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Humanities › History & Culture Biography of Diego de Almagro, Spanish Conquistador Share Flipboard Email Print Jojagal / Wikimedia Commons / CC0 1.0 History & Culture Latin American History History Before Columbus Colonialism and Imperialism Caribbean History Central American History South American History Mexican History American History African American History African History Ancient History and Culture Asian History European History Genealogy Inventions Medieval & Renaissance History Military History The 20th Century Women's History View More By Christopher Minster Professor of History and Literature Ph.D., Spanish, Ohio State University M.A., Spanish, University of Montana B.A., Spanish, Penn State University Christopher Minster, Ph.D., is a professor at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador. He is a former head writer at VIVA Travel Guides. our editorial process Christopher Minster Updated August 20, 2019 Diego de Almagro (1475–July 8, 1538) was a Spanish soldier and conquistador, famous for his role in the defeat of the Inca Empire in Peru and Ecuador and his later participation in a bloody civil war among the victorious conquistadors. He rose from humble beginnings in Spain to a position of wealth and power in the New World, only to be defeated by his former friend and ally Francisco Pizarro. His name is often associated with Chile: He led an expedition of exploration and conquest there in the 1530s, although he found the land and its people too harsh and tough. Fast Facts: Diego de Almagro Known For: Helped conquer the Inca EmpireBorn: 1475 in Almagro, Castile (now Spain)Parents: Juan de Montenegro, Elvira GutiérrezDied: July 8, 1538 in Cuzco, PeruSpouse: Ana Martinez Children: Diego de Almagro el Mozo Early Life Diego de Almagro was born illegitimately in Almagro, in present-day Spain, which explains why his name is based on his place of birth rather than his parents, Juan de Montenegro and Elvira Gutiérrez. According to most accounts, his father shunned him; when he was very young he was raised by his mother or a servant of his mother. At any rate, his parents were of little help to him as he grew up. Later, he was raised by his maternal uncle Hernán Gutiérrez, but he is believed to have struck out on his own around age 15. At some point, he is thought to have served in the Spanish navy. By 1514 he was in the New World—possibly after killing a man in a fight—having arrived with the fleet of Pedrarías Dávila, a colonial administrator. A tough, determined, ruthless soldier, Almagro quickly rose through the ranks of the adventurers who were conquering the New World. He was older than most, approaching 40 by the time of his arrival in Panama. He eventually took a common-law wife, Ana Martinez, and they had a son, Diego de Almagro el Mozo. The latter part of the son's name is variously translated as "the younger" or "the lad." Panama Gov. Dávila's first mainland outpost was created in the isthmus of Panama. The spot that Dávila picked for the settlement was humid and buggy, and the settlement struggled to survive. The highlight of this period was without a doubt Vasco Núñez de Balboa's overland voyage that discovered the Pacific Ocean. Three of the hardened soldiers of the Panama expedition were Almagro, Francisco Pizarro, and the priest Hernando de Luque. Almagro and Pizarro were important officers and soldiers, having participated by this time in various expeditions. Exploring the South Almagro and Pizarro remained in Panama for a few years before receiving news of Hernán Cortés’ stunning conquest of the Aztec Empire. Together with Luque, the two men put together a proposal to the Spanish king to outfit and direct an expedition of a conquest to the south. The Inca Empire was as yet unknown to the Spanish: they had no idea who or what they would find down south. The king accepted the proposal, and Pizarro set forth with about 200 men. Almagro remained in Panama to send men and supplies to Pizarro. Conquest of the Inca In 1532, Almagro heard that Pizarro and 170 men had captured the Inca Emperor Atahualpa and were ransoming him for a treasure unlike any the world had ever seen. Almagro hurriedly gathered reinforcements and departed for present-day Peru, catching up with his old partner in April 1533. His 150 well-armed Spaniards were a welcome sight to Pizarro. Soon the conquistadors began hearing rumors of the approach of an Inca army under Gen. Rumiñahui. In a panic, they decided to execute Atahualpa. The Spanish somehow managed to hold onto the Empire. Troubles with Pizarro Once the Inca Empire was pacified, Almagro and Pizarro began having troubles. The crown’s division of Peru was vague: The wealthy city of Cuzco fell under Almagro’s jurisdiction, but the powerful Pizarro and his brothers held it. Almagro went north and participated in the conquest of Quito, but the north was not as rich. Almagro seethed at what he saw as Pizarro's schemes to cut him out of the New World loot. He met with Pizarro and it was decided in 1534 that Almagro would take a large force south into present-day Chile, following rumors of vast wealth. His issues with Pizarro were left unsettled. Chile The rumors turned out to be false, and the journey was arduous. The conquistadors had to cross the treacherous, mighty Andes, which took the lives of several Spaniards and countless African slaves and native allies. Once they arrived, they found Chile to be a harsh land, full of tough-as-nails Mapuche natives who fought Almagro and his men on several occasions. After two years of exploring and finding no rich empires like the Aztecs or Incas, Almagro’s men prevailed upon him to return to Peru and claim Cuzco as his own. Civil War Almagro returned to Peru in 1537 to find Manco Inca, an Inca prince who had been a puppet ruler of the Inca Empire, in open revolt against Pizarro's forces, who were on the defensive in the highlands and the city of Lima. Almagro's army was weary and tattered but still formidable, and he was able to drive off Manco. Almagro saw the revolt as an opportunity to seize Cuzco and quickly engaged the Spaniards who were loyal to Pizarro. He had the upper hand at first, but Pizarro sent another force up from Lima in early 1538. They soundly defeated Almagro and his men at the battle of Las Salinas. Death Almagro fled to Cuzco, but men loyal to the Pizarro brothers pursued and captured him there. Almagro was sentenced to death, a move that stunned most of the Spanish in Peru, as he had been elevated to a nobleman by the Spanish king some years before. He was executed by garrote, an iron collar slowly tightened around the neck, on July 8, 1538, and his body was put on public display. Legacy The unexpected execution of Almagro had far-reaching consequences for the Pizarro brothers, turning many against them in the New World as well as in Spain. The civil wars did not end. In 1542 Almagro’s son, then 22, led a revolt that resulted in the murder of Francisco Pizarro. Almagro the Younger was quickly caught and executed, ending Almagro’s direct line. Today, Almagro is remembered chiefly in Chile, where he is considered an important pioneer even though he left no real lasting legacy there other than having explored some of it. Pedro de Valdivia, one of Pizarro’s lieutenants, finally conquered and settled Chile. Sources Hemming, John. "The Conquest of the Inca." Pan Books, 2004.Herring, Hubert. "A History of Latin America From the Beginnings to the Present." Alfred A. Knopf, 1962."Diego de Almagro." Euston."Diego de Almagro." Encyclopedia.com."Diego de Almagro: Spanish Conquistador." Encyclopedia Brittanica. | <urn:uuid:ebd38613-4eff-45fb-8a37-a83b183320d4> | {
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Stephen Jay Gould delved into the nuances of biology and the theory of evolution with the soft touch of a novelist and the obsession of a baseball fanatic, becoming through his widely read books and essays the most public biologist of the last century--and one of the most controversial.
Gould, 60, died of cancer Monday in New York.
Much of his most popular writing involved lively explanations of how evolution works, such as the way fish jawbones evolved over eons into the delicate ear bones used by mammals. "The Mismeasure of Man," Gould's 1981 book on the checkered history of eugenics and intelligence testing, placed 24th on the Modern Library board's list of the 100 best non-fiction works of the 20th Century.
But Gould also engaged in long-running and sometimes harsh academic debates from his post in paleontology at Harvard University, most notably over the theory of "punctuated equilibrium" that he published in 1972 with colleague Niles Eldredge. They modified Charles Darwin's original ideas about evolution, arguing that changes in species happen relatively quickly, rather than in the stately progression that Darwin envisioned.
Yet Gould's true scientific legacy is not any specific discovery he made, but his ability to make sense of diverse ideas in evolutionary theory and explain them in the "bully pulpit" of his books, said David Jablonski, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago.
"If you look at how we view evolution now, he changed it profoundly," Jablonski said. "It's hard to think of another scientist who was as visible, articulate or skilled at helping the public see the world view of an evolutionist."
Some of Gould's colleagues argued that despite his mass appeal--he made a voice appearance on the cartoon series "The Simpsons"--he had little influence among professional scientists. The British biologist John Maynard Smith once described Gould in The New York Review of Books as "a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with."
The study of evolution entranced Gould from the time he first saw a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton as a 5-year-old in New York City. Two of his other lifelong passions were baseball and the New York Yankees, though he once described himself as "a 190-pound guy who can't hit a curveball."
In 1974 Gould began writing an essay feature called "This View of Life" for Natural History magazine, a discipline he maintained for 300 straight issues, ending last year. Gould captured a wide following with the pieces, in which he could veer effortlessly from recent evolutionary theories to considerations of Victorian poetry.
Gould often described the story of evolution as a "glorious accident." Although that sense of contingency challenges the notion that the human race was preordained, Gould believed there was no necessary conflict between evolution and religion.
"We like stories about things moving somewhere," Gould said in a 1996 interview with the Tribune. "We don't like stories like the Book of Ecclesiastes, where rivers run to the sea but it never fills up, the race isn't to the swift, the battle isn't to the strong."
Even researchers who disagreed with Gould in scientific disputes praised his abilities as a writer.
"He was the best publicist we had," said Jerry Coyne, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago.
One of Gould's more controversial ideas was that the struggle for survival that shapes evolution happens not just among individual organisms, but involves entire species. Coyne said that theory has proven extremely difficult to test.
Gould's latest book is a 1,433-page opus on the history of his field and of his own views called "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory."
When Gould began that project 20 years ago, a diagnosis of aggressive stomach cancer threatened to cut short his career. He said in the 1996 Tribune interview that he found a strange form of solace in the statistic that half of the people diagnosed with his condition lived less than eight months. The numbers implied that some patients far outlived that estimate.
"When I was ill, I had this quite life-affirming insight," Gould said. He added, "I don't want to exaggerate the role it played because I think it's basically chemotherapy that got me better."
Gould is survived by his second wife, Rhonda Roland Shearer, and two children from his first marriage, Jesse and Ethan. | <urn:uuid:af260271-0492-407d-a8f1-0aa8b7a07c56> | {
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See what questions
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C Syndrome: A rare inherited disorder characterized by a triangular-shaped head, facial anomalies, joint contractures and loose skin. More detailed information about the symptoms, causes, and treatments of C Syndrome is available below.
Read more about complications of C Syndrome.
Read more about causes of C Syndrome.
Research the causes of these diseases that are similar to, or related to, C Syndrome:
Research related physicians and medical specialists:
Other doctor, physician and specialist research services:
Medical research articles related to C Syndrome include:
Visit our research pages for current research about C Syndrome treatments.
Read about other experiences, ask a question about C Syndrome, or answer someone else's question, on our message boards:
A multiple congenital anomaly/mental retardation syndrome marked by trigonocephaly due to craniosynostosis, orofacial anomalies (mainly metopic prominence, upward slating of the palpebral fissures, epicanthal folds, hypoplastic nose, malformed ears, and abnormal palate) associated with various renal, pulmonary, genital, and cardiovascular defects. Agenesis of the corpus callosum and tetralogy of Fallot in some cases. Opitz trigonocephaly and Varadi-Papp syndromes have many common characteristics. - (Source - Diseases Database)
C Syndrome is listed as a "rare disease" by the Office of
Rare Diseases (ORD) of the National Institutes of Health
(NIH). This means that C Syndrome, or a subtype of C Syndrome,
affects less than 200,000 people in the US population.
Source - National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Search Specialists by State and City | <urn:uuid:2d707ec2-40b4-4a94-b6d8-70bf5fa32e81> | {
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Unleashing An Epidemic To Kill The Tumbleweeds
U.S. Agricultural Research Service scientists have applied to release exotic Eurasian fungi to kill invasive tumbleweeds in the American West.
Dana Berner wants to start an epidemic among tumbleweeds. Berner is a pathologist with the U.S. Agricultural Research Service who studies the diseases that afflict plants. One of his projects has been a search for something that’s able to infect and kill the iconic, spiny, rolling weed of the American West.
After about a decade of research—plus more work, done by predecessors—he thinks he’s got an answer: Two fungi species that hail from the Eurasian steppes to which tumbleweed is native. He and his colleagues have submitted applications to release these exotic fungi on willing U.S. farmers’ lands. Now they’re just waiting for an answer.
“I’m very optimistic on its ability to control tumbleweed. We just need to get it released,” Berner tells Popular Science. “We have lots of evidence on it that it’s safe and effective.”
“It eliminated tumbleweed in fields, within one to two years. Gone.”
What’s Berner’s problem with this quirky Western icon? As American as they may seem, tumbleweeds aren’t native to the U.S. They were introduced here, accidentally, in a shipment of flaxseeds, in the 1870s. Without the predators and diseases that normally munch at them in places like Russia and Hungary, they can grow in incredible numbers.
Tumbleweeds can take over farmland, crowding out crops or forage that cattle are able to eat. (Cattle don’t eat tumbleweed.) They can pile up against houses, creating a fire hazard. (“I had a call from another fellow in California, just recently, who’s just terrified of the fire risk,” Berner says.) In 1989, a North Dakotan town of 4,000 spent $8,500 to dig itself out from a pileup that blocked streets and houses; similar scenarios have happened this year across the west. That’s not to say tumbleweeds aren’t beloved by some… but others could do with fewer of them. Yet farmers and ranchers don’t often want to plunk down the money to kill them off with chemical herbicides. The type of land tumbleweeds grow on tends not to be very valuable, agriculturally. So they persist, with each tumbling ball scattering up to a quarter million seeds as it rolls.
A Green, Growing Tumbleweed
The Agricultural Research Service got a first glimpse of a possible solution in the 1990s. At the time, plant pathologists in Hungary noticed a fungus infecting and killing local tumbleweeds. Knowing the Americans would be interested, they mailed a sample to the Agricultural Research Service’s Foreign Disease-Weed Science Research Unit in Fort Detrick, Maryland.
Since then, Berner and his colleagues has been studying that fungus, Colletotrichum salsolae, alongside another fungus called Uromyces salsolae. They’ve been checking what the fungi kill and don’t kill. The latest studies included field tests of C. salsolae in Greece and Russia, where C. salsolae already grows. Berner describes the results of a study they performed by renting a patch of land from a Greek farmer with a tumbleweed problem. “It eliminated tumbleweed in fields, within one to two years. Gone.”
The fungi work against the tumbleweeds when they are saplings, so they don’t have the chance to grow into large bushes, which would later dry out, snap off their roots, and roll around while dispersing their seeds.
Stem of a Tumbleweed Infected with C. Salsolae Fungus
The safety tests included inoculating plants of species related to the Salsola tragus tumbleweed that C. salsolae and U. salsolae target. The plant researchers wanted to make sure that if released, the fungi wouldn’t kill native plants. Those tests were performed in a biosafety level 3 greenhouse, a precaution that was meant to protect not the human researchers, who aren’t susceptible to the diseases studied in the greenhouse, but all of the plants outside of it. Scientists have to shower before leaving the greenhouse.
Not every plant species gets a greenhouse test, however. Some species are difficult to find or cultivate. So Berner and his colleagues ran a mathematical model on all of their species that estimates the extent to which a species is susceptible to certain pathogens, based on its genetics. The model is a widely used one for checking what species a “biological control agent”—a living thing meant to kill weeds or pests—will affect.
The team checked 89 species’ vulnerability to C. salsolae, plus 64 species’ vulnerability to U. salsolae. Only a few species were vulnerable to infection at all. Those that were didn’t seem to suffer in overall health from the infection. One helpful fact: Plant diseases tend to infect closely related species and there are no plants native to the U.S. that share tumbleweeds’ genus, Salsola.
Now it’s a question of waiting, which depends in part on whether the approval committee is convinced by Berner and his coworkers’ safety tests. The team submitted one application, for U. salsolae, in 2009. They haven’t yet received an answer. They submitted their application for C. salsolae this year.
Should the approval go through, spreading the fungi will be cheap and easy. Scientists infect otherwise sterilized rice with the fungi, then dump a half-kilogram pile of the rice every 5,000 meters in the fields of those who want it. Rain and tumbleweeds’ tumbling will do the rest.
“It will eventually spread,” Berner says. “Ultimately, it’s going to spread as far as tumbleweed spread.” | <urn:uuid:bf3cd46d-05cc-4030-b677-f9e3a7ac04fe> | {
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CEWD members have found a variety of ways to use the course and its related certifications to engage high school and community college students, military veterans and others new to the energy industry. Members have access to free materials, including instructor and student guides and hands-on activities that allow them to bring STEM energy connections to life inside the classroom.
FIND AN ENGAGING TEACHER
Not everyone can take a content-dense course and make it spring to life. CEWD members that have used the curriculum caution that having the right type of instructor – one who knows how to engage students and make the material compelling through group and hands-on activities – is key.
“Our instructors deliver the content in a variety of ways,” said Amber Fogarty, Manager of DE&I at Consumers Energy in Michigan. “Those who supplement the course with hands-on activities to reinforce the concepts they’re teaching have higher pass rates.”
Joyce Cooper, Director of Diversity and Inclusion at OPPD in Nebraska, said her company found using subject matter experts to teach the modules
Each instructor gave students a tour of the section of the utility in which they worked, answering questions about the work that they did. “Not only did students learn the content, but they also saw how OPPD was structured and learned about the company,” she said.that related to their areas of expertise turned out to be a better approach than having one teacher try to cover everything.
MAKE IT INTERACTIVE
Providing students with materials for experiments and hands-on activities also kept the students engaged, Cooper said. “That was the best way to do it.”
Fogarty agreed. Consumers provided each new school that offered the program with a fun, hands-on, power grid manipulative kit, like a mini-town, that allowed students to see generation, transmission and distribution systems at work. “You could hook up a wind turbine with a tiny hand crank and see how it impacts the grid,” she said.
Students have also built their own, smaller-scale wind turbines and taken part in energy audits for their schools, helping to find ways to make the buildings more energy efficient.
SPICE IT UP
Jackson College, which offers the online version of the course in Michigan, incorporated videos and animation to spice up some of the otherwise dry material, Fogarty said. She’s hoping a more engaging presentation will also boost pass rates.
“This year’s students are really getting it,” she said. “We’ve really struggled with helping them make that connection between the curriculum and the test. Students need something to help them retain the knowledge they’re getting. The fun video approach might help.”
CEWD is looking for ways to weave gaming concepts into an online course offering but that piece of the program is still under development.
MAKE SURE STUDENTS SEE THE VALUE
Completing the course takes a great deal of time and effort so it helps to show students the return they’ll get on their investment, members say.
Consumers Energy combined the course with a work-based learning opportunity for high school students, allowing them to earn credit for the elective while simultaneously getting the first-hand experience of what it’s like to work at a utility.
“We paired students with internship-like opportunities in jobs that fit their interests,” Fogarty said. “Some went into IT. Others worked on job sites with field employees. We had them working in a variety of ways.”
Eddie Burkhead, who oversees the program for Jackson College, said having a close relationship with Consumers Energy helps students make the connection between what they’re learning in the classroom and how they’d be using that knowledge in a job in the energy industry. It also helps them to know that Consumers has hired students who went through the program before them.
“We can point to these people and say that person was where you are, taking this course. We can bridge that gap between the classroom and the workplace.”
First graduates of Henry Ford College Power and Trades Pathways EIF program
Fogarty said Consumers has put roughly 450 students through the program since they started using it in 2017. While pass rates have varied from school to school, they’ve been pleased with the program overall and have hired about 150 employees who have taken the course.
“It took a while to get it up off the ground, but we’re really starting to see the fruits of our labor,” said Fogarty. “Students who are getting hired by the company are reporting back that it was beneficial to them.” | <urn:uuid:428ddc9b-ba4b-4cca-aa75-e6026d4e38c0> | {
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Passive Radon Progeny Dosimeters based on Solid State Nuclear Track Detectors (SSNTD)
Daniel Steck, Physics
Radon-related lung cancer is responsible for approximately 21,00 deaths each year in the U.S. alone. The risk of developing lung cancer is associated with the cumulative energy delivered to the lung by radon progeny. However, despite the fact that the risk arises from exposure to radon progeny, most exposure studies are currently based on measured radon levels. The purpose of this work was to develop a detector that could quantify the available dose from radon progeny. The detector developed is able to accurately measure the airborne dose as well as reconstruct the historical radon concentration when its measurements are combined with a dosimetric model.
Berglund, Julie, "Passive Radon Progeny Dosimeters based on Solid State Nuclear Track Detectors (SSNTD)" (2004). Honors Theses. 418.
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The Flemish, being the loyalists they were, answered Henry II’s call to arms for the invasion of Ireland. Their reward for their loyalty and lives was land grants across Ireland, and indeed, there are Flemings in nearly every county of that fine land to this day. However, my particular branch of the family was loyal to Baron Lacy and set about helping him attempt to pacify Meath.
Other branches of the Flemish clans stayed in England, and still others migrated to Scotland over the years. As the centuries progressed, Flanders became a center of European textile technology and manufacture, with Flemish weavers in high demand across the continent – and especially in England, Scotland and Ireland, leading to a wave of people named Fleming coming to England. Of course, they didn’t get the name Fleming until they got there, because once the King of England established the Poll Tax (a kind of income tax), everybody had to have a last name.
The Flemings loyal to Baron Lacy found themselves on the outs, royal-favor-wise, when they backed James II in his bid to unseat William (of William and Mary) in 1690, but by then the Flemings were well entrenched in Ireland.
It was at this point that my daughter – remember why I started telling this story in the first place? – declared that she is going to tell people she is “Ohirish with a little Mexican thrown in.” I told her I can live with that.
Now, besides me, you may have heard of a number of Flemings. My clansmen and women have made great contributions to the world. Here’s a rundown of Flemings You Should Know.
- Peggy Fleming – figure skater who won Olympic gold in 1968, but perhaps most well-known as the object of Snoopy’s love from the late 1960s through the early 1970s
- Ian Fleming – creator of James Bond. Duh.
- Valentine Fleming – Ian’s father and a casualty of World War One; the major was a close friend of Winston Churchill and died as a result of German action at Gillemont Farm in May 1917. He was a Member of Parliament at the time, and Churchill wrote his obituary.
- Alexander Fleming – Scottish scientist who discovered penicillin
- Renée Fleming – opera singer (and a damn good one)
- Thomas Fleming – the Archbishop of Dublin from 1623 until his death in 1655
- Valerie Fleming – two-time Olympic gold-medal winner in the 2-person bobsled in 2006; she also earned 8 silver medals and 8 bronzes over the years
- Richard Fleming – USMC/USN Captain, KIA in his Vindicator dive bomber in action against the Japanese heavy cruiser Mikuma during the Battle of Midway and subsequently awarded the Medal of Honor
- Williamina Fleming – astronomer who discovered the Horsehead Nebula in 1888 (we claim her even though she married into the clan)
- Lord David Fleming – a prominent Scottish judge and author of the Fleming Report, which led to public funding for elementary schools
- John Fleming, the 2nd Lord Fleming – killed in a duel by a guy called Tweedie in 1524
- Michael Anthony Fleming – a Franciscan monk born in Ireland who became the first Catholic bishop in Newfoundland
- Dave Fleming – contender for rookie of the year for the Seattle Mariners in 1992
- Victor Fleming – directed Treasure Island, Captains Courageous, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Joan of Arc, The Wizard of Oz and won an Oscar for Best Director for Gone With the Wind
- Nancy Fleming – Miss America 1961 | <urn:uuid:46adaeb5-1d71-40bb-8212-69aed0829b07> | {
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"I should like to eliminate once and for all the questions regarding the foundations of mathematics, in the form in which they are now posed, by turning every mathematical proposition into a formula that can be concretely exhibited and strictly derived, thus recasting mathematical definitions and inferences in such a way that they are unshakable and yet provide an adequate picture of the whole science." - David Hilbert
A Turing Machine (TM) is an imaginary machine, capable of performing computations.
It is generally used as a theoretical tool to prove points about computational problems.
More on that later. One can think of the Turing Machine as a computer.
It is neither a very fast nor a very efficient computer, but, because of its simplicity, it is a practical tool for the analysis of more complex, real life computers and computing problems.
Many real-life implementations of Turing Machines do exist an can be found on-line as Java applets.
A general description of the architecture of a TM is as follows: the TM is defined as a machine with an infinitely long tape and a read/write head.
The tape is divided into squares or regions of equal size, that can contain exactly one symbol (possibly blank).
The choice of symbols is up to whomever defines the TM.
For example, one might use the Latin alphabet or perhaps the numbers 0 and 1.
The read/write head is always on top of one of the squares.
It can move at most one square to the left or to the right.
Aside from these physical properties, the machine always has an internal 'state', which usually has a number (q0, q1, q2, etc..).
At any time, the TM is in one specific state.
The use of this architecture and the state concept will become apparent later on.
For now, it is important that there is one 'halt' state that will stop the machine.
The machine is only capable of performing one elementary operation on the tape.
This operation consists of four steps:
- Read the symbol on the tape under the head.
- Based on the symbol read and the current state, overwrite the square with a new symbol (possibly the same symbol).
- Based on the symbol read and the current state, go to a new state (possibly the same state).
- Based on the symbol read and the current state, go one square left or right.
The 'current' state here being the state at the start of the operation, not the 'new' state.
Later on, we will see how it is possible to compute things with the Turing Machine.
For now, it is of the utmost importance to understand that the TM is not complete without a set of transition rules
If you have read the above description of the elementary operation carefully, you will have noticed that the new symbol, the new state and the new position are all dependent on the current state and the current symbol.
This means that the behaviour of the TM is governed by a set of rules.
These rules define a new state, direction and symbol for all possible current state/symbol combinations.
If we call the state-space Q, and the alphabet used Σ, these rules are in essence functions
from (Q,Σ) to (Q,Σ,D), where D is a direction: <- or ->).
As a final note, input into a TM is performed by pre-writing the tape with some symbols, before starting the machine. The output is what is left on the tape when halt is reached.
Intuitively, the list of transition functions is the 'program' and the Turing Machine is the computer.
For historical reasons, which we will see later on, the rules are however considered part of the machine itself.
Not a separate program.
So, infinitesimally many Turing Machines exist and the tape and read/write head alone are not a complete Turing Machine.
There is another good reason for not calling the rule-set a program.
We will also see that later on.
In the early twentieth century, mathematicians had an assumption about the power of mathematics that is still persistent amongst non-mathematicians today.
Mathematicians basically assumed that, given unlimited time and mathematical skills, it would be possible to solve any problem.
In other words, theorists assumed that if an assertion was true, then it would always be possible to prove that it was true.
To give an impression of how deeply engraved this belief was, the famous mathematician David Hilbert once said:
"If mathematical thinking is defective, where are we to find truth and certitude?"
This persistent idea eventually gave rise to two very important, yet simple questions:
- Is there a sequence of very simple, formal steps (i.e. a 'method') to prove any true assertion in finite time?
- Is every true assertion indeed provable?
These questions are a slight restatement of two questions formulated by Hilbert. They are known as the Hilbert Programme. Since it did not even occur to Hilbert at that time that either of these questions might be unanswerable, he thought of them as the last two formal bumps between mankind and a perfect mathematical system. Too bad..
The first of these questions, known as the Entscheidungsproblem (Decision Problem), is interesting, because it would allow us to build a machine that can systematically check all assertions and return a 'true' or a 'false'.
In essence, any mathematical theorem could be put into this machine and it could then be proven.
Fermat's Last Theorem for example.
It is obvious that such a method would have propelled us into an everlasting Golden Age of mathematics.
The second of these questions was considered by Hilbert and his peers to be an annoying little formality.
Everybody knew this had to be true, but a nice proof had just been evasive until then.
In 1931, Kurt Gödel struck a terrible blow to the mathematical community: he found a proof alright.
He proved that Hilbert's assumptions were wrong!
Gödel first proved that there are truths in mathematics (Theorems) that cannot be proved.
More horrifying was the fact that he proved that this problem could not be solved, because it was not a flaw of our mathematical system.
It was a fundamental flaw of any imaginable mathematical system.
Gödel showed that a mathematical system, any system, is either incorrect or incomplete.
This means that, if you create a mathematical system, there are either truths that cannot be proved within that system or there are things that are not true that can, incorrectly, be proved.
Gödel's Theorem deserves a node in itself.
As an overly bold simplification, it has to do with the fact that one can or cannot prove that "this statement is false".
Before Gödel delivered his striking blow, however, mathematicians looked at the first of these two questions.
This question can be rephrased as: "Is there a 'method' to prove things, that will always finish?"
For the word method, one can informally substitute 'recipe' or 'algorithm'.
In order to find such a method, it was necessary to define the concept of a method or an algorithm in a mathematical sense.
Mathematicians needed a mathematical model of the act of systematic problem solving.
A difficult philosophical question indeed: how do you make a model of a mathematician?
The model of the Mathematician
The young and talented British mathematician Alan Turing had a thorough understanding of both the abstract and the real world.
His solution to the question posed above was not the only one ever devised, but is is generally considered to be the most elegant one.
It still has many useful applications in theoretical computer science today.
Turing literally made a model out of a working mathematician, sitting behind a desk, contemplating, writing down things on a piece of paper, looking up facts in notes, correcting earlier notes, etc.
Turing stipulated that the first of Hilbert's questions actually was:
"Can a person with an infinite amount of paper, erasers and time, prove any theorem?"
He then systematically removed all irrelevant details from this picture.
First, he figured that the fact that a piece of paper may contain more than one symbol is irrelevant.
If necessary, one could use a great amount of separate sheets of paper for each symbol.
Then, Turing figured that a mathematician drew conclusions from the symbols he or she had jotted down, in combination with some idea in his or her head (the 'state') and, on the basis of his/her mental state and the symbols on the paper containing earlier results, the mathematician could write down new results or alter old ones.
The mathematician should be able to go backwards or forwards in to his/her notes if necessary, and consult or alter them, based on the mathematician's state of mind.
To form a more concrete picture of this, consider a mathematician, yourself for instance, adding up two large numbers on paper.
Usually, you would start on the right side of both the numbers.
You first read the symbol on the right of one number an memorise that (you enter a state describing that number) and move on to read the rightmost digit of the other number.
Then, based on the digit you are remembering and the digit you are currently looking at (current state and symbol), you draw a conclusion as to what digit should be written under the dotted line.
If the numbers add up to something higher than nine, you should 'remember' to add one when you add the next two digits.
This means that you should be in the 'remember one' state before you proceed to add the rest of the digits.
Your mode of operation for the remaining digits will have to be different when you are in this 'remember one' state.
At this point, it should be obvious that the tape machine described in the first section is exactly the same as the mathematician sitting behind a desk. The 'current' square is the desk, the tape is the infinite supply of paper, the read/write head is the mathematician and the 'state' is the mathematician's mental state.
The Turing Machine: a universal model of computation?
An obvious question to ask is wether this model of computation, the Turing Machine, is actually a universal model.
That is: can the Turing Machine be used to model all methods or, equivalently, is there a model that can solve more problems than the Turing Machine?
That question is very difficult to anwer.
But, as stated earlier, several other models were devised for the concept of a 'method' or algorithm.
These methods are, roughly, Lambda Calculus (by Alonzo Church), Partial Recursive Functions (Kurt Gödel and Stephen Kleene) and General Recursive Functions (Gödel, Kleene and Jacques Herbrand).
These four methods have all been proven to be equivalent.
Anything that can be proven with one of them can be proven with any of them.
This at least suggests strongly that they are indeed universal models of computation. Further, these methods are all self descriptive. One can make a Turing Machine on a Turing Machine. This property is called Turing Completeness. It is something any programming language should be tested for.
Since anyone with imagination can invent a model of computation and a concept of what computation is, this matter is by definition impossible to resolve.
One interesting note is the fact that, of these four methods, the Turing Machine is by far the most elegant model, because it is very comprehensible and little mathematical skill is required to understand it.
(Challenge to other noders: Try writing a node as comprehensible as this one about Lambda Calculus!)
There are different types of Turing Machines and different grounds on which to classify them. Here is a summary:
Normal vs. Universal Turing Machines:
As stated earlier, the transition rules are considered part of the machine itself.
That means that one Turing Machine is only capable of solving one problem (for instance, finding the prime numbers between 1 and 100).
Such a Turing Machine is called a Normal Turing Machine.
Early on, Turing wondered if it would be possible to construct a set of rules (that is, one Turing Machine) that could perform a function that was specified on the tape itself, instead of in the predefined functions.
In essence, one would encode a program on the tape, next to the input data, and this special Turing Machine would read the program and perform it.
This is indeed possible.
This type of Turing Machine is called a Universal Turing Machine, since it can perform all sorts of functions.
It is more like a stored program computer than the normal Turing Machine.
The existence of this type of Turing Machine is a good reason not to call the state transition functions a 'program'.
Note that this idea was very revolutionary, since ordinary computers did not exist in the 1930's.
Modern computers are, roughly, just sophisticated Universal Turing Machines.
This property makes Turing Machines so valuable for the general analysis of computing problems.
Single vs. Multiband Turing Machines:
Another distiction to make is one between Turing Machines with one tape and one head and a Turing Machine with more tapes and heads.
The single most interesting question here is: is a multiband Turing Machine able to compute more things than a single band machine?
The answer is, of course, no.
Otherwise, we would have proven that the Turing Machine is not a universal model of computation.
In fact, it has been proven that any multiband Turing Machine can be simulated on a single band Turing Machine with at most a quadratic increase in time complexity.
This is a great exercise for the reader!
Deterministic vs. Non-deterministic Turing Machines
A TM with exactly one transition rule for every given symbol/state combination is said to be a Deterministic Turing Machine.
The one that we will look at in the example below is such a machine.
When we use the TM as a theorerical tool, it is often practical to define TM's with more than one rule per symbol/state pair when modelling computations.
Imagine, for instance, a Turing Machine that explores all possible cycles in an undirected graph.
Such a machine might start in one vertex and decide to go either left or right.
To find all cycles, the TM needs to do both.
You can think of this as having two duplicate machines running off in each direction to find a cycle.
It has been proven that every Nondeterministic Turing Machine can also be modelled using a Deterministic Turing Machine.
NDTM's are only useful as a philosophical tool.
Since nobody actually uses Turing Machines to compute things, what are their practical purposes?
We already saw that Turing Machines are capable of performing the same functions as modern processors.
The advantage of the Turing Machine is that it is so simple to understand and that all steps take the same amount of time.
This property makes the Turing Machine an excellent tool for calculating the time complexity of algorithms.
(For a detailed description of time complexity, I gladly refer to my writeup there)
Aside from time complexity calculations, Turing Machines have one other important application.
Ever since Gödel shot down the idea that everything can be proved with a machine, people started to wonder what can and cannot be computed with a machine.
The Turing Machine is a theoretical aid in the determination of the type of problems that can be solved on computers, regardless of their architecture.
This is incredibly important to computer scientists, because it allows them to analyse beforehand if a given problem is at all solvable or not.
Needless to say, that is an interesting thing to check before one begins to write a program to solve such a problem.
Example of a Turing Machine
To demonstrate and illustrate the concept of the Turing Machine, we will look at an example.
Hopefully, you will see what a simple and elegant mechanism it is.
We have already seen that a TM is defined by a set of transition functions from a state/symbol pair to a new state/symbol pair and a direction in which to move.
Using only these types of functions, we will define a Turing Machine that can increment any binary number by one and then halt.
The number that is to be incremented will be on the tape prior to the start of the machine and the head will be on the leftmost digit.
At the time the system halts, the head will be on the leftmost bit of the result, and the rest of the tape will be empty.
We will first direct the head to the rightmost bit, by scanning until we find a space and then going one square to the left.
Then, we will add one to the rightmost bit. If we have a carry bit, we will remember that and move on to the next digit to the left.
To that, we will add one in case we have a carry bit or we will leave it if there is no carry bit.
If there was already a one on the new position and we do have a carry, we will set it to zero and remember a new carry when processing the next digit. The details will be specified below.
We will use the following notation for transition rules: (qn,s)->(qm,t,d). Here, qn is the current state, s is the current symbol, qm is the new state, t is the new symbol and d is a direction.
The direction is either L, or R (Left or Right) or - (no move). The symbols will be 0, 1 or _ for space.
The Turing Machine:
- (q0,0)->(q0,0,R) //q0 is the 'searching' state. If we read a 0 keep searching..
- (q0,1)->(q0,1,R) //If we read a 1, keep searching as well..
- (q0,_)->(q1,_,L) //If we find the first space, go left and enter the 'adding state' q1
- (q1,0)->(q2,1,L) //If we find a zero while adding, add one and go to the 'done' state q2
- (q1,1)->(q1,0,L) //If we find a 1, make it 0 and keep on adding to the left..
- (q1,_)->(halt,1,-) //If we find a space while adding, make it 1 and halt.
- (q2,0)->(q2,0,L) //If we are 'done' we keep looking for the leftmost bit.
- (q2,1)->(q2,1,L) //Same here..
- (q2,_)->(halt,_,R) //If we are 'done' and find a space on the left, we move right and halt.
..and that, as they say, is it!
Additional information and suggested reading
On Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem
There are books abound describing the proof of Gödel's incompleteness theorem. The proof in itself is not very difficult, but formal logic requires very strict notation. This makes most literature a difficult read. A very informal and famous treatment is given in Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas R. Hofstadter. The author introduces the concepts of Godel's Theorem by comparing them to the 'impossible' graphics of M.C. Escher and J.S. Bach's mathematically structured compositions.
Turing Machine implementations
Turing Machines have been implemented in many remarkable ways (usually making finite assumptions for the infinite tape). Java implementations are abound on the web. A particularly interesting implementation is the one within Conway's Game of Life. More about this can be found here.
A note to the purists
Gödel did not actually prove that any mathematical system is either incorrect or incomplete. Obviously, this node is not the place for a complete coverage, but to be somewhat more exact he proved that any Theory at least as complex as the theory of Peano arithmetics cannot be fully described by a finite number of axioms. Peano arithmetics is more commonly known as the theory of natural numbers. As you can imagine, almost all branches of mathematics are at least as complex as number theory. Understand that the above exactly means: given any finite number of axioms, there are truths that cannot be derived from this set of axioms, meaning that these truths are themselves axioms. An example of a theory that is both correct and complete is that of Propositional Logic. Fitch's system of Natural Deduction and the Tree Method can be used to prove all theorems within this system. In turn, these methods can be proven to be both correct and complete. The Prolog programming language is in effect a proof checker for theorems in Predicate Logic; an even more complex Theory. | <urn:uuid:0bf29ab5-b2be-438f-8751-f25940aae77c> | {
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Texas A&M University's Jody Naderi wants to know why people
choose to walk — and she keeps stopping them to find out.
Her first stop has been on her home campus, but she thinks the
lessons learned there will be applicable in a variety of scenarios.
The landscape architecture professor has interviewed 150 campus
pedestrians so far, and she and computer science graduate student
Baranidharan Raman have used what they learned to write software
that helps design walker-friendly landscapes.
"We asked people why they were walking around the campus,
then we surveyed their physical environments to determine what
landscape features contributed to their achieving their goals," Naderi
says. "We found that people were walking to achieve one
of five goals: to promote health or prevent disease; for exercise;
for fun; to encourage contemplation; and just to get somewhere.
We then combined what we had learned about pedestrians' motivations
with features of their environment, such as path surface, availability
of benches on which to rest, noise levels, nature sounds and
smells, to construct a decision-tree model for designing pedestrian
landscapes that encourage walking for health."
Naderi says the concepts derived from study of the Texas A&M
campus are applicable in just about any location, but local
input is necessary to pick up on the nuances of climate and
context that strongly affect pedestrian preferences.
Naderi and Raman's work has been published as "Computer
Based Pedestrian Landscape Design Using Decision Tree Templates" in
the September 2005 Advanced Engineering Informatics.
"In addition to the practical features of the pedestrian
environment, including its safety, I feel that landscape design
must include engagement of all five of the senses and the potential
for spiritual renewal," Naderi says. "Pedestrian
landscapes are particularly successful when they feature pleasant
nature sounds and smells and if they are connected to something
sacred to those who use them."
In addition to parks and other more protected walking areas,
Naderi believes the software can be applied to designing safer
and more pedestrian-friendly streets.
"Walking on the street can be a life and death matter," Naderi
says. "Yet people use the street as a health facility
for walking and jogging. I am currently expanding my research
to examine how we can design our streets for safe pedestrian | <urn:uuid:f8453a09-8899-4056-a0f5-a67d03355c65> | {
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Why does marriage matter? In part, according to Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, because it secures civil rights that unmarried people—more specifically, unmarried gays and lesbians—do not have.
That inequality, Wolfson argues, is fundamentally wrong and suspiciously un-American. Gays and lesbians, he urges, “speak the vocabulary of marriage, live the personal commitment of marriage, do the hard work of marriage, and share the responsibilities we associate with marriage.” He adds, “It’s time to allow them the same freedom every other American has—the freedom to marry.” As Wolfson well knows, there are powerful forces arrayed against any judge or legislature with a mind to grant such freedom, and discrimination abounds. He reckons that the country is about evenly divided in thirds on the issue of gay marriage: a third oppose it on any grounds, a third approve of it or at least disapprove denying it, and a third aren’t quite sure personally but are likely to reject that discrimination, meaning that, in theory, a majority of Americans are, in principle, in favor of allowing gay and lesbian marriage, providing for the portability thereof from state to state, and according married partners all rights attendant in marriage as it is civilly understood. All that will come soon, Wolfson predicts, and he imagines a happy time in the not-too-distant future when “gay people have won the freedom to marry and our society looks back and wonders what the big deal was.” Meanwhile, he examines some of the current fighting, along with a few of the villains and many heroes in the struggle, from gays and lesbians willing to bear the weight of fighting for civil rights to conflicted politicians such as the Massachusetts legislator who remarked, “The Constitution has always required us to reach beyond our moral and emotional grasp.”
Well taken. A thoughtful, reasonable, and eminently worthy companion to recent books such as David Moats’s Civil Wars (Feb. 2004). | <urn:uuid:1afb5500-7943-43b4-80aa-9d0b8c2fa854> | {
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Technologies under development include a transparent display that uses computer vision, technology that brings real-world aspects back into computing, and the use of spatial memory to navigate source code.
REDMOND, Wash.Microsoft Research demonstrated a number of cutting-edge technologies that are under development at an event here Sept. 26, including a transparent display that uses computer vision, technology that brings real-world aspects back into computing, and the use of spatial memory to navigate source code.
At an event at the Redmond campus to celebrate Microsoft Researchs 15th anniversary, Redmond lab director and corporate vice president Dan Ling moderated a demonstration of a prototype of technology that uses sensing as a real modality.
"The idea of the interactions you can have using computer vision techniques is an area Microsoft Research got into some 10 years ago, when we had no idea how this would be useful going forward," he said.
The technology, known as TouchLight,
is a transparent display that uses computer vision technology to enable new applications in gesture-based user interfaces, video conferencing, augmented reality and ubiquitous computing.
Surface computing technologies such as this do away with the mouse and monitor and allow images and data to be displayed on tabletops, walls and other surfaces and manipulated by making simple hand gestures.
Ling also moderated several other technology demonstrations, including using visualization technologies to provide innovative ways to visualize and explore the world, such as combining maps from Windows Live Local
with other maps of bus routes or bicycle trails to create entirely new hybrid maps.
He also oversaw a demonstration of streaming intelligence technologies that combine Web services, machine learning and sensors to help mobile devices make useful predictions and inferences, such as helping cell phones decide whether to interrupt users based on whether theyre in an important meeting or simply stuck in traffic.
Ling said Microsoft Research has also been working on technologies that use reason, even under conditions of uncertainty, and then take action based on this.
"We have been building statistical models on intention for the past five or six years, looking at how busy the person is and what the cost of interrupting them is at any time.
"This can translate into a record of what happened in your life and on your desktop when the files were created and used, and can be used for biographical purposes and as a tool to memorialize experiences like trips and vacations," he said.
Another technology, Code Thumbnails, outlined here in PDF form,
uses spatial memory to navigate source code.
It introduces two user interface features to Microsoft Visual Studio: the Code Thumbnail Scrollbar for navigating within a file; and the Code Thumbnail Desktop for navigating between files.
The Scrollbar supplements the documents vertical scrollbar with a thumbnail image of the entire document. The document text is shrunk to fit the height of the scrollbar.
Researchers at the event said that this technology is designed to help programmers, and the normal scrollbar for the editing windows gives a snapshot of the entire program shrunk down to fit, giving a quick way to get to arbitrary parts of the program that they are editing.
Another related technology is a tool for team awareness: a dashboard that shows what files are currently checked out, who is working on them, which files are being edited and by which method. It has applicability and use beyond groups of developers, Ling said.
Can Microsoft take over the anti-spam market? Click here to read more.
While many of these nascent technologies have not found their way into shipping products as yet, others, like the Microsoft SmartScreen technology, have.
SmartScreen is at the core of anti-spam filters in products like Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, MSN 8 and Hotmail.
SmartScreen Technology, which uses a probability-based algorithm to essentially "learn" what is and what isnt spam based on characteristics of both types of e-mail, grew out of the work begun in 1997 and which, in early 2003, saw some Microsoft researchers joined with staff from other groups to form the Anti-Spam Technology and Strategy Group.
Check out eWEEK.coms for Microsoft and Windows news, views and analysis. | <urn:uuid:949de09c-a2e8-4c29-b097-018617f3672a> | {
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Research Starters is a feature in EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) that provides links to citable, authoritative summary articles for thousands of popular topics. Designed to assist users with their research, this feature was developed based on extensive studies with undergraduate and graduate students.
When a user conducts a search in EDS, a Research Starter (outlined below in red) may appear at the top of the Result List. For those topics identified as most popular, Research Starters will retrieve relevant articles that link the user to related information and detailed bibliographies.
If a Research Starter appears on the Result List, as in the example above, simply click the article title or the More button to read about the topic or find related articles and images.
From the overview article page, you can read the HTML Full Text article, listen to the article using the Text-to-Speech feature, or add it to your personal folder. You can also click the icons under Tools to print the article, email it, save it to your computer, etc. | <urn:uuid:d99662bf-b5ab-4bb9-abe0-962560392145> | {
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You have persistent pain in one knee. Or have you perhaps noticed swelling in your joints? Those are signs of osteoarthritis. This degeneration of the cartilage is the most common rheumatic disease. It affects nearly 15% of the population with a majority of people over 50 years of age. The causes of osteoarthritis are multiple and ageing favours its appearance. Joint pain and inflammation induced by this form of arthritis are disabling. But it is by no means a fatality. You can effectively prevent and relieve the pain associated with osteoarthritis. Take a look.
The aggravating factors of osteoarthritis
We are not all equal when it comes to osteoarthritis. Gender, age and lifestyle can affect the onset of the disease.
- Do you have a relative who have osteoarthritis ? You are 2 to 3 times more likely to develop osteoarthritis than the rest of the population. This is especially the case for osteoarthritis of the knee or gonarthrosis, and osteoarthritis of the hands.
- You are overweight, your work requires you to carry heavy loads or you practice a sport that puts intense strain on the joints. These conditions cause premature wear and tear.
- A sedentary lifestyle leads to poor oxygenation of the cartilage. It offers a favourable ground for osteoarthritis.
- A diet low in antioxidants and omega 3 is also an aggravating factor. It does not provide your body with the nutrients it needs to fight osteoarthritis.
- The menopause makes women vulnerable to this disease. Studies have shown that the drop in female hormones promotes inflammation that is conducive to osteoarthritis.
- A vitamin D deficiency increases the risk of osteoarthritis of the hip. This result is obtained by American researchers at the University of California in San Francisco, USA.
Taking medication: a temporary solution to relieve osteoarthritis
A sudden increase in pain or the appearance of joint stiffness are symptoms of a flare-up of osteoarthritis. This is inflammation of the synovial membrane. It usually accompanies a destruction of the cartilage and must be treated without delay. Taking allopathic drugs is one of the solutions :
- Relieve joint pain with simple analgesics such as Paracetamol;
- Reduce inflammation with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or corticosteroid injections;
- Reduce the intensity of pain with symptomatic slow-acting anti-arthrosics (AASALs).
Non-drug treatments to prevent and relieve osteoarthritis attacks
Managing flare-ups of osteoarthritis is not enough. To improve quality of life, it is essential to establish routines to delay the progression of the disease.
4 easy tips for a healthy lifestyle
They're common sense.
- Rest the diseased joint during the acute phase of an osteoarthritis attack. Avoid leaning on the wrong leg, for example. But under no circumstances remain nailed to the bed. Keep moving, even if you need help with crutches. Movement activates cartilage cells. They are better nourished and heal faster.
- Regular, moderate physical activity strengthens the muscles around the joints. They protect them more effectively from shocks and stress.
- Losing weight relieves the joints and delays the development of osteoarthritis.
- Manage stress to avoid causing more than enough premature cell degeneration. Indeed, studies have shown that chronic stress, pollution and prolonged exposure to the sun increase the production of free radicals. They are responsible for many joint diseases such as osteoarthritis.
5 foods adapted to the treatment of osteoarthritis
Osteoarthritis doesn't just magically disappear. But a change in diet can slow its progression and reduce the frequency of painful inflammatory attacks. Favour products that contain :
- Omega 3. This fatty acid helps reduce inflammation and acts on pain.
- Antioxidants. They participate in the fight against the free radicals responsible for the ageing of our cells. They are one of the provocative factors of osteoarthritis.
Osteoarthritis and chronic stress: is there a link ?
Here are the 5 foods that are particularly recommended in cases of osteoarthritis:
- Olive oil. Like rapeseed oil or linseed oil, it is rich in omega 3.
- Fruits and vegetables. Abuse red fruits: blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, goji berries, etc. Powerful antioxidants, they contain polyphenols that help to suppress free radicals. Enjoy them plain, as a sorbet or just sprinkled in cottage cheese.
In the vegetable family, prefer greens: kale, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, spinach, parsley. They are rich in vitamin K, a substance essential for building bones and cartilage.
- Spices. Turmeric and ginger are both powerful anti-inflammatories and antioxidants. They are useful in the prevention of inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis.
- Oleaginous plants. Whether nuts or flax seeds, they provide you with a significant amount of omega 3. Consume them every day. Sprinkle them in salads or eat them just plain. They relieve your joint pain.
- Oily fish. Salmon, sardines, herring or mackerel are rich in omega 3. They also provide zinc and selenium, two antioxidants that help fight painful inflammation.
Carbone 60, the antioxidant champion
Carbon 60 or C60 was discovered in 1985. It is made from graphite. After vaporization by an intense electric current, carbon is reorganized into a football-shaped molecule of 60 atoms. Hence the name C60.
You'll find C60 mixed in vegetable oil. This oil carries it to the liver, the organ that processes the oil. From there it passes into the bloodstream and is distributed throughout the body. To make taking C60 a pleasure, you can choose between olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil and oleic sunflower oil.
C60 is the most powerful antioxidant known. It is 172 times more effective than vitamin C. Take three tablespoons of C60 oil on the first day of a flu and you'll be out of the flu in two days. In the case of osteoarthritis, carbon 60 helps regenerate cartilage by increasing the production of chondrocytes.
Osteoarthritis: put all the chances on your side with Carbon 60
Osteoarthritis is a painful and disabling joint disease. Osteoarthritis cannot be completely cured. Medications are active, but not without side effects.
To limit their intake, other actions can be taken to delay and effectively relieve osteoarthritis.
- Reduce stress and do moderate physical exercise to lose weight.
- Favour foods that contain antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents: fruits and vegetables, oily fish, olive oil, etc.
- Take C60, one of the most powerful antioxidants currently available. | <urn:uuid:257ea2ff-8a94-4268-99e3-6efc810cabcb> | {
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The colossal battle of the Argonne, fought 75 years ago, started with a shouting match between General John J. Pershing and his immediate commander, French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch.
Foch had appeared at the headquarters of the brand-new American First Army in Ligny-en-Barrois, 25 miles southeast of St. Mihiel, on August 30, 1918. Pershing and his staff were putting the finishing touches on an offensive Foch had ordered in hopes of wiping out the German salient that bulged into the Allied lines north and south of the ancient French city.
Foch grandly announced he had changed his mind. Field Marshal Douglas Haig, the British commander, had convinced him that it was time to launch a massive assault to roll back the entire German position in France by attacking from the left, front and right. Foch wanted Pershing to reduce the American offensive to little more than a demonstration against the St. Mihiel salient’s southern flank and give him two-thirds of the First Army’s troops, which he was going to distribute to Haig and several French generals.
Pershing absolutely refused to comply. ‘Do you wish to take part in the battle?’ Foch shrilled, his mustaches vibrating.
‘As an American army and in no other way!’ Pershing roared.
Foch backed down and agreed to let Pershing go ahead with the St. Mihiel attack. But he insisted on American support for the grand offensive he and Haig envisioned. Poking his finger at a map, Pershing vowed to finish St. Mihiel by mid-September–and then to commit his army to an assault in the valley of the Argonne before the end of the month.
In their mutual fury, neither general was thinking coherently. With a totally untried staff, Pershing had committed the American First Army to fighting two major battles 60 miles apart within 10 days. He had also accepted responsibility for attacking up the huge, tunnel-like Argonne Valley, bounded on the west by a dense forest and on the east by the unfordable Meuse River–but he left the territory on either side in French hands.
Things started so well at St. Mihiel that the potential for disaster was euphorically forgotten. When the First Army attacked on September 12, it found an enemy in retreat–the Germans had decided to abandon the salient. The Americans captured 16,000 largely second-rate troops at a cost of only 7,000 casualties. Then, thanks to a staff colonel named George C. Marshall, the Americans managed to shift more than 400,000 troops from St. Mihiel to the Argonne–and attack at dawn on September 26, after an all-night barrage from 3,928 guns.
Proof of American overconfidence were the objectives Pershing and his staff assigned the assaulting divisions for the first day. The 250,000 men who went forward into a dense ground fog were expected to advance no less than 10 miles up the valley, clearing the enemy from the forest of the Argonne and bursting through two of the three German defense lines (Stellungen)–bearing the Wagnerian names of Giselher, Kreimhilde and Freya. Pershing hoped to accomplish this miracle with a combination of mass and movement. Against his nine double-strength American divisions, the Germans mustered only five understrength divisions–perhaps 50,000 men.
But the Argonne was not the invitingly flat terrain of St. Mihiel; nor were these Germans even slightly interested in retreating–behind them lay the four-track railroad that sustained the Kaiser’s armies in the north. Moreover, of the nine divisions that surged into that ominous fog on September 26, only four, the 4th, 28th, 33rd and 77th, had seen combat in the summer-long struggle to reverse the German offensives of spring-summer 1918. Two divisions, the 79th and the 91st, had never even been in the front lines.
The U.S. Army Air Service (USAS) was also in action. The 94th Aero Squadron, led by the man who would become the Service’s leading ace, former race-car driver Eddie Rickenbacker, arrived over the Argonne in time to catch the last of the artillery barrage. In the next few hours, Rickenbacker shot down a Fokker, and two of his squadron mates flamed German Drachen, as they called the enemy’s barrage balloons, an important contribution to blinding the opposition’s artillery.
Another element of the Air Service, the 20th Aero Squadron, was airborne in seven Liberty DH-4 bombers to attack German supply depots at Dun-Sur-Meuse. Built by the Americans to incorporate 12-cylinder Liberty engines in British de Havilland DH-4 airframes, they were barely over the Argonne when 20 Fokker D.VIIs of Jasta 12 spun out of the sun to whirl through their formation, killing the lead plane’s observer and sending one bomber down to fiery death. Four more of the lumbering lemons went down before the leader and the squadron’s tail-end Charlie fled for home without dropping a bomb.
By the time Rickenbacker and the 94th headed for their home airfield, the fog had lifted and they could see the doughboys swarming forward over the shell-pocked earth. Watching their ranks being gouged by German artillery and machine guns, Rickenbacker wondered why they ‘did not go absolutely mad with terror.’
The madness and terror would come later. For the first half- day, the infantry made encouraging progress, as the surprised Germans fell back to stronger elements of the Giselher defense line. The American foot soldiers were encouraged by the presence of Colonel George Patton’s tank brigade–141 Renault light tanks and 28 French-manned mediums, called Schneiders. But the horrendous terrain and the Germans’ aggressive anti-tank tactics took a heavy toll on Patton’s men and machines. The enemy had learned to move their Austrian 77mm fieldpieces forward to blast them at point-blank range.
By midday, two-thirds of the brigade tanks were either broken down or knocked out. Patton, virtually berserk over his losses, led a pickup squad of infantry in a frontal assault on a machine-gun nest. Every man but one was gunned down; the survivor dragged Patton into a ditch, bleeding from a severe leg wound.
The infantrymen, too, were discovering that Pershing had sent them into terrain that was only a few removes from hell. The primeval glacier that had originally gouged out the valley had left behind a hogback running down the middle of the Argonne, with ridges slanting off at odd angles, effectively dividing the Argonne into two tunnel-like defiles. General Hunter Liggett, who commanded I Corps on the American left, soon realized the place was ‘a natural fortress, beside which the Wildnerness in which Grant and Lee fought was a park.’
Inside the Argonne Forest itself, ravines, hillocks and meandering little streams added to the obstacles created by the trees and dense underbrush that reduced visibility to 20 feet. Here and throughout the valley, the Germans had added every imaginable man-made defense, from parallel and flanking trenches to concrete dugouts and fortified strongpoints, supported everywhere by barbed wire and machine guns. To those advantages was added the possession of the high ground east of the Meuse, from which dozens of heavy guns rained death on the Americans. Artillery on the slopes of the 1,600-foot-high ridge topped by the Argonne Forest wreaked similar destruction from the opposite flank.
On the first day, the crucial action took place in the center, where V Corps was given the task of taking Montfaucon, a steep-sided 500-foot height that was the key to the Giselher Stellung. This fortress had to be seized quickly by the 79th Division if V Corps had any hope of taking Romagne and other strongpoints in the Kreimhilde Stellung, the second defense line. But the green draftees from Pennsylvania and Maryland became badly confused as the fighting intensified.
German machine-gunners who looked dead suddenly came to life and started shooting up the American rear areas. Men kept charging machine guns in bunches, enabling a single gun to scythe down an entire platoon. Front-line elements lost all contact with their artillery. Not until dusk did one battalion of the 79th Division’s 313th Regiment get close enough to Montfaucon to make an attack, supported by two French Schneiders. But the French tankers, after getting a better look at the Maxims and 77s spouting death, decided to call it a day.
On the 79th’s right, the 4th Division, part of III Corps, had reached its assigned objectives by 12:30. Montfaucon was in clear view. But rigid orders from headquarters required the doughboys to sit there, doing virtually nothing, for four hours, until the 79th Division came abreast. By that time the prize was beyond anyone’s reach–and so was a quick victory in the Argonne. General Max von Gallwitz, commander of the army group opposing the doughboys, poured in a half-dozen reserve divisions in the next few days. ‘On the 27th and 28th,’ Gallwitz later wrote, ‘we had no more worries.’
An overstatement, to be sure, but there is no doubt that on those days, Pershing was a much more worried general. He ordered his nine divisions to attack again. The 79th Division, with some help from the 37th Division, captured Montfaucon at noon. Then serious problems, verging on disaster, developed in I Corps. In the forest of the Argonne, the New Yorkers of the 77th Division were floundering in incredible confusion.
In the valley, the Kansas and Missouri National Guardsmen of the 35th Division were suffering severe internal command problems. On the eve of the battle, Pershing had relieved the two brigade commanders, the chief of staff and three of the four regimental commanders, replacing them with regulars. They barely had time to introduce themselves before they started fighting the elite First Prussian Guards Division.
On September 27 and 28, the 35th Division literally fell apart. The two brigades became chaotically entangled; communications between front and rear virtually ceased. The 35th’s commander, Peter Traub, roved the battlefield in a sleepless daze, out of touch with his own headquarters. At one point he was almost captured by the Germans.
On the 29th, the Prussian Guards launched a counterattack that caused a near rout. The diary of the German Third Army reported ‘concentrated artillery fire struck enemy masses streaming to the rear with annihilating effect.’ The oncoming German infantry were stopped by counterfire from the 35th’s field artillery, among which Battery D of the 129th Regiment, headed by Captain Harry S. Truman, performed with distinction. But on the following day, the shattered division was withdrawn.
By the afternoon of the 29th, gloom and confusion had spread across the entire American battle line. West of the Argonne Forest, the French Fourth Army had barely gained a foot, a mistake making life even more difficult for the Americans in the woods.
September 29 also saw the last flight of 2nd Lt. Frank Luke, the 27th Aero Squadron’s wild Arizona balloon buster, who had destroyed 11 German balloons and downed four enemy planes in the past 17 days. Taking off that evening, Luke sent three more gasbags up in flames, but he never returned. It was later learned that he had been brought down by groundfire near Murvaux and, when called upon to surrender by German troops, drew his pistol and died fighting. Luke was later awarded the Medal of Honor.
Pershing personally visited every division to deliver exhortations and threats of dismissal. Alas, willpower was not what the First Army needed. It was stalled not only by ferocious German resistance but also by massive traffic jams in the rear areas. On October 1, the entire offensive ground to a muddled halt.
For the next four days, the green center divisions were relieved by three veteran divisions, the 1st, the 32nd, and the 3rd, which had all performed with distinction during the summer. But the traffic problem was worsened by days of bone-chilling rain that turned the roads into gumbo–and started influenza raging among the front-line troops.
The Air Service was also having its troubles maintaining superiority. The Germans had bolstered Stenay-based Jagdgeschwader II (JG.II, comprised of Jastas 12, 13, 15 and 19) with JG.I (Jastas 4, 6, 10 and 11)–the famed Richthofen Circus. No longer commanded by the Red Baron, who had been killed on April 21, it was still an elite outfit, commanded since July by an ace named Oberleutnant Hermann Göring. The long, narrow shape of the Argonne enabled the Germans to fly into it from three sides. They roared along the defiles and popped over ridges to gun down American rear-area troops as they clustered around mess kitchens.
On October 4, the First Army attacked again along the entire front. This time the Americans did it without artillery preparation, trying to surprise the Germans, but machine guns and the murderous artillery fire from the flanks forced everyone to measure gains in yards. Only the 1st Division, lashed by its ruthless commander, Charles P. Summerall, made any progress, blasting and battering a narrow 7-kilometer-long salient up the Aire River valley. The cost was horrendous. In six days, the division lost 9,387 men and had to be withdrawn.
In the Argonne Forest, some 540 New Yorkers of the 77th Division were cut off and surrounded in the Ravin de Chaulevaux. Stubbornly refusing to surrender, they became the ‘Lost Battalion,’ a name coined by a newspaper that infuriated the New Yorkers ever afterward–they insisted they were neither lost nor a battalion. The Air Service made repeated attempts to drop food and ammunition to the surrounded men from minimum altitudes. One DH-4 crew of the 50th Aero Squadron, 1st Lts. Harold Goettler and Erwin Bleckley, was shot down on October 6, both men later winning posthumous Medals of Honor. But all the goods landed in German hands and stomachs.
The casualties were close to 70 percent when the survivors were rescued on October 7 by the tactical genius of Hunter Liggett. Relieving the exhausted 28th Division with the ‘All-American’ 82nd Division, he ordered a brigade to make a’sideways’ attack into the forest from the edge of the 1st Division salient. The daring maneuver worked, forcing the Germans to withdraw from the entire forest by October 10.
On the second day of that operation, a Tennessee mountaineer in the 82nd became a legend. Corporal Alvin York had grown up with a gun in his hands. He could knock the head off a turkey at 100 yards. When his company’s advance was stopped by German machine guns on a hill ahead of them, Future Sergeant York worked his way through the woods into the German rear with 16 other men. They captured the commander of the machine-gun battalion, but fire from the hill killed half of York’s men and pinned down the rest. With rifle and pistol York proceeded to kill 28 men on the hill without missing a shot. The German major blew his whistle and ordered the survivors to surrender. York marched them back to the American lines, scooping up more prisoners along the way, to bring his total bag to 132–plus a Medal of Honor.
York’s and the 82nd’s deeds were among the few bright spots in the renewed American assault. Flying overhead, General Billy Mitchell, the commander of USAS, groaned aloud as he watched the uncoordinated attacks. He said it was like watching a man butt his head against a brick wall.
On October 10, Mitchell dispatched three squadrons, the 94th, the 27th and the 147th, over the Argonne to flame a particularly annoying Drachen. The Germans summoned Jastas from all directions, and the result was an aerial battle royal–one in which the Americans claimed four victories and the German Jasta 10 claimed three American Spads. At the end of the day, however, the deadly Drachen was still aloft.
On October 8, Pershing had finally decided to do something about those murderous guns east of the Meuse. He ordered the 29th Division to attack, supported by the French 18th Division and part of the III Corps’ 33rd Division. The attack made some early gains, but the Germans moved in two fresh divisions and soon had the Allies pinned on the banks of the Meuse. On October 12, New Jersey National Guardsmen of the 29th’s 113th and 114th regiments took the Bois d’Ormont, at a cost of 118 killed and 812 wounded. Over the next 34 hours, the Germans bombarded Bois d’Ormont with high-explosive and mustard gas shells. Wisely, the 113th withdrew while the 114th held its ground–which only resulted in 706 more gas casualties in an area, permeated with persistent mustard agent, that the Germans had no intention of entering.
Meanwhile, despite an unwillingness by their French allies to keep up the pace, Maryland’s 115th Regiment overran Richène Hill, while the Virginian 116th took the heights of Malbrouck, Consenvoye and Molleville Ferme–discovering the last objective to have been defended by Austrian troops. Then, on October 18, the two units found their right flank exposed (due to the breakdown of the 113th and 114th’s assault) and under German attack from the directions of Ormont and Haumont. On October 16, the 79th Division arrived to relieve the 29th, and five days later the last of the ‘Blue and Grays’ were pulled out of the line, after having suffered 5,552 casualties in three weeks. Although pushed back as far as seven kilometers, the German Meuse batteries remained a menace until the last week of the war.
Elsewhere, the First Army was showing signs of severe strain. The traffic jams had become monumental again. The terrific casualties forced Pershing to cannibalize seven divisions as they arrived in France, sending green men into the lines to serve with strangers–never a good situation. More than 100,000 stragglers were wandering in the rear area, and Pershing finally issued a desperate order to shoot any man who ran away.
Pershing himself began to show signs of emotional collapse. Foch and Georges Clemenceau, the French premier, were hurling insults and demands for ‘results’ at him. Driving to the front, he buried his head in his hands and spoke to his wife, who had died tragically in a fire at the Presidio in San Francisco in 1915. ‘Frankie, Frankie…my God, sometimes I don’t know how I can go on.’
But the iron general summoned great reserves of mettle from somewhere within his warrior soul. Visiting the 90th Division, he told General Henry T. Allen: ‘Things are going badly…but by God! Allen, I was never so much in earnest in my life. We are going to get through.’ Even so, Pershing by now recognized that willpower was not enough. He decided to try brain power.
On October 10, he handed over command of the First Army to I Corps’ Hunter Liggett. The former president of the Army War College, Liggett was a thinking general. He was also 40 pounds overweight, but he parried criticism by declaring: ‘There’s nothing wrong with fat, if it isn’t above the collar.’
To focus Liggett’s task, Pershing created the Second Army east of the Meuse and put Robert Lee Bullard, III Corps’ commander, in charge of it. He also replaced George H. Cameron, V Corps’ leader, with the 1st Division’s ferocious commander, Charles P. Summerall.
Liggett waited until October 16 to take charge, meanwhile allowing fresh outfits, notably the 42nd ‘Rainbow’ Division, to make another try at cracking the Kreimhilde Stellung. The Rainbow, which included New York’s famous ‘Fighting 69th’ (redesignated the 165th U.S. Infantry), was assigned the forbidding Côte de Chatillon. On the night of October 13-14, Summerall visited brigade commander Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters and said: ‘Give me Chatillon or a list of 5,000 casualties.’ MacArthur replied that if they failed, the entire 84th Brigade would be on the casualty list, with his name at the top.
In the next two murderous days, MacArthur and his soldiers almost reached Summerall’s savage quota, with the brigade commander ignoring shrapnel and bullets to set an example for his men. By dusk on the 16th, they reached the crest of Chatillon and held it against a ferocious German counterattack. On their right flank, the weary men of the 32nd Division surprised themselves and everyone else by capturing another key height, the Côte Dame Marie, effectively piercing the Kreimhilde Stellung. It had taken the First Army three weeks and 100,000 casualties to reach the objective Pershing had assigned to it for the first day.
Liggett immediately announced it was time to rest and regroup. While rounding up the 100,000 stragglers and returning them to their units and restoring order in the rear, he replaced the exhausted 77th Division with the fresh 78th ‘Lightning’ Division and ordered that New Jersey-New York outfit to exert pressure on the enemy’s right flank around the town of Grandpré, which sat on a bluff north of the Aire River.
For 10 days and 10 nights, the 78th attacked, and attacked again, taking heavy casualties from Germans in the town and the nearby Bois de Loges. As Liggett had hoped, the Germans, convinced that the Americans’ next offensive would come from the left, shifted reserves from the center to meet the threat.
Meanwhile, Liggett tried to reform the First Army’s primitive tactics. He issued orders to stop charging machine guns and strongpoints that were holding up an advance. Regiments and divisions were no longer to consider boundary lines as no-trespass signs. They should assist their neighbors with flank attacks if they made better progress. Liggett also significantly added to his staff’s brain power by making Colonel George C. Marshall his operations officer.
On November 1, a rested, replenished First Army renewed the offensive with a thunderous predawn barrage. The I and III corps attacked vigorously on the left and right flanks–but the main effort was a three-division smash up through the center by Summerall’s V Corps, led by the veteran 2nd Division and its Marine brigade. The Air Service roared in to strafe and bomb, in an early example of ground-air coordination. The German center virtually evaporated, and the 2nd Division gained an astonishing five miles. On its right, the 89th Division did almost as well.
The appalled Germans found their right and left outflanked and had no choice but disengagement and headlong retreat. Several times in the next few days, when the Germans attempted to set up a defense line, the Americans overran it before the enemy could issue orders to man it. On November 3, the 2nd Division marched an entire regiment through a wood by night, while the frantic enemy was trying to fortify it. In the morning the Germans found themselves in a trap. A despairing General Gallwitz was told: ‘All the front line commanders report the [German] troops are fighting courageously but just cannot do anything.’
The Meuse River became the one hope of containing the American surge, but that, too, vanished when the 5th Division raced across open ground under fire and crossed the river at Dun-sur-Meuse on November 5. The crucial railroad was soon within range of American artillery. Elsewhere, Foch’s grand offensive was making equally spectacular gains. On November 8, the Germans met with the generalissimo to discuss an armistice and peace talks.
Pershing already had told President Woodrow Wilson he thought that was a poor idea. He favored fighting until the Germans surrendered unconditionally. Wilson had furiously informed him that politics were none of his business. Pershing responded by ordering Liggett and Bullard, whose Second Army had also gone into action, to attack without respite.
The offensive’s main goal soon became the city of Sedan, where France had ingloriously surrendered to the Germans in 1871 to signal an unhappy end to the Franco-Prussian war. Pershing, still seething at Foch, decided he wanted Americans to capture it–Liggett ordered I Corps to make the city its target. The 42nd Division, which had replaced the 78th, led the advance. But V Corps commander Summerall had brought his beloved 1st Division back into action and decided he wanted the men to win the prize.
Summerall ordered the 1st to lunge across the fronts of the 77th and 42nd divisions in a dash to Sedan. The result was massive confusion that would have caused a military disaster if the German army had retained any fighting power. Doughboys shot at each other in the darkness, and a 1st Division patrol arrested a strolling Brig. Gen. Douglas MacArthur as a German spy. Liggett called the fiasco a ‘military atrocity’ and seriously considered court-martialing Summerall. But Pershing dismissed the episode as not worth fussing about. The 1st Division was his favorite, too.
By the time the mess was unraveled, Pershing had yielded to French complaints and allowed his hosts to capture Sedan. But at 11 a.m. on November 11, when the armistice went into effect, most divisions of the American First and Second armies were still attacking. To the end of his life, Pershing insisted that if the battle of the Argonne (and the other Allied offensives) had lasted another 10 days, ‘we would have rounded up the entire German army, captured it, humiliated it.’
Not a few military historians have differed strongly with Pershing’s view. Both the French and British armies were close to exhaustion, and the combination of 117,000 Argonne casualties, influenza, and a total lack of replacements rendered the ability of the First and Second American armies to fight a battle of annihilation against a determined enemy a dubious proposition. On the key to victory in the Argonne, however, there was no disagreement. The iron general confessed it on Armistice night in Paris. ‘The men were willing to pay the price.’ *
This article was written by Thomas Fleming and originally published in the October 1993 issue of Military History magazine. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Military History magazine today! | <urn:uuid:9911c611-f49a-45ac-a67e-01df0234595b> | {
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In BriefA recent study on a space anomaly that has perplexed scientists for years has some suggesting that it could be explained by a parallel "bubble universe" — although there are other, more standard potential explanations, as well.
For years, scientists have been baffled by a weird anomaly far away in space: a mysterious “Cold Spot” about 1.8 billion light-years across. It is cooler than its surroundings by around 0.00015 degrees Celsius (0.00027 degrees Fahrenheit), a fact astronomers discovered by measuring background radiation throughout the universe.
Previously, astronomers believed that this space could be cooler simply because it had less matter in it than most sections of space. They dubbed it a massive supervoid and estimated that it had 10,000 galaxies fewer than other comparable sections of space.
But now, in a recently published survey of galaxies, astronomers from the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) say they have discovered that this supervoide could not exist. They now believe that the galaxies in the cold spot are just clustered around smaller voids that populate the cold spot like bubbles. These small voids, however, cannot explain the temperature difference observed.
To link the temperature differences to the smaller voids, the researchers say a non-standard cosmological model would be required. “But our data place powerful constraints on any attempt to do that,” explained researcher Ruari Mackenzie in an RAS press release. While the study had a large margin of error, the simulations suggest there is only a two percent probability that the Cold Spot formed randomly.
“This means we can’t entirely rule out that the Spot is caused by an unlikely fluctuation explained by the standard model. But if that isn’t the answer, then there are more exotic explanations,” said researcher Tom Shanks in the press release. “Perhaps the most exciting of these is that the Cold Spot was caused by a collision between our universe and another bubble universe.”
If more detailed studies support the findings of this research, the Cold Spot might turn out to be the first evidence for the multiverse, though far more evidence would be needed to confirm our universe is indeed one of many. | <urn:uuid:f1ef48e3-f861-4639-b733-550639141277> | {
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Death by volcanism is not unusual. During the 20th century, volcanic eruptions have killed more than 75,000 people. Lava flows—thick and slow-moving compared to pyroclastic flows of hot ash, gas, and rock fragments—rarely cause a loss of life: 226 lives were lost last century. When the African volcano Nyiragongo erupted unusually fluid lava in January 2002, however, nearly 500,000 Congo citizens were displaced, and dozens were killed. The lava did not erupt from the central crater, but instead ran from fissures along the southern slopes, just north of the city of Goma.
This image of Nyiragongo Volcano was captured by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite on February 21, 2005. Vegetation appears green; lava rock is dark purple; bare ground, probably agricultural land, is pink; water is blue; and the urban area of Goma is light purple. A lava lake churns within the volcano’s crater, and on the day of this image, a cloud of steam (and perhaps other gases) billowed from the summit.
Since January 2002, satellites have monitored episodes of volcanic activity at Nyiragongo. ASTER can detect thermal (heat) energy in addition to visible light, which allows scientists to measure lava lake temperatures as well as to create digital images. The plume that ASTER observed at the crater of Nyiragongo was a visible sign of volcanic venting. Invisible to the human eye, however, was infrared energy (inset image) that allows volcanologists to measure the temperature of rocks heated by molten lava in the crater. In the inset, cooler areas are dark, and hotter areas are whitish-yellow.
The 2002 eruption was not the first fluid eruption to affect Goma’s citizens. In 1977, Nyiragongo erupted fast-moving lava that flooded twenty square kilometers in about one hour. The lava traveled at a remarkable speed of sixty kilometers per hour (about 37 miles per hour), and it cost an estimated 180 people their lives. Most lavas are thick and move slowly enough to allow humans to escape from oncoming flows. Nyiragongo lavas are different because they are unusually low in silica, the strong silicon-oxygen bonds that typically make lavas sluggish and thick. Those fast-flowing lavas were responsible for nearly 90 percent of the lava-related deaths during the 20th century. | <urn:uuid:ee5a1884-41a0-46da-b34e-f45cdef4f6ca> | {
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Genetic studies of African populations on disease susceptibility and response to vaccines and therapeutics
Last Updated on October 8, 2022 by Joseph Gut – thasso
September 25, 2022 – Nearly 2000 years ago the Roman scholar and natural philosopher Pliny the Elder wrote in his Natural History: “Ex Africa surgit semper aliquid novi” (from Africa there is always something new). This quote beautifully applies to genetic studies of African populations as they provide a critical resource in the study of genetic risk factors of human disease and to new discoveries. Africa is the ultimate source of modern humans and as such harbors more genetic variation than any other continent.
For this reason, studies of the patterns of genetic variation in African populations are crucial to understanding how genes affect phenotypic variation, including disease predisposition. In addition, the patterns of extant genetic variation in Africa are important for understanding how genetic variation affects infectious diseases that are a major problem in Africa, such as malaria, tuberculosis, schistosomiasis, and HIV/AIDS. Therefore, elucidating the role that genetic susceptibility to infectious diseases plays is critical to improving the health of people in Africa. It is also of note that recent and ongoing social and cultural changes in Sub-Saharan Africa have increased the prevalence of non-communicable diseases that will also require genetic analyses to improve disease prevention and treatment. In this review we give special attention to many of the past and ongoing studies, emphasizing those in Sub-Saharan Africans that address the role of genetic variation in human disease. In an extensive review , a team of authors and researchers have addressed this issue. They show in quit some detail, how selected genes may influence or even be responsible for the susceptibility to disease phenotypes characteristic in a variety of Sub-Saharan Afrian populations.
Some problems in selecting definitive ethnicity and examples of definitive correlations with disease susceptibility
Here, we try to show excerpts from the afore cited review in order to illustrate infectious diseases, rare diseases, but also normal chronic diseases, where definitively genetic backgrounds play a role in their remedy, or in the tendency of falling prey to them. We may, however, not find clear-cut ethnic dependency. This has certainly to do with two things.
First, Africa is a region of considerable genetic, linguistic, and cultural diversity. There are over 2,000 distinct ethnolinguistic groups, speaking languages that constitute nearly a third of the world’s living languages. These languages have been classifed into four major language families: Niger-Kordofanian (spoken predominantly by agriculturalist populations across a broad geographic distribution in Africa), Afro-Asiatic (spoken predominantly by northern and eastern Africa pastoralists and agropastoralists), Nilo-Saharan (spoken predominantly by eastern and central African pastoralists), and Khoisan (a language containing click-consonants, spoken by southern and eastern African hunter–gatherer populations). These populations live in a diverse set of environments and climates, including tropical forests, savannah, desert, and coastal regions. Moreover, African populations have a complex demographic history, consisting of ancient and recent population expansion and contraction events, short and long range migrations (e.g. the migration of agricultural Bantu-speakers from West Africa throughout sub-Saharan Africa within the past 4,000 year and the migration of Khoisan-speakers from eastern to southern Africa within the past 20’000 to 40’000 years), and countless local population admixtures The modern day (i., today) consequences of these migrations may be illustrated with the example of Cameroon; where among environ 30 millions inhabitants exist 250 ethnic groups and about 250 different languages.
Second: Since today there exist not yet definitive genetic signature profiles for a given “ethnicity”, it will still be very difficult to assign, based on genetic profiles, risk profiles for the susceptibility of members of given ethnicities for certain selected disease phenotypes and to assign higher or lower disease risks to selected ethnicities. For the time being, one may have to stay with information on genetic variation that is connected with increased risks of individuals carrying these variations for disease phenotypes, vaccination successes, and drug/therapy success; perhaps not yet strictly connected with ethnicities but rather with groups of individuals of the same local social-economic, environmental, cultural, linguistic, and/or behavioural environments.
In line with this latter estimation, there exist already many studies schooling disease risks or absence thereof in patients of selected genotypes. Malaria would be an example. Malaria is a serious health issue in Africa, accounting for one in every five childhood deaths. In 2006 the WHO estimated that almost 74% of the African population lives in areas endemic for malaria, about 19% in epidemic-prone and only 7% in malaria-free areas. Studies of large populations are addressing the complex genetics of malaria susceptibility and several genes have been associated with malaria susceptibility. Certain phenomena (pathways) are critical to the development overt malaria, and genetic variants that disrupt these processes can protect against disease. The invasion of erythrocytes by malaria parasites is central to the disease process, and the Duffy blood group antigen, a chemokine receptor expressed in many cell types and encoded by the FY gene, is important because Plasmodium vivax cannot infect individuals who do not express the Duffy antigen, resulting in full protection of Duffy (-) individuals. The lack of Duffy expression is due to a promoter SNP that alters a binding site for the GATA-1 transcription factor, resulting in the parasite being unable to invade red blood cells. Over 97% of individuals in West and Central Africa are Duffy (-). The date of emergence of the Duffy (-) genotype has been broadly dated, from more than 90,000 to about 6,500 years ago, (Webb 2005). There has been considerable debate whether the spread of Duffy (-) was due to survival selection of individuals (in the sense of Charles Darvin) in response to Plasmodium vivax or if it evolved independently and probably earlier. The latter hypothesis is consistent with a Southeast Asian origin of P. vivax, and the independent evolution of the Duffy (-) genotype throughout Africa. Whether there developed a strict correlation of ethnicity with the malaria phenotype, particularly when considering individuals living in the aforementioned epidemic-prone and malaria-free areas remains an open question.
Here, we may be aware that the above considerations around malaria also apply for other infectious diseases throughout Africa such as tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, leprosy, schistosomiasis, trachoma, and even to non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and obesity, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, cancer in general, but then to prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, breast cancer, vaccine-induced immunity, serum lipids (cholesterol). Only the candidate genetic risk variants in each case would vastly be different.
By doing studies throughout Africa it will be possible to capture most of the extant genetic risk factors in all human populations. It may also be possible to use simple and relatively inexpensive genetic tests to reduce overall healthcare costs. There are many diseases that are endemic to Africa that carry signifcant genetic risk, and studying these could improve the health in Africa. However, despite the advantages and importance of these studies there are substantial impediments to performing genetic research in an African setting, most notably lack of resources and infrastructure. In recognition of these factors great efforts and initiatives are in place to develop research networks and biobanks needed to expedite clinical and genetic research related to the specifics of Africa. Such initiatives include, but are not restricted to, the African Society of Human Genetics, the African Genomic Medicine Portal (AGMP), the H3Africa Consortium (H3Africa), or African-based companies like 53gene (53gene).
Needless to say that thasso has already had several articles on genetics and genetic backgrounds when it comes to African patients, such as, but not limited to, “Hidden secrets in African genomes revealed by large scale sequencing“, or “AGMP: The African Genomic Medicine Portal“, “Populations of African descent: New trait loci for hypertension“, and “Tapping into the massive potential of African genomes: 54gene“.
See here a sequence on the genetic diversity of African populations:
Disclaimer: The images and/or videos (if any) on this blog may be protected by copyright. All rights remain with the owner of these rights. | <urn:uuid:6eb7d2d3-8c6b-4d67-84cc-9874110cfe02> | {
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Out of Africa: did Emys orbicularis occidentaliscross the Strait of Gibraltar twice?
The narrow Strait of Gibraltar has separated the African and European continents since the Miocene (5.3 Mya), with a different degree of permeability for Mediterranean taxa. Southern and northern regions of the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco, respectively, are key areas to evaluate the colonization dynamics and biogeographic history of taxa occurring at both sides of this strait. The Ibero-Maghrebian subspecies of the European pond turtle, Emys orbicularis occidentalis, is patchily distributed and threatened throughout most of the Iberian Peninsula and northern Morocco and its origin is thought to be in North Africa. Here we expand the geographic sampling across the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco, with special emphasis in the southern tip of the peninsula and northern Morocco, and analyze mtDNA sequences of 183 E. o. occidentalis to better understand the complex biogeographic history of this subspecies. We provide for the first time evidence for shared haplotypes of Iberian and North African pond turtles, with an additional haplotype in the southern Iberian Peninsula derived from Moroccan haplotypes. This supports the hypothesis that the Strait of Gibraltar constitutes no significant biogeographic barrier for E. orbicularis. However, the newly discovered shared, or extremely similar, haplotypes of European pond turtles from the southern Iberian Peninsula and Morocco suggest either that at least two independent natural colonization waves from Morocco have reached the Iberian Peninsula or that Moroccan turtles were accidentally or deliberately introduced there. | <urn:uuid:6890539e-221b-44d5-ab00-3fb52b9c93d9> | {
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By: Colette Hapi
Have you ever wondered about the correlation between executive function skills and mathematics?
Many do not realize that there is a major correlation between executive function skills and success in mathematics. Executive function skills are especially essential when solving complex problems because they require prioritization due to the fact that operations must be solved in a specific order. They also require impulse control because the student needs to stick with these problems long enough to completely solve them. Organization skills are also a necessity because the student needs to know which formula to apply and where to look to find the right ones. Finally, flexible thinking, which is the skill that focuses on a student’s ability to adapt to new situations, improvise, and shift strategies to meet different types of challenges, is necessary to help the student solve multi-steps problems.
We’ve found that students with executive dysfunction often struggle with math because they find it hard to shift from one type of problem to another (flexible thinking). They often have trouble with working memory, which can make it hard to solve multi-step problems. These students usually rush through their math homework and are therefore careless about the process. They often tend to give automatic answers to math problems. It is also not uncommon for them to get lost in the middle of complex math problems, and they are often unable to catch their mistakes.
To subscribe and receive the full versions of our monthly tips, please send us your email address here. | <urn:uuid:a505e801-913f-41b1-8952-a4522ede1707> | {
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FOUR in 10 Tasmanians and nearly half of indigenous Tasmanians are making do on very low incomes.
Almost 41 per cent of non- indigenous Tasmanians aged 15 and over had weekly incomes of $399 or less in 2011, according to Productivity Commission analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics data.
The national figure was 36.9 per cent.
Indigenous people were doing worse, at state and national level.
In Tasmania, 47.9 per cent of indigenous people were getting $399 or less per week.
The figure was 49.4 per cent for all indigenous Australians.
The proportion of indigenous Tasmanians on such low incomes was no surprise to Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre state secretary Ruth Langford.
She suggested poverty resulted from inter- generational exclusion from opportunity.
"These appalling statistics do not adequately tell the human story of generations of people living in abject poverty," Ms Langford said.
"Nor do they tell of how people who have been excluded from equal opportunities become entrenched in a way of existence which is extremely difficult to break free from.
"When I was growing up I didn't know anyone with a university degree."
"University wasn't even something I considered or believed our family could afford."
She said it took years of advocacy to get support services for indigenous students attending universities and taking up other skill development opportunities.
"We now wait to see the benefits of a new generation of young Aboriginal people who know that access to opportunity is our human right." | <urn:uuid:84a53d69-444c-412a-9c44-db62d09c349e> | {
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Vets and other professionals recognise that gastrointestinal function and health in horses exists in a finely balanced state. Most conditions relating to the intestinal tract, for example colic and diarrhoea are well understood and are most commonly treated either medically or surgically. There has been, however, less appreciation of how frequently the health of a horse’s stomach can be compromised. The true prevalence of equine stomach lesions (gastric ulcers) was recognised only with the introduction of gastric endoscopy. How prevalent are ulcers? Numerous studies conducted in the 1980s and ‘90s in varied horse populations within differing sporting disciplines identified EGUS as a much more a widespread problem than commonly assumed. Many of these studies focussed on thoroughbred racehorses, and produced remarkably similar findings.
Between 80 and 90% of horses in training were found to have gastric ulcers. And, somewhat surprisingly, over 50% of racehorses temporarily out of training also had lesions. Moreover, this health and welfare issue was not confined to thoroughbred racing; horses competing in other equestrian sporting disciplines were also prone to this condition. In contrast, less than 5% of permanently grazed horses appear to suffer from gastric ulceration. Prevalence of EGUS in horses engaged in different equestrian sporting disciplines Population Prevalence (%) Racing (thoroughbreds) 80 - 90 Trotting/pacing (standardbreds) 72 - 88 Endurance racing 67 Show horses 58 Foals (thoroughbred) > 50 Symptoms to look for that may suggest gastric ulceration include chronic recurrent colic, episodic colic, acute colic, reduced appetite, poor body condition and chronic diarrhoea. Whilst these clinical signs are not always indicative of gastric ulcers, as can be seen from the table below there is a clear relationship.
The strongest indicator appears to be an inability to thrive as indicated by poor body condition and reduced appetite. Incidence of overt clinical signs in horses subsequently found to have EGUS Clinical signs Incidence (%) Chronic recurrent colic, for 7 days or more 25 Episodic colic (1+) for 7 or more days 13 Acute colic 10 Reduced appetite 53 Poor body condition 40 Diarrhoea 9 Unfortunately, however, in about 52% of horses where gastroscopy reveals ulceration there will have been no obvious prior clinical signs.
What causes gastric ulcers? Gastric lesions (ulcers) are now recognised as a common condition in stabled horses, whether involved in racing or other equine sports, and in foals, yet they appear to be absent in wild horses. You may be familiar with the fact that gastric ulcers in humans are frequently caused by infection with a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori, it was not surprising therefore that this was investigated but then dismissed as a possible cause in horses. So, what is the cause and why is the prevalence in racehorses so high? To answer this question we need to examine the manner in which we train, house and feed our racehorses. All the clinical evidence to date indicates that the high incidence of gastric ulcers in racehorses is a ‘man-made’ phenomenon that is related to the feeding and management practices that we employ during training.
There are four key contributory factors involved in the development and progression of ulcers:
1) Dietary makeup and feeding practices
2) Intensity of exercise (level of work)
3) Stress factors
4) Prolonged use of non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs, such as phenylbutazone, and corticosteroids. When considering these factors we need to appreciate that the horse has evolved over millennia as an exclusively grazing animal with a digestive system that is reliant on the continual ingestion of fresh forage to meet its dietary requirements. In EGUS the damage caused to the lining of the stomach arises from prolonged exposure of the gastric mucosa to gastric acid, without sufficient protection from the buffering effect of saliva.
Dietary makeup and feeding practices Racehorses are most often fed a diet that is high in starch rich cereal and low in forage. Horses produce gastric acid continuously, and high starch diets tend to further increase its production through stimulation of a hormone known as gastrin. In addition, where these starch-rich meals are large, inadequate mixing in the stomach can lead to some of the starch being fermented here, which further contributes to the overall acidity. During feeding, chewing normally stimulates the production of saliva, which contains a natural buffer ‘bicarbonate’, to offer some protection of the gastric mucosa against the corrosive effects of gastric acid. However, the amount of saliva produced for each kilogram of concentrate feed consumed is about 2.5 times less than that produced for the same weight of forage, as proportionally less chewing is involved. Minimal forage intake therefore takes its toll on gastric health, as during periods when the horse has no access to feed or forage, the protective effects of saliva are lost and these are key danger times for gastric ulceration.
