:cd5ef081-c8a7-4d03-a9cc-cb4eabb093d6> | {
"date": "2019-09-22T18:54:29",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2019-39",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-39/segments/1568514575627.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20190922180536-20190922202536-00336.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.8362538814544678,
"score": 2.765625,
"token_count": 225,
"url": "http://www.waterbeachschool.org.uk/page/?title=Results&pid=23"
} |
Linux and the Power of Virtual Mega-Machines
Some applications just weren't built for the cloud -- they either need more RAM or more processing cores than most clouds can easily provide. Many of these applications are written for or easily migrated to Linux. New technologies provide a new kind of virtualization: virtualization for aggregation. Using hypervisor fundamentals, the power of multiple x86 boxes can be combined to create gigantic virtual machines.
02/19/10 5:00 AM PT
Cloud computing describes an Internet-based computing infrastructure that has abstracted users and user applications from the underlying computing resources that support them. In concept, cloud computing is functionally different from previous IT architectures in that users no longer need to own, have expertise in, or have control over the underlying technology -- they are only aware of borrowing and consuming IT services, much as they would with telephony, electrical or plumbing infrastructures.
The cloud paradigm has developed along with the maturity of virtualization and provisioning technologies that enable resources-as-a-service using Internet protocols.
Wikipedia defines the cloud as "a computing capability that provides an abstraction between the computing resource and its underlying technical architecture (e.g., servers, storage, networks), enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction." This definition states that clouds have five essential characteristics: on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity and measured service."
Too Big for the Cloud?
The challenge for evolving cloud computing architectures is that there have been and always will be a significant number of applications that can't easily serve existing compute nodes. These demanding workloads require either a large number of processing cores or large memory (RAM) footprints that are beyond the scale of normal cloud computing resources. For end users who have been increasingly disaggregated from the compute nodes and trained to think of compute resources as on-demand, this is both frustrating and challenging, as they have to differentiate workloads that can run in the cloud from those that continue to need dedicated, expensive and purpose-built hardware. These users also need to maintain and manage these additional compute resources when their energies are likely better spent running workloads and generating application results instead of managing IT.
Recently, Penguin Computing and SGI announced a new HPC solution targeting end users interested in deploying their applications in the cloud. Penguin Computing and SGI are only the latest in a growing number of vendors either supplying the technology to deploy HPC in private clouds or service providers offering high-performance computing cloud services.
What makes this trend even more interesting is that traditional cloud provisioning services were targeted at enterprise workloads -- largely parallel or small data-set application services. These workloads have commonly been the focus of virtualization vendors like VMware or Citrix, who are providing cloud managers with the ability to share hardware resources among several workloads and multiple customers. Workloads requiring a large number of processing cores and/or very large memory footprints, sometimes requiring hundreds of GB of RAM, have been completely eliminated from cloud computing deployments.
So What Is Changing?
Currently, the vast majority of workloads requiring a large number of processing cores or large memory have already moved or are in the process of moving to Linux.
These once-proprietary Unix applications have been relatively easy to migrate or are increasingly being written for a Linux or open source operating system alternative. This makes it inherently easier for these workloads to move to x86 infrastructure, providing more flexibility in their deployment models and giving customers the ability to take advantage of higher-performance and lower-cost commoditized systems.
The Hypervisor in the Cloud
Virtualization is one infrastructure market not often thought of as being relevant for demanding workloads. Partitioning virtualization, as that from VMware or Citrix, is thought of as a way to optimize individual server utilization when running workloads that require less than full system resources. However, other workloads are often looking for ways to increase processor cores and memory -- not partitioning them.
New technologies from companies like ScaleMP provide a new kind of virtualization technology: virtualization for aggregation. Using the same fundamental hypervisor technology, these vendors have found a way to aggregate the power of multiple x86 boxes and run off-the-shelf Linux (for ScaleMP that is Linux kernel level 2.6.11 or later) to create very large virtual machines scaling across hundreds of processor cores and terabytes of RAM. These large virtual machines (VMs) are perfect for demanding workloads.
However, this is only half the story. Once vendors have created large VMs out of smaller x86 servers, it's just a small step to provisioning systems from a cloud infrastructure on-demand. Provisioning large VMs on an on-demand basis will lead to a revolution in architectural design -- one in which workloads requiring sub-system resources and workloads demanding resources of several systems can coexist in the same infrastructure and dynamically allow IT administrators to modify their compute resources -- accommodating needed workload rather than restricting the infrastructure to the workloads that fit within a single node. This increase in workload addressability will, in most cases, increase cloud utilization to close to 100 percent of enterprise and compute workloads and increase cloud infrastructure ROI.
This VM-on-demand-for-any-workload paradigm is not a futuristic revolution. For example, HPC-as-a-service enabled by hypervisor aggregation technologies exist today and are available from companies like R Systems in El Dorado Hills, Calif.
The common thread in this discussion is Linux and virtualization. Virtualization allows Linux to utilize exactly the hardware resources required by a specific workload -- whether these workloads require sub-system resources (partitioning) or combination of multiple systems (aggregation). Growing flexibility allows cloud infrastructures to be more power- and resource-efficient, and it provides users with virtual resources that fit their workload. Furthermore, it is possible that future cloud deployments will combine both capabilities to allow small VMs to be aggregated into large Vms, providing even greater level of flexibility -- a capability that deserves an article of its own.
Shai Fultheim is the founder and CTO of ScaleMP. | <urn:uuid:9e09851d-c4a9-48c2-ae4c-edf5cba2a338> | {
"date": "2015-04-01T05:50:51",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2015-14",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-14/segments/1427131303502.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20150323172143-00102-ip-10-168-14-71.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9221806526184082,
"score": 2.8125,
"token_count": 1289,
"url": "http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/69377.html"
} |
Freie Bühne, (
German: “Free Stage”) independent Berlin theatre founded in 1889 by 10 writers and critics and supervised by the writer-director Otto Brahm for the purpose of staging new, naturalistic plays. Like André Antoine’s Théâtre-Libre in Paris, Brahm’s company gave private performances to theatre subscribers only. The Freie Bühne’s first production was of Henrik Ibsen’s Gengangere (1881; Ghosts) in September 1889. A month later, Brahm staged Gerhart Hauptmann’s first play, Vor Sonnenaufgang (1889; Before Dawn, or Before Sunrise), a tragedy of working-class people. Hauptmann, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1912, was the most important playwright introduced by the Freie Bühne.
During the following seasons, Brahm’s presentations included the important naturalist drama dealing with a degenerate family, Die Familie selicke (1890; “The Happy Family”) by Arno Holz, as well as plays by Leo Tolstoy, Émile Zola, and August Strindberg. Although the Freie Bühne was a success, it lasted for only three seasons, largely because Berlin’s commercial theatre had by then embraced the new theatrical movement of naturalism. But it inspired the creation of other private theatres and amateur groups throughout Berlin, Munich, and Vienna. | <urn:uuid:6bb9d109-7ae8-4af1-8924-31f5d1fc4bb0> | {
"date": "2016-12-06T09:18:51",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2016-50",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-50/segments/1480698541886.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20161202170901-00064-ip-10-31-129-80.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9209935069084167,
"score": 2.8125,
"token_count": 326,
"url": "https://www.britannica.com/topic/Freie-Buhne"
} |
One of the things that many birders do to document their birdwatching is keep a life list. A life list is basically a checklist of species of wild birds that someone has seen.
Jove and I have both started our life lists. For mine, I printed out a checklist from the front of a bird guide of the approximately 800 birds found in Eastern North America. For the birds I see everyday like House Sparrows and American Robins, I just checked the box and for less common birds I am recording the date and location that I saw it. Jove's list is a small notebook we made where he has written down the names of the birds he has both seen and knows how to identify. Jove's booklet is really more of a self-made bird guide than a life list, but I feel like we can wait until he is a little older for him to maintain his own life list. I also keep anecdotal journal entries about birds that we see: their field marks, behavior and the weather conditions and location where we saw them. I am not including birds that I know I have seen in the past, although I am not sure if you are supposed to or not.
Field marks, such as colors, patterns, shape or size of a bird's head, beak, feathers, etc are what birders use to positively identify a bird. You probably already know what a robin looks like, but how do you know what a robin is? The rust colored breast feathers, the white tips on its wings when it flies, its yellow beak, its size, its hopping behavior. It is useful to notice the field marks of common birds to get used to knowing them on uncommon birds. Field guides include color drawings of birds that emphasize field marks that allow you to distinguish between birds that could easily be confused.
Here's my life list as of right now:
Rock Dove (pigeons)
Jove told me we should keep a life list for everything, not just birds. | <urn:uuid:ce082652-7504-47c2-b5db-a01cde89a2b7> | {
"date": "2018-03-17T22:02:54",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2018-13",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-13/segments/1521257645362.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20180317214032-20180317234032-00656.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9562907814979553,
"score": 2.96875,
"token_count": 407,
"url": "http://onceuponakitchen.blogspot.com/2009/05/beginning-birder-chronicles-part-one.html"
} |
'Tiger stripes' underneath Antarctic glaciers slow the flow
Posted November 7, 2013; 04:15 p.m.
Narrow stripes of dirt and rock beneath massive Antarctic glaciers create friction zones that slow the flow of ice toward the sea, researchers at Princeton University and the British Antarctic Survey have found. Understanding how these high-friction regions form and subside could help researchers understand how the flow of these glaciers responds to a warming climate.
Just as no-slip strips on flooring prevent people from slipping on a wet floor, these ribs or "tiger stripes" — named in reference to Princeton's tiger mascot — provide friction that hinders the glaciers from slipping along the underlying bed of rock and sediment, the researchers report online in the journal Science.
Researchers at Princeton University and the British Antarctic Survey used mathematical modeling and data from satellites and ground-penetrating radar to infer the existence of stripes or ribs (in red) indicating areas of high friction between the glacier and the underlying bedrock. These high-friction ribs slow the movement of ice toward the sea. The image on the left is the Pine Island Glacier and the image on the right is the Thwaites Glacier, both in West Antarctica. (Image courtesy of Olga Sergienko, Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences)
The researchers discovered these tiger stripes, which occur in large, slippery regions under the glaciers, using mathematical modeling based on data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center and the British Antarctic Survey. The work was conducted by Olga Sergienko, an associate research scientist in Princeton's Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and Richard Hindmarsh, a scientist at the British Antarctic Survey.
Olga Sergienko, an associate research scientist in the Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, shown during a research expedition to the McMurdo Ice Shelf in Antarctica in winter 2006. (Photo courtesy of Olga Sergienko)
Researchers would like to understand what factors determine the flow of glaciers, which are massive, moving ice sheets that, when they flow into the ocean, can contribute substantially to sea-level rise. The researchers studied two glaciers, the Pine Island Glacier and the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica, which together contribute about 10 percent of the observed sea-level rise over the past 20 years, despite their small areas. The Pine Island Glacier moves at a velocity of about 1.5 miles per year, according to the researchers.
This map shows the Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers, at far left, in West Antarctica. (Image courtesy of NASA)
Studying the bottom of these glaciers is next to impossible due to the inability to see through the ice, which is over a mile-and-a-half thick. Instead, the researchers used satellite measurements of the ice velocity and ground-penetrating radar collected from airplane flyovers to detect bedrock and surface topography, as well as field observations. Using the data, Sergienko created a mathematical model that calculated what happens inside the glacier as it flows along the bedrock. The model predicted the formation of the tiger stripes or ribs, which Hindmarsh had theorized some years earlier.
The friction at the interface of the bedrock and glacier ice is a major factor in the speed of a glacier, Sergienko said. When friction is high, the glacier moves slowly. When friction is low, as when melting ice provides a liquid layer that allows the ice to slide over the bedrock, the glacier moves more quickly.
The tiger stripes, which the researchers also call ribs due to their slightly curved structure, lie at roughly 30-degree angles to the direction of the glacier's movement. These ribs arise and decay in response to natural processes over roughly 50 to 100 years, according to the researchers' calculations. The process is strongly affected by how water, which comes from ice melting due to the inherent heat trapped in the Earth, infiltrates the space between the ice sheet and the bedrock, the researchers found.
"The ribs may play an important role in buffering the effects of a warming climate, since they slow the movement of ice that reaches the ocean and contributes to sea-level rise," said Sergienko. "These changes can happen independently of climate change, too," she added.
More investigations are needed to verify models of rib formation, according to the researchers. "Our guess is that these ribs are related to typical landforms that exist in the formerly glaciated areas of North America and Europe," said Hindmarsh. "A great example are the drumlins — raised areas of soil and rock — that make the hills in Seattle or Glasgow," he said.
The study reveals new patterns of friction that help control the speed of ice flow and determine the effect of Antarctic ice on sea level, according to Douglas MacAyeal, a professor of glaciology at the University of Chicago who was not involved in the work. "This is strongly suggestive of a new style of physical controls over friction, like water flow in the thin zone between the rock of the bed and the ice," he said. "The results of this study will drive new theoretical and observational efforts to understand what causes this pattern."
