A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises examining mass movements—from Christianity in its infancy to the national uprisings of modern times. His analysis of the psychology of mass movements is a brilliant and frightening study of the mind of the fanatic.
A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Eric Hoffer
wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. “The True Believer” — the first and most famous of his books — was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences.Completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today, “The True Believer” is a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one.
(1902 — 1983) was self-educated. He worked in restaurants, as a migrant fieldworker, and as a gold prospector. After Pearl Harbor, he worked as a longshoreman in San Francisco for twenty-five years. The author of more than ten books, including “The Passionate State of Mind, The Ordeal of Change”, and “The Temper of Our Time, ” Eric Hoffer
was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983.


Videoing lab activities
You may wish to use a video camera on a tripod to video demonstrations and experiments so the entire class can see more easily. Rather than recording, simply send the message to a computer that is connected to the projector. Video cameras may have the following video outputs
- Firewire - IEEE-1394; the standard for transferring digital video from camera to the computer and back again.
- Analog Video - Analog video capture works by transforming the analog video signal with a hardware device into a digital signal that can be saved on computer. Many data projectors have analog video inputs and you can therefore send your video directly from the camera to the projector. If you wish to record the video on the computer, you will first need to send the analog signal into a digitizer before it is imported to your computer.
- USB - Note: USB is generally useful only for transferring still images (jpgs)


- Words: 1486
- Length: 5 Pages
- Topic: Literature
- Paper #: 82786984
Coming of Age: Telemakhos in "The Odyssey"
We often hear the line, "Like father, like son" and Homer's "The Odyssey" gives us an opportunity to see how this line can actually work in life. With a father like Odysseus, one might feel a bit of intimidation and insecurity, so it is understandable that Telemakhos might have a rough time being his son. In such a scenario, a weak individual might never


Before the Lilac Garden, this area was part of the Manito Zoo from 1905-1932, where buffalo roamed. One of the larger and more famous of the buffalo was King Ranger. When he died, his body was stuffed and given to the Cheney Cowles Museum in 1915. The park board wanted a new buffalo, so in 1917 they accepted one from the park commission of Portland, OR and in 1920 they accepted one with the help of Senator Miles Poindexter and Colonel N. M. Brett from Yellowstone National Park.
The first lilacs entered North America in the 1700s. Spokane was introduced to them in 1906 by one of the city founders, J.J. Browne, when he planted two lilac bushes in his yard. John W. Duncan brought lilacs to Manito in 1912 with 128 cultivars from Rochester, NY. Lilacs became so popular that city leaders encouraged gardeners to plant lilacs throughout the city. The first Lilac Festival was held in 1938 and soon after Spokane became the Lilac City. Duncan designed a landscaped lilac garden and presented the plans to the park board in December 1941. The Spokane Lilac Club donated 40 shrubs to the Spokane Park System in 1942 some of these are in Manito.
A hybrid lilac was created in 1999 specifically for Spokane called the Syringa Spokane Lilac. In 2008 several plants had matured enough to be planted in the Lilac Garden. This two-toned magenta flower opens bright and ends in a lighter pink-silver-white as it matures. The highlight of lilac season is May and June and visitors to the park are hit with the amazingly sweet and fragrant smell of lilacs.
Other lilacs in the Lilac Garden include syringa vulgaris (wedgewood blue), syringa x prestoniae, syringa oblata (Cheyenne blue single), syringa oblata dilatata (pink single), and syringa yunnanensis (purple single).


Amid the din of conversations about how South Dakota alone gets enough wind to power a quarter of the country, or the huge efficiency gains of nuclear power, or how harnessing the movement of the tides could provide 20% of Britain’s energy needs, one important fact gets lost: The power grid in the U.S. has barely been upgraded in 20 years, and is nowhere near ready to move vast amounts of power across long distances. As energy demand rises and we start to look at large centralized installations (wind, hydro, nuclear, other), we overlook a politically inconvenient truth – without vast investments in the power grid itself, all that new energy isn’t going anywhere. The grid is already full-to-bursting, and moving lots of energy across long distances is a giant headache.
When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.
â€œWe need an interstate transmission superhighway system,â€ said Suedeen G. Kelly, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.


Comment apprendre à être parent autrement qu’en regardant Super-Nanny à la télé? En utilisant le CD-ROM « Etre Parents Aujourd’hui », pardi! L’idée est surprenante, amusante et pas si bête, finalement.
Innovation usually focuses on bringing new features to markets through « innovative » products or services invented by technology researchers and blessed by business managers. « Innovative » usages are rarely planned or expected even though the previous « next big things in the Internet » (Web, P2P, blogs, …) went big because of emergent usage dynamics rather than of « innovative » products or services pushed to markets. Usage innovations has been one big credo at the FING (a French think tank dedicated to Internet technologies) for quite a long time. They now mention this nice France Telecom R&D article that summarizes how usage innovation differs from product innovation and why applied research should focus on usage innovation. Here is my attempt at translating and paraphrasing some of the nicer bits found in this article:
If innovators don’t focus on they innovation efforts on usage first, their inventions then face the following risks :
- Technical risks: offering features that do not address real needs or remain incompatible with other systems, networks, protocols or interactions and are then not used; or those only features that will be used face a risk of rapid obsolescence and over-serving features will slow any update process
- Economic risks: making clients pay for mandatory additional features whereas the price for addressing real needs would be lower; clients will then see a low value for their own use (10 to 20% only of all features are useful to them while 80% remain hidden and latent…)
- Human factors risks: difficulties will appear in the use and the representation of the product and services, users won’t be able to anticiapte work around « wrong uses » of the product and will not accept product limitations; users will rely on some « hot line » to learn how to use product or service, will make frequent calls or ask for refund but expected uses are not fulfilled.
- Social risks: product or service may be massively rejected, retracted from market, distrustful or disinforming campaign may arise, investigations about bad impact on health or environment may be launched; this would lead to delays in the distribution of the product, needs for reorganization to answer arising needs or market pressures or major bad impact for corporate brands
- Combined risks: risk of significant overhead for the user in terms of technology, usage, service adoption, need for skills or knowledge, price to pay for the tool to be really adopted; risk of dividing even more the ones who know and can profit from the offering to those who can’t; reducing the market impact
Those risks are not addressed by the current inventor habits for product innovation because those are specific to the field of expertise of researchers whereas usage risks emerge from the combination of these fields into a single complex offering once it is brought to the market. It is difficult to combine discipline-specific predictions related to usage because they are scattered among siloed scientific disciplines.
- Technology researchers focus on solving tough technical problems and give answers to such questions as « How and why it works », supported by demonstration of technical capabilities and technical benchmarks. They can predict the level of disruptiveness of this new technology in terms of new capabilities and features offered to users and can anticipate how well this new piece of technology compare to the current state-of-the-art in terms of features and performance.
- Social researchers, supported by interviews and observations, may answer users questions such as « what is it useful to? how could it be useful to me? ». They predict the level of disruptiveness this piece of new technology will bring to user habits, how well (or bad) this technology complies with the current user habits and usage. They advocate the anticipation of emergent usages.
- Human factors researchers perform field trials and in-lab tests. They focus on user questions such as « how does one use it? can I use it or not? ». They anticipate how this invention will conform to the representation users have of similar products or services and can predict their needs for support.
- Economist researchers will answer « how much does it cost to users? how much profit would users expect from it? » and use total cost of owernship analysis and niche market analysis. They can anticipate such users decisions as deciding to wait before getting equipped or as deciding to renew one’s equipment.
It is difficult to anticipate and address risks emerging with usages. It is even more difficult to invent usages. Is it even possible? Maybe with the use of early simulation and rapid prototyping such as this article seems to sugges? I lost myself while reading the rest of this nice France Telecom R&D articles. And I yet have to be convinced that corporations such as France Telecom would be able to innovate through usages.
Cette chronique de Bertrand Lemaire (LMI) au sujet des appels d’offres des marchés publics de l’Etat m’a rappelé combien les administrations centrales gèrent mal leurs décisions d’achat. Les administrations centrales de l’Etat, d’une manière générale, me semblent être des organisations bien malades, souvent bien plus malades que les bureaucraties privées. Leur difficultés à acheter des prestations informatiques n’est qu’un symptôme parmi tant d’autres. Les SSII qui font affaire avec elles sont peut-être à plaindre mais elles y trouvent quand-même leur compte. C’est surtout les fonctionnaires qui y travaillent et les citoyens qu’ils sont sensés servir que j’aurais tendance à plaindre. Pauvres de nous…
+28% en 2005, +34% à +46% prévus en 2006, c’est le nombre d’offres d’emploi pour informaticiens en France. Fin 2005, près d’un tiers des offres de recrutement de cadres concernaient des informaticiens, surtout en SSII. Et la demande est particulièrement forte pour les chefs de projet avec un profil plutôt « business » et les programmeurs et architectes Java ou .Net. Les causes? Départs à la retraite de nos anciens et baisse du nombre de diplômés en informatique. Ca devrait être bon pour mon porte-monnaie, tout ça.
SFR is the #2 telecom operator in France (subsidiary of Vodafone and Vivendi Universal). They announced yesterday that they would allow 50 additional employees every year to spend from 6 to 11 paid days per year working for a non-profit organization. These days are paid and managed as usual working days. SFR limited the authorized non-profits to those working in the fields of childhood protection and people with disabilities. SFR employees have a strong demand for such a program and a jury will have to select the yearly 50 « citizen-employees » based on the quality of their project.
For sure, this must be great news for altruistic SFR employees. But I’d like to make a suggestion to SFR to make this operation even more effective: why aren’t you focusing on your core business and competencies instead of diverting your efforts toward childhood and disabilities topics? I’m quite sure SFR employees could come with substantial socially-savvy innovations in the field of telecommunications if they were challenged to do so. Social entrepreneurship (entrepreneuriat social in French) combines altruistic aspirations with senseful business innovations. In the field of telecommunications, the best example for such activities is probably the Grameen Village Phone (see also here) or, to a lesser extent Alcatel’s Digital Bridge. Many other examples exist in social hightech. Social entrepreneurship projects may be riskier than usual innovation projects corporations sometimes carry. But this citizen-employee kind of operation would be ideal for managing the risks of social entrepreneurship project while contributing to the corporate social responsability of SFR, giving it a nice media coverage and still giving birth to economically viable businesses.
The so-French tradition of tightly containing « charities » away from business sometimes drives me nuts. Take the best of both worlds, please!
Anyway, hurrah for this nice SFR marketing and HR operation! If only my employer did the same thing, I would probably be on the field trying to connect some unconnected families, researching some disruptive knowledge technologies applied to local development (such as social networking software for residential areas), developping semantic web technologies applied to corporate social responsability reports or so.
Grâce aux Google maps notamment, on a vu apparaître sur le Web une floppée de mashups visant à permettre des interactions locales entre personnes, ancrées dans un territoire. De manière balbutiante, PlaceOPedia fait par exemple le lien entre des articles Wikipedia décrivant des lieux et la localisation de ces lieux sur une Google Map. On est encore bien loin d’avoir des outils qui permettent de créer du lien social sur un territoire donné pour lutter contre les phénomènes d’exclusion. D’abord parce que les territoires sont à peine représentés sur le Web, ensuite parce que les logiciels de réseautage social sont bien peu efficace pour réellement créer du lien, enfin parce que le mixage des deux tarde à donner une quelconque forme de résultat utile.
Certains s’amusent à construire leur propre téléphone mobile. En Wifi pour s’affranchir de l’opérateur télécom. Ca peut donner ce qu’on appelle de l’open source hardware.
Les mashups, c’est cette activité très à la mode (« Web 2.0 ») qui consiste à combiner (agréger) des services Web existants pour en faire un « mashup » à votre sauce et développer ainsi un nouveau business. Il existe autant de mashups possibles que de combinaisons de services Web.
Problème pour l’opérateur de site Web qui envisage de publier un service Web: est-ce que cela va me rapporter de l’argent ou ne vais-je pas, au contraire, perdre du traffic direct et donc des revenus publicitaires? Matt McAlister s’est penché sur la question.
Jean-Pierre is member of a French NGO dedicated to extreme poverty in France. He works closely with some nomad gypsy families who live in poverty near Paris. He sometimes brings them his laptop, a digital camera, a printer and an Internet connection and made some experiments with Skype and other software. They enjoy getting some news about Romania through online newspapers and websites. The young father of one of these families told Jean-Pierre how cool it would be if computing allowed him to get some recent pictures from his 5 years-old son who stayed in Romania. It has been 2 years since he last saw him. Another person is trying to get in touch with their mother who suffers from some disease in Romania.
When I read that on Jean-Pierre’s blog, I started trying to identify some Romanian volunteer who would visit that remote family with a digital camera, take some pictures and send them back to Jean-Pierre’s laptop via the Internet. I wrote a blog entry for this. I asked a Romanian colleague in the company I was working for at the time. I also sent a couple of emails to some Romanian IT services companies which offer offshore consulting services to French customers. Unsuccessfully.
Some time ago, a French guy in Bucharest contacted me in order to volunteer. Unfortunately, he was not located near the Romanian area where these families are, as Jean-Pierre explained us. So he could not help.
I don’t know much things about these families in Romania. As far as I know, they are in the area called Mehedinti, near the city of Girla Mare. I assume they are gypsies. Another Romanian colleague told me a bit more about this area. It is a very poor rural area with small mountains (up to 1000m high) near the Romanian border with Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro. He told me that the Romanian government had been saying for years that no such extremely poor and excluded gypsies exist in the country (until the European Union required from them that they recognize the importance of their minorities). From what I saw about gypsy families in the Czech Republic, I imagine that they live far from any town or village, without any sort of infrastructure. Maybe the road that leads to their place has no asphalt. Maybe they are in the middle of a forest, in some muddy place (Dilbert’s Elbonia anyone?). Maybe they live in a giant soviet-like sinister building in the forest where broken windows have never been replaced (this is the reason why they might be interested in linux BTW). They probably don’t have electricity nor any phone line. They most probably live on the fringe of society as their French cousins do in some way. I wonder how far such a picture is from reality. I hope I would be wrong.
Anyway, as I joined a new company, I investigated our presence in Romania still in search for some would-be volunteer. Our corporate directory randomly gave me the coordinates of one of our employees in Bucharest. I sent him an email like I would be sending a bottle into the sea. How surprised I am by his answer!
He tells me that he asked all of his colleagues about what we can do. One of them knows someone in this rural area. This local person is the head of a mountaineering club. He tells us that he is very enthusiastic about helping there. At the same time, my employer might be motivated by the idea of connecting some unconnected families in such a rural area and may support such an initiative. Or I am once again too naive. Anyway I am now investigating this opportunity internally. I also have to answer this mountaineer and try to understand a little bit more his motivations and expectations. I have to get sure that he does not think this would bring him any money because this is so far from what I am interested in.


WISE mission warms up but keeps chugging along
After completing its primary mission to map the infrared sky, NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has reached the expected end of its onboard supply of frozen coolant. Although WISE has 'warmed up,' NASA has decided the mission will still continue. WISE will now focus on our nearest neighbors -- the asteroids and comets traveling together with our solar system's planets around the sun.
"Two of our four infrared detectors still work even at warmer temperatures, so we can use those bands to continue our hunt for asteroids and comets," said Amy Mainzer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Mainzer is the principal investigator of the new phase of the mission, now known as the NEOWISE Post-Cryogenic Mission. It takes its name from the acronym for a near-Earth object, NEO, and WISE. A cryogen is a coolant used to make the detectors more sensitive. In the case of WISE, the cryogen was frozen hydrogen.
WISE launched Dec. 14, 2009, from Vandenberg Air Force Station in California aboard a Delta II launch vehicle. Its 40-centimeter (16-inch) infrared telescope scans the skies from an Earth-circling orbit crossing the poles. It has already snapped more than 1.8 million pictures at four infrared wavelengths. Currently, the survey has covered the sky about one-and-one-half times, producing a vast catalogue containing hundreds of millions of objects, from near-Earth asteroids to cool stars called "brown dwarfs," to distant, luminous galaxies.
To date, WISE has discovered 19 comets and more than 33,500 asteroids, including 120 near-Earth objects, which are those bodies with orbits that pass relatively close to Earth's path around the sun. More discoveries regarding objects outside our solar system, such as the brown dwarfs and luminous galaxies, are expected.
"The science data collected by WISE will be used by the scientific community for decades," said Jaya Bajpayee, the WISE program executive in the Astrophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "It will also provide a sky map for future observatories like NASA's James Webb Space Telescope."
The NEOWISE Post-Cryogenic Mission is designed to complete the survey of the solar system and finish the second survey of the rest of the sky at its new warmer temperature of about minus 203 degrees Celsius (minus 334 degrees Fahrenheit) using its two shortest-wavelength detectors. The survey extension will last one to four months, depending on early results.
NEOWISE will also keep observing other targets, such as the closest brown dwarfs to the sun. In addition, data from the second sky scan will help identify objects that have moved in the sky since they were first detected by WISE. This allows astronomers to pick out the brown dwarfs closest to our sun. The closer the object is, the more it will appear to move from our point of view.
The WISE science team now is analyzing millions of objects captured in the images, including many never seen before. A first batch of WISE data, covering more than half the sky, will be released to the astronomical community in spring 2011, with the rest to follow about one year later.
"WISE has provided a guidebook to the universe with thousands of targets worth viewing with a large telescope," said Edward (Ned) Wright, WISE principal investigator from UCLA. "We're working on figuring out just how far away the brown dwarfs are, and how luminous the galaxies are."


The incredible power of botanical medicines has been proven for thousands of years in traditional practices around the world. However, it often feels like we’re just beginning to catch up to what other cultures have known for generations. In Middle Eastern and Asian traditional medicine, black seed oil (black cumin, Nigella sativa) was prescribed as a tonic for virtually everything, including respiratory diseases, infections, digestive disorders, muscle pain, and many other conditions. In fact, one of the old sayings about black seed oil was that it “cured everything but death.” In recent years, black seed oil has drawn some much-deserved attention from the scientific community, and there’s good reason for this – it has shown an incredible
ability to protect cells from developing into cancer, reduce inflammation, preserve mental function, stop pain, and fight infections.
Cancer Growth and Tumors
One of the most exciting things about black seed oil is its potential to slow tumor formation. Studies on cancerous cells show that a primary compound in black seed oil, thymoquinone, disarms the cancer cell’s ability to defend itself from our body’s natural cancer killing systems. Thymoquinone has also been shown to increase the activity of the body’s own tumor stopping gene, the p53 pathway, to prevent the cycle of (harmful) cell creation, or stop the process if it has already occurred. Black seed oil is able to selectively target cancerous cells for destruction while simultaneously protecting healthy, normal cells from harm. Thymoquinone from black seed may also work as an adjunct to conventional cancer treatment. In a study of human cancer cells, researchers combined thymoquinone with doxorubicin, a chemotherapy treatment that has severe side effects, including cardiovascular damage. While black seed oil has its own tumor reducing capabilities, the study found that it bolstered the activity of doxorubicin, even with multi-drug resistant cells. Findings like this and additional research could lead to black seed oil being used for integrative approaches to fighting cancer, with less of the conventional drug and reduced side effects and risks.
Protects Brain, Memory, and Nerves Black seed oil shows great promise in protecting brain cells from damage. In laboratory studies using animal models, thymoquinone from black seed oil helped alleviate brain injury and reduced the severity of epileptic seizures, improved memory and learning abilities, and reduced inflammatory markers in the brain. Studies have also shown that black seed oil may be useful for helping prevent brain damage in the cases of stroke, and could reduce the risks of
Alzheimer’s disease by preventing the development of plaques in the brain that block neural signals. In a nine-week study, volunteers using a Nigella sativa supplement showed a significant improvement over a placebo group in recall, attention, and cognition tests. Another clinical study found that black seed improved recall memory and reduced anxiety in adolescent males in just four weeks.
Fights Bacterial Infection
Like many powerful botanical ingredients, black seed oil shows both antifungal and
antibacterial effects. In one scientific study, it effectively inhibited the growth of Candida albicans by 5-fold in the kidneys, 8-fold in the liver, and 11-fold in the spleen. Other work has found that black seed has a strong effect against a variety of bacteria, including Staphylococcus aureus (staph infection), and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a drug-resistant bacteria that affects individuals recovering from surgery or with weakened immune systems.
Fights Inflammatory Conditions
Thymoquinone from black seed inhibits inflammatory markers, including 5-lipooxygenase (5-LOX) and 5-hydroxy-eicosatetraenoic acid (5-HETE), both involved in allergic and asthma responses. The fact that black seed oil can inhibit 5-LOX inflammation puts it into a special category of herbs, along with Boswellia serrata, making it an extremely valuable ally for treating asthma, allergies, irritable bowel syndrome, or Crohn’s disease.
Protects Stomach and Digestive System
Given the strong anti-inflammatory effect of black seed oil and its ability to counter oxidative stress, it’s not surprising that it also protects the digestive system. In scientific studies, thymoquinone from black seed has been shown to reduce acid secretion and proton pump activity and protect the mucosal lining of the intestines against injury.
Black seed oil can reduce the sensation of pain, not by simply blocking pain receptors, but by inhibiting a variety of other inflammation pathways in the body.
A double-blind, eight-week placebo-controlled clinical trial found that black seed oil reduced levels of inflammatory markers in individuals with rheumatoid arthritis. It also boosted levels of an anti-inflammatory cytokine (IL-10) leading the researchers to conclude that it could be an effective natural medicine, and one that could be safely used alongside conventional medications to treat arthritis.
What I’ve outlined here is just a snapshot of the potential of black seed oil. I believe that it is one of the most versatile and potent herbal ingredients available. While Nigella sativa has been valued for centuries, it has also been well studied, with new clinical trials and scientific investigations in the works that validate its incredible power.
Michael Chase, MS, NTP
Nutrition Science and Dietetics
DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for educational purposes only, and should not be construed as personal medical advice or instruction. No action should be taken based solely on the contents of this information. Individuals should consult appropriate health professionals on any matter relating to their health and well-being. The statements made in this document have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Any product discussed is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.


The inflectional verbal morphology of Old Inggirian divides itself, albeit not neatly, into three sets of forms: bound forms, nominal forms and finite forms. Finite forms are those forms that carry personal marking, and nominal forms are those which may head the body of a relative clause. The finite forms, apart from being the only ones to carry personal marking, may only appear at the end of a sentence or clause. The nominal forms, although frequently employed, especially in later texts, as medial verb forms to the (progressively rarer) finite forms ending a sentence, all have nominal or adnominal functions to some degree. The remaining forms all essentially act as adverbs, and thus are called bound forms.
The Finite Forms
The finite forms essentially occupy a 2x2 matrix:
|No f. reference||-∅||-ki|
The precise meaning of these categories, although convenient for analysis, requires explanation.
The aorist is the unmarked form. Its semantic value is simply the assertion of some state or action. Pragmatically, what this means depends on the inherent aspect of the verb: with perfective verbs, this means a past occurrence, whereas with imperfective verbs, it is most often a future or present interpretation. The aorist can be used where the use of the "present" -ne
is rendered superfluous by context, but this is rarely done. It has no aspectual interpretation.
The subjunctive, similar to the aorist, has no fixed temporal reference, but simply indicates full or partial non-assertion. Its use is therefore very wide. It occurs in complement phrases, especially to verbs of quotation or fearing. It can indicate that the speaker is unsure, for instance because he has inferred the information being communicated. Finally, it can indicate a state of potentiality.
The Present (which is quite misleadingly named) is an asserted form that carries fixed reference to some point of time. When context does not specify a time period, the default interpretation is essentially the inverse of the Aorist: present/near future for perfective verbs, and past for imperfective ones. However, it is grammatical also to use this form in any other time context. In these situations, its use over the aorist is usually conditioned by the presence of a subclause that refers to a different time.
The conditional is the non-asserted counterpart to the present, and derives its name from the unusual counterfactual construction of Old Inggirian, in which the protasis is a finite verb in the conditional and the apodosis a nominalization in the infinitive. On its own it may fulfill similar functions as the subjunctive, but with a marked time reference (such as a sort of potential-in-the-past).
The Personal Desinences
Old Inggirian has a very pedestrian set of finite personal endings, distinguishing three persons and two numbers. A specialty is that there are two different sets of endings for positive and negative verbs.
The Nominal Forms
The nominal forms, in the earliest texts, are still largely limited to functioning as nouns. They begin to take over as a sort of loosely bound converb or even medial verb in later texts.
The most basic nominal form during the Old Inggirian stage, the infinitive ends in -yuku
for stems with an even number of feet and in -ku
for stems with an odd number of feet. The infinitive is an abstract noun in the earliest texts, and later becomes the participial version of the aorist: yorwayuku
, "to see", "seeing", "the one who sees".
The participle, much like the infinitive, has two metric allomorphs: -nagun
. It acts as a nominal variant of the present: yorwanagun
, "the one who saw".
This form, with the metric allomorphs -basu
, acts in all respects like -(yu)ku
, except that it can attach only to perfective verbs. Here it takes over the function of a past participle, leaving -(yu)ku
to take on a specifically abstract meaning or take on nominal function for imperfective interpretations of the same verb. For example, raku
"to die" has the perfective nominalization rakubasu
, "who is dead/died" and the imperfective rakuyuku
, "to die; who is dying". The form rakunagun
, meanwhile, refers to someone who is about to die, or who lay dying in the past.
The Bound Forms
The bound forms essentially act as converbs; they are adverbial modifiers to other clauses. It is worth noting that, while for purposes of illustration these are often translated with the English converb -ing
, the tight temporal binding they express is most often rendered in English with "and".
The sequential converb
This morpheme, invariantly -tol
, expresses that an action was completed immediately prior to the modified clause. Rodmo dagi cagujaku woldatol betelwag̃ samyobag̃o galpadeg̃
: "He caught on a stone and fell on the ground", literally "having become caught on a stone, he fell on the ground".
The simultaneous converb
Metric variants -g̃apa
. Expresses the simultaneous occurrence of the action and the modified clause. Nacaleag̃o-g̃i cobug̃apa buk gir jamo g̃endagay wedawa
, "walking around in my garden I suddenly saw a small squirrel".
The causal converb
This converb takes the forms -tolpa
. It is a straightforward combination of the two basic converbs, and expresses causality. Rodmo dagi cagujaku woldatolpa betelwag̃ samyobag̃o galpadeg̃
: "Because he caught on a stone, he fell to the ground".


What is a corrupt file?
Today it is so common to hear about diseases, such as viruses or infections that can be contagious and risky for health. However, it is not surprising that not only living beings suffer this type of risk, but also the files and data that we have on our computers or devices, can present vulnerabilities that completely damage them.
How does a file get corrupted?
There are several reasons why a file may become unusable or “corrupt”, for example; virus attacks, malware or malicious scripts, operating system malfunctions, transmission errors, outdated codes or unsupported and unsafe versions of platforms. In very few cases the problem can be fixed and the files that have been corrupted can be recovered, however in most cases it is necessary to permanently delete them and replace them with similar ones. It may be that deleting and replacing the files with others will solve the problem, however this problem may be something that occurs frequently due to an external malware or virus that modifies the function of the system, in this case it must be corrected as soon as possible. possible since otherwise this may affect your account and generate a suspension by the Hosting provider because it would be violating security protocols.
What to do if I have corrupt files?
In some cases, as we mentioned above, the problem can be solved by using system tools to repair the damage, as long as it is due to a temporary failure of the operating system. On the other hand, having an antivirus program can be of great help to detect this type of damaged files and carry out automatic repair. After making these types of corrections, the software should continue to function normally.
However, when the corrupted files cannot be repaired, in this case it is necessary to permanently delete them, replace them with totally new files, and install a new database. It is not recommended to upload a copy of the files if they were already infected because this would not correct the problem, you can make a copy or Backup of the files as long as it is previously saved, allowing you to solve the problem and avoid losing the information.
Many websites or blogs provide some information on how to repair corrupt files, either automatically or manually or even with some type of antivirus. However when several of the files are already infected or corrupted there is nothing to do. The most recommended in this case is to completely delete the content of the account and recreate them from scratch as if it were a new service.
The most common causes of file corruption are that POSIX-based file systems such as Linux, also Unix, BSD, Windows and MACOS use a security system based on users and groups, where three figures indicate the permissions to access directories , links, devices and files. The truth is that if we assign 777 permissions to a directory we are telling our system that that directory is accessible to anyone. This means that any little hacker with minimal security knowledge could inject files that would be executed on our server with the wrong permissions. Reason why our code could be damaged and generate this type of errors or code infected by viruses.
Some programmers only filter code injection into fields that are visible to the user, such as the URL or form fields. In addition, the automatic tools for detecting security holes do not go much further. However, hackers can modify any parameter that is sent in the communication, whether it is in the HTTP protocol headers, in the requests made by hidden form fields. This is carried out with tools such as WebScarab, Paros or Burp that act as a proxy between the hacker's browser and the server, allowing all the content of the communication to be viewed and modified to suit the attacker. Hackers are very patient: if they want to attack a specific target, they can spend weeks or months looking for vulnerabilities of this type. On the other hand, the platforms used to set up websites such as WordPress, Joomla or PrestaShop also have their vulnerabilities, which allow filtering scripts or malicious code if the proper updates are not made. So the best thing we can do to avoid hacker attacks is to know how they can attack them and to always have the code updated.