A recent study published in the Equine Veterinary Journal also suggests that repeated electrolyte or salt administration may exacerbate or even induce gastric ulceration. But before we all cast aside our daily electrolyte or salt administration, which has great physiological benefit, we need to take these recent findings in context. This latest study used an endurance model of electrolyte administration using a concentrated electrolyte syringe 8 times within an 8-hour period. Whilst this may be common practice during endurance races, this type of administration in racing is in my experience not practised. It is, however, a difficult conundrum for endurance trainers as electrolyte depletion during races is a significant issue.
Certainly electrolyte or salt products that dissolve more slowly in the stomach may be an advantage. Exercise intensity The level of work that horses undertake has also been found to be a significant contributory factor in the development of EGUS. Although ulcers are present in about 40% of horses undertaking light exercise this increases to over 95% in horses with busy racing schedules. This effect probably arises through the physical movement of the organs and tissues within the horse’s body that occurs during exercise. Mechanical movement and compression of the stomach forces the most sensitive non glandular regions of its lining into further contact with gastric acid, and this effect is exacerbated when exercise intensity is increased.
Stress Although training and racing by necessity place horses under physiological stress, psychological stress is also implicated in ulcer development. Recent studies in the USA indicate that sudden stressful changes from the normal daily routine and environment, including transport and new stabling, promote rapid changes to the integrity of the stomach lining. Indeed, gastroscopy showed the appearance of ulcers within only 6 days. Medical treatment of gastric ulcers Gastric ulcers in horses rarely heal spontaneously, so veterinary intervention is necessary. Methods for the treatment and prevention of gastric ulcers in horses follow those employed in human medicine and generally involve the use of antacids alone, or in conjunction with anti-ulcer drugs.
Antacids neutralise gastric acid. Those based on sodium and calcium carbonates and bicarbonates have the potential drawback of releasing carbon dioxide (gas) in the gut. In addition, bicarbonate supplementation can increase blood bicarbonate levels that could potentially result in a breach of doping rules. Antacids containing aluminium or magnesium hydroxides and silicates may be preferential.
Drugs used to inhibit gastric ulcers include, the H2-receptor blockers cimetidine and ranitidine and the so-called ‘proton-pump inhibitor’ omeprazole. Omeprazole is the most widely used and effective treatment in horses and is marketed as an oral paste under the trade name Gastroguard. Dietary supplement products available for gastric health Product Company Active ingredients Function Product Form Dose (500kg horse) Neigh-Lox Saracen (KER) Dihydroxy-aluminium, sodium carbonate, calcium carbonate, aluminium phosphate Antacid Coats & protects Pellet 340g Settlelex Feedmark Calcium carbonate, aluminium hydroxide, magnesium carbonate, dicalcium phospahte Antacid Powder 30-100g Acti-Soothe Nelson Veterinary Ltd high fibre ingredients, calcium carbonate. Magnesium carbonate, probiotic, prebiotic Antacid Pellet 400g Gastro Ardmore Equine phytochemicals, mucosal agents,, natural antibiotics, natural stress reducers Other Paste 1 syringe Ulseraze NAF Powder, lactoferrin, ginger, marshmallow, Liquorice,psyllium seeds, phosphotidylcholine, Other Powder 60g U-Guard Equine America Calcium carbonate, kaolin, liquorice, aloe Vera, iron oxide, dried apple pectin pulp, magnesium silicate, vitamin B5 and magnesium oxide. Antacid Coats & protects Powder 40g Stomacare Twydil polyunsaturated fatty acids, phospholipds, chitosan glucosamine fibre Antacid Coats & protects Syringe 1-2 syringes (60-120g) Dietary prevention of ulceration Mark Tompkins chairman of the Newmarket Trainers Federations takes the view that “a common sense approach to gastric ulcers is what's needed, with care being taken over the feeding regime and any stress on horses being kept to a minimum”. In essence he is absolutely correct and as we largely know what the dietary trigger factors are, this should be a fairly straightforward process.
Firstly, whilst the need to minimise gut fill from forage is appreciated, we should try to maximise forage intake whenever possible. This serves two purposes by increasing the amount of protective saliva produced, but also reducing the amount of time that horses in training spend without access to feed. Racehorses could benefit from the best of both worlds, if they were fed more hay or haylage for the majority of the time, with the level being reduced to a minimum (1% of bodyweight for hay and 1.25% of bodyweight for haylage) in the 2-3 days before racing. Additionally, any horses that suffer from recurrent ulcers would certainly benefit from turnout onto pasture for some part of the day. Ensuring meal size is minimised can mollify the negative effects of a high cereal intake. Greater number of small meals, rather than a few large ones is the better option.
It is usually the second and third meals of the day that often need to be reduced and be redistributed to a fourth late feed. Addition of generous double handful of alfalfa chaff to concentrate feeds will also encourage chewing and improve saliva production. Supplements fed to help maintain gastric mucosal health are unlikely to be as effective as drug treatments such as Omeprazole. However, they can be used as an adjunct to veterinary therapy following an initial course of treatment, or during periods where drug treatment has to be withdrawn to avoid contravening doping regulations. In choosing a product however, selecting those from companies that have tested the efficacy of their product in a scientific environment is a wise strategy. | <urn:uuid:cc888dcc-067f-4abd-ba61-9ca1891c0c7a> | {
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An article submitted for publication in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” describes a research on the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy NGC 5195, which is undergoing some sort of indigestion. Using data collected with various telescopes, a team of astronomers at the University of Manchester discovered that the black hole causes chaotic events in its galaxy. Among the causes there’s its interaction with a much larger galaxy called NGC 5194 or Whirlpool galaxy.
The galaxy pair formed by the dwarf galaxy NGC 5195 and the spiral galaxy NGC 5194 is interacting in an early phase of a galactic merger, although the significant difference in size between the two galaxies probably makes it more appropriate to say that the NGC 5194 will devour its smaller companion. The process is extremely slow and since who knows how long NGC 5195 periodically ends up into one of its larger companion’s spiral arms. It will take some billion years before a single galaxy is formed but there are effects of the interaction that are already visible.
When NGC 5195 ends up in its companion’s arm, a lot of gas and dust are attracted by the supermassive black hole at the center of the dwarf galaxy. Despite this galaxy’s relatively small size, the mass of this black hole has been estimated at around 19 million solar masses, really huge considering that the one at the center of the Milky Way, bigger than NGC 5195 and NGC 5194 combined, has a mass estimated at just over 4 million solar masses.
The flow of materials towards the supermassive black hole at the center of the dwarf galaxy NGC 5195 ends in the accretion disk that orbits it. This disk grows to the point where the balance inside it gets broken and the black hole can no longer swallow those materials efficiently. The consequence is that many materials get ejected at very high speed into interstellar space.
Last year, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Space Observatory detected arcs of X-ray emission that appeared to be the result of that violent event, which represented a kind of indigestion for the supermassive black hole. Now that area has been studied with the e-MERLIN radio telescope, the latest evolution of the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network, an array of antennas scattered across England.
The e-MERLIN radio telescope is run by the University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Observatory whose astronomers conducted this research. Radio detections were put together with Chandra’s but also with others conducted over the years with the VLA radio telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope.
In the image, the left side (courtesy Jon Christensen) shows NGC 5194 and NGC 5195. The right side shows a false color image of NGC 5195 (courtesy NRAO / AUI / NSF / NASA / CXC / NASA / ESA / STScI / U. Manchester / Rampadarath et al.) obtained by combining observations of VLA (red), Chandra Space Observatory (green) and Hubble Space Telescope (blue). The inset shows the maps created from observations by e-MERLIN (courtesy e-MERLIN / U. Manchester / Rampadarath et al.) of the nucleus of NGC 5195.
By putting together all the observations, the researchers have reconstructed what’s happening. The ejection of materials from the supermassive black hole causes a shock wave that heats the interstellar medium causing the X-ray emission and stripping electrons from neutral hydrogen. The arcs observed by Chandra and Hubble are created by a bubble of these materials.
These arcs have an estimated age of one to two million years so we’re lucky to see them. They show the consequences of what happened around the supermassive black hole, an example of what influence it can have in a vast area. In 2013 the study of various observations of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way showed the effects of a much less exceptional meal. What happened in NGC 5195 shows what kind of consequences the activity of a supermassive black hole can have in extraordinary cases. | <urn:uuid:09985130-61b6-40b5-a945-25f0bea8566d> | {
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The auditory capacities of humans are exceptional in terms of identifying familiar voices.
A nanoscale machine composed of synthetic DNA can be used for the rapid, sensitive and low-cost diagnosis of many diseases, including HIV.
René Doyon believes his team could be the first to discover alien life.
Repeating in one's head without gesturing is the least effective way to recall information.
Professor Lehoux believes it is possible to invest in health technologies that are socially relevant.
Electrochemical test's sensing principle may be generalized to many different targets, leading to inexpensive devices that could detect dozens of disease markers in less than 5 minutes.
A giant step towards preventing prematurity, which is the world's leading cause of infant death.
An artificial intelligence programme to improve Tinder suggestions has been developed by Harm de Vries, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Montreal who was sick of swiping left.
Researchers find that the brain cells most at risk in the disease consume unusually high amounts of energy, gradually exhausting and killing themselves.
51 Eridani b is the first exoplanet discovered by the Gemini Planet Imager. It is a million times fainter than its star. | <urn:uuid:5a96dddf-033b-412f-ae91-d0d9b88a0d1f> | {
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How to Stay Safe as a Pedestrian
In 2019, there were 6,205 pedestrian fatalities and countless pedestrian accidents and injuries. Pedestrian safety is everyone’s responsibility, but drivers are not always as careful as they should be. That’s why you, as a pedestrian, should take some steps to keep yourself safe from cars and negligent drivers.
We’ve outlined the most important ones below:
Step 1: Pay Attention
Although it is easier to move your body than operate a motor vehicle, you should use the same amount of focus anytime you are on or near the roadway. Stay alert and pay attention to what you are doing. Avoid distractions from electronic devices and keep your eyes and ears on the road. Don’t text while you’re crossing the street and leave your headphones at home, so you can hear surrounding traffic.
Always keep an eye out for cars, especially when you are crossing the street.
Step 2: Cross Safely
Cross the street in crosswalks whenever possible and obey all signs and signals. If there are no crosswalks nearby, cross at an intersection, and if there are no intersections, choose a well-lit area with a good view of traffic.
Look for cars in both directions and always wait for a gap in traffic that allows enough time to cross safely. Keep an eye on traffic as you cross and be mindful of drivers turning left or right.
Step 3: Be Predictable
Part of the reason you should always cross at crosswalks and intersections when they are available is that drivers expect pedestrians at those locations. Similarly, drivers expect pedestrians to obey traffic signs and signals, like the red hand that indicates you should wait and the green hand that indicates you should go. If sidewalks are available, drivers will not expect to see a pedestrian walking on the street.
Use sidewalks whenever you can and if there is no sidewalk, walk facing traffic and as far away from moving vehicles as possible.
Step 4: Be Seen
Never assume a driver can see you. When crossing, make eye contact with approaching drivers to make sure they are aware of you. You can also make sure you are visible by wearing bright clothing during the day and reflective clothing at night.
When you walk at night, carry a flashlight, as drivers may see the light before they see you!
Step 5: Be Sensible
Common sense is key when it comes to staying safe as a pedestrian. Watch for cars in driveways and parking lots and be careful whenever you are around motor vehicles.
Avoid alcohol and other substances that impair your abilities and judgment.
Remember that pedestrians often suffer the most in car-pedestrian accidents. Even if you have the right of way, wait until it is safe to cross the road and be aware that not everyone will follow the rules of the road.
While cars protect their drivers, you will take the brunt of any collision that occurs – and you could be left with serious or life-threatening injuries.
Bonus: Know Who to Call
Unfortunately, you cannot avoid every accident. If a drunk driver decides to drive on the sidewalk or a distracted driver speeds through a red light, you could be hit by a car.
If you get hurt:
- Call 911 and accept all recommended medical treatment
- Go to the doctor immediately after the accident (even if you feel fine)
- Gather evidence if you can
- Call an attorney for help with medical bills, missed wages, and other accident-related losses
Our team at Foley Griffin, LLP is here to help you move forward after pedestrian accidents. If you have legal questions or other concerns, please call us at (888) 966-8480 or contact us online for a free, confidential consultation. | <urn:uuid:ef6039e0-1181-4e15-9928-8e5532ad8a84> | {
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Ethnology of Manihiki and Rakahanga
Plate 1. Houses and Implements
Plate 1. Houses and Implements.
A. Old-type house with side supporting posts and crossbeams, low eaves, and open walls with coconut leaf screens let down on left; sole survival of type, on Rakahanga.
B. Houses of Rarotongan type on Rakahanga, with lauhala thatch: 1, house with end sloping out to form veranda, closed walls of horizontal pieces of wood; 2, house with vertical ends and open walls, used as assembly house.
C. Thatching implements: 1, roof sheet needle (tuiau) of ngangie wood (C. 2811) (fig. 10); 2, thatching needle of ngangie wood (C. 2810) (fig. 11).
D. Hand graters (tuai) of pearl shell, front surface with grating edge up: 1 short grater (C. 2788) (fig. 20, a); 2, grater (C. 2784) with serrated edge, length, 6.5 inches and greatest width, 1.4 inches; 3, grater (C. 2783) with serrated edge, length, 7.1 inches and greatest width, 1.2 inches; 4, grater (C. 2785) with part of shell hinge included in grip end, length, 8.1 inches and greatest width, 1.6 inches.
E. Wooden food pounder (reru) with knobbed handle (C. 3020) (fig. 21). | <urn:uuid:cb81c710-715a-416b-87db-66369bfc4d3f> | {
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African Americans, Hispanics face greater risk of heart failure
DALLAS, February 18, 2016 – More than 915,000 Americans will be diagnosed with heart failure this year, according to the recently published American Heart Association 2016 Statistical Update.
Heart failure, a chronic, progressive condition in which the heart can’t pump blood efficiently to meet the body’s needs, is one of the most common heart diseases in the United States. In the next 15 years, the number of people living with the condition is expected to increase substantially – from 5.7 million to nearly 8 million by 2030 – and treatment costs will nearly double.
The statistics for minorities are even more startling. Studies show heart failure disproportionately affects African Americans, with incidences roughly double that of whites. This population is also at greater risk of developing the condition at younger ages and dying from it.
Hispanics have the second-highest risk of developing heart failure and are more likely to be younger, have diabetes or high blood pressure and be overweight/obese. Studies also show Hispanics with heart failure have higher rates of hospitalizations and readmissions for heart failure.
Numerous studies point to higher rates of modifiable risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity as the reason these groups are more likely to have heart failure.
Education is crucial because people of all races aren’t aware of heart failure symptoms or risk factors. And those who suffer from the condition, may not realize they have it.
“These statistics highlight the need for all Americans to get an annual checkup, and especially for minority populations—who are at higher risk—to start in early adulthood to check blood pressure,” said Mariell Jessup, M.D., a former president of the American Heart Association and a cardiologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “Heart failure is preventable and treatable. Data shows that if we can control blood pressure, we may prevent heart failure. This specifically has the potential to reduce the incidence of heart failure in minority populations.”
Jessup’s advice resonates with twins Kimberly Ketter and Shaun Rivers, of Richmond, Va.
The sisters, both nurses and African American, ignored early warning signs and got their heart failure diagnoses one week apart at the age of 40 in 2009. The diagnosis was particularly surprising, because they did not have the typical risk factors. While their heart failure stemmed from a genetic condition, they now understand the importance of tuning into the body’s warning signals, living a healthy lifestyle and seeing a doctor regularly.
They join a newly established team of American Heart Association Heart Failure Patient Ambassadors through the Rise Above Heart Failure initiative. The group works to increase awareness and understanding of heart failure, sharing personal experiences and helpful resources.
Additionally, Kim and Shaun share their story in hopes of saving the lives of fellow parishioners at The Saint Paul’s Baptist Church, leading the American Heart Association’s EmPowered To Serve ™ initiative they’ve established there. EmPowered To Serve is a national strategic initiative partnering with faith-based and other organizations serving minority populations to improve health outcomes in underserved communities
“It all boils down to access to care and education,” said Rivers, Advanced Diabetes Clinical Nurse Specialist. “We need to go out and educate in schools and churches — where the people are. It’s going to take a whole lot of effort from a whole lot of people to create change on a larger scale.”
Another simple piece of advice they offer: Don’t ignore signals from your body — or from your lineage.
“Many people don’t talk about their health concerns, but knowing your family history is key,” said Ketter, a nurse practitioner. “I tell people to do a family tree. You could be genetically predisposed to high blood pressure, diabetes or heart disease. Education is a huge first step. If people know they are at risk, they can start tackling the problem early.”
The American Heart Association launched the Rise Above Heart Failure initiative last year to increase the dialogue about the condition, empower patients to take a more active role in their care, and encourage small changes that can lead to healthier lifestyles and better disease management to help keep patients out of the hospital. Rise Above Heart Failure is nationally supported by Novartis Pharmaceutical Corp.
The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association receives funding mostly from individuals. Foundations and corporations donate as well, and fund specific programs and events. Strict policies are enforced to prevent these relationships from influencing the association’s science content. Financial information for the American Heart Association, including a list of contributions from pharmaceutical companies and device manufacturers, is available at www.heart.org/corporatefunding.
For Media Inquiries: (214) 706-1173
Staff contacts: Cathy Lewis (214) 706-1324; [email protected]
For Public Inquiries: (800)-AHA-USA1 (242-8721) | <urn:uuid:c7bf08c9-32f0-4976-96d4-1d86c7930ef9> | {
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Imagine the scene; you and your group are floating along the saddle between Shark and Yolanda Reef, all of a sudden all hell breaks loose as Kamikaze Dive Club (KDC) enters the water. Divers descend, sand swirls, corals are crushed and fish flee!
Resisting the temptation to turn off their air, you swim for a clearing and spend the rest of your day cursing the staff and divers of KDC.
In Sharm there are strict guidelines regarding the conduct of dive operators and their staff, and fines or penalties may be enforced on those who fail to adhere to these. In the current digital age there is normally somebody in the group with a camera, a simple snap of the offence which will identify the company provides excellent evidence. Once they have a photograph the authorities are able to take concrete action.
Reefs are globally in decline and to date it is estimated 27% have already been lost with a further 32% expected over the next 30 years. They represent on of the most vital parts of the underwater eco-system and yet are one of the most threatened.
Take the PADI Project Aware Coral Reef Conservation Course (open to all ages and non-divers) and discover how amazing coral truly is.
On the 29th of April Red Sea College held a fundraising 70’s disco on the beach to raise money for Project Aware. Pictures and feedback to be followed. | <urn:uuid:8302e06a-3f7f-46b1-82e0-c75488b3c713> | {
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The war events of the first world conflict with the related development needs of the Italian aviation led the Turin Military Technical Directorate to ask the Municipality of Fano the availability of an area suitable for the establishment of a “landing ground for planes “of the size of 400 x 120 meters. To this end, an area called Madonna del Ponte was identified, which in a few months was adapted to the required demands. So in the last months of 1917, the city of Fano was equipped with the first airport infrastructure, even if it was a field of fortune, practically a small field at the edge of the city, unlocked by obstacles and equipped with special signals to allow landing of aircraft. Being completely devoid of infrastructures such as aviorimesse or other services that characterize an airport, the prevailing use of the aviation field was probably related to the needs of aircraft traveling to the Austrian front. But the aviation expansion of that period had to proceed very quickly since already in 1919 it began to talk about the expansion of the landing field. This impetus intensified considerably during the fascist period of twenty years, when internal politics considered the strengthening of military structures as crucial. This climate was exploited by the imperial Raffaello Riccardi, Undersecretary of the Air Force (Minister Italo Balbo), wanted directly by Mussolini. At the end of long negotiations between the Commune of Fano and the Air Force, the Ministerial Decree was issued in the Official Gazette of January 29, 1930 for the establishment of the “Campo di fortuna di Fano in the province of Pesaro”. | <urn:uuid:53093019-7570-4d17-97d2-256325548968> | {
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–> A biography holds with-it the requirements of any good account. There might be dilemma love, hate, and voyage. All of the factors essential to inform a powerful narrative can be found in peoples lives as well as the functions that occur around them. However, your paper wont earn you the very best grade in case you basically express the reality. If youre striving to publish a fascinating and informative resource, listed here are five suggestions to help write a solid document. 1. Choose a fascinating topic.
Clarify the specific situation and take it to be addressed by actions.
If youre writing a resource for school, you most likely have the option of picking your matter. Is the topic somebody who the audience may realize, for example an actor, politician, or additional public amount, or somebody closer to home, just like a relative or buddy? In the event the reader doesnt realize the individual, ask yourself if you have something compelling concerning the subjects life that’s of distinct interest as possible grow upon. Or even, choose someone else since the topic to your paper. 2. Meeting or study your matter. See if you can access interview them, if you choose a person who is living and friendly. However, if your matter is not offered to for interview or speechpublic.com is lifeless, you will need to get the info that is necessary by performing investigation.
Zainab: (thinking) today i am guaranteed to be the main one earning the prize.
Collect the basic facts, including date and host to beginning, training, household, successes, and location and time of demise, if appropriate. Furthermore, check out any major events that took place in the subject’s time and use them to draw the smoothness of your matter out. Search for any affect that is possible your matter had on community and any historic importance. Be sure that whenever additional materials are referenced by you in a biography for college, the citation style that is correct is used by you. 3. Start your resource within an exciting approach. Specifics independently tend to be not wet and dull. Just because youre publishing a resource for university doesnt imply you ought to just express the facts. Alternatively, incorporate them or put them in intriguing tactics that are other.
It’s a time of lovely statements.
Most people connect on an emotional level above all with a resource. Recall, your starting is what captures the readers focus and sets the tone for your report. You could possibly elect to add a little known fact or a exciting function at the start. Be sure it’s appropriate and that it brings in to the body of one’s biography, if you do. 4. Choose the right tone. Before beginning to publish, think about your subjects lifestyle.
Have the capacity to keep restrictions.
Could it be a tale of catastrophe or triumph? Was your subjects living inspiring or gritty and black? You wish to generate a picture within your readers head that matches the existing feeling of these lifestyle. Use a tone that fits this appropriately. 5. Break up the components of your subjects life. Break up your subjects life-story into three or four components or time periods. Once youve completed this, you’ll find what can include additional fascinating sub-plots in the account.
People will want to understand while in the simplest terms possible, what you’re doing.
Choose a specified arc while in the account. You could possibly pick just an area of the subjects lifestyle if that is a defining second inside their development. For instance, your subject was an expert athlete or was involved during a warfare in a risky goal in case, you might want to write pretty much the period within their life. If you check with works by different creators within your resource, its essential that you report them precisely so that your viewer may verify the referrals. The citation type will be different based on the publishing format given to you by your faculty professor, another or whether APA. Your cited sources will incorporate the narrative and significance and standing. You can use format application for accuracy, if you’re uncertain of the proper structure on your citation design. REGARDING THE AUTHOR Mark Plaut will be the founding father of Research Point Software (RPS).
The atmosphere from the fan helps a number of the surplus water to escape.eliminate.
RPS offers a full package of easyto-use arrangement theme products offering APA and MLA style templates, freeing up time to concentrate on element while ensuring style precision. For more information, firewood onto or publish to: Reference Point Software isn’t associated with, supported by, or linked with the American Psychological Association (APA) or with the Modern Language Relationship (MLA). | <urn:uuid:a65f3645-c3e9-4768-b9d6-8d3033479b91> | {
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Bibb County GEMS-U team conducting interviews: Gracie, Ahyunna, Maci, Lydia, and Amy.
Bibb County School District
Brent Elementary School and Centreville Middle School
This podcast consists of four meteorologists describing Doppler radar. The first is Ms. Jessica Talley and Ms. Kristina Sumrall from the National Weather Service in Calera, AL. She describes how Doppler works. The second is Ms. Stephanie Walker of Alabama's13 (NBC). She is a broadcast meteorologists and tells how she uses Doppler to inform the public about upcoming weather. Finally, James Spann from ABC3340 tells about tornadoes and how they look on Doppler radar.
Aligned to the following ALEX lesson plan:
Doppler is Warning You!
Content Areas: Math, Science, Career and Technical Education
Alabama Course of Study Alignments and/or Professional Development Standard Alignments:
[TC2] (3-5) 10: Use digital environments to collaborate and communicate.
2. Communication and Collaboration
Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students:
a. interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media.
b. communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats.
c. develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures.
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Roses are one of the most beloved of all flowering plants in our landscapes. Unfortunately, they are also one of the most pest-prone. Earlier this year a sample arrived in the Bug of the Week mailbox. The sample consisted of a badly swollen stem of a sturdy hybrid of Rosa rugosa. Accompanying the sample was a note describing an unfortunate bed of hybrid roses with splitting canes, lodging stems, and untimely death of plants.
Deformities such as swelling and cracking on stems and branches of woody plants usually indicate the presence of some unseen evil attacking the delicate meristematic tissue lying just beneath the bark. A few deft cuts with a scalpel revealed a gorgeous but dastardly larva of a flatheaded borer tunneling within the pithy center of the stem. Flatheaded borers are larvae of a remarkable group of beetles known as buprestids or metallic wood boring beetles, so named for their luminous, metallic exoskeletons. While the adults levy no particular offense other than to nibble a few leaves, their youngsters are real trouble makers and some of the most devastating pests of woody plants. We visited another deadly metallic wood boring beetle, the emerald ash borer, in a previous episode of Bug of the Week.
Last spring adult rose stem girdlers emerged from the bark of infested rose stems, mated, dined on leaves, and deposited eggs on the bark of small rose stems. Eggs hatched and tiny larvae, called flatheaded borers, entered the tree and fed on nutritious plant tissues creating spiraling galleries just beneath the bark. In response to this assault, the stem of the rose swelled in an apparent attempt to defeat the attacking borer.
As larvae feed and grow, accumulating damage weakens the stem making it susceptible to bending or breaking. Disruption of the normal movement of nutrients up and down the stem may cause the cane to die above the telltale swelling that marks the site of the beetle’s attack. With the return of warm weather in a few months, borers will complete their development, pupate in chambers in the stem, and emerge as adults to repeat this circle of life. The rose stem borer probably arrived in our country from Holland back in the day when Warren Harding was our president. This scoundrel is now found in many states in the eastern US and also in Utah where it is a major pest of raspberries. What should you do if you discover the nefarious borer in your favorite roses? Do not despair. Winter is an excellent time to deal with this villain. Simply grab your pruners, cut the damaged stem a few inches beneath the swelling, and destroy the cutting along with the borer in a safe and environmentally acceptable way, no thermonuclear devices please.
Bug of the Week thanks Roger for providing specimens and inspiration for this episode. The awesome “Guide to Insect Borers in North American Broadleaf Trees and Shrubs” by J.D. Solomon was used as a reference for this episode. To learn a bit more about this insect, please visit the following web site. | <urn:uuid:0ea01fda-005e-4f19-8c30-ec9020e1b519> | {
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The Demand of Early Education is
at an All-Time High
Through recent studies, it has become clear that the expectation placed on our educational system and children has dramatically increased. This increased focus on academics has led The New York Times to turn to early education and child development researchers to find out the cause. Through studies, they have discovered that it is less about the academic content and more about the approach.
“Research suggests that preschool-age kids also learn more new words when their learning is play-based and self-directed rather than teacher-taught.”
Read Melinda Wenner Moyer’s full article to understand the concerns associated with the approach, stress and rigidity around early education and how child-led learning can solve it:
On a recent trip to the eye doctor, my 4-year-old stumbled over some letters on her vision test. She didn’t falter because she couldn’t see the letters; it was because she couldn’t name them. I didn’t think it was a big deal, but my optometrist was concerned. She really needed to know her letters by the time she entered kindergarten in the fall, he said. Otherwise she would inevitably struggle in school.
It didn’t used to be this way. In a 2016 study, researchers from the University of Virginia analyzed kindergarten classrooms and teacher expectations in public schools in the United States from 1998 and compared them to those in 2010. While only 29 percent of the 2,500 teachers surveyed in 1998 thought parents needed to ensure their kids knew the alphabet before kindergarten, 62 percent of the 2,700 surveyed in 2010 thought so.
The school routines of kindergarteners have changed too: Over the 12 years covered in the study, kindergarteners began spending less time on music, art, dance and theater, and more time doing worksheets. Time doing child-led activities — such as reading, playing with Legos, or doing arts and crafts — dropped, while teacher-directed instruction rose. The findings paint a clear picture: Kindergarten involves a lot more academic instruction than it used to, and teacher expectations have grown.
Older elementary grades seem to be following the same trend. In 2006, about 79 percent of elementary school districts in the United States provided regularly scheduled recess, whereas in 2016, about 65 percent did, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study. Also, surveys of more than 400 elementary school teachers compiled by the University of Phoenix showed that in 2013, only 2 percent of those teachers assigned more than 10 hours of homework per week to kindergarten through fifth graders, while 8 percent did in 2015.
Why are these changes happening, and are they ultimately good or bad? I reached out to a handful of early education and child development researchers to find out.
How we got here
To understand why early childhood education has changed so much, I had to go back to a 1983 report called “A Nation at Risk.” Written by President Ronald Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education, the report argued that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people.” It demanded that more resources be allocated to public education and that states adopt more rigorous educational standards.
Then, in 2002, President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act, which held public schools more accountable for their performance and began requiring more standardized testing for elementary school and middle school students as a way to measure their success. Schools that did not meet test targets could lose funding or even get shut down, so school administrators began to prioritize test scores over almost everything else. The best way to boost test scores, they thought, was to change the way students were taught — to have teachers use more direct, rote instruction to drill students on topics covered in tests. To make room for test prep, they reduced time spent on child-led, curiosity-driven lessons.
“It made the whole atmosphere of education become over-focused on learning certain facts and skills at certain ages,” said Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Ed. D., a professor emerita and teacher educator at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass. Continuing this trend, in 2009, President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, which allocated money to create the Race to the Top Fund, a competitive grant program for states that encouraged and rewarded them for, among other things, high student test scores.
Effects on learning
An increased focus on academics in and of itself isn’t a problem, according to Daphna Bassok, Ph.D., a University of Virginia psychologist and a co-author of the 2016 study analyzing how kindergarten has changed. Kids are often deeply interested in math, history, literacy and science “because those topics are about engaging with the world around them, figuring out new things, and making exciting discoveries,” Dr. Bassok explained.
“When children learn academic content in a way that’s fun and playful and engaging, and meets them where they are, it can be very empowering.”
The problem, she said, arises when these lessons are given in a way that is not developmentally appropriate — when young kids are required to sit still for long periods of time, for instance, or do piles of worksheets. “It’s not so much about the academic content itself but about the approach, and stress, and rigidity that sometimes comes with it,” she said, which can lead young kids to feel frustrated or disengaged.
Making matters worse, direct, teacher-led instruction may ultimately teach kids less. “If you say what you want is for kids to do better on tests, then you have to ask: What gets you better scores on the tests?” said Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., a psychologist at Temple University who studies how children learn. “It turns out the answer is not just teaching to the test,” she said, because when teachers rely on rote instruction, kids are less likely to retain the information.
In a study of 70 4- and 5-year-olds that Dr. Hirsh-Pasek co-published in 2013, she and her colleagues found that kids learned more about the features of geometric shapes when they played with the shapes compared with when teachers lectured to them. The kids who played with the shapes were also more likely to remember the details a week later. And research suggests that preschool-age kids also learn more new words when their learning is play-based and self-directed rather than teacher-taught.
When it comes to the benefits of elementary school homework, findings aren’t promising either. In the most thorough review of the research on the issue to date, published in 2006, researchers at Duke University concluded that the amount of homework done by kindergarten through sixth-grade students had no bearing on their grades or their standardized test scores.
The increased focus on academic instruction also doesn’t seem to be boosting overall educational performance in the United States. Although No Child Left Behind led to some educational gains, particularly in math among disadvantaged students, an August 2016 bipartisan report by the National Conference of State Legislatures concluded that during the decade after the act went into effect, “the United States was outperformed not only by a majority of the advanced industrial nations, but by a growing number of less-developed nations as well.”
Effects on mental health
One important question is whether growing school pressures are worsening anxiety and depression among American children. According to a 2019 study published in the Journal of Pediatrics, about 7 percent of kids between ages 3 and 17 suffer from anxiety, while about 3 percent are depressed. This prevalence is twice as high as those found in earlier studies, which suggests that anxiety and depression are increasing among kids. Other factors, such as increasing use of technology, social media and cyberbullying, undoubtedly contribute, but school pressures may be playing a role as well. Homework can also be a source of stress for kids from low-income families, who may not have computers at home, parents who can help or quiet places to work, Carlsson-Paige said.
This shift in school expectations may also be pathologizing normal child behavior. Preschool and elementary school kids who are naturally wiggly and not quite ready to sit still at school may be chastised and labeled as having behavioral problems, even if they’re actually acting appropriately for their age, Dr. Bassok said. In a 2011 study, researchers reported that children up to age 17 in states with higher school accountability pressures were more likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and prescribed stimulants than were students in states with less school accountability pressures.
But the push for more academic instruction may be easing in some districts. In recent years, some schools have decided to ban homework in early elementary grades, for instance, and recess time has increased in certain schools. “In some communities, the trend toward more structure and academic focus seems to be intensifying, but there are also schools and districts that appear to be moving in the other direction,” Dr. Bassok said.
Dr. Hirsh-Pasek also noted that early education researchers are now largely in agreement about the benefits of child-led learning over rote instruction. “You can have really good academic and social skill content, and build strong relationships, while at the same time doing it in a playful context,” she said. “And I think everybody’s come around to that.” It’s just a matter of waiting for the science to trickle down into the classrooms.
Want a Step-by-Step Easy Path to Learn to Read?
See Words: School lays out the fundamental steps in 14 engaging lessons using proven multi-sensory methods and phonics. Download the suite of apps from the Apple App Store now. | <urn:uuid:3e679077-5207-4e63-9fff-2de1502c3897> | {
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Last year, as Harlem Village Academies prepared to open new elementary schools , our principals visited dozens of kindergarten classrooms. The upper-income schools focused mostly on active play, interesting discussions and crafts, including papier-mache projects that delighted children for hours. In the lower-income schools we saw regimented academics, reward-and-punishment behavior systems and top-down instruction. In one South Bronx classroom, the only time children spoke during the course of three hours was to repeat drills of the sounds of letters over and over.
Why the disparity? Many educators are placing the blame squarely on the Common Core — national learning standards recently adopted by 45 states and the District and supported by the Obama administration — and asserting that they lead to poor-quality teaching and take all the joy out of kindergarten.
One Brooklyn teacher who attempted to teach the Common Core told the New York Post that her kindergartners broke down in tears, anxious and frustrated. Early-childhood development experts such as Nancy Carlsson-Paige argue that the standards will lead to an increase in rote learning and a decrease in active play and exploration. If so, we should heed her warning.
The question, however, is whether the new standards should be blamed for poor quality instruction. It’s an important question, as the Common Core will be the reason for spending billions of dollars for new textbooks, state tests, teacher evaluation systems and more.
The standards were designed to elevate the quality of instruction in our country: to teach students to think independently, grapple with difficult texts, solve problems and explain their thinking in a clear and compelling way. This is a noble vision. But its attainment depends entirely on the execution. In fact, the authors of the Common Core write, “the standards define what all students are expected to know and be able to do, not how teachers should teach.”
Take vocabulary, for example. The Common Core standards state that kindergarten students should be able to “distinguish shades of meaning among verbs that describe some general action (e.g., walk, march, strut, prance) by acting out the meanings.” Imagine a classroom full of 5-year-olds marching, strutting, walking and prancing for 10 minutes to different kinds of music while laughing and learning vocabulary. Imagine, further, that this activity is organically integrated into a meaningful project or a theme-based unit that lights up the child’s love of learning. So while some schools might choose to teach vocabulary in a rote, boring way, clearly the standards are not to blame.
As Zoltan Sarda, an elementary school teacher with 22 years of experience, said to me last month, “The textbook companies are trying to box the big ideas of the Common Core into little disjoined pieces. But just because they are written in a linear way, that doesn’t mean you have to teach in a linear way.” Sarda, who now guides teachers at High Tech High in San Diego, once had his kindergartners build a life-size paper model of how humans would need to be designed in order to fly. This project taught them gravity, anatomy, speed, addition and subtraction, and measurement — all included in the standards — and the children loved it.
When I told one of our kindergarten teachers that there was a growing concern that the standards were ruining kindergarten, she laughed: “I didn’t know standards had that much power!”
So the standards are neither the problem nor the solution. The issue is how to use the standards to teach well. How do we do this at Harlem Village Academies?
First, we hire the smartest people out there and, when necessary, let go those who are not up to par. This is more important than ever, because the Common Core is immensely challenging and requires teachers to make intelligent, nuanced decisions about instruction during every lesson, every day. The only way to teach at this level is for every school to empower its principal to select, nurture and develop an outstanding faculty and then to hold the principal accountable for results.
In our schools, we prioritize teacher development over curriculum development. You do not make teachers better by handing them a packaged curriculum and sending them to a few days of training. Instead, teachers need time to analyze the standards, practice different teaching strategies, learn from mentors, collaborate with colleagues, observe one another, look at student work together, reflect on why certain approaches work better than others, learn from mistakes and continually improve. None of this is fast or easy. But it is how teachers become great.
Above all, we share a vision of engaging, sophisticated education. When a friend visited recently, she saw 27 children dancing in one kindergarten classroom. In another, she saw children singing a song about numbers. And in a third, the children were spread out in different parts of the room — some sprawled on the floor reading, some coloring and others playing with blocks. During our reading and writing period, each child chooses which learning activities to pursue that day. “This looks just like my son’s kindergarten,” she said. “But I pay $37,000 a year!”
Our classrooms are less structured and less orderly, sometimes even a bit chaotic. That’s how kindergarten should feel. Play is not a break from learning or a way to fill time for the little ones: play, imagination and discovery are how kindergartners learn.
Those of us who spend our years fighting for social justice should be as passionate about pedagogy as we are about politics. And that starts with equal access to a quality kindergarten education. | <urn:uuid:b1b60049-0947-4b8b-86e6-a6ef72dabdcb> | {
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Using an Author's Clever Strategies in One's Own Writing
Students will examine specific clever strategies of the author and incorporate them in their own writings.
About the Story
Each of this story's three sections focuses on a different lesson the author learned from serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco. Morocco's population is almost 99 percent Muslim. Religion permeates every aspect of the culture. In exploring some of the cultural features that shape the people of Morocco, Storti focuses on experiences that made him aware of how people of a different cultural background can view the world in fundamentally different ways. He describes his growing realization that his own perspectives and tastes, which he had always taken for granted as being fairly universal, don't necessarily prevail in another culture.
Students will find more meaning in this story if they understand the importance of prayer in Muslim culture—and that central to Islam is the importance of the submission of one's will to the will of Allah. In submitting to the will of Allah, a Muslim expects to find peace. Moroccans and other Muslims commonly end statements with the term inshallah, meaning "God willing," because, for them, Allah controls their destiny.
Muslims pray five times a day. Prayers are said at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and nightfall. Muslims are called to prayer by a muezzin, or crier, who chants from the tower of a mosque. The chant is often sung through a loudspeaker so that it can be heard throughout an entire town or a large part of a city. Although it is preferable to worship together in a mosque, a Muslim may pray almost anywhere, such as in a field, an office, a factory, or a university. Muslim children are taught to pray when they are 6 or 7, and are expected to pray by the time they are 10.
Wherever they are, Muslims face Mecca to pray. Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, is the birthplace of the prophet Mohammed and the holiest place on Earth to Muslims. Facing Mecca creates a sense of unity among Muslims by providing a spiritual and social focus.
About the Setting
Morocco, a monarchy on the northwest coast of Africa, has a population of some 30 million people, almost all of whom are Sunni Muslims of Arab, Berber, or mixed Arab-Berber ancestry. Arabic is the official language, though Berber is spoken in some areas, as well as French and Spanish. The chief cities all lie along the Atlantic or Mediterranean coasts: Rabat, the capital; Casablanca, to the south; and Tangiers, to the north.
Morocco is a land of contrasts—from the range of the High Atlas Mountains in the north, where the temperature may be extremely cold, to the Sahara in the south, where the temperature and humidity are characteristic of a hot desert.
The Peace Corps has been active in Morocco since shortly after the agency began. More than 4,000 Volunteers have served in the country since 1963—working and living in both large metropolitan cities and the smallest traditional communities. Author Craig Storti served in the coastal city of Safi, some 150 miles south of Casablanca.
Largely dependent upon tourism, Morocco also exports citrus fruits and has a sizable bauxite mining industry.
The current monarch, King Mohammed VI, is working hard to improve the quality of life in rural areas, raise the social and economic status of women, and relieve poverty.
To learn how to model the structure of one's own writing on the structure used by an effective author
- Minaret: [min-uh-RET] A tower that is part of a mosque, with a balcony used by a muezzin to call Muslims to prayer
- Mosque: [MAHSK] Muslim house of worship
- Prayer call: A signal to Muslims to pray, issued by a muezzin
- Cadence: A beat of sound; a rhythm
- Muezzin: [myoo-EHZ-in] A crier who calls Muslims to prayer
- Irrevocably: Unalterably; permanently; unable to be changed
- Staging: A three-day orientation session in the United States for new Peace Corps
- Eschew: [es-CHOO] To avoid
- Unrelentingly: Unyieldingly
- Auxiliary verb: A verb used to help form the tense or condition of another verb. For example: will do, have done, may happen
- Remind students that Storti's story comprises three mini-stories, loosely linked, each with its own point.
- Point out that as readers, students have a huge selection of things to choose from. So if a passage they pick up doesn't interest them right away, they can move on to something else. Therefore the lead—the first few words—of what they read is crucial to catching their attention. Writers use many different kinds of leads to capture attention. They may begin gently, soothingly. They may startle with an odd fact, an intriguing question, a disturbing detail, a clever expression, a funny quotation, or unexpected grammar. Ask students to look at Storti's lead. What is unusual about it? [Most obviously, it is only one word long. It has no stated verb. Everything else about it being September is simply understood. But there are no verbs in the second or third "sentences," either.] What is the effect of Storti's strategy? [Students might suggest that the author is painting a verbal picture, using words as mosaics.] Why does he do it? [It's punchy, direct, attention-grabbing.]
- In Storti's second "lesson," ask students to focus on the sentence: "And woke with the light." Where is the subject? [It's in the previous paragraph.] What is the effect of this foreshortened sentence? Why did Storti use it? Do students think that it works? If so, why?
- Ask students to look at the third lesson of Storti's, about the term inshallah. What is unusual about the lead: "The scene is a cafe in Tangiers. It is Saturday"? [Help students discover that the author has switched tenses. Whereas his first two lessons were written in the past tense, this one is suddenly in the present tense.] What is the effect of this strategy? [Does it make the scene more immediate? Does it startle or surprise the reader? Does it distinguish this lesson effectively from the other two? Could it relate to the fact that Storti learned this lesson only years after he learned the other two?]
- Have students revise their composition from the previous lesson, concentrating on their lead sentence or sentences. The job of the students' leads should be to ensure that readers stay with the passage. Encourage the students to emulate Storti's strategies in writing an arresting lead. When the students have completed their accounts, have them share their pieces in a class discussion, allowing them to critique each other's work constructively. Post the results on a bulletin board.
Frameworks & Standards
- Everyone has a culture. It shapes how we see the world, ourselves, and others.
- Living and serving in another culture can teach important life lessons—if one is open to learning.
- Living in another culture challenges us to understand the world from that culture's point of view.
- How do my cultural values and beliefs shape how I view individuals from other cultures?
- What can I gain from being open to learning from people who are different from me?
English Standards: 1, 6
Social Studies Standards: I, IV, IX
National Geography Standards: 6, 10
For more information on the standards in Uncommon Journeys, see the Appendix (pdf—160 KB, linked above). | <urn:uuid:5d73d80f-e572-4e58-b0dd-f59293fdedaf> | {
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What Can Medical Students Learn From Art History? The University of Virginia’s New Course Reveals How Art Shaped Our Understanding of Plagues
The course was put together after the abrupt shutdown of the University of Virginia.
An online course speedily organized for more than 300 medical school students who were abruptly sent home from the University of Virginia in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting the often overlooked connections between medical training and the arts.
Medical school professors Marcia and James Childress put together “Confronting Epidemics: Perspectives from History, Ethics, and the Arts” in a matter of days after the school’s sudden closure in mid-March.
“To provide context, under normal circumstances, medical students start checking in on patients at 5:30 or 6 a.m., stay in the hospital until between 4 and 6 p.m., and spend the rest of the evening studying for examinations,” says Lydia Prokosch, a third-year medical student who took the course. “It was jarring to go from a strenuous yet critical part of our education to having little to no structure.”
The course was designed to fill that crucial need, and to give burgeoning clinicians reeling from the immediate health impact of the coronavirus a broader perspective on the cultural history of plagues, from the 1918 Spanish Flu to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
In developing the course, the instructors worked with colleagues from across the university, including M. Jordan Love, a curator at the school’s Fralin Museum of Art who consulted on imagery to help students understand how societies have understood prior pandemics.
“Artists have responded to plagues in a variety of ways,” says Love, whose training is in medieval art history. “And they didn’t necessarily create imagery as a plague was happening, because they were too busy trying to survive.”
In the years after the bubonic plague of 1347–51, churches commissioned painters to create altarpieces depicting saints associated with healing. There were also poets such as Gilles Li Muisis, a Frenchman who chronicled the plague in an illustrated manuscript that included images of mass burials.
“When you look back on these images and compare them to those we see coming out of Brazil today, where we’ve seen stacks of coffins, it connects us to the people of the past in a profound way,” Love says.
