Community-Based Events & Resources Invite Families to Learn, Celebrate & Reflect on Freedom
These days, when a monumental government decision is made, technology allows the news to travel quickly and we are able to find out almost immediately. However, before the internet and telephones and even motorized vehicles were invented, information took a lot longer to travel. News could take days, weeks, even months to spread, and the further information had to travel, the longer it took for it to get there. In the case of the Emancipation Proclamation, for example, word of Lincoln’s granting of freedom to slaves in Confederate states took nearly six months to reach some parts of the country! While the Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1st, 1863, word of emancipation took until June 19th to travel from Washington, DC to Galveston, Texas!
The day upon which Texas slaves learned of the Emancipation Proclamation is celebrated today as Juneteenth. Originally celebrated only in Texas, the day has served as a commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States since 1865. Across the country – and even around the world – Juneteenth is celebrated in order to honor the struggles of those who endured slavery, and to remind us of the ways in which our country’s history has affected (and continues to affect) our current society.
Community-Based Education Events
Monday, June 13th -Sunday, June 19, 9:30am-5pm
“Freedom Week” at Old Sturbridge Village offers historical programs to celebrate Juneteenth. This holiday commemorates the ending of slavery in the United states and the day on which Texas slaves learned of the Emancipation Proclamation. Daily performances will highlight the experience of American slaves, particularly local figures. Storyteller Tammy Denease Richardson will portray Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman, a woman who lived in the Berkshires and became the first black enslaved person to gain her freedom in a court of law based on the principle of general equality. Denease will also play Belinda Royall, a woman who was sold into slavery to the Royall Family and later taken to Medford, Massachusetts.Belinda petitioned the government for reparations. Andre Keitt will present Keys to the Keepers, a presentation about the ways in which slaves preserved their African culture through storytelling and folklore. On June 18th and 19th only, The Ray of Hope Project musicians and actors will perform participatory music programs which incorporate history and primary source readings. 800-733-1830. 1 Old Sturbridge Village Road. Sturbridge, MA. (Adults $$. 17 and under $. 2 and under FREE)
Sunday, June 19, 4pm
The day upon which Texas slaves learned of the Emancipation Proclamation is celebrated today as Juneteenth. Originally celebrated only in Texas, the day has served as a commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States since 1865. Across the country, Juneteenth is celebrated in order to honor the struggles of those who endured slavery, and to remind us of the ways in which our country’s history has affected (and continues to affect) our current society. Learn more about this historic day through storytelling, and celebrate with song at Old Deerfield’s Brick Church. 413-628-0262. 77 Old Main Street. Deerfield, MA. ($)
Sunday, June 19, 4pm-7pm
In a time of globalization and instantaneous information spreading, it can be difficult to imagine news traveling slowly. Juneteenth, on June 19th, commemorates the ending of slavery in the United states and the day on which Texas slaves learned of the Emancipation Proclamation. Union General Gordon Granger read the news aloud at Galveston Island. Juneteenth is a time to honor those who endured slavery, and reflect on the ways in which our society continues to be shaped by this history. Arise for Social Justice invites you to a Juneteenth celebration at Ruth Elizabeth Park. There will be food, activities, and entertainment for the whole family. 413-734-4948. Hancock Street and Hickory Street. Springfield, MA. (FREE)
Community-Based Education Resource
In addition to learning about the importance of observing Juneteenth by participating in these community-based learning events, families can learn more about the process of securing freedom for African-Americans by reading tales included in Freedom Stories of the Pioneer Valley. A collection of tales about folks living in the Pioneer Valley who worked to ensure their own freedom and/or the freedom of others, Freedom Stories of the Pioneer Valley details the lives of many important former Pioneer Valley residents.
From some of Florence’s first activist community members to early Amherst residents doing jail time for saving a child from being sold into slavery, the stories convey the fear, uncertainty, and injustices endured even by legally freed African-Americans living in Massachusetts. Learning about the Pioneer Valley’s history with slavery and African-American rights can help children develop context for the information that they learn about the Civil War, emancipation, and our country’s prolonged struggle to create equality. Being able to put large-scale events into a local context, and to imagine them happening in familiar places, makes stories truly hit home.
- All Different Now: Juneteenth, the First Day of Freedom (by Angela Johnson)
- Juneteenth (by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson)
- Juneteenth for Mazie (Floyd Cooper)
- Juneteenth: A Celebration of Freedom (by Charles Taylor)
- The Story of Juneteenth: An Interactive History Adventure (by Steven Otfinoski)
- Juneteenth Jamboree (by Carole Boston Weatherford)


West Nile virus epidemics in North America are driven by shifts in mosquito feeding behavior.By Kilpatrick et al.
Kilpatrick AM, Kramer LD, Jones MJ, Marra PP, Daszak P. 2006. West Nile virus epidemics in North America are driven by shifts in mosquito feeding behavior. PLoS Biol. 4(4): e82.
West Nile virus (WNV) has caused repeated large-scale human epidemics in North America since it was first detected in 1999 and is now the dominant vector-borne disease in this continent. Understanding the factors that determine the intensity of the spillover of this zoonotic pathogen from birds to humans (via mosquitoes) is a prerequisite for predicting and preventing human epidemics. We integrated mosquito feeding behavior with data on the population dynamics and WNV epidemiology of mosquitoes, birds, and humans. We show that Culex pipiens, the dominant enzootic (bird-to-bird) and bridge (bird-to-human) vector of WNV in urbanized areas in the northeast and north-central United States, shifted its feeding preferences from birds to humans by 7-fold during late summer and early fall, coinciding with the dispersal of its preferred host (American robins, Turdus migratorius) and the rise in human WNV infections. We also show that feeding shifts in Cx. tarsalis amplify human WNV epidemics in Colorado and California and occur during periods of robin dispersal and migration. Our results provide a direct explanation for the timing and intensity of human WNV epidemics. Shifts in feeding from competent avian hosts early in an epidemic to incompetent humans after mosquito infection prevalences are high result in synergistic effects that greatly amplify the number of human infections of this and other pathogens. Our results underscore the dramatic effects of vector behavior in driving the transmission of zoonotic pathogens to humans.


Boiler explosion causes long outage and loss of generation. It can cause loss of life and property. NFPA has collected data on explosion and has large number of standards which guide to prevent explosion. Evaluating the cause, documenting it for corrective and preventive action is essential.
Explosions in boilers are not uncommon. Irrespective of the type of fuel being fired, boilers have experienced explosions. Remember that an explosion analysis is not a fault finding mission, but a fact finding one for prevention of the cause in future. Never officially put on record any of your findings before the chief of the plant at the highest level agrees with you. There are many areas to be taken care by the plant owner and you as a fact finding man have to be helping him in all. However it is very important to record all the facts for your analysis and corrective / preventive action.
- Reach the site as early as possible (before any evidence is destroyed).
- Take all printouts of all recorded parameters from at least 24 hrs before the explosion.
- Take the first-up details; take the event recorder data if available.
- Take photos of the entire area while inspecting the boiler.
- Look at all the areas, starting from FD fan to ID fan make a full survey.
- Immediately pick up any evidence samples then and there and tag them as to where you got them and how they were positioned; take photos before disturbing the position.
- Take the copy of the shift and boiler operator log book.
- Discuss with all starting from the chief of boiler and plant to the local floor operator. Note all points verbatim.
- It will be good to talk to the maintenance group, both regarding the maintenance carried out and their impression about operation.
- Look at the available after-combustion products before they are cleaned; take samples for analysis.
- Look at the start-up and shut down procedures as explosions happen mainly during this period.
Mark all deviations from
- Safe practices
- Good operating practices
- Large load swings
- Any fuel interruption
- Action by operator to save unit from tripping like introducing high reactive fuel
- Action by local operator without instruction from main control room like introducing igniter
- Contradictions in statement of persons
- Observation that can be a possible source of evidence
- Any other points for your analysis
- Make up your own hypothesis for the explosion with the evidence collected; build up a model
- Validate this with the owner and the designers
- Check with the codes like NFPA whether your hypothesis for explosion of boiler fall in line with these codes and make the final report
NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) and others have analysed the causes of explosion and find that operator error (can be more clearly put as operator anxiety to save unit from trip) has contributed to about 47%, insufficient purge about 39%, control failure 11%, and equipment failure 3%. The only way to avoid an explosion is to avoid the accumulation of fuel in the boiler.


Instruction for Concept Map.
I am providing the blank format which has chart everything, you need work on that.
Teaching Assessment and Patient/Client Education (In hospital) and Transfer (discharge). Format is bullet points or number them. No paragraphs.
1. Discuss/Teach a procedure while in the hospital or provide education about a consult
2. Discuss/Teach- a medication while in the hospital (choose one) the action of the medication and the side effects- when to notify/emergency
3. Teach- while in the hospital A health promotion or disease prevention.
Anticipated transfer/Discharge/Interprofessional Consults (going home): In bullet points or number them. No paragraphs.
1. Follow-up with whom? And about what?
2. Discharge Medication-Name the medication, present the action and side effects of the drug. Also, include the dosage, and route.
3. Need to see referral/consultation, and rationales- with whom? And about what?
Nursing Diagnosis: (2 Highest Priority). Please don’t use acute pain diagnosis, DEFICIENT Knowledge, anxiety or fatigue.
1. 2 Actual nursing diagnosis-written correctly:
Example: The Problem- related to -as evidence by- Include the citation.
Diagnosis must R/T medical diagnosis or condition, AEB pertinent S/S, diagnostics and supporting data. (According to NANDA)
2. at Risk for-what is the Potential Complication. -Priority.
1. Written correctly- Example: Problem-related to. For risk no need as evidence by.
Potential Health Deviations (A Risk diagnosis).
1. Use the Carpenito textbook. Write them correctly.
2. Do not use National Safety goals- Potentials for examples: falls, skin breakdown, infection etc. Look-up National Safety Goals
3. Nursing Outcome/Goal and Evaluation:
1. Outcomes/Goals- Opposite/Reversal of the Problem.
2. They are SMART goal which means they are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timed. For example, patient pain is reduced 4 out of 10 after 1 hour.
1. Each Interventions must be evaluated- what the results?
4. Planning/Goals & Evaluation:
1. Refer to the rubric and provide one goal for each nursing diagnosis.
2. Evaluation- Evaluate each intervention, then assess if goal is met.
No paragraphs. Did you meet your goals?
5. Nursing Interventions:
1. Provide the rationales. Please follow the format and sequence- Assess- vital signs and system assessment (focused assessment), Monitor- choose one of them: a lab value, or a diagnostic procedure, or intake/output; Administer- a medication including route, dosage per MD orders; Collaborate- with whom? And about what? 5. Teach-Back-what?
2. Implementation/Interventions: Be specific and clear. Do not provide the same information.
I ADD MY SAMPLE OF CONCEPT MAP, PLEASE FOLLOW THAT.
9. Diagnostic test and Diagnostic procedures: – Please present abnormal findings for pertinent current diagnostic tests and diagnostic procedures need to be assessed. Provide the Rationales- what would be done about them.
10. General Organization:
1. Concept Maps are APA including coversheet. Each category must include the citations. Citations must be scholarly which does not mean WebMD. Must include the minimum of three references. Add title page and reference page.


You might have lived in the early days of smartphones. Few decades ago, personal computers were bulky and owning a cell phone almost makes you look an elite citizen of the world. These days however, things have changed hugely. If you would look at technology, these gadgets are now more of a necessity than a luxury.
But there are more ways in which electronics have improved. Processor speeds drastically increased while screen resolution delivers more vibrant and sharper images. There are even companies that are spending almost as much time and research on aesthetics as they do with its engineering. But there is this one improvement that you will barely see or notice, and that is the phone’s Glass or screen. Still, let us take into account that these screens are not invincible to damage and scratches. If such thing happens and you want to keep them looking neat, it is best to bring it to the pros like those who are in https://www.fixpod.com.au/.
Solution to Day to Day Abuse of Your Device
Corning is a manufacturing company that developed the product called Gorilla Glass. They have designed to meet the rigorous demands of electronics.
Everyone’s guilty of carrying around their tablets, computers and smartphones and several other devices everywhere. With this, they are risking of damaging them due to day to day use.
With the integration of Corning Gorilla Glass, it can endure abuse especially with its impact and scratch-resistant qualities. Corning’s approach enables the glass to become so thin. Meaning to say, it will not interfere with the capacitance of touch screen or even add weight to the device.
What sets Gorilla Glass unique from other glasses? The answer here lies on the outstanding temperature, special robots and molten salt bath used. The end product is a very thin piece of glass that’s capable of withstanding tons of punishment.
What Corning does is take the SiO2 or Silicon Dioxide and combining it to other chemicals before it melts it to a glass. The glass is aluminosilicate, which means that the glass contains silicon, oxygen and aluminum. The glass also has sodium ion which is a vital part of the next stage of its manufacturing.
Corning then pours the molten glass in a V-shaped trough. The company keeps adding molten glass until the glass starts to overflow to the sides. Automated robotic arms are drawing the sheet of glass from edge of the trough.


Online Custom «Belmont Report» Essay Sample
The historical development of technology, psychology, and the society in general has exerted a significant impact on all areas of human life and activity, including education, philosophy, as well as personal and professional relations. Due to the creation of new medication and treatment techniques that allow curing various illnesses, one of the spheres that have been affected most is medicine. The development of these innovations required thorough and dedicated research, which involved performing tests on human subjects with an aim to improve their efficiency and eliminate possible drawbacks and side effects. Preserving rights of individuals involved in clinical trials required the implementation of a strict set of ethical norms secured by law. The Belmont Report marked a milestone in the history of medical ethics, because it provided clear recommendations on dealing with human subjects of biomedical and behavioral research. Therefore, it would be beneficial to analyze the impact of the report’s implementation on the development of modern ethical principles in the medical environment.
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First, it is essential to review the brief history of the Belmont Report, its keys positions, and recommendations. In 1974, the adoption of the National Research Act led to the formation of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (The Belmont Report, 1979). The group’s main goal was to protect rights of individuals involved in clinical trials by identifying ethical principles for scientists and developing guidelines that would ensure their adherence to the code of ethics. One of the main reasons for conducting the Belmont Report was ensuring that war crimes committed by the Nazi scientists against human test subjects during the Second World War would never happen again (Childress, Meslin, & Shapiro, 2005, p. 2-12).
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Therefore, the Commission concentrated on several major aspects of medical research: the difference between actual research and common medical practice; the necessity of acknowledging possible risks and benefits for society and human subjects involved in the research; recommendations for choosing appropriate individuals for clinical trials; and the importance of informed consent in various types of research (The Belmont Research, 1979). Eventually, their work resulted in the creation of the Belmont Report that identified the ethical principles of performing research involving human test subjects and offered recommendations for the adoption by the government.
The Commission insisted that it was essential to distinguish between biomedical and behavioral research and medical practice in order to determine when people should be considered test subject and receive appropriate protection. According to this opinion, common procedures are aimed at providing diagnoses, preventive treatment, and therapy to improve the health of patients, while scientific research is designed for testing hypothesis and techniques to organize knowledge and develop new means of treatment (The Belmont Report, 1979). Therefore, the Committee insisted that any untested activity that may produce unexpected effects on patients should be reviewed to protect human subjects. This position statement has greatly contributed to the development of social responsibility among researchers and ensured that the majority of innovative practices are incorporated into formal research projects (Vanderpool, 2006).
Additionally, the Commission concentrated on promoting basic ethical principles among medical practitioners. In particular, three most important aspects of ethics should be maintained when dealing with human test subjects: respect for persons, justice, and beneficence (The Belmont Report, 1979). The first principle involves treating each person as an individual capable of making autonomous decisions and providing essential protection to those lacking this ability. Therefore, scientists should respect a person’s needs and pay more attention to people with disabilities. Justice concentrates on providing equal treatment to all human subjects despite background differences and sharing the results of research with all who can benefit from it. Therefore, this principle implicates that it is unethical to use unwilling groups of people, such as prisoners, for conducting clinical trials, and that all members of society should be provided with the advantages of medical innovation regardless of their financial capabilities.
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The third principle implies that it is necessary not only to protect test subjects from harm but also positively affect their health (The Belmont Report, 1979). Scientists also need to consider the beneficence of research to the whole society when managing the possible risks of innovative treatment. The application of this ethical principle in medicine has resulted in the emergence of the opportunity to use children as test subjects upon receiving their personal agreement and approval from parents (Carroll and Gutmann, 2011). Such practice has proven to be beneficial for the society due to the invention of various types of treatment for childhood and inherited diseases.
The Commission insisted that all research should be performed according to three essential recommendations: informed consent, risk/benefit assessment, and selection of subjects (The Belmont Report, 1979). The first one implies that subject should be able to choose what they shall or shall not be exposed to. This principle ensures that people do not endure trials unwillingly or under the application of either psychological or physical pressure. Therefore, human subjects should receive essential information on the research, be comprehensible, and volunteer to participate (The Belmont Report, 1979). The assessment of risks and benefits implies that scientists gather sufficient and relevant data and process it thoroughly before conducting actual tests. This principle ensures that a review committee can clearly determine whether the potential advantages for the society justify the treatment of individuals involved in research. The third recommendation implies that researchers treat all subjects equally despite such differences, i.e. the color of skin, gender, age, and social and cultural background. The adoption of these principles has allowed improving the quality of research, developing innovative medicine and treatment techniques, and protecting the rights of people.
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In conclusion, the Belmont Report emphasized the importance of adhering to basic ethical principles for medical practitioners and securing human subjects involved in tests and clinical trials. The adoption of the recommendations provided in the report has allowed increasing the efficiency of research, inventing new medicine and treatment techniques, and protecting the rights of people.


Into and Out of Dislocation, by C. S. Giscombe.
New York: North Point Press, 2000.
In 49th Parallel Psalm, his 1999 poetic history of black arrivants in British Columbia, Wayde Compton refers to Canada as “Xanada,” a version of the dreamy, Edenic Xanadu that some nineteenth century blacks, escaping slavery and segregation in America, were led to believe they might find “on the Brit side of the border.” C. S. Giscombe’s Into and Out of Dislocation mines similar ground, but from a decidedly different perspective: Compton has lived his entire life on the Xanadian side of the border, well aware of the flimsiness of the myth of a Canada free of racial inequalities, while Giscombe is the ardent traveler, captivated by Canada’s otherness, by how blacks are “a different kind of presence” there, by how, in fact, “Race is different everywhere.” Into and Out of Dislocation is the prose companion to Giscombe’s 1998 book of poetry, Giscome Road (Dalkey Archive Press). Both books explore the same northern British Columbian geography, and both pursue the faint traces of the historical figure John Robert Giscome, a nineteenth-century black explorer and miner who made his fortune in B.C. and who may just be a distant ancestor of C. S. Giscombe (despite the missing ‘b’ in his name). Into and Out of Dislocation is a memoir of Giscombe’s numerous travels in Canada (a country to which he “was always going”) and his six months residence in Prince George, a few short miles from the Arctic Circle, researching the nineteenth-century Giscome. It is also a meditation on place, race, the racialized body, family and history which explores the “sexiness” of border crossings and the traces of miscegenation in a country so apparently white. The title refers to Giscombe’s physical injuries – his left arm is amputated at the elbow and that shoulder, as a doctor tells him, moves “with surprising ease into and out of dislocation.” This quickly becomes the metaphor for Giscombe’s travels, for his ever present desire to “disappear into landscape,” to move, as he writes in Giscome Road, “out to the edge, right out / to the mutest edge there.” Two experiences in particular seem to fascinate the author: finding black people and their history “in a very unlikely location,” and, conversely, stretching out beyond the borders of black context, “over the edge,” to be the anomalous and only black man, one armed and “a possible threat,” wheeling into small town Canada on his bicycle.
Early in the narrative, Giscombe cites what he calls an old African-American saying: “that no matter where you go, no matter how far, no matter to what unlikely extreme, no matter what country, continent, ice floe, or island you land on, you will find someone else black already there.” It is the surprise of this discovery that holds much of his attention, the black woman he glimpses in the supermarket, the man from Chicago he meets in Prince George, and asks him “how things were for us here” (“‘It’s OK,’ he said, ‘but you’re always the only one’”), the dawning realization of just how far “we’ve spread,” how far the ragged edges of the diaspora extend. Part of this discovery involves his research on John Robert Giscome. The traces are few and faint: an article in a small colonial newspaper, a mountain pass and a nearly abandoned town named Giscome, just north of Prince George – although no one is certain who the places are named after (more often than not it is Giscombe who tells the locals, revealing the “heart of darkness” in the “great white north”). The reasons for the near erasure of black history are the same as elsewhere: “the focus of history in northern B.C. is white penetration and settlement.” Some accounts do not even mention that John Giscome is black, although every Giscome and Giscombe that C. S. has ever met is and came, at some point, through Jamaica, as John Robert is know to have. Canada’s history is the same as and different from any other former colony – it is and it isn’t Xanada/Xanadu. Giscombe discovers annals of black history he knew nothing of – six hundred black emigres who sailed from San Francisco to Victoria in 1858, a thousand who moved from Maine to Nova Scotia in 1783 with the Loyalists, all for the sake of a better, less racialized life “on the Brit side of the border” – but he also discovers that black Canadians are often just as economically marginalized as their American counterparts: on trains he meets porters, cooks, and waiters “all of whom were black, yes even in Canada.”
Giscombe likens his explorations “into dislocation,” into solitariness, to being “a black Marlow seeking black Mistah Kurtz,” striking alone into the “great colorless blankness of the map,” the “big otherness” of Canada. It’s a nicely ironic reversal of the story of white penetration into the “dark” continent,” with Giscombe much enjoying being the solitary black explorer amidst all the whiteness – metaphoric and actual – of Fort George and Grande Prairie, Alberta. However, the “Mistah Kurtz” Giscombe searches for is not only John Robert, but the racial “heart of darkness” wherever it may impossibly lie, from the buried black history of the far north to the traces of miscegenation he uncovers in a young girl’s face in North Bay, Ontario. “[B]lack is such a big category,” he writes, “because such a wide range of people’s bodies count as black, we’re used to looking at people in a fairly discerning way. Whiteness is different, is defined by the absence of non-whiteness among the forebear; it’s a celebration, as far as I’ve ever been able to tell, of not mixing.” Giscombe-Marlow, deep into the “big otherness” of Canada, is both alone in his anomalous blackness and simultaneously connected to “some great fleshy body” lying under the surface: “O my brothers and cousins in Canada, I’m what is hidden in the blood.”
The relation of self with space is crucial to Giscombe’s experience of Canada. Sounding much like the Charles Olson of Call Me Ishmael (indeed, Giscombe refers to John Robert as his Creeley-esque “figure of outward”), he writes “living with all that space, this was what it meant to be Canadian.” His own experience of that “space,” as I have suggested, is racial – but it is transgressively racial. John Robert’s Canadian adventure is intriguing in part because “he got all outside the lines that geography, race, and the languages of white people had made for him and, that way, both entered and failed to enter history. He went on over into Canada.” Giscombe the late twentieth century poet can share Giscome the late nineteenth century explorer’s experience of “singularity” and “anomalousness” in that vast whiteness, and it is this singularity that absorbs and that appears to throw racial categories into strange new shades. “My sense is that black singularity’s especially out of context,” Giscombe writes – out of the context, that is, of black community – and thus “The problem’s how to celebrate the brothers without constituency,” how to deal with the desired and loathed experience of being alone in othering whiteness. One answer may be seen in that, as a story of the extended diaspora, Into and Out of Dislocation comes to an unusual understanding of space: there are the crucial boundary and border crossings, yes, but another typical diasporadic experience of space – its absence in the crowded holds of the middle passage – is here offered its opposite experience: black singularity in nearly unpeopled space, the ability to stand just “a little outside of history” and the usual black geography, a little outside the damages time and space have written on the black body.
There were moments, reading Into and Out of Dislocation, when I wanted to be more challenged as a reader, when Giscombe’s Canada was too conveniently the geography of sexy otherness, when the narrative of campsites and bicycling, academic life, train travel, became an almost too mundane backdrop to the more stirring meditations on race and place. But this is also what allows those meditations their time and space to unfold, and the non-linear structure of Giscombe’s various memories of a lifetime of travel in Canada, always circling back to his “Winter in Fort George,” on the trail of John Robert, liberates the text from a potentially dull narrative of what-I-saw/what-I-thought travel notes. Giscombe’s is poetic, meditative prose of the most accessible and pleasurable sort, and he reveals the eye and ear of a poet at every step as he pries into the landscape and language of desire.
— Stephen Collis


Stop Over-Snacking Your Kids
I see them everywhere. Toddlers running on the playground with sticky granola bars in their hands. Preschoolers riding their Razors with one hand in a bag of Goldfish crackers. Children whose smallest peep results in a parent reaching for a loaded Snack-Trap.
They are The Over-snacked.
Over-snacking, or consuming food outside of normal meal times regardless of energy need, can lead to multiple problems - and I am not just referring to obesity. Yes, too many snacks can lead to weight gain. And for some families, this weight gain is a catalyst to change a family’s eating habits. But, obesity is not the only consequence of too many snacks.
Some over-snackers are underweight. These kids lose their appetite for healthy whole-food choices at meal times because their calorie needs have already been met for the day through snack foods. After awhile, their consumption of typically high-fat, high-carb, sugary snack foods replaces a normal, balanced diet of nutritive foods. By the end of the day, they don’t eat enough quality calories for appropriate growth.
Meanwhile, the over-snacked begin to crave high-sugar, high-fat items in order to feel “full.” Proteins, fiber, and dairy have a tendency to fall to the wayside in a child’s diet. The formative, foundational years to develop a balanced palate are lost to excessive crackers, fruit, and granola bars. Or, even worse, fall to pouches of glorified baby food.
Over-snackers can also become manipulative. An over-snacked child’s behavior will change depending on if, when, and what snack food is offered. The slippery slope of positively reinforcing whining and interruption begins as parents scramble to “just keep him quiet” with food. Or, snacks begin to be associated with praise. For example, “You did such a great job, let’s go get a treat.” After awhile, too many snacks for the wrong reasons.
The result? Picky-eaters and meal-refusers.
In my opinion, snacking has become more cultural norm and popular expectation rather than nutritional need. For long-term health, our children need to learn how to eat for nutritive gain - learning to eat when hungry is a life-skill. Over-snacked kids lose the ability to listen to their body’s cues of hunger and fullness.
So, if a child is eating the required amount of calories for normal growth and development in 3 squares a day, is all this snacking really necessary? How do we know if our children are getting too many snacks? And, what can we do to discourage over-snacking?
- Offer water first. Small kids can confuse the feeling of thirst for hunger. In addition, kids are generally under-hydrated. Water should be a first go-to. And, if your child seems satisfied after a quick drink, skip the snack.
- Out of sight, out of mind. Keeping food in your bag, purse, glove box, and pockets is part of the over-snacking recipe. With the exception of long excursions, food should be kept in the kitchen cupboard. In this way, snacking becomes more inconvenient. And, hopefully, more infrequent.
- Don’t force a snacking schedule, but don’t snack on demand. Be mindful of a snacking balance. Have snacks at the ready, but don’t offer them until your child demonstrates hunger. If your child demonstrates hunger cues, and it is an appropriate time in the day, then enjoy the snack.
- Sit to snack. A child who is hungry will sit (OK, slow down?) to eat. They will stop playing, go to the table, and eat a snack. If your child is not willing to stop play, they are likely not really hungry. Save the snack for later, or skip it. An exception to the sit to snack rule? The carseat! Try to eliminate 4-wheeled eating.
- Keep a snack, a snack. Despite what Taco Bell would like us to believe, a snack should not be a 4th meal. Leave some calorie craving for actual meal times. In general, snacks should be 100-200 calories.
- Snacks are nutrition, not a discipline tool. I fully understand that food will keep a toddler/pre-schooler quiet and entertained. Save those here-is-a-snack-I’m-trying-to-do-something moments to the minimum. Help your children learn self-entertainment and quiet play, independent of food.
Hopefully these tips will help your family find the right snacking balance, and not fall into the trap of over-snacking. For the long-term health of our children and families, learning how to successfully eat meals and snacks is a lesson we all should prioritize.
*The tips and suggestions in this post reflect general trends I have observed in our KC community. If your child has health or medical conditions where frequent eating is necessary, clearly these do not apply. Please ask your health care provider about your family’s eating habits if you are concerned, or if you have more questions.


Medical research into fracking is increasing rapidly. Most studies show impacts, and an increasing number of medical organisations and professionals are calling for a temporary or permanent ban on fracking.
Most papers on the topic have been published in the last couple of years, since the UK government last reviewed the health impacts of fracking. So our government’s current position is based on out of date science.
Here are just a few key reports on the health impacts of fracking.
British Medical Journal Letter
Eighteen senior UK health professionals have written to the BMJ, saying that “The arguments against fracking on public health and ecological grounds are overwhelming.” (Further details of the Medact Report can be found below this letter)
We write as concerned health professionals who seek to draw the public’s attention to the dangers associated with hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and shale gas extraction in the United Kingdom, as highlighted by a recent report published by Medact.
Fracking is an inherently risky activity that produces hazardous levels of air and water pollution that can have adverse impacts on health. The heavy traffic, noise and odour that accompanies fracking, as well as the socially disruptive effects of temporary ‘boomtowns’ and the spoilage of the natural environment are additional health hazards.
Such risks would be magnified in the UK where fracking is projected to take place in closer proximity to more densely populated communities; and where there are concerns about the effectiveness of the regulatory system for onshore gas extraction.
But in addition to this, shale gas is not a clean source of energy. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas in its own right, and when burnt, produces carbon dioxide. Shale gas extraction would undermine our commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and be incompatible with global efforts to prevent global warming from exceeding two degrees centigrade.
The arguments against fracking on public health and ecological grounds are overwhelming. There are clear grounds for adopting the precautionary principle and prohibiting fracking.
Dr Robin Stott, Co-Chair, Climate and Health Council
Professor Sue Atkinson CBE, Co-Chair, Climate and Health Counci
Professor Hugh Montgomery, UCL
Professor Maya Rao OBE
Professor Martin McKee, LSHTM
Dr Clare Gerada, GP and former Chair of RGCP
Dr Christopher Birt, University of Liverpool and Christie Hospital, Manchester
Professor John Yudkin, Emeritus Professor of Medicine, UCL
Dr Sheila Adam, former Deputy Chief Medical Officer
Professor Klim McPherson, Chair of the UK Health Forum
Dr John Middleton, Vice President UKFPH
Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, KCL
Helen Gordon, Board Member, Climate and Health Council
Dr Frank Boulton, Medact and Southampton University
Dr Sarah Walpole, Academic Clinical Fellow
Professor Allyson Pollock, QMUL
Dr Julie Hotchkiss, Acting Director of Public Health at City of a York Council
Professor Jennie Popay, Lancaster University
Competing interests: No competing interests
This letter is on the BMJ website here
Medact Report – Health and Fracking
Since the release of the original MEDACT report in 2015, over 350 academic papers have been published, examining the impacts of high volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) for shale gas on air and water quality, health, climate change, social wellbeing, economics, noise and light pollution, and seismic events. This new report updates the findings of a review of the more recent evidence. David McCoy, the report’s lead author states that ‘the biggest threat posed by shale gas is via global warming, but there are also direct risks to the health and wellbeing of local populations. What is striking is the lack of an integrated social, economic, environmental and health impact assessment of fracking”.
Medact’s view that the UK should abandon its policy to encourage shale gas production remains unchanged.
In arriving at this view, Medact carefully considered the arguments put forward by the industry-funded Task Force on Shale Gas, which concluded that shale gas production in the UK would be safe, economically beneficial and important for the UK’s energy security. Medact’s latest report disagrees with their conclusions and explains why:
Hazardous pollutants are produced at all stages of the shale gas production process. The range of pollutants are outlined in the report. Based on current evidence it is not possible to conclude that there is a strong association between shale gas related pollution and negative local health effects. However, there is clearly potential for negative health impacts. In particular, there are risks of:
(i) adverse reproductive outcomes due to exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals,
(ii) risk of respiratory effects resulting from ozone and smog formation,
(iii) stress, anxiety and other psycho-social effects arising from actual and perceived social and economic disruption.
Further details of the updated Medact Report can be found here


We all like to know the temperature, right? Well, with the SparkFun TMP102 Digital Temperature Sensor, we've made it just about as easy as it gets. Based on the original Digital Temperature Sensor Breakout - TMP102, we've added Qwiic connectors to bring this board into our plug-and-play Qwiic Ecosystem and added an address jumper instead of breaking out the address pin. However, we still have broken out 0.1"-spaced pins in case you prefer to use a breadboard.
The TMP102 itself is an easy-to-use digital temperature sensor from Texas Instruments. While some temperature sensors use an analog voltage to represent the temperature, the TMP102 uses the I2C bus of the Arduino to communicate the temperature.
The TMP102 is capable of reading temperatures to a resolution of 0.0625°C, and is accurate up to 0.5°C. The breakout has built-in 4.7kΩ pull-up resistors for I2C communications and runs from 1.4V to 3.6V. I2C communication uses an open drain signaling, so there is no need to use level shifting.
The SparkFun Qwiic Connect System is an ecosystem of I2C sensors, actuators, shields and cables that make prototyping faster and less prone to error. All Qwiic-enabled boards use a common 1mm pitch, 4-pin JST connector. This reduces the amount of required PCB space, and polarized connections mean you can’t hook it up wrong.
If a board needs code or communicates somehow, you're going to need to know how to program or interface with it. The programming skill is all about communication and code.
Skill Level: Competent - The toolchain for programming is a bit more complex and will examples may not be explicitly provided for you. You will be required to have a fundamental knowledge of programming and be required to provide your own code. You may need to modify existing libraries or code to work with your specific hardware. Sensor and hardware interfaces will be SPI or I2C.
See all skill levels
If it requires power, you need to know how much, what all the pins do, and how to hook it up. You may need to reference datasheets, schematics, and know the ins and outs of electronics.
Skill Level: Rookie - You may be required to know a bit more about the component, such as orientation, or how to hook it up, in addition to power requirements. You will need to understand polarized components.
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The Banda inhabit a small region in western Ghana. Ghana's European name was "Gold Coast", named for the gold in the area. In 1957, Gold Coast gained her independence and took back her former name, Ghana. Ghana's coastal and far north regions are savannas (flat grasslands); in between the grasslands is a forest zone. The low annual rainfall there makes it the least developed region of the country. A smaller population lives in Cote d'Ivoire.
Many species of animals live in the savanna region. These include monkeys, buffaloes, elephants, lions, giant snails, and a variety of birds. There are also numerous types of insects. Among the most dangerous are mosquitoes, tsetse flies, and blackflies. These insects carry diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, sleeping sickness, and river blindness. Unfortunately, the territory that is occupied by the Banda has the most exposure to these insects.
The Ligbi Banda live in Numasa, northwest Brong-Ahafo; east of Sampa and northwest of Wenchi. In Cote d'Ivoire they live in the Eastern Department, Bineto village; Bouna community; Slil town near Boundoukou; Ourodougou near Malinke [loi] territory.
The main source of income for the Banda is farming. Sorghum and manioc (a shrubby plant with a thick, starchy root) are their main crops. Potatoes, peanuts, bananas, corn, peas, rice, and melons are also grown. The Banda do not raise many cattle because of the tsetse flies. However, they do keep goats, dogs, chickens, and some sheep. Hunting is also important because the meat provides most of the protein in their diet. Very little fishing is done because of the dangerous insects swarming around the rivers.
The men generally clear the land, while the women do most of the planting and harvesting. The older men hunt and the younger men perform the required "bride service." This entails tending to their in-laws' farms.
Polygyny (having multiple wives) is common among the Banda. Wives live in their own private huts, to which the husband rotates. There is a "chief wife" who has authority over all the others.
A Banda village is arranged in a circle around a central court. Each neighborhood has from three to ten huts. A typical house is round with low walls of beaten dirt and a thatch roof that is supported by a central post. Each community has a headman, or a clan chief who lives in the central court of the village. He handles the affairs of the people by acting as judge.
The Banda tribe is largely Sunni Muslim. Islam is based on the teachings of Mohammed, the prophet. There are five essential duties in Islam: affirming that Allah is the only god and that Mohammed is his prophet; praying; giving alms; fasting; and making at least one pilgrimage to Mecca, if possible.
The non-Muslim Banda practice ethnic religions such as ancestor worship (praying to deceased ancestors for help or guidance). When a person dies, the family sets up a special shrine in his honor. Every important step in a man's life is recorded at his shrine. The ancestral spirits are worshipped at the shrines, usually by the men. The spirits are believed to be "guardian spirits" over the family's children.
The Banda also believe in "bush spirits" or "fairies." The fairies are believed to be small creatures with large heads covered with rough hair. They are rarely seen and act as humans would act. The fairies are said to take revenge on people who offend them, by either making them insane or killing them.
The Banda wear magical charms and make medicines to protect themselves from curses or diseases. When a woman has twins, this is viewed as a punishment or a curse on the family. Parents of twins must be purified. The Banda believe that anyone who defies the magical charm or purifying medicine will be cursed.
There are only a handful of known Banda Christians in northern Ghana. Evangelistic resources in the Banda language, Ligbi, are very limited. Additional tools and laborers are needed.
* Ask the Lord to call people who are willing to go and share Christ with the Banda.
* Ask God to give the Banda Christians opportunities to share the Gospel with their own people.
* Pray that the Lord will grant wisdom and favor to the missions agencies that are working among the Banda.
* Ask the Holy Spirit to soften the hearts of the Banda towards Christians so that they will be receptive to the Gospel.
* Pray that God will open the hearts of governmental leaders to the Gospel.
* Ask the Lord to raise strong local churches among the Banda.
|Profile Source: Bethany World Prayer Center|
|People Name General||Ligbi|
|People Name in Country||Ligbi|
|Population in Côte d'Ivoire||7,000|
|Pioneer Workers Needed||1 to 2|
|Progress Scale||1 ●|
|GSEC||5 (per PeopleGroups.org)|
|Alternate Names||Banda, Jogo, Ligwi, Nigbi, Nigwi, Nwela, Tuba, Vwela, Weela, Wela|
|Region||West and Central Africa|
|Persecution Rank||Not ranked|
|Location in Country||Eastern Department, Bineto village; Bouna community; Slil town near Boundoukou; Ourodougou near Malinke [loi] territory Source: Ethnologue 2010|
|Major Religion ▲||Percent *|
|Christianity (Evangelical 0.30 %)||
|Other / Small||
|Christian Segments ▲||Percent|


It is no wonder, packing lunchboxes is a task dreaded by so many parents.
Now I am certainly not going to claim that by simply reading this blog all your lunchbox dramas will be solved, but hopefully it might make things a little easier and ensure your children has a lunchbox they love that also meets their nutritional needs.
Components of a healthy lunchbox:
well-balanced meal; half vegetables or salad, 1 quarter wholegrain or low GI carbohydrate, 1 quarter lean protein, and a serve of fruit and milk, cheese, yoghurt or alternative on the side. Of course the exact amount provided will depend on your child’s age, energy needs, as well as the length of time they are away from home.
Ideally whole foods should make up the bulk of the items in a lunchbox, with package foods being limited to 1 item that still has good nutritional value.
Make packets count
children, but ensuring the right packaged items are included can have a significant contribution to your child’s overall diet quality. Let’s think of it this way, by including just 1 packet of chips in your child’s lunchbox each day (which doesn’t have good nutritional value), they will consume 200 packets of chips a year! Obviously this isn’t ideal.
If you do choose to include a packaged item in your child’s lunchbox, dairy, wholegrain or fruit based item can be a good choice. *
Did you notice the giant clause here??
These items can be good, provided they contain little or no added sugar, fat or salt. Aim for a product with less than 15g of sugar per 100g and check the ingredients list to find out where this sugar is coming from. Fruit contains natural sugar so if the product contains actual fruit, about 15g per 100g is a good target. If the product contains no real fruit, but has more than about 5g of sugar per 100g than it is more than likely from added sugar, which we want to minimise.
Aim for a total fat less than 3g per 100g and sodium levels less than120mg per 100g (although this can be tough, but definitely go for 300mg or less). If choosing a wholegrain product, check the ingredients list to see how much wholegrain it actually contains (usually listed as a precent – 50% or more is a good choice) and the amount of fibre, aiming for about 6g of fibre per 100g.
Suitable packaged items could include yoghurts, cheese sticks, UHT milk poppers (not juice – dental nightmare), wholegrain crackers, natural popcorn, canned fruits or fruit purees – but be sure to read the labels!!
Whole Kids Frooshies
Frooshies are a delicious certified organic fruit smoothie that comes in 6 great flavours. They are nut free, dairy free, GMO free, No added sugar, colours, flavours, additives or concentrates, from an Australian company.
It leaves to question what’s in them - well quite simply, fruits, vegetables and grains, that’s it!
The Frooshie flavour range is awesome; Banana and apple, Banana
beetroot and apple, Banana Strawberry and apple, Mango Banana and Carrot, Banana Strawberry apple and raspberry, and, Banana apple apricot and honey - I love the fact that the range has some veggies in there too!
They come in great squeeze pouches which kids love and makes them
easy to fit in the lunchbox and perfect to freeze which helps keep the lunchbox cool and makes a delicious frosty treat.
My 3 little monkeys have been lucky enough to sample the Frooshie
range and the verdict was 6 thumbs up! I really liked the flavours too (Banana, beetroot and apple was my favourite) and the texture was really nice, lovely and smooth not gritty like some fruit purees.
Overall I think these are a great product that definitely adds nutritional value to the lunchbox while still being a little ‘special.’
Whole Kids Prize Pack!!!!!
to make filling some of those lunchboxes a whole lot easier.
For your chance to get your hands on one of these packs, please:
1. Share this article on your Facebook page,
2. Leave a comment below
3. Pop over to the Whole Kids Facebook page, ‘like’ them.
Winners will be announce on The Kids Menu Facebook page on Monday 30th September 2013 at 7pm and winners contacted via email.
P.S. The team at Whole Kids would love if you could take just a few minutes to complete their survey, thanks: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WholeKidsSurvey


The earliest stage of gum disease is known as Gingivitis.
What is gingivitis?
Gingivitis is inflammation of the gums; it is the initial stage of gum disease and the easiest to treat. The direct cause of gingivitis is plaque.
What is plaque?
Plaque is the soft, sticky colourless film of bacteria that forms constantly on the teeth and gums.
If plaque is not removed by daily brushing and flossing, it produces toxins (poisons) that can irritate the gum tissue, causing gingivitis. At this early stage in gum disease, damage can be reversed, since the bone and connective tissue that hold the teeth in place are not yet affected. Left untreated, however gingivitis can become periodontitis and cause permanent damage to your teeth and jaw which may lead to tooth loss.