Robotics Club, Snt Council2 The 3 Schools of Robotics: Mechanical Design – Types of motors – Material selection – Driving, gripping, clamping, climbing, lifting… Electronics – Microcontrollers – Motor Drivers – Sensors (Infrared, Ultrasonic, etc) Programming – Microcontroller Programming – Communicating with a computer. – Communicating between multiple robots.
Robotics Club, Snt Council3 A simple autonomous robot
Robotics Club, Snt Council4 What are Sensors? A sensor is a device that measures a physical quantity and converts it into a signal which can be read by microcontroller. (heat, motion, gyro, sonar, IR, etc…)
TSOP 1738: It is a DIGITAL IR SENSOR, giving outputs of 0V and 5V. It does not respond to any stray IR, it only responds to IR falling on it at a pulse rate of 38 KHz (given by TIMER of microcontroller) Can accurately distinguish between 2 colors.
QRD1114: It is an easy-to-use, simple analog sensor (Output range: 0V to 5V) Has a very small range: 0.5mm to 1cm Used to distinguish between bright and dark colours
LDR (Light Dependent Resistor) made of calcium sulfate… When no light falls on it, the LDR behaves as an open circuit (very high resistance: 10^6 ohms) As the intensity of light increases, the resistance drops (to about 10 to 100 ohms)
7805 As Atmega requires 5V: To convert 12V (input) to 5V (output) we use the 7805 Voltage Regulator: Current Rating:0.5A
MICRO-CONTROLLER: A microcontroller is the brain of the robot: These are: 1. Integrated Circuits (ICs) 2. Programmable – You can define what they do. This is what makes them different from other simpler ICs, such as AND gates, inverters, etc Logic tables relating Input and Output can be defined by you 3. Many useful features built in to the uC itself
Kinds of Microcontrollers: AVR PIC Intel 8051 Rabbit Zilog Many, Many more We will be using AVR microcontroller, of Atmel’s ATMEGA family… Mostly, we will use Atmega 16…
How a U C works? U C consists of a CPU interfaced to a RAM and a Flash memory (the one your pen- drive has!!). We program the flash memory. When the U C is turned on, the microprocessor i.e. the CPU accesses instructions from RAM which access your code from Flash…
How to program a microcontroller: A microcontroller understands only binary language (0 and 1)…We write the code in C language in CVAVR (Compiler + IDE). We compile the code to generate the.hex file (which the machine understands) We transfer the.hex file to Atmega using a Programmer Hardware: Serial Programmer, STK 500, USB etc… (Contains chips to convert voltage levels and protocols) Software: AVR Studio, AVRDUDE, etc…
ATMEGA 16 16 KB Flash Memory… 40 pin U C… 32 I/O Pins These pins have other functions like UART, ADC, SPI, LCD, Interrupt, TIMERS, etc… But we will now focus on I/O and TIMER… Maximum Voltage 5V, current rating about 10 milli- amperes
How to Run Motors through U C? The Atmega16 has a current rating of 5-10 mA. The normal DC motor’s current ratings start from 150 mA and above. So the motor cannot be directly attached to the Atmega, hence a motor-driver is used… (eg: L293, L298, etc…)
TIMERS: Atmega has: Timer 0, 8 bit (OC0 at PB3) Timer 1, 16 bit (2 parts A and B each of 8 bit, OC1A at PD5, OC1B at PD4) Timer 2, 8 bit (OC2 at PD7) There are 2 clocks: System Clock (fs) Timer Clock (ft = fs or fs/8 or fs/64 or ….)


|Manistee Main Light||Seeing The Light|
Congress instructed the Army Corps of Engineers to dispatch an Engineer Officer to Manistee to conduct a survey of the river entrance in 1861. While the Engineering report indicated that harbor improvements at Manistee were both necessary and valid, nothing would be done until 1867 when appropriations were simultaneously approved for improvements to the river entrance and for the erection of a lighthouse to guide vessels into the new entry on its completion. Improvements began in July 1867 under the direction of Mr. John Canfield, and that same year, a survey party was sent to Manistee to select and survey a site on the north shore of the river mouth for the new lighthouse reservation.
Work on the new station began in 1869 with the excavation of a cellar and the erection of a rubble stone foundation. Atop this foundation, a wood-framed dwelling with an integrated tower was erected, and outfitted with a Fifth Order lens. With expected completion close at hand, Octavius W Barney was appointed as the station’s first Keeper, reporting for duty at Manistee on December 30, 1869, when work was suspended with the arrival of winter. Although considerable work remained to be completed at the station, work on the tower had progressed to the point that Barney was able to exhibit the new Manistee light on the opening of the 1870 navigation season. As construction continued through the spring, it was discovered that the building had been mistakenly erected too close to the rear of the reservation, and that a small addition at the rear of the dwelling was located beyond the surveyed reservation. Work was temporarily suspended until arrangements were made to purchase additional land at the rear of the reservation for the princely sum of $30.00. Work on the new station finally came to a close in July 1870. The construction crew departed, leaving Barney to tend the light alone.
Barney resigned his position as Keeper of the Manistee Light on April 24, 1871, and was replaced by John McKee. Manistee of 1871 was a flurry of activity with river entry and harbor improvements well underway, and the mouth of the river now accessible to the largest vessels. The river was being opened-up deep into the heartland, and with the new lighthouse serving as an excellent guide to the increasing volume of vessels entering the bustling harbor, the residents of Manistee sensed their town was poised for greatness.
Then on October 8, 1871, all Hell broke loose. A huge fire, which had been sweeping through the area forests finally reached Manistee. Fed by the mountainous piles of lumber and shingles lining the river banks, the fire jumped the wooden bridge across the river, completely consuming the town on its inexorable push south. When the fire had passed, the entire town lay in smoldering ruins, including the lighthouse which had burned to the ground foundation. As the townsfolk tried to rescue the few remaining possessions of their former lives, Keeper McKee toiled for two days to establish a temporary light atop a pole near the lakeshore to serve until more permanent arrangements could be made. With the lighthouse a complete loss, Congress appropriated $10,000 for construction of a new light on May 18, 1872.
Eleventh District Engineer Major Orlando Poe responded quickly, dispatching a work party and materials to Manistee that July, with the crew working at a feverish pace to complete the reconstruction. On completion, the new dwelling appears to have been a virtual duplicate of the original station, consisting of a 2-story wood structure with clapboard siding with an integral wooden tower at its lakeward gable end, and capped by an octagonal cast iron lantern. Since the original Fifth Order Fresnel lens had been destroyed in the fire, a new lens was ordered from Paris, and a temporary lens was displayed in the lantern on completion of the new station that September. The new lens was finally received at the Detroit depot late in 1873, and after shipment to Manistee, replaced the temporary lens in the lantern.
1874 and 1875 were exceptionally busy years for Manistee, with 3,488, vessels entering the river between June 30, 1874, and June 30, 1875. To serve this burgeoning maritime commerce, the piers were extended an additional 150 feet in 1875, and the channel between them dredged to a minimum depth of ten feet. With the main light now standing a considerable distance to the rear of the pierheads, the decision was made to replace the shore light on the north bank with a pierhead beacon on the outer end of the longer south pier. On establishment of the new south pierhead beacon on the night of October 15, 1875, the main light was discontinued, only three years after the station was rebuilt.
While the structure no longer served as an active aid to navigation, it continued to serve as a dwelling for Keeper McKee, who was now forced to row across the river numerous times during each day and night to tend the pierhead light. However, McKee’s inconvenience was short-lived, as he was removed from his position on October 26, 1875 and William King appointed as his replacement.
The volume of traffic along the coast heading to and from the Straits continued to increase, and in 1893 the decision was made to reactivate the main light to serve double duty as both a coast light and to better guide mariners to the river mouth. The futility of having the keepers simultaneously attend the reactivated main light on the north side of the river and the fog signal and the ranges on the south pier became clear, and the fog signal and pierhead light were relocated to the north pier in 1894. A new fixed white Fifth Order Fresnel lens exhibiting a red flash every 45 seconds was installed in the lantern on the Main Light, and the station officially reestablished on the night of June 18, 1894.
The following year, 100 cubic yards of muck and clay were delivered and spread atop the sand on the main lighthouse grounds in order to provide a base for a lawn, and a rail fence was also erected around the edge of the reservation, completely enclosing the property.
After recurring problems with the rotational mechanism on the main light, the light was temporarily extinguished from February 24 to March 5, 1902, while the District Lampist installed a new pedestal and ball bearings assembly beneath the lens. While on site, the Lampist also installed new improved Fifth order lamps in both the main and pierhead lights. 1906 saw the installation of 600 feet of concrete walkways connecting the buildings on the main lighthouse reservation.
The fog signal building was removed from the north pier in 1927, and replaced by a 39 foot-tall iron tower on the outer end of the pier, and with the establishment of these new aids to navigation, the old Main Light was permanently extinguished and decommissioned. No longer serving any official government purpose, the lantern was removed from the structure and the building transferred into private ownership.
With plans underway for the construction of the sprawling Harbor
Village condominium complex in the area in 1993, the old building found
itself smack-dab in the middle of the developing area, and the structure
was lifted and moved to a residential area in town, where it sits to
this day on West Melitzer Street at the end of Third Avenue, its
original purpose virtually indistinguishable.
We walked the pier, and looked at the catwalk, which runs the entire
length of the pier.