The study, "Regular patterns in frictional resistance of ice-stream beds seen by surface data inversion," was published online in the journal Science on Nov. 7. The research was supported by National Science Foundation grant CMG-0934534 and the British Antarctic Survey Polar Science for Planet Earth program. | <urn:uuid:e5159593-575d-456b-adb6-834d92e4ee43> | {
"date": "2016-12-04T14:11:10",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2016-50",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-50/segments/1480698541322.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20161202170901-00304-ip-10-31-129-80.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 4,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9395233392715454,
"score": 4.03125,
"token_count": 1123,
"url": "http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S38/38/34Q39/index.xml?section="
} |
Reilly and his collaborator Thomas White suspect that the development of epipubic bones made the prehistoric creatures more mobile. The increased locomotion made them better predators, helped them to escape predators and allowed them to forage more widely. "Locomotion contributed heavily to the evolution of mammals," Reilly said, "and these bones had something to do with increasing locomotor efficiency in the very earliest mammals."
As the mammals radiated after the dinosaurs went extinct, the epipubic bones in most mammals, including humans, became fused with the pelvis, which allowed mammals to use many gaits besides the trot.
The findings could have implications for paleontologists, Reilly said.
"If the function of the epipubic bone relates to locomotion, that makes the bones more important as a fossil indicator of increased locomotor efficiency," he said. If scientists study the fossil record and figure out when these bones first appeared, he added, it would shed light on a crucial step in the evolution of mammals.
The research is part of a larger study by Reilly and Ohio University colleague Audrone Biknevicius focusing on the evolution of locomotion, which is funded by a three-year, $295,000 National Science Foundation grant. | <urn:uuid:e87ad45e-e322-4f31-ae38-73bb81b677dc> | {
"date": "2014-08-22T01:58:59",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-35",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1408500822407.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20140820021342-00118-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 4,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9584385752677917,
"score": 4.25,
"token_count": 255,
"url": "http://news.bio-medicine.org/biology-news-2/Early-mammals-used-pelvic-bones-to-trot--study-finds-5869-2/"
} |
The OAS supports member states in the design and implementation of policies, and projects to integrate environmental priorities into poverty alleviation and socio-economic development goals. Actions are implemented at the hemispheric level, facilitating international meetings and conferences on key issues of sustainable development, as well as “on-the-ground” activities. The Organization carries out several mandates designed to protect biodiversity, strengthen environmental law, manage water resources, raise awareness on climate change, and promote sustainability, among others.
Department of Sustainable Development
Summit Mandates on Environment & Natural Resources Management and Climate Change: Consequences for the Environment
Integrated Water Resources Management
Energy and Climate Change Mitigation
Natural Hazards and Climate Change Adaptation
Environmental Law, Policy and Good Governance | <urn:uuid:0abcef95-0f9a-45ca-a138-2f19aa2cbee1> | {
"date": "2014-03-10T14:58:05",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-10",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-10/segments/1394010851505/warc/CC-MAIN-20140305091411-00006-ip-10-183-142-35.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9118435382843018,
"score": 2.625,
"token_count": 156,
"url": "http://www.oas.org/en/topics/environment.asp"
} |
Generate a random number generator for uniformly continous deviates
This functionality does not run in MATLAB.
stats::uniformRandom(a, b, <Seed = s>)
stats::uniformRandom(a, b) returns a procedure that produces uniformly continous deviates (random numbers) on the interval .
The procedure f := stats::uniformRandom(a, b) can be called in the form f(). The return value of f() is either a floating-point number or a symbolic expression:
If a and b can be converted to floating-point numbers, then f() returns a floating point number between a and b.
In all other cases, stats::uniformRandom(a, b)() is returned symbolically.
Numerical values of a and b are only accepted if they are real and a ≤ b.
The values X = f() are distributed randomly according to the cumulative distribution function of the uniform distribution on the interval . For any a ≤ x ≤ b, the probability that X ≤ x is given by .
Without the option Seed = s, an initial seed is chosen internally. This initial seed is set to a default value when MuPAD® is started. Thus, each time MuPAD is started or re-initialized with the reset function, random generators produce the same sequences of numbers.
For efficiency, it is recommended to produce sequences of K random numbers via f := stats::uniformRandom(a, b): f() $ k = 1..K rather than by stats::uniformRandom(a, b)() $ k = 1..K The latter call produces a sequence of generators each of which is called once. Also note that
stats::uniformRandom(a, b, Seed = n)() $k = 1..K;
does not produce a random sequence, because a sequence of freshly initialized generators would be created each of them producing the same number.
The function is sensitive to the environment variable DIGITS which determines the numerical working precision.
We generate uniform deviates on the interval :
f := stats::uniformRandom(2, 7): f() $ k = 1..4
With symbolic parameters, no random floating-point numbers can be produced:
f := stats::uniformRandom(a, b): f()
When a and b evaluate to real numbers, f starts to produce random floating point numbers:
a := PI: b := 10: f() $ k = 1..4
delete f, a, b:
We use the option Seed = s to reproduce a sequence of random numbers:
f := stats::uniformRandom(0, 10, Seed = 10^3): f() $ k = 1..4
g := stats::uniformRandom(0, 10, Seed = 10^3): g() $ k = 1..4
f() = g(), f() = g()
delete f, g:
arithmetical expressions representing real values; a ≤ b is assumed.
Option, specified as Seed = s
Initializes the random generator with the integer seed s. s can also be the option CurrentTime, to make the seed depend on the current time.
This option serves for generating generators that return predictable sequences of pseudo-random numbers. The generator is initialized with the seed s which may be an arbitrary integer. Several generators with the same initial seed produce the same sequence of numbers.
When this option is used, the parameters a and b must be convertible to floating-point numbers at the time when the random generator is generated. | <urn:uuid:630457bf-2975-44b4-8919-e001ebcb2b65> | {
"date": "2014-07-24T08:42:19",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-23",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1405997888216.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20140722025808-00128-ip-10-33-131-23.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.7855916619300842,
"score": 3.0625,
"token_count": 744,
"url": "http://www.mathworks.com/help/symbolic/mupad_ref/stats-uniformrandom.html?nocookie=true"
} |
About the course
In this course we will cover all the fundamentals of MPLS. We will be discussing why MPLS was implemented, the terminology used in an MPLS environment, the configurations used in MPLS, concentrating in using Layer 3 VPNs. We will discuss the LDP protocol, what labels are and how they get forward it to other LDR Routers. Using the hands on lab we will get to see how these labels get forwarded and we will be configuring multiple IGP routing protocols along with BGP to get information across our network. We will be creating multiple types of VPNs and through the use for Route Targets and Route Reflectors, we'll demonstrate how packets can be manipulated in a particular direction. We will definitely be creating Provider Edge routers Customer Edge Routers and have customers within the same company communicate with each other and different companies also be able to communicate with each other through VPN. We will also learn how to create VRF's in order to make all this possible, as well as understand the CEF, LFIB, LRIB and much more tables in order to troubleshoot MPLS.
Who Should Attend?
Students preparing for CCNP or CCIE certifications would benefit greatly from taking this course. But also those IT individuals that are working in real world environment would gain some knowledge on MPLS application. | <urn:uuid:99411f99-ce60-4534-bd3c-64066f48b277> | {
"date": "2019-03-27T00:40:35",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2019-13",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-13/segments/1552912207146.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20190327000624-20190327022624-00176.warc.gz",
"int_score": 4,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.936676025390625,
"score": 3.703125,
"token_count": 274,
"url": "https://on-ed.com/courses/2183"
} |
MIT scientists report that because alternative RNA splicing often alters the outputs of signaling networks in different tissues, this may be largely responsible for the differences observed among various species.
After analyzing vast amounts of genetic data, the researchers found that the same genes are expressed in the same tissue types, such as liver or heart, across mammalian species. However, alternative splicing patterns, which determine the segments of those genes included or excluded, vary from species to species.
“The core things that make a heart a heart are mostly determined by a heart-specific gene expression signature. But the core things that make a mouse a mouse may disproportionately derive from splicing patterns that differ from those of rats or other mammals,” says Chris Burge, Ph.D., an MIT professor of biology and biological engineering, and senior author of a paper on the findings in the December 20 online edition of Science.
Alternative RNA splicing controls the composition of proteins encoded by a gene. In mammals, genes consist of many short segments known as exons and introns. After the DNA is copied into an RNA transcript, all introns and frequently some exons are excised before the messenger RNA (mRNA) leaves the nucleus, carrying instructions to make a specific protein. This process allows cells to create a much wider variety of proteins than would be possible if each gene encoded only one protein.
In 2008, Dr. Burge and colleagues analyzed mRNA from 10 different human tissues, publishing their results in Nature, and found that nearly every gene is alternatively spliced. Furthermore, most alternative splicing was found to differ among tissues. In the new study, the researchers compared tissues from several different mammalian species (the rhesus monkey, rat, mouse, and cow) as well as one species of bird, the chicken. For each species, the researchers analyzed nine types of tissue (brain, colon, heart, kidney, liver, lung, muscle, spleen, and testes) from three individuals, sequencing more than a trillion bases of mRNA.
Using new high-speed sequencing technology, the researchers analyzed both gene expression and alternative splicing patterns in each tissue sample. They found that gene-expression patterns were extremely similar across tissues, no matter what species the tissue came from. That is, the genes active in kidney tissue from rats were nearly identical to those turned on in cows’ kidney tissue.
“That was not a big surprise,” points out Dr. Burge. “It’s consistent with the idea that the gene expression pattern actually determines the identity of the tissue. You need to express certain structural and motor proteins if you’re a muscle cell, and if you’re a neuron you have to express certain synaptic proteins.”
The results from the alternative splicing pattern comparison were very different. Instead of clustering by tissue, the patterns clustered mostly by species. “Different tissues from the cow look more like the other cow tissues, in terms of splicing, than they do like the corresponding tissue in mouse or rat or rhesus,” according to Dr. Burge.
Because splicing patterns are more specific to each species, it appears that splicing may contribute preferentially to differences between those species, he continues. “Splicing seems to be more malleable over shorter evolutionary timescales, and may contribute to making species different from one another and helping them adapt in various ways.”
The researchers also found that a major function of alternative splicing is the addition and deletion of short protein segments that contain one or more phosphorylation sites. Phosphorylation is a common way for cells to activate or deactivate proteins. When a variant form of a protein lacks a key phosphorylation site, it may lose the function of the original form. Phosphorylation can also direct proteins to different locations within the cell, which may alter their function.
Changes in splicing patterns also help to modify the signaling networks that regulate most cellular activity. These networks are often controlled by phosphorylation of proteins involved in the network, many of which can be alternatively spliced. “You can think about it as rewiring signaling networks so they control different outputs. Splicing can add a new output or delete it in a tissue-specific way,” explains Dr. Burge.
The researchers also identified several thousand new alternative exons in each species, and are now studying how these exons evolved and exploring their potential functions.
The specific importance of signaling and alternative splicing, which led to differences in the brain among primates, was demonstrated by Lin et al at the University of Iowa (online, May 11, 2010, Human Molecular Genetics). After profiling the brain transcriptomes of humans, chimpanzees, and rhesus macaques, the scientists concluded that evolution of cis-regulatory signals is a major contributor to the emergence of human-specific splicing patterns. “Together, our data reveal widespread human-specific changes of alternative splicing in the brain and suggest an important role of splicing in the evolution of neuronal gene regulation and functions,” wrote the researchers. | <urn:uuid:00abad96-f5a3-4247-b606-351fc6b2bbb3> | {
"date": "2016-09-28T02:30:43",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2016-40",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-40/segments/1474738661289.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160924173741-00182-ip-10-143-35-109.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 4,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9498308300971985,
"score": 3.890625,
"token_count": 1047,
"url": "http://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/rna-splicing-provides-species-with-new-alternatives/81247802/"
} |
Regions are defined in Webster's or Funk & Wagnall's as a large and 'indefinite' part of the surface of the earth. In Ontario, ODP editors have 'defined' seven regions organized by geographic area, and containing specific counties and districts. The Ontario Regions below, list the Counties and Districts which they embrace. Please note that these seven regions should not be confused with regional municipalities, of which there are a number in Ontario. Regional municipalities are listed in the Localities sub-category. By editor funk, revised 2000.05.11
Municipal Government within Ontario
Index of municipalities throughout the province at the regional, county, district, city, and other local levels, with links to official websites wherever available. Extract from a UK site that contains this kind of information for countries around the world.
Ontario Municipal Home Pages
A list that shows the makeup of municipalities in different areas of the province, with links to websites where available.