Humanities courses are a longstanding part of the curriculum for University of Virginia medical students. “Early on, the interest was in keeping doctors well-rounded so they could converse with patients about something more than an antibiotic dose,” says Marcia Childress, a scholar of English literature who has been at the university since the 1980s. “But it has become clearer since that we can use the arts to teach and practice certain core clinical skills,” including observation, analysis, and the ability to tolerate ambiguity.
“Medical students are increasingly schooled to use certain algorithms when developing diagnoses and treatment plans,” she says. “But there are always clinical situations that are outside the perimeters of those algorithms, about which you need to be creative and imaginative about what you see.”
As part of the course, students were shown images of late-Renaissance-era plague doctors, who often wore beak-like masks as personal protective equipment (PPE), and were asked to draw or design their own PPE.
“We asked them, ‘what would make you feel safe?’” Childress says. “And some of the students were just as worried about having their own faces obscured, because they wanted to be able to communicate with their patients.” Some students even imagined decorating their PPE to present their individual personalities.
Childress stresses that the importance of empathy is a big part of courses such as these—and the point is not lost on her students.
“Practically speaking, empathy among medical students has been found to drop precipitously in the third year of medical education,” Prokosch says. “I wonder if small opportunities to pause, reflect, and make something new would help to ignite some of the compassion that drove us to choose the medical profession in the first place.”
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Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. | <urn:uuid:b6c50001-8e96-4b81-a40c-bbc372dcb36f> | {
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On this day in 1789, George Washington attended a ball in his honor, a week after being sworn in as the first U.S. president.
Another decade passed before the practice was revived, with the inaugural of James Madison, the fourth president. Madison’s vivacious wife, Dolley, threw a gala for 400 people at Long’s Hotel in Washington. Tickets cost $4.
Story Continued Below
Since then, inaugural balls have become more or less a quadrennial presidential fixture.
However, Woodrow Wilson, in 1913, and Warren Harding, in 1921, both passed up balls, citing the need to economize.
Franklin Pierce canceled his in 1853 because of the recent death of his son.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was another exception, choosing to work through the night rather than attend his first inaugural ball in 1933. He canceled the next three galas because of the Depression and World War II.
At the first ball, Washington danced with many ladies who were considered the cream of New York society. New York was the temporary site of the newly established federal government.
Eliza Hamilton, wife of Alexander Hamilton, the treasury secretary, recorded her impressions in her memoirs. She wrote that Washington liked to dance the minuet, a dance she thought was “suited to his dignity and gravity.”
The record number of inaugural balls attended in one night by a president is 15, set by President Bill Clinton in 1997.
George H.W. Bush ran a close second, making 11 stops in 1989.
Aside from informal events, 10 official balls were held for President Barack Obama’s Inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009. Ticket prices topped out at $5,000.
They were the only balls Obama and his wife, Michelle, attended that evening, putting him in third place. | <urn:uuid:314971b3-e60a-4fa2-bc2b-99f6bb48fd51> | {
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Jamaica Bay Advocates Finalize Deal
More than a year after the initial announcement, Jamaica Bay advocates scored a huge victory last week when they finalized a deal with the city to spend more than $100 million in upgrades for the wastewater treatment plant to limit nitrogen waste, restore marshlands and monitor water quality in Jamaica Bay.
The deal was first announced last March after the city and state negotiated with bay advocates that included the Jamaica Bay EcoWatchers, the American Littoral Society, NY/NJ Baykeeper and the National Resources Defense Counsel (NRDC). The groups argued that permit violations existed at the four city sewage treatment plants that discharge levels of nitrogen pollution into Jamaica Bay that kill marshland, pollute the water and affect wildlife.
The announcement, however, took more than a year to finalize, according to NY/NJ Baykeeper Executive Director Debbie Mans.
Mans says that even though the deal took a while to be finalized, all the terms of the original announcement have been preserved. Therefore, under the original $115 million agreement the New York City Department of Environmental Protection will upgrade the four sewage treatment plants surrounding the bay which will reduce nitrogen discharges through 2020. The changes will get enforcement help with stricter permit terms for the treatment plants. In addition, the agreement will dedicate at least $15 million towards marsh restoration over the next five years.
According to advocates, nitrogen discharges from the sewage treatment plants are the biggest contributor to water quality problems in Jamaica Bay. According to numbers provided by the NRDC, the plants discharge nearly 40,000 pounds of nitrogen into the bay daily. The results are algae blooms, unsustainable marine life and marshland deterioration. The marshlands have made a considerable comeback in the last decade thanks in part to work done by the EcoWatchers, among other advocates, as well as federal funding going towards restoration. The marshlands provide a natural habitat for wildlife but also serve as a flood barrier to the Rockaways and can help prevent shoreline erosion. | <urn:uuid:11e35baa-9a90-4e06-9532-db4a871014d9> | {
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UCSF virus hunter DeRisi wins Heinz award
Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Dr. Joseph DeRisi, a UCSF virus hunter who invented a remarkable DNA technology that can swiftly detect unknown disease-causing organisms, has won a prestigious $250,000 Heinz award.
The 38-year-old biochemistry professor's invention first gained attention in 2003 when it spotted the virus that causes the epidemic form of pneumonia called SARS. It has also pinpointed the virus that causes a type of lung disease, and a virus that causes a rare form of prostate cancer.
His laboratory has also used the invention to isolate a new virus associated with a fatal disease of endangered and exotic birds.
Along with the invention, the Heinz Family Foundation cited DeRisi's decision to make the details of his invention freely available to scientists around the world, through what is known as "open access publishing," instead of patenting his technology and starting a hot new start-up company, as many scientists have done.
DeRisi's invention is called a "ViroChip" - a glass wafer the size of a microscope slide that is dotted with up to 22,000 sequences of DNA from thousands of virus families. The gene-coated chip enables scientists to simultaneously screen the genes of many suspect viruses and detect the one involved in the disease whose unknown cause they are hunting.
The researcher has already won a $500,000 MacArthur "genius" grant to support his work, and is now on the hunt for a cure for malaria, the foundation's announcement said.
DeRisi's Heinz award is one of five the foundation makes each year for technology, the arts and humanities, the environment, the human condition and public policy. | <urn:uuid:d73acce9-54eb-4770-b6f1-1d04e3029781> | {
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Yale University researchers have weighed in with their opinions on how to change the eating patterns of Americans: impose a “fat tax” on certain foods.
The researchers charge that America is afflicted with an “out of control epidemic of obesity and other diseases related to diet, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.” They blame the “toxic food environment” which produces a “diet that is high in fat, high in calories, delicious, widely available and low in cost.”
Their proposed solution is to place a tax on foods high in fat and cholesterol and conversely subsidize the cost of fruits and vegetables.
In an interview with The Washington Times, Kelly Brownell, director of the study, said people cannot be held responsible for gaining weight because they are “being blitzed with messages to eat more.” He also said, “Junk-food advertisements should be regulated, and excise taxes imposed on high-fat foods, just as they are on tobacco and alcohol.”
The Yale study recommends that the money collected from the tax be used to fund nutritional education and public exercise programs.
Consumer Freedom reminds readers that the first time we reported on a proposal for a special tax for certain foods, it was suggested by a fringe animal “rights” activist group. Now the idea has worked its way up to one of the most prestigious universities in the country. | <urn:uuid:41bd1591-e2e0-4cfc-acbe-bbb21102f495> | {
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By David Pope
Why is choosing repertoire important? Repertoire selection is one of the most significant decisions made by ensemble directors. Thoughtfully selected repertoire can properly develop students’ technique from concert to concert, cultivate musicality, energize daily rehearsals, and motivate students to practice outside of class. My main objective as a director is to foster successful experiences for my students, and the first step in creating positive experiences is choosing repertoire that meets students’ musical needs, engages them in the music making process, and excites them about playing their instrument.
To meet these objectives, directors should strive to avoid common pitfalls when choosing music. Directors should get out of their own way, understand their students’ performance abilities, know the specific techniques required in each piece, and determine what motivates their students. Considering the four strategies below will help directors create positive learning experiences for their students.
1. Set Realistic Expectations
The most common complaint from festival adjudicators is that ensemble directors over program. Many directors choose concert repertoire with their hearts instead of their heads. Common examples of this include: programming specific repertoire because directors played it when they were in middle or high school, a longing desire to teach a masterwork, or blindly choosing music based on the way it sounds. Those decisions often lead to unrealistic expectations and result in directors becoming upset when their students do not rise to the challenge. Directors transfer their stress onto students during class, and that negatively impacts the rehearsal environment.
To avoid going down that road, pay closer attention when sight-reading new repertoire of music with your students. Did you stop more than four times because chaos reigned and the ensemble fell apart? Were the students in the back of the ensemble lost the entire time? If the answers to those questions are “yes,” consider selecting different repertoire that will lead to a greater level of student success. Yes, most students want to push themselves to learn hard music, but it can be demoralizing if they are barely keeping up. “Playing hard music” should not be the goal. Make creating positive and memorable musical moments the objective in your classroom.
2. Know Your Ensemble
Part of setting realistic expectations is accurately understanding your students’ playing abilities. Before selecting repertoire for each concert, determine where your students’ are in their musical development. Determine which concepts they perform proficiently and those that need additional practice to reach a satisfactory performance level. With that knowledge, directors can choose repertoire that nurtures their students’ musical development.
Another component of successful programming is knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your ensemble. Effective programming involves emphasizing the strong sections of your ensemble, limiting the exposure of inexperienced sections, and knowing how hard you can push your students for each concert sequence. Avoid featuring your inexperienced sections and chose repertoire that highlights the strengths of your ensemble. If I have strong celli and weak violins, maybe “Canon in D” is not the best option for my ensemble. While “Canon in D” is a wonderful work, it does not give the ensemble the best opportunity to succeed. Also consider the amount of rehearsal time for each concert sequence. If you have a limited number of rehearsals due to state testing and field trips, consider that when selecting repertoire.
3. Determine the Required Technique
Once you narrow down possible repertoire choices for your next concert, dissect each piece to determine what playing techniques are required. Establish what left hand (i.e. shifting, vibrato, various finger patterns, extensions), right hand (i.e. bow strokes, tone colors, stylistic playing, articulations), and music reading skills (i.e. note range, changing clefs, symbols, terminology) are necessary to produce a high level performance. That information, paired with in-depth knowledge of your students’ performance abilities, will help directors determine how many new concepts occur in the repertoire.
I use a basic math formula to determine the amount of new skills I want to introduce in new repertoire. I also consider what playing techniques I plan to refine. For beginning 6th grade students, creating proper set-up and playing position is my main goal. As a result, I skew heavily toward refinement (70%) over new skills (30%). I do not want to overwhelm my students with too many techniques at once. However, the ratio changes as students age because they have a solid set-up and better multi-tasking abilities: 7th grade (40% new skills and 60% refinement), 8th grade (45% new skills and 55% refinement), 9th grade (50% new skills and 50% refinement), 10th grade (55% new skills and 45% refinement), 11th grade (60% new skills and 40% refinement), and 12th grade (65% new skills and 35% refinement). To create positive experiences, it is important to set students up for success through detailed analysis and proper planning.
4. Connect to Every Student
Another step to successful programming is choosing repertoire your students want to perform. If you are like me, I am sure you have selected at least one piece of music your students did not like. If your ensemble population mirrors mine, you have a diverse group of students with an even wider array of musical preferences. Yes, it is essential to teach students about specific genres and important pieces of music, but what impact will that have if they continuously do not like our repertoire choices? Will it cause students to lose their desire to play in our ensembles?
Even though directors may prefer specific genres of music and think our students need to know specific works, consider programming works outside of your comfort zone to engage all students in your classroom. Find a variety of new pieces that engage all of your students. For example, The Emerald Falcon (Meyer) resembles energetic movie music, Aspire (Phillips) is soulful and lyrical, Gaelic Trilogy (arr. Palmer) leans on traditional Irish fiddle tunes, and Trans-Siberian Orchestra arrangements are orchestra rock music. As long as the repertoire meets your students’ technical and musical needs, choose works that match their personalities. Remember to choose repertoire that inspires your students to love music, and we can use a variety of genres to reach that objective.
David Pope is Director of Orchestras for the Elyria City Schools (OH). In addition, he teaches string pedagogy courses for VanderCook College of Music, conducts the Northern Ohio Youth Orchestra, and serves as a senior conductor and co-director of Florida State University’s String Orchestra Camp. As an active adjudicator and clinician, he has conducted numerous all-state orchestras, regional honor orchestras, and served as a guest clinician for various orchestra programs throughout the United States. Dr. Pope has presented string pedagogy clinics and his research at state, regional, national, and international conferences. Dr. Pope received the Distinguished Music Educator Award (2015) from the Yale Symposium for Music in Schools and was the recipient of the Outstanding Young Music Educator Award (2009) for the state of Tennessee. | <urn:uuid:276a1848-76b2-46a6-930f-6343e8d27fe4> | {
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Hamlet revenge essay hamlet essay ahed alsoufi ms buckley 12a revenge the theme of revenge is shown in both othello and hamlet through dialogue. “hamlet is the finest of all plays in the english revenge tradition” (shakespeare, iv) the recurring theme in william shakespeare’s play, hamlet, is revenge. Revenge themes in hamlet essays: over 180,000 revenge themes in hamlet essays, revenge themes in hamlet term papers, revenge themes in hamlet research paper, book. An essay on the theme of madness in hamlet themes of madness in hamlet later he makes a clear statement about his state when he commits himself to revenge. | <urn:uuid:1f42a772-5007-46a1-9785-252ed6defe45> | {
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Researchers Use Wastewater to Generate Electricity – While Filtering It Too
A lab in the United States has developed a system that filters wastewater while creating electricity.
Organic materials in wastewater are consumed by bacteria, which in turn produces biogas, which is the primary source of energy used to produce bioelectricity. Wastewater can already be converted to energy using bacteria, but it usually comes at the expense of the water, which could be filtered and otherwise repurposed for such purposes as irrigation and toilet flushing, if not for drinking.
Using an integrated filtration system and microbial electrochemical system, the lab combined the two processes of energy production and filtration. The system uses electrochemically active bacteria, instead of platinum, as a catalyst, similar to a typical microbial fuel cell. These systems attach bacteria to the electrode. A wastewater anode generates electricity by releasing electrons from the bacteria as they digest organic matter. Filtration of that same water, however, requires a different system.
To combine the systems, the lab developed a permeable anode that functions as a filter. Using conductive, carbon cloth, the anode acts as a dynamic membrane. The bacteria and membrane filter out 80% to 90% of organic matter, leaving the water clean enough to be released into nature or to be further treated for non-potable purposes.
But the primary goal of the system isn’t electricity production, it’s wastewater treatment and nutrient recovery.
Please keep this website running by donating today, thanks! | <urn:uuid:b12a6f20-693e-489f-8f2b-4015dd8fb618> | {
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LED Lighting for Art and Displays: Best Practices and Techniques
Learn about the various practices and techniques in which to utilize LED lighting for precise use in art galleries and museum displays.
Read more for tips on how to showcase artworks and exhibits while prioritizing energy efficiency and creating visually stunning, sustainable displays.
LED lighting has revolutionized the way art gallery and museum displays are illuminated, offering a wide range of benefits over traditional lighting sources. From enhanced color accuracy to energy efficiency, LED lighting has become the go-to choice for showcasing artworks and exhibits. In this article, we will examine the most useful practices and techniques for using LED lighting in art and displays, ensuring optimal visual impact while preserving the integrity and longevity of the piece.
Color Accuracy and Rendering
One of the most crucial aspects of lighting for art and museum displays is color accuracy and rendering. LED lights with high color rendering index (CRI) values ensure that the colors of the artwork are faithfully flaunted, allowing viewers to experience the piece as the artist intended. Selecting LED lights with a CRI of 80 or higher is recommended for optimal color accuracy and, additionally, it’s essential to consider the color temperature of the LEDs to create the desired ambiance and to bring out the details and tones in the artwork effectively.
Illumination Levels and Uniformity
Maintaining appropriate illumination levels is vital for preventing damage to artwork and enhancing visibility. Light intensity should be sufficient to allow viewers to appreciate the details without causing harm. It is recommended to consult with conservation experts to determine the appropriate light levels for specific exhibits as well as incorporate the use of dimming systems for pieces where light protection is paramount. Uniformity of lighting across the display area is also essential to avoid uneven lighting distribution and unwanted shadows. Proper positioning and spacing of LED lighting fixtures ensure consistent illumination throughout the display.
UV and IR Radiation Control
Artwork and painted media are especially vulnerable to damage from UV and IR radiation emitted by lighting sources. LED lighting provides an advantage in this regard, as they emit minimal UV and IR radiation compared to traditional lighting options. However, it is still essential to select LED strip lights or bulbs with built-in UV and IR filters to further minimize the potential for harm. The use of UV-filtering glazing on display cases or protective coatings on delicate artworks can also act as an extra layer of protection against harmful radiation.
Directional Lighting and Spotlights
Directional lighting and spotlights can play a crucial role in drawing attention to specific artworks or exhibit highlights. LED track lighting systems and adjustable spotlights using small LED bulbs allow curators to precisely direct light onto specific areas, emphasizing details and creating visual focal points. Care should be taken to position the lights at appropriate angles to minimize glare and reflections, ensuring a comfortable viewing experience for visitors.
Dimming and Control Systems
Implementing dimming and control systems for LED lighting provides flexibility and allows curators to create different lighting scenarios based on the specific requirements of the exhibit. Dimming capabilities enable adjustments in light intensity for different artworks, changing the atmosphere as needed. Utilizing advanced lighting control systems, such as DMX, provides centralized control over multiple lighting zones, facilitating synchronized lighting effects and efficient energy management.
Energy Efficiency and Sustainability
LED lighting is highly energy-efficient compared to traditional lighting options. By using LEDs, museums can significantly reduce energy consumption and operating costs while minimizing their carbon footprint. Additionally, the longevity of LED lights reduces maintenance requirements, minimizing disruption to exhibits with heavy foot traffic. Utilizing smart lighting solutions and occupancy sensors further enhances energy efficiency by automatically adjusting lighting levels based on occupancy or daylight availability.
Proper heat management is crucial when using LED lighting in close proximity to sensitive artwork. Excessive heat can damage delicate materials or cause discoloration over time. To mitigate this risk, select LED lighting with efficient heat dissipation mechanisms, such as heat sinks or thermal management systems. Ensuring proper ventilation and avoiding overcrowding of fixtures is also key in aiding in dissipating heat effectively, prolonging the lifespan of the LEDs, and more importantly, safeguarding the artwork.
LED lighting has become an indispensable tool for art and museum displays, providing superior color accuracy, energy efficiency, and versatility. By following best practices and techniques such as focusing on color accuracy, controlling UV and IR radiation, using directional lighting, implementing dimming and control systems, prioritizing energy efficiency, and managing heat effectively, curators and lighting professionals can create visually stunning and sustainable displays that enhance the beauty and longevity of artworks for generations to come. | <urn:uuid:e410da7c-9d81-4323-93d7-6efab78649f1> | {
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United States of America: Senate, 8 November 2016
At stake in this election:
- 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate
Note on the results: The above results reflect the seats won by each party in this election. The current composition of the Senate is 48 Democrats, 51 Republicans.
Description of government structure:
- Chief of State: President Barack H. OBAMA (since 20 January 2009)
- Head of Government: President Barack H. OBAMA (since 20 January 2009)
- Assembly: The United States has a bicameral Congress consisting of the Senate with 100 seats and the House of Representatives with 435 seats.
Description of electoral system:
- For the Senate, two members are directly elected in each of the 50 states by simple majority vote. Members serve 6-year terms with one-third membership renewed every 2 years.
Note: The states of Georgia and Louisiana are exceptions and require an absolute majority vote for election.
- Elections for the Senate were last held on 4 November 2014. In the 2014 elections, 33 seats were at stake following normal expiry of the term and 3 seats were at stake in special elections to fill vacancies for Hawaii, South Carolina, and Oklahoma. Following these elections, the Republican Party had 54 total seats, the Democratic Party had 44, and independents secured two seats.
Main parties in the election:
- Democratic Party
- Leader: Harry REID (Senate); Nancy Pelosi (House)
- Seats won in last election: 44
- Republican Party
- Leader: Mitch MCCONNELL (Senate); Paul Ryan (House)
- Seats won in last election: 54
Population and number of registered voters:
· Population: 323,995,528 (July 2016 est.)
· Registered Voters: 190,669,639 (2014)
· Female Population: 164,304,770 (July 2016 est.)
· Is the United States a signatory to CEDAW: Yes (17 July 1980)
· Has the United States ratified CEDAW: No
· Gender Quota: No
· Female candidates in this election: Yes
· Number of Female Parliamentarians: 84 (House of Representatives); 4 (Senate)
· Human Development Index Position: 8
· Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) Categorization: N/A
· Is the United States a signatory to CRPD: Yes (30 July 2009)
· Has the United States ratified CRPD: No
· Population with a disability: 48,599,329 (est.) | <urn:uuid:661c8298-f199-4d7e-b81c-36b0733376f2> | {
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Q. What can parents teach young children to help avoid an accidental death by drowning?
A. Drowning is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, and most children younger than 4 drown in backyard swimming pools, according to the Arizona-based U.S. Swim School Association. In addition to supervising children, teaching them to swim starting as young as 6 months and having pool fences or barriers around pools, the association adds these tips:
* Create a verbal cue for your toddler or child that must be given by you before he or she can enter the pool, so that he or she doesn't jump in before you're ready. Tell the child to wait for you to say a phrase such as, "Ready, 1, 2, 3. You can come in now," says Bobby Hazen, a co-owner of Saf-T-Swim, with 12 locations on Long Island.
* Create a process children must go through before entering a pool, such as putting on a swim diaper, a swimsuit and applying sunscreen. If your child doesn't know how to swim, make sure he or she is always wearing a U.S. Coast-Guard-approved life vest. This teaches them not to go near the water if they aren't prepared for it, Hazen says.
* Teach your children to open their eyes under water; if they fall in, they can find the side of the pool or a step and get out safely.
* Teach a child that an adult "water-watcher" must always be with him or her at the pool. The adult should be watching at all times, Hazen says -- not on a cellphone or a computer, not chatting with friends and certainly not drinking alcohol.
To find a local, USSSA-affiliated swim school, visit usswimschools.org. | <urn:uuid:167b2d0d-b7c8-46e2-8122-435530871138> | {
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Sleep Problems and Disorders
Getting good sleep is important for mental health. Unfortunately, there are many things that can interfere with sleep, like poor sleep hygiene, stress in our environment, or medical conditions such as sleep disorders. Everyone has problems sleeping from time to time. However, if problems like constant drowsiness or mood changes are common, sleep problems may be more serious and need attention. | <urn:uuid:9c0f7635-9c44-44e6-a211-976ab111c264> | {
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Effective protection: selecting a respirator
What is the relationship between OSHA permissible exposure limits/maximum use concentrations and assigned protection factors?
Responding is Bruce Schorer, consultant, OHD LLLP, Hoover, AL.
OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standard (1910.1200, Appendix D) requires that Safety Data Sheets list not only the relevant OSHA permissible exposure limits, but also the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists threshold limit values and any other exposure limits used or recommended by the chemical manufacturer, importer or employer preparing a hazardous materials SDS.
Historically, most of the PELs contained in the Z-Tables of 29 CFR 1910.1000 were adopted from existing federal standards for general industry. These, in turn, were adopted from the 1968 TLVs of ACGIH.
NIOSH offers a pocket guide that lists its recommended exposure levels as well as the OSHA PELs.
Additionally, some respirator manufacturers provide selection guides that list occupational exposure limits, including but not limited to the OSHA PELs, ACGIH TLVs, NIOSH RELs, etc. Think of these manufacturers as “the NIOSH Approval-Holders.”
To ensure effective respiratory protection, zero in on all current edition OELs knowing a PEL may or may not exist for a specific compound. This is essential to calculating the maximum use concentration and the appropriate level of protection for the wearer.
Definitions: OSHA 29 CFR 1910.134
“Assigned Protection Factor” is the workplace level of respiratory protection that a respirator or class of respirators is expected to provide to employees when the employer implements a continuing, effective respiratory protection program as specified by this section.
“Maximum Use Concentration” is the maximum atmospheric concentration of a hazardous substance from which an employee can be expected to be protected when wearing a respirator, and is determined by the APF of the respirator or class of respirators and the exposure limit of the hazardous substance.
The MUC usually can be determined mathematically by multiplying the APF specified for a respirator by the PEL, short-term exposure limit, ceiling limit, peak limit or any other exposure limit used for the hazardous substance. The MUC for respirators is calculated by multiplying the APF for the respirator by the PEL. The MUC is the upper limit at which the class of respirator is expected to provide protection. Whenever the exposures approach the MUC, the employer should select the next higher class of respirators (higher APF) for workers. Beware that some publications may refer to calculating the “hazard ratio” vs. MUC.
“Employers must not apply MUCs to conditions that are immediately dangerous to life or health (IDLH); instead, they must use respirators listed for IDLH conditions,” states OSHA Ref: 29 CFR 1910.134 – MUC.
Additionally, in today’s changing world, the same respirator face piece may be assigned to an individual for multiple uses, including but not limited to toxic industrial materials and/or for response to an IDLH environment and/or use in chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive applications.
Once a respirator has been selected with an adequate APF, the program manager of the respiratory protection program must ensure effective training is executed, as well as fit testing, in accordance with OSHA 29 CFR 1910.134. Follow-up training and fit testing must be scheduled as well to maintain user confidence and protection. Finally, do not hesitate to solicit support from OSHA, NIOSH and the manufacturers of respirators and fit-testing apparatus. These sources are willing to contribute their knowledge to your respirator program to make it a successful one.
Editor's note: This article represents the independent views of the author and should not be construed as a National Safety Council endorsement. | <urn:uuid:fffdcf4d-be49-499c-8d57-7a5f3201003c> | {
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Pangalay: Ancient dance heritage of Sulu
Modern-day Bongao, the capital of Tawi-Tawi province, has trappings of contemporary living: regular air transport, Internet access, cellular phones, television and various modes of sea and land transportation.
But some four decades ago when I arrived in the Sulu Archipelago, Tawi-Tawi still had no electricity and concrete roads. That’s why amid the flurry of modern living in Bongao at present, scenes from a bygone era haunt my memory: the call to prayer at daybreak from a distant mosque; the tantalizing cadence of “kulintangan” music that wafted unexpectedly anytime from somewhere; the engaging lilt of “lelleng” (extemporaneous ballad) sung passionately after sundown by a neighborhood boy with a captivating voice; the hypnotic sound of “lugo” (chant) earnestly intoned from afar; the lullaby hummed by a solicitous mother to pacify a baby in a makeshift cradle on a house boat or “lepa.”
Time was when the geographically isolated inhabitants of Sulu and Tawi-Tawi satisfy the acute need for a mode of dramatic expression and entertainment through dance. Dancing not only allows them to release kept energy, but also to assert their creativity in a community of strongly held traditions and customs.
The people in the Sulu Archipelago may have several names for the “pangalay” dance style which has a distinct movement vocabulary. The Badjaw use the generic term “igal” to name the dance which is “paunjalay” among the Yakan of Basilan province.
The dance may look quite simple at first glance but upon closer scrutiny, its intricacy becomes obvious. Even more apparent is the similarity of pangalay to other Southeast Asian modes of classical dancing: the Cambodian, Burmese, Thai, Javanese and Balinese. In Sanskrit or the holy language of much of India, pangalay means “temple of dance” or “temple dancing.”
Captivated by the beauty of the pangalay, I became passionate in recording and learning it from innumerable dancers in the Sulu Archipelago. In order to preserve the dance, I devised a practical way of remembering postures and gestures, aided by my own silhouette reflected on the wall by a lighted candle.
The habit irritated my husband because even way past bedtime, I would still dance and analyze my silhouettes on the wall and figure out if my shadow matched what was recorded in my mind. This became my routine every time I would see new postures and gestures from new dancers whom I chance upon in serendipitous situations.
My shadow silhouettes became the most reliable learning guide since there was no electricity all over Tawi-Tawi province at the time. Electricity came only in the 1980s.
In the absence of any formal method of instruction, modifications and elaboration by countless pangalay performers are inevitable. Also, owing to the limitless possibilities of improvisation depending upon the performer’s artistry and skill, it would be a mistake to regard a particular variant of the pangalay as the correct or authentic form or style.
To preserve and conserve the abundant pangalay movement vocabulary, a method of instruction has been developed based on more than four decades of experience, study, documentation and performance. This is the Amilbangsa Instruction Method (AIM), which gives equal emphasis on technique and creativity.
The method of instruction is the key to the preservation of intangible cultural heritage like the pangalay. Through the AIM, those who are already dancing the pangalay should be able to distinguish between the good and the bad manners of dancing (the pangalay), and to correct whatever may be aesthetically inferior. Flawed techniques that may even cause injury can be avoided, and the standard of pangalay training may be elevated.
Lastly, the AIM training program is designed for all ages, for amateurs, for dancers in other disciplines, for native pangalay dancers interested to learn effective rehearsal techniques, in order to enrich their vocabulary of traditional movements already half-forgotten.
The story of how I codified two dances, the “linggisan” and the “igal kabkab,” demonstrates the painstaking process of preserving and conserving traditional dance.
Working on ‘linggisan’
To amplify hand movements, the use of “janggay” or metal claws is popular in the Sulu Archipelago. The janggay magnifies the intricate hand movements in linggisan (bird dance).
My first glimpse of linggisan was in Jolo, Sulu, in 1969. Gay dancers performed the “dallingdalling” at Plaza Tulay on Sundays after supper. The comic song-dance has a serious portion about a bird. This is the linggisan.
I was impressed upon seeing the sophistication and richness of its postures and gestures. When danced as a solo number, the Samal and Tausug used kulintangan accompaniment with a distinct melodic pattern. The most impressive rendition of linggisan that I witnessed in Jolo was danced by a woman whose gestures were exceptionally beautiful.
When I arrived in Bongao in 1973, I often saw students and ordinary people dancing some linggisan movements during school programs and celebratory gatherings. Learning the linggisan vocabulary involved serious memory work. Thanks to my reliable candle-and-shadow method, I pieced together postures and gestures from numerous dancers through more than two decades of research and experience in the Sulu Archipelago.
This was the long and tedious process of how I created the cohesive movement vocabulary specific to linggisan alone, which I codified in stick figures, and later were superseded by my own silhouette figures that first appeared in my book titled “Pangalay,” published in 1983.
To date, my linggisan choreography is the most complex version that is a complete dance in itself—with a beginning, middle and ending—that combines complex postures and gestures distilled from observing many native dancers.
The fan is a favorite prop in Asian dance. However, the igal kabkab (literally, fan dance) is not popular among native dancers who obviously did not treat it as a serious dance, but only for merriment.
I was excited the first time I saw a dancer use the fan in dancing basic pangalay movements in 1973. This proved to be a rare encounter because it took another three years, in 1976, before I chanced upon another dancer who performed the pangalay with a fan, at a moonlight picnic or “lamburuk” by the beach on Sibutu Island.
Imagining the beauty of pangalay movements with the use of a fan, I created my original choreography of igal kabkab in 1993—a far cry from the simple fan dance I witnessed in 1973 and 1976—by fusing more complex pangalay postures and gestures which I codified.
I was inspired to develop the simple fan dance for a global audience: My choreography of igal kabkab was intended for the International Dance Festival in Seoul, South Korea, sponsored by big media institutions like KBS and Chungang Daily newspaper, and the Korean Culture and Arts Foundation.
For that occasion, I used the beautiful fan given to me as a present by the president of Asian Dance Association, Madam Oh Hwa-jin, during the Asian Dance Festival held in conjunction with the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
This original igal kabkab choreography is now part of the repertoire of the dance groups which I co-established, namely Tambuli Cultural Troupe and AlunAlun Dance Circle. Hopefully, igal kabkab will gain more prominence in the Sulu Archipelago to demonstrate the rich possibilities of transforming a simple dance without sacrificing the authentic character of pangalay.
The preservation of the movement vocabulary of an intangible cultural heritage like the pangalay is of primary importance. But conservation in aid of preservation is equally important. For example, for popular appeal and contemporary context, we may use different kinds of music in pangalay choreography but without losing the intrinsic character of the dance.
Whatever type of music is used—whether pop, rock, folk, western classical or novelty—dancers must consistently maintain the pangalay posture, and its slow, smooth, meditative and flowing movements. Motion in stillness, stillness in motiom—this is the wellspring of the refined and elegant qualities of the pangalay dance tradition.
Editor’s Note: Ligaya Fernando-Amilbangsa lived in Sulu and Tawi-Tawi for several decades. Her husband is Datu Punjungan Amilbangsa, a younger brother of the last reigning sultan of Sulu—Sultan Mohd. Amirul Ombra Amilbangsa. Starting in 1969, she has undertaken exhaustive field research and documentation of the local culture in the Sulu Archipelago, specifically pertaining to the performing and visual arts of the Samal, Badjaw, Jama Mapun and Tausug. The wealth of primary data that she gathered is published in two volumes: “Pangalay: Traditional Dances and Related Folk Artistic Expressions” (1983), which was given the National Award for Best Art Book by Manila Critics Circle; and “Ukkil-Visual Arts of the Sulu Archipelago” (2005), which was awarded as one of the best publications in the Philippines in 2006.
She was bestowed the honor of being the First Most Outstanding Artist of Tawi-Tawi, presented by Gov. Sadikul Adalla Sahali in September 2011 during the 38th foundation anniversary of Tawi-Tawi province. | <urn:uuid:9852a56b-393c-4cba-b28c-4a52fc5cefd9> | {
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In addition to the main goals: pittas, when coming to Vietnambirds’ 7-day eco-tour, you will get beautiful pictures of other colorful tropical birds?
There are many stories to tell, future visitors of Vietnambirds, today tour guide Andy will tell you a story about the beauty of broadbill birds in Vietnam.
The list of broadbill species in Vietnam includes Black and Red broadbill, Banded broadbill, Dusky broadbill long-tailed broadbill, and Silver-breasted Broadbill. All of them have beautiful colors, attracting all eyes. In addition to their cute appearance, their wide eyes and behavior also delight birdwatchers. It can be said that broadbill species are difficult targets to ignore in bird-watching tours in Vietnam.
Three of the five broadbill species mentioned above can be found in the lowlands, where humidity is high and daytime temperatures are hot, creating a sultry appearance common in tropical forests. To compensate for the unpleasant weather and the efforts of visitors, the cute birds, chubby appearance, and round eyes will delight visitors. When visiting Cat Tien National Park, visitors can meet Black and Red broadbill, Banded broadbill, and Dusky broadbill species. Black and Red broadbill birds always appear in pairs, they live all their lives together and rarely see Black and Red foraging alone, except when one of them has to incubate in the nest.
This bird’s behavior is also indicative of love, when there is a strange call (usually from the instructor’s playback), instead of the male “hunting” for the stranger, the female will stay put. Like many other birds, Black and Red species have different behavior, they go to a place where there is a strange call, then look, listen, listen, then, they cuddle, a pair of birds rub their beaks. Their cyan blue oversized bulky looks like they’re kissing, and the male also intentionally makes gestures to cuddle the female. They do so from branch to perch as if to discourage the stranger from an indivisible fidelity.
A little more difficult to approach is the Banded Broadbill, which has a slightly more aggressive appearance than the Black and Red, with a larger bill, darker cyan, and oversized round blue-gray eyes. like cartoon birds. This is a beautiful bird with a light violet color mixed with a light pink color on the overall plumage. Above the wings, there are yellow dots that create attractive splashes of color.
However, it is not easy to photograph all of these beauties, as this bird often perches on tall trees, most of which appear only in dense foliage in primeval forest areas. The only thing to identify the existence of the banded broadbill species is their loud calls, when they appear, usually in a group, of 3 to 5 animals, the leader has a Wheooo Wheooo call, and the others. the rest take turns taking on characteristic chorus sounds, and always immediately followed by a loud, rising, rapid insect-like trill including up to 100 notes and lasting 5–9 seconds,…
You will have a hard time difficult to see them without a few tricks of the eye. We will be confused when we hear the sound is very loud and clear, but we look and look forever, but there is no bird at all! That difficulty is partly due to the color of this bird as it blends into the surrounding dry yellow leaves, another thing is that they often perch on high places where the foliage blocks most of the light, and they perched almost motionless, only shaking their heads to observe and utter loud, territorial cries.
The third broadbill species, Dusky-broadbill, also occurs in flocks of 3 to 7 individuals, preferring areas of open forest, with deciduous forest such as Dipterocarpus interspersed with bamboo. Their appearance is easily recognizable by the noisy sounds like the broadbill races, however, they also rarely down low, only perching on high branches.
This bird has the least colorful plumage of the family but derives its beauty from its huge pink beak, which is flat and slightly curved like the lips of the models. Above the wings, there are 2 prominent white patches on the wing primary, the throat of this bird rises and falls according to the loud calls it emits, each time, you will find them very beautiful with a pale yellow color.
Leaving the area of Cat Tien National Park, visitors come to the next destination, Nui San Pass, Dilinh plateau. Where the altitude is from 800m-1100m, the climate is cooler, the humid tropical forests left after a long time being invaded by humans to create agricultural land gradually appear. This is where birdwatchers can meet the other two broadbill species: the Long-tailed Broadbill and the Silver breasted Broadbill.
While Long-tailed broadbill is usually noisier, Silver breasted is quieter. But the long-tailed birds often perched on high branches, rarely falling, silver-breasted appeared in the middle, closer to the ground.
Silver-breasted birds are more passive birds, they rarely overreact or squirm to unfamiliar sounds. When parked, they often standstill in a secluded place and observe, there are calls to signal their territory, then continue to observe, after a while they continue to find another place nearby without flying far. This is a bird that usually occurs in pairs rather than in flocks. The male is silver-gray, like the female, and it has a very noble necklace. When looking at the back, the wings will appear with beautiful silver, light blue patches.
The long-tailed broadbill looks like a tiny pilot due to the “helmet” it has. The black patch on the head separates it from the green neck and body. It is the blackhead with 2 pale yellow streaks on the ears, creating the feeling that the bird is wearing a helmet. In front of the face are clear gray-blue eyes and an ivory-white beak. When there is the appearance of strangers, this bird usually repels by gathering in a flock of 4 to 8 birds, they move continuously in a circle around the place of the stranger on the tall branches.
Visitors’ journeys are still full of other colorful and attractive birds at attractive bird watching spots throughout southern Vietnam such as Bidoup Nui Ba National Park, Yokdon National Park, Ngoc Linh Nature Reserve…
Vietnambirds hopes that our enthusiastic, attentive service and experience in organizing bird watching tours always bring satisfaction to visitors. Each customer who comes to us is an experience of nature, people, local living habits, and cultural and culinary characteristics…
Visit for more:
Contact in facebook, please click on my name
Call or Message by Whatsapp, viber with the same number: +84982928482 | <urn:uuid:fff80d1b-d86a-4e45-92cf-89a3519bda0e> | {
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Meghan Edwards | March 01, 2012
Aided by Widder, an associate professor of architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design, Team New York devised the Solar Roofpod, a penthouse-type structure ideal for the flat tops of city mid-rises. A steel-framed dunnage system acted as a foundation while extending on all sides as a deck landscaped with plants irrigated by storm runoff. The single-story pod's steel frame accepted a variety of wall panels in poplar plywood and/or glass. Inside, a square core integrated a kitchen, an entertainment system for the living area, a Murphy bed, a bathroom, and storage. Appliances, electronics, and HVAC were entirely powered by the roof's photovoltaic panels in conjunction with an innovative system of thermal storage. Over the course of a year, instead of the competition's two weeks, Solar Roofpod could save $2,500-plus in utilities and keep 8,800 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. | <urn:uuid:03efb1ce-f149-42c1-a016-3e8a7ccfdd7b> | {
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Academics discover variation in circadian clock protein in fruit flies
3D structure of Cryptochrome—a blue light photoreceptor; a natural variation in a single amino acid shown in green, has impact on behaviour and development of fruitflies, and is driven by natural selection
The circadian clock is a molecular network that generates daily rhythms, and is present in both plants and animals.
A research team from the Department of Genetics led by Dr Eran Tauber has studied genetic variation in circadian clock genes in wild populations of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster – and has discovered that their genes change and adapt depending on environmental conditions, altering their circadian clock.
The research focuses on examining a protein called Cryptochrome (CRY), a blue light photoreceptor which synchronises the circadian clock of the fruit fly with the environmental light-dark cycle. CRY is involved in circadian clock functioning in both plants and animals, including humans.
Adaptive variations have resulted in two versions of the CRY protein existing in fruit flies, both with a different amino acid present – these amino acids affect the circadian clock of the fruit fly.
Using this kind of experimental evolution allowed the team to demonstrate that this variation is actively maintained by the species.
The paper, which has been published in PLOS ONE, a peer-reviewed international online publication, can be read here. | <urn:uuid:35b6ea28-bf4f-4397-b01d-cfe7ef7fec30> | {
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Conservatives call the media Mockingbird because of the CIA's operation Mockingbird.
Into to History
-- Future Scenarios
+USA Last 100 Years
Last 12000 Years
+USA Is a Corp
Unheard of Civilizations
Over and Over
The United Nations
Anunnaki Short Version
Anunnaki DNA of the Gods
Anunnaki North America
Legend of Atlantis
My Search Print View Slide Show
As you read and listen to the video in the left menu; keep in mind that
the Winners write the History!Or is it the people in Power thatwrite the history?So It could be Distorted?! Dah!
Also, these videos cover everything from ancient history to truth. There are many conflicts, especially in the ancient history sections. This is where you come in. You have to decide what you think.
Rewriting history gives them the power to have us think the way "They" want us to.
Columbus did not discover America;
There are ancient maps that are more accurate than today's maps.
Researcher Charlotte Harris Rees discussed Asian maps dating as far back as 4,000 years ago that show the coastlines of the Americas. Picking up on the work of her father who collected these maps, she suggested that the ancient Chinese were seafaring and traveled to America far before Columbus' arrival. As further evidence, she cited genetic markers that are shared only by Asians and Native Americans.
This is from Coast to Coast AM.
This video tells the history of early America; coming to America, 1776, the articles of Confederation, the writing of the Constitution. Very cool!
Inspiration to Change America the World Shane Krauser the history version
I don't think the Chinese were the only ones to know about the Americas.
If Columbus did anything it was to inform a very ignorant European population that there were other lands out there.
The Ancient-Wisdom website has been primarily designed to serve as a free online research facility for prehistory at the same time as tackling the apparent 'veil of mystery' that surrounds many prehistoric artifacts and associated activities. It is exactly because the term 'prehistory' refers to the time before written history, that we have had a natural difficulty in understanding the context of many discoveries, and it is this lack of translation that has greatly contributed to the divide we see today between the theories of traditional archaeologists and those of speculative researchers and writers.
Mayans knew of Planets we just now discovered.
The Mayans knew of the planets in 2600 BC that we just now have discovered. What do you think of that? Just who are you? Is that rewritten history. Does this prove the Ages.
The Length of the Year Changed, 360 to 365, but why?
The 5280 foot mile is a remnant of the 360 day era which still lingers today. This article proves it. An "Ideal" Earth Year of 360 Days?; this is fascinating. But again, our history is wrong about it.
Could have it been The Flood? see; intelligentdesigntheory.info.
The more I think about this piece of history the more I wonder: Did the Great Flood cause the earth to change? Or did the earth changing cause the Great Flood? Oh, for you folks that did not read these links, this is a summary; the earth changed orbit and size about the time of the Great Flood.
Bottom line on this, "They" kept this from us too!
Wright Brothers invented Airplane! - NOT!
Follow this link to read about Ancient Airplanes and Spacecraft. Or look it up yourself.
"They" taught us We were the most Advanced. While, We don't even know who we are!
Educating us to believe we are the most advanced civilization ever (We are far from it) is the biggest change of history. Let Me explain; The amount of cognition of humans is in a very long cycle (Ages). And we are not at the top of it. Although, our civilization is emerging from an Iron Age it is headed for a Golden Age AGAIN. Plus, "They" have hidden enormous amounts of history from us.
New Giant Skulls Found!
Uploaded on Jun 18, 2010
Evidence of the Nephilim, the offspring of the Giants, the Fallen Angeles, Anunnaki, Giants Skulls of Cro Magnon from Atlantis, Rhesus Negative Blood Type, Same DNA Genetics as the Pharoahs of Egypt, the God kings of Sumerian Mythology, the Maya, Inca, all civilizations that had pyramids, all go back to Atlantis, Periodic global cataclysm, climate change, pole shift, earth changes, planet X nibiru, biblical prophecy, conspiracy, nwo, cia, nsa, mk ultra, moutak, 2012, reptilian, human, and homo sapian.
The History of Lost Continents has been Hidden
We all have heard about Atlantis, a mythical lost advanced continent.
And there was a continent in the middle of the Pacific ocean called Mu.
These lost continents took with them the secrets of power and cognition. Or did "They" just decide to hide everything?
Some people still think the pyramids in Egypt were built by slaves dragging the stones up dirt ramps. That is absurd, as we could not even take the pyramids down today if we wanted to. And, considering pyramids are on every continent on earth; just what are they. I think it would change everything if we know exactly what they were.
Stonehenge, in England, we don't know what it is other than gigantic rocks on other gigantic rocks. Although, there are theories about it.
Even here in southern Arizona, we have native American buildings dating back only 1500 years that are not fully explainable. And our water canal system of today was originally built by the native American back then. It uses the same exact canals. They had knowledge.
Even the Bibles have been Tainted.
The Catholic church (back a couple thousand years ago) suppressed the Nag Hammadi texts (discovered in 1945) from the Bible. The Nag Hammadi texts documented conversations between Jesus and his disciples.
Note: the News coverage of that. Did you read it here first?
Ancient High Tech
Researcher Chris Dunn has worked at every level of high-tech manufacturing, and has used his machinist's point of view to analyze the construction of Egyptian artifacts. He presented his contention that the ancient Egyptian builders of the pyramids and temples used advanced tools to construct various monuments, and statues, in addition to the pyramids. There is precisely crafted granite within a thousandth of an inch, which demonstrates a high level of skill and geometry, he said. Statues of Ramses, for instance, 1,000 tons each, are so precisely cut that it would be difficult to replicate today, he detailed.
In contacting stone sculptor, Mike Leckie, he confirmed to Dunn that these ancient Egyptian statues couldn't be made with the tools he has at his disposal. Using photographic analysis and computer design software, Dunn concluded that making the statues would likely have required diamond or ultrasonic tools run by electricity.
In his earlier work, he suggested the function of the Giza Pyramids wasn't as a tomb, but rather as a machine-- a holistic power plant that could draw energy from the earth. "The ancient Egyptians had a sophisticated knowledge of science and technology," but evidence for their tools might have been wiped out in an extinction event or cataclysm, he theorized.
This video discusses the Ark of the Covenant. Supposedly some folks know where it is at, but will not reveal it for the safety of the planet. And much more!
David Wilcock Interviews Graham Hancock Setting History Free!
There are Thousands of Books about Ancient Times
"They" need these BIG LIES to promote "Their" enslavement agenda. In summary, we all have been programmed with faulty information. There is hope though, we can reprogram ourselves and avoid being subjects of the enslavement conspiracy.
Dead Men's Secrets
George Gordon narrates Dead Men's Secrets, ancient Egypt, the Nazca Lines and much much more.
The mutual collapse of the high civilization centers through nuclear warfare in about 2000 B.C. had come swiftly and without warning, leaving little time to salvage anything but essentials.
For more go here or search "Dead Man's Secrets", or you may buy the book.
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India is well-known for monuments like the Taj Mahal. But there's another category of local architecture that might not be as famous, and that is currently being threatened by the growing water crisis in India: the magnificent stepwell. Many of these centuries-old subterranean structures -- originally built as large-scale water cisterns to store monsoon rainwaters for later use -- have fallen into disuse and disrepair, due to water tables being over-pumped to depletion, and the introduction of modern plumbing.
Nevertheless, many of these neglected stepwells are masterpieces of engineering and beauty. Aiming to spread a greater global awareness to help preserve them, Chicago-based journalist Victoria Lautman took several years to travel the country, photographing dozens of these awe-inspiring structures. Lautman, who specializes in art history and archeology, writes passionately about them in a post on ArchDaily, noting their millennia-old cultural and spiritual significance:
By the 19th-century, several thousand stepwells in varying degrees of grandeur are estimated to have been built throughout India, in cities, villages, and eventually also in private gardens where they’re known as “retreat wells”. But stepwells also proliferated along crucial, remote trade routes where travelers and pilgrims could park their animals and take shelter in covered arcades. They were the ultimate public monuments, available to both genders, every religion, seemingly anyone at all but for the lowest-caste Hindu. It was considered extremely meritorious to commission a stepwell, an earthbound bastion against Eternity, and it’s believed that a quarter of these wealthy or powerful philanthropists were female. Considering that fetching water was (and is still) assigned to women, the stepwells would have provided a reprieve in otherwise regimented lives, and gathering down in the village vav was surely an important social activity.
These old bastions of water, once a community hub and a convenient cooling spot, declined during recent times, due to colonization and changing ideas about how water should be delivered, says Lautman:
As for the current state of stepwells, a hand-full are in relatively decent condition, particularly those few where tourists might materialize. But for most, the prevailing condition is simply deplorable due to a host of reasons. For one, under the British Raj, stepwells were deemed unhygienic breeding grounds for disease and parasites and were consequently barricaded, filled in, or otherwise destroyed. “Modern” substitutes like village taps, plumbing, and water tanks also eliminated the physical need for stepwells, if not the social and spiritual aspects. As obsolescence set in, stepwells were ignored by their communities, became garbage dumps and latrines, while others were repurposed as storage areas, mined for their stone, or just left to decay.
Lautman's work not only documents the aging majesty of these stepwells, but also the derelict ones. Here is one that has been filled with garbage, a sad sight:
Then there are stepwells like this "Queen's Well," (Rani ki vav in Patan, Gujarat) which was buried in mud and silt for almost a thousand years, probably due to its immense size (210 feet long by 65 wide) and recently designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
These remarkable structures are great examples of traditional methods of water conservation, and are an admirable part of India's heritage, and should be preserved somehow. In the future, Lautman hopes to produce a book on stepwells, and is now in the process of finding a publisher. You can find out more or contact her via Victoria Lautman. | <urn:uuid:2e81ae51-a325-422c-8c8a-b5629a581d39> | {
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Have you ever received a gift that had a special meaning to you or your family? When artist Otto Plaug traveled to New Mexico in 1921 he befriended the man in the portrait, Trevio Kouni, who was a former governor of the Laguna Pueblo and recipient of a gift from Abraham Lincoln. In 1863, President Lincoln gifted an ebony cane with a silver crown to each of the governors of New Mexico’s 19 Pueblos. Each cane was engraved with “A. Lincoln” and the name of the Pueblo on the top of the crown. With this gesture, Lincoln became the first United States President to recognize the sovereignty, or independence, of all 19 Pueblos. For each of the tribes the gifted canes represent leadership and self-governess. These canes remain an important symbol today as they are still used by Pueblo governors to represent authority and the relationship of the Puebloan people with the United States government. If you are interested in learning more about the “Lincoln Canes” check out the documentary entitled Canes of Power released in 2012 which documents the history of these important objects. | <urn:uuid:8e09668c-d3d9-4758-b926-dc46cdb5573e> | {
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Presentation on theme: "HealthPartners Medical Group"— Presentation transcript:
1 HealthPartners Medical Group Arthritis 101Kenneth D. Kleist, M.D.HealthPartners Medical GroupRegions HospitalSt. Paul, MNIntroduce yourself and the plan or plans available to the members. Let members know that you are happy to answer their questions.
2 The Key Players Orthopaedic Surgeon The expert in the musculoskeletal systemDiagnoseTreatMedicationPhysical TherapyExerciseBraceSurgeryPreventPhysician AssistantPrimary Care Sports Medicine PhysicianPhysical Therapist
3 Arthritis—Background Arthritis is the second most common chronic condition in the US (sinusitis is first)Most common among elderlyArthritis affects over 20 million people in the US76 million by 2030Leading cause of disability in people > 65 yoTotal costs associated with arthritis are over $82B/year, including hospital and drug costs, nursing home costs, and lost productivity and work
4 Synovial Joints Fibrous capsule Bone Synovial membrane Joint space filled with synovial fluidArticular cartilageTo understand osteoarthritis, it is helpful to first look at a joint and understand how it works. A joint is the place where the ends of two or more bones meet. These bone ends of the joint are covered with a smooth material called cartilage. Cartilage cushions bone and allows your joints to move smoothly and without pain. The synovium is a fibrous envelope that encloses the joint and produces fluid that helps reduce the friction and wear on that joint. Ligaments connect bones and keep your joints stable. Finally, muscles and tendons power your joints and allow them to move.
5 There are two general types of arthritis Osteoarthritis: By far the most common“Garden Variety” or “wear and tear”Caused by the breakdown of cartilageRemainder of the talk will focus hereRheumatoid Arthritis and related diseases:These involve not only the joints but other organs like skin, tissues, eyes, and blood vesselsImmune system attacks the tissues of the joint
6 Osteoarthritis (Inflammation of Joints) PainLoss ofMotionAvoidanceofMotionArthritis is, simply put, inflammation of the joints. Inflammation is one of our bodies’ normal reactions to injury or disease. Inflammation in turn results in visible swelling, pain, and stiffness, because as the joint becomes painful, the individual avoids moving it, which causes the muscles to tighten, making it harder to use that joint. This results in more pain.Usually this inflammation is temporary. But in an arthritic joint it may cause long-lasting and sometimes permanent disability. Osteoarthritis is a particular type of arthritis which affects the cartilage in the joints, causing it to break down and eventually be lost altogether.IncreasedMuscleTightness
7 What does arthritis look like Arthritic Knee X-RayNormal Knee X-Ray
8 Diagnosis: History Symptoms Pain in affected joints Pain worse with prolonged overusePain better with rest and exerciseStiffness relieved by flexingUnlike other systemic forms of arthritis, osteoarthritis does not affect the other organs of the body. Symptoms vary greatly from patient to patient, but the most common early symptom is pain in the affected joint or joints. This pain gets worse with prolonged overuse and is relieved by rest and moderate exercise. In addition to pain, many osteoarthritis sufferers experience a stiffness that is relieved by flexing the joint a few times. This stiffness, called gelling, is generally most pronounced first thing in the morning.
9 Diagnosis Physical exam X-rays Blood test to rule out other diseases The effects of osteoarthritis can be fairly significant, but with proper treatment, we can get you back into the game, living your life to the fullest. Your orthopaedic surgeon will use a combination of an evaluation of your symptoms, a physical examination, and x-rays to make an arthritis diagnosis. Your physician will likely also order a blood test, to rule out other forms of arthritis as well as other ailments that could be causing your symptoms.
10 Treatment: Non-operative Activity modificationAvoid painful activitiesLow impact exerciseDecreases painImproves flexibilityImproves joint nutritionPhysical TherapyCane or other assistive device
11 Treatment: Non-operative Weight ControlMaintain current weight or lose weight10 lbs of weight loss30-50 lbs less weight on your hips and kneesHeat/Cold – Both Can be effective
12 Treatment: Medication Acetaminophen – Pain control (Tylenol)NSAIDs – Pain and inflammationStandardIbuprofen, naproxen, piroxicamCox-2CelecoxibUltram – Non-narcotic, addiction potentialMild NarcoticsNot recommended except short term
13 Treatment: Injection Corticosteroids (Cortisone) Injection Anti-inflammatory placed into the jointTemporary pain reliefTemporary swelling improvementDoes not change the arthritisLimited number per yearBlood sugar elevation in diabetes
14 Treatment: Injection Hyaluronic Acid Injections (knee only) A series of 3 – 5 injectionsMuch more costly than steroidsMay last longer than steroidsNo one knows exactly how they workMay increase lubricationMay soothe the nerve endingsMay have anti-inflammatory effect
15 Treatment: Alternative Approaches No Scientific Evidence to RecommendGlucosamine/Chondroitin SulfateAcupunctureGreen teaGrape seed extractTart cherry concentrate | <urn:uuid:8c9c4a8c-cbe0-40e6-afbb-08beea3fff91> | {
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By: John Marsh
194 pages, b/w photos, b/w illustrations
This is the journal of John Howard Redfield's travels with Asa Gray, William Canby, Charles Sargent and M.E. Hyams in search of an elusive plant in North Carolina in 1879. On a visit to Paris, France in 1839, Asa Gray saw one leaf of a plant first discovered by Andre Michaux in 1788. Gray named it in honor of Dr. Charles Short, Shortia galacifolia. Gray traveled to North Carolina four times over the next 40 years searching for this plant, finally having success on this trip.
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Wildlife, science and conservation since 1985 | <urn:uuid:f7910d0b-506f-4f41-bf23-9f87ff13d0a1> | {
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Babies born today will be 32 years old in 2050 when the United States will not be the No. 1 economy in the world (it will be No. 3) and next-door Mexico will be right behind the U.S. in economic size (No. 5 or No. 7, depending on the study).
That is projected by experts. But what of today?
From Business Insider: “Mexico is the 11th-largest economy in the world with free access to the largest economy in the world . . . not to mention vast amounts of American investment pouring in . . . Mexico is seen as a land of drug dealers. But this perception is like viewing the United States as if it were Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s and the typical American as Al Capone.”
While most Americans think of Mexico as a third-world country, those who live on the border, those who see Mexicans every day, those who do business in Mexico, know that it is not.
Guadalajara is the high-tech capital of Mexico. It is a higher-education center with quality public and private universities producing thousands of science technology engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduates annually.
The Mexican state of Jalisco (Guadalajara is its capital) has 12 universities, including the prestigious Tecnológico de Monterrey, creating 85,000 graduates in IT a year. In the past four years an estimated US $120 million has been invested in more than 300 high-tech start-ups.
Mexico, surprisingly, ranks well in the world with engineering graduates — about half the number of U.S. engineering graduates with only one-third the population.
Guadalajara has a security-tight high-tech complex, Guadalajara Creative Digital City, headquartered in a former shopping mall. It was founded by a public/private partnership led by the Jalisco state government. The state leased more than 100,000 square feet and built it up into individually wired turnkey work spaces and charged high-tech start-ups minimal rent.
In they came, one and two-person operations, small cohorts of educated men and women, young and old, who knew what ones and zeroes do when properly put together. An industry was born.
That effort continues. However, the days of one and two-person firms has passed, replaced by firms with dozens and even hundreds of people churning out more than $21 billion worth of tech products that are exported all over the world — in particular, to the United States.
“Itexico” is one of those start-ups that is maturing in Guadalajara with offices in Austin, Chicago and Mountain Valley, Calif. It was founded by Guillermo Ortega, a Mexican engineer, and Anurag Kumar, also an engineer and an Indian immigrant to America. Kumar is the CEO of the company. It has grown from a staff of a half-dozen to 170.
Need a mobile app, original software, software maintenance? Need geographic or time-zone convenience, or fluent English-speaking contractors? Ortega and Kumar explained to this writer (in better English than I speak) why their American/Mexican facilities are better to deal with than firms in Europe or Asia.
Convenience is the key word, and language is next, with time-zone relativity closing the deal. Well-educated people working with ones and zeros from top universities, including MIT and California State University, who speak the same language make working with Guadalajara totally more desirable than working with Singapore, Hong Kong or Moscow.
The beginning: Mexican manufacturing grew exponentially when giant American manufacturers flooded into Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s to take advantage of wages, the peso, geography and transportation to the world’s largest market, the U.S. Then, China entered the global industrial scene and, in 2001, Mexico found itself with empty manufacturing facilities left behind when plants moved to China for lower wages. The nascent Mexican auto industry took up some of the unemployed but other efforts were needed.
The brightest Mexican minds gathered and commissioned the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and consulting firm Accenture to conduct a study of how to fill the employment gap left behind by Chinese-bound companies.
The public/private partnership to help high-tech start-ups was suggested; it was organized. The 14-year-long leader is retired Hewlett-Packard executive and engineer Julio Acevedo García, who revels in the non-paid job. He works at it unpaid full time.
Itexico founders and partners Ortega and Kumar told us about their first days in business and how they grew and continue to grow. Their pitch made sense to customers, and referrals provide 70% of their business. Today, Itexico has 170 employees; in five years, it projects 1,000. Today, Mexico’s high-tech industry accounts for $21 billion in exports; in five years, maybe $100 billion?
Mexico could be the fifth largest economy in the world in 2050. Will it be led by high-tech in Guadalajara? Maybe.
Raoul Lowery Contreras is the author of “The Armenian Lobby & American Foreign Policy” and “The Mexican Border: Immigration, War and a Trillion Dollars in Trade.” His work has appeared in the New American News Service of the New York Times Syndicate. | <urn:uuid:fbb5e8d0-1da8-4d83-95d6-3d161356cc51> | {
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University of Illinois Press, 1997.
Review posted Jan 2017.
The author joined his two friends as Merchant Mariners in 1943, during the time leading up to the invasion of Normandy. Woody Guthrie was already a well known musician and Cisco Houston was also an established folksinger. Neither would be drafted. Houston was blind in one eye and Guthrie had four young children. But they were determined to do their part in the war and persuaded Woody's friend Jim to come with them. During the crossings, they learned the seaman's skills while singing to entertain their fellow crew members and the passengers, the soldiers they were delivering to the battlefield.
A non-stop tale, vividly and dramatically told, as two of their ships are attacked by enemy fire during the crossing. It's a great war story and music story and an example of honorable men behaving courageously during dangerous times. | <urn:uuid:b4ebbd25-8bb9-413f-acf3-12c845089180> | {
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Ankylosing Spondylitis: is a long-lasting disease that primarily affects the spine and may lead to stiffness of the back. The joints and ligaments that normally permit the back to move become inflamed. The joints and bones may fuse together.
Anserine Bursitis: Two symptoms of pes anserine bursitis of the knee are pain and tenderness on the inside of your knee, just about two inches below the joint. The pes anserine bursa is a small lubricating sac located between the shinbone and three tendons of the hamstrings muscle at the inside of the knee. Because the three tendons splay out on the front of the shinbone and look like the foot of a goose, pes anserine bursitis is also known as "goose foot" bursitis.
Avascular Necrosis: also called Avascular Necrosis is a bone disorder that decreases the blood supply to the affected area, leads to tiny breaks within the bone, and can eventually cause bones to collapse.
Behcet's Syndrome: this disease is a rare and chronic condition that affects the inner lining of the mouth and genitals and the small blood vessels throughout the body. Symptoms of Behcet's disease include recurrent ulcers in the mouth and on the genitals, and eye inflammation. Behcet's is a multi-system disease; it may involve all organs and affect the central nervous system, causing memory loss and impaired speech, balance, and movement. Behçet's Disease usually affects more women than men in the U.S. and primarily young adults in their 20s and 30s.
Bursitis: is a rheumatic diseases that affect the tissues and structures that surround a joint and produce pain, swelling or inflammation. Bursitis is inflammation of the bursa, the small fluid-filled sac that acts like a cushion between muscles and tendons, or between muscles and bones.
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: is a painful condition caused by compression of a key nerve in the wrist. It occurs when the nerve that runs from the forearm into the hand becomes pressed or squeezed at the wrist.
Corticosteroid-Induced Osteoporosis: is a disease that makes bones more porous and easier to break than normal bone. The production of strong healthy bone is dependent on a balance between bone growth and bone break down.
CREST Syndrome: is a form of Systemic Sclerosis which is characterized by calcium deposits, usually in the fingers; sudden constriction of the blood vessels in the fingers; loss of muscle control of the esophagus, which can cause difficulty swallowing; a tapering deformity of the bones of the fingers; and small red spots on the skin of the fingers, face, or inside of the mouth.
Cryoglobulinemia: is the presence of cryoglobulins in the blood, abnormal forms of protein molecules that precipitate at cold temperatures and redissolve at normal body temperature. Hence, when a person with cryoglobulinemia is exposed to cold, he or she may experience impaired circulation in the small blood vessels. This may lead to color changes in the skin, hives, damage to the extremities, bleeding into the skin, and other problems. | <urn:uuid:bc1fce7b-b539-4aa5-b990-7417f431b01e> | {
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Pam LaValliere, Director of Human Resources, is the College's Title IX Coordinator. The Title IX Coordinator serves as the campus’ primary point of contact for those seeking information or wanting to report sexual harassment/sexual misconduct. The Title IX Coordinator is available to meet with those who believe they have been victimized. The Title IX Coordinator can also provide information as well as refer to sources of support.
What is Title IX?
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is a comprehensive federal law intended to end sex discrimination in all areas of education. Title IX made non-discrimination based on gender a condition of participation in federally funded education programs. It guarantees equal access to educational programs funded by the federal government and applies to all recipients of federal funds – both public and private institutions, though there are religious exemptions. It also applies to educational program equity, such as in athletics, and also to sexual harassment
and sexual assault.
Although Title IX applies to gender discrimination, like Title VII, it did not recognize sexual harassment as a form of discrimination until 1992 (Franklin v. Gwinnett Public Schools). Learn more...
College is committed to staying compliant with Title IX training and as such
all incoming Freshmen and Transfers are required to take online training called
“Think About It” which helps prepare students for the
unique challenges and responsibilities of college life. It addresses issues
related to alcohol, drugs and sexual misconduct, and provides important
information regarding Edgewood College policies and available resources. | <urn:uuid:1d20e53e-de9c-471e-91c2-7a24671cd9d8> | {
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From large robots to tiny sensors
Automation and Robotics Research Institute embraces second 'Industrial Revolution' to deliver world-class research to customers and transfer technology to industry
Small stuff matters to Harry Stephanou. The director of The University of Texas at Arlington’s Automation & Robotics Research Institute in Fort Worth says miniaturization is the way of the future. No more giant robots assembling automobile chassis.
“That is yesterday’s technology,” Dr. Stephanou says. “You don’t see very many humans on the welding lines in auto plants, and you haven’t in a long, long time.”
He is adamant that the future lies in small things: micro pumps to deliver chemotherapy directly to the affected cells; tiny, inexpensive sensors embedded by the thousands in airplanes to give advance warning when systems are approaching failure; a set of surgeon’s less-than-infant-sized robotic hands that, in addition to the size advantage, never get tremors or experience other human failings.
“There is a second Industrial Revolution under way,” said Stephanou, who notes that because of the shift toward miniaturization, many products must be assembled by humans with flexible hands and small fingers. “We are developing tools that are far smaller than any human hand.”
And when that happens, Stephanou says, the United States will again become a manufacturing economy, using small, inexpensive tools to make small products. “Our body of knowledge is intensive. The knowledge is like Lego blocks, and we must rapidly reconfigure it to other uses.”
Stephanou believes that research exclusively to create new knowledge is also passť. He advocates the more direct approach of asking industries what they need to do the job and then reconfiguring to meet those needs while simultaneously creating new knowledge to anticipate future needs. And if the researcher hits a dead end, that’s what government grants are for: to develop new approaches to solve existing problems.
The ARRI director, who compiled an impressive record in industry before coming to UT Arlington in 2004, intends to have a consortium of companies working with the institute.
One of the institute’s contracts is with the Navy. ARRI produces mechanical locks for munitions, very small sensors that ensure that the torpedo explodes when it is supposed to, not prematurely and too close to the launching vessel. ARRI is doing other work for the Navy, but security concerns prohibit a discussion.
UT Arlington embraced the need for more university-based manufacturing research about 20 years ago when ARRI became a reality. Originally named the Advanced Robotics Research Institute, ARRI’s objective was to combine the resources of the University, Fort Worth/Dallas and relevant industries to introduce manufacturing technologies and strengthen national defense.
Sometimes those new technologies have dictated rather unusual areas of specialization.
Frank Lewis, an electrical engineering professor and holder of the Moncrief-O’Donnell Chair for Automation and Robotics, is a control expert. He came to ARRI in 1990 in the endowed chair dedicated to scholarship and research in the decision-making aspects of artificial intelligence. He has spent more than a decade developing decision-making controls in automated systems that closely resemble human processes.
At the time Dr. Lewis arrived, the National Science Foundation was interested in three aspects of decision making: neural networks, fuzzy logic and discrete event systems. Neural networks are inspired by the human nervous system—the way all the electrons in the body make muscles move. Fuzzy logic is based on the linguistics abilities of humans, and discrete event systems are based on human beings’ decision-making abilities.
Working with computer science and engineering Professor Diane Cook, Lewis developed grant proposals in all three areas. And the researchers received all three types of grants.
“Every faculty member, in essence, runs a small business,” Lewis explains. “One-third is teaching, even though that is the most important part; one-third is research, and the other one-third is bringing in funding.”
Lewis has been successful at each component of his “business.” Awarded numerous grants, he has written five textbooks and dozens of journal papers, and he has graduated 15 Ph.D. students who are taking ARRI research findings to places like Singapore and Croatia. Two of the doctoral graduates won National Science Foundation Career Awards, the highest NSF honor, and others have received awards in South Korea and Ecuador.
ARRI can attract top students, Lewis said, because it provides an opportunity to do industry-relevant work that is mathematically grounded, thus affording returns in both profit and theoretical advancement.
Until the Russians stunned the world in 1957 with the launch of the first artificial satellite, all decision-making controls in the United States were linear, based on a “simplified model of reality.” That worked for technology like radar systems and identifying bombing sites for aircraft, but Sputnik proved that the Russians had embraced nonlinear control theory—a more sophisticated technology that takes into account the interaction and relationships of the system with its environment.
So the United States hurriedly played catch-up and found, in the process, many applications for the new decision technologies.
One of these applications is in the work being done by former graduate student Dan Popa, now a UT Arlington electrical engineering faculty member, on micro-electromechanical systems. Mobile sensor networks can detect fire, intruders, carbon monoxide or any other threat and sound an alarm that dispatches a mobile robot to check the problem.
“It’s a whole system acting together with one goal,’’ Lewis said.
Lewis is working with Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in developing an underwater monitoring system that will be tested in the small lake on the ARRI grounds. The sensors can detect ships, fish, metal and environmental changes and have applications in urgent national priorities like harbor security.
Aside from its research emphasis, ARRI is also home to the Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center, the Cross Timbers Procurement Center and the Small Business Development Center for Enterprise Excellence, maintaining its early commitment to improving the efficiency of local manufacturers.
That’s no small stuff.
— Sue Stevens | <urn:uuid:5abe55cd-bc36-4f6b-8c56-d68dff9f1643> | {
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Tutorials – Cave Modeling
About : This tutorial will talk you through the basic process of making a simple box modeled cave in a 3D program. The tutorial will only show the step by step progress of a cave I made for one of my UT2004 levels. It does not describe how every step was done, it will however point you in the right direction. You require basic understanding of the 3D program you use! 3DSMax and a tiny bit of Maya are used in this tutorial.
My book contains a small section on what exactly makes a cave or a rock look good and what doesn’t so for those who are interested..
Target Audience : Everyone – intermediate skill required
Platform : Everything
Last Update : August 2006
The Cave – 3DSMax
Though the cave in this tutorial is made with 3DSMax it’s perfectly possible to use the same technique for any other modeling program such as Maya.
I use box modelling to model my caves. Often used techniques such as throwing a noise modifier on a sphere or cylinder or by using two terrains/plane meshes leads to very random and messy results. Manual work is the key to good quality.
The cave technique could also be applied to older games such as Unreal Engine 1 UT and Unreal although the polycount will have to be ridiculously low. I made most of the caves in UT1 Xidia in 3DSMax, greatly speeding up the process and improving the result..
I started with a cube and was sure to give it enough tessellations. The amount of tessellations is dependent on the size of the room but sure to keep it quite blocky. It will be MeshSmoothed later.
The cube has a Normal modifier applied to flip it inside out.
Next I applied an Edit Poly modifier and start extruding faces to create corridors and rooms.
I continued doing so until I had the entire cave done in a very cubical simple way. Also note that it never hurts to make a few extra cuts sometimes to give some polys more definition.
The basic floorplan was almost complete in this picture.
The next thing I did was to start cleaning the model up by welding a lot of vertices together. You want pretty simple cubic 4 to 8 sided corridors and not more or it will be too high poly and too unnecessary smooth once a MeshSmooth Modifier is applied.
After the model has been cleaned and optimized it must be randomized. I randomly dragged vertices, faces and edges around to make it all appear more natural and random.
It is also wise to cut up a few polys so not the entire model is made up of quads. Quads are too perfect for a natural object.
After the model was cleaned and randomized I applied a MeshSmooth Modifier to it. Set the iterations to 1 and you will end up with a nice medium high poly cavern.
As you might notice the cave has a lot of useless polys on some spots and it is in general too smooth and flat for a natural object so start optimizing and cleaning it again! Again start to weld certain vertices together and pull on those polys, edges and vertices to make it all rougher and more random. Soft Selection can also come in handy now. Making a few manual extra cuts certainly too.
I only applied a single texture to the mesh because of my Vertexpaint texture blend technique. I wrote a separate tutorial on that subject.
I applied a UVW Mapping Modifier and set it to box mapping before I undertook further UVW steps.
After the uv’s were ok I vertexpainted it with black and red. Black will be rock, red sand.
Because the cave was quite wet and thus smooth I applied only a single smoothing group to the entire cave. I rarely give caves and rocks hard edges unless it has very sharp and specific elements.
If your cave is meant for ingame usage you can and should optimize the cave by cutting it up in multiple pieces.
This cavern I made was cut in 11 pieces. There are various reasons why you want to cup it up. Smaller meshes can be clipped away easier by the zoning, occluders, and camera frustum and if the cavern will be lightmapped it will also improve the lightmap quality.
The Cave – Maya
In Maya and nearly all other 3D programs you can use the same method. Start with a cube.
Edit it around so you get a blocky layout or your cave.
And randomize everything to make it look more natural.
As you can see, I didn’t even use meshsmoothing here. You can start from scratch without meshsmoothing if you want. The only reason why I often use MeshSmooth is to speed up the process. On the other hand MeshSmoothing will make the mesh a mess and it might cost a considerable amount of time cleaning it up again. It is your own choice if you prefer to use MeshSmooth or decide to make everything by hand manually.
The Cave – The Result
After a week of work the cave build in the 3DSMax part of this tutorial looked like this ingame: | <urn:uuid:c5c2ca0f-86d6-4f65-8b2e-373fb6a440bf> | {
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Trichomonas NAAT at home
To diagnose an infection with the parasite Trichomonas vaginalis, which causes the sexually transmitted disease trichomoniasis.
Trichomonas vaginalis is a single cell (protozoan) parasite that cannot be seen by the naked eye (microscopic). It causes vaginal infections in women and, in men, infections of the urethra, the tube that carries urine from the bladder to outside the body, and inflammation of the prostate (prostatitis). Trichomonas testing detects the parasite in samples from the vagina or penis to diagnose an infection. | <urn:uuid:96f7a893-23e0-40b2-b65b-d360b6b4d6d3> | {
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Report: Requiring kindergartners to read — as Common Core does — may harm some
Valerie Strauss, Washington Post's Answer Sheet, January 13, 2015
The Common Core State Standards call for kindergartners to learn how to read, but a new report by early childhood experts says that forcing some kids to read before they are ready could be harmful.
Two organizations that advocate for early childhood education — Defending the Early Years and Alliance for Childhood — issued the report titled “Reading in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose.” It says there is no evidence to support a widespread belief in the United States that children must read in prekindergarten or kindergarten to become strong readers and achieve academic success.
The authors — Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin and Joan Wolfsheimer Almon — found that:
Many children are not developmentally ready to read in kindergarten, yet the Common Core State Standards require them to do just that. This is leading to inappropriate classroom practices.
No research documents long-term gains from learning to read in kindergarten.
Research shows greater gains from play-based programs than from preschools and kindergartens with a more academic focus.
Children learn through playful, hands-on experiences with materials, the natural world, and engaging, caring adults.
Active, play-based experiences in language-rich environments help children develop their ideas about symbols, oral language and the printed word — all vital components of reading.
We are setting unrealistic reading goals and frequently using inappropriate methods to accomplish them.
In play-based kindergartens and preschools, teachers intentionally design language and literacy experiences which help prepare children to become fluent readers.
The adoption of the Common Core State Standards falsely implies that having children achieve these standards will overcome the impact of poverty on development and learning, and will create equal educational opportunity for all children.
The report says that kindergarten has since the 1980s become increasingly academic — with big pushes from President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and President Obama’s Race to the Top — and that today many children are being asked to do things they are not ready to do. It says:
Under the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) the snowball has escalated into an avalanche which threatens to destroy appropriate and effective approaches to early education. The kindergarten standards, in use in over 40 states, place huge emphasis on print literacy and state bluntly that, by the end of kindergarten, children are to “read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.” Large amounts of time and money are being devoted to this goal, and its impact is felt strongly in many preschools as well.
Many children are not developmentally ready to read in kindergarten. In addition, the pressure of implementing the standards leads many kindergarten teachers to resort to inappropriate didactic methods combined with frequent testing. Teacher-led instruction in kindergartens has almost entirely replaced the active, play-based, experiential learning that we know children need from decades of research in cognitive and developmental psychology and neuroscience.
When children have educational experiences that are not geared to their developmental level or in tune with their learning needs and cultures, it can cause them great harm, including feelings of inadequacy, anxiety and confusion. A grandmother from Massachusetts told this story:
My 5-year-old grandson adored his play-based preschool, but it was a different story when he started an all-day, very academic, public kindergarten. From the first day he had mostly worksheets and table tasks, which he said were “hard.” On the fifth day of kindergarten he refused to go to school, locked himself in his bedroom, and hid under his bed!
Here from the report are some examples from the Core that the authors cite as inappropriate for many kindergartners:
The CCSS website states, “Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades.” However, there is no evidence that mastering these standards in kindergarten rather than in first grade brings lasting gains. To achieve them usually calls for long hours of drill and worksheets — and reduces other vital areas of learning such as math, science, social
studies, art, music and creative play.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.4: Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.1.D: Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet.
Phonics and Word Recognition
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.3.B: Associate the long and short sounds with common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.K.9: With prompting and support, identify basic similarities in and differences between two texts on the same topic (e.g., in illustrations, descriptions, or procedures).
Research to Build and Present Knowledge
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.K.7: Participate in shared research and writing projects.
Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.K.4.B: Use the most frequently occurring inflections and affixes (e.g., -ed, -s, re-, un-, pre-, -ful, -less) as a clue to the meaning of an unknown word.
The authors call for the withdrawal and rewriting of the kindergarten Common Core standards. Other recommendations from the report are:
Invest in high quality, long-term research to identify which approaches in preschool and kindergarten best help children become fluent readers by fourth grade and beyond, paying particular attention to children living in poverty.
Convene a task force of early childhood educators to recommend developmentally appropriate, culturally responsive guidelines for supporting young children’s optimal learning from birth to age 8.
End the use of high-stakes testing with children up to third grade and the use of test scores for teacher evaluation and the closing of schools.
Promote the use of assessments that are based on observations of children, their development and learning.
Ensure a high level of professionalism for all early childhood educators. Strive to reduce the income achievement gap by
placing experienced teachers in low-income communities. Invest in high-quality teacher preparation and ongoing professional development.
One of the report’s authors, Carlsson-Paige, who is professor emerita of early childhood education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., and the author of “Taking Back Childhood”, co-wrote a tough critique of the kindergarten Common Core standards that you can read here. It says in part:
When the standards were first revealed in March 2010, many early childhood educators and researchers were shocked. “The people who wrote these standards do not appear to have any background in child development or early childhood education,” wrote Stephanie Feeney of the University of Hawaii, chair of the Advocacy Committee of the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators.
The promoters of the standards claim they are based in research. They are not. There is no convincing research, for example, showing that certain skills or bits of knowledge (such as counting to 100 or being able to read a certain number of words) if mastered in kindergarten will lead to later success in school. Two recent studies show that direct instruction can actually limit young children’s learning. At best, the standards reflect guesswork, not cognitive or developmental science.
Moreover, the Common Core Standards do not provide for ongoing research or review of the outcomes of their adoption—a bedrock principle of any truly research-based endeavor. | <urn:uuid:1463207a-98fe-4d4a-9268-18fd2e436d4e> | {
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The formation of a precipitate which is generated homogeneously and, generally, slowly by a precipitating agent within a solution.
Source: Orange Book, 2nd ed., p. 84 [Terms] [Book]
Cite as: IUPAC. Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 2nd ed. (the "Gold Book"). Compiled by A. D. McNaught and A. Wilkinson. Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford (1997). Online version (2019-) created by S. J. Chalk. ISBN 0-9678550-9-8. https://doi.org/10.1351/goldbook. | <urn:uuid:6d2f334e-1cd4-4bfd-8e08-09354d6f05c0> | {
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Acne causes untold misery for millions of young people.1 Adolescents become the butt of cruel jokes and endure embarrassment that makes it hard to go to school every day. Parents and their children often ask pharmacists about acne and the utility of nonprescription products.
Prevalence of Acne
Acne is the most common dermatologic condition, affecting 40 to 50 million Americans each year. Up to 80% of those aged between 11 and 30 years have at least a minor version of the condition (acne vulgaris). However, it can occur at any age, and all races are affected.2-4
Epidemiology of Acne
Acne is more common during the teen years, for the reasons described below. However, other
situations worsen acne. Hormonal changes during pregnancy or initiating or ceasing therapy with oral contraceptives may be causal.2 Allowing oils to contact the face can plug pores. This may occur in patients intentionally placing an oil-based cosmetic or other material on the face (acne cosmetica), or in those exposed to atmospheres with oil, such as grill workers in restaurants. Pressure on the skin can also cause acne, as in those wearing bike or football helmets, tight collars, or backpacks (acne mechanica).3
Pathophysiology of Acne
While the exact causes of acne are unknown, it is thought to result from an unfortunate confluence of factors. One is the body changes that occur with puberty. Those changes affect the pilosebaceous unit, an area referred to as “the seat of acne.”2,5,6 The body’s pilosebaceous units contain a hair follicle and the associated sebaceous glands. Pilosebaceous units are lined with stratum corneum tissues, identical to the stratum corneum found in the outer layer of skin. On outer skin, the stratum corneum is constantly shed into the environment. However, inside the pilosebaceous unit, shed cells do not fall out into the environment but surround the hair follicle. Sebum from the sebaceous glands washes the shed cells to the surface of the skin or scalp, where they are removed by cleansers. At puberty, individual sebaceous glands grow into surrounding tissues, a process referred to as multilobulating. They produce more sebum when this occurs. Further, the stratum corneum cells develop an abnormal cohesion, and begin to narrow the lumen of the follicle.2,7 Thus, just at the time the pilosebaceous unit needs to be fully open to allow excessive sebum to escape, the follicular hyperkeratosis gradually shuts off outflow.
The Role of Bacteria
If outflow is sufficiently impeded, a plug can form from the hair, stratum corneum cells, and sebum.3 Bacteria in the plug cause inflammation, leading to its breakdown and resulting in acne lesions. The offending organism is Propionibacterium acnes. It lives on the fatty acids in sebum, producing propionic acid, which is inflammatory to tissues.
The Lesions of Acne
Acne lesions are of two types, noninflammatory and inflammatory.8 The initial acne lesion is a small pimple beneath the surface of the skin known as the whitehead.2,3 As the whitehead continues to grow, the top of the pore opens, exposing the upper layers of material to the air. Oxidation discolors the upper section of the plug to produce a brown to black color, resulting in the familiar blackhead. It is critical to note that the discoloration is not accumulated dirt, as this misconception leads to ill-advised cleaning regimens that can damage the skin. Whiteheads and blackheads are both noninflammatory lesions.9
Inflammatory acne lesions include papules, pustules, and nodules. Papules are small, tender bumps with an erythematous halo. They progress to painful pustules with erythema, but also exhibiting visible pus at the apex. Nodules may appear next, as larger (>5 mm in diameter), painful/tender erythematous solid pimples deep in the skin. Eventually, the patient may develop cysts that are deep, painful, and pus-filled. Once cysts develop, scarring will almost always follow.
Rating Acne Severity
Several scales can be used to rate acne severity. However, the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research recommends the Investigator’s Global Assessment (IGA) scale for the development of acne medications.8 Grade 0 denotes clear skin with no lesions. Grade 1 is skin that is almost clear, with a few noninflammatory lesions but no more than one small inflammatory lesion. Grade 2 acne is of mild severity, with inflammatory lesions, but no more than a few inflamed lesions (papules or pustules only). Grade 3 acne is of moderate severity, with many noninflamed lesions and some inflammatory lesions, but not more than one small nodular lesion. Grade 4 acne is severe, with many noninflamed and inflamed lesions, and a few nodular lesions.
Nonprescription Products for Acne
Nonprescription acne products are not appropriate for the more severe forms of acne. In its final rule on nonprescription topical acne products, the FDA limited OTC labeling to treatment of acne blemishes, pimples, blackheads, and whiteheads.9 The FDA defined blemishes as flaws resulting from acne and pimples as small, prominent, inflamed skin elevations. Thus, labeling appears to contraindicate their use in nodular or cystic acne. Products approved for acne include sulfur, sulfur/resorcinol combinations, salicylic acid, and benzoyl peroxide (see Patient Information).2
FDA’s Final Rule on Acne Product Labeling
Benzoyl peroxide underwent additional scrutiny to assess its safety and efficacy for acne; in the process, the FDA finalized labeling for acne products. Like the other ingredients previously mentioned, benzoyl peroxide was judged to be safe and effective in the original 1982 acne panel deliberations, when used in a 2.5% to 10% concentration.10 The FDA agreed with this conclusion in its 1985 notice of proposed rulemaking (tentative final monograph).11
In 1991, the FDA issued an amendment to the tentative final monograph reclassifying benzoyl peroxide from Category I (safe and effective) to Category III (more data needed) status.12 The agency explained that this unusual move was a response to information it had received since the 1985 report. Two studies indicated that benzoyl peroxide might possess tumor promotion or tumor initiation potential. The FDA evaluated the studies and subsequently concluded that benzoyl peroxide did appear to be a skin tumor promoter in mice and other laboratory animals. The FDA asked for additional studies of 18 to 24 months’ duration in two species (mouse and rat) to determine benzoyl peroxide’s potential for carcinogenicity. The agency promised to consider the wisdom of allowing continued marketing during the time that the carcinogenicity studies were underway.12
In 1995, the FDA proposed additional labeling for benzoyl peroxide to address the safety of continued marketing.13 The agency explained that it would not restrict sales pending a final determination, but explained that the proposed labeling would help ensure safe use. Labeling would warn against unnecessary sun exposure and would also direct patients to use a sunscreen when going outdoors.
The issue of benzoyl peroxide’s carcinogenicity was not settled until 2010.9 In a final rule, the FDA stated that it had examined newly submitted studies and concluded that adequate labeling could minimize the risks associated with benzoyl peroxide while allowing patients to obtain effective acne treatment, in effect reclassifying the ingredient as safe and effective (Category I). In that document, the agency also reconsidered labeling for other acne ingredients (e.g., sulfur, sulfur/resorcinol, salicylic acid) and issued a final revision affecting all safe and effective acne ingredients. The rules became or will become mandatory on March 4, 2011 (benzoyl peroxide products with annual sales ≥$25,000), March 2, 2012 (benzoyl peroxide products with annual sales <$25,000), and March 4, 2015 (sulfur, sulfur/resorcinol, and salicylic acid products).
Warning labels for all acne products will advise patients that dryness is more likely if two products are used at the same time, and to use only one product if irritation occurs. Products containing sulfur will caution patients to use them only on areas affected with acne and will warn against use on large parts of the body or on broken skin. Products containing the combination of resorcinol and sulfur will warn patients to rinse them immediately from the eyes after accidental contact, and to stop use and ask a physician if skin irritation occurs or worsens. Benzoyl peroxide products will warn patients against use if they have sensitive skin, and to avoid contact with the eyes, lips, and mouth. The FDA also required preliminary sun warnings, so that these products will advise against unnecessary sun exposure and recommend the use of sunscreen. Other warnings will state that benzoyl peroxide may bleach hair and dyed fabrics and may cause skin irritation, characterized by redness, burning, itching, peeling, or inflammation, all of which may be eased by using the product less often or in a lower concentration. Finally, benzoyl peroxide products will warn patients to stop use and seek physician assistance if irritation becomes severe.9
As the pharmacist counsels patients with acne, they may ask about popular myths regarding its causes. For instance, patients often believe that certain foods or drinks cause or worsen acne. They may ask specifically about fried foods, caffeine-containing drinks, potato chips, or chocolate. While it may be advisable to limit intake of all of these foods and drinks, it cannot be said with any degree of certainty that limiting them or eliminating them will improve or stop acne.9 Another myth is that dirty skin leads to acne. Patients should be cautioned to avoid overwashing with harsh sponges or scrubbing with pressure, as either can actually damage the delicate skin and worsen the acne.2,14,15 Rather, oils and dirt on the skin should be removed by gently washing once or twice daily with a nondrying soap or facial cleanser (e.g., Basis, CeraVe, Cetaphil, Dove, Neutrogena).
Patients should be urged not to scratch, squeeze, pick, or rub their acne lesions. Doing so can lead to infection and scarring. Patients should avoid tight headbands, baseball caps, and other types of hats and helmets whenever possible, to avoid acne due to friction against the skin. They should shampoo the hair daily, especially if they have oily hair. The hair should be combed or pulled back out of the face to minimize oil transfer. Hands and fingers should be kept away from the face. For instance, listening to lectures with the chin cupped in one hand can cause acne in the identical areas touched by the hand. Makeup should be water-based and noncomedogenic, and should be removed at night.15
Nonprescription Products for Acne
If your acne is not too severe, safe and effective nonprescription products can provide relief. None of them will cure acne, but reducing its severity may be enough. You should not combine acne medications, as doing so could worsen dryness and irritation of the skin.
Cleanse the skin by gently washing with a mild soap before applying acne products. The first time you try a new product, apply it sparingly in a thin layer to just a few small areas once daily. Reapply it in the same manner for 2 more days. If you notice that painful burning or irritation occurs, it may be best to try another product. If the substance produces only a mild adverse reaction, you may wish to continue to use it and apply it to all affected areas. Eventually, you can begin to apply it two or three times daily, as directed on the label. You may also choose a product with a higher concentration of active ingredient. If dryness or peeling becomes troublesome, you should reduce application to once daily or once every other day.
Ingredients to look for include benzoyl peroxide, sulfur, sulfur/resorcinol, and salicylic acid. Examples of benzoyl peroxide trade names include Clearasil Daily Clear Acne Treatment Cream, Neutrogena On-the-Spot Acne Treatment, PanOxyl 4, Proactiv, and ZapZyt Gel. If you develop redness, burning, swelling, peeling, or itching, stop using the product. Keep it away from the eyes, mouth, and lips, and stay out of the sun while using it. Benzoyl peroxide can bleach hair or fabric due to its peroxide content.
A product containing a combination of sulfur and resorcinol is Clearasil Daily Clear Adult Treatment Cream. It should not be applied to large areas of the skin or skin that is broken.
Products containing salicylic acid include Clean & Clear Advantage Mark Treatment, Neutrogena Oil-Free Acne Wash, OXY Daily Cleansing Pads, Stridex Daily Care Acne Pads, and ZapZyt Pore Treatment Gel.
Treatments to Avoid
You should be careful when choosing possible treatments for acne. Avoid any OTC products that are not proven safe and effective, such as those labeled “natural” or “ herbal.” Some products are rubbed on the skin, and others may be oral tablets, but none are proven to work. Also avoid products that claim to help acne through harsh and repeated scrubbing with rough sponges or cleaning pads. These can actually damage the skin and worsen the overall situation.
Certain Web sites sell small devices that claim to heal acne by generating light and/or heat. The user is instructed to place the hand-held device over a blemish and hold a button down for about 10 seconds, with the promise that these emissions will reduce or eliminate acne. These devices are of unknown effectiveness in treating acne. In addition, soaps and facial washes containing antibacterials such as triclocarban and triclosan have never been proven to be safe and effective for the treatment of acne.
If your acne is severe and nonprescription products do not effectively control your breakouts, referral to a dermatologist may be necessary.
1. Dunn LK, O’Neill JL, Feldman SR. Acne in adolescents: quality of life, self-esteem, mood, and psychological disorders. Derm Online J. 2011;17:1.
2. Pray WS. Nonprescription Product Therapeutics. 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2006.
3. Acne. National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. www.niams.nih.gov/Health_Info/
Acne/acne_ff.asp. Accessed September 30, 2011.
4. Imahiyerobo-Ip JI, Dinulos JG. Changing the topography of acne with topical medications. Curr Opin Ped. 2011;23:121-125.
5. Tzellos T, Zampeli V, Makrantonaki E, Zouboulis CC. Treating acne with antibiotic-resistant bacterial colonization. Expert Opin Pharmacother. 2011;12:1233-1247.
6. Ramos-e-Silva M, Carneiro SC. Acne vulgaris: review and guidelines. Dermatol Nurs. 2009;21:63-68.
7. Degitz K, Ochsendorf F. Pharmacotherapy of acne. Expert Opin Pharmacother. 2008;9:955-971.
8. Guidance for industry. Acne vulgaris: developing drugs for treatment. FDA. September 2005. www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/
pdf. Accessed September 30, 2011.
9. FDA, HHS. Classification of benzoyl peroxide as safe and effective and revision of labeling to drug facts format; topical acne drug products for over-the-counter human use; final rule. Fed Regist. 2010;75:9767-9777.
10. FDA, HHS. Topical acne drug products for over-the-counter human use; establishment of a monograph.
Fed Regist. 1982;47:12430-12477.
11. FDA, HHS. Topical acne drug products for over-the-counter human use; tentative final monograph. Fed Regist. 1985;50:2171-2182.
12. FDA, HHS. Topical acne drug products for over-the-counter human use; amendment of tentative final monograph. Fed Regist. 1991;56:37622-37635.
13. FDA, HHS. Topical drug products containing benzoyl peroxide; required labeling; proposed rule. Fed Regist. 1995;60:9554-9558.
14. Acne. MedlinePlus. www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/
acne.html. Accessed September 30, 2011.
15. Acne: causes. MedlinePlus. www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/
ency/article/000873.htm. Accessed September 30, 2011.
16. Meixner D, Schneider S, Krause M, et al. Acne inversa. J Dtsch Dermatol Ges. 2008;6:189-196.
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When one thinks of adults residing in the same household, the first people that come to mind are couples who are married or living together.
But there are other grown-up groupings: parents with adult children at home, parents with their parents in spare rooms, siblings sharing an abode, people taking care of ill relatives, unrelated adults renting an apartment together, servants or nannies residing on the premises, refugees clumped together during a war, and so on. Those kinds of household arrangements in literature are the subject of this blog post.
Why those arrangements? They’re done for reasons such as economics, love, neurosis, or tradition (for instance, in “the olden days” adult women often stayed home until they married). In real life, the situations of adults non-romantically living together can often be mundane; in the heightened world of literature, those arrangements are frequently depicted in more dramatic fashion.
Take Washington Square. In Henry James’ novel, things get rather interesting as rich, unkind Dr. Austin Sloper opposes his at-home daughter Catherine’s relationship with the not-very-solvent Morris Townsend because he suspects the charismatic Morris wants to marry the uncharismatic Catherine for her inheritance. (There’s a reason why the movie version of the book is called The Heiress.) Meanwhile, Dr. Sloper’s also-at-home sister Lavinia Penniman supports the possible marriage in her meddlesome, irritating way because she finds the whole scenario vicariously exciting.
James’ pal Edith Wharton offers another niece-aunt dynamic in The House of Mirth, which features the not-wealthy Lily Bart uneasily living with her wealthy but ungenerous Aunt Julia. When the aunt dies, Lily’s financial problems are seemingly over — until she learns that Julia mostly wrote her out of her will because of an alleged “scandal” for which Lily is not really to blame.
Adult daughters living with widowed fathers are memorably depicted in Jane Austen’s Persuasion and Emma. Anne Elliot is a together person from the start of Persuasion, with an unlikable dad. Emma Woodhouse grows as a person in Emma, with a likable but hypochondriacal dad.
Also in 19th-century Brit lit, George Eliot’s dramatic Daniel Deronda features various non-romantic living arrangements. After Daniel saves her, Mirah Lapidoth lives with the family of Daniel’s friend from school days. Meanwhile, Mirah’s brother Mordecai lives with a different family. Later, after Mirah and Mordecai find each other following years of separation, they share a household as siblings.
The Bronte sisters are part of this discussion, too. The title character in Charlotte’s Jane Eyre becomes the governess to Edward Rochester’s “ward” Adele at Thornfield Hall. (Though that situation eventually turns into a romance.) In Emily’s Wuthering Heights, servant Nelly Dean is the crucial narrator who lives with a number of the novel’s tempestuous and/or sickly adult characters.
Moving to 20th-century fiction, we have siblings Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert sharing a residence when they seek to adopt a boy to help on their farm. Instead, they end up with the delightful Anne Shirley in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird has the mysterious Radley family, including mentally challenged adult son Boo, in the same house. Then there’s the impoverished Ewell family dwelling — where the adult Mayella lives with her siblings and drunk, abusive father Bob. Boo and Bob “meet” during the novel’s famous conclusion.
In Elsa Morante’s History, Ida and her lovable son Giuseppe have to live in a shelter with many other adults and kids because of the ravages of war in 1940s Rome.
Cost-conscious college students and young adults sharing the same room or apartment appear in numerous fictional works, including Margaret Atwood’s debut novel The Edible Woman. Protagonist Marian shares a Toronto apartment with Ainsley — and the depiction of their interesting, at-times funny friendship is an early example of Atwood’s novel-writing skill.
What are your favorite literary works featuring adults (other than spouses/romantic partners) living together?
(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else. Also, please feel free to read through comments and reply to anyone you want; I love not only being in conversations, but also reading conversations in which I’m not involved!)
For three years of my Huffington Post literature blog, click here.
I’m also writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in New York City and Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at [email protected] to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson. | <urn:uuid:4c13bf3f-6ba1-4754-8c04-789db51058f6> | {
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William Wey (1405/6–1476) was a Fellow of Exeter College in Oxford and later bursar of Eton. His accounts of his pilgrimages to Compostella, Rome and Jerusalem in the years 1456-62 were edited by Francis Davey and published by the Bodleian last year. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry on him by Henry Summerson can be read here.
Since that was published in 2004, as the speaker explained, new material has become available which he was able to incorporate into his book
There is a website about Wey's pilgrimages here.
Amongst the points to which he drew attention was Wey's concern with exchange rates for money on his travels. He lists 40 types of currency, and would have depended upon letters of credit - probably from the Medici bank who had opened a London office in 1454. It is notoriously difficult to translate money values from such period into modern terms. One method suggests a multiplier of 437, another 500, but that helps put the 2 shillings fare from Dover to Calais into perspective; it was 4/3 for a man and a horse. The 40 ducats galley fee from Sicily to Jaffa amounts to something like £4000 in todays money. Totravel as Wey did required a sponsor - his income as a former fellow of Exeter or as bursar of Eton would not stretch to that and he may well have been sponsored by King HenryVI. te king certainly insisted that Eton gave him the time off with full pay.
An example of a sponor comes in the will of another west countryman, a Cornish mineowner who bequeathed 40 marks in 1406 to send a pilgrim on his behalf to the Holy Land. This was the equivalent of £11,000 - but had to cover nine months travel,lodging and food. Wey made that journey twice to the Holy Land.
Travel with large amounts of cash was not only risky but also impratical - on the galleys pilgrims has a space six feet by eighteeen inches for themselves an was d their possessions.
His motivation was something he set out in his accound, giving ten reasons for pilgrimage. Important to him was the acquisition of indulgences. In Rome he obtained 39,200 years of remitted temporal punishment and seven plenary indulgences.
In the Holy Land he would have undertaken a Franciscan-guided thirteen day tour. On display was a photograph of a map in the Bodleian Wey probably owned of the Holy Land. He had particular fascination with renewable miracles such as the wood where the birds did not sing from passion Sunday until Easter, or the spring which marke dthe spot where the star of the Epiphany came to earth,or alamp whiche burned for a whole year in front of a crucifix on just one filling of oil, or the Miracle of the Holy Fire at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem at Easter.
Christ's footprint was something he wanted to measure so as to calculate His height - notwithstanding the existence in Westminster Abbey of a similar relic of the Ascension. He was also very interested in the Valley of Jehosophat, where the Last Judgement will take place.
Another pilgrim, the German priest Felix Faber, was approached by afriend before going there and given a pebble with the friend's name on it so as to place it in the Valley and reserve a place for the Last Day - which, as Francis Davey pointed out, rather beats towels on poolside loungers.
Travel was hazardous. The classic account of the Holy Land pilgrimage in this period is R.J, Mitchell's The Spring Voyage , written in the 1930s from several fifteenth century accounts. Since then another has been found in recent years in the archives of Cologne, and published by the Bristol Record Society as The Case of Robert Sturmy. This, which in part covers the pilgrimage fleet of two galleys which included Wey himself, has many details he does not mention - international intrigue over the alum trade prompting Genoese pirates to atatck Venetian galleys, the death of Robert Sturmy in a battle at sea between Malta and Gozo and the attempt of a pirate captain to capture the wealthy English pilgrim John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester. Worcester, who had arrived only 36 hours before departure from Venice, unlike the much longer waiting times for lesser mortals, complete with his retinue of 28, including not only chaplains, but also his organist. With the galleys being dogged by reports of an impending attack on their return Worcester eventually made his escape on afast boat from a Venetian outpost on the Albanian coast, to go on to study humanist ideas in Italy, return to England as a Yorkist Lord High Constable with an unenviable reputation for savagery as a judge in the years 1462 to 1470 before being beheaded himself in 1470 during the readeption of King Henry VI.
John Tiptoft Earl of Worcester
from his monument in Ely Cathedral.
Given his Yorkist sympathies it is interesting that the Earl is wearing the Lancastrian collar of SS
Worcester was not the only aristocratic pilgrim of the period. Others who made the journey were Sir Baldwin Fulford from Devion, who accompanied Wey in 1456 and Earl Rivers in later years. Both of these men survived the pilgrimage only to fall beneath the headsman's axe in their native England in 1461 and 1483 respectively in the conflict between and within Lancaster and York. | <urn:uuid:e2690dc2-9983-4398-b40b-2dfa7dd069d0> | {
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While other high school students lounged by the pool, soaked up some sun or rested for the upcoming school year, Kira Boles of Oakland High School in Murfreesboro learned how to make Raspberry Pi.
But it’s not the dessert people know and love.
In late June, Boles and other high schoolers used their skills in computer science and engineering to code video games in an MTSU computer classroom inside Kirksey Old Main.
They were part of MTSU Coding Camp, a summer camp that involved game programming with Raspberry Pis, tiny and affordable high-performance computers that promote teaching of basic computer science in schools.
Coding Camp gives boys and girls who have an interest in computer science an opportunity to receive hands-on training from MTSU faculty and staff. Each attendee this summer learned how to assemble a Raspberry Pi, creating a microcomputer that operates all the functions of the gaming systems they were creating.
Boles has coded since 2014, thanks to her mom signing her up early for coding experiences. For as long as she can remember, the art of coding has stuck with her.
“I really enjoy it, so I continued to do it throughout the years. Now I’d like to do something with it in college,” the high school senior said, adding that engineering runs in her family. She sees herself going in a different direction, however.
“I want to do cybersecurity,” Boles explained. “I really want to protect people against cyberthreats and cyberattacks.”
Boles said that discovering and playing with the technology the program provides is nothing short of amazing.
“I love that we can make our own games. That’s my favorite thing,” she said. “I’ve been into making games, but I wasn’t completely sure if that’s what I wanted to do. Now it’s something I’d like to do on the side.”
MTSU has held coding camps for three years, offering students the opportunity of learning how to code on several different platforms, including HyperText Markup Language, or HTML, the standard language to create Web pages; Scratch, a free programming language and online community where participants can create their own interactive stories, games and animations; and now a gaming software that creates similar functions to the game Asteroids.
“I’ve always been interested in coding. I just didn’t know where to start,” said David Bystrom, a Blackman High School student.
First-time camp instructor Neal McClain, director of library technology in the James E. Walker Library, led the camp with help from Dr. Chrisila Pettey, chair of the Department of Computer Science.
“They get to keep their Raspberry Pi,” McClain said. “The idea is that they learn some basic programming skills and get some exposure to a field they may or may not find themselves interested in down the road. A lot of these high school students are interested in video games.”
Organizers of the camp, which is sponsored by the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce, are urging high school students with an interest in computer science to apply for next year’s camp.
For more information about the camp, contact Pettey at 615-898-2397 or [email protected].
— Jayla Jackson ([email protected]) | <urn:uuid:661ab292-a734-46df-80e2-9af939f78ba3> | {
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No, it's not the government.
The year 1913 saw the creation of a banking monopoly called the Federal Reserve System that would have federal appointees control the money supply - although the Constitution never authorized any such thing. It also saw the “ratification” of the Sixteenth Amendment which authorized the income tax, and the Seventeenth Amendment which called for the direct election of Senators by the people.
These three events essentially gave the federal government unlimited power regardless of what the Constitution said. The American people were dependent on the Fed for their access to the money supply, and what they acquired from it could be taxed away by Congress. Dependent upon the government for virtually the entire state of economic affairs, the direct election of Senators was the final nail in the coffin of the Republic that once was. When Senators were appointed by state legislatures, those legislative members were jealous of their own power, which meant they would send to Washington Senators who would protect the state’s wealth and rights to self-government.
But when the Senators could appeal directly to the people, instead of jealous state legislators, they would be able to more effectively transform the nature of the federal government from that of a democratic republic to a republican democracy. The Congress, and all the branches of the federal government, would now have greater power over the people than their own states did. There was no check on ambitious Senators from within their own states, and they would no longer protect the interests of their states, but rather protect the economic interests of this now-servile citizenry. Washington D.C. is where the money is, and I’ll bring my state’s “fair share” of the nation’s wealth home.
Many of us do not realize that the system of checks and balances in our nation’s system of government was not only amongst the three branches of the federal government, but also on checks from the state: one branch of Congress would be accountable to the people, the other accountable to the state legislature.. The direct election of Senators made a farce of this system. The people in each state would elect the two Senators from the state, which means that for the composition of the Senate the voting power of one voter in a small-population state was many times that of a large population state: today the imbalance between citizens in Wyoming and California is around a ratio of sixty to one. And this at the very time when, with the new Fed monopoly and the income tax, more and more power transferred to Washington. Somebody like Tom Daschle from South Dakota could become second-most powerful politician on the globe, when, considering the population of the United States, virtually nobody voted for him.
The relationship was different when the states were treated as equals in their sovereignty, Senators were accountable to their state legislatures, and the powers of the federal government were limited. But no longer. While I think the income tax and the Fed were such powerful tools for politicians that virtually no traditional Constitutional check would have restrained the federal government, I am certain that the direct election of Senators speeded up the process by quite a bit.
What did we get? World War I in four years, a war that had nothing to do with national security but which gave federal politicians far greater power over our lives. And then what followed? Prohibition. Then the New Deal. Insane agricultural policies. Then dragging us in to World War II as a means to revive the economy. Massive tax increases. Then the United Nations and other international bureaucracies. And Korea, Vietnam, the abolition of freedom of association through Civil Rights Acts. And the Great Society, the abolition of the gold standard and the introduction of permanent inflation, plus the regulatory state, the War on Drugs, and ballooning deficits. And an out-of-control Supreme Court that thinks prayer in a local public school is a First Amendment issue but the national prohibition of criticism of federal politicians is not.
But it also must be admitted: Americans are healthier and live longer. They have greater time for and access to arts and leisure. They are more productive than they’ve ever been. With the greater choices from affluence, it would seem that Americans are freer. There seems to be a correlation: more government means greater prosperity and freedom. That maybe through it all, our system “worked” for the benefit of the American people.
And I agree, the "system" worked, but the "system" was not the government. In fact, the only thing the government really did was make things much worse than they would have been. Indeed, there’s scarcely been a time, except for our wars and the government-induced and -prolonged Great Depression, where we weren’t better off than at any time before. Even before the era of big government, the people prospered. The economy grew. Even people, as a result of better diet due to greater wealth, grew.
Greater prosperity for all is a reality of our culture that keeps chugging along. More and cheaper products are available to more and more people despite government taxation and regulation. And two words account for this miracle:
I know, I know, please don’t write your letters. I know that since the Constitution’s inception that there’s been a large class of influential wealthy people and politicians who have believed in trade restrictions and managed-trade bureaucracies, seeking exclusive advantage in the American market over outside competitors. We’ve never had fully free trade with other nations, though to the extent that we had it, the more prosperous we and our trading partners became. So let me extend it to five words:
Free trade between the states.
Of all of the provisions in the Constitution, this is one of the few still standing. A state can’t levy protective tariffs on goods from another state, and the trade policy with foreign countries is uniform throughout the states, directed by the federal government. And we are a large market. Once you jump through all of the regulatory hoops, if you have developed a product or service that is attractive for its quality, price, or both, than you have a market of hundreds of millions. No state can make money from placing an import tax, or tariff, on your product. That’s why our stores are shelved with great quantities of many different products. And why what was rare twelve years ago, like DVD’s or access to the Internet, is now commonplace.
This is the secret of prosperity of the United States, and of Canada, of the European Union, and of a growing part of east Asia and of several other parts of the world. Despite all of the socialist measures and regulations, where there is still enough freedom of action to make a profit from one’s own hard work and/or talents, there is going to be greater prosperity for all.
The danger is always that the government will take credit for something it did not and could not do: engineer prosperity. The danger is the myth that the economy can be “fixed” by politicians in Washington. But the economy can’t be fixed, because it is always evolving. The best thing that politicians can do for the prosperity of our nation is to enact budget cuts, tax cuts, and deregulation. For the more freedom the individual has to make a profit from his hard work and/or talent, then even better off will we be. | <urn:uuid:55273557-b047-4b11-a3e9-b840172bd510> | {
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|Part of a series on|
A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, one is required to put pieces together in a logical way, in order to arrive at the correct solution of the puzzle. There are different types of puzzles for different ages, such as crossword puzzles, word-search puzzles, number puzzles, or logic puzzles.
Puzzles are often devised as a form of entertainment but they can also arise from serious mathematical or logistical problems. In such cases, their solution may be a significant contribution to mathematical research.
Solutions of puzzles often require the recognition of patterns and the creation of a particular kind of order. People with a high level of inductive reasoning aptitude may be better at solving such puzzles than others. But puzzles based upon inquiry and discovery may be solved more easily by those with good deduction skills. Deductive reasoning improves with practice.
The 1989 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary dates the word puzzle (as a verb) to the end of the 16th century. Its first documented use (to describe a new type of game) was in a book titled The Voyage of Robert Dudley...to the West Indies, 1594–95, narrated by Capt. Wyatt, by himself, and by Abram Kendall, master (published circa 1595). The word later came to be used a noun.
The word puzzle comes from pusle "bewilder, confound" which is a frequentive of the obsolete verb pose (from Medieval French aposer) in sense of "perplex". The meaning of the word as "a toy contrived to test one's ingenuity" is relatively recent (within mid-19th century).
The first jigsaw puzzle was created around 1760, when John Spilsbury, a British engraver and cartographer, mounted a map on a sheet of wood, which he then sawed around the outline of each individual country on the map. He then used the resulting pieces as an aid to the teaching of geography.
After becoming popular among the public, this kind of teaching aid remained the primary use of jigsaw puzzles until about 1820.
By the early 20th century, magazines and newspapers had found that they could increase their readership by publishing puzzle contests.
Organizations and events
There are organizations and events that cater to puzzle enthusiasts, such as the World Puzzle Championship, the National Puzzlers' League, and Ravenchase. There are also "puzzlehunts," such as the Maze of Games.
Types of puzzles
Puzzles can be divided into categories. For example a maze is a type of tour puzzle. Some other categories are construction puzzles, stick puzzles, tiling puzzles, transport puzzles, disentanglement puzzles, lock puzzles, folding puzzles, combination puzzles, and mechanical puzzles.
- A chess problem is a puzzle that uses chess pieces on a chess board. Examples are the knight's tour and the eight queens puzzle.
- Jigsaw puzzles.
- Lateral thinking puzzles, also called "situation puzzles"
- Mathematical puzzles include the missing square puzzle and many impossible puzzles — puzzles which have no solution, such as the Seven Bridges of Königsberg, the three cups problem, and three utilities problem
- Mechanical puzzles such as the Rubik's Cube and Soma cube
- Metapuzzles are puzzles which unite elements of other puzzles.
- Paper-and-pencil puzzles such as Uncle Art's Funland, connect the dots, and nonograms
- Peg solitaire
- A puzzle box is a puzzle that can be used to hide something — jewelry, for instance.
- Rubik's Cube and other combination puzzles can be stimulating toys for children or recreational activities for adults.
- Sangaku (Japanese temple tablets with geometry puzzles)
- Sliding puzzles (also called sliding tile puzzles) such as the 15 Puzzle and jigsaw puzzles. Puzz-3D is a three-dimensional variant of this type.
- Spot the difference
- Word puzzles, including anagrams, ciphers, crossword puzzles, and word search puzzles.
A completed jigsaw puzzle
- Kendall G.; Parkes A.; and Spoerer K. (2008) A Survey of NP-Complete Puzzles, International Computer Games Association Journal, 31(1), pp 13–34.
- History of Jigsaw Puzzles The American Jigsaw Puzzle Society
|Wikiquote has quotations related to: Puzzle|
|Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Puzzles|
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Neutron vs Neutrino
Though earlier scientists like Dalton thought, atom is the smallest unit, which makes up any substance, later they found there are several other sub atomic particles also. Electrons, protons, and neutrons are the main sub atomic particles in an atom. In the structure of an atom, scientists describe how all these sub particles are arranged within an atom. Later on there were discoveries on some other sub atomic particles like Electrons, protons, and neutrons .
Neutron is a sub atomic particle, which resides in the nucleus of an atom. It is denoted by n. Neutron does not have a charge. Its mass is 1.674927 X 10−27 kg, which is slightly higher than the mass of a proton. A nucleus of an atom also contains protons, which are positively charged. If there are only protons in the nuclei, the repulsion between those will be higher. Therefore, presence of neutrons is important to bind the protons together in the nuclei. Single element can have different number of neutrons in their nuclei. These atoms, which have similar numbers of electrons or protons and different neutrons, are known as isotopes. For example, among the isotopes of hydrogen, protium doesn’t have neutrons, and deuterium has only one neutron. Tritium nucleus contains two neutrons with one proton. Sometimes the number of neutrons can be similar to the proton number, but it not necessarily has to be that way. Neutrons and protons in the nucleus are collectively known as nucleons. By looking at the atomic number and the mass number of an element, we can determine the number of neutrons it has.
Number of neutrons= mass number- atomic number
Rutherford first described the neutron in 1920. Since it has no charge, it was difficult to detect neutrons. Afterwards, James Chadwick discovered the neutron. The experiment, which leads to the discovery, was bombarding beryllium metal with alpha particles. They observed that, after bombarding, a non-ionizing, very penetrating radiation emitted from Beryllium. When this radiation is allowed to hit with a paraffin wax block, it produces protons. Later, they found that, the radiation emitted from the Beryllium is neutrons. Neutrons are emitted by unstable, heavy nuclei, and they play an important role in nuclear reactions. These nuclei become stable by neutron emission, which happens in spontaneous fission. Neutrons are important in energy production through chain reactions.
Neutrino is a sub atomic particle with a small mass (similar to electrons) and no electrical charge. Since there is no electrical charge, neutrinos are not affected by the electrical or magnetic forces. It is shown by the letter ѵ(nu). Three types of neutrinos have been described as electron neutrino, muon neutrino and tau neutrino. Neutrino has a spin of half integer. It is hard to determine neutrinos directly as they don’t carry a charge, and don’t ionize the materials they are passing through. The present detectors can only detect the high energy neutrinos.
What is the difference between Neutron and Neutrino?
• Neutrons have a higher mass than neutrinos.
• Neutrons are closely similar to the protons in their mass. Neutrinos are closely related to the electrons in their mass. However, both these particles don’t have a charge.
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Welcome to the NYC Elder Abuse Center’s (NYCEAC) news and resource roundup blog, The Field Guide. We’ve selected and analyzed pertinent articles and resources relevant to More →
“The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.”
– Bill Gates
Using social networking and online gaming as a gateway into the digital world, older Internet users are joining Facebook, Twitter, and Skype to connect with friends and family, and participate in online communities. In this blog, we examine these promising opportunities for older adults, as well as highlight some important resources for preventing elder abuse and financial exploitation online.
The Internet is best known for its fast-paced nature and bold presentations of youth culture. It may come as a surprise then that the fastest growing demographic of Internet users is adults 74 years and older, according to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. Through online engagement, older adults are becoming more active in today’s vibrant digital culture, contributing their knowledge and wisdom to the dialectic mosaics of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
This national trend of integration into the digital town square has the potential to yield positive benefits for the mental and emotional well being of older adults. With about 25% of the nation’s older adults expressing clinically significant symptoms for depressive disorders, it’s important to consider the importance of countering social isolation, which is a serious risk factor for elder abuse.
The Benefits of Online Engagement for Older Adults
In a 2012 study, sociologist Dr. Shelia Cotten, a Professor at the University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB), reported a 20-28% decrease in depressive symptoms among older adults who regularly engage in online activities. “It’s this kind of bigger sense of mattering, in the social world, if you will,” Cotten explained in an interview with the Atlantic. “You’re not just something that’s been pushed off to the wayside anymore. You still have consequence.”
Researchers from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas found that playing online multi-player video games can also have positive socialization benefits for elder gamers. While online gaming is popular across all generations, Trinity’s study reports that older gamers play longer and most often participate in games focused on cooperation rather than competition. So while accepting Facebook friend requests from you parents and grandparents may have been unexpected, just wait until you meet their World of Warcraft avatar!
Social Media Classes for Older Internet Users
Organizations like Older Adults Technology Services (OATS), offer computer training, seminars on online safety, and social networking classes in local senior centers. According to their mission statement, “OATS is committed to maximizing the power of technology to help older adults to live healthier, more connected, socially engaged lives.” Their course, “Social Networking for Older Adults” helps students create their own Facebook page and connect with friends, family members, and invites them to participate in their Senior Planet Digital Community.
With services on the web and on the ground, Senior Planet has “engaged, trained and supported older adults in using technology to improve their quality of life and enhance their social and civic engagement.” Launched online in 2006, Senior Planet is an exciting tool for encouraging older adults to engage online and celebrate aging.
In an interview with Mashable, Sarah Hoit, the CEO of Connected Living, argued that all generations should be included in today’s digital culture. “Social engagement is especially important for seniors who depend on remote family members for support or who are going through life transitions such as the loss of a spouse or the need to move out of their house into an assisted living community.” Connected Living seeks to connect older adults with each other and the digital world at large through offering technology classes in assisted living homes, where many residents often suffer from social isolation and depression.
Preventing Elder Financial Abuse Online
The exciting benefits to online engagement must be met with apprehension for the digital vulnerability of older adults, who are prime targets for many large-scale Internet scams. The Government Accountability Office has deemed elder financial exploitation an “epidemic with society-wide repercussions,” robbing victims of millions each year.
The growing population of older Internet users is a welcomed trend in the digital world, as they contribute greatly to the robustness of our digital town squares. We must stay ahead of this burgeoning digital trend. Thus, further research is needed to determine whether older adults participating in online culture are at risk for elder financial abuse and if so, how to prevent this abuse from occurring. As elder justice advocates, we must raise awareness and take action against elder financial exploitation and it’s ever increasing presence in the global village of tomorrow.
by Alexandra Pearson, Communications Specialist, NYCEAC | <urn:uuid:4cc3f90b-5643-491e-877b-4cd2e16d1bfd> | {
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English settlers came to America to spread the gospel.
April 29 marks the anniversary of an event that is central to CBN's
ministry today. On that day in 1607 a nation was born when travel-weary
Englishmen landed at Cape Henry on the shores of Virginia. There they
established the foundation for what would become the most powerful
country the world has ever seen.
Act 1, Scene 1 of the drama that was to be the United States unfolded
that day at Cape Henry, and the legacy of godliness on American shores
From these shores, settlers claimed the day for the glory of Jesus
Christ, promising that the gospel of God's kingdom would go forth
to the nations.
America's destiny and purpose were sealed with the cross they erected
at Cape Henry. All that would follow in our nation's growth hinged
on the single proclamation that this land belonged to Jesus Christ.
In the Mayflower Compact of 1620, the Pilgrims reaffirmed the mission
set forth by the original Virginia settlers.
"All of us were taught that the Pilgrims came to America for freedom
of worship or religious freedom, but that's really not true," says
Dr. Peter Marshall, an author and historian. "They said that they
came to America to 'propagate the gospel among the Indians and to
become, themselves, stepping stones for the furtherance of the gospel
to the outermost parts of the Earth.' So they were missionaries."
The Puritans carried the Cape Henry legacy further. On the deck of
the Arbella, halfway between England and Cape Cod, leader John Winthrop
declared, "We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people
are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this
work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help
from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world."
Winthrop's phrasing was revealing, says Marshall. "When you bring
up Winthrop's phrase there, `the city upon a hill,' that's the heart
and the core of what America's been all about since day one. Point
being here that the basis for American life was to be committed Christians
who were to so let their light shine to one another and then to the
whole world, that the world could see that as an example."
More than 100 years later, as America set off on her own course toward
independence, the godly foundations laid in Virginia established the
character of our Revolution.
"Before God, I believe the hour has come," said John Adams of
the Revolution. "My judgment approves this measure and my whole heart
is in it. All that I have, all that I am and all that I hope in this
life I am now ready to stake upon it. And I leave off as I began,
that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It
is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God, it shall be my
dying sentiment. Independence now and independence forever."
George Washington's pure, Christian heart, Benjamin Franklin's call
to prayer, and John Adams' reverence for the will of God symbolize
the undying commitment of our Founding Fathers to the creation of
a nation that would glorify God. The American character was born in
Scripture and nurtured by the Holy Spirit, yet today, our national
heritage is under siege.
Bishop James Madison warned of such a risk in 1795: "The moment that
religion, the pure and undefiled religion, loses its influence over
our hearts, from that fatal moment, farewell to public and private
happiness. Farewell--a long farewell--to virtue, to patriotism, to
Nearly 400 years have passed since America was first conceived at
Cape Henry, and respect for our roots is growing cold. Yet one undeniable
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Oldenburg Castle is the former residence of the counts, dukes and grand dukes of Oldenburg in the capital and imperial seat of Oldenburg.
Oldenburg Castle stuns visitors in light yellow; its appearance frequently changed over the centuries. At the beginning of the 17th century, Count Anton Günther had his residential seat built in the Renaissance style. Later, the castle façade was endowed with rococo elements. At the end of the 18th century, the library wing was erected, and the castle interior was remodelled in the Classicist style. Some of the historical state rooms are still almost completely preserved today. Large parts of the façade, however, are unmistakeably from the Baroque period.
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Whether objects are case-sensitive or not is partly determined by the underlying operating system. Unix-based systems are case-sensitive, Windows is not, while Mac OS X is usually not, but can be if UFS volumes are used.
Log file group name are case sensitive.
The lower_case_table_names server system variable plays a key role. It determines whether table names, aliases and database names are compared in a case-sensitive manner. If set to 0 (the default on Unix-based systems), table names and aliases and database names are compared in a case-sensitive manner. If set to 1 (the default on Windows), names are stored in lowercase and not compared in a case-sensitive manner. If set to 2 (the default on Mac OS X), names are stored as declared, but compared in lowercase.
It is thus possible to make Unix-based systems behave like Windows and ignore case-sensitivity, but the reverse is not true, as the underlying Windows filesystem can not support this.
Even on case-insensitive systems, you are required to use the same case consistently within the same statement. The following statement fails, as it refers to the table name in a different case.
SELECT * FROM a_table WHERE A_table.id>10;
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The Theory of Search Is the Economics of Discovery:
Some Thoughts Prompted by Sir David Hendry’s Essay *
in Rationality, Markets and Morals (RMM) Special Topic:
Statistical Science and Philosophy of Science
Part 1 (of 2)
Professor Clark Glymour
Alumni University Professor
Department of Philosophy[i]
Carnegie Mellon University
Professor Hendry* endorses a distinction between the “context of discovery” and the “context of evaluation” which he attributes to Herschel and to Popper and could as well have attributed also to Reichenbach and to most contemporary methodological commentators in the social sciences. The “context” distinction codes two theses.
1.“Discovery” is a mysterious psychological process of generating hypotheses; “evaluation” is about the less mysterious process of warranting them.
2. Of the three possible relations with data that could conceivably warrant a hypothesis—how it was generated, its explanatory connections with the data used to generate it, and its predictions—only the last counts.
Einstein maintained the first but not the second. Popper maintained the first but that nothing warrants a hypothesis. Hendry seems to maintain neither–he has a method for discovery in econometrics, a search procedure briefly summarized in the second part of his essay, which is not evaluated by forecasts. Methods may be esoteric but they are not mysterious. And yet Hendry endorses the distinction. Let’s consider it.
As a general principle rather than a series of anecdotes, the distinction between discovery and justification or evaluation has never been clear and what has been said in its favor of its implied theses has not made much sense, ever. Let’s start with the father of one of Hendry’s endorsers, William Herschel. William Herschel discovered Uranus, or something. Actually, the discovery of the planet Uranus was a collective effort with, subject to vicissitudes of error and individual opinion, was a rational search strategy. On March 13, 1781, in the course of a sky survey for double stars Hershel reports in his journal the observation of a “nebulous star or perhaps a comet.” The object came to his notice how it appeared through the telescope, perhaps the appearance of a disc. Herschel changed the magnification of his telescope, and finding that the brightness of the object changed more than the brightness of fixed stars, concluded he had seen a comet or “nebulous star.” Observations that, on later nights, it had moved eliminated the “nebulous star” alternative and Herschel concluded that he had seen a comet. Why not a planet? Because lots of comets had been hitherto observed—Edmund Halley computed orbits for half a dozen including his eponymous comet—but never a planet. A comet was much the more likely on frequency grounds. Further, Herschel had made a large error in his estimate of the distance of the body based on parallax values using his micrometer. A planet could not be so close.
Herschel communicated his observations to the British observatories at Oxford and Greenwich, which took up the observations as, soon, did astronomers on the continent. Maskelyne quickly concluded the object was a planet, not a comet, but multiple attempts were made on the continent to fit a parabolic orbit. Every further observation conflicted whichever parabolic hypothesis had been fitted to the previous data. By early summer of 1781 Lexell had computed a circular orbit and (very accurate) distance had been computed using the extreme observations including Herschel’s original observation, but the accumulating data showed an eccentricity. The elements of the elliptic orbit were given by Laplace early in 1783. In all, it took nearly two years for Herschel’s object to be certified a planet.
There was a logic to the process, but there is no natural place to chop it into context of discovery and context of justification, and no value in chopping it anywhere. Herschel had a criterion for noting an anomalous object—the appearance of a disc. An anomalous object could be one of three kinds: a comet, a planet, an anomalous star. Herschel had a quick test—changing magnification—that eliminated the stellar option. Based on the history of astronomical observations a comet was far more likely than a new planet, and that option was investigated first, by attempts to compute a parabolic orbit that would predict subsequent observations. When that failed, and the body failed to show distinctive signs of a comet—a tail for example—the planet hypothesis was resorted to, first by computing the simplest orbit, a circle, and when that failed, the elliptical orbit.
The example is a near-paradigm of how to recognize and determine salient properties of a rare object. First, a cheap criterion for recognizing a candidate; then an ordering based on prior data of the alternative hypotheses; then applying the criterion for the likeliest candidate—a parabolic orbit for a candidate—and, testing on further observations, rejecting it. Then applying the criterion for the remaining candidate in its simplest form, rejecting it, applying the criterion in a more complex form, and succeeding. There is a collective decision flow chart, which I leave to the reader.
What is striking is the economy of the procedure. Cheap tests (noting the visual features of the object, changing the magnification) were applied first, tests requiring more data and more calculation (computing orbits) only applied when the cheap tests were passed. The alternative explanations were examined in the order of their prior probability which was also in some respects the order of their data requirements (elliptic orbits required more data than parabolic orbits), so that if the most probable hypothesis succeeded—which it did not–the effort of testing the less probable would be avoided. A cheap (in data requirements and calculational effort) test (circular orbit) of the less probable hypothesis was applied before the more demanding, and ultimately successful test.
There is a lesson in the example. Testing is a cog in the machine of search, a part of the process of discovery, not a separate thing, “justification.” And a larger lesson: there are strategies to search, better and worse in the conditions of success and better and worse in the costs they risk. In a slogan, the theory of search is the economics of discovery. The slogan is only semi-original. Pierce described the process of abduction/deduction/test/abduction as the “economics of research.” As usual, he was inspired, but “abduction” never came to anything practical.
Could there be search procedures behind the discovery of things more abstract than planets? Cannizaro’s discovery of the values of relative atomic weights might serve as an example. But what about real big juicy theories, the theory of relativity say? We don’t know precisely what went on in the brains of Einstein and Hilbert, the two discoverers of the theory, but we know something about what they knew or assumed that constrained their respective searches: they wanted field theories, which meant partial differential equations; they wanted the equations to be coordinate independent, or covariant; they wanted the equivalence principle—unforced motions would follow geodesics of a metric; they wanted a theory to account for the anomalous advance of Mercury’s perihelion. It is not at all implausible that an automated search with those constraints would turn up the field equations of general relativity as the most constrained explanation.
In sum, search methods are pretty common in science if not always explicit. They could be made a lot more common if the computer and the algorithms it allows were put to work in explicit search methods. Both philosophers and statisticians warn against search methods, even as statisticians use them—variable selection by regression is a search method, and so is principal components factor analysis. Herschel and Popper and Reichenbach seem not to have imagined the possibility of automated search, but Hempel did. Hempel claimed such searches could never discover anything novel because a computational procedure could not introduce “novel” properties. (Little did he know.) A thousand metaphors are apt: Search is the wandering Jew of methodology, useful but detested, a real enough bogeyman to scare graduate students. But even enlightened spirits who do not truck with such anti-search bigotry often imply that the fact that a hypothesis was found by a search method cannot itself be evidence for the hypothesis. And that is just wrong.
A search procedure can be thought of as a statistical estimator, and in many applications that is not just a way of thinking but the very thing. There is assumed a space, possibly infinite, of possible hypotheses. There is a space of possible data samples, each of which may be ordered (as in time) or not. A search procedure is a partial function from samples to subsets of the hypothesis space. If the hypotheses are probabilistic, then all of the usual criteria for statistical estimators are well defined: consistency, bias, rate of convergence, efficiency, sufficiency and so on. Some of the usual theorems of estimation theory may not apply in some cases because the search set up is not restricted to parametric models and the search need not be a point estimator—i.e., it may return a set of alternative models.
Statistical estimators have epistemic relationships and trade-offs. Some estimators have convergence theorems that hold under weaker assumptions than other estimators. The trade-off is usually in reduced information in cases in which the stronger assumptions are actually true. Hence “robust statistics.” The same is true of search methods. Linear regression as a method of searching for causal relations is pointwise consistent under extraordinarily strong assumptions; FCI, by now an old standard in graphical model search, has much weaker sufficient conditions for pointwise consistency but provides much less information even in circumstances in which regression assumptions are correct. In other cases, there is something akin to dominance. The PC algorithm, for example, gives the same causal information as regression whenever regression does (given the information that the predictors are not effects of the outcome) but also in many cases when regression does not.
I think ordinary parameter estimation provides evidence for the estimated parameter values. The quality of the evidence depends of course on the properties of the estimator: Is it consistent? What is the variance of the estimate? What is the rationale for the hypothesis space—the parametric family of probability distributions for which properties of the estimation function have been proved? But issues of quality do not undermine the general principle that parameter estimates are evidence for and against parameter values. So it is with model search, there is better and worse.
*Hendry, D. (2011) “Empirical Economic Model Discovery and Theory Evaluation”, in Rationality, Markets and Morals, Volume 2 Special Topic: Statistical Science and Philosophy of Science, Edited by Deborah G. Mayo, Aris Spanos and Kent W. Staley: 115-145.
[i] Clark Glymour is also a Senior Research Scientist at IHMC (Florida Institute for Human and Machine Learning).
He works on machine learning, especially on methods for automated causal inference, on the psychology of human causal judgement, and on topics in mathematical psychology.
His books include:
Theory and Evidence (Princeton, 1980);
Examining Holistic Medicine (with D. Stalker), Prometheus, 1985;
Foundations of Space-Time Theories (with J. Earman), University of Minnesota Press, 1986;
Discovering Causal Structure (with R. Scheines, P. Spirtes and K.Kelly) Academic Press, 1987;
Causation, Prediction and Search (with P.Spirtes and R. Scheines), Springer, 1993, 2nd Edition MIT Press, 2001;
Thinking Things Through, MIT Press, 1994;
Android Epistemology (with K. Ford and P. Hayes) MIT/AAAI Press, 1996;
Bayes Nets and Graphical Causal Models in Psychology, MIT Press, 2001.
Galileo in Pittsburgh, Harvard University Press, 2010 (with Wang Wei and Dag Westerstahl, eds.)
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On September 3, 1980, the owner of the St. Lucie Nuclear Station in Florida conducted an emergency drill. Part of the drill examined the performance of local emergency and rescue organizations. Plant workers notified local officials of the drill and requested that an emergency crew be dispatched to the site.
An emergency vehicle rushed to the site as requested. Security guards waved the vehicle through the security gate. A security guard guided the emergency crew to the auxiliary building and then escorted the crew into the main control room.
Inside the control room, plant workers discovered that an unauthorized person had accompanied the emergency responders onto the plant site and into the control room. That individual – a reporter for a local newspaper – was promptly escorted out of the plant.
The reporter had been working on a series of articles about local and emergency organizations when the drill started. He tagged along with the emergency crew as they responded to the plant’s call and inadvertently gained access to the main control room of the St. Lucie nuclear plant.
Talk about freedom of the press!
Incidents like this one demonstrate the value of the periodic emergency exercises. In addition to their value helping onsite and offsite responders gain awareness about their roles and responsibilities during a nuclear plant accident, they reveal glitches from time to time.
It is far better to find and fix a glitch during an exercise than to encounter it during an actual emergency. The intense stress and strain inherent with actual nuclear plant emergencies has a way of growing glitches into gaping holes.
While it’s best never to experience an actual nuclear plant emergency so as to avoid even the potential for tripping over a glitch, second-best is finding and fixing glitches during exercises where even the trips are simulated.
“Fission Stories” is a weekly feature by Dave Lochbaum. For more information on nuclear power safety, see the nuclear safety section of UCS’s website and our interactive map, the Nuclear Power Information Tracker.
Support from UCS members make work like this possible. Will you join us? Help UCS advance independent science for a healthy environment and a safer world. | <urn:uuid:a26315dd-e572-4bbf-b345-03a36967f20c> | {
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Date of Award
Master of Science (MS)
STEM and Professional Studies
John M. Ritz
Electrometallurgical industries comprise an important segment of the world's manufacture of metal products. These industries involve three major categories: electrowinnowing, electrorefining and electroplating. Electrowinnowing consists of purifying raw ore to a relatively pure metal by electrolysis. Extraction of aluminum from bauxite is an example. Electrorefining involves electrolysis of metallic solutions to recover or produce extremely pure metal. Recovery of precious metals is often done by electrorefining. Electroplating involves the coating of one metal or object with another metal for various reasons. The chief reasons are the protection of a part from corrosion or its beautification. Another type of electroplating is done to repair or replace worn surfaces and in some cases to form an entirely new metal surface for some nonmetallic object. This last type of electroplating is generally called electroforming.1 This article will be concerned with electroplating.
Farrell, James G., "Electroplating" (1974). OTS Master's Level Projects & Papers. 567. | <urn:uuid:a750da29-eea8-4c08-b01c-63ece75e0a39> | {
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Image by Bibliothèque nationale de France, via Wikimedia Commons
Marie Curie has a place in history because of her research on radioactivity, of course, but a look into her biography reveals another area she had a part in pioneering: crowdfunding. It happened in 1921, 23 years after she discovered radium and a decade after she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (her second Nobel, the first being the Physics prize, shared with her husband Pierre and physicist Henri Becquerel in 1903). The previous year, writes Ann M. Lewicki in the journal Radiology, an American reporter by the name of Marie Meloney had landed a rare interview with Curie, during which the famed physicist-chemist admitted her greatest desire: “some additional radium so that she could continue her laboratory research.”
It seems that “she who had discovered radium, who had freely shared all information about the extraction process, and who had given radium away so that cancer patients could be treated, found herself without the financial means to acquire the expensive substance.” Radium no longer exists in its pure form now, and even in 1921 it was, to quote Back to the Future‘s Doc Brown on plutonium, a little hard to come by: it cost $100,000 per gram back then, which Smithsonian.com’s Kat Eschner estimates at “about $1.3 million today.”