Powersystems review on the environment, transportation and the electric vehicle revolution looked to understand the electric vehicle revolution, and key elements driving it.
Consumer tastes and preferences are changing. The driver to these behavioural changes can almost be linked to technological innovation. Technology is one part of a three-pronged phenomenon that’s behind the electric vehicle revolution. The other two key drivers are environmental awareness and political policy changes.
Is the UK geared up for the rise in electric vehicles?
Most recently, point 4 of Boris Johnson’s Ten Point Plan announced in November 2020 stated, ‘We’ll invest more than £2.8bn in electric vehicles, lacing the land with charging points and creating long-lasting batteries in UK gigafactories. This will allow us to end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans in 2030. However, we will allow the sale of hybrid cars and vans that can drive a significant distance with no carbon coming out of the tailpipe until 2035.’
The UK has committed to Net-Zero carbon emissions by 2050. Transport is currently the largest emitting sector of the UK economy, responsible for 27% of total UK greenhouse gas emissions; within this, cars are responsible for 55% of transport emissions. Electric vehicles (EVs, or sometimes known as Ultra Low Emission Vehicles (ULEVS)) offer one method of reducing emissions, with the Committee for Climate Change (CCC) suggesting that all new vehicles should be electrically propelled by 2035, if not sooner, to achieve the Net Zero target.
Simply, the nation will only be in a position to ban new petrol cars by 2035 if the charging infrastructure for electric vehicles is fit for purpose….
What are Electric Vehicles (EVs)
EVs run, either partially or wholly, on electricity, stored on board the vehicle in batteries or produced from hydrogen. Whilst cars represent 92% of the 432,000 ULEVS licensed (1.1% of all licensed vehicles) at the end of 2020, there are also electric motorcycles, taxis, buses, vans and heavy goods vehicles. The market for EVs is immature, yet growing, with 8.5% of registered vehicles ULEVs in 2020. Meanwhile, only 1.8% of used car sales, responsible for approximately 80% of transactions, involved alternatively fuelled vehicles.
‘The ban’ on the sales of new petrol and diesel vehicles
Reported by Powersystems The original deadline for the ban on new petrol and diesel sales was 2040 but in February this year, Boris Johnson announced at the UN climate conference (COP26) that the government will bring this forward to 2035 or earlier if feasible, subject to consultation. Another five years has been taken off the original deadline, but the 2035 date is reportedly being kept for the end of hybrid car sales.
Unofficially In February, 2020 Transport Secretary Grant Shapps announced his intention to bring forward the ban on sales of new petrol, vehicles from 2040 to 2032. The subsequent Covid-19 pandemic, lockdown and accompanying economic downturn brought the car industry to a standstill in the UK, the Government has since put the 2032 target back to 2035.
2020 was set to be a landmark year for electric vehicle innovation. However, in April 2020 new vehicle sales were down 97% on the previous year. According to figures published by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders which show pure battery-electric cars held just a 1.6 per cent share of the new car market last year.
As of May 2021, the number of total electric cars registered in the UK were more than 535,000 plug-in vehicles with approx. 260,000 BEVs and 280,000 PHEVs registered. Battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) made up 8.4% of all new cars sales in May 2021, with 13,120 registrations. That was down from 12.0% in May 2019, when the figure was boosted by EV firms such as Tesla continuing contactless deliveries. In the first five months of 2021, the 54,051 BEVs sold accounts for 7.5% of the market, compared with 4.3% in 2020.
Launching a car scrap-page scheme?
And of course to support the conversion to electric vehicle the government is reportedly considering launching a car scrap-page scheme, in which drivers could be given up to £6,000 to trade in their diesel or petrol vehicle for an electric one. However, earlier in March this year the government cut the electric car grant from £3,000 to £2,500, and lowered the upper price limit for eligible vehicles from 50,000 to 35000. The move attracted criticism from industry experts who said it sent out the wrong message. Should the reported £6,000 initiative go ahead, it would mean price parity between many electric vehicles and their petrol counterparts.
Is the UK charging infrastructure fit for purpose?
A report issued on the 19 May by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said the 2030 target would be missed without urgent action to improve infrastructure – The government has a “mountain to climb” to reach its goals of phasing out new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 and for all new cars to be zero-emission by 2035.
PAC criticised the government for lacking a plan to achieve these targets and tackle the consequences of an all-electric car society, including the impact on the future power needs, the impact on the skills and capabilities required to support the changeover and the impact on the government tax-take due to the loss of fuel duties.
PAC also detailed recommendations into charging infrastructure, stating it isn’t convinced that the government has “sufficiently thought through” how this will expand at the pace required to meet the targets.
The Department for Transport (DfT) has made assumptions about the types of journeys people will make and how they charge their car, but not estimated the number of charge points required across the country to keep up with the increase in electric vehicles (EVs).
Alongside the additional work needed on on-street charging, both the DfT and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) also need to work with other departments to consider the practical implications of the transition to zero-emission cars, the PAC said.
In particular, they should set out how they are going to manage the wider societal impacts such as the impact on power generation and transmission and retraining the workforce.
Concerns need to be answered over electricity demand and Government targets. What effect will electrifying the car fleet have on the power industry? How often will cars be recharged, what additional load will this place on the grid, and where might the need for charging expose capacity restrictions on the network?
According to National Grid Future Energy Scenario (FES), the UK needs approximately 87-113GW (scenario dependent) of renewables capacity by 2030 and 197-231GW by 2050. The current market and options available for new-build renewables are inadequate to keep the UK on track to meet its net-zero target.
As Baroness Brown, vice chair of the Committee on Climate Change, stated at June 2021 launch of the Hydrogen Strategy Now campaign, “the UK missed the boat on wind technology and missed the boat on batteries. We can ‘t afford to miss the boat on hydrogen”.
It looks like the UK is on track for missing the annual ramp up rate of 5 GW as well, with new build renewables currently facing a tough choice regarding their route to market options, with challenging and volatile market conditions making it tough to secure investment and ultimately build-out projects. Reform is needed now!
The National Grid believes that consumer behavior will change to avoid charging at peak times, therefore resulting in a less significant increase to peak demand.
Wider proliferation of electric vehicles will add demand to the grid. However, “smart charging” or “vehicle to grid” can reduce charging at peak times, and the batteries in the vehicles could become an asset to the National Grid, as they have the potential to be used for grid balancing. ‘Smart’ use of the electricity system involves using power at times when demand (and therefore prices) is low. Consumers can benefit from cheaper power, and operators benefit from an easier to balance system and avoiding all cars being charged simultaneously, such as at the end of rush hour.
Smart meters, which are currently being rolled out, have the potential to allow more detailed information on consumption to be sent to energy suppliers, and more reactive use of power for customers. For example, ‘Time-of-use’ tariffs are already available from some energy suppliers, rewarding customers with smart meters who choose to sign up for using power at times of low demand. Integrating smart devices, such as smart charging electric cars, into this mechanism could mean that additional demand for electric cars is significantly reduced.
An extension of smart charging, the concept of ‘Vehicle to Grid’ (V2G), is that when supply is low and demand high, EVs connected to the grid to charge can instead release power back into the grid. Owners of the vehicles can then be paid for this balancing service in a similar way to electricity storage unit operators. In theory, if a vehicle is needed to be charged for a certain time the owner could register that time and this would override the use of the car as a power source. Some suppliers have been developing V2G offers for their customers, though availability is currently limited
Are consumers ready to switch to EVs?
Today, it is a widely held view by the man on the street that a petrol vehicle is more reliable than an electric vehicle, because you are never to far from a petrol pump! The majority of the car-buying public aren’t ready to switch to an electric car.
Perceptions by approx. 27.8 million households advised by the energy regulator Ofgem found that they were unlikely to get an electric vehicle, because batteries do not offer enough range between charges, lack of on-street charging points near homes and of course the price is to high. All points play a significant concern when thinking about switching to an EV.
Statistics from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) show that 13.6% of new cars sold in the past four months had a plug, while figures from the Department for Transport show that more than half-a-million ultra-low emission vehicles are now being driven on roads across the country.
New research suggests that around one in four households across the UK plan to buy an electric car or plug-in hybrid in the next five years.
It has been reported that there are more public places to charge an Electric Vehicle in the UK (around 30,000) than there are petrol stations, but like all statements ‘the context’ is really important…
Zap-Map.com a UK-wide charging points map for electric cars, says that 24,649 charging points have been installed in 15,680 locations, and 700 added in the last 30 days, with more being added every day. To give you an idea, currently there are charging locations for example 7,526 in London, 2,558 in Scotland, 1742 in the South West.
However, at the time of writing there are currently only 1,080 ultra-rapid charge points and 2,970 rapid chargers at locations in the UK, and this means the difference in facilities on offer between a 20-minute ultra-rapid charge, to hanging around for what could be literally hours.
Quick guide on the the main types of chargers
There are three main types of EV charging – rapid, fast, and slow. These represent the power outputs, and therefore charging speeds, available to charge an EV. Power is measured in kilowatts (kW). Each charger type has an associated set of connectors which are designed for low- or high-power use, and for either AC or DC charging.
- 50 kW DC charging on one of two connector types
- 43 kW AC charging on one connector type
- 100+ kW DC ultra-rapid charging on one of two connector types
- All rapid units have tethered cables
Rapid chargers are the fastest way to charge an EV, often found at motorway services or locations close to main routes. Rapid devices supply high power direct or alternating current – DC or AC – to recharge a car as fast as possible. Depending on model, EVs can be recharged to 80% in as little as 20 minutes, though an average new EV would take around an hour on a standard 50 kW rapid charge point.
Ultra-Rapid DC chargers provide power at 100 kW or more. These are typically either 100 kW, 150 kW, or 350 kW – though other maximum speeds between these figures are possible. These are the next-generation of rapid charge point, able to keep recharging times down despite battery capacities increasing in newer EVs. For those EVs capable of accepting 100 kW or more, charging times are kept down to 20-40 minutes for a typical charge, even for models with a large battery capacity. Even if an EV is only able to accept a maximum of 50 kW DC, they can still use ultra-rapid charge points.
- 7kW fast charging on one of three connector types
- 22kW fast charging on one of three connector types
- 11kW fast charging on Tesla Destination network
- Units are either untethered or have tethered cables
Fast chargers are typically rated at either 7 kW or 22 kW (single- or three-phase 32A). The vast majority of fast chargers provide AC charging, though some networks are installing 25 kW DC chargers with CCS or CHAdeMO connectors. Charging times vary on unit speed and the vehicle, but a 7 kW charger will recharge a compatible EV with a 40 kWh battery in 4-6 hours, and a 22 kW charger in 1-2 hours. Fast chargers tend to be found at destinations such as car parks, supermarkets, or leisure centres, where you are likely be parked at for an hour or more.
- 3 kW – 6 kW slow charging on one of four connector types
- Charging units are either untethered or have tethered cables
- Includes mains charging and from specialist chargers
- Often covers home charging
Most slow charging units are rated at up to 3 kW, a rounded figure that captures most slow-charging devices. In reality, slow charging is carried out between 2.3 kW and 6 kW, though the most common slow chargers are rated at 3.6 kW (16A). Charging on a three-pin plug will typically see the car draw 2.3 kW (10A), while the majority of lamp-post chargers are rated at 5.5 kW because of existing infrastructure – some are 3 kW however. Charging times vary depending on the charging unit and EV being charged, but a full charge on a 3 kW unit will typically take 6-12 hours. Most slow charging units are untethered, meaning that a cable is required to connect the EV with the charge point.
Investment to get Britain ready for more electric vehicles
Ofgem unveils £300m investment to get Britain ready for more electric vehicles. – Ofgem is to invest £300m on more than 200 low carbon projects to get Britain ready for more electric vehicles, with motorway service areas and key trunk road locations across the country set to get the cabling they need to install 1,800 new ultra-rapid charge points. This £300m down payment is just the start of building back a greener energy network which will see well over £40bn of investment in Britain’s energy networks in the next seven years. “The payment will support the rapid take up of electric vehicles which will be vital if Britain is to hit its climate change targets. Drivers need to be confident that they can charge their car quickly when they need to. We’re paving the way for the installation of 1,800 ultra-rapid charge points, tripling the number of these public charge points. Drivers will have more charging options for longer journeys.”
UK businesses are set to invest £15.8bn in the electrification of their vehicle fleets over the next year. – A 50% uplift on their spending during the previous 12 months, according to research, commissioned by Centrica Business Solutions, which revealed that UK firms spent £10.5bn on electric vehicles (EVs) and on-site charging points during the year to March 2021 but are now planning £15.8bn of investment in the same area over the next 12 months– a 50% increase year-on-year. Of these businesses, six in ten (58%) cited the need to meet corporate sustainability targets as the biggest driving factor behind their increased adoption of EV, followed by reducing operational disruption caused by low and zero-emission zones (51%) and the attraction of the lower maintenance and whole-life costs offered by EVs (37%). Range anxiety was reported as the chief concern for a third (34%) of these firms, followed by the need to prioritise business investment elsewhere during the height of the coronavirus crisis (32%).Despite this, two-thirds (67%) of all companies polled claimed they are well-prepared to operate a fully electric fleet by 2030, when the Government’s ban on the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles comes into effect.
Now that 2030 is set in stone as the end of new petrol and diesel sales we need to ensure three things to help get us there, sufficient affordable electric vehicles to meet demand, reliable affordable charging infrastructure that’s available to all and a flexible affordable energy system that can deliver green power where it’s needed.