Last update:September 9, 2016 at 5:24:09 UTC | <urn:uuid:6c9a3123-f1dd-456f-b272-1941a387f7e2> | {
"date": "2016-09-30T17:11:29",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2016-40",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-40/segments/1474738662321.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160924173742-00082-ip-10-143-35-109.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9037596583366394,
"score": 2.71875,
"token_count": 214,
"url": "http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/Canada/Ontario/Regions/"
} |
Insecticides are natural or synthetic chemicals used to manage insects pests; they are important for disease control and providing food and fiber for a growing world population. Insect control with chemicals began about 2,000 years ago with the use of natural products, whereas the age of synthetic insecticides began with the introduction of dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT) in the 1940s. Here the major classes of insecticides are covered, and important example compounds provided. The discussion is organized topically by mode of action/target tissue. In addition to synthetic materials, natural products are addressed because their use is increasing in "organic farming." This entry then explores the development of plants or viruses genetically engineered to produce insect-selective toxins . The harmful effects of insecticides on humans will also be discussed, as well as some nonchemical control techniques.
Compounds Affecting Nerves
The pyrethroids are composed of natural pyrethrins, which are isolated from chrysanthemum flowers, as well as newer synthetic materials. Older pyrethroids (e.g., pyrethrins and tetramethrin) degrade too rapidly in the environment to be used in agriculture. They are used in buildings, and because of their general safety, they are even applied to humans to control lice. Newer pyrethroids have greater chemical stability (e.g., permethrin and deltamethrin), which allows their use on many types of field crops. Another important use of permethrin is application to mosquito netting. Intoxication by pyrethroids develops rapidly (in 1 to 2 minutes), and involves a rapid loss of normal posture and movement called "knockdown." Pyrethroids affect nerve impulse generation throughout the entire nervous system. Multiple nerve impulses occur when only a single one was expected, and there is an increased release of chemical neurotransmitters as well. These actions result in convulsions, prostration, and death.
Sabadilla, an extract from the seeds of a tropical lily, is used in home gardens and organic farming operations. It degrades rapidly in the environment, and causes signs of intoxication, and has a mode of action similar to that of pyrethroids. Sabadilla extract has low toxicity to mammals.
The tobacco compound nicotine has been used as an insecticide for over 200 years. It is especially effective against sucking insects, such as aphids, and has excellent contact activity . Related compounds are neonicotinoids (e.g., imidacloprid), which have similar insecticidal activity, but are less toxic to mammals. Nicotine and imidacloprid mimic the action of acetylcholine , which is the major excitatory neurotransmitter in an insect's central nervous system. The action of acetylcholine is stopped by the enzyme acetylcholinesterase, which rapidly breaks down acetylcholine. Nicotine and imidacloprid are also neuroexcitatory, but do so persistently, since they are not affected by acetylcholinesterase. Overstimulation of the nervous system often leads to convulsions, paralysis, and death.
The organophosphorus (OP) and carbamate insecticides are used to control a wide variety of insect pests. The acute toxicity of the OPs and carbamates varies, and many of them have high mammalian toxicity . These compounds react chemically with the active site of acetylcholinesterase, producing a blocked enzyme that cannot degrade acetylcholine. The concentration of acetylcholine then builds up and hyperexcitation occurs. The signs of intoxication include restlessness, tremors, convulsions, and paralysis. Blockage of acetylcholinesterase by OPs is persistent, and recovery of the enzyme takes many hours or even days. The mode of action of the carbamates
is similar, except that enzyme blockage is less stable and recovers in a matter of minutes. Among insects, carbamates are particularly toxic to hymenoptera, such as honeybees.
Organochlorines represent one of the oldest groups of synthetic insecticides, with only biodegradable materials such as lindane and endosulfan still used in pest control. High mammalian toxicity was common with organochlorines, but a newer compound, fipronil, has improved selective toxicity toward a variety of insect pests. These insecticides cause hyperexcitability and convulsions by blocking the inhibitory neurotransmitter γ ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA). Normally, GABA has a dampening effect that maintains normal nerve activity. Blocking the effects of GABA removes inhibition, leading to hyperexcitation of the nervous system and convulsions.
Deet is an important insect repellant. This compound is applied to skin or clothing, and repels biting flies (e.g., blackflies and mosquitoes). Deet acts on the sensory nerves, causing insects to avoid treated surfaces.
Compounds Affecting Muscles
Ryania consists of the powdered stem of the tropical shrub, Ryania speciosa. The extract contains ryanodine and related compounds, and has a low toxicity to mammals. The powder is used as a stomach poison on vegetables and fruit. Ryanodine induces paralysis in insects by direct action on the muscles, resulting in sustained contraction and paralysis.
Avermectins are a group of closely related compounds isolated from the fungus Streptomyces avermitilis that are used to control the parasites of humans and animals, as well as arthropod pests in crops. They have fairly high mammalian toxicity, but their movement into treated leaves, oral activity against insect pests, and rapid breakdown in sunlight are all favorable properties. In insects and worms poisoned by avermectin, inactivity and flaccid paralysis occur from its relaxing effect on muscles.
Compounds Disrupting Energy Metabolism
These compounds vary, from the natural product rotenone (from Derris or Lonchocarpus root, used to control vegetable and fruit insects) to the synthetics sulfluramid and hydramethylnon (used to control mites and cockroaches). Interestingly, the highest acute toxicity to mammals is caused by the natural product rotenone. These compounds affect the production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) , the energy storage molecule of the cell that is produced by mitochondria, the "powerhouse" of the cell. The disruption of energy metabolism and the subsequent loss of ATP result in a slowly developing toxicity, and the effects of all these compounds include inactivity, paralysis, and death.
Insect Growth Regulators
Insects exposed to diflubenzuron and related compounds are unable to form normal cuticle (skin) because their ability to synthesize it is lost. Thus, the cuticle becomes thin and brittle, and is unable to support the insect or to withstand molting, a process requiring the shedding of the old cuticle, as in metamorphosis. Diflubenzuron and other chitin synthesis inhibitors have extremely low mammalian toxicity and are used against termites.
Methoprene and fenoxycarb mimic the action of insect juvenile hormone in molting and reproduction, and have low toxicity to mammals. Exposure at molting produces deformed insects having mixed larval/pupal or larval/adult morphologies, and they disrupt reproductive physiology in adults to effectively serve as a method of birth control.
Tebufenozide acts by mimicking the effects of the insect hormone ecdysone, which along with juvenile hormone, controls the initiation of a molt. Exposure to tebufenozide induces a premature molt that traps the insect in its old cuticle. This compound is especially effective against caterpillars.
Toxins from Bacillus thuringiensis
The bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis forms an internal crystal that contains a number of insecticidal protein toxins. When eaten by the insect, the crystal dissolves in the midgut, the toxin mixture is released, and the proteins are cleaved into active forms. The toxins bind specifically to midgut cells and assemble a pore that leads to disintegration of the cells, gut paralysis, and death. B. thuringiensis strains have toxins specific for caterpillars, beetles, or flies. They have little or no effect on mammals.
Human Toxicity of Insecticides
In mammals DDT and related organochlorines have effects on the endocrine system, including the disruption of thyroid hormone synthesis and mimicking of the effects of estrogen . Liver cancer has also been observed in mice exposed to these substances, and there has been one claimed association between exposure to DDT and breast cancer. Epidemiological studies show a consistent connection between exposure to pesticides and the occurrence of Parkinson's disease in rural populations. A well-documented effect of some OPs is organophosphorus-induced delayed neuropathy , a slowly developing degeneration of the leg nerves that results in irreversible limping. A specific hazard of pyrethroids is paresthesia, a tingling or burning sensation in exposed skin.
Nonchemical Control Methods
There is considerable interest in developing genetically enhanced, insect-specific viruses or crop plants that would replace conventional chemical insecticides. Corn, cotton, and potatoes have been engineered to express B. thuringiensis toxins to control chewing insects. Although this approach has worked effectively for controlling some pests, others not targeted by the B. thuringiensis toxin must be controlled by other means.
Sex pheromones, chemicals that attract one sex of an insect to the other, also have uses in pest control. They are often utilized with traps to monitor the number of pest insects in an area, and when applied in the field at higher levels, they can disrupt reproduction or egg laying.
Biological control involves the introduction of predators and parasitoids to attack pests. The extent of control using this technique varies and can be quite good in some cases, but unforeseen ecological impacts occur when imported species attack nontarget organisms.
Chemical insecticides remain an important tool for managing insect pests of humans, animals, and food and fiber crops. Compounds that are persistent in the environment are no longer used, and the amounts sprayed have dropped from kilograms per acre to grams per acre of active ingredient. Future compounds and technologies will seek to maintain high levels of effectiveness with a reduced impact on the environment and human health.
Budavari, Susan, ed. (1996). The Merck Index, 12th edition. Whitehouse Station, NJ: Merck & Co.
Massaro, Edward J., ed. (2002). Handbook of Neurotoxicology, Vol. 1. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.
Meister, Richard T., ed. (2000). Farm Chemicals Handbook. Willoughby, OH: Meister Publishing.
Pedigo, Larry P. (1989). Entomology and Pest Management. New York: Macmillan.
Miller, Terry L. "ExToxNet—The Extension Toxicology Network." Available from http://ace.orst.edu/info/extoxnet/ .
Ware, George W. "An Introduction to Insecticides." Available from http://www.ipmworld.umn.edu . | <urn:uuid:653ab784-58e7-4223-aae2-f7112f423be1> | {
"date": "2017-08-17T03:44:36",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-34",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886102891.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20170817032523-20170817052523-00016.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9272146821022034,
"score": 3.46875,
"token_count": 2349,
"url": "http://www.chemistryexplained.com/Hy-Kr/Insecticides.html"
} |
YOU GUESS IT??
Rhubarb Plants in Early Spring
This Can You Guess It?? Photo is featured in the May 2007 Nebline Newsletter
Rhubarb in the Garden:
The rhubarb stalk is used in
pies, sauces, jams, jellies, and
desserts. Although classed as a
vegetable, rhubarb is used as a
fruit because its high acidity
gives a tart flavor. Only the
stalks should be eaten because
the leaves contain moderately
poisonous oxalic acid.
Rhubarb should not be harvested during the first two growing seasons. In the third season, rhubarb may be harvested for 4 weeks. The harvest period can be extended to 8 weeks in the fourth and following years.
Note About Using Rhubarb Impacted by the April 2007 Freeze:
Soon after these rhubarb emerged from the ground, southeastern Nebraska experienced a prolonged freeze. According to UNL Extension Horticulturalists, rhubarb hit by a hard frost or freeze in late spring can still be eaten as long as the stalks are firm and upright. If the stems are soft and mushy, do not eat them. Cut the damaged stalks off to allow new stalks to develop for eating. | <urn:uuid:18e30b66-a952-4583-a25e-234d3c4782b9> | {
"date": "2016-05-30T04:52:39",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2016-22",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-22/segments/1464049288709.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20160524002128-00171-ip-10-185-217-139.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9431907534599304,
"score": 2.84375,
"token_count": 266,
"url": "http://lancaster.unl.edu/feature/guessmay07.shtml"
} |
This gallery contains 4 photos.
This gallery contains 3 photos.
When Dr. Bugajska-Bigos invited me to be a part of the International Art Project devoted to Andy Warhol, I was thrilled. Since Warhol was a revolutionary in modern art, developing new techniques and styles as technology progressed, I thought his work was perfect to use as a means of exploration in 3D computer graphics. And I also took this as an opportunity to teach about Andy Warhol and his art in relation to the effect of social media on pop-culture.
Andy Warhol died 30 years ago, but his visions and commentaries about society are even more valid than they were in 60s and 70s . With billions of images uploaded daily on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc., his predictions of mass media enveloping culture are truer than he could have ever imagined. His ultra-colorful images, often multiplied and filtered, blurred the line between art and everyday life; something that social media continually perpetuates. Along with the accessibility to tools that make it easy to create, the internet has allowed for an instant global sharing system that has the power to turn anybody into an “artist”.
Inspired by Warhol’s Pop-Art, I developed the idea of this blur in my Digital Fine Art class. I asked my students to think about how Warhol manipulated simple images in order to expose and critique the consumption of society.
After exploring his ideals and philosophy, I had the students take photos of their own faces. We then uploaded the images to Photoshop, and using the Polygonal Dispersion technique, we broke up the faces (as well as the background) into a random array of polygonal shapes.
As a final project we converted the portraits into 3D forms; multiplying and layering them, while varying contrast, color, and gradient in the background.
POLYGONAL 3D (LOW_POLY) SELF-PORTRAIT WITH SKIN DISPERSION (EXPLOSION) AND 3D ANDY WARHOL INSPIRED ARTWORK
The students will manipulate various geometric polygonal figures in order to create a unique 3D self-portraits inspired by the art of Andy Warhol.
This lesson will have three different steps:
- Polygonal Face and Polygonal Landscape
- Skin Dispersion/Explosion
- 3D Warhol Project
The students will explore how to:
- use Polygonal Lasso and Filters
- create a geometric shape with a flat color field with an average color
- create unique Gradients
- create 3 D objects using PS6/CC
- create Warhol inspired 3D compositions
- take make an “explosion”/dispersion effect of their skin/hair/body
- Starting up on composition
- naming layers
- making sure the background is blur (Iris or Tilt)
- shifting and changing skin pieces
- learning PEN TOOL
- The Importance of a correct selection
- Creating LOW_POLY selections from a center point
- Breaking Self-Portrait to various Triangles and Polygonal Geometric shapes
- Learning about different shades and skin tones
- Polygonal Lasso Tool
- Adding to and subtracting from selections
- Repeating Filter functions with Ctr+F
- Making difficult selections with the Refine Edge future
- Using the Pen Tool to select an area of an image
- Converting a path to a selection
- Filling in polygonal selection with gradients
- Creating unique gradients
- Art History: CUBISM and Andy Warhol
- History of Photography
(d) Instructional Activity:
The teacher will demonstrate how to use 3D panel on Photo-shop. The teacher will also introduce the students to Andy Warhol artwork. The students than use their own Polygonal Self-portraits (with the skin explosion /optional) to create an artwork inspired by pop-art creator Andy Warhol. The students with use: cubes, soda can, hats, rings, and cylinder shapes.
The students will be assessed based on their citizenship/participation
Self-reflection: (to be verified after class)
EXAMPLES of 3 STEP PROCESS:
- Polygonal Landscape and Polygonal Self-Portrait:
- Skin Dispersion/Explosion:
- 3D Warhol inspired project: | <urn:uuid:9a7f49c8-71be-41e0-b67a-6e7649636a12> | {
"date": "2018-05-21T02:41:03",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2018-22",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-22/segments/1526794863923.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20180521023747-20180521043747-00296.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9207779765129089,
"score": 2.8125,
"token_count": 930,
"url": "https://jowezyk.wordpress.com/"
} |
School-based, public access defibrillation (PAD) programs saved the lives of nearly nine out of ten student-athletes and adults suffering sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) during physical activity on school grounds, reports a first-of-its-kind study of PAD in a school setting published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
SCA is the leading cause of sudden death in young athletes during exercise. Historical survival rates from out-of-hospital SCA using conventional EMS systems are less than 8%. PAD programs have been shown to improve survival rates by shortening the time interval from cardiac arrest to defibrillation through strategic placement of automated external defibrillators (AEDs), with placement of AEDs in schools and at athletic venues now the "cornerstone" of emergency response planning and the prevention of sudden cardiac death in young athletes.
The study found that when the AED used in the resuscitation was brought by responding offsite EMS - which took an average of 7.8 minutes - only half of the SCA victims survived, but that if the defibrillator used was supplied by the school the survival rate for student-athletes who suffered SCA jumped to 80%. The survival rate for schools with an established emergency action plan was almost twice as high as schools without an EAP (79% versus 44%).
Our "study suggests SCA in students and student-athletes is largely a survivable event through prompt treatment and access to" an automated external defibrillator," writes lead author, Jonathan A. Drezner, MD, of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Washington, and "provide compelling support for school-based AED programmes."
High survival rates
Drezner and his colleagues said the high survival rates were likely related to several factors known to increase the probability of survival from SCA:
- over 90% of cases were witnesses and received prompt CPR.
- 83% had an established emergency action plan for SCA
- school AEDs were readily accessible and used in nearly 70% of cases; and
- two-thirds of victims received defibrillation onsite.
He noted that even when the school's AED was not used in the resuscitation (ie, responding EMS provided the defibrillator), survival rates were reasonably high, which Drezner said "may reflect that school-based AED programmes predict other important determinants of survival and better overal emergency planning for SCA."
For support, he pointed to an earlier study he co-authored published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine finding that schools with AED programmes were more likely to ensure access to early defibrillation, establish an emergency action plan for SCA, review the EAP at least annually, consult EMS in its development, and establish a communication to activate emergency responders.
That study reported that roughly 1 in 5 U.S. high schools did not have an AED, half of schools without AEDs did not have any EAP for SCA, less than half of schools with an EAP regularly reviewed and rehearsed the plan, and 1 in 5 high schools did not train their coaches in CPR.
"While there is a growing trend towards AED placement in schools," Drezner writes, "school-based AED programs are not yet a universal standard," with financial concerns cited as the primary obstacle. "Greater resource allocation towards emergency planning for SCA is needed to ensure widespread access to AEDs in the school setting. Given two-thirds of SCA on a school campus occurs at an athletic venue, prioritising AED placement to these locations should be considered if resources are limited." | <urn:uuid:65d9ca04-3e7e-42ed-a3f7-3d0d278a5575> | {
"date": "2017-01-23T02:29:57",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-04",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281746.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00128-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9740412831306458,
"score": 2.953125,
"token_count": 759,
"url": "http://www.momsteam.com/health-safety/school-based-aed-programs-save-victims-of-sudden-cardiac-arrest-and-important-public-safety-measure-study-says"
} |
French theologian, b. 31 December, 1715 at Darney in Lorraine ; d. at Versailles, 9 April, 1790. After a course of theology in the University of Besançon, he received the degree of doctor, was ordained priest, and went to Paris to finish his studies. Returning to Besançon in 1748, he was given charge of a parish and later became president of the college of the city, which had formerly been under the direction of the Jesuits. In 1769 the Archbishop of Paris, M. de Beaumont, appointed him canon of the cathedral, and thenceforth Bergier resided at Paris. A pious priest and an energetic student, he devoted a great part of his time to writing in defence of religion. He agreed to correct certain articles of the "Encyclopédie", but found himself obliged to write entirely original articles which then formed the "Dictionnaire de theologie" as a part of the "Encyclopédie".
The works of Bergier are in the fields of apologetics and theology, except "Les elements primitifs des langues" ( Besançon, 1764) and "L'origine des dieux du paganisme" (Paris, 1767). Among his apologetical and theological works, the most important are: "Le déisme refuté par lui-même" (Paris, 1765); "La certitude des preuves du christianisme" (Paris, 1767, also published in Migne's "Démonstrations évangéliques", XI); "Reponses aux Conseils raisonnables de Voltaire" (Paris, 1771, also in Migne, ibid.); "Apologie de la religion chrétienne" — against d'Holbach's "Christianisme devoile" (Paris, 1769); "Réfutation des principaux articles du dictionnaire philosophique"; "Examen du matééééééééérialisme" (Paris, 1771); "Traité historique et dogmatique de la vraie religion" (Paris, 1780, and 8 vols. 8vo., 1820). The "Dictionnaire theologique" has been often edited, especially by Gousset in 8 vols. ( Besançon, 1838) and Migne (Paris, 1850). Some of his writings concerning divorce, the question of the mercy of God and the origin of evil, and one volume of sermons were published after his death. Though on certain points, as on the questions of grace and the supernatural necessity of revelation, the doctrine of Bergier lacks precision and completeness, the value of his theological and apologetical work cannot be denied.
The Catholic Encyclopedia is the most comprehensive resource on Catholic teaching, history, and information ever gathered in all of human history. This easy-to-search online version was originally printed in fifteen hardcopy volumes.
Designed to present its readers with the full body of Catholic teaching, the Encyclopedia contains not only precise statements of what the Church has defined, but also an impartial record of different views of acknowledged authority on all disputed questions, national, political or factional. In the determination of the truth the most recent and acknowledged scientific methods are employed, and the results of the latest research in theology, philosophy, history, apologetics, archaeology, and other sciences are given careful consideration.
No one who is interested in human history, past and present, can ignore the Catholic Church, either as an institution which has been the central figure in the civilized world for nearly two thousand years, decisively affecting its destinies, religious, literary, scientific, social and political, or as an existing power whose influence and activity extend to every part of the globe. In the past century the Church has grown both extensively and intensively among English-speaking peoples. Their living interests demand that they should have the means of informing themselves about this vast institution, which, whether they are Catholics or not, affects their fortunes and their destiny.
Copyright © Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company New York, NY. Volume 1: 1907; Volume 2: 1907; Volume 3: 1908; Volume 4: 1908; Volume 5: 1909; Volume 6: 1909; Volume 7: 1910; Volume 8: 1910; Volume 9: 1910; Volume 10: 1911; Volume 11: - 1911; Volume 12: - 1911; Volume 13: - 1912; Volume 14: 1912; Volume 15: 1912
Catholic Online Catholic Encyclopedia Digital version Compiled and Copyright © Catholic Online | <urn:uuid:e9f77f84-fd26-445a-bd2d-19f28dea6b23> | {
"date": "2014-07-29T16:55:31",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-23",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1406510267745.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20140728011747-00330-ip-10-146-231-18.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9093575477600098,
"score": 2.75,
"token_count": 962,
"url": "http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=1760"
} |
The Research Project
From the end of the 18th century onwards, the Orient fascinated Europe’s educated bourgeoisie and there was immense interest in spectacular events, discoveries and scientific findings. One particular event that help to kindle the fascination was Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1789, on which he permitted scholars and historians, as well as artists, to join him. In the heyday of colonialism, specific concepts of the Orient became platitudes: Whilst in the eighteenth century the Arabian continent was considered a magical place full of secrets, in the nineteenth century the fascination for foreign people and landscapes, for Arabian architecture and ornamentation found expression in literature and painting. A broad bourgeois public travelled to the Orient in increasing numbers and, alongside researchers and scientists, artists were at the forefront of this movement. For painters, the general preoccupation with the Orient and the findings emerging from it resulted in the demands of the observer becoming more exacting in terms of an accurate portrayal of buildings, costumes and locations. Around 1900 at the latest, however, it became clear that the mysteriously glorified Orient was a product of colonisers’ fantasies, and that, despite their accurate depictions of nature, the images Orient painters produced originated mainly in powers of imagination. At the beginning of the 20th century, the artistic approximation of the Orient changed, in that painting excluded the narrative element and instead sought solutions to problems of form and scene in the southern Orient. The modern artists largely distanced themselves from traditional orientalism and its academic-illusionist style of painting, hoping to find unknown sensual impressions and new sources of inspiration for their own creativity.
One of the research projects based at the Dresden State Art Collections’ Galerie Neue Meister focuses on the Egyptian travels of two important German artists from the beginning of the twentieth century: the impressionist Max Slevogt (1868–1932) and Bauhaus artist Paul Klee (1879–1940). Max Slevogt had already tackled the theme of the Orient in 1903 when, as an illustrator, he produced fantasy-laden, fairytale-like picture series for “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”. During his meticulously planned journey through Egypt in the spring of 1914, which took him from Cairo to Luxor and on to Aswan, he met the people of Egypt and their culture with the eye of an outdoor painter who renders his visual impressions spontaneously and impartially. Slevogt concentrated primarily on the atmospheric colour effects under the influence of the bright sunlight, and he managed to create a series of travel images of outstanding pictorial unity, depth and authenticity. By closely linking painting and drawing, Max Slevogt managed to capture intense atmospheric impressions and scenes of everyday oriental life quickly and with remarkable certainty. The oil paintings he produced during this time were almost all acquired by Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie a short time later.
Paul Klee’s interest in Egypt also had its roots in 19th century Orientalism, and was anchored in a search for evidence of a mystical birth of mankind. As early as 1914, he discovered the Orient for himself on a trip to Tunisia, and visited Egypt in 1928/29. Klee, who had taught at the Bauhaus since 1920, was particularly interested not only in the mythological iconography of ancient Egyptian religion, but also in the laws of proportion and construction applied in temple structures and tombs. Yet he was also struck by the light and colour, something that stayed with him and led to a turning point in his later artistic creativity. In line with his artistic theory, according to which impressions of nature must be conveyed through the soul of the painter, Paul Klee’s Egyptian works – right down to individual sketches – only developed after his return. In his mathematically constructed layer patterns, the artist realises impressions of the Egyptian landscape, and later on in the 1930s too, Klee again took inspiration from his trip in his so-called “Balkenbilder”, the paintings based on bars of colour.
Taking the Egypt cycle, Max Slevogt’s unique “Apotheosis of Light”, as a starting point, within the context of the research project the artistic product of Slevogt’s travels, comprising around seventy paintings, plus documents like diaries, letters and photographs, is being reappraised and for the first time considered in relation to the imagery of Paul Klee. Here, Klee’s multifaceted transformation of his travel experience into over one hundred works is in dialogue with, and in contrast to, the perceptions immediately applied to canvas, wood and paper by the impressionist Slevogt. The aim is to make a contribution both to the comprehensive documentation of the two artists’ travels, and to the research into the portrayal of Egypt in German painting from the first half of the twentieth century, and in doing so, to take into consideration in particular the aspect of the change in artists’ ways of viewing things.
The results of the research project will flow into both a publication and an exhibition prepared jointly with the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, which was opened on 30 April 2014 in Dresden and will subsequently open in Düsseldorf.
More information on the project can be found on the Gerda Henkel Stiftung home page.
Dr. Hartwig FischerLocation
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden | <urn:uuid:18b507e1-a66e-484d-944a-74bfdaeafb73> | {
"date": "2020-01-29T06:24:32",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2020-05",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579251788528.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20200129041149-20200129071149-00416.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9629425406455994,
"score": 3.359375,
"token_count": 1134,
"url": "https://lisa.gerda-henkel-stiftung.de/licht_und_farbe?nav_id=4924?show_language=en&show_hd=1&autoplay=1&language=en"
} |
The z990, also known by its code name T-Rex, is a 64-bit mainframe computer from IBM that contains up to 32 processors, together capable of executing approximately 9,000 million instructions per second (MIPS), nearly three times the processing power of IBM's z900. IBM says that the z990 enhances the e-business capabilities of the z900 and that it was designed from the ground up to serve customers' varying on-demand computing needs. The z990 is not only faster but comes with four times as much memory and twice as many I/O channels as the z900.
To serve varying "on demand" situations, the z990 directs processor resources to the highest priority tasks and also minimizes problems that occur when addressable memory becomes insufficient. It also allows dynamic flexible partitioning and resource management under mixed or unpredictable workloads. The z990 supports up to 30 logical partitions. High-speed interconnects make it possible for Internet traffic to move between partitions and virtual servers at memory speed. IBM says that a 16-way z990 system can handle 11,000 Secure Socket Layer (SSL) transactions per second. New versions of IBM's z/OS and its DB2 database product help support these capabilities.
The basic hardware unit in a z990 is the Multichip Module (MCM), which IBM says is "the world's densest logic package with over three billion transistors." An MCM comes as a unit with memory cards holding up to 64 gigabytes (GB) and Self-Timed Interconnects; each of these units is known as a book. A z990 can include up to four books. The z990 allows the installation of up to 512 local communication channels across three I/O cages. (A cage is a structure into which channel connections can be installed.) | <urn:uuid:fc51dc6c-79f7-4c89-baba-001f1ed27a0f> | {
"date": "2014-04-19T17:20:54",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-15",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-15/segments/1397609537308.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20140416005217-00427-ip-10-147-4-33.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9519765377044678,
"score": 2.734375,
"token_count": 372,
"url": "http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/definition/z990"
} |
My daughter will be two years old in August. For a year she has had occasional periods when she passes out when crying too hard. It is always brought on from her being angry or upset. She holds her breath, her face becomes purple and her tongue looks purple, also. The whole breath-holding and passing out lasts only a few seconds. Afterwards, she will be sleepy and cry for 5 – 10 minutes. Then she is back to normal. Is she harming herself? Is this normal? Is this more serious than simply holding her breath? Her baby-sitter suggested that these may be seizures.
Sara Silva – Porterville, California
Dr. Greene’s Answer:
This is a typical scene: A little child is playing happily, something upsets her, she exhales forcefully with a brief, shrill cry — but she doesn’t take another breath. You wait, but she still doesn’t breathe. She looks as if she’s crying, but no sound emerges. She begins to turn blue, her face strained, and still she is not breathing. Now she is unconscious, unresponsive, limp; the sight of her lifeless body is terrifying. Now her back arches, and her blue arms and legs begin to jerk uncontrollably. Your heart is pounding, frantic…
Breath-holding spells are perhaps the most frightening of the common, benign behaviors of childhood. Desperate parents often want to splash cold water on the child’s face, start mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, or even begin CPR. Thankfully, breath-holding spells resolve spontaneously soon after the child passes out, and unless the fall hurts the child, she will be fine afterwards. The spell usually resolves within 30 to 60 seconds, with the child catching her breath and starting to cry or scream. Sometimes children will have real seizures as part of breath-holding spells, but these brief seizures are not harmful, and there is no increased risk of the child’s developing a seizure disorder. Breath-holding spells occur in about 0.1 to 5% of children, usually between ages 6 months to 6 years old.
These spells are provoked by the child’s not getting her own way. While they are triggered by a child being angry or surprised, they are thought to be reflexive, not intentional behaviors. Breath-holding is quite rare before 6 months of age. It peaks as children enter the twos, and disappears finally by about age five. The spells occur sporadically, but when they do occur, it is not uncommon for there to be several spells within a single day. Once parents have witnessed one breath-holding spell, they can often predict when another one is about to happen.
The first time a spell occurs, the parents should have the child examined by a doctor. Because breath-holding spells do share several features in common with seizure disorders, the two are often confused. In epileptic seizures, a child may turn blue, but it will be during or after the seizure, not before. Rarely, other medical conditions may look like breath-holding spells and a visit to the doctor’s will help clarify the situation.
If your doctor confirms that the event was indeed a breath-holding spell, it is a good idea to check for anemia since there is an association between the two. Treating the anemia, if present, will often decrease the frequency of passing out. The parents’ most important job, however, is to not reinforce the breath-holding behavior — either by bending to the child’s will or by paying more attention to her when she has these spells. Instead, if you are certain she hasn’t choked on something, place her in a safe spot (without giving in to whatever she held her breath to achieve), and ignore her behavior.
There is another, far less common, type of breath-holding spell, where the child turns deathly pale instead of blue or purple. These pallid spells are involuntary and unpredictable. They are brought on by a sudden startle, such as falling and striking the head. The child stops breathing, goes limp, passes out, and rapidly drains of color. Pallid breath-holding spells also resolve spontaneously. These children should be examined by a doctor, both to confirm the diagnosis, and to prescribe a preventative medicine if the spells are frequent or severe. There is an even less common type of breath-holding spell associated with a rare genetic condition called familial dysautonomia (Riley Day Syndrome); these involuntary spells occur in children who are already acting seriously ill.
Breath-holding spells shine a brilliant spotlight on one of the biggest challenges of parenting. We do not like to disappoint the little children that we love so much. Moreover, we don’t want to get into yet another battle with our children — in the short run it is always easier to give in to a tantrum than to do what we instinctively feel is best. For parents of breath-holding children, this crucial struggle of parenthood is powerfully amplified.
Most would expect that a breath-holding spell would be difficult. Most are surprised, however, to find that in many ways, the biggest challenge is life between spells. Parents become timid about setting limits or disappointing their children because of the very real possibility of provoking another spell. For all of us, love consists of having the courage to act in spite of our fear. | <urn:uuid:276c07e1-9fc6-46e0-be01-bc3505ee68a9> | {
"date": "2015-03-29T11:25:58",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2015-14",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-14/segments/1427131298464.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20150323172138-00242-ip-10-168-14-71.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.963395893573761,
"score": 2.515625,
"token_count": 1110,
"url": "http://www.drgreene.com/qa-articles/breath-holding-spells/"
} |
Enteroscopy is a procedure used to examine the small intestine (small bowel).
Small bowel biopsy; Push enteroscopy; Double-balloon enteroscopy; Capsule enteroscopy; Sonde enteroscopy
How the Test is Performed
A thin, flexible tube (endoscope) is inserted through the mouth and into the upper gastrointestinal tract. During a double-balloon enteroscopy, balloons attached to the endoscope can be inflated to allow the doctor to view a section of the small intestine.
In a colonoscopy, a flexible tube is inserted through your rectum and colon. The tube can most often reach into the end part of the small intestine (ileum).
Tissue samples removed during enteroscopy are sent to the lab for examination. | <urn:uuid:4748caae-f7e5-479e-977c-e6dd2f044d3b> | {
"date": "2019-10-15T02:32:52",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2019-43",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986655735.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20191015005905-20191015033405-00336.warc.gz",
"int_score": 4,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.8837227821350098,
"score": 3.6875,
"token_count": 161,
"url": "https://www.sutterhealth.org/services/gastroenterology/cpmc-double-balloon-enteroscopy"
} |
(PRWEB) May 04, 2012
Beginning in May, Healthy Vision Month, the American Health Assistance Foundation (AHAF) is launching See a Better Tomorrow, a public education campaign that encourages people to schedule comprehensive eye exams to help protect against irreversible vision loss.
AHAF, which funds research and provides public information on glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration, attests that early diagnosis is key to limiting or preventing vision loss from these two degenerative diseases, which affect 16 million Americans.
“Many people are unaware that they have these diseases until they start to experience symptoms, after irreversible vision loss may have occurred,” says AHAF President and CEO Stacy Pagos Haller. “The good news is that with detection and treatment, eye doctors can often slow or stop the progression of these diseases and help protect against blindness.”
A regular, comprehensive eye exam with pupil dilation allows a doctor to examine the back of the eye for signs of eye disease before symptoms appear.
Through public service announcements and a wide range of resources, AHAF’s See a Better Tomorrow campaign asks people to visualize places or people they want to see, and then to protect their ability to continue seeing them by having an eye exam. The multi-platform campaign, highlighted at the campaign website, http://www.ahaf.org/SeeaBetterTomorrow, features:
Glaucoma, which has few or no symptoms in its early stages, is a leading cause of blindness in the U.S. and the world. Approximately 2.8 million Americans have been diagnosed with open-angle glaucoma, the most common form of the disease, and another 2.8 million may be living with the disease and not yet know it. Eye exams are very important for people who might be at high risk for glaucoma: African Americans older than 40; everyone older than 60, particularly Mexican-Americans; and people with a family history of the disease.
Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in industrialized nations. In the U.S., as many as 11 million people may have some form of the disease, and that number is expected to double over the next four decades. There are limited options for preventing or treating various forms of this disease, but for many patients treatments can slow or halt vision loss.
Scientists are still learning about the causes of, and developing treatments for, these diseases. To date, AHAF’s Macular Degeneration Research and National Glaucoma Research programs have provided more than $31.5 million in grants to identify new prevention, diagnostic, and treatment options for people facing vision loss.
About the American Health Assistance Foundation
The American Health Assistance Foundation (http://www.ahaf.org) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding cures for age-related degenerative diseases by funding research worldwide under its three programs: Alzheimer’s Disease Research, Macular Degeneration Research, and National Glaucoma Research. AHAF also provides public information about these diseases, including risk factors, preventative lifestyles, current treatments, and coping strategies. | <urn:uuid:5e6e8035-7fef-4563-a3d3-4a78f0fdec53> | {
"date": "2014-11-27T09:36:50",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-49",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-49/segments/1416931008218.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20141125155648-00196-ip-10-235-23-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9435440301895142,
"score": 2.828125,
"token_count": 650,
"url": "http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/5/prweb9469271.htm"
} |
Sex and gender more important than income in determining views on division of chores
AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION (EUREKALERT.ORG, 21/8/2018)
For heterosexual couples, most Americans still believe in the traditional division of household labor between husbands and wives, while for same-sex couples, they think the "more masculine" partner and the "more feminine" partner should generally be responsible for stereotypically male and female chores, respectively, suggests a new study that will be presented at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA).
"This is the first study that looks at Americans' beliefs about how partners should divide chores and childcare tasks," said Natasha Quadlin, the lead author of the study and a doctoral student in sociology at Indiana University.
Titled, "Making Money, Doing Gender, or Being Essentialist? Partner Characteristics and Americans' Attitudes Toward Housework," the study examined responses from a nationally representative survey of more than 1,000 adults in 2015 to determine which characteristics, including relative income, masculine or feminine traits, and sex, shape Americans' ideas about how married couples should divide household labor -- indoor and outdoor chores, as well as childcare. Each respondent was randomly assigned a description of a heterosexual or same-sex couple. The description included information about each partner's occupation and income, as well as his or her hobbies and interests, which cued whether the partner had traditionally masculine or feminine traits. The respondents also received a list of chores and childcare-related tasks to assign between the two partners.
Quadlin and co-author Long Doan, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, found that among heterosexual couples, partner sex differences had the strongest overall effect on the assignment of chores and childcare. "Nearly three quarters of our respondents thought that the female partners in heterosexual couples should be responsible for cooking, doing laundry, cleaning the house, and buying groceries," Quadlin said. "In addition, nearly 90 percent of our respondents thought that heterosexual men should be responsible for automobile maintenance and outdoor chores. Regardless of the partner's relative income or gendered hobbies and interests, our respondents gravitated toward the person's sex instead."
When respondents were asked to assign tasks between same-sex partners, traditionally female chores were generally given to the more feminine partner, and traditionally male tasks were typically assigned to the more masculine partner. According to the researchers, 66 percent of respondents believed the more feminine partner should be responsible for buying groceries, 61 percent felt that partner should cook, and 58 percent thought that partner should clean the house and do the laundry. On the other hand, 67 percent of respondents believed that the more masculine partner should handle automobile maintenance and outdoor chores.
"Even in same-sex couples where there are not sex differences between partners, people use gender differences as a way to approximate sex differences," Quadlin said.
Women in heterosexual relationships were also expected to handle the majority of childcare tasks. Eighty-two percent of respondents said the female partner should be responsible for the children's physical needs, 72 percent thought she should take care of the children's emotional needs, and 62 percent believed the woman should be the stay-at-home parent. Male partners were assigned only one childcare task by a majority of respondents: 55 percent felt the man should be in charge of discipline.
When evaluating same-sex couples, 62 percent of respondents expected the more feminine partner to attend to the physical needs of the children, and 60 percent believed the more feminine spouse should handle the emotional needs of the children, the researchers said. The findings for whether the more masculine or feminine partner should be the stay-at-home parent and be in charge of discipline were not statistically significant for same-sex couples.
"Sex was by far the strongest determinant of which tasks people assigned to each spouse in heterosexual couples," Quadlin said. "But, surprisingly, that theme extended to same-sex couples. When there wasn't a sex difference between partners, people relied on information about gender to guide their beliefs about what people should be doing. So, in other words, they took the heterosexual norm, where there are certain chores that men are expected to do and certain chores that women are expected to do, and used that same rationalization to determine household responsibilities for same-sex couples. We were surprised that happened to the extent that it did, because we thought expectations for household responsibilities would be more egalitarian between same-sex partners."
In terms of the study's importance, Quadlin said the research provides insight into the state of gender equality in America. "Determining who does what in the home is a complex negotiation that reflects underlying power dynamics in the household," Quadlin said. "We have public policies aimed at ensuring that women and men have equal earnings, but those policies will not necessarily advance gender equality in the home if people maintain such gendered attitudes. Even if women have higher earnings than their husbands, they are expected to come home and perform a second shift of chores and childcare." | <urn:uuid:defbaf2c-f6a1-4652-89d4-30c9efcc190a> | {
"date": "2017-03-28T14:04:22",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-13",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218189771.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212949-00171-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9600013494491577,
"score": 2.6875,
"token_count": 1029,
"url": "http://gaynewsingreek.blogspot.com/2016/09/blog-post_2.html"
} |
Tracing the beginning of Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate Social Responsibility [hereinafter referred to as “CSR”] came into common use in the late 1960s and early 1970s but if we were to turn the pages of history, we would know that the history of social and environmental concern about business is as old as trade and business itself. For example laws to protect forests, can be traced back almost 5,000 years. In Ancient Mesopotamia around 1700 BC, King Hammurabi introduced a code in which builders, innkeepers or farmers were put to death if their negligence caused the deaths of others, or major inconvenience to local citizens.
With industrialization, the impacts of business on society and the environment assumed an entirely new dimension. The “corporate paternalists” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used some of their wealth to support philanthropic ventures. By the 1920s discussions about the social responsibilities of business had evolved into what we can recognize as the beginnings of the “modern” CSR movement. It was in 1929, that the Dean of Harvard Business School, Mr. Wallace B. Donham commented in his speech delivered at North Western University:
“Business started long centuries before the dawn of history, but business as we now know it is new - new in its broadening scope, new in its social significance. Business has not learned how to handle these changes, nor does it recognize the magnitude of its responsibilities for the future of civilization.”
Almost seventy five years later, these words ring just as true. Today also there are so much of talks going about the same but very little done in this regard.
Defining Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate social responsibility (CSR), also commonly as called corporate conscience, corporate citizenship, social performance, or sustainable responsible business/ responsible business). CSR differs from place to place, from industry to industry. It is difficult to define CSR precisely because it will always have a locationspecific context. The world business Council for Sustainable Development defines CSR as, “Corporate Social Responsibility is the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large.”
It is basically a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model.
Friedman versus Russell
Milton Friedman indicated that one and only one social responsibility of a business is to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits, as long as it stays with the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception of fraud.
On the other hand Kirk Russell insisted that every right is married to a duty, every freedom owns a corresponding responsibility. Hence, there cannot be genuine freedom unless genuine order also exists in the moral realm and in the social realm.
Its not only in the times of Friedman and Russell that two completely contrasting opinions about CSR existed, even today there are a number of people, infact most number of people following the Friedman’s way. Without even realizing that today, there is no way to avoid paying serious attention to corporate citizenship/ CSR, as the cost of failing is very high. There could be countless win-win opportunities waiting to be discovered. It is to be understood that every activity in a firm’s/any sort of corporate set-up’s value chain overlaps in some way with social factors, from how to buy or procure to how to conduct the research, and its quite strange that yet very few companies have thought about it. The goal is not only to earn profit but leverage company’s unique capabilities in supporting social causes as well as improving its competitive context at the same time.
Methodology of Corporate Social Responsibility
CSR is the procedure of assessing an organization’s impact on society and evaluating their responsibilities. It begins with an assessment of the following aspects of each business:
Corporate social responsibility is maintainable as it involves activities that can be upheld by an organization without negatively affecting the business growth. CSR is not only about protecting the environment, taking ecological accountability into consideration or having a recycling policy, it is about considering the whole representation of the company, from internal processes to the clients, taking in every step that a business takes during day-to-day operations and for its wholesome growth.
Organizations have to recognize that CSR is just a way in which companies manage their business processes to produce an overall positive impact on the community at large. It is very important big and small both companies to understand that besides growing their businesses, it is also important to shape responsible and supportable relationships with the society.
An initiative is also required from countries having developing economy to have CSR as a part of their business. This can be achieved by having specific departments and teams in their companies (having number of members depending upon the size of their organization/company) that develop specific policies, strategies and goals for their CSR programs and set separate budgets to support them.
Issues and Challenges
The prime purpose of including CSR in corporate business is to make the corporate business activities as well as the corporate culture both sustainable in three ways: economic, social and environmental. Paying equal amount of attention to all the three dimensions, but many companies think that corporate social responsibility is a much exterior part of their business, whereas most think it to be an irrelevant issue for their business as satisfying their customers/clients is more important for them. It is further felt that customer satisfaction is only about price and service, but concentrating on only these aspects of business makes them blind folded towards other important changes taking place worldwide that could blow the business out of the water. The change is named as social responsibility which is an opportunity in itself for the business.
Some of the drivers pushing business towards CSR include:
Inefficiency of the Government
In the past, governments have relied only on legislation and regulation to deliver social and environmental objectives in the business sector which has lead to certain failed initiatives.
Demands for Greater Disclosure
There is a growing demand for corporate disclosure from stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, employees, communities, investors, and activist organizations.
Increased Customer Interest
It has been seen and proved through a survey conducted in the year 2002 in 25 countries by Environics International1, it was found that more than one third of surveyed consumers believed that large companies “should do more than give money to solve problems.”
The same study found that almost 50 percent of consumers had considered punishing a company based on its social actions, and that nearly 30 percent had actually avoided a company for that reason. Further it was proved that the ethical conduct of companies have a growing influence on the purchasing decisions of customers.
Increased pressure from the Investor Investors are changing the way they analyze companies' performance, and are making decisions based on ethical concerns too.
Change in employee behaviour
Employees are increasingly looking beyond paychecks and benefits and seeking out employers whose operating practices match their own principles. In order to hire and retain skilled employees, companies are being forced to improve working conditions.
Advantages of making CSR a part
The concept of corporate social responsibility is now firmly rooted around the globe as a business agenda. But in order to move from theory to concrete action, many hurdles need to be overcome. The positives of a CSR initiative are that it can bestow an organization both in terms of finances as well as managerial talent and also attract right people to work on the initiatives. Thus looking at the initiatives by Corporate around the world one feels that we can expect more from them.
There is an urgent need to address the various CSR initiatives and also a need to build a mechanism through which such efforts are recognized and rewarded. It would not be wrong in saying that transparency and dialogue can help to make a business appear more trustworthy, and push up the standards of other organizations at the same time.
Some of the positive outcomes that can arise when businesses adopt a policy of social responsibility include:
Examples of benefits to a Company:
- Improved financial performance;
- Lower operating costs;
- Enhanced brand image and reputation;
- Increased sales and customer loyalty;
- Greater productivity and quality;
- More ability to attract and retain employees;
- Reduced regulatory oversight;
- Access to capital;
- Workforce diversity;
- Product safety and decreased liability.
Examples of benefits to the Community and the General Public
- Charitable contributions;
- Employee volunteer programs;
- Corporate involvement in community education, employment and homelessness programs;
- Product safety and quality.
Examples of benefits to the Environment
- Greater material recyclability;
- Better product durability and functionality;
- Greater use of renewable resources;
- Integration of environmental management tools into business plans, including life-cycle assessment and costing, environmental management standards, and eco-labeling.
It would certainly not be wrong to say that the leading global companies of 2020 will be those that would provide their customers and clients with goods and services and even reach out to them in a manner and with a approach that accommodates solutions to world’s major challenges, such as poverty, climate change, resource depletion, globalization and demographic shift. | <urn:uuid:91320985-6860-4c29-9081-620414f93553> | {
"date": "2019-09-16T00:41:09",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2019-39",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-39/segments/1568514572439.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20190915235555-20190916021555-00016.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9708914756774902,
"score": 3.09375,
"token_count": 1905,
"url": "https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=b22d13e7-1640-413b-9832-8a4d5454e8ab"
} |
Americans have begun to battle over sunshine. In sun-scorched Arizona a regulatory skirmish has broken out over arrays of blue-black silicon panels on rooftops, threatening the local utilities that have ruled electricity generation for a century or more. With some of the best access to sunshine on the planet, Arizona boasts the second-most solar power in the U.S.—more than 1,000 megawatts and counting. The state hosts vast photovoltaic arrays in the desert as well as the nation’s first commercial power plant with the technology to use sunshine at night—by storing daytime heat in molten salts.
In terms of infrastructure, such big solar fits as comfortably as a coal-fired power plant in the traditional electricity business model, which involves large plants transmitting electricity over a grid of conducting lines through transformers and into individual homes and businesses. The trouble, from an electric utility’s perspective, is the tens of thousands of Arizona’s total of three million or so homes that have installed small solar: photovoltaic panels made from wafers of semiconducting material, typically silicon, that use incoming sunlight to create an electric current. With these homes making their own electricity, utilities lose their most lucrative customers and confront a dwindling base over which to spread big infrastructure costs, like building new power plants or maintaining the grid. “The net-metered customer does not share equally in the overhead costs associated with the grid or other services provided by the utility, producing a very substantial ‘cross-subsidy’ funded by all other utility customers who must pay proportionately more,” wrote James Hughes, CEO of solar panel maker First Solar, in an op-ed in support of the utility Arizona Public Service Co. (APS) position this past June. . . . | <urn:uuid:f8de0ea4-791b-4e5b-b2a4-b2ad6ada8b1f> | {
"date": "2018-03-17T21:56:36",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2018-13",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-13/segments/1521257645362.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20180317214032-20180317234032-00656.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9449334144592285,
"score": 2.78125,
"token_count": 369,
"url": "https://www.usrea.org/fight-over-rooftop-solar-forecasts-a-bright-future-for-cleaner-energy/"
} |
Schools often resort to ineffective, punitive interventions for the 10% of K-8 students whose challenging behavior interferes with their own and their classmates' learning. This book fills a crucial need by describing ways to provide meaningful supports to students with disruptive behavior disorders. Prominent authority Frank M. Gresham weaves together current research, assessment and intervention guidelines, and illustrative case studies. He reviews a broad range of evidence-based practices and offers recommendations for selecting, implementing, and evaluating them within a multi-tiered framework. Coverage includes school- and home-based approaches, multicomponent programs, prevention strategies, and social skills training.
1. Characteristics, Correlates, Causes, and Outcomes of Disruptive Behavior Disorders in Children and Youth 2. Evaluating, Selecting, and Implementing Evidence-Based Practices in School Contexts: Key Issues and Recommendations 3. Evidence-Based Assessment Strategies: Screening, Identification, Progress Monitoring, and Outcomes 4. Issues and Guidelines in Implementing Interventions 5. Evidence-Based School Interventions: A Multi-Tiered Approach 6. Evidence-Based Home Interventions 7. Evidence-Based Multicomponent Interventions 8. Primary Prevention Strategies 9. Replacement Behavior Training Strategies 10. Case Study Applications for Best Practices with Kelsey Hartman and Rachel Olinger Steeves References | <urn:uuid:e19b86b7-c378-4633-ad7a-025434814334> | {
"date": "2017-12-13T12:42:34",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-51",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-51/segments/1512948523222.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20171213123757-20171213143757-00456.warc.gz",
"int_score": 4,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.8696824312210083,
"score": 3.78125,
"token_count": 277,
"url": "https://www.wisepress.com/ebooks/disruptive-behavior-disorders-9781462521333/"
} |
John Shoch and Jon Hupp at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center discovered the computer "worm," a short program that searches a network for idle processors. Initially designed to provide more efficient use of computers and for testing, the worm had the unintended effect of invading networked computers, creating a security threat.