Wealth quintiles derived from household asset indices are routinely used for measuring socioeconomic inequalities in the health of women and children in low and middle-income countries. We explore whether the use of wealth deciles rather than quintiles may be advantageous.
We selected 46 countries with available national surveys carried out between 2003 and 2013 and with a sample size of at least 3000 children. The outcomes were prevalence of under-five stunting and delivery by a skilled birth attendant (SBA). Differences and ratios between extreme groups for deciles (D1 and D10) and quintiles (Q1 and Q5) were calculated, as well as two summary measures: the slope index of inequality (SII) and concentration index (CIX).
In virtually all countries, stunting prevalence was highest among the poor, and there were larger differences between D1 and D10 than between Q1 and Q5. SBA coverage showed pro-rich patterns in all countries; in four countries the gap was greater than 80 pct points. With one exception, differences between extreme deciles were larger than between quintiles. Similar patterns emerged when using ratios instead of differences. The two summary measures provide very similar results for quintiles and deciles. Patterns of top or bottom inequality varied with national coverage levels.
Researchers and policymakers should consider breakdowns by wealth deciles, when sample sizes allow. Use of deciles may contribute to advocacy efforts, monitoring inequalities over time, and targeting health interventions. Summary indices of inequalities were unaffected by the use of quintiles or deciles in their calculation.
Citation: Wong KLM, Restrepo-Méndez MC, Barros AJD, Victora CG (2017) Socioeconomic inequalities in skilled birth attendance and child stunting in selected low and middle income countries: Wealth quintiles or deciles? PLoS ONE 12(5): e0174823. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0174823
Editor: Marly Augusto Cardoso, Universidade de Sao Paulo, BRAZIL
Received: December 6, 2016; Accepted: March 15, 2017; Published: May 3, 2017
Copyright: © 2017 Wong et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: The data underlying this study are third party data that are public and freely available at http://dhsprogram.com/data/available-datasets.cfm. To locate specific data sets, users can scroll down to the country and year of each survey and download the data. The authors do not have special access privileges to these data and confirm they may be retrieved in the manner described.
Funding: This work was supported by Wellcome Trust [Grant Number: 101815/Z/13/Z]; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Brazilian Public Health Association (ABRASCO). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
The measurement of socioeconomic inequalities in health has received growing attention in recent years, and will likely be even more prominent during the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) era from 2015 to 2030. The third SDG (“ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”) has an intrinsic equity component, and the tenth goal (“reduce inequality within and among countries”), albeit focused on economic inequality, also highlights the importance of reducing disparities (https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org). SDG 17 calls for disaggregated analyses of targets according to socioeconomic status and other equity stratifiers.
The availability of survey data in the fields of reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health (RMNCH) has made it possible to systematically document socioeconomic inequalities across countries and over time. Based on principal component analysis of household variables including ownership of assets and housing characteristics, families can be classified into equal sized groups, usually quintiles, each including approximately 20% of all families.
However, there is no specific reason why one should use quintiles rather than say tertiles, quartiles or deciles. Finer breakdowns (e.g. deciles) are as easy to analyze and may help identify subgroups that are at higher risk of poor health or malnutrition, or that present markedly lower intervention coverage than the rest of the population. Because recent national RMNCH surveys tend to have larger sample sizes than in the past, there is good justification for trying out alternative approaches to the use of quintiles.
Our analyses are focused on two indicators that are consistently and strongly associated with socioeconomic position, namely coverage of delivery by a skilled birth attendant (SBA), and prevalence of stunting in children aged under five years. SBA coverage tends to be directly linked to socioeconomic position, thus showing a pro-rich distribution. In contrast, stunting prevalence is usually higher among the poor.
Our analyses have two objectives. First, we compare results obtained through stratification by wealth quintiles and deciles, and assess the degree to which socioeconomic differences may be underestimated by reliance on quintiles. Second, we assess the extent to which stratification by deciles may contribute to a better understanding of patterns of inequality, such as “top inequality” (when the wealthiest group is considerably different from the rest of the population) and “bottom inequality” (when the poorest group stands out from all others).
Analyses are complemented by supporting information in which we estimate the precision for selected RMNCH indicators stratified either by wealth quintiles or deciles, for a range of survey sample sizes.
The data used in the present cross-sectional analyses are drawn from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), which provide national probability samples of households from low and middle-income countries (www.dhsprogram.com). For each country, we downloaded the most recent publicly available survey (as of October 2014) carried out between 2003 and 2013. The other two eligibility criteria were that (i) the country was classified by the World Bank as a LMIC during survey period and (ii) the sample size included at least 3000 children aged 0–5 years. On average, these samples would include 300 children per decile, a number that was deemed sufficient for the proposed analyses (standard errors of 3 pct points or less for any given level of prevalence).
The institution that commissioned, funded, or carried out the surveys was responsible for ethical approval, as well as ensuring complete confidentiality of survey respondents. For each country, we downloaded the most recent publicly available survey (as of October 2014) carried out between 2003 and 2013 with a sample size of at least 3,000 children.
Data were obtained through standardized interviews with women aged 15–49 years. The DHS wealth index scores are derived from the ownership of country-specific sets of household assets and dwelling characteristics generated by principal component analysis. Each household is then assigned a continuous asset score and samples can then be divided into categories according to these values.
We stratified the sample of each survey down first in five (quintiles) and then in ten (deciles) categories, each containing approximately 20% and 10%, respectively, of the households in the sample. We referred to the first quintile (Q1) as the poorest and the fifth (Q5) as the wealthiest quintile. Similarly, the first decile (D1) was described as poorest and the tenth (D10) as the wealthiest. By definition, D1 and D2 were contained in Q1, and D9 and D10 in Q5.
We began by assessing within-quintile wealth disparities, particularly in Q1 and Q5, by plotting the smoothed average values of the continuous standardized asset index, by centile. These average values were calculated from the mean asset indices per centile across countries. LOWESS smoothing was used.
Two dependent variables were analyzed–stunting prevalence and SBA coverage. Children aged below five were classified as stunted if their height-for-age Z-score was more than two standard deviations below the median value of the World Health Organization Growth Standards (www.who.int/childgrowth). The second outcome was delivery by a skilled birth attendant, such as doctor, nurse, or midwife to assist with a woman's most recent delivery in the five years before the survey. Alternatives to using a skilled birth attendant included being assisted by a traditional birth attendant, untrained health worker, relative, neighbor, or friend (or unassisted deliveries). There was some variability among countries in what types of health professionals were considered as skilled, in the context of each national health system; our results are consistent with the definitions used in each national DHS report. Both for stunting prevalence and SBA coverage, results were stratified by quintiles and deciles of wealth index.
All analyses took into account sampling weights and clustering. The following measures of inequality were calculated:
- extreme group differences for deciles (D1 minus D10) and quintiles (Q1 minus Q5);
- extreme group ratios for deciles (D1 over D10) and quintiles (Q1 over Q5);
- difference between the two poorest (D1 minus D2) and the two richest deciles (D9 minus D10);
- slope indices of inequality (SII) using deciles and quintiles;[7–10] SII are expressed in percent points and represent the difference in the outcome between the two extremes of the wealth scale, obtained by regressing the outcome on the midpoints of the cumulative frequency distribution of the wealth groups–for example, 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7 and 0.9 for wealth quintiles, when the five quintiles have exactly the same number of children;
- concentration indices (CIX) using deciles and quintiles; [7–10] the CIX is similar to a Gini index, with individual children being ranked according to socioeconomic position on the x axis, and cumulative SBA coverage (or stunting prevalence) on the y axis.
The two extreme group difference measures are further compared using the Wald test (using the “test” command in Stata after running the two models) The difference measures and the SII reflect absolute inequalities, while the ratio measures and CIX signal relative inequalities.[7–10] Graphical displays include equiplots (http://www.equidade.org/equiplot.php) in which each horizontal line shows the results by quintile or decile for a given country.
For characterizing patterns of inequality, (top, bottom and linear ), we examined the relationship between national prevalence/coverage and the difference between the outcome measures in D1 and D2 to signal bottom inequality, that is, marked variability at the bottom of the wealth scale. Likewise, the difference between D9 and D10 by national level was used to describe top inequality, or inequality at the wealthier end of the socioeconomic spectrum. We calculated Spearman correlation coefficients between national coverage and the two patterns of inequality and their corresponding two-tailed P levels.
Data analyses were performed using Stata SE version 13 (StataCorp LP, College Station, TX, USA), taking the sample design into account.
Data were available for 46 surveys for both stunting and SBA. The surveys included in this analysis, with corresponding country name, survey year, UN region and sample size are listed in S1 Table. Because the wealth index score is evaluated at the household level, and because fertility varies with socioeconomic positon, the percentage of children in each decile varies. In the countries studied, the poorest decile included on average 11.7% of the sample, and the richest decile 6.9%.
For each country, we present the prevalence of stunting and SBA coverage at national level. We also present these estimates for each wealth quintile and decile. Detailed results by quintile and decile are shown in S2 Table and S3 Table, respectively.
Table 1 shows that across all available surveys, the average prevalence of stunting was 33% (95%CI: 30–37) with a range from 8% to 58% (Table 1). Low prevalence countries included Colombia, Dominican Republic and Jordan (<15%) and high prevalence countries were Burundi, Madagascar and Timor-Leste, where one in two children aged under five, on average, was stunted.
In Fig 1, we plotted the smoothed average values of the continuous standardized asset index, for the 46 countries by wealth percentile. Within Q5, we can see that the slope of the lines is much steeper than in the other quintiles, for several countries. This implies that there is much more wealth variability within Q5 than in other quintiles. For a few countries, there is also substantial variability in wealth within Q1. Such variability within a given quintile suggests further stratification, e.g. in deciles, may be worthwhile.
Fig 2 presents equiplots (www.equidade.org/equiplot.php) of stunting prevalence by wealth deciles for all 46 countries. Below each solid line showing the results by decile, national prevalence is shown as a diamond, and prevalence in the poorest (Q1) and richest (Q5) quintiles as hollow circles. Countries are arranged in order of increasing national prevalence. For each country, the widths of the solid line and dashed line represent absolute wealth inequality among wealth deciles and wealth quintiles, respectively. All countries but Kyrgyzstan show higher prevalence among the poor than among the rich. In Egypt and the Maldives, the distance between the extreme deciles is less than 10 percent points; on the other extreme, differences greater than 40 percent points are observed in Honduras, Bolivia, Cameroon, Nigeria, Nepal and India.
Upon visual inspection, distances in stunting prevalence between D1 and D10 tend to be larger than those between Q1 and Q5; the parts of the deciles lines that hang over the quintiles line represent the additional, hidden wealth inequality between D1 and D10 not detected when wealth quintiles were used. This is confirmed by the summary inequality statistics shown in Table 2: only two countries (Senegal and Zimbabwe) have smaller differences between the extreme deciles compared to differences between the extreme quintiles. In Burundi, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia and Nepal the decile gap is more than 10 pct points greater than the quintile gap. In 37 of the 46 countries, there is statistical evidence that the extreme-decile differences are wider than the corresponding extreme-quintile differences (p-value < 0.05). On the other hand, in countries such as Pakistan, Sierra Leone and Tajikistan, no statistical evidence of such a difference is found. The same patterns are apparent when comparing the D1/D10 and Q1/Q5 ratios. A particularly high D1/D10 ratio, equal to 106, is observed in Jordan where stunting prevalence in D10 was only 0.1% (Table 2 and S2 Table).
In 32 of 46 countries, differences in stunting prevalence at the poor end of the socioeconomic scale (D1-D2) tended to be smaller than differences at the wealthy end (D9-D10). The opposite was observed in the remaining 14. In Burundi, for example, the prevalence of 42% in Q5 hides an important difference between D9 and D10, where prevalences are equal to 51% and 30%, respectively (S2 Table).
Finally, the two summary measures that take the whole socioeconomic distribution into account–the SII and CIX–provide very similar results both for quintiles and deciles, although CIX tends to be very slightly larger when deciles are used.
Turning now to SBA coverage, the average value was 63% (95%CI: 56–70) in all 46 surveys (Table 1). Country-specific national coverage ranged from below 30% in Timor-Leste, Niger, Bangladesh and Chad to almost universal coverage in the Dominican Republic, Jordan and Kyrgyzstan (S3 Table).
In contrast with stunting, SBA coverage shows pro-rich patterns in all countries (Fig 3, Table 3 and S3 Table). Except for Kyrgyzstan, Jordan and the Dominican Republic where SBA coverage is virtually universal, all other countries show differences of 10 percent points or greater between the extreme quintiles. The differences between the extreme deciles are even greater, reaching more than 80 percent points in Cameroon, Haiti, Nepal and Nigeria. Except for Kyrgyzstan where national coverage is 99.1%, all other countries appear to have wider gaps between D1 and D10 than between Q1 and Q5. In 28 countries, there is statistical evidence that the two measures are different (p-value of comparison <0.05). The extreme example is Ethiopia, where these gaps are, respectively, 74 and 44 percent points; this discrepancy is largely because the coverage of 46% in Q5 is an average of the widely different coverages of 27% in D9 and 76% in D10. Similar patterns are observed when comparing the D1/D10 ratios, which tend to be more extreme in all countries than the Q1/Q5 ratios, except again for Kyrgyzstan (Table 3).
In contrast with stunting, coverage differences at the top of the wealth scale predominated in low-coverage countries, whereas in high-coverage countries the largest differences were at the bottom of the scale (Fig 3).
Figs 4 and 5 show the associations between national levels and the degrees of bottom inequality (indicated by differences between D1 and D2 levels) and top inequality (differences between D9 and D10 levels). For stunting (Fig 4), low prevalence countries tend to show bottom inequality, and high prevalence countries show top inequality. In other words, when national prevalence is low, the very poor tend to stand out from the rest with much higher prevalence. Conversely, when national prevalence is high, the very wealthy stand out because of their lower prevalence. The Spearman correlation coefficient between national coverage and bottom inequality was equal to -0.35 (p = 0.02) whereas that with top inequality was 0.69 (p<0.001).
The situation for the patterns of SBA coverage are in opposite direction (Fig 5). When national coverage is low, the rich tend to be way above every other group; and when prevalence increases, the rich tend to lag behind. The Spearman correlation coefficient between national coverage and bottom inequality was equal to -0.38 (p = 0.01) whereas that with top inequality was 0.79 (p<0.001).
We used data from 46 national surveys to assess how using wealth deciles instead of quintiles might affect the interpretation of the magnitudes in inequalities in maternal and child health in low and middle-income countries. We selected two indicators, stunting prevalence among children under the age of five years, and coverage with skilled birth attendants because of their well-established associations with wealth.[2, 4] In virtually all countries, wealth was inversely associated with stunting prevalence, and directly associated with SBA coverage. For both indicators, the associations with wealth deciles tended to be monotonic, that is, prevalence declined and coverage increased for each subsequent decile.
As seen in Fig 1, evidence of higher wealth heterogeneity was observed mostly within the two extreme quintiles, and thus we focused the analyses on these quintiles. We found some advantages to using deciles when sample sizes allow. As might have been predicted from the stepwise association with wealth, comparison of outcomes in the poorest and richest deciles usually resulted in larger differences and ratios than similar comparisons of the extreme quintiles. In some countries, there were important within-quintile differences; for example, in one quarter of the countries studied the difference in SBA coverage was greater than 10 percent points between the poorest and second poorest deciles. Analyses using deciles may be instrumental for advocacy and benchmarking purposes, e.g., reporting inequalities in terms of distance from the best-performing subgroup of the population, as well as for targeting.
Summary indices of inequalities that take into account the whole wealth distribution of the sample rather than only the extreme groups–such as the slope and concentration indices–were not affected by the use of quintiles or deciles in their calculation. This finding is reassuring for scientific audiences who are the main users of such indices, but may be less relevant for policy makers to tend to rely on the more palpable statistics resulting from extreme group comparisons.
Last, deciles were useful for revealing "top" and "bottom" inequalities.[5, 11] When national stunting prevalence was low, bottom inequalities predominated—that is, there tended to be marked gaps between the two poorest deciles. When national prevalence was high, top inequalities tended to prevail, with larger gaps between the wealthiest deciles. Patterns for SBA coverage were in the opposite direction: top inequalities when national coverage was low, yet the rich managed to achieve relatively high coverage levels; and bottom inequalities when national coverage was high but the very poor were yet to be reached. Use of deciles made these patterns more evident than had the analyses been limited to quintiles.
Other than top and bottom inequalities, the use of deciles allows to document patterns of inequality such as universal coverage and a linear pattern. The first refers to a situation in which all subgroups report near 100% coverage. The use of quintiles may show a coverage of say 95% in the poorest group, whereas the use of deciles may reveal that the poorest 10% are the ones responsible for lower coverage in the poorest quintile. In contrast, if coverage is indeed universal, it is obviously irrelevant whether quintiles or deciles are used. The linear pattern (also known as incremental or queueing pattern (10)) describes a steady gradient, moving from the poorest to the richest in approximately equal-sized distances between the groups. When such a pattern is present, using deciles when sample sizes are sufficient may reveal greater disparities than when using quintiles.
Our analyses have limitations. Information on the wealth index, under-five stunting and SBA coverage were not available for all countries. According to the World Bank Income Classification in 2010, our analyses covered 70% (28/40) of low income, 27% (15/56) of lower-middle and 11% (5/45) of upper-middle income counties. We selected the year cut-off of 2010 as this is the median (and mean) survey year of our all included countries. Global results should be interpreted with this limitation in mind. Nevertheless, with 46 different countries this is the largest set of analyses on this topic so far. The use of asset indices to assess socioeconomic position is affected by the choice of assets and poor comparability between urban and rural areas,[12, 13], but such indices are easy to compute and compare well to more complex indicators of wealth.[3, 14, 15] The usefulness such indices is confirmed by our present results showing their strong and usually monotonic, associations with nutrition and coverage. Another limitation is that due to higher fertility among the poor, the actual numbers of children tend to be somewhat larger in the poorer deciles and quintiles than in the rest of the sample.
Finally, use of deciles is limited by the available survey sample size. S1 Supporting Information includes a spreadsheet with sample size calculations for precision according to quintiles and deciles, for different sample sizes.
Our results suggest that, while wealth quintiles are useful for documenting health inequalities, researchers and policymakers should also consider finer breakdowns, such as deciles, when sample sizes are sufficient for such levels of disaggregation. Use of deciles may contribute to advocacy and benchmarking efforts, monitoring inequalities over time, and targeting health interventions.
S1 Table. List of countries, surveys and sample sizes included in the analyses.
S2 Table. Prevalence of stunting among children under five years of age, by wealth quintiles and deciles.
S3 Table. Coverage with skilled birth attendants, by wealth quintiles and deciles.
- Conceptualization: KLMW CGV.
- Data curation: KLMW MCRM AJDB.
- Formal analysis: KLMW AJDB CGV.
- Funding acquisition: CGV AJDB.
- Methodology: KLMW AJDB CGV.
- Project administration: MCRM AJDB CGV.
- Software: KLMW MCRM AJDB.
- Supervision: AJDB CGV.
- Validation: AJDB CGV.
- Visualization: KLMW AJDB CGV.
- Writing – original draft: KLMW MCRM AJDB CGV.
- Writing – review & editing: KLMW MCRM AJDB CGV.
- 1. Bouchard L, Albertini M, Batista R, de Montigny J. Research on health inequalities: A bibliometric analysis (1966–2014). Soc Sci Med. 2015;141:100–8. Epub 2015/08/11. pmid:26259012
- 2. Barros AJ, Ronsmans C, Axelson H, Loaiza E, Bertoldi AD, Franca GV, et al. Equity in maternal, newborn, and child health interventions in Countdown to 2015: a retrospective review of survey data from 54 countries. Lancet. 2012;379(9822):1225–33. pmid:22464386
- 3. Filmer D, Pritchett LH. Estimating wealth effects without expenditure data—or tears: an application to educational enrollments in states of India. Demography. 2001;38(1):115–32. pmid:11227840
- 4. Restrepo-Mendez MC, Barros AJ, Black RE, Victora CG. Time trends in socio-economic inequalities in stunting prevalence: analyses of repeated national surveys. Public Health Nutr. 2015;18(12):2097–104. Epub 2014/12/19. pmid:25521530
- 5. Victora CG, Fenn B, Bryce J, Kirkwood BR. Co-coverage of preventive interventions and implications for child-survival strategies: evidence from national surveys. Lancet. 2005;366(9495):1460–6. pmid:16243091
- 6. World Health Organization. Proportion of births attended by a skilled attendant: 2008 updates. 2008.
- 7. Mackenbach JP, Kunst AE. Measuring the magnitude of socio-economic inequalities in health: an overview of available measures illustrated with two examples from Europe. Soc Sci Med. 1997;44(6):757–71. Epub 1997/03/01. pmid:9080560
- 8. Harper S, Lynch J, Meersman SC, Breen N, Davis WW, Reichman ME. An overview of methods for monitoring social disparities in cancer with an example using trends in lung cancer incidence by area-socioeconomic position and race-ethnicity, 1992–2004. Am J Epidemiol. 2008;167(8):889–99. Epub 2008/03/18. PubMed Central PMCID: PMCPMC2409988. pmid:18344513
- 9. Wagstaff A, Paci P, van Doorslaer E. On the measurement of inequalities in health. Soc Sci Med. 1991;33(5):545–57. pmid:1962226
- 10. Barros AJ, Victora CG. Measuring Coverage in MNCH: Determining and Interpreting Inequalities in Coverage of Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health Interventions. PLoS Med. 2013;10(5):e1001390. Epub 2013/05/15. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3646214. pmid:23667332
- 11. Victora C, Barros F, Vaughan J. The impact of health interventions on inequalities: infant and child health in Brazil. In: Leon D, Walt G, editors. Poverty, inequality and health An international perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2000. p. 125–36.
- 12. Howe LD, Hargreaves JR, Huttly SR. Issues in the construction of wealth indices for the measurement of socio-economic position in low-income countries. Emerg Themes Epidemiol. 2008;5:3. pmid:18234082
- 13. Houweling TA, Kunst AE, Mackenbach JP. Measuring health inequality among children in developing countries: does the choice of the indicator of economic status matter? Int J Equity Health. 2003;2(1):8. pmid:14609435
- 14. Morris SS, Carletto C, Hoddinott J, Christiaensen LJM. Validity of rapid estimates of household wealth and income for health surveys in rural Africa. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. 2000;54(5):381–7. pmid:10814660
- 15. Filmer D, Scott K. Assessing Asset Indices. SSRN eLibrary. 2008.