“Normal is just a setting on the dryer.”
– Barbara Johnson, author and speaker
“Grief” is a word we hear throughout our entire life, but we never really understand it until we experience it. Grief is a normal response to a loss. It is the way we feel and behave following a death. Grief can be ugly, unforgiving, confusing, and disorienting. It also may be warmed by feelings of peace, comfort or even gratitude. Whatever you feel, know that your feelings are unique to you. Others may have lost a spouse, parent, sibling, grandparent, uncle or friend, but no one can feel exactly as you do. Each relationship is one of a kind; therefore the response to the loss is equally unique.


So many people refer to misophonia as a disorder in which people aversively respond to chewing and breathing. There has been a culture that has conformed to the idea of “chewing rage”, unfortunately this does not tell the entire story. While there seems to be a high incidence of severe reactivity to chewing and other body noises it is important to keep in mind that misophonia also includes responsivity to other kinds of noises. In time research will reveal the mystery behind the noises that bother us. However, in the meantime it is always good to have on hand a short review of what the studies show us this far.
What are the symptoms of misophonia?
Individuals with misophonia are set off, or “triggered” by repetitive, patterned-based sounds, such as chewing, coughing, pencil tapping, sneezing, etc. Some individuals with misophonia also describe visual triggers.
Are the sounds always related to chewing or “people noises”?
Often people assume these are noises that from other peoples’ bodies (such as chewing). However, we really don’t know what features of the noises are causing the aversive responding. For example, it may be the repetition of the noise that is not processed properly within the auditory/neurological system, not the fact that “my friends chewing bothers me”.
Is misophonia neurological or psychiatric?
Misophonia appears to be a neurologically based disorder in which certain auditory stimuli are misinterpreted as dangerous or otherwise harmful. This atypical auditory processing may leads a fight/flight response, which leads to emotional reactivity and psychological problems.
Is there a cure for misophonia?
Not yet but research looks promising.
What different treatments or therapies are there? What therapies may exist the near future?
Right now, we know more about wasn’t doesn’t work than what does. Until we figure out the underlying neural mechanisms it is difficult to say what will help treat the condition. Psychological counseling may be helpful and earplugs that mask noise fitted by audiologists may help with daily life functioning. However, there is not an approved therapy at this time.
What do I do if I need help?
Try to find psychologists, counselors and audiologists through reliable sources such as medical doctors who have written articles on misophonia. As you sift through the many different press articles and support groups, etc. on the Internet make sure that you are corresponding with professionals who understand the disorder, who are connected to a university where misophonia is being studied, or who have been providing clinical services for misophonia or related disorders and/or who are willing to work under the direction of someone who can guide them. Most of all, go with your instinct when looking for help. If you feel that someone is treating you with disrespect or exploiting your suffering for purposes of profit, listen to your instincts.Looking for more information on misophonia? Consider attending our workshops at Misophoniaeducation.com


It sounds like a creature envisioned in a B-grade horror movie: a giant, predatory wasp with jaws so large that they drag when it walks. But that's exactly what entomologist Lynn Kimsey of the University of California, Davis, encountered during a recent expedition to the remote Indonesian island of Sulawesi, according to the UC Davis Department of Entomology. The new species, dubbed a "warrior wasp" due to its huge ninja-like mandibles, is a terrifying sight up close. It is also being called the "Komodo dragon" of the wasp family due to its intimidating size. Males can measure in at over two and a half inches, jaws included.
Earn PointsWhat's this? Comments (38)[/*]Email[/*]Twitter[/*]Stumble[/*] Digg[/*][url=http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=20]Shar"Its jaws are so large that they wrap up either side of the head when closed. When the jaws are open they are actually longer than the male's front legs. I don't know how it can walk," noted Kimsey, who is also director at the Bohart Museum of Entomology.[/url][/*][/list] Luckily it prefers to dine on insects, but if threatened there's little doubt it could leave a sizeable mark on human flesh too. Though the wasp belongs to the genus Dalara, Kimsey plans to name the species "Garuda" after the part-human, part-eagle mythical beast that is well-known as a national symbol in Indonesia. The wasp was discovered in the Mekongga Mountains in southeastern Sulawesi, a little-explored Indonesian island between Borneo and New Guinea that Kimsey has called "one of the world's top three islands for biodiversity — that along with Australia and Madagascar." Aside from wasps of legendary size, the island is also home to dwarf buffalo called anoa, palm civets, and colonial spider webs that can stretch for acres. Kimsey is part of a team of researchers who received a five-year, $4 million grant to study the island's rich biodiversity. So far in her three trips to Sulawesi, she estimates that hundreds — maybe even thousands — of new species could be catalogued. Kimsey hopes that the discovery of the warrior wasp and other surprising new animals will help raise awareness of how unique and precious the region is. "There's talk of forming a biosphere reserve to preserve this," she said. "There are so many rare and endangered species on Sulawesi that the world may never see." http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/giant-warrior-wasp-discovered-with-jaws-longer-than-its-legs?hpt=hp_bn11
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Home | Historically, independence has led to peace
Historically, independence has led to peace
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To some reasonable people, New Hampshire independence sounds scary. The old saying, “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”, comes to mind. Something that hasn’t been done before strikes fear. However, this isn’t the first time independence has happened. Not even the first time this great state of our has done it. Some people may think, “Well that was over 200 years ago. That would never work now!”
Independence around the world is happening all the time. South Sudan just became independent as recently as 2011 and there have been 34 different nations created since 1990. In fact, since 1979 three nations peacefully became independent from the United States of America! (Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau).
Understandably, when calling for Independence, many Americans think that it will be violent. American independence from the British Empire in 1776, as well as Southern independence from Washington D.C. in 1861, resulted in violence. It doesn’t have to be this way. Recently, it hasn’t been violent. Since World War II, 30 newly created countries became independent with a referendum, in other words, no violence.
What do these new nations have in common? The majority of the people in these regions felt that their larger parent state did not represent the values of their region. They stood up against it and took things into their own hands. Washington D.C. doesn’t represent us. The motto that New Hampshire holds dear, “Live free or die”, is deep rooted in the veins of the people that live and grew up here. It seems each and every day our values are being taken away. Let’s make a stand.
The goal of the Foundation for New Hampshire Independence is to educate citizens on the benefits of the 'Live Free or Die' state peacefully declaring its independence and separating from the federal government of the United States.
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Volume 13, Number 11—November 2007
Environmental Predictors of Human West Nile Virus Infections, Colorado
To determine whether environmental surveillance of West Nile virus–positive dead birds, mosquito pools, equines, and sentinel chickens helped predict human cases in metropolitan Denver, Colorado, during 2003, we analyzed human surveillance data and environmental data. Birds successfully predicted the highest proportion of human cases, followed by mosquito pools, and equines.
The United States has experienced numerous locale-specific West Nile virus (WNV) epidemics since the infection was first identified in New York in 1999 (1). Since then, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that jurisdictions consider improving surveillance based on probability of arbovirus activity and available resources (2). As a result, many states have developed or enhanced environmental surveillance systems to detect WNV activity within their jurisdictions.
Tri-County Health Department (TCHD), a local public health agency in metropolitan Denver, Colorado, serves >1 million people in Adams, Arapahoe, and Douglas Counties, and spans urban and rural regions. In response to the anticipated arrival of WNV, the state of Colorado added WNV serologic testing to its existing sentinel chicken surveillance (which included serologic testing for western equine encephalitis and St Louis encephalitis), and initiated surveillance of mosquito pools, dead birds, and equines. This retrospective study aims to utilize both epidemiologic and spatial tools to determine whether the enhanced environmental surveillance system was able to predict human infections in space and time during an epidemic year of WNV activity. In addition, this study assesses whether predictability differed by urban/rural location and month of onset of human disease.
Since 2002, healthcare providers and laboratories have been required to report patients with laboratory evidence of acute WNV infection in Colorado if testing identified WNV-specific immunoglobulin M antibodies in either cerebral spinal fluid or serum by ELISA, or blood donors with a positive nucleic acid test result. In addition to laboratory confirmation, patients had to exhibit clinical features consistent with an acute WNV infection, including encephalitis, meningitis, flaccid paralysis, or WNV fever; detailed case definitions have previously been described (3). Human surveillance data were downloaded from the Web-based statewide notifiable disease reporting system.
Environmental data included specimens of birds, mosquito pools, equines, and sentinel chickens that were tested for WNV. Bird oral swab specimens and mosquito pools were tested by reverse transcription–PCR or VecTest (Medical Analysis Systems, Inc., Camarillo, CA, USA) at Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s (CDPHE) laboratory or regional local health department laboratories. Equine specimens were tested at the Department of Agriculture and Colorado State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratories on a fee-for-service basis by IgM antibody capture–ELISA (MAC-ELISA) at a 1:400 dilution to eliminate false-positive results due to vaccination (4). Sentinel chickens were set at 3 permanent sites and tested weekly by MAC-ELISA at the Weld County Health Department laboratory. All laboratory results were reported to CDPHE and forwarded to TCHD.
A total of 408 human WNV cases were reported in Adams, Arapahoe, and Douglas Counties during 2003. TCHD’s environmental surveillance system identified 109 (50.0%) of 218 birds that tested positive for WNV, 62 (54.9%) of 113 equines that tested positive, 58 (21.7%) of 267 mosquito pools that tested positive, and 45 (12.7%) of 354 sentinel chickens that tested positive. Geographic locations were determined for all but 4 (99.0%) of the infected humans, for 96.0% of environmental species with positive results, and for 97.4% of environmental species with negative results. Human and environmental surveillance data were mapped in ArcView, version 3.3 (ESRI, Redlands, CA, USA) (Figure). The space–time relationships between human infections and environmental positive results were computed for all humans. For space, a distance threshold of 2 km was used, well within the dispersal distances identified for Culex tarsalis (5), the primary vector of WNV in Colorado. For time, the temporal threshold for environmental positive results was any time before, and up to, the time of the onset of human infection. This assumes that once an environmental positive result was documented at a particular location, WNV would remain at that location for the rest of the season. Using a script written in the Avenue programming language for ArcView 3.3, if a person was within the threshold for both space and time in relation to an environmental positive result, then we concluded that the occurrence of human infection was successfully predicted by the environmental surveillance system. Human cases that were identified as being successfully predicted and all environmental positive results are indicated in the Figure.
To determine whether environmental surveillance was more accurate at predicting human cases by urban than rural location and month of human infection onset, we calculated the proportions of human cases that were successfully predicted. Urban regions were identified as those census tracts with densities >1,600 persons per square mile (PPSM) based on Census 2000 data. In contrast to the Census Bureau’s “urban area” classification of 1,000 PPSM, this density value was derived statistically by using Colorado census tract data and did not include census blocks of low population surrounding highly built-up areas. SAS software (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA) was used to determine measures of association by Wald χ2 tests with a significance level of 0.05.
Overall, the 4 types of environmental surveillance were able to predict 64.6% of all reported human cases of WNV infection (Table 1). When the 4 types of environmental specimens were analyzed separately, birds successfully predicted the highest proportion of human cases, followed by mosquito pools and equines. The accuracy rates for birds were higher in urban than in rural locations and were better in the latter half of the season. Although findings were not significant, human infections were more successfully predicted by both mosquito pools (p = 0.0874) and equines (p = 0.0782) in rural areas.
To validate our findings, we assessed the data in a different manner to determine how well positive environmental results predicted human infections and how well negative environmental results predicted the absence of human infections. Similar to the previous analysis, the spatial cutoff was 2 km, and the temporal threshold for environmental positive results was any time before, and up to, the time of human infection onset. Environmental negative results were expected to be followed by no human infections for at least 2 weeks. In this analysis, 50.8% of positive environmental results were followed by a human infection at some point after the environmental positive result was detected, and 86.0% of negative environmental results were followed by a lack of human cases for at least the next 2 weeks (Table 2).
This study evaluated whether resources dedicated to environmental surveillance for the detection of WNV activity can predict human cases. More specifically, we assessed the predictability of 4 different types of environmental surveillance to identify where and when these methods were most successful in predicting human infections.
Overall, an environmental indicator preceded almost two thirds of human infections, and half of positive environmental results were followed by a human infection. Although more tests were performed for sentinel chickens and mosquito pools, birds were better predictors of human infections. Because bird surveillance depends on the public identifying and bringing in birds for testing, bird surveillance was dramatically more accurate in urban areas with high human population densities. Sentinel chicken surveillance had extremely low predictive success, which supports the subsequent decision to discontinue this surveillance method in Colorado in 2004.
This study uses a combination of epidemiologic and geographic tools to analyze WNV data spatially, temporally, and categorically. These findings would be valid when sufficient environmental samples with accurate geo-location data are submitted for testing. As with any surveillance system, environmental surveillance is likely to be more predictive during epidemic levels of virus transmission. However, the goal of state and county WNV surveillance is not to document endemic virus circulation, but rather predict increased risk for human transmission and epidemic level activity in time to initiate public notification and preventive measures.
Several other studies have illustrated the utility of dead bird testing (6–8) and dead bird clustering (9–11) in predicting human infections. Another study looked at county-level data to monitor dead birds and WNV-positive birds, as well as WNV-positive mosquito pools to predict human risk (12). Our study incorporates dimensions of space and time to assess the overall success of environmental surveillance at a local level. Methods used in this analysis could potentially be applied to other vectorborne diseases.
Dr Patnaik is the Epidemiology Program Manager at Tri-County Health Department, in metro-Denver, Colorado. Currently, she coordinates agencywide epidemiologic research and is also involved in communicable disease and emergency preparedness activities.
We thank Tri-County Health Department’s disease control, environmental health, and public health nursing staff who assisted in WNV surveillance, particularly, Laura DeGolier, who coordinated the human surveillance, and Monte Deatrich, who coordinated the environmental surveillance. In addition, we thank John Pape for his statewide coordination efforts.
- Nash D, Mostashari F, Fine A, Miller J, O'Leary D, Murray K, The outbreak of West Nile virus infection in the New York City area in 1999. N Engl J Med. 2001;344:1807–14.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Epidemic/epizootic West Nile virus in the United States: guidelines for surveillance, prevention and control, 2003 [cited 2007 Feb 1]. Available from http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/westnile/resources/wnv-guidelines-aug-2003.pdf
- Patnaik JL, Harmon H, Vogt RL. Follow-up of 2003 human West Nile virus infections, Denver, Colorado. Emerg Infect Dis. 2006;12:1129–31.
- Sahu SP, Alstad AD, Pedersen DD, Pearson JE. Diagnosis of eastern equine encephalomyelitis virus infection in horses by immunoglobulin M and G capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. J Vet Diagn Invest. 1994;6:34–8.
- Turell MJ, Dohm DJ, Sardelis MR, Oguinn ML, Andreadis TG, Blow JA, An update of the potential of North American mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) to transmit West Nile virus. J Med Entomol. 2005;42:57–62.
- Eidson M, Komar N, Sorhage F, Nelson R, Talbot T, Mostashari F, Crow deaths as a sentinel surveillance system for West Nile virus in the northeastern United States, 1999. Emerg Infect Dis. 2001;7:615–20.
- Eidson M, Kramer L, Stone W, Hagiwara Y, Schmit K. Dead bird surveillance as an early warning system for West Nile virus. Emerg Infect Dis. 2001;7:631–5.
- Guptill SC, Julian KG, Campbell GL, Price SD, Marfin AA. Early-season avian deaths fromWest Nile virus as warnings of human infection. Emerg Infect Dis. 2003;9:483–4.
- Theophilides CN, Ahearn SC, Grady S, Merline M. Identifying West Nile virus risk areas: the dynamic continuous-area space-time system. Am J Epidemiol. 2003;157:843–54.
- Mostashari F, Kulldorff M, Hartman JJ, Miller JR, Kulasekera V. Dead bird clusters as an early warning system for West Nile virus activity. Emerg Infect Dis. 2003;9:641–6.
- Johnson GD, Eidson M, Schmit K, Ellis A, Kulldorff M. Geographic prediction of human onset of West Nile virus ssing dead crow clusters: an evaluation of year 2002 data in New York State. Am J Epidemiol. 2006;163:171–80.
- Brownstein JS, Holford TR, Fish D. Enhancing West Nile virus surveillance, United States. Emerg Infect Dis. 2004;10:1129–33.
Suggested citation for this article: Patnaik JL, Juliusson L, Vogt RL. Environmental predictors of human West Nile virus infections, Colorado. Emerg Infect Dis [serial on the Internet]. 2007 Nov [date cited]. Available from http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/13/11/07-0506.htm
Comments to the Authors
Lessons from the History of Quarantine, from Plague to Influenza A