Shoch took the term "worm" from the book "The Shockwave Rider," by John Brunner, in which an omnipotent "tapeworm" program runs loose through a network of computers. Brunner wrote: "No, Mr. Sullivan, we can´t stop it! There´s never been a worm with that tough a head or that long a tail! It´s building itself, don´t you understand? Already it´s passed a billion bits and it´s still growing. It´s the exact inverse of a phage - whatever it takes in, it adds to itself instead of wiping... Yes, sir! I´m quite aware that a worm of that type is theoretically impossible! But the fact stands, he´s done it, and now it´s so goddamn comprehensive that it can´t be killed. Not short of demolishing the net!" (247, Ballantine Books, 1975).
USENET established. USENET was invented as a means for providing mail and file transfers using a communications standard known as UUCP. It was developed as a joint project by Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by graduate students Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis, and Steve Bellovin. USENET enabled its users to post messages and files that could be accessed and archived. It would go on to become one of the main areas for large-scale interaction for interest groups through the 1990s.
The first Multi-User Domain (or Dungeon), MUD1, is goes on-line. Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw, two students at the University of Essex, write a program that allows many people to play against each other on-line. MUDs become popular with college students as a means of adventure gaming and for socializing. By 1984, there are more than 100 active MUDs and variants around the world.
Dag Spicer is CHM's "Chief Content Officer," and is responsible for creating the intellectual frameworks and interpretive schema of the Museum's various programs and exhibitions. He also leads the Museum's strategic direction relating to its collection of computer artifacts, films, documents, software and ephemera—the largest collection of computers and related materials in the world.
Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born. | <urn:uuid:8e373bf5-3236-4e5f-b8b2-b24d4265012e> | {
"date": "2016-07-25T09:37:02",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2016-30",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-30/segments/1469257824217.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20160723071024-00208-ip-10-185-27-174.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9510655999183655,
"score": 2.890625,
"token_count": 568,
"url": "http://gizmodo.com/5317247/the-network-before-the-internet"
} |
Guavas are found in the tropics, and invoke images of vacations, summer parties and island life, but this tasty fruit is more than a celebratory food. This fruit is bursting with healthy vitamins and minerals and can be used to treat many serious ailments. You can recognize guavas by their yellow, green or maroon skins and creamy white or pink pulp.
1. Weight loss and gain
Guava is a winning fruit for its many great benefits. If you’re trying to lose weight, guavas are not a fruit you need to give up. In fact, this snack-sized fruit can satisfy your appetite while adding few calories, low amounts of carbohydrates and no cholesterol to your diet. Also, compared to other fruit,it adds a low dose of sugar. Guavas also offer a great source of vitamins, proteins, roughage, fibers and minerals. For lean people trying to gain weight, this fruit is also beneficial as it promotes the healthy absorption of nutrients and its substantial nutrients regulate one’s metabolism.
2. Blood pressure and Diabetes
Guavas are hypoglycemic and rich in fiber, which help reduce blood pressure. Dietary fibers maintain the blood’s fluidity and prevent it from thickening, which can worsen blood pressure. Foods lacking in fiber (for example refined flour) increase blood pressure because they convert to sugar more quickly. This can help fight or even prevent diabetes. The fiber regulates the sugar being absorbed by the body and the risk of both high spikes and drops in the body’s insulin and glucose levels is reduced.
3. Diarrhea, dysentery, and gastroenteritis
The abundant astringent (substances that contract body tissue) makeup of raw guava and guava leaves helps loosen the bowels and reduce the symptoms of diarrhea and gastroenteritis. Being highly alkaline, the guavas act as a disinfectant, removing excess mucus from the intestines and inhibiting microbial growth. For these reasons, guavas can also be used to treat dysentery. The guavas’ plentiful supply of vitamin C, carotenoids and potassium can also boost your digestive system.
4. Thyroid health
A good substance for regulating the thyroid’s metabolism is copper, which guavas have plenty of. The thyroid glands regulate important hormones and organ system functions, which helps maintain a healthy balance in your body.
5. Healthy brains
Also present in guavas are high amounts of vitamins B3 and B6. These both have benefits for the health of your brain. B3, which is also called niacin, is known to help increase blood flow and stimulate cognitive function, while B6 helps preserve normal nerve function.
Guava is your best source for vitamin C. In fact, it has four times the amount of Vitamin C found in oranges, which are regarded as the go-to food for this vitamin. The concentration of vitamin C can prevent scurvy, a disease caused by a deficiency of this vitamin.
The seeds of guavas, either ingested whole or chewed, are excellent laxatives. In addition to the fruits' substantial amount of dietary fiber, guavas are advantageous for treating constipation. These two sources cleanse your intestines and excretory system and help your body retain water, helping you achieve healthy bowel movements. Frequently snacking on guavas, then, can be beneficial for proper digestion.
8. Colds and coughs
Drinking the juice of guavas and fresh guava fruit helps in fighting colds and coughs. The astringent quality can lessen mucus, disinfect the respiratory tract, throat, and lungs and reduce microbial activity. The substantial amounts of iron and vitamin C in guavas also help treat viral infections. It’s advised to avoid eating overly ripe guavas when you have a cold or cough, as they can actually aggravate them.
The considerable quantities of vitamin A in guavas are extremely beneficial for the health of your vision. This helps slow down macular degeneration, the growth of cataracts and can even improve one’s eyesight deterioration once it has begun.
10. Cancer prevention
Guava is also valuable in your diet as a preventative measure against cancerous growths and metastasis. The high levels of an antioxidant called lycopene has been shown to reduce the risk of prostate cancer and inhibit the growth of breast cancer cells. Guava leaf oil is another anti-proliferative extract from the guava plant that has proven effective in reducing cancer growth.
Guavas are also fantastic at improving skin texture and keeping your skin looking fresh. Guavas are full of astringents, particularly in fresh fruit and the leaves of the plant. If you rinse your skin with a guava decoction, the fruit can tone and tighten areas of loose skin. Eating the fruit also provides a rich source of vitamins A, B, C, as well as potassium, which are excellent antioxidants and detoxifiers. They can keep your skin glowing, prevent premature aging and wrinkles, and can speed up the healing process of wounds. | <urn:uuid:e07db918-1d7b-45fa-a194-9ef41ab6b768> | {
"date": "2017-01-16T12:58:55",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-04",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279176.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00478-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9373806715011597,
"score": 3,
"token_count": 1067,
"url": "http://www.ba-bamail.com/content.aspx?emailid=19550"
} |
Explaining Wireless Sensor Nodes: ZigBee vs. WiFI
This is a great video that is short and to the point when comparing some of the technical aspects of Zigbee and WiFi wireless communication. After you watch the video let’s go over the info and put some Controls Freak-speak to it to better understand the comparisons and some of the technical jargon.
This video brings up three great points about these two types of wireless communication. Let’s take a look at those three items.
Power and Battery Life
In most cases we don’t think twice about the amount of battery power our WiFi enabled phones and laptops consume because our chargers are always just a wall socket away to delivering a fresh stream of recharge juice. However, ya really can’t plug that space temperature sensor into the nearest outlet each day.
The way ZigBee gets such long battery life is in the way the radio of the transmitter works. It has a sleep mode that it goes into when not required to ‘listen’ or ‘talk’. This is the heart of the ZigBee 802.15.4 standard.
Bit Rate or Throughput
In the video, if you were paying attention, you prolly noticed that the amount of data that a ZigBee transmitter can spit out is 250 kb/s. To put that in perspective for those of you not hip to the whole MEGA-bit Flip Chip terminology, the WiFi transmitter spits out a whopping 54,000 kb/s.
The thing ya gotta ask yourself is… Do you need all that speed and bandwidth? No, not at all. We are talking about small devices like temperature, pressure and current sensors that only need to send a few bits of information to allow you to see a simple 3 or 4 digit number on the computer screen.
Range of Communication
Here we see another comparison where ZigBee shines. Zigbee device can reach up to 1000 meters of distance with a good line of sight. Typical WiFi reaches 100 meters or 300 feet. These distance are pretty relative when dealing with the radios inside of a building with walls, ceilings, concrete and metal all around.
Some closing thoughts though… ZigBee mesh networks still rely on wired Ethernet as its backbone or trunk to get all the gathered information from the many sensors and devices back to your front end or computer. The main points of this video is not to show how ZigBee replaces computer network connectivity, but sensor and device connectivity. I think you would be hard pressed to find common, inexpensive WiFi sensors and devices for Building Automation System applications. They just don’t make sense when talking about individual points.
Then again I haven’t actually installed any ZigBee or other wireless devices myself and I wanted to learn some more as I will be utilizing my first wireless devices here in the next couple of months on a truly large project.
Have YOU had any experience with ZigBee or some other brand of wireless devices? I’d like to hear about it in the comments below. | <urn:uuid:8d7e9eca-5c0e-4d7c-a523-fa4882b6c46c> | {
"date": "2017-03-25T17:23:14",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-13",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218189031.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212949-00446-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9179998636245728,
"score": 2.8125,
"token_count": 621,
"url": "http://www.thecontrolsfreak.com/2011/communication/explaining-wireless-sensor-nodes-zigbee-vs-wifi/"
} |
Symmetry of Graphs: Odd and Even Functions - Concept 16,762 views
There are special types of functions that have graph symmetry. The most notable types are even and odd functions. Even functions have graph symmetry across the y-axis, and if they are reflected, will give us the same function. Odd functions have 180 rotational graph symmetry, if they are rotated 180 about the origin we will get the same function. There are algebraic ways to compute if a function is even or odd.
I want to talk about even and odd functions. First the definition. A function f is even if f of -x equals f of x for all x in the domain of f. That means that you can switch x for -x and get the same value. Now what kind of symmetry does that give us? Well the graph of an even function's always going to be symmetric with respect to y axis. Why is that?
Well, if you remember our discussion of symmetry, of reflections, the graph of y equals f of -x. y equals f of -x is a reflection about the y axis, if the reflection of about the y axis of a function is exactly same the same as the function itself then it's symmetric about the y axis. Now let's look at two examples from our parent functions. There's y=x squared and there's y equals the absolute value of x.
Now odd functions. Function f is odd if f of -x equals the opposite of f of x. This means that opposite inputs give opposite outputs. Now, if this is true, the graph of an odd function would be symmetrical with respect to the origin. That means is you could take the the graph, rotate it 180 degrees and it will look exactly the same. So it's 180 degrees symmetry about the origin. Now some examples from our parent functions are y=x, y equals x cubed and also y equals 1 over x.
So remember odd functions: opposite inputs have opposite outputs. Even functions: opposite inputs have the same input. Even functions are symmetric about the y axis, odd functions are symmetric about the origin. | <urn:uuid:20bbc702-cdd7-4308-aef1-827820958f68> | {
"date": "2014-10-31T09:57:05",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2014-42",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-42/segments/1414637899531.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20141030025819-00201-ip-10-16-133-185.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 4,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9205425977706909,
"score": 3.859375,
"token_count": 439,
"url": "http://www.brightstorm.com/math/algebra-2/introduction-to-functions/symmetry-of-graphs-odd-and-even-functions/"
} |
Effects on Children
Children are always affected by domestic violence. Whether they are awake or asleep, in the same room or in another room, whether they are in the womb, infants, or as old as teens, they are affected by emotional, psychological and physical abuse within the household, even when it is not directed toward them.
If children are exposed to the violence repeatedly, they can develop severe behavior changes, develop Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and their developing brains can be damaged. The State of California recognizes domestic violence as child abuse.
Children in abusive households may be subject to incest or sexual molestation, be physically or psychologically abused and controlled, and have their pets abused or threatened.
Below are some behavioral changes of children exposed to domestic violence, incest and abuse:
- Changes in sleeping and nursing or eating patterns
- Extreme clinginess
- Low self-esteem, Shyness, shame, isolation, withdrawal
- Over-responsibility, trying to care for the parent, defend the parent
- Violent behavior
- Submissive behavior
- Inability to concentrate
Children who receive counseling or trauma therapy after leaving a violent situation may be able to reverse some of the behavioral changes.
Scared of your partner's ANGER?
Walking on eggshells? Hiding your bruises? Frightened for your kids? Trapped with no safe place to go?
Have you been RAPED?
Are you keeping it a shameful secret? Do you think no one will believe you? Do you believe it is your fault?
Were you MOLESTED as a child?
Does it still haunt you? Wondering if you will ever get over it?