How can different types of radiation exposures be compared?
In the diagram at left, a man is exposed to a collimated x-ray beam. In the
diagram at right, he is exposed to a non-collimated beam. For this example, we
shall assume the exposure in the beam is 50 mR in both cases.
Although the radiation output of the x-ray machine is the same in both cases
(50 mR), it is evident that the biological risks from these two exposures is NOT
EQUAL, since a greater portion of the body is exposed to the x-rays in the
To be meaningful, a measure of radiation dose should be adjusted for these
types of factors. This "adjusted" dose is known as the Effective Dose
Effective Dose Equivalent [measured in rem]
This is a risk-based measure of radiation dose. It is adjusted for:
- the type of radiation, and
- the relative radio-sensitivity of the exposed portion of the body.
Effective Dose Equivalent = rad x Quality Factor x Weighting Factor
Quality Factor is a factor that expresses the relative biological
effectiveness for a specific type and energy of radiation. For x-rays and gamma
rays the Quality Factor (QF) is 1.
Weighting Factor is a number that adjusts for the relative radio-sensitivity
of the exposed organ or part of the body.
For whole body exposures (WBE) the weighting factors for organs/body parts
area added together and give a Weighting FactorWBE = 1


|Quick Facts: Actors|
|2012 Median Pay||$20.26 per hour|
|Entry-Level Education||Some college, no degree|
|Work Experience in a Related Occupation||None|
|On-the-job Training||Long-term on-the-job training|
|Number of Jobs, 2012||79,800|
|Job Outlook, 2012-22||4% (Slower than average)|
|Employment Change, 2012-22||3,300|
What Actors Do
Actors express ideas and portray characters in theater, film, television, and other performing arts media. They also work at theme parks or other live events. They interpret a writer’s script to entertain or inform an audience.
Most actors work under pressure and are often under the stress of having to find their next job.
How to Become an Actor
Many actors enhance their skills through formal dramatic education, and long-term training is common.
The median hourly wage for actors was $20.26 in May 2012.
Employment of actors is projected to grow 4 percent from 2012 to 2022, slower than the average for all occupations.