By Adda Bjarnadottir Authority Nutrition
Information about dried fruit is very conflicting.
Some say it is a nutritious, healthy snack, while others claim it is no better than candy.
This is a detailed article about dried fruit and how it can affect your health.
What is Dried Fruit?
Dried fruit has had almost all of the water content removed through drying methods.
The fruit shrinks during this process, leaving a small, energy-dense dried fruit.
Raisins are the most common type, followed by dates, prunes, figs and apricots.
Other varieties of dried fruit are also available, sometimes in candied form (sugar coated). These include mangoes, pineapples, cranberries, bananas and apples.
Dried fruit can be preserved for much longer than fresh fruit and can be a handy snack, particularly on long trips where refrigeration is not available.
Bottom line: Dried fruit has had most of the water content removed. The most common varieties are raisins, dates, prunes, figs and apricots.
Dried Fruit is Loaded With Micronutrients, Fiber and Antioxidants
Dried fruit is highly nutritious.
One piece of dried fruit contains about the same amount of nutrients as the fresh fruit, but condensed in a much smaller package.
By weight, dried fruit contains up to 3.5 times the fiber, vitamins and minerals of fresh fruit.
Therefore, one serving can provide a large percentage of the daily recommended intake of many vitamins and minerals, such as folate (1).
However, there are some exceptions. For example, the vitamin C content is significantly reduced when the fruit is dried (2).
Dried fruit generally contains a lot of fiber and is a great source of antioxidants, especially polyphenols (3).
Polyphenol antioxidants are associated with health benefits such as improved blood flow, better digestive health, decreased oxidative damage and reduced risk of many diseases (4).
Bottom line: Dried fruit is rich in fiber, vitamins and minerals. It is also high in phenolic antioxidants, which have numerous health benefits.
Health Effects of Dried Fruit
Several studies have shown that people who eat dried fruit tend to weigh less and ingest more nutrients, compared to individuals not eating dried fruit (5, 6, 7).
However, these studies were observational in nature, so they can not prove that the dried fruit caused the improvements.
Dried fruit is also a good source of many plant compounds, including powerful antioxidants (8, 9, 10, 11).
Bottom line: Eating dried fruit has been linked to an increased intake of nutrients and a reduced risk of obesity.
Raisins May Reduce the Risk of Certain Diseases
Raisins are dried grapes.
They are packed with fiber, potassium and various health-promoting plant compounds.
They have a low to medium glycemic index value, and a low insulin index (12, 13).
This means that raisins should not cause major spikes in blood sugar or insulin levels after meals.
Studies show that eating raisins may (12, 14, 15, 16, 17):
- Lower blood pressure.
- Improve blood sugar control.
- Decrease inflammatory markers and blood cholesterol.
- Lead to increased feeling of fullness.
All of these factors should contribute to a reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Bottom line: Raisins are high in fiber, potassium and other plant compounds. Eating raisins may improve blood sugar control, lower blood pressure and blood cholesterol, as well as decrease inflammation.
Prunes are Natural Laxatives and May Help Fight Diseases
Prunes are dried plums.
They are highly nutritious, being rich in fiber, potassium, beta-carotene (vitamin A) and vitamin K.
They are known for their natural laxative effects.
This is caused by their high content of fiber and a sugar alcohol called sorbitol, which is found naturally in some fruit.
Eating prunes has been shown to help improve stool frequency and consistency. Prunes are considered to be even more effective at relieving constipation than psyllium, which is another common remedy (18).
As a great source of antioxidants, prunes may inhibit the oxidation of LDL cholesterol and help prevent heart disease and cancer (19, 20).
Prunes are also rich in a mineral called boron, which can help fight osteoporosis (21).
Furthermore, prunes are very filling and should not cause rapid spikes in blood sugar levels (19).
Bottom line: Prunes have a natural laxative effect because of their fiber and sorbitol content. They are also very filling, and may help fight oxidative damage in the body.
Dates May Benefit Pregnancy and Help Prevent Several Diseases
Dates are incredibly sweet. They are a great source of fiber, potassium, iron and several plant compounds.
Of all the dried fruit, they are one of the richest sources of antioxidants, contributing to reduced oxidative damage in the body (3, 22).
Dates have a low glycemic index, which means that eating them should not cause major spikes in blood sugar levels (23).
Date consumption has also been studied in relation to pregnant women and labor.
Eating dates regularly during the last few weeks of pregnancy may help facilitate cervical dilation, as well as decrease the need for induced labor (24).
One study had women eat dates during the last few weeks of pregnancy. Only 4% of the date-eating women required induced labor, compared to 21% of those who did not consume dates (25).
Dates have also shown promising results in animal and test-tube studies as a remedy for infertility in males, but human studies are lacking at this point (22).
Bottom line: Dates are rich in antioxidants, potassium, iron and fiber. Eating dates may help reduce oxidative damage, moderate blood sugar and help with labor in pregnant women.
Dried Fruit is High in Natural Sugar and Calories
Fruit tend to contain significant amounts of natural sugars.
Because the water has been removed from dried fruit, this concentrates all the sugar and calories in a much smaller package.
For this reason, dried fruit is very high in calories and sugar, including both glucose and fructose.
Below are some examples of the natural sugar content of dried fruit (26).
- Raisins: 59%.
- Dates: 64–66%.
- Prunes: 38%.
- Apricots: 53%.
- Figs: 48%.
About 22–51% of this sugar content is fructose. Eating a lot of fructose may have negative health effects. This includes increased risk of weight gain, type 2 diabetes and heart disease (27).
A small 1-ounce portion of raisins contains 84 calories, almost exclusively from sugar.
Because dried fruit is sweet and energy-dense, it is easy to eat large amounts at a time, which can result in excess sugar and calorie intake.
Bottom line: Dried fruit is relatively high in calories and sugar. Common dried fruits contain 38–66% sugar, and eating too much of them may contribute to weight gain and various health problems.
Avoid Dried Fruit with Added Sugar (Candied Fruit)
To make some dried fruit even more sweet and appealing, they are coated with added sugar or syrup before being dried.
Dried fruit with added sugar are also referred to as “candied” fruit.
Added sugar has repeatedly been shown to have harmful effects on health, increasing the risk of obesity, heart disease and even cancer (28, 29).
To avoid dried fruit that contains added sugar, it is very important to read the ingredients and nutrition information found on the package.
Bottom line: Some fruit is coated with sugar or syrup before being dried. Always read the package when purchasing dried fruit and avoid brands that contain added sugar.
Dried Fruit May Also Contain Sulfites, and May be Contaminated With Fungi and Toxins
Some producers add preservatives called sulfites to their dried fruit.
This makes the dried fruit look more appealing, because it preserves the fruit and prevents discoloration.
This applies mainly to brightly colored fruits, such as apricots and raisins.
Some individuals may be sensitive to sulfites, and may experience stomach cramps, skin rashes and asthma attacks after ingesting them (30, 31). To avoid sulfites, choose dried fruit that is brown or grayish rather than brightly colored (32).
Dried fruit that is improperly stored and handled may also be contaminated with fungi, aflatoxins and other toxic compounds (33, 34, 35).
Bottom line: Sulfites are added to some dried fruit to preserve color, which may cause adverse effects in sensitive individuals. Dried fruit that is improperly stored and handled may also be contaminated with fungi and toxins.
Take Home Message
Same as with many other foods, dried fruit have both good and bad aspects.
Dried fruit can boost your fiber and nutrient intake and supply your body with large amounts of antioxidants.
However, they are also high in sugar and calories, and can cause problems when eaten in excess.
For this reason, dried fruit should only be eaten in small amounts, preferably along with other nutritious foods.
They should not be eaten by the handful, because it is very easy to eat too many calories from dried fruit.
Also, they are a high-carb food, making them unsuitable on a low-carb diet.
At the end of the day, dried fruit is far from perfect, but it is certainly a much healthier and more nutritious snack than chips or other processed junk foods.


During a severe flu season, a high-dose influenza vaccine appears to be significantly more effective than a standard-dose vaccine in preventing post-influenza deaths among older adults. These are the findings of a study published The Journal of Infectious Diseases.
The high-dose influenza vaccine was first approved in 2009 for adults 65 years of age and older as this population tends to run a higher risk of serious complications from flu. Compared to H1N1 or influenza B viruses, H3N2 viruses have been associated with increased mortality in this age group.
In order to compare the effectiveness of these flu vaccines on older patients, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) identified Medicare beneficiaries 65 years of age and older who received either the high-dose or standard-dose flu vaccines in community-located pharmacies. The primary outcome of the study was death in the 30 days after an inpatient or emergency department visit that included an influenza diagnosis.
High-dose vaccine was given to 1,039,645 patients during the 2012–2013 season and 1,508,176 during the 2013–2014 season. Standard-dose vaccine was given to 1,683,264 patients during the 2012–2013 season and 1,877,327 during the 2013–2014 season. During the 2012–2013 season, when H3N2 was predominant, patients who received the high-dose vaccine were 36.4% less likely to die 30 days following hospitalization or emergency department visit, compared to those who received the standard-dose vaccine. During the 2013–2014 season, when H1N1 was predominant, the high-dose vaccine was not significantly better at preventing deaths (2.5%) than the standard-dose vaccine which appeared to be more effective during this season than in the previous one.
“The high dose vaccine does appear, at least in this particular H3N2 season, to be more effective at preventing deaths that occur within 30 days of an influenza hospitalization,” said study author David K. Shay, MD, MPH, of CDC’s Influenza Division, “We didn’t see a significant effect on post-influenza deaths during the 2013-2014 H1N1 season.”
Shay DK, Chillarige Y, Kelman J, et al. Comparative effectiveness of high-dose versus standard-dose influenza vaccines among US Medicare beneficiaries in preventing postinfluenza deaths during 2012–2013 and 2013–2014 [published online March 2, 2017]. J Infect Dis. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiw641
This article originally appeared on MPR