End the Suffering
Call Us Now
24-hr Crisis Line 209-533-3401
or toll-free 1-800-454-4766 | <urn:uuid:cb2a9b35-89e2-4b54-a9b8-b2839cf943bc> | {
"date": "2018-08-17T05:55:03",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2018-34",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-34/segments/1534221211719.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20180817045508-20180817065508-00616.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9393588900566101,
"score": 3.203125,
"token_count": 377,
"url": "https://nonviolentcommunity.org/services/domestic-violence-services/effects-on-children/"
} |
Respiratory protection against inorganic arsenic (7440382) is briefly discussed. Because some inorganic arsenic compounds have a significant vapor pressure, NIOSH eliminated certain types of respirators, such as half mask respirators, from its list of currently recommended protective equipment for workers exposed to inorganic arsenic. Current NIOSH recommendations for personal respiratory equipment for use with inorganic arsenic compounds were given. These included full face coverage to prevent eye and facial irritation, high efficiency particulate filters for nonvolatile inorganic arsenic compounds, and air purifying respirators with an acid gas canister for arsenic compounds that have a high vapor pressure, such as arsenic-trichloride (7784341). Engineering controls were recommended to reduce and maintain arsenic exposures below the recommended standard of 2.0 micrograms per cubic meter. The author states that these controls, rather than respirators, should be used to attain compliance with the standard, except in cases of emergency or when installing or testing engineering control equipment, performing maintenance, or other nonroutine operations, when respirators should be used. | <urn:uuid:b9cc7f71-8ec6-470e-81c7-6db52631f52a> | {
"date": "2017-03-28T10:15:58",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2017-13",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218189686.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212949-00501-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9094901084899902,
"score": 2.703125,
"token_count": 218,
"url": "https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/nioshtic-2/00170795.html"
} |
n. Turbidity. Turbidity is the suspension of impurities in water. Muddy water
has a high turbidity.
o. Backwashing. Backwashing is the removal of accumulated solids from a
filter by using a reverse flow of filtered water. The operation mayor may not be
preceded by a reverse flow of compressed air.
p. Brine. Brine is very salty water.
q. Desalination. Desalination is the process of removing salt from
sea or brackish water.
a. Commander. The unit commander is responsible for the adequacy and
safety of the water used by his troops. He must enforce the rules of water discipline
(see f below) and ensure that each individual thoroughly understands the danger of
drinking contaminated water. When treated water is not obtainable, the commander
must ensure that proper water treatment methods are used in his unit. The unit field
sanitation team assists the commander in carrying out these responsibilities.
b. Quartermaster Corps. Personnel of the Quartermaster Corps (QM) are
responsible for setting up and operating bulk water treatment equipment. The QM units
procure, treat, and distribute the water. Sometimes water is transported by QM unit
personnel to centralized water distribution points (dry points) for easy pick up by field
units. However, the normal procedure is to erect standpipes adjacent to the water point
for water trailer or container unit pick up.
c. Corps of Engineers. The Corps of Engineers selects sources of water and
establishes water distribution points based upon information received from the Army
d. Army Medical Department. Army Medical Department personnel are
responsible for conducting bacteriological and chemical examinations of water, as well
as chlorine residual and pH testing under certain situations, enforcing and establishing
water quality standards, and inspecting water points and sources. Army Medical
Department personnel advise commanders and engineers/QM as to the methods of
purification that should be used to produce potable water. Once appropriate laboratory
and field examination of water is complete, it is also the AMEDD responsibility to
approve or disapprove the water for consumption.
e. Field Sanitation Team. The field sanitation team reports all water
inadequacies to the unit commander. The team, with regards to military water supply, is
(1) Instructing soldiers in sanitary methods of washing individual eating
(2) Assisting the commander in providing guidance to personnel and
inspecting them and the facilities for proper water sanitation procedures. | <urn:uuid:00b623b7-6d16-4e98-bc29-e8b9f8ca0b2f> | {
"date": "2018-03-20T21:38:57",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2018-13",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-13/segments/1521257647545.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20180320205242-20180320225242-00056.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.920404851436615,
"score": 3.078125,
"token_count": 527,
"url": "http://armymedical.tpub.com/MD0160/Responsibilities-Military-Water-Supply-9.htm"
} |
The CNC hobby machine fills the needs of the retired person who wants to make a hobby of machining. This is truly a hobby of the 21st century.
In fact, it was not until after World War II that machining began to move in a direction that would allow a then young generation to later entertain the thought of having machining as a hobby.
After World War II, almost fifty years before the appearance of the first CNC hobby machine, industry began to use punched tape for machine cutting. An IBM computer produced the punched tape, and that tape gave the machinery in a manufacturing facility the information for the needed procedure. The punched tape told a machine when and where to cut, drill or punch a material, although the machinery remained large and cumbersome.
The invention of the personal computer allowed machining to have access to directions from computer software. This led to reliance on computer numerical controls (CNC). The CNC machine can be used in a manufacturing setting. It can also be used for working on a smaller scale. This small-scale work, usually done in a home shop, requires a CNC hobby machine.
The CNC hobby machine pushes the operator to concentrate on subtractive processes. The operator of the CNC hobby machine commonly divides a single piece of material into parts in order to produce a new object. It is possible, however, for the operator of a CNC hobby machine to use an alternate building process.
The CNC hobby machine can be used to make smaller parts that are then fused into a new object. A third approach to creating that might be pursued by the operator of the CNC hobby machine involves shape changing. Here the hobbyist changes the shape of a material in order to create a new object.
While many of the CNC hobby machines sit in various home shops, more than one CNC hobby machine has found its way to a jewelry store. The ability of the CNC hobby machine to facilitate the cutting and engraving of metals has led most present-day jewelers to depend on the availability of such machines.
The CNC hobby machine has also found its way into schools and into high tech micro labs. Most of the micro labs using a CNC hobby machine have entered the new nanotech world. In order to appreciate the importance of CNC for the workers in the nanotech world, one needs to learn a bit about that setting.
The nanotech world is one in which everything is done on a smaller scale. For the high tech micro lab that means that, the culturing of viruses must be done in tiny plastic wells. Usually a technician works with a single plate that contains almost 100 such wells. The creation of such plates and the performance of operations on those plates can be facilitated by the availability of the CNC hobby machine. The CNC hobby machine certainly proves useful as well when it becomes necessary to label these multi-welled plates. | <urn:uuid:04313921-e4fc-4adf-8fbf-1a45384ba27e> | {
"date": "2019-11-18T18:30:58",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2019-47",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-47/segments/1573496669813.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20191118182116-20191118210116-00016.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9537861347198486,
"score": 3.390625,
"token_count": 592,
"url": "http://www.machine-and-tool.com/cnc-machines/cnc-hobby-machine.html"
} |
What does environment service?
- Fight poachers
- Identify actions linked with youth activities
- Organize the planting of trees
- Promote the utilization of sustainable resources
- Teach youth in schools about the environment
- Provide new skills in renewable energy
- Provide skills in rice production We promote the Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems in our region byencouraging work that spans these ecosystems. We organize forum/presentation in which all aspects of the conservation of aquatic resources can be presented and discussed enabling greater cooperation and efficiency in solving problems in aquatic resource conservation.
- The energy we use in producing, delivering and consuming materials is overwhelmingly derived from fossil sources crude oil, natural gas and coal, together with nuclear power from uranium.
- Fossil resources primarily crude oil and minerals are the most important raw materials for the industrial manufacture of finished and semi-finished goods.
Today, almost all human activity is critically dependent on energy produced from fossil fuels. Even as the economy scales new technological heights, the energy that powers it is condemning it to death. This fundamental contradiction is no mere Cassandran prophecy, but a truth arising from the operation of the laws of nature. The simple fact is that all economic activity relies on the physical and chemical conversion of materials from one form into another, and the conversion of fuels into the energy needed to distribute and consume the resultant products. Energy and raw materials are the fundament of our economies, their nervus rerum, or "nerve of all things". This nervus rerum is the real "ghost in the machine" (Arthur Koestler).
The faster the pace of the current global economy, the faster it rushes towards disaster:
In the world, more than three billion people still depend on food cooked over polluting open fires and inefficient stoves, using fuels such as wood, charcoal, coal, and kerosene. The toxic emissions from these cooking fires cause dramatic health, climate, economic, and environmental impacts, including some four million deaths each year "Clean Cooking Alliance". Women and girls, who are disproportionately affected, often spend hours each day cooking, inhaling toxic smoke, and gathering fuel. Cooking is also a leading cause of air pollution, responsible for up to 25 percent of outdoor air pollution in some countries.
Our department works and promotes Clean Cooking in rural areas, the development of clean energies, distribution and consistent use of cleaner, more efficient cookstoves and fuels in regions. We are interested in the positive social and environmental impacts. Fuel accounts for the majority of consumer spending when it comes to cooking, and our organization's goals reflects the importance of scaling access to the whole range of clean cooking and energy approaches. | <urn:uuid:4be86b19-ce0e-46c8-a3a3-920c0927d538> | {
"date": "2019-12-08T09:08:39",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2019-51",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-51/segments/1575540507109.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20191208072107-20191208100107-00496.warc.gz",
"int_score": 4,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.9121760725975037,
"score": 3.53125,
"token_count": 549,
"url": "http://youthandenvironment.org/doeservice.php"
} |
Days to maturity are calculated from date of direct seeding.
Hybrid SE/se Corn: The inherited sugar enhanced (SE/se) traits are what make these corn varieties unique. For starters, the kernel walls are the most tender of all corn varieties. Added to that are more sugars, making every ear as sweet as can be. After harvest, the conversion from sugar to starch in SE/se corn is delayed, so the corn maintains its sweetness longer after picking. To top it off, no isolation is required from other normal types of sweet corn, making SE/se corn very popular. For best germination, soil temperature should be at least 70°F.
Hybrid sh2 Supersweet Corn: The shrunken gene (sh2) gives the dried kernels an extra-wrinkled appearance. This inherited characteristic increases the sweetness of the corn at harvest time. Commonly called Supersweet, sh2 varieties are some of the sweetest corn available. They do not germinate well in cold wet soil, so make sure your soil is at least 70°F; use a soil thermometer if uncertain. To grow great Supersweet corn, isolate it by time or distance from any other corn.
OP Sweet Corn: For best seed saving results we recommend bagging plants to avoid cross pollination.
Ornamental Corn: Often used for decorating, but it also makes great cornmeal and corn flour. Grow just as you do sweet corn. The earliest plantings are preferred to ensure ample time for field drying. Ears may be picked after the husks begin drying. Isolation is necessary between varieties to preserve color combinations.
Popcorn: After picking and husking, spread the ears in a dry, airy place and allow to cure for several weeks. Test-pop a few kernels periodically to determine when the kernels are dry enough to twist from the cobs, store in airtight containers. Large quantities can be processed by placing into heaps and stomping the kernels off the ears. For best results, isolate from any other corn.
Synergistic Corn: Synergistic corn has 75% sugar enhanced kernels and 25% Supersweet kernels. It combines the exceptional tenderness and sweet corn flavor of SE/se varieties with the extra sweetness, extended shelf life and field-holding ability of sh2 varieties. For best results, isolate Synergistic corn from any other corn. For best germination, soil temperature should be at least 70°F.
• Corn performs best in fertile, well-drained soil with a pH between 6.0-7.0
• Corn is a heavy feeder requiring high amounts of nitrogen during the vegetative stage
• Waiting for soil to reach optimum temperature is critical to successful corn growing
• Corn is wind pollinated, for proper pollination plant individual varieties in blocks of at least 4 rows
• Separate varieties by time (plant 10 days apart), or distance (200 feet) to reduce cross-pollination
• For optimum growth ensure beds are watered evenly and deeply
• Make row furrows about 6-8 inches deep
• Spread 3-5 pounds of TSC's Complete fertilizer per 100 square feet
• Back fill the furrow, then sow seeds and cover with soil or sifted compost
• Thin seedlings when 4-5 inches
• Start indoors 2-3 weeks before desired transplant date
• Avoid letting starts get root bound and avoid damaging roots when planting
Insects & Diseases
• Common insects: Corn borer, corn ear worm
• Insect control: Pyrethrin, applied before silking, Monterey B.t. to silks
• Common diseases: Blight, rust, smut
• Disease prevention: 3-4 year crop rotation, remove old stalks in the fall, and contact your local extension agent with specific issues
Harvest & Storage
• Harvest when kernels are full and milky
• Drying and browning of ear silks is also an indicator of maturity
• Ears should be cooled as quickly as possible and stored at 36°F
KEY TO CORN DISEASE RESISTANCE AND TOLERANCE
HR indicates high resistance.
IR indicates intermediate resistance.
MDMV | Maize Dwarf Mosaic Virus
NCLB | Northern Corn Leaf Blight
R | Common Rust
SCLB | Southern Corn Leaf Blight
SW | Stewart's Wilt | <urn:uuid:71183fa2-478c-4f2f-a745-a86055c66edf> | {
"date": "2019-12-08T01:18:41",
"dump": "CC-MAIN-2019-51",
"file_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-51/segments/1575540503656.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20191207233943-20191208021943-00176.warc.gz",
"int_score": 3,
"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.887771725654602,
"score": 2.59375,
"token_count": 911,
"url": "https://territorialseed.com/products/corn-honey-cream"
} |
Subsets and Splits