The solution arrived in the form of the Marie Curie Radium Fund, launched by Meloney and contributed to by numerous female academics, who raised more than half the full sum in less than a year. And so in 1921, as the National Institute of Standards and Technology tells it, “Marie Curie made her first visit to the United States accompanied by her two daughters Irène and Eve.” They visited, among other places, the Radium Refining Plant in Pittsburgh and the White House, where she received her gram of radium from President Warren Harding. “The hazardous source itself was not brought to the ceremony,” the NIST hastens to add. “Instead, she was presented with a golden key to the coffer and a certificate.”
The real stuff went back on the ship to Paris with her. As for that extra $56,413.54 proto-crowdfunded by the Marie Curie Radium Fund, it eventually went on to support the Marie Curie Fellowship, first awarded in 1963 to support a French or American woman studying chemistry, physics, or radiology. Given the costs of innovative research in those fields today, Curie’s intellectual descendants might have a hard time funding their work on, say, Kickstarter, but they have only to remember what happened when she ran out of radium to remind themselves of the untapped support potentially all around them.
An Animated Introduction to the Life & Work of Marie Curie, the First Female Nobel Laureate
Marie Curie Attended a Secret, Underground “Flying University” When Women Were Banned from Polish Universities
Marie Curie Invented Mobile X-Ray Units to Help Save Wounded Soldiers in World War I
Marie Curie’s Research Papers Are Still Radioactive 100+ Years Later
New Archive Puts 1000s of Einstein’s Papers Online, Including This Great Letter to Marie Curie
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. His projects include the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.
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The Italian Holocaust:
The Story of an Assimilated Jewish Community
Peter Egill Brownfeld
Some historians have tried to absolve Italians from their role in the holocaust, explaining that while Italy did institute racial laws, the extermination campaign was strictly a German invention. Those historians fail to take account of the impact of Italy’s 1938 racial laws, which instituted harsher restrictions than Germany’s first anti-Semitic legislation. They ignore the impact of the Italian anti-Semitic campaign, which worked to isolate Jews from Italian society and remove their wealth, measures that served to prepare for the much harsher German campaign. However, when considering Italy’s relationship with its Jews during World War II, it would be a mistake to look only at the official attitudes and ignore the behavior of the Italian people.,
The Italian Jews, representing just 0.1 percent of the Italian population, were the most assimilated Jews in Europe. Although Italy is a nation with a strong Catholic tradition, Jews were accepted as important members of society and were successful in the military, politics, and in every skilled profession. When Benito Mussolini’s government asked the Italian people to turn on their neighbors, an astoundingly large number said “No.” As a result, a higher percentage of Italian Jews were saved than in any other occupied country, aside from Denmark. The Italian role in the Holocaust is a complicated one, with condemnable official behavior, but an impressive popular rejection of anti-Semitic policies.
The Italian Jews were among the most assimilated in the world, benefiting from the absence of legal and social disadvantages that existed elsewhere. They spoke Italian or the local dialect rather than the Yiddish or Ladino that many of their European coreligionists spoke. They were engaged in politics, served at high rates in the military, and found success in every skilled profession. However, this was a relatively new position for the Italian Jews. Italy was one of the last countries in Europe to eliminate the ghetto with the liberation of Rome in 1870 during the Italian unification movement. In many Italian cities, the ghetto had been restored even after Napoleon had knocked down its walls.
Commenting on the success of the Jews in Italy, Alexander Stille, author of “Benevolence and Betrayal,” writes, “In the course of one generation, Italy had gone from being one of the most backward and repressive nations of Europe to being one of the most tolerant.... In a few decades Italian Jews achieved a level of acceptance without parallel in any other country. While France was bitterly divided over the fate of Captain Dreyfus, Italian Jews were acting as generals, cabinet ministers and prime ministers.”
Cecil Roth, author of “History of the Jews of Italy,” also described the nation as very accepting. “After 1870, there was no land in either hemisphere where conditions were or could be better. It was not only that disabilities were removed, as happened elsewhere too during these momentous years, but that the Jews were accepted freely, naturally and spontaneously as members of the Italian people, on a perfect footing of equality with their neighbors.”
Jews in Public Service
By 1902, out of 350 senators, there were six Jews. By 1920, there were nineteen Jewish senators. And in 1910, Luigi Luzzatti, a Venetian Jew, became prime minister.
Jews served in the military in numbers far outpacing their share of the population. Historian Renzo De Felice, writes in “The Jews in Fascist Italy” that at the end of the 19th Century, the Italian Jews were “almost fervent patriots.” When Rome was captured in 1870, there were 87 Jewish officers in the Italian army. There were fifty Jewish generals in the Italian army in World War 1. Piedmontese Jews had gained such a reputation for military service, that some historians have compared the Piedmontese Jewish community with Prussia because of its military tradition. More than one thousand Jews won medals for valor in World War I, and both the oldest and youngest volunteers to receive Italy’s highest military honor, the Gold Medal, were Jews. These figures display both the patriotism of Italian Jews and their desire to be accepted as full members of Italian society.
Jews also had succeeded in gaining social acceptance. According to the 1938 census, of married couples involving Jews, only 56.3 percent were both Jewish; the other 43.7 percent were mixed. Italy had a much higher intermarriage rate than other countries. In 1934, it was 11 percent in Germany. In Hungary in 1932 it was 14 percent. Roth writes that Jews were accepted throughout society, “It was not that the Italian Jews no longer suffered from any political disabilities, but that they no longer suffered to any serious degree even from prejudice. The profession of Judaism was regarded as an amiable eccentricity, rather than a social mistake.”
Day of Faith
Even under fascism, the loyalty of Italian Jews for their country did not wane. On December 18, 1935, Italian leader Benito Mussolini declared a national day of faith in which Mussolini requested the wedding rings of Italian women. The Day of Faith was called to show national solidarity in the face of international criticism over Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia. On that day, virtually every Italian synagogue celebrated the day by playing the Royal March (the Savoy hymn) and the fascist song ‘Giovinezza.’ A patriotic sermon followed, and the women relinquished their wedding rings.
In a typical Day of Faith sermon, Rabbi Rosenberg of Ancona said: “Today is the sacred Day of Faith. Today is the thirty-first day of the economic siege, ordered to humiliate the Italian people and stop its march to victory. But Italy is demonstrating today to the entire world its firm will to defeat the ignoble siege . . . and you, wives and mothers, are in the vanguard. Following the august example of the Queen of Italy you have today placed on the altar of the Fatherland the most precious object you possess.... More than a gift of gold, it is a gift of the soul.” Rosenberg emphasized that Jews had an additional reason for giving: “for the honor of your religion.”
Rabbi Aldo Lattes of Rome encouraged Jews to continue their Italian patriotism: “Just as during the war of unification the Jews did not lag behind in their sacrifice of blood, so today they should be second to none in the resistance to the iniquitous sanctions. Brothers and Sisters! Falling short today in the duty we owe the Fatherland would be a betrayal not only before mankind but also before the Lord! ... Strip from your houses all foreign products, make every possible economy, and give, give gold to the Fatherland!”
Attitude Toward Zionism
Because of their success in Italy and their full engagement in Italian society, Italian Jews were not as drawn to Zionism as some of their coreligionists in other European nations. One chronicler of the Jewish community in Rome noted, that there was little interest in Zionism. “Italian Jewry, or to be more precise the Italian Jews, considered themselves closed within the borders of the country they were living in, ecstatic at their own successes in politics, science, industry, the arts, journalism, and were well on their way towards the most complete assimilation, paving the way for the next generation to be completely absorbed and having their identity canceled.”
A member of one of Turin’s leading Jewish families, Ettore Ovazza, publicly rejected an appeal to aid the Zionist movement. “I cannot as an Italian participate in a program of such extreme consequences, particularly now in this moment, when we have a greater duty to participate in the front lines of the reconstruction of our country. In few nations in the world does the Jew enjoy such consideration as in Italy. ... We do not believe that in order to feel intimately connected to our fellow Jews suffering unjust persecutions it is necessary to create a second fatherland. It is not selfishness that stimulates my firm stand on this point, it is the higher sentiment of the Fatherland which from the ranks of the Thousand [Garibaldi’s troops] to the soldiers of Vittorio Veneto [the last Italian victory of World War I], so many of the purest heroes of Jewish blood have died for.”
There were active and vocal Italian Zionists, however few foresaw an aliyah for themselves or their countrymen. De Felice writes, “The majority of Italian Zionists, including those who belonged to the Italian Zionist Federation, all understood it as an `oriental’ issue, a way of saving other Jews who were being oppressed or persecuted. For them Zionism came down to a form of financial contribution to encourage emigration from Eastern Europe and moral solidarity with Jewish victims of oppression. Very few took Zionism to mean a moral and material movement that would include the happy as well as the unhappy Jews, the free Jews and those who were oppressed. For the majority, Zionism, on the ideological and cultural level, did not go beyond a certain curiosity for history, tradition, and folklore and a greater attachment to these elements.”
The Zionist magazine Israel, illustrates this point. In its last editorial, on September 22, 1938, before Fascism forced it to shut down, it stated, “A great and profound sense of being Italian exists among all Italian Jews. It does not come out of the blue nor from the history of this land, but was given to us with our mothers’ milk, our lullabies, the history of our grandparents, and with our maternal tongue, the Italian language. For us, it is a great and tragic sorrow that it is possible to throw doubt on the reality and grandeur of this feeling, and to misjudge the sincerity of the mettle shown by centuries of Jews living in Italy, taking part with heart and mind, like other Italians, in the life of this land.”
Jewish Fascists and Anti-Fascists
Italian fascism had been in power since 1922, and it only became anti-Semitic in 1938. Until then, Jews, like other conservative Italians, were likely to be members of the Fascist Party. Italian Jews were spread among all political parties and took positions on fascism as Italians, not as Jews.
Ettore Ovazza was one of the 230 Italian Jews who participated in the October 1922 March on Rome that installed Mussolini in power. In fact, the number of Jews who signed up as fascists was disproportionately high. Ovazza started a Jewish fascist newspaper, “La Nostra Bandiera” (Our Flag) in an effort to show that the Jews were among the regime’s most loyal followers. They defended Jews from anti-Semitism and attacked Zionists and anti-fascist Jews. Ovazza’s father, Ernesto, was the leader of the Turin Jewish community. Not only was it not unusual that he was a fascist, he would probably be unable to hold this semi-public position if he had not been a member of the party.
The novelist Girorgio Bassani, author of “Garden of the Finzi-Continis,” grew up in Ferrara, a city known for a long tradition of tolerance for Jews. He has said that he does not remember a single Jew who was not a fascist.
Stille describes how widespread Jewish fascism was, “Although there are instances of Jews making compromises with fascism elsewhere in Europe, these were isolated cases of personal opportunism, of private pacts with the devil. In Italy, Jewish fascism was a real ideological movement, a mass phenomenon, as much as that was possible in Italy’s tiny Jewish population of 47,000. In 1938, at the beginning of the racial laws, more than 10,000 Jews-about one out of every three Jewish adults-were members of the Fascist Party.”
Jews were politically involved across the spectrum. There were also many leading Jewish antifascists. Claudio Treves and Renato Modigliani were among the leaders of the socialist party. Umberto Terracini was a leader of the Italian Communist Party. The antifascist movement in Turin was largely led by Jews.
Vittorio Foa, a leading Jewish antifascist, said “The Jews are no different from anyone else-good and bad, intelligent and stupid. But beyond that, I think there was a certain link between the Jews affinity for antifascism and their democratic roots. They were liberated by the process of democracy.” Cecil Roth noted, “The Italian Jews, in their attitude to Fascism, were no worse, but alas little better, than their compatriots.”
Level of Italian Anti-Semitism
Even the fascists acknowledged that there was little anti-Semitism in Italy. In a 1932 interview, before the anti-Semitic campaign had begun, Mussolini said, “Antisemitism does not exist in Italy ... Italians of Jewish birth have shown themselves good citizens, and they fought bravely in the war. Many of them occupy leading positions in the universities, in the army, in the banks.”
Other commentators, sometimes to their consternation, also found low levels of anti-Semitism. Guido Leto, the head of the Italian secret police, the OVRA, recalled the climate in 1936 in his memoirs: “Beyond a few cities where some Jews, gathered in specific neighborhoods, as in Rome, could be the target of jokes, more for fun than out of meanness, it was very difficult for an Italian to see the difference between an Aryan and a Jew, or even have a minimum of curiosity in knowing the race and religion of persons he was friendly with or with whom he had business relations.”
Even once the anti-Semitic campaign had begun in earnest, there was little sympathy for the campaign to be found. A fascist party report from December 21, 1938, from Turin, probably the most anti-fascist city in Italy, states, “Uncertainty and discontent regarding the Jewish problem lingers on with almost everyone. No one identifies with the racial campaign as it has been conducted, and people are wondering, but not out of pietism, where it is going and what results are expected from the measures taken and those to come in the future. I have been informed of sermons given in some churches in town, sermons dealing exclusively with the racial problem, which is not viewed favorably by the Catholic Church. In Catholic circles the entire anti-Jewish policy is being criticized and such criticism, well known to the public, is creating a solidarity with the Jews that surfaces everywhere.”
Turin was no exception as Italians continued to see their Jewish countrymen in a sympathetic light in other Italian cities. A Fascist Party report to Mussolini about Trieste on November 20, 1938, stated, “Most inhabitants of Trieste have not forgotten the vast amount of work done by the Jews to defend Trieste’s Italian character, even though, in some cases, it was because of vested interests. Those financing irredentism were Jews and the majority of volunteers from Trieste in the Italian army during the war between Italy and Austria were also Jewish.... As things stand, it is the general wish, even among Catholics, that, given the patriotic past of many Jews from Trieste, the discriminations should be awarded somewhat generously and those discriminated should enjoy a sufficiently happy life.”
On July 25, 1943, the fascist Grand Council voted Mussolini out of power. Marshal Pietro Badoglio took over. Seeing its ally collapse, Berlin sent German forces to occupy Italy. The German estimation of the Italian view of the Jews was similar to that of the Italians. The senior SS representative in Italy Lieutenant-Colonel Knochen wrote on February 12, 1943, “The best of harmony prevails between the Italian troops and the Jewish population.”
The Germans were particularly perturbed because the Italians not only protected Jews on their territory, but when they occupied parts of France, Greece, the Balkans, and elsewhere, they protected the local Jewish populations there also. On December 13, 1944 Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister wrote in his diary, “The Italians are extremely lax in the treatment of the Jews. They protect the Italian Jews both in Tunis and in occupied France and will not permit their being drafted for work or compelled to wear the Star of David. This shows once again that Fascism does not really dare to get down to fundamentals but is very superficial regarding problems of vital importance.”
When the anti-Semitic legislation was passed, Jews had mixed experiences. Some felt shunned and isolated in their communities. Primo Levi, who would later become a famed author, felt isolated in school and socially. He had difficulty completing his studies and finding work. Others reported being abandoned by old friends or publicly insulted. When legislation was passed barring Jews from owning businesses, frequently they arranged to have the business put in the name of gentile friends and associates. Not a few Jews soon found that their business had just been stolen from them. Profiteers and anti-Semites thrived in this climate. But fortunately these attitudes do not seem to have been embodied by the majority of the Italian population.
Massimo Teglio’s story shows the camaraderie that remained between Italian Jews and gentiles. Through the aviation club in Genoa, Teglio had gotten to know Italo Balbo, a pilot whose fame in Italy was comparable with that of Charles Lindbergh in America. In 1933, Balbo led a squadron of pilots on a historic flight from Rome to Chicago. Balbo was an early leader in fascism and a member of the ‘quadrumvirate’ that was just below Mussolini in the fascist hierarchy. Mussolini, in fact, felt threatened by Balbo’s fame and the Duce sent him to be governor of the Italian colony of Libya.
Balbo visited Genoa in 1939, while the anti-Semitic campaign was taking place. Teglio, along with his wife, parents, brother, sisters, and many others flooded the streets to greet Balbo as he flew into Genoa’s harbor by hydroplane. When he came ashore, Balbo spotted Teglio and motioned him to come over. After warmly shaking his hand, Balbo asked Teglio, “Is there anyone else here from your family?” “They’re all here!” Teglio responded. Before the crowd of several hundred, Balbo made a point of greeting the family of his Jewish friend first. “Afterward,” Teglio recalled, “I asked Balbo’s copilot, ‘He knows I’m Jewish, doesn’t he?’ and the copilot responded, ‘He did it intentionally.’”
Help in Smuggling Jews
Teglio was an easygoing, popular man who had friends in all walks of life in Genoa. Before the war, he was considered a bit of a ne’er do well, but he emerged as a hero during the years of anti-Semitism. He found friends in the Archbishop’s office from whom he procured stamps to create baptismal certificates. He also got the help of fascist officials to help protect his clandestine activities of hiding and smuggling Jews as well as to make false documents. Stille writes, “Hostility toward the German occupation and Mussolini’s puppet government was so widespread that much of the legal apparatus was actively collaborating with the antifascist conspiracy.”
When official anti-Semitism began, Beppe Foa of Turin enjoyed the support of his colleagues. When he arrived at his job at an airplane manufacturer after the July 14, 1938, release of the “Manifesto of the Racist Scientists,” a crowd of his colleagues greeted him. He recalled, “The first thing they said to me was, ‘We’re ashamed to be Italians today.’ They came to tell me this. The atmosphere surrounding me was far from anti-Semitic.”
In July 1939, Foa discovered that as a Jew and a member of an antifascist family, he was about to be fired. He remembers that his colleagues never turned against him. “In fact, when I finally left Piaggio, there was another demonstration of affection that was even more moving to me than the one my friends showed me after the publication of the race manifesto. I had already said good-bye to my colleagues at the factory, but when I went to catch my train, there must have been, without exaggeration, 250 or 300 workers at the station. As I waited for the train, they were just lined up in silence, not saying a word. I didn’t understand why. Then one of the workers slipped from the crowd and came to me and said under his breath: ‘We can’t say anything, but we wish you every possible good.’ They had come to the station just to see me off. I was so moved I didn’t know what to say. And when I got on the train, I leaned out the window and waved as the train went off.”
Barred from Armed Forces
Because of the anti-Semitic legislation, Jews were barred from the armed forces. Five generals and five admirals were forced to resign. When Colonel Segre learned that he was being retired as a Jew, he assembled his troops, drew his pistol and shot himself before his men.
Despite the ban, when the country entered the war in June 1940, a number of Jews wrote Mussolini requesting permission to fight. Mussolini rejected their requests. However, the Italian Navy was in trouble because the only man capable of refloating the Italian fleet sunk by British torpedo planes in the Taranto harbor was a Jew-Umberto Pugliese, a fifty-eight year old former inspector general of the Navy. Mussolini sent envoys to ask Pugliese how much he wanted for the job. Pugliese replied that all he wanted was his return ticket and to be permitted to wear his uniform and medals while he worked. His wish was granted. Afterwards he went into retirement.
The Catholic church has been the subject of much criticism for its role in the holocaust. What happened at the highest echelons of the church will remain an important and lively issue in historical scholarship. While that question is ripe for further debate, there is no doubt that Catholic priests and parishes throughout Italy did a tremendous service in aiding the Jews.
Italian historian Liliana Piciotto Fargion writes, “Certainly the extant documents give the impression of a Vatican policy merely concerned with not irritating the Germans, and that it was inclined towards a policy of non-intervention. On the other hand, it is fair to record that, in contrast to the official position taken by Vatican diplomacy, there were many high-ranking prelates and individual priests, as well as convents, who gave considerable assistance to the Jews in hiding, of which the pope must have been aware.”
In the town of Assissi, a rescue effort (made famous by the book and film “The Assissi Underground”) took place. In Assissi, 300 Jews were saved by Father Rufino Niccacci. He dressed many of the Jews as nuns and monks, taught them Catholic rituals, and hid them in monasteries and parishioners’ homes.
In 1943, the Vatican-run Catholic Cinematographic Center, commissioned one of Italy’s greatest movie makers, Vittorio de Sica, to make “La Porta del Cielo” (The Gate of Heaven). The movie was shot inside the Basilica of St. Paul’s and came under the protection of the Vatican. Hundreds of people worked on the film as extras. The Jewish extras were allowed to live within the Basilica. De Sica arranged to drag out the production to protect the Jews. De Sica’s son Christian said, “Originally, filming was only supposed to last for a few weeks, but my father purposely extended it to six months until the Americans arrived in Rome. At the end, they were only pretending to be filming as they had run out of film.” Sadly, De Sica’s efforts were not enough. In February 1944 the Nazis stormed the area and arrested 60 people.
The Roman Ghetto
Most of Italy’s Jews were cosmopolitan, middle class, and not very religious. By contrast, in Rome, many of the Jews were poor, only semi-literate, and deeply religious. The Roman ghetto was the only place in Italy where there was a large Jewish neighborhood with many impoverished Jews. Many of the city’s 12,000 Jews lived in the former ghetto. In this area, Jewish tradition remained very strong.
Mussolini was driven from power in July, 1943, and marshal Pietro Badoglio took over. In September, German forces were approaching Rome. The Allies tried to make a deal with Badoglio in which Italian forces would hold the city’s airports while the Americans and British landed paratroopers. The Italian military’s leaders balked at the proposal, and the Germans soon occupied the city. Stille concludes, “With even a small amount of courage and preparation, the Italian government might have prevented the German occupation entirely.”
On September 26, 1943, the Germans demanded fifty kilograms of gold from the Jews within 36 hours or two hundred Jews would be deported to Germany or the Russian front. In the first few hours, only five kilograms were collected and Jewish leaders went to the Vatican for help. They were told that the Vatican would lend whatever portion of the ransom the Jews needed, to be repaid after the war. Later that day, the response of the Jewish and non-Jewish community proved that offer to be unnecessary. A crowd of people had gathered outside the synagogue to make contributions. Stille writes, “It seemed that the whole of Rome-eager to express its disgust with the German occupation-had risen up in defense of the Jews. Word of the ransom had spread quickly through the streets and brought Christians and Jews from all parts of the city to converge on the synagogue, carrying gold watches, earrings, pins, bracelets, cuff links, wedding rings, cigarette cases and coins.” Those without gold brought cash with which gold was purchased on the black market.
Catholics Enter Synagogue with Gifts
Roman Jewish literary critic Giacomo Debenedetti, described the scene of Catholics entering the synagogue with their gifts: “Cautiously, as if afraid of being refused, uncertain whether to offer gold to the rich Jews, some ‘Aryans’ presented themselves. They entered the hall adjacent to the synagogue full of embarrassment, not knowing if they should take off their hats or keep their heads covered, according to Jewish custom. Almost humbly, they asked if they could - well if it would be all right to ... Unfortunately, they did not leave their names.”
Olga Di Veroli, a Roman Jew who was helping with the effort to raise the sum, remembered, “There was the woman who used to sell candy to the children in front of the movie theater. She removed her earrings and said, ‘Take these,’ I thought she wanted to sell them, so I asked the jeweler. ‘How much should we give her?’ The poor woman began crying and said, ‘Look, Olga, the stones are fake. It’s only a gram or two of gold, but it’s all I have. My wedding ring I gave to the Fatherland on the Day of Faith. It’s not much but I want to give it.’ I got up and embraced her. I felt terrible, because I had thought she wanted to sell them.”
The Jews managed to raise more than the fifty kilograms in the required time, but this only delayed the Germans from acting against the Jews. On October 16, 1943, the Germans entered the ghetto to round up the Jews. The Gestapo command in Rome sent a report to headquarters in Berlin in which once again the absence of widespread Italian anti-Semitism was evident. “All available forces of the [German] security and police forces put to use. Participation of the Italian police, considering the unreliability in this affair, was not possible. ... The behavior of the Italian people was outright passive resistance.... As the German police were breaking into some homes, attempts to hide Jews in nearby apartments were observed, and it is believed that in many cases they were successful. The anti-Semitic part of the population was nowhere to be seen during the action, only a great mass of people who in some individual cases even tried to cut off the police from the Jews.”
Di Veroli with her family managed to avoid the roundup. She recalled: “There’s no way around it: the people of Rome opened their hearts to us. Some did so out of self-interest, but a lot of them did it out of pure generosity. What little they had, they shared with us.”
The resistance was active and large in Italy although, as in other countries, its true size and impact will probably always be the subject of debate. Between two and three thousand Jews participated in the resistance, a number much greater than the Jewish proportion of the population.
Recalling the Jewish role in Italian unification, Roth writes, “Jews had been playing an active part once again in the liberation of Italy. Everywhere, they took their share in the partisan movement, providing some outstanding leaders. Numbers of these fell in the course of the fighting-no fewer than fifteen in the Turin community alone.”
Of the approximately 40,000 Italian Jews and 10,000 foreign Jewish refugees, before the war, 8,000-9000 had been deported with only a small number returning. Historian Meir Michaelis wrote in “Mussolini and the Jews,” although Mussolini “was too much of an Italian to approve of the ‘final solution,’ . . . he and his henchmen helped to create the conditions in which the Holocaust became possible.” While Mussolini did not put Italian forces to work to implement the “Final Solution,” he had legally isolated Italian Jews to strengthen the Rome-Berlin axis. His record can be contrasted favorably with that of Adolf Hitler or Marshal Petain in Vichy France, though that is indeed a low standard.
When considering the record of the Italian people, it is important to remember that Mussolini was a popular leader and fascism was a popular movement. When the racial laws were passed, the most common reaction among Italians was one of indifference, not outrage. That said, the racial campaign also failed to sway most Italians to anti-Semitism. While the most assimilated Jewish community in Europe was betrayed by its government, it found that many Italians remembered their past service to the nation, viewed them as no different than their Catholic neighbors, and stood by their Jewish countrymen. | <urn:uuid:8a5c8ad3-bec1-4620-92c1-8ad3df088c9a> | {
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Why are human brains the biggest? We would like to inform you that human brains are not the biggest compared to other animals.
NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope new image shows NGC 7026, a planetary nebula.
Located just beyond the tip of the tail of the constellation of Cygnus (The Swan), this butterfly-shaped cloud of glowing gas and dust is the wreckage of a star similar to the Sun. Planetary nebulae, despite their name, have nothing to do with planets. They are in fact a relatively short-lived phenomenon that occurs at the end of the life of mid-sized stars. As a star’s source of nuclear fuel runs out, its outer layers are puffed out, leaving only the hot core of the star behind. As the gaseous envelope heats up, the atoms in it are excited, and it lights up like a fluorescent sign. Fluorescent lights on Earth get their bright colors from the gases they are filled with. Neon signs, famously, produce a bright red color, while ultraviolet lights (black lights) typically contain mercury. The same goes for nebulae: their vivid colors are produced by the mix of gases present in them. This image of NGC 7026 shows starlight in green, light from glowing nitrogen gas in red, and light from oxygen in blue. As well as visible light, NGC 7026 emits X-ray radiation, and has been studied by ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope. X-rays are a result of the extremely high temperatures of the gas in NGC 7026.This image was produced by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. The image is 35 by 35 arcseconds. A version of this image was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures Competition by contestant Linda Morgan-O’Connor.
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Astronomers Discovered Alien World Orbiting Nearby Barnard’s Star
Bright Meteor Lit up Night Sky above Atlanta
Hubble Took an Iconic Image of Eagle Nebula | <urn:uuid:c3b739a2-80c7-4540-a1e8-66f22afac4f8> | {
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This richly illustrated and valuable resource reaches back five centuries to document the evolution and ingenuity of house design in the British Isles.
The architecture of Britain’s houses displays a dizzying variety of styles and details. Brimming with 600 full-color photographs, House annotates hundreds of examples from every conceivable angle: from gables and pediments to chimneys and roofs; from bow windows and casements to fanlights and door furniture. Armed with a career’s worth of experience and research, Philippa Lewis takes readers up and down the country to feature examples of typically British building, including cottages, manor houses, castles, bungalows, and flats. She also looks at houses built from a wide variety of materials, including stone, glass, wood, brick, and even corrugated iron, in different settings such as rural, suburban, seaside, and urban. Lively texts help identify specific details and place them in their historical context, as well as offering compelling examples of how innovative conversions of structures such as watermills, gatehouses, and churches reflect and sustain their environment. Readers interested in architectural history and design, and anyone looking to understand the nooks and crannies of their own home, will find this unique guide the most eye-opening and comprehensive of its kind.
Hardcover with jacket, 192 pages, 19,5x24, 123 color illustrations
$ 39.95 | £ 24.99
Publishing House: Prestel
Date of publication:
US April 20, 2011
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The integrated circuit has made such steady strides over the past 40 years that it’s easy to believe in a sort of “manifest destiny” for electronics. How could a year go by without the introduction of cool new gadgets boasting previously unimagined capabilities at amazingly affordable prices?
But the chip industry is approaching a crisis. After decades of progress, continued improvement in power efficiency has begun to stall. If we want to continue proliferating cheaper, smaller electronics and usher in what many in the chip industry call an Internet of Things—a future full of billions of always-on, always-connected devices and sensors—we will have to look beyond the CMOS transistor to find a less power-hungry technology.
The future may lie in the past: Looking back to the earliest days of electrically driven computing, we’ve found a surprisingly attractive alternative. It’s the electromechanical relay. As a switch, the relay is about as fundamental as you can get—it uses a voltage to physically open and close a circuit. Early relays were far too slow and power hungry to compete with vacuum tubes, let alone transistors. But by using modern CMOS production processes, we think the relay can get a microscopic makeover.
These miniature moving switches—or nanorelays—aren’t as speedy as the solid-state devices on today’s chips. But what the tiny mechanical switches lack in speed they make up for in energy efficiency. Nanorelays don’t leak current when they’re off, and they can change states with just a fraction of the energy that’s needed to turn a transistor on or off. These qualities make the microscopic switches ideal for ultralow-power chips that can run off scavenged energy from acoustic vibrations, light, or ambient radio signals. With some clever engineering, it may even be possible to make nanorelays fast enough to drive the core logic inside cellphones, tablets, and other portable electronic devices.
Mass-produced chips full of moving parts aren’t as far off as they might seem. After years of small-scale experiments, we’re now on the cusp of demonstrating fully functional, complex integrated circuits that are entirely mechanical. The long-retired relay could soon be reborn.
For decades, every time engineers reduced the size of the transistor, they were rewarded with a faster and more energy-efficient switch. But a little more than a decade ago, chipmakers realized that simply shrinking transistors wouldn’t improve their energy efficiency the way it used to.
The problem is that transistors are imperfect switches; they leak current even when they’re supposed to be shut off. This leakage is fundamental to the way the transistor operates, and so there’s no easy way to eliminate its effects. If you reduce the operating voltage of the transistor, less energy will be needed to switch the device. But the amount of time that this lower-power transistor takes to switch will balloon, and meanwhile the other transistors in the circuit will leak more current while they’re waiting for the operation to be completed. As a result, there’s a fundamental limit to the energy efficiency of a CMOS circuit, and we’re fast approaching a point where we won’t be able to keep boosting the performance of a chip without increasing power consumption.
The good news is that you can avoid leakage altogether if you use a switch that simply lacks a pathway for electricity to flow through when it’s off. An early model of such a switch—the relay—was invented in 1835 by the American scientist Joseph Henry, right around the same time that Charles Babbage was devising steam-powered calculators. Henry’s first relay used induction to power up an electromagnet, which would tug on an armature that mechanically closed a gap between two electrodes.
The relay cleared the way for the first complex, programmable computers—machines that could compute logarithmic tables or analyze aerodynamic forces—in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The very first general-purpose, electrically powered digital computer, Germany’s Zuse Z3, unveiled in 1941, used about 2000 relays to perform calculations for aircraft design.
But the relay’s role in computing was short-lived. The Z3, which boasted clock speeds of less than a dozen hertz, was quickly surpassed by computers based on the vacuum tube and later the transistor. The relay is about to come full circle though: Decades of advances in lithography, etching, and other techniques used to fabricate CMOS chips now offer us the means to revive relays in a smaller, more energy-efficient form.
As you might imagine, there are plenty of ways to go about designing a miniature mechanical switch. You could, for example, reproduce the classic relay on a much smaller scale by using current to physically push or pull on a tiny piece of magnetic material. And indeed, researchers have done just that. In 2001, a team at Arizona State University showed that a cantilever made of an iron nickel alloy could be drawn down to complete a circuit by running current through a nearby coil. This device wasn’t compact and energy efficient enough to be practical for large-scale integration, but it created enough interest among researchers that they began exploring other ways to shrink the relay.
Since then, others have devised relays that derive their mechanical motion from thermal expansion or from piezoelectricity, a property of some materials to expand or contract under the influence of an electric field. These designs have shown great promise, but the approach that seems to be most compatible with existing chip production processes—and most capable of scaling down to sizes comparable to those of today’s transistors—is the electrostatic switch.
At the University of California, Berkeley, we’ve been working on such a switch: a micrometer-scale relay inspired by the CMOS transistor. Like a transistor, the relay contains a source, a drain, and a channel through which current flows, as well as gate and body electrodes that control the device’s state. But the relay boasts a key structural difference: The gate and channel are suspended above the source and drain rather than built alongside them.
We achieved this configuration by etching the gate—which consists of a square and four springy suspension coils attached at the corners—out of a conductive silicon germanium alloy. Because we cleared away some of the intervening material during the device fabrication process, the gate is suspended less than 100 nanometers above the “base” of the switch. This base is divided into three parts—a “body” electrode that serves as a reference potential for the gate, and source and drain electrodes located on either side of the body electrode. Attached to the insulated underbelly of the gate is a layer of conductive material that forms the channel.
If the voltage difference between the gate electrode and the body electrode is sufficiently large, then the electrostatic attraction between the opposite charges on the gate and body exerts a force that pulls the gate down. This stretches the springy coils and brings the channel into contact with the source and drain electrodes so that it forms a conductive bridge for current to flow through. When the applied voltage between the gate and the body is lowered, the electrostatic force is reduced and eventually becomes lower than the restoring force of the coils. The gate is then pulled back to a neutral position so that it’s once again suspended above the body of the switch. In that state, an air gap separates the channel from the source and drain electrodes, preventing current from flowing.
The resulting relays aren’t particularly speedy compared to today’s transistors. A relay that’s about the size of a modern CMOS device can take anywhere from 1 to 10 nanoseconds to mechanically switch—100 to 1000 times as long as the typical limiting factor in the speed of a transistor-based circuit, the time needed to electrically charge or discharge an output signal. Because of this, if you were to take an optimally designed CMOS circuit and simply substitute a relay for each transistor, you’d wind up with a perfectly functional relay circuit but one that’s less than a hundredth as fast as your original circuit.
Fortunately, our research team—which includes members at Berkeley, UCLA, and MIT—has demonstrated that the effect of this long mechanical delay can be minimized by optimizing the circuit design. In a CMOS circuit like an adder or multiplier, the transistors are typically arranged in small groups to make fairly simple logic gates. Each of these gates contains a handful of transistors and operates in sequential order—the output of one gate is used to influence the state of the next gate. This approach ends up being speedier than building more-complex logic gates out of large collections of transistors connected in series or in parallel.
It turns out that the best way to design a digital relay circuit block is to take a page from the first half of the 20th century, when large discrete relays were still used to build computers. Instead of grouping the nanorelays into discrete simple gates, as you would do with transistors, the best approach is to arrange many of them in series and in parallel to make as few gates as possible. If all the devices can be arranged into one single gate, all the nanorelays can be switched simultaneously, and the time required to perform any function is reduced to a single mechanical delay.
This approach works because the extra delay associated with the movement of electrical signals through more-complex circuits remains minuscule compared to the mechanical delay associated with opening or closing a single switch. When combined with other relay features, logic circuits built this way require fewer devices, saving space and thus chip cost. While a CMOS adder might require 25 or so transistors, we’ve built nanorelay adders that need only 12 switches. The mechanical circuits that have been fabricated to date contain relays that are micrometer-size, dozens of times as big as today’s highest-performance transistors. But our research—as well as studies by teams at Stanford and Caltech—indicates that relays can be shrunk in a way that’s similar to what’s been done for CMOS transistors, and with similar gains in performance.
Extrapolating from our current relays, our simulation results indicate that for the same lithographic dimensions, a nanorelay circuit could consume as little as a hundredth of the energy while occupying the same chip area as that of an equivalent CMOS circuit. We estimate that nanorelay circuits made using mature 90-nm chip technology could operate at speeds up to about 100 megahertz.
In these days of multiple-gigahertz processors, it might seem strange to contemplate an entirely new technology that’s capable of only about a tenth of the speed. But that amount of computing power is more than enough to drive the logic behind the various sensors, cameras, implanted electronics, and communication devices that will form the future Internet of Things.
And as the nanorelays get smaller, both their energy efficiency and their speed will continue to improve, potentially up to speeds of a gigahertz or so. The best way to boost the speed will be to reduce the mechanical delay of the relays. We could, for example, make the relay’s gate and channel out of lighter materials so that the switch will accelerate faster for a given force. We could also build the relay so that the gate is suspended closer to the body of the switch, reducing the distance a nanorelay gate must travel between its on and off states and boosting the attractive force between the electrodes.
It all sounds straightforward enough, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention a couple of caveats. One question we’re often asked is: What would happen to a relay chip if you dropped it? Probably nothing. It turns out that the mass of the movable electrode in a nanorelay would be so small—on the order of a billionth of a gram—that accelerations in excess of 100 000 g’s would be required to overcome the restoring force on the movable electrode springs and cause the channel to accidentally come into contact with the source and drain. To put this number into context, dropping your cellphone on the ground typically results in less than 1000 g’s of acceleration at the moment of impact. Thus it is extremely unlikely that vibrations and mechanical shock would cause a relay chip to fail, let alone damage it—unless your phone happens to explode into pieces.
Another issue is reliability. Any mechanical device will eventually wear out or break with repeated use. In the case of the nanorelay, the most likely way the device will break down is through the contacts—the spots where the channel comes into contact with the source and the drain. The heat created as these contacts conduct current to charge or discharge the output of the relay can eventually cause the contacts to become welded together or even to vaporize.
Conveniently, though, the relative sluggishness of the nanorelay lets us use materials that are more resistant to wear. The electrical delay associated with charging and discharging a switch when a channel comes into contact with or is lifted off the source and drain is tiny compared to the mechanical switching time. As a result, we are free to use more wear- and heat-resistant materials like tungsten for the contacts. Such hard materials don’t make good electrical contacts—they don’t deform when pressed into one another, so actual contact is usually made at only a few points. The resulting small contact area increases the electrical delay, but that delay is still small compared to the mechanical delay.
Extrapolating from the amount of wear seen in our experiments, we estimate that nanorelays could be used to make a practical microcontroller for an embedded sensor that switches a quadrillion (1015) times without failing. That level of activity corresponds to running 1 percent of the time at speeds of 100 MHz for 10 years.
Furthermore, we expect that as relays are scaled down, they’ll likely become even more reliable. One key reason is that smaller relays will have lower capacitance, which means it will take less time for components to charge or discharge. That will reduce the amount of heat that’s dissipated through the contacts.
Before relays can become the next mainstream integrated circuit technology, two critical things still need to happen: The relays need to get smaller, and they need to be fabricated into more-complex circuits. A number of teams are working on both tasks. We’ve already shown that memory, as well as basic logic circuits such as adders and multipliers, can be built with nanorelays. The next step is to build full chips like microcontrollers, which would easily contain thousands or even millions of switches. In the process, we’ll develop techniques to optimize the design of very-large-scale integrated circuits and also get the wafer fabrication chain ready for those large chip designs.
Fortunately, creating integrated circuits containing millions or even billions of these nanorelays should be relatively uncomplicated. Apart from some relay-specific design rules, checks, and device models, we’ve been able to use the same computer-assisted design tools developed for the silicon CMOS industry to place and route relays and simulate circuit behavior. Being able to reuse this software is critical, because rebuilding this infrastructure from scratch would be very expensive.
Much work remains to be done, of course, but nanorelay technology appears to have the potential to break through the CMOS energy-efficiency roadblock and restore the manifest destiny of electronics. Before long, we may see cool new devices that operate for weeks or years on a single battery charge. All it will take is for a few million things to click into place.
About the Author
For Tsu-Jae King Liu, Dejan Marković, Vladimir Stojanović, and Elad Alon the relay is more than a blast from the past. IEEE Fellow Liu, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, suspected that miniature versions of the mechanical switches could be an attractive, low-power alternative to silicon transistors, but she needed circuit designers to help prove it. Marković, an electrical engineering professor at the University of California, Los Angeles; Stojanović, a professor at MIT; and Alon, a fellow Berkeley professor, all eagerly joined the effort. | <urn:uuid:1dac8ce0-6d89-4d3d-aeb4-11336770c90a> | {
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20 Russian Blue Cat Facts
Unlike the common Orange Tabby cat, the Russian Blue cat is actually its own unique breed. They are absolutely striking with their soft, blue gray coats and bright green eyes. In fact, they are on Insider’s list of Most Beautiful Cat Breeds!
It is no secret that Russian Blues are gorgeous, so we have put together a list of the more interesting facts about them here.
P.S. If you want to see more russian blues, stories of pets, or share your pet's story check out our free Facebook group.
1. The Russian Blue cat was shown at the world’s first Cat Show in London.
In 1875, Crystal Palace hosted one of the first cat shows. While the Russian Blues were not eligible to win any prize, they did start to make a name for themselves! Later on around 1912, Russian Blue cats found their way to America and became recognized as an official breed.
2. Russian Blue cats seem to have sparkly coats.
These cats have short, double-layered coats. While the under coat is soft and feathery, the outer coat is more dense and is flecked with shiny silver hairs. This gives the Russian Blue their characteristic shimmer.
3. Though they have emerald green eyes once fully grown, Russian Blue cats are born with yellow eyes.
Most cats are born with very light blue eyes that get darker as they age - eventually turning brown. Oddly, Russian Blue cats are born with yellow eyes instead! Around four months old, they develop the gorgeous emerald eyes that they are known for.
4. Russian Blue cats come from the Archangel Isles of Northern Russia.
These beautiful cats are a naturally occurring breed that freely roamed the wilderness of Northern Russia before becoming domesticated. Many believe that sailors brought the Russian Blue cats aboard their ships sometime around 1860. The friendly felines provided lots of love to their new found companions and quickly became a favorite in the Archangel Isle ports. This is why they are sometimes called Archangel Blues.
5. Legend has it that Russian Blue cats are Lucky Healers.
Old Russian folktales consider Russian Blue cats as good luck charms. It is even said that one of these unique cats once saved an ill Russian prince from his impending death! They are a favorite of Russian royalty and were also used to ward off evil spirits from the kingdom. In fact, Russian Blue cats were often given a place to sleep in nurseries to protect the newborn royals!
6. Russian Blue cats are actually black cats with faded coats.
Like we mentioned before, Russian Blue cats were a naturally occurring wild cat before they were domesticated. Eventually, black cats that carried diluted fur genes mated and produced the beautiful blue gray color. You see, Black cats have 1 of 2 coat genes - either “BB” or “Bb.” If two “Bb” cats mate, they can create kittens with “bb” genes. The “bb” gene combination gives rise to the shimmery diluted gray coat of the Russian Blue. If a Russian Blue mates with a black cat, they will produce a litter of black and gray kittens!
7. Russian Blues love sticking to their routines.
These cats really prefer to live by a set schedule - especially when it comes to their dinner time. They will certainly remind you if you’re only 5 minutes late feeding them! Russian Blues do not do well with changes like moving, or being adopted out to another family. They really only bond with one person and getting outside of their routine makes them anxious. They will not like traveling with you, but do not worry! They are pretty independent and happy to stay home without you. A Russian Blue will greet you lovingly once you return home.
8. Russian Blue cats have something in common with the Mona Lisa.
While we have acknowledged that Russian Blue cats have very beautiful fur, we should also note that they have a smile similar to the famous Mona Lisa. The slight up turn of the mouth and expressive eyes, both the Russian Blue cat and the Mona Lisa have such faint but sweet smiles.
9. Russian Blue cats are sort of hypoallergenic.
The Russian Blue has a low shedding coat, leading some to say that they are hypoallergenic. And tests show that these cats produce lower levels of the Fel d 1 protein. This protein is secreted in feline saliva and skin and it may cause wheezing, itching skin and watery eyes in humans. However, even very low levels of Fel d 1 can cause allergy issues so the Russian Blue cat may still cause problems for allergy sufferers - just less than other cats.
10. Russian Blues are known for their loving nature.
Like we mentioned before, Russian Blue cats are a one-person cat. But this just means they will only be deeply bonded to one person. It does not mean that they should only live in one person homes. They actually enjoy living in families, and can even live happily with other pets! Russian Blue cats are affectionate and love to sit right next to their owners. When these cats are feeling exceptionally loving, they will crawl up and curl right into your lap!
11. Russian Blue cats have a very high prey drive.
As a wild cat, the Russian Blues retain a high level of hunting instincts. This means you will need to provide plenty of toys and mental stimulation to keep them happy. Laser pointer anyone? If they are left outside alone, they may try to catch a bird, lizard, or other small prey. Unfortunately, this is how many cats become lost. So it is best to keep them inside, or to cat proof your yard!
12. Russian Blue cats can live for decades.
The Russian Blue cat’s wild genes also make them very healthy. Unlike other common house cats, these cats rarely suffer from kidney issues or UTIs. In fact, with regular veterinary check ups, your Russian Blue cat can live up to 25 years!
13. Russian Blue cats are Shy
While we have mentioned that Russian Blue cats are very loving to their families, they are shy toward strangers. They will typically find a nice spot to hide away if many visitors are over. However, they can warm up to other people in more intimate settings. By playing with one of their favorite toys, you may be able to draw the Russian Blue out his secret spot.
14. Russian Blues have impeccable grooming habits.
While many cats pride themselves on being clean and spend many hours grooming themselves, the Russian Blue cat takes it to the next level! Their long, thick hair means that they require extra attention to their coats. So you can help your cat out by brushing him once or twice a week. The Russian Blues are also notoriously fussy about their litter boxes - it’s best to keep them impeccably clean, or your cat may find a new place to go!
15. The Nyan Cat was inspired by the Russian Blue Cat.
If you are unfamiliar with the Nyan Cat, he’s a cat/poptart hybrid that flies through space, leaving a rainbow trail behind! The illustration quickly became popular in 2011 when Chris Torres shared it on YouTube. He stated that the animation was inspired by his Russian Blue cat Marty - aptly named after Marty McFly from Back to the Future.
16. The Russian Blue breed almost disappeared around World War II.
When the war began, cat breeders lacked resources to continue producing Russian Blue litters. As a result, they almost disappeared as a recognized breed! But as the war slowed down, cat lovers from all across Europe set out to save this beauty. They crossbred the remaining Russian Blues with Siamese cats and British Blues to preserve their genes. Then American breeders began to develop the Russian Blue as we know it today.
17. Russian Blues are different from other Blue cats.
Though they were bred with British Blues, and even resemble other blue cats like the Chartreux, the Russian Blue is distinctly his own! They have remarkable emerald green eyes unlike that of any other cat. For example, British blues almost always have yellow or gold eyes and the Chartreux are known for their orange eyes. The Russian Blue also has much softer, silkier, shimmery fur! They also have much more sleek bodies. The other cats tend to be stocky and chubbier - just as cute, just different! Russian Blue cats appear more regal than other Blue cats. Perhaps this is why they were so popular with Russian royalty!
18. Russian Blue cats appear much larger than they actually are.
Russian Blue cats have very fine bones and dense double-layered coats. Though they actually have pretty slim frames, their beautifully thick fur makes them appear larger and fluffier than they really are. This will certainly be evident at bath time as their coats get wet and stick to their trim bodies.
19. Russian Blues are one of the smartest cats around.
While some animal lovers believe that dogs are the only ones that can learn tricks, the Russian Blue cat is happy to prove them wrong. All cats are intelligent, but the Russian Blue actually loves to learn new things! Unlike other cats who seem to have their own agenda, Russian Blue cats are easily trainable. Most Russian Blues love to play fetch with small balls and will happily roll over for small treats! They are curious and quick to learn. Teaching them tricks also satisfies some of their need for mental stimulation.
20. The Russian Blue breed is a very vocal cat.
Like we mentioned before, if you forget to feed your Russian Blue cat, you will receive a quick reminder. These cats are especially vocally expressive! We have also covered how loving and playful they are with their owners. If you talk to or make noises at your Russian Blue cat, they are almost certain to talk back! This just adds to the many reasons to love them.
We hope you enjoyed our list of interesting Russian Blue cat facts! And we are sure we have shown you that they are much more than beautiful. Do you have a Russian Blue cat that we should add? Comment below and let us know!
Looking to show off your Russian Blue Cat? We’ve put together a list of recommended products below.
Personalized Pet Storybook
Create a custom storybook, starring your pet. Design the look of your dog or cat, write a dedication, and add your name and hometown to create a uniquely personal adventure!
Pet Pop Art Blanket
Looking for a fantastic way to snuggle with your fur-born? Create a custom blanket featuring your pet’s likeness. Perfect for pet beds, your bed, and couches!
Pet Pop Art Socks
Turn your pet into a fashion statement! Make a pair of socks with your dog or cat’s likeness so you can walk around with their adorable face everywhere you go.
Pet Pop Art Canvas
Do you love your pet enough to turn them into a work of art? Design custom canvas prints, featuring your pet, to display in your home. We work with you to capture the look of your dog or cat and select the perfect background from our collection of over 60 options!
Pet Pop Art Phone Case
Is your fur-born always on your mind? Create a custom phone case with your pet’s likeness on a variety of backgrounds. Show off your pet to the world and get tons of compliments on their cute face! | <urn:uuid:d4fe551d-2521-41e8-b92a-d58135c9a492> | {
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TI-83/TI-84 Programs - Paetzke
Bill Paetzke offers TI-83/TI-84 Plus programs to help students and teachers be more efficient in using their calculators. The programs are organized under these categories:
Read about Paetzke here:
The Platonic Solids Information Site
Dan Radin's site contains information, computer graphics, a computer-animated video, teaching tools, and links pertaining to the three-dimensional geometry of the polyhedron in its many forms.
Radin focuses particularly on the five Platonic solids -- the tetrahedron, the cube, the octahedron, the icosahedron, and the dodecahedron -- and the compound solids made from their dual pairs.
Areas of the site include:
- Platonic Solid Rock (the video)
- The Platonic Solids Discussion Group
- Computer Desktop Wallpaper
- High-Resolution Images
- Animated Gifs
- Polyhedral Origami
- Paper Polyhedron Plans
- Proof?! (a polyhedral screenplay)
- Lesson Plans
- National Standards
- Dan Radin's Bio
GoKnow Sketchy Contest
Do you use Sketchy in the classroom? Do you know a budding artist who uses Sketchy to convey educational concepts? The GoKnow Sketchy Contest Team is hosting their 4th Annual Sketchy contest for students and teachers. Submissions are due May 25, 2007, and winners will be announced after June 4th.
First place finishers will receive a special 1 GB iPod Shuffle. Digital Cameras are on hand for all 2nd place finishers, and 3rd place secures a new addition to their prizes: the Pocket Mind Reader. Numerous honorable mention certificates will be provided for those who have their Sketchys posted on the Web.
The official flyer and rules can be accessed in PDF format from their site. You can also view previous winning Sketchy animations.
Demo versions for Palm OS or Windows Mobile are available for download: | <urn:uuid:e1e23cd5-5a8f-4f28-8922-a26ae042d6d6> | {
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PPPL delivers a plasma source that will enable high-power beam pulses in a new Berkeley Lab accelerator
Plainsboro, New Jersey — Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have designed and delivered a crucial component for a device that can heat a spot of foil to 30,000 degrees Centigrade in less than a billionth of a second. The part will complete a linear accelerator that researchers at the E.O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are using to create a superheated state called “warm dense matter.”
Researchers are eager to study this substance, which is rarely seen on Earth but common throughout the universe. Warm dense matter can be found in the molten core of giant planets like Jupiter, and in the preliminary stages of fusion, a process that powers the sun and stars. Such matter intrigues physicists studying the cosmos and scientists including those at PPPL who are seeking to harness fusion to produce electric power.
For PPPL physicist Erik Gilson, the plasma source he designed for the accelerator marks the third generation of components that he has created for Berkeley Lab projects that are part of the Heavy Ion Fusion Science Virtual National Laboratory, a joint venture of PPPL, Berkeley Lab, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Gilson’s latest device upgrades previous versions while retaining the core—modules made from 1.6-inch-long rings of barium titanate ceramic. The material produces a swarm of ions and electrons at its surface when a high-voltage is applied to it.
A bit of mystery surrounds where these ions come from. “The mechanism isn’t completely understood,” Gilson said. “It could be absorbed gas on the surface of the modules. But whatever fuel you have is what you brought with you when the parts were installed.”
The 10-meter-long accelerator, known as the Neutralized Drift Compression Experiment-II (NDCX-II), is expected to begin full-scale operation this fall. The device will send a beam of charged lithium particles — or ions — through a series of electromagnetic induction cells that will accelerate and compress the beam, turning it from a javelin-like projectile into one that resembles a tiny comet. The highly compressed beam will heat a target made of a custom-designed foil, producing the warm dense matter that instruments can analyze in the instant before the target vaporizes.
The target material is not like kitchen foil. It measures four one-hundredths of an inch in diameter and is less than a micron thick, making it more than 10 times as thin as the foil that might be used to wrap warm leftovers. It can be made from many materials including gold, tungsten, carbon, or even a metallic foam.
Without the PPPL-designed device, the intense NDCX-II beam would rapidly expand into the beam tube walls before reaching the target. The copper-clad, 43-inch cylinder the size of a hand telescope will create an electrically charged plasma to fill the penultimate stage of the accelerator called the drift line. Negatively charged electrons in the plasma will neutralize the positively charged ion beam after it leaves the accelerator and zips through the drift line on its way to the target chamber. This neutralization is needed to keep the beam from dispersing, since particles with the same charge would repel one another.
Gilson’s device improves upon the plasma source he designed for the previous Berkeley Lab accelerator, the NDCX-I. The biggest change involved connecting a separate 10,000-volt electric power supply to each barium titanate module. This enables researchers to regulate power all along the device and deliver added power to modules that might need it. By contrast, the NDCX-I plasma source connected four or five modules to a single power supply and was unable to regulate the power to individual modules.
The new device rounds out a particle accelerator that has hundreds of times more heating power than the NDCX-I, which was operated by scientists in the mid-2000s. The NDCX-II will compress bunches of about 200 billion lithium ions so rapidly that the tail of the beam will overtake the head in the drift line, condensing the beam to deliver the maximum heating punch. “What makes NDCX-II unique is the beam’s charged-particle density,” said Joe Kwan, Berkeley Lab project manager for the new accelerator.
Construction of the NDCX-II began in 2009 with $11 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus program that Congress passed that year. Experiments on the accelerator will complement research under way at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Scientists at NIF are seeking to produce fusion by imploding hydrogen fuel capsules with the world’s most powerful laser beams in a process called inertial confinement. At the same time, Berkeley Lab researchers have been studying ion beams for the possible production of fusion through the same process.
PPPL is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science and managed by Princeton University. Its research mission is to advance the coupled fields of fusion energy and plasma physics. Fusion is the process that powers the sun and the stars. In the interior of stars, matter is converted into energy by the fusion, or joining, of the nuclei of light atoms to form heavier elements. At PPPL, physicists use a magnetic field to confine plasma. Scientists hope eventually to use fusion energy for the generation of electricity.
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SHERIDAN — Summer brings warmer temperatures and its associated positive and negative effects. One of those negative aspects is the increased danger in some bodies of water caused by potentially dangerous algae.
Cyanobacteria, also called blue-green algae, can form harmful algal blooms that cause skin irritation, organ damage and in severe cases, death for both humans and animals. HABs usually occur in late summer and early fall in slower-moving bodies of water like ponds and lakes.
Lindsay Patterson, supervisor for the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality surface water quality standards program, said the algae issue is a fairly recent one in Wyoming. DEQ began seriously taking a look at HABs in 2013 and has been working with several organizations over the past few years to study and improve responses to the problem.
“As the science improves and we learn more and more, there’s just a much better understanding of the potential health risks associated with some of the types of blooms that can happen,” Patterson said.
Patterson said the blooms occur in late summer and early fall because the algae needs time to grow. Once temperatures decline, the prevalence of harmful algae will as well.
“A lot of times you have potentially more nutrients coming in during irrigation season, or the water temperatures begin to increase,” Patterson said. “It just takes a while for them to kind of get going, so usually we don’t see them get really bad until July or August.”
HABs are usually caused by excessive amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous. The two components are essentially fertilizer for algae and could come from stormwater or runoff from a nearby yard or golf course.
“Once it rains, the nutrients can wash off into the surface water and potentially make these algal blooms grow,” Patterson said. “[HABs] occur at low levels and when you add more nutrients than the system is used to, they just proliferate and grow kind of crazy.”
Potentially harmful blooms should be reported to DEQ’s Report a Spill hotline at WyoSpills.org or (307) 777-7501. After receiving a report, a DEQ employee takes water samples, which are analyzed in a lab to determine the density and quantity of toxins in the water. Patterson said it usually takes about 24 hours to get preliminary analysis on the water.
If the toxin quantity and/or density exceeds a certain threshold, DEQ notifies the Wyoming Department of Health, which then notifies local water management agencies that are responsible for posting advisory signs.
There were three reports of cyanobacteria in Wyoming last year and two confirmed. One occurred in Boysen State Park in Shoshoni, which had both toxins and cell density that exceeded thresholds. Another confirmed report took place in Woodruff Narrows Reservoir near Evanston, where bacterial cell density exceeded its threshold. A report in Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area near Rock Springs had below-threshold levels.
Algae threats appear to be minimal in the Sheridan area.
“It doesn’t look like there’s too much happening in the northeast corner of the state,” Patterson said. “I don’t know if that’s just a lack of data or because there’s not many larger reservoirs that are visible on satellite imagery.”
There haven’t been any reports yet in 2018, but Patterson expects to respond to more reports this year because of the increase in monitoring resources.
Dr. Alexia Harrist, state health officer and state epidemiologist with the Wyoming Department of Health, said side effects range from a minor annoyance to severe health issues. Direct contact with toxic water can cause rashes, irritation of the eyes, nose and throat and respiratory issues. Ingestion of affected water can lead to headaches, abdominal pain, vomiting, confusion and numbness, diarrhea and liver and kidney damage.
There are no truly preventative measures other than avoiding and reporting HABs. The toxins cannot be removed through boiling, filtration or chlorination, either. DEQ and other agencies are working on reducing HABs but are still in the beginning phases of addressing them.
Harrist noted that campers should not wash clothes or dishes in potentially dangerous water and added that water skiing and tubing can cause potentially harmful water to spray into a person’s face.
Harrist said WDH has not received any human injuries as a result of HABs but has been informed of livestock injuries and deaths in recent years. Like Patterson, Harrist is not sure if HABs are becoming more common or if more attention is being paid to them.
Summer is a time for outdoor fun, but recreaters must remain aware of potential harm in bodies of water around the state. | <urn:uuid:0116c3a6-4f83-48c7-870c-9dc11f62a080> | {
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Dr. Larry Larsen
---- — Dear Doctor,
Recently we read that the moon causes some mental illnesses. The study said they had proof. We have often thought our children were more active during a full moon. Is there any book you could recommend?
There is no book I would, nor could recommend.
The moon has been implicated or connected to human behavior since ancient times. Keep in mind the heavens caught the imagination of the ancients with the notion that they somehow controlled or predicted human behavior.
This view is still held by many today.
The moon, in particular, has been blamed for more negative acting out. Such terms as “lunatic” and “lunacy” are based on the Latin word for moon, Luna.
The recent study you mention has captured some press. I have not read the original text. Based upon what I have read, the study joins hundreds of others making similar claims.
For example, one study done in Connecticut some decades ago researched inmates behavior in a state hospital. It asserted that incidents of violent behavior increased with the full moon. The study was later not replicated. The behavior was more likely connected to the pay day for the staff.
The present study is flawed by an excluded middle design. If thee results were positively correlated with different phases of the moon and that with very significant results, then I would give the results a second look. The other factor is an intervening variable such as brighter nights and wakefulness.
Your children are more likely responding to you, not the moon. Sorry about that!
To the moon! Research is full of holes | <urn:uuid:d76a20c9-55a1-4103-8017-0d591fc8706a> | {
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Emissions from the transport sector currently represent 30 percent of all pollution in the country, and approximately 80 percent of air pollution in Metro Manila. A sizeable proportion of vehicle emissions are attributable to inefficient public transport, particularly from tricycles, jeepneys and buses.
The 20 e-trikes are part of an ADB-funded project to introduce energy-efficient transportation alternatives in the Philippines. ADB is currently in discussions with the government and other development partners on a proposed project to significantly scale up the rollout of energy efficient e-trikes in Manila and other urban areas as early as 2012.
"Working together, we can give Manila cleaner air, bluer skies, and a more livable environment," said Kunio Senga, director general of ADB's Southeast Asia department. "The Philippines is assuming a leading role in Asia in supporting green transportation alternatives, and if e-trikes are followed by new fleets of electric buses and jeepneys, the effect could be transformative."
More than 3.5 million motorized tricycles are currently operating in the Philippines, producing more than 10 million tons of carbon dioxide and using close to $5 billion of imported fuel each year. Motorized tricycles - which are motorcycles with sidecars - are popularly used as low-cost public transport for short distances.
"Every 20,000 e-trikes that are introduced to Manila's streets will save the Philippines 100,000 liters of foreign fuel imports each day, saving the country about $35 million annually," said ADB's Principal Energy Specialist Sohail Hasnie. "This initiative not only benefits the environment, but it also supports the Philippines drive to become more energy independent."
Though the new e-trikes have higher up-front costs, older petrol tricycles are more than twice as expensive to operate and maintain in the long run. The cost savings will directly increase the incomes of e-trike operators.
The new ADB-supported e-trikes use lithium ion batteries, commonly used in laptop computers and mobile phones. The batteries can be recharged approximately 2,000 times, in contrast to lead acid batteries used in older e-trike models that need to be replaced every two years.
A recently concluded phase-one ADB pilot project demonstrated that the Philippines has the local manufacturing capacity and technical skills base to build and maintain a large e-trike fleet. Once thousands of e-trikes begin to be manufactured, many new jobs could be created.
Factoring in electricity required for charging the batteries, the e-trikes' carbon footprint will be less than one quarter of petroleum-fueled tricycles' carbon dioxide emissions.
As part of the pilot project, ADB will install four charging stations in Mandaluyong City, which will be able to charge the e-trike batteries to 50-percent capacity in less than 30 minutes. One of the charging stations will use solar energy. | <urn:uuid:f0cebf83-4759-4594-ab7d-74166b86ef45> | {
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China’s escalating energy consumption places increasing stress on the world’s energy prices, leading to mounting global pressures to seek potential energy supplies through technology and exploration.
Chinese energy demand has more than doubled during the past decade. According to the study “China’s Quest for Energy Resources on Global Markets” published in Pacific Focus by Wiley-Blackwell, China will consume about 41% of global coal consumption and 17% of global energy supply by 2050.
“The economic prosperity of China partnered by its rising energy demands will affect global energy sectors, commodity stock exchange market, energy trading strategies and environmental policies. Availability of fossil fuels, both in the near and long term, will become also increasingly scarce as China absorbs a growing global share of demand”, says co-author Dr. Zhang Jian, a research economist at the University of Hawaii, Manoa.
China became a net importer of petroleum in 1993, and is now the third largest importer and consumer – after the U.S. and Japan. As one of the world’s top carbon emitters, its energy profile is heavily weighted towards fossil fuel technologies, petroleum and coal at a time when reductions are urgently needed to stabilize global climate change.
While China has expressed willingness to participate in global negotiations over greenhouse emission reduction, their present domestic policy continues to rely on growing energy consumption.
“Although higher prices will stimulate innovation and research on renewable and alternate energy sources, the expansion of global energy supply is still not adequate to compensate China’s energy demand growth. The rest of the world will still have to manage and reduce energy demand through conservation”, said Dr. Zhang.
This paper is published in the November 2008 issue of Pacific Focus (Vol.23, Issue 3).
Provided by Wiley
Explore further: Russia turns back clocks to permanent Winter Time | <urn:uuid:d587a103-5abc-408d-8d85-79bb0812bbc0> | {
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Coit Street Historic District
The Coit Street Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. Portions of the content on this web page were adapted from a copy of the original nomination document. [†] Adaptation copyright © 2010, The Gombach Group.
The Coit Street Historic District in New London, Connecticut, includes four 18th-century buildings from the early period of settlement on the northeastern edge of the former Bream Cove, just southwest of the central business district, and the 19th-century buildings which encroached on the natural shoreline of the cove as it was gradually filled in. Coit Street follows the original shoreline of Bream Cove. The Coit Street Historic District contains approximately four acres and 33 buildings on flat terrain.
The Coit Street Historic District is isolated from the downtown by the rear elevations of a series of two, three, and four-story brick buildings which abut the southern edge of the district, effectively screening the district from traffic and commercial activity. The Coit Street Historic District is defined by the houses fronting Blinman Street on the south, Brewer Street on the east, and Coit and Washington Streets on the west and north. The Coit Street Historic District is densely developed, with small dwellings located at the rear of several of the lots. The closed-in sense of this compact district is established by the narrow one-way streets lined with 18th and 19th-century houses.
Based on the comprehensive inventory of New London, it is estimated that there are twelve 18th-century buildings extant in scattered sites throughout the city. Of these, four are located within the Coit Street Historic District. The depletion of New London's building stock from that period is due to Benedict Arnold's disastrous raid on the city in 1781 and the redevelopment of more recent years.
All of the principal buildings located within the Coit Street Historic District are contributing to the overlying themes. These include the well-preserved c.1763 William Coit house at 92 Washington Street (Bell-Cast Gambrel) and the George Chapman House at 7 Coit Street (Georgian). The brick duplex at 26-28 Blinman Street (c.1833) is an example of a late Federal style building. Several buildings combine elements of different styles, such as 18 Brewer Street (c.1839), which combines Greek Revival features with a Georgian roofline, and the two 1885 houses at 48 Blinman Street and 24 Coit Street, which use both Italianate and Queen Anne details.
Greek Revival houses, gable-end-to-street, predominate in the Coit Street Historic District. Fluted Doric columns support porticos on 35 and 36 Blinman Street, and the front porch of 40 Coit Street. Most Greek Revival houses retain the details which are the hallmarks of the style, including pilasters, full entablatures, sidelights and transoms, and semi-elliptical gable windows, which withstood the transition from Federal to Greek Revival in New London. Many houses have porches and other details which reflect additions made in the late 19th century, including one delicate jig-sawn porch, Eastlake porches, and bay windows, which relate well to the late 19th-century vernacular houses in the district. Italianate and Queen Anne styles are also represented, as well as a retardetaire example of French Second Empire, built in 1913.
The Colt Street Historic District contains architectural styles rare in New London, including one of only two 18th-century gambrel dwellings, three of seven Georgian style dwellings, and one of four Federal style buildings in the city. The Coit Street Historic District includes a significant number of early buildings and a well-preserved building stock which creates a compact and cohesive streetscape. The diversity of architectural styles is representative of residential construction in New London from the mid-18th century through the early 20th century. The Coit Street Historic District is historically significant because it contains survivors of an 18th-century settlement on the northeastern edge of the former Bream Cove which underwent further residential development in the 19th and 20th centuries. Early residents of the Coit Street Historic District were often directly engaged in waterfront activity, while later residents were more often employed in supporting trades. Colt and Blinman Streets were among the first streets laid out in the city. Their current configuration still reflects colonial usage as thoroughfares carrying traffic around Bream Cove. Several of the houses in the Coit Street Historic District are associated with families significant in the early history of New London. Although once part of a larger 18th-century neighborhood, the district has been isolated by the loss of many of the city's 18th-century buildings and modern development on the periphery.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the land comprising the Coit Street Historic District was considered the western edge of town. Beginning in 1647, some of the first home-lots established in New London were laid out along Bream Cove. Cove Street, now Coit Street, was carried around the head of the cove at this time to connect the outlying area with the central part of town. A foot bridge built along the path of Blinman Street was replaced in 1766 with a cart bridge. Descendants of several of the families who settled the district during the 17th and 18th centuries erected houses found here today.
The Coit family was an active and influential family in the early years of New London's history, first arriving in this city in 1651. A portion of the district is part of the seven acres purchased by the Coit family in 1694, where the family established its homestead and relocated its shipyard in 1699. William Coit was involved in local revolutionary activities, serving on committees beginning in 1767, shortly after the construction of his house at 92 Washington Street. He commanded several ships during the Revolutionary War, and anecdotal stories about Coit indicate that he was a fervent patriot. Jonathan Coit, a 19th-century member of the Coit family, built his house at 40 Coit Street in 1840. He was also active in the local abolitionist movement in the 1840s.
In 1702, Benjamin Starr purchased a house and wharf on Bream Cove. He was involved in the West Indies trade and a member of the Governor's Council. His cousin's son Jonathan Starr bought this estate in 1759, including 40-42 Blinman Street. It is doubtful that this is the original house: more likely it was built shortly after 1759. Jonathan may also have been active in the West Indies trade, as was his son Jonathan. Benjamin's son Daniel built his home at 35 Brewer Street sometime after 1743, where he lived until his death in 1767
New London's small geographic size limited development at a time when demand for land was rising. The only course for the city was to create land by filling in portions of its waterfront. The waterfront lots were considered premium when the district was first settled, and as the waterfront was filled in, property became valuable because of its proximity to the downtown. In the 1830s, property values in this area were significantly higher than those in contemporaneous developments, with lots commanding as much as twice the price.
Building activity begun at this time became more intense. Almost half of the buildings in the district were built in the next two decades. There is evidence of significant reuse of early house lots and buildings in the district. Many of the 17th and 18th century houses were replaced by mid-19th century dwellings. Sometimes, elements of the earlier houses were salvaged. The former outbuilding at 3 Coit Street has 6/9 sash taken from an earlier building, which was probably installed when the building was converted into a dwelling in the 19th century. Several buildings, such as 7 Coit Street, were moved to new sites in the district.
George Jones built a four-unit rowhouse at 26-28 Blinman Street between 1833 and 1839, tearing down an earlier house and filling in a portion of the cove in the rear of his lot (the eastern half of the rowhouse was removed c.1925). The houses on the south side of Brewer Street were all erected between 1835 and 1843. 24 and 26 Brewer Street replaced an older house. Samuel Beckwith and Orlando Gorton razed a house and built two houses at 18 and 22 Colt Street shortly after 1841, adjacent to Beckwith's own home at 14 Coit Street.
The trades of the residents of the district were evolving from strictly water-dependent careers, which required wharfage and access to the cove, to work skills which, although often marine-related, were not dependent on water access. The residents of the 1830s and 1840s made their livelihoods as a blacksmith, joiner, grocer, ship's carpenter, mariner, rigger, and as captains.
As more of Bream Cove was filled in, the land created was put to industrial use. In 1859, the New London Horse Nail Company was established on the newly created land. After its demise in 1878, the building became part of the Brainard and Armstrong Company silk mills. The intensification of land use on the outskirts led to a new spate of residential development in the district. Eleven houses were built during the latter half of the 19th century, filling in available lots between the older buildings. The mixture of residential and commercial activity in the district, first seen in the Coit shipyard and an 18th-century brewery (no longer extant) on Brewer Street, was maintained when George Shepard erected a dry goods store at 38 Coit Street, adjacent to his home in 1859, and with the construction of a livery stable at 17-21 Brewer Street in 1887.
The final phase of development in the Coit Street Historic District came during the closing years of the 19th century and the early 20th century. The pattern of replacing older buildings and developing empty lots was continued. The heirs of Orlando Gorton, who had built 18 and 22 Coit Street, continued speculative real estate practices with the construction of three two-family homes at 2 through 12 Coit Street between 1894 and 1896. In 1907, Albert Fetherson moved a Greek Revival house onto property he purchased five years earlier at 3 Brewer Street. As late as 1913, an older house at the opposite end of Brewer Street was taken down, and replaced by 78 Washington Street (1913) and 31 Brewer Street (1915).
A wide range of architectural styles is represented in the Coit Street Historic District including Gambrel and Georgian from the 18th century, Federal, Greek Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne, and Romanesque from the 19th century, and Colonial Revival and Second Empire from the early 20th century. In general, the buildings in the Coit Street Historic District are modest, well-designed buildings which exemplify the basic building types used in residential construction in New London from the 18th century through the early 20th century. The variation of styles and the melding of stylistic elements from different styles is noteworthy.
18th-century dwellings are a rarity in New London. The largest concentration in the city is found in the Coit Street Historic District. 92 Washington Street is an unusually intact example of 18th-century architecture. This Bell-Cast Gambrel dwelling, c.1763, with slightly flared eaves and 6/9 sash, is one of two dwellings of this type and vintage extant in New London. Door moldings and fireplace surrounds of 92 Washington Street are similar to those published in 1797 in The Country Builder's Assistant by Asher Benjamin.
The other early houses in the Coit Street Historic District are Georgian. There are only four other dwellings of this style at scattered sites in the city. The well-preserved house at 7 Coit Street was moved onto the site in the early 19th century. Hand-wrought nails, some original 12/12 sash, and the Georgian door surround, as well as its basic design, indicate its earlier origins. The Daniel Starr House, c.1743, is the earliest documented house in the district on its original location. The massing and lines of the house clearly suggest its 18th-century construction.
The 18th/19th century double-house at 40-42 Blinman Street underwent considerable transformations. The western half, built c.1759, has hand-hewn beams and earlier construction techniques than the eastern side, which was built with sawn lumber in the mid-19th century. Since 1759, the house has been described in deeds as remodelled and modernized. Indeed, the handsome Italianate door hood and Greek Revival door surround date from the mid-19th century and may be contemporary with the construction of the eastern half. The adherence to the earlier design in the basic massing and roof detail is interesting and conveys the sense of 18th-century vernacular architecture. There are stylistic similarities between the 40-42 Blinman Street and 7 Coit Street which illustrate the historic process by which a Georgian three-bay house has evolved into a 19th-century double-house.
The brick duplex at 26-28 Blinman Street, c.1833 (originally a four-unit rowhouse), with splayed lintels and Flemish Bond brickwork, is clearly influenced by the Federal style and is the only 19th-century rowhouse in New London. 18 Brewer Street, c.1839, has a Greek Revival door surround, but a gambrel roofline more commonly associated with Georgian architecture. Several of the houses of the 1830s and 1840s have semi-elliptical windows in the pediments, a Federal characteristic which was retained in many early Greek Revival dwellings in New London.
The Greek Revival houses in the Coit Street Historic District are well-proportioned 2-1/2 story, gable-end-to-street buildings with good overall design quality. The Doric porticos at 35 and 36 Blinman Street are noteworthy for their relationship to each other and the quality of the craftsmanship involved. The architectural details of Greek Revival residential buildings are found in the vernacular houses, including pilasters, entablatures, sidelights, and transoms. The scale and proportions of these houses relate well to both the earlier and later houses in the district. Several of the Greek Revival houses have later porches. The similarity of these elements to adjacent late 19th-century houses creates additional unity in the streetscape.
48 Blinman Street and 24 Coit Street are distinguished by the eclectic use of stylistic elements from both Italianate and Queen Anne. Both 1885 dwellings use the same fretwork molding in the cornice. The 1894-96 Queen Anne houses at 2 through 12 Coit Street have identical porticos. The late use of the French Second Empire style on 78 Washington Street (1913) may indicate an attempt to maximize space in the house.
Benjamin, Asher. The Works of Asher Benjamin. Reprint ed., New York: DeCapo Press, 1972. Vol.1: The Country Builder's Assistant, 1797.
Caulkins, Frances M. History of New London, Connecticut. New London, Connecticut: H.D. Utley, 1895.
Chaplain, F.W. Coit Family Genealogy. Hartford, Connecticut: Case, Lockwood and Brainard Company, 1874.
Decker, Robert Owen. The Whaling City. Chester, Connecticut: The Pequot Press, 1976.
New London, Connecticut. New London County Historical Society. Frances M. Caulkins Manuscript Notebooks.
New London Land Records, New London Town Clerk.
New London Probate Records, New London Probate Court.
New London City Directories, 1853-1915.
Starr, Burgis Pratt. A History of the Starr Family. Hartford, Connecticut: Case, Lockwood and Brainard Company, 1879.
Wall, Richard B. Wall's Scrapbook, columns from The Day, 1906-1924.
Bailey, O.H. & Co. Boston. "New London, Connecticut," 1876.
Beers, F.W.; Ellis, A.D.; Soule, G.G. "Atlas of New London County Connecticut." New York, New York: F.W. Beers, A.D. Ellis and G.G. Soule, 1868.
Sanborn-Perris Map Company. "Sanborn Map of New London, 1891."
________"Sanborn Map of New London, 1901."
________"Sanborn Map of New London, 1907."
________"Sanborn Map of New London, 1912."
________"Sanborn Map of New London, 1921."
________"Sanborn Map of New London, 1954."
Sidney, J.C., Civil Engineer. "Plan of the City of New London, New London County, Connecticut." Philadelphia: Collins & Clark, 1850.
Starr & Company. "Map of the City of New-London Conn." New London, Connecticut: Starr & Company, 1863.
Walker, George H. & Co. "Map of the City of New London, New London, Connecticut." 1884.
Warren, Moses. "Warren's Survey of Streets of City of New London." 1807.
Sharon P. Churchill, New London Landmarks, Inc. and John Herzan, Connectocut Historical Commission, Coit Street Historic District, New London, CT, nomination document, 1987, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C. | <urn:uuid:845171f4-ab9a-450a-b5f6-8606ee972f6c> | {
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In a makeshift shelter held up by tree branches, a woman clutches her infant child close to her body. The two are dressed in tattered clothing, and the mother’s face is creased with worry lines. This black and white photograph, titled “Migrant Mother” and taken by Dorothea Lange, is a variant of the famous photograph that has come to represent the Great Depression. It is currently on display in the Addison Gallery of American Art.
“I think that the fact that many of these photos are in black and white really shows the mood of the whole era. I think a lot of young people here have learned about the Great Depression, and the exhibit kind of brings that period to life for us and we can truly see the suffering, seeing it not just in a book,” said viewer Valerie Tang ’20.
The new Addison exhibition, “Photographers Among Us,” opened on April 7 and is located on the second floor of the museum. It features over 200 photographs selected from the Addison’s permanent collection, and was curated by Tessa Hite, Curatorial Fellow.
Hite wrote in an email to The Phillipian, “The exhibition traces the history of pre-digital photojournalism and documentary photography, and considers how advancements to photographic technologies have shifted the ways in which photographs are produced and disseminated.”
Hite hopes that the exhibit helps viewers realize the power of photograph and the potential that everyone has to influence their community.
“Today, we are all photographers walking around with cameras in our pockets. Now more than any time before, anyone has the power to take images — be they of protests or of their community — that can be seen by innumerable audiences on the internet. So I hope too that this exhibition can inspire these acts of citizen journalism,” wrote Hite.
The photographs in each room are separated by themes that demonstrate the variety of forms of photography.
Hite wrote, “The social reform photographs in the first gallery demonstrate how photographs are used to produce social change. In the second gallery, magazines show how photographs were disseminated and read by contemporary audiences. The third gallery on war photography speaks to the role of photographs as historical records and Blumberg’s series raises questions about how war is conveyed in the press. Finally, the last gallery has extended series on communities or landscapes, which are sometimes more personal projects.”
The photo “Migrant Mother” is part of the social reform exhibit and were deliberately commissioned to show the conditions of the time. According to Hite, “Migrant Mother” was taken while Lange was working for the Resettlement Administration and was intended to illustrate the necessity of such government assistance programs. Taken years later, Russell Lee’s photograph, “Jack Whinery and His Family,” was intended to boost morale as the war approached.
“In the many decades since, these masterful photographs have continued to emotionally resonate with countless viewers. But beyond this, knowing the photographers’ motivations, helps us understand the images in a greater historical context,” wrote Hite.
The only collection of photographs printed in color is of a small store in Alabama, where 11 photos are taken across the span of 35 years from 1967 to 1991. They are framed almost exactly the same way, with a direct shot of the store’s front, and clearly show the changes with each passing year.
“It was almost surreal to see the technology of photography get better and better with each one, but the shop itself seemed almost frozen in time,” said viewer Vincent Fan ’20.
Hite hopes that viewers will think carefully about the stories behind each photograph they see in the exhibit. She also urges people to consider the images we see in everywhere everyday life.
“By thinking how and why the photographs assembled in this exhibition were commissioned and published, I am hoping students will continue to ask the same questions about the images that they see on the news, social media or in advertisements. It is also equally important to consider what is being deliberately left out of the frame. Who is not being represented?” wrote Hite in an email to The Phillipian.
“Photographers Among Us” will be on display until July 31. | <urn:uuid:c0cb1bd0-9b4d-4ed9-9aab-b37e2807faa4> | {
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The steady formation of new brain cells in adults may represent more than merely a patching up of aging brains, a new study has shown. The new adult brain cells may serve to give the adult brain the same kind of learning ability that young brains have while still allowing the existing, mature circuitry to maintain stability.
Hongjun Song and colleagues reported their findings in the May 24, 2007 issue of the journal Neuron, published by Cell Press.
In their experiments, they used a virus to selectively label new brain cells with a fluorescent protein in the hippocampus, a major brain center for learning and memory, of adult mice.
The researchers then analyzed the electrophysiological properties of the new neurons at different times after their formation. This analysis enabled them to measure how adaptable, or "plastic," the brain cells were.
The researchers found that the new adult neurons showed a pattern of changing plasticity very similar to that seen in brain cells in newborn animals. That is, the new adult brain cells showed a "critical period" in which they were highly plastic before they settled into the less plastic properties of mature brain cells. In newborn animals, such a critical period enables an important, early burst of wiring of new brain circuitry with experience.
What’s more, the researchers’ molecular analysis showed that the plasticity of new adult neurons depended on the function of one of the same types of receptors that is associated with learning-related processes in newborn animals. Such receptors are the receiving stations for chemical signals called neurotransmitters, launched from neighboring neurons to trigger a nerve impulse in the receiving neurons. Subtle alterations in receptor populations are the means by which the brain wires the preferred pathways in the process of learning and memory.
The researchers also observed in the new adult neurons anatomical evidence of the same kind of formation of new connections that take place in the brains of newborns as they wire new pathways in response to experience.
The researchers wrote that, since the adult form of critical-period plasticity resembles that seen in young brains, "adult-born neurons within the critical period may serve as major mediators for experience-driven plasticity and therefore function as special units in the adult circuitry to contribute to specific brain functions throughout life."
They concluded that "adult neurogenesis may represent not merely a replacement mechanism for lost neurons, but instead an ongoing developmental process that continuously rejuvenates the mature nervous system by offering expanded capacity of plasticity in response to experience throughout life."
Source: Cell Press
Explore further: Building and breaking connections: How neuronal networks influence alcoholism | <urn:uuid:9c959406-79d8-4014-b43e-c5536ce113cc> | {
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The answer, says el-Beltagy – an associate of TWAS, the Academy of Sciences for the Developing Globe – must involve a renewed focus on agricultural study in the South. Composing in the spring problem of the TWAS Newsletter, el-Beltagy outlines the measures that’ll be needed to make sure that developing countries may take benefit of cutting-edge agricultural technology, such as for example genomics and nanotechnology, which have the potential to improve crop yields without unduly stressing the surroundings. Building such capacity depends upon overcoming two obstacles: The North-South gap, which delays the transfer of systems to the developing globe, and the gap between developing world study communities and farmers employed in the field.Amer and Ohio Condition doctoral college student Basant Abdulrahman demonstrated that macrophages isolated from both mice and human beings that carried the most typical CF mutation cannot very clear the B. Cenocepacia disease. The bacterium invades the macrophage and simply sits there, Amer explained, to be digested and cleared apart instead. Because autophagy had not been employed in these cells, the experts tested the consequences of the medication rapamycin, an immune-system suppressant that’s recognized to stimulate autophagy, in regular animals and those with common CF genetic mutation. | <urn:uuid:b21a86eb-fa83-4445-a6e4-5a33143a0ec6> | {
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Author: Ian Devlin
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Audience: Beginners who want incorporate multimedia into websites
Reviewer: David Conrad
Web Multimedia is a strange mix of simple and complex. The latest HTML5 audio and video tags make things simple in principle but in practice it can be very messy. Can this book keep in simple from beginning to end?
Chapter 1 starts of with a look at the basics of HTML5 and I'm not really sure this is necessary in a book so focused on a subtopic of HTML5. Even so it might help some readers. Chapter 2 is where the multimedia proper starts and it first describes the way things used to be done, i.e. using Flash and media players in general. Then it moves on to the basic HTML5 tags - audio and video. It also outlines the differences between browsers in they way they treat the tags and the use of the source element to make sure that you provide at least one format that is supported. At the end of this chapter you have just about all you need to know to actually use audio or video tags and you might well be wondering what the rest of the book is going to be about.
The next two chapters take a slower deeper look at the audio tag and then the video tag. You get to find out in detail what a codec is and what browsers support what codecs. There are examples of how to play files on the latest browsers and what to do for legacy browsers.
The next chapter shows you how to use CSS to format the video window and place text and other special effect overlays on top of it. Chapter 7 pushes the CSS into transitions, transforms and animations to the video or audio display. This isn't particularly special to the video and audio tags because CSS can be applied to style any HTML element in roughly the same way. Of course the dreaded CSS vendor prefixes are scattered all through these chapters, but there is little the author can do other than warn you where the examples will or will not work.
Chapter 8 is about accessibility and covers subtitles and other issues. Chapter 9 is on using video with canvas and this demonstrates simple techniques for displaying video on the canvas element, screen dumping and how to do some simple image processing - converting a color video to gray scale. Chapter 10 describes using SVG with video - mainly using SVG to mask the video display area to produce an elliptical video viewer say.
The final chapter looks at some of the latest multimedia technologies including the getUserMedia API, which gives you access to the device's camera.
Being a programmer, for me the best parts of the book were towards the end where the power of canvas and SVG were used to show how you could be more creative. | <urn:uuid:1e0e5609-9a81-4d32-84a6-d8441dc6610a> | {
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In India it is routine to hear “Nice party. They served non-veg” and “Are you veg or non-veg?” We see that the expression “non-veg” does duty both as noun and as adjective. In the former role it can stand for flesh, fish or fowl – the sole essential being that whatever it may be, it is not “veg”.
In the UK, incidentally, “veg” means not vegetarian but vegetable, as in the typical meal of “steak, potatoes and two veg”.
In the late 1970s, it used to give my English girlfriend much pleasure to hear people in India call themselves vegetables: “She did look like an aubergine, you know.”
In the Hindu-CNN-IBN State of the Nation Survey of August 2006, Yogendra Yadav and Sanjay Kumar spoke of India's food habits. “The findings [of the survey] show that only 31 per cent of Indians are vegetarians,” they wrote. “The figure is 21 per cent for families (with all vegetarian members).”
This is in the present. Historians have shown that the people of ancient India, beginning with Brahmins, ate many kinds of meat, including that of cattle.
Therefore, to call India a vegetarian country when over two-thirds of Indians eat meat is imbecility. Yet vegetarianism is assumed to be the norm, encouraged or imposed by the ideologies of religion and caste.
The prefix “non-” is used to indicate negation or absence. Thus there are words like “non-combatant” and “nonsense”.
It may also be used to mark a negative quality or a deviation from a norm, as in “non-attractive”. In a land of Hindus, a “non-Hindu” is a deviant. In our country, because vegetarianism is wrongly assumed to be the norm, those who eat meat are called “non-vegetarians”.
The expression often has a negative connotation: the eating of meat may be seen as a reprehensible act.
Vegetarianism is known all over the world, but it is considered a harmless eccentricity.
Humans in nearly the entire world eat the flesh of mammals and birds and fishes. We are, as a species, omnivores, never mind all the ersatz Vedic humbug that flies around in Bharat.
It is only in our India that the expression “non-vegetarian” is found. Indians who go abroad get blank stares when they utter it.
No one anywhere says “non-meat-eater” or “non-carnivore”, which would be a good deal more logical.
A meat-eating family living in Ahmedabad in a housing society owned by Jains recently got 40 letters threatening the rape of their daughter as punishment for their “criminal” food habits.
Can you imagine a sattvik pujari living in Birmingham facing a death threat for his food choices: “You eat kaddu, Panditji – you die”?
This article was originally published at Scroll.in and has been reproduced here with permission. | <urn:uuid:92814194-59a4-4fd5-a2cc-2879631b6ec6> | {
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North Dakota officials raise awareness of emerald ash borer
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) – State and local officials in North Dakota this week are trying to raise awareness of the emerald ash borer.
The beetles have killed millions of ash trees in 25 states, including neighboring Minnesota. North Dakota has about 78 million ash trees that could be at risk if the pest crosses the border.
“Given the traffic between our two states, it is more important than ever for North Dakotans to take action to prevent it from coming here,” Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring said.
One way residents can help with prevention is by buying firewood from local sources, State Forester Larry Kotchman said.
“(The beetle) spreads slowly on its own, but it can be moved long distances in firewood and ash nursery stock,” he said.
Officials in nearly 50 North Dakota cities including Fargo, on the Minnesota border, are placing ribbons and posters on ash trees to raise awareness. State and federal officials also are putting about 180 beetle traps around the state. The traps will be monitored throughout the summer. | <urn:uuid:15d54859-c0df-4813-a4e8-78fd0f99b0ed> | {
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A Mayo Clinic study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings found that varsity football players from 1956 to 1970 did not have an increased risk of degenerative brain diseases, compared with athletes in other varsity sports.
The researchers reviewed all the yearbooks and documented team rosters for Mayo High School and Rochester High School, now called John Marshall High School, in Rochester. The high school football players were compared with athletes who did not play football, including swimmers, basketball players and wrestlers.
Using the medical records linkage system of the Rochester Epidemiology Project, each student was observed for about 40 years after participation in high school sports.
Among the 296 students who played football, the researchers found:
Among the 190 athletes who did not play football, the researchers found:
- One case of dementia
- Four cases of mild cognitive impairment
- Three cases of parkinsonism
- Zero cases of ALS
- 14 cases of head trauma
The football players were found to have a suggestive increased risk of medically documented head trauma, especially in the 153 students who played football for more than one season. But they still did not show increased risk of neurodegenerative diseases.
This study mirrors a previous Mayo Clinic study of high school athletes who played between 1946 and 1956. That study also found no increased risk of degenerative brain diseases. While football from 1956 to 1970 was somewhat similar to present day, including body weight, athletic performance and equipment, football-related concussions still were minimized as “getting your bell rung,” the researchers note.
Football has continued to evolve. Helmets, for example, have gone from leather to hard plastic shells. However, helmets do not eliminate concussions and may provide players with a false sense of protection, says Rodolfo Savica, M.D., Ph.D., Neurology/Health Sciences Research, who is the senior author of the study.
The researchers point out that high school sports offer clear benefits of physical fitness on cardiovascular health, and some studies also have suggested a possible protective effect against later degenerative brain illness. But the researchers caution that additional studies are needed to explore more recent eras and involve players who participate at the collegiate and professional levels.
“This study should not be interpreted as evidence that football-related head trauma is benign,” the researchers write. “The literature on chronic traumatic encephalopathy in college and professional football players seems irrefutable, with reports of devastating outcomes. However, there may be a gradient of risk, with low potential in high school football players.” | <urn:uuid:14083d32-96d7-49dd-8e41-8724d9cb0750> | {
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