(Last Updated on : 01/02/2012)
During the reigning period of Akbar, the Mughal Empire reached to the peak of success. The Mughal emperor helped to elevate the empire by accelerating the cultural, social and the economic affairs of the era.
Coins of Akbar include the gold, silver and copper coins. The Mughal emperor used to create the coins that followed the patterns of Suri coinage and gradually the weight and fabric of the coinage were also adopted. The gold coins that were created during the time of Akbar are now known as 'muhar'. According to Abul Fazl, Akbar had issued gold coins of several values. During this period, the heavy weight coins were common but with the progression of time, the light weight coins became common and the heavy weight coins became rare. Before 988 A.H (Islamic calendar) no fractional coins in any metal came into existence. Later some fractional coins were used in all metals though they were rare. Besides, these coins meant for the entire empire, some coins were also issued on the local pattern in gold and silver. Gold coins were similar to those issued in the time of Humayun and silver coins were issued from Gujarat, Malwa and Kashmir. These coins followed the patterns that were popular then in the respective territories.
The shape of the coins of Akbar was round and later was changed to square for gold and silver coins. The round and square coins were issued simultaneously during 993 A.H. to 998 A.H. Later the square shaped coins were abandoned and almost all the coins of the later period were issued in round shape. Akbar had also issued some commemorative gold coins in Mihrabi shape i.e. hexagonal with oblong upper and lower sides and left and right sides of the shapes of domes. The coins of Akbar were distinguished for the styles he incorporated along with the shape and weight of the coins. The coins gained the distinct characteristics due to the content of their inscriptions. Till 1585 A.D. the gold and silver coins were issued in the 'Kalima' type. They followed the earlier 'Shahrukhi' coins of the early Mughal emperors like Babur and Humayun. The coins were issued with the 'Kalima' on the obverse with the names of the four Khalifas. On the reverse side of the coin was the emperor with or without the titles, the pious wish, the name of the mint with or without an epithet and the date in the Hijri era. The dates in the Hijri era were inscribed in a regular manner till 98 A.H. then the word 'Alif' was put on them to represent 1000.
The coins of Akbar also reflect the change in the religious thinking of the emperor. During this period the 'Kalima' was removed from the coins and its place was given to the Ilahi creed Allah Akbar Jalla jalalah. Including these, the name and titles of the emperor were also withdrawn. The Ilahi coins issued after 1585 A.D. may be distinguished into four types. The earliest coins bear the Ilahi creed exclusively. The coins bore the inscription of Allah Akbar on one side and Jalla jalalah on the flip side of the coin. These coins were issued in the thirteenth year of the reign of Akbar. The second type has a similarity with the first type but had the year with the word Ilahi on the Jalla jalalah side. Later the third type was introduced and the full Ilahi creed was placed on one side of the coin and the dates in two lines were engraved on the other side of the coin. In these coins, Akbar introduced an innovative way which is remarkable in the Indian numismatic history. From this time onwards, the coins issued bore the names of the month of issue. Though the suspension of the mint name continued, with the issue of the third type, the mint name was reintroduced.
Akbar introduced the use of metrical legends on some of his gold and silver coins and after Akbar this was practised by most of his successors as well. The earliest coins with a couplet were issued but were suspended shortly after. They were reissued and were continued till the end of his reign. Another metrical legend on gold was used on the coins of Agra mint and the metrical legend is observed on silver coins on the Allahabad issues. Silver coins with the metrical legend were issued on the conquest of Bandhogarh. Akbar also reintroduced the pictorial motifs on some of his coins. The gold coins that were issued to commemorate the conquest of the fortress of Asirgarh, the stronghold of Khandesh, bear a hawk on one side and the mint name and the date on the other side of the coin. Some silver coins of another type manifesting Akbar riding a horse with a hawk were perhaps issued on this occasion. In later years, the mint less gold and silver coins were issued. The effigy of Ram and Sita with the words 'Rama Siya' in Nagari was observed on the top of one side of the coin. Another pictorial coin was also issued in the same year, which bore the picture of duck on the coin.
The copper coins which were also known as 'dam', was the fortieth part of a silver rupee. The fractional coins of it were 'nisfi' or 'adhelah' (half), 'paula' or 'rabi' or 'damra' (quarter) and 'damri' (one eighth). Akbar issued this type of coins till the forty fourth year of his reign. After these coins a new coin termed as 'tankah' was introduced and it was just twice the weight of the 'dam' (664 grains). The 'dam' was given a fractional status with the introduction of these new denominations and it was termed as 'nim tankha' (half tankah). After a short span of time, another series of copper coins were issued from Ahmedabad, Agra, Delhi and from some places outside India and they came to be known as 'tanki'. With some exceptions, the copper coins of Akbar followed the copper coinage of Babur and Humayun in respect of the legends. They only had the name of the mint with the words 'fulus' or 'Sikka fulus' on the obverse and the date in Persian words on the reverse. Later with the introduction of Ilahi era, the Ilahi month and year were placed on this side. When the 'tankah' and 'tanki' coins were introduced, the obverse had the value suffixed with the word 'Akbar Shahi'. The mint name was now placed on the reverse along with the date. In time of Akbar, the mint names got importance and since then they became an integral part of the Mughal coins. The steady territorial expansion of Akbar's empire was accompanied by the expansion of the mints. Over twenty names are seen on the gold coins and about forty five on the silver coins. In the beginning, regular mints for gold were situated at the provincial capitals and afterwards Delhi was added to the list. But the mint at Delhi was soon closed and Ahmedabad took the position when Gujarat was conquered. Similarly, coins were issued from Patna after Bihar was attached to the empire. These mints, which struck gold coins, also issued silver and copper coins. In addition to that, there were three or four mints which issued only silver and copper coins. Apart from that, copper coins were issued from many other places.
The time of Akbar was remarkable as the designs of the coins during the time of Akbar had got the originality with technical designs and minting process. Mughal coinage during Akbar truly reflects originality and innovative technique. Innovations like ornamentation of the background of the coin with floral scrollwork were introduced during this time.


Author: Doug Moran
Publisher: AGATE Publishing, 2011
ISBN-13: 978-1932841589, 276 pages
“If–,” the famous poem by Victorian poet Rudyard Kipling, captures the essence of modern-day leadership. Leadership consultant Doug Moran offers a fascinating, instructive perspective that identifies the “If Sixteen Leadership Attributes” that Kipling’s poem describes. Moran’s well-researched biographies of historic figures illustrate qualities Kipling found essential to great leadership. getAbstract recommends Moran’s insights to students of history and to good leaders seeking to become great.
“Rudyard Kipling as Leadership Guru”
Rudyard Kipling was born in 1865 to English expatriates living in Bombay, India. At age 24, he moved to England, where he gained literary success, prosperity and acclaim for his poetry, short stories and books. Kipling won the Nobel Prize in 1907 and published “If–” in 1910. He hobnobbed with many of his era’s political, literary and social leaders. Kipling continued to write until his death at age 70 in 1936.
Using Kipling’s classic poem “If–” as a leadership model
Exercising excellent leadership requires the fortitude to accept the challenges of being in charge. Kipling cautioned that “leadership is not about attaining perfection,” but instead committing to greater awareness and better choices. His poem “If–” defines 16 leadership traits that make up “the If Sixteen Leadership Framework.” It cites four defining areas:
• “Knowing who you are and what you believe.”
• “Knowing what you want.”
• “Attracting others and motivating them to follow.”
• “Earning and retaining the privilege to lead.”
The lives of 16 famous leaders illustrate the leadership attributes highlighted in “If–.” Examine and analyze your own leadership skills in terms of each attribute. Think about the leaders who exemplify these traits, about how to deploy these qualities effectively in your life, about chances you’ve missed because you did not exercise one of these character traits and about what you can do to incorporate these foundational values into your future leadership style.
Knowing who you are and what you believe
Self-awareness is crucial to good leadership. Examine the four attributes of self-awareness as they apply to your “personal brand of leadership”:
• “Character” – Former US President Ronald Reagan made no secret about his beliefs, values and moral principles. He confidently accepted the doubts of others and helped them learn to trust themselves. Character-based leadership requires that you know the “one thing” you stand for, that your beliefs have a moral basis, and that you align your decisions and actions with your beliefs and values.
• “Authenticity” – Theodore Roosevelt’s success as president reflects only one aspect of his “distinct identities” as a “politician, cowboy, author, hunter, naturalist, explorer, bureaucrat, soldier, father, husband and family man.” No matter which role he took on, his words and actions remained genuine. Roosevelt was comfortable with himself and comfortable with everyone else, no matter what the circumstances. He could “walk with kings” but not “lose the common touch.” Gain authenticity by knowing who you are and who you are not. To enhance your credibility, keep your commitments.
• “Integrity” – Michael Collins helped create Ireland as an independent nation in 1922, after more than 700 years of British rule. Born in 1890, he became a nationalist at age 15, was jailed in 1916, founded the Irish Republican Army in 1919 and was assassinated in 1922. The treaty Collins negotiated with the British in January 1922 to create the Irish Free State included political losses that many Irish people found unacceptable, but Collins knew it was the only solution. He died with 4,000 others during the 13-month Irish Civil War between pro- and anti-treaty forces. His leadership demonstrates the value of speaking and acting honestly and having the courage to defend the truth as you see it.
• “Self-efficacy” – Winston Churchill’s long political career swung between “extraordinary triumphs [and] catastrophic disasters.” Through it all, he had the confidence and self-assurance to believe he was “destined for greatness.” Churchill had an internal drive to succeed that was not dependent on the external world…


What is Edge Analytics?
Edge analytics is a model of data analysis where incoming data streams are analyzed at a non-central point in the system such as a switch, a peripheral node, or a connected device or sensor.
Web and mobile application analytics track a variety of metrics constantly, both on the backend and the front-end of the application’s stack.
Unlike traditional analytics models, edge analytics emphasize speed and decentralization and thus ignore normal big data collection methods. The concept is relatively new and is closely tied with the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) as a viable technology for the future.
See Sisense in action:
The edge analytics paradigm has become more feasible as the internet and web connectivity has improved thanks to technology such as 5G networks. Importantly, it has evolved because of the need for fast response times and quick data analytics IoT networks impose.
Sensors, smart technology, and other connected devices would not be effective if their entire data analysis process involved sending back information to a central location and waiting for it to be processed and returned.
Instead, edge analytics optimizes the process by handling the bulk of analysis on-site, usually in a nearby connected network switch or device, and only transmitting the most important data back to a central server.
The goal is to provide real-time or as close to real-time BI insights as possible and create a scalable analytics system.
How can I Use Edge Analytics?
While edge analytics is still a specialized tool, they are useful in a variety of industries and sectors. One of the most common uses is in IoT edge analytics, which allows for network controllers to have a much better real-time picture of how devices and sensors are operating. In this case, devices transmit data back to a central location, but the bulk of analysis happens on-site.
For instance, a device that controls the temperature of a refrigerator at a supermarket could detect a dangerous change in internal temperature that could cause damage to products in seconds. If that data were required to travel back to a central server, be processed and parsed, and then be relayed back to the sensor, the refrigerator’s goods could quickly spoil.
With edge analytics, the same problem could be resolved in a few seconds with the sensor instantly relaying the problem and implementing a solution.
Similarly, manufacturing plants can use edge analytics to keep better track of machinery health, production output, and be ready to deal with any crisis that arises in seconds instead of minutes.