You've just moved into an older house or apartment and now it's too late to question the two-prong outlets in every room. While two-prong outlets are becoming less and less common everyday as codes mandate grounded outlets for safety, they can still be found in many places. Not only are the outlets not grounded, these outlets are often in fewer number in the home, requiring the outlet to take heavier electrical demands than an updated electrical system. The problem being that major appliances require three-prongs but also the majority of electronics, such as laptops, also require three-prong outlets.
Using electronics and electric appliances as the manufacturer suggests is important. According to the U.S. Fire Administration electrical fires are still the leading cause of home fires. In the majority of electrical fires the fire will spread beyond the object where the fire started; don't risk your entire home because of one faulty appliance or outlet. Fire departments respond each year to an estimated 25,000 home electrical fires. It is estimated that those fires cause 280 deaths, 1,125 injuries and $1.1 billion in property loss.
A seemingly simple fix to the two-prong/three-prong problem is to purchase a cheater-plug or a three-prong/two-prong adapter. This is a cheap and quick fix, but the problem is that very rarely are they used correctly. Older versions are equipped with a wire that is to be connected to a ground (though older versions were discontinued after it was found a disconnected ground wire could be accidentally inserted of a nearby socket). New adapters have a grounding tab that is designed to be connected to a ground cover screw.
An unsafe alternative is removing the ground pin of your plug, turning your plug into a two-prong. Removing the grounding pin from your plug leaves the appliance without a proper ground. If you eventually have access to a three-prong outlet you may insert the plug incorrectly since most plugs rely on the grounding pin in order for proper orientation. Inserting the plug incorrectly into the outlet can cause an additional hazard by reversing the "hot" and "neutral" wires.
Additionally, some homeowners may replace the two-prong receptacle with a three-prong type. While this is a proper repair, the problem is that many leave the ground screw unconnected to a ground. While the three-prong plug may appear safe, only the installer will know that the outlet is not grounded.
Rather than rewire the entire house the safest alternative is to replace the receptacle with a ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI). If a GFCI is working it will interrupt the dangerous current to limit the potentially lethal electric shock from an appliance.
It is important to never overload any outlet type. Always contact an electrician if you have blown a fuse or trip a circuit breaker as this can be the sign of a more serious electrical problem and potential danger.
Alexander Zielinski is a volunteer firefighter in Evansville, Indiana and a full-time firefighter in Providence, Kentucky. You can follow him on Twitter @FireSafetyAZ If you enjoyed this article leave a comment or click subscribe above to receive notification of future stories. Read a previous Fire Safety article: Missing California firefighter found less than a mile from campsite


The country remains in urgent need of food assistance, and at least 1 million people are on the brink of catastrophe, three UN agencies warned on Monday.
Famine has been formally declared in parts of South Sudan, the United Nations said, warning that war and a collapsing economy have left some 100,000 people facing starvation there and a further 1 million people are classified as being on the brink of famine.
“Famine has become a tragic reality in parts of South Sudan and our worst fears have been realized,” said Serge Tissot, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Representative in South Sudan, in a news release issued jointly with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Program (WFP).
According to the government and the UN aid agencies, the famine threat is the result of the ongoing civil war, and an entrenched economic crisis that has devastated the country.
The WFP says the catastrophe is man-made.
“This famine is man-made. WFP and the entire humanitarian community have been trying with all our might to avoid this catastrophe, mounting a humanitarian response of a scale that quite frankly would have seemed impossible three years ago.” said WFP country director, Joyce Luma.
The failure of the October to December rains has left a trail of hunger in its wake. With the spring rains also expected to be weak, people in the region are facing at least six months of extreme hunger.
Even outside the famine-affected areas, food stocks are far below what would be expected for this time of the year.
In parallel to the drought and the increasing insecurity, the economic situation has severely deteriorated, with a dramatic drop in the value of the South Sudanese pound.


March 2016 - Norway, Romsdalen Valley. Hiker filmed mysterious disc-shaped UFO with glowing lights hovering over mountain in Romsdalen Valley.
Watch the VIDEO HERE !
The Hessdalen Mystery : The Hessdalen lights are unexplained nocturnal lights observed in a 7.5-mile-long (12 km) Hessdalen valley in rural central Norway. The Hessdalen lights are of unknown origin. They appear at night, and seem to float through and above the valley. They are usually bright white, yellow, or red and can appear above and below the horizon. The duration of the phenomenon may be from a few seconds to longer than an hour. Sometimes the lights move with enormous speed, and at other times, seem to slowly sway back and forth. On yet other occasions, they hover mid‑air. Some hypothesise that the light is ionised iron dust.
Unusual lights have been reported in the region since at least the 1930s. Especially high activity occurred between December 1981 and mid-1984, at which point the lights were being observed 15–20 times per week, which attracted many overnight tourists. As of 2010, the lights were observed 10–20 times per year.
Since 1983, there has been ongoing scientific research often nicknamed "Project Hessdalen", initiated by UFO-Norge and UFO-Sweden. The project was active as field investigations during 1983–1985. A group of students, engineers, and journalists collaborated as "The Triangle Project" in 1997–1998 and recorded the lights in a pyramid shape that bounced up and down. In 1998, the Hessdalen Automatic Measurement Station (Hessdalen AMS) was built in the valley and registers and records the appearance of lights.
Later, the EMBLA programme was initiated. It brings together established scientists and students into researching these lights. Leading research institutions are Østfold University College (Norway) and the Italian National Research Council.
Despite the ongoing research, there is no convincing explanation for the phenomenon. However, there are numerous working hypotheses.
1) One possible explanation attributes the phenomenon to an incompletely understood combustion involving hydrogen, oxygen, and sodium, and occurs in Hessdalen because of the large deposits of scandium there.
2) One recent hypothesis suggests that the lights are formed by a cluster of macroscopic Coulomb crystals in a plasma produced by the ionization of air and dust by alpha particles during radon decay in the dusty atmosphere. Several physical properties including oscillation, geometric structure, and light spectrum, observed in the Hessdalen lights (HL) can be explained through a dust plasma model. Radon decay produces alpha particles (responsible by helium emissions in HL spectrum) and radioactive elements such as polonium. In 2004, Teodorani showed an occurrence where a higher level of radioactivity on rocks was detected near the area where a large light ball was reported. Computer simulations show that dust immersed in ionized gas can organize itself into double helixes like some of occurrences of the Hessdalen lights; dusty plasmas may also form in this structure.
3) Another hypothesis explains HL as a product of piezoelectricity generated under specific rock strains (Takaki and Ikeya, 1998) because many crystal rocks include quartz grains which produce an intense charge density. In a 2011 paper, based on the dusty plasma theory of HL, it is suggested that piezoelectricity of quartz cannot explain a peculiar property assumed by the HL phenomenon – the presence of geometrical structures in its center. Paiva and Taft have shown a mechanism of light ball cluster formation in Hessdalen lights by the nonlinear interaction of ion-acoustic and dusty-acoustic waves with low frequency geoelectromagnetic waves in dusty plasmas. The theoretical model shows that the velocity of ejected light balls by HL cluster is about 10,000 m s−1 in a good agreement with the observed velocity of some ejected light balls, which is estimated as 20,000 m s−1. Why is the ejected ball always green-colored? Ejection of small green light ball from HL is due to radiation pressure produced by the interaction between very low frequency electromagnetic waves (VLF) and atmospheric ions (present in the central white-colored ball) through ion-acoustic waves (IAW). Paiva and Taft presented a model for resolving the apparently contradictory spectrum observed in HL phenomenon. Thus, its nearly flat spectrum on the top with steep sides is due to the effect of optical thickness on the bremsstrahlung spectrum. At low frequencies self-absorption modifies the spectrum to follow the Rayleigh–Jeans part of the blackbody curve. This spectrum is typical of dense ionized gas. Additionally, the spectrum produced in the thermal bremsstrahlung process is flat up to a cutoff frequency, ν, and falls off exponentially at higher frequencies. This sequence of events forms the typical spectrum of HL phenomenon when the atmosphere is clear, with no fog. According to the model, spatial color distribution of luminous balls commonly observed in HL phenomenon are produced by electrons accelerated by electric fields during rapid fracture of piezoelectric rocks under the ground.
There have been some sightings positively identified as misperceptions of astronomical bodies, aircraft, car headlights, and mirages.
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Sometimes, inspiration for biotechnological innovation comes from the darndest places. Geckos inspire adhesives for wall-climbing, beetle penises provide insights on how to engineer catheters and other medical devices, and dragonfly wings demonstrate how to create anti-bacterial surfaces.
Now, researchers have turned once again to nature: A team of chemists working for the U.S. Air Force has used crystals extracted from butterfly wings to detect trace chemical warfare agents.
Chemical agents are a threat to both soldiers and civilians. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used them against civilians, including children, in his country's civil war, and the North Korean regime used VX nerve agent to kill Kim Jong-Un's half-brother, Kim Jong-Nam. Because of these threats, chemical weapons detectors are a top priority for the military. Unfortunately, the most sensitive detectors are expensive and confined to research labs. Hence, the search is on for cheap, reusable sensors that can be readily deployed in the field.
On the Wings of a Butterfly
As it turns out, materials within the wings of the Morpho didius butterfly can detect chemical agents, though they obviously did not evolve for that purpose. Instead of pigmentation, the butterfly's wings are colored due to the presence of photonic crystals, special crystals that affect the way light is reflected and refracted. When viewed straight on, the scales of the butterfly's wings are colorless, but when viewed from an angle, they appear blue. By taking advantage of such light scattering properties, photonic crystals can be used to detect various types of chemical vapors.
So the researchers tested the ability of butterfly wing scales to detect chemicals that simulated mustard gas and a type of nerve agent. (The team's apparatus is shown below.)
Vapor samples were blown into a chamber containing pieces of a butterfly wing. A spectrometer monitored the light reflecting from the wing. Any changes in the light reflectance patterns was indicative of the presence of a specific chemical in the chamber, such as a simulated weapons agent.
While the researchers demonstrated an important proof-of-concept, photonic crystals from butterfly wings will not be making their way into chemical sensors on the battlefield because they are not sensitive enough. The butterfly crystals could only detect chemical agents in the parts per million range, but that concentration is lethal to humans. To be useful, sensors need to detect noxious vapors in the parts per billion or trillion range.
The butterflies, therefore, can serve as inspiration for scientists to engineer something even better than Mother Nature designed.
Source: Joshua D. Kittle, Benjamin P. Fisher, Anthony J. Esparza, Aimee M. Morey, Scott T. Iacono. "Sensing Chemical Warfare Agent Simulants via Photonic Crystals of the Morpho didius Butterfly." ACS Omega 2 (11): 8301-8307. Published: 21-Nov-2017. DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.7b01680


“Following the rules” is no longer good enough. In the “post-truth,” artificial-intelligence-driven, find-the-answer-on-Google world, wisdom may be the only way to navigate an organization, a career, or a life ethically. This course explores the ancient concept of wisdom with a modern perspective and tools to tackle some of the toughest decisions you face.
Course ID: WISDOM
Ethics: What’s Wrong with Being “Right”? Ethics and the Quest for Wisdom
Compliance is like high school geometry; wisdom is like quantum mechanics. No one course can make you “wise.” This course seeks to:
- Open the door to other ways of looking at ethical issues that could improve your decision-making
- Reduce stress, and, in the long run,
- Lead to a higher quality of life for you and those around you
- What is wisdom? It’s NOT just being “smart” or “logical.” And it’s not about “knowing stuff.” Socrates, believed to be one of the wisest persons ever, “invented” ethics. Yet he frequently claimed “to know nothing.” Wisdom is a different kind of “critical thinking.”
- Which “brain” are you using? Whether you call it the “head, heart and gut” or the “mind, body and soul,” ethical decision-making harnesses the whole human being. What to do if the three brains disagree.
- What if you’re wrong…AND right…and so are they? This could be the only way to function productively in an increasingly polarized world.
- Are you as bad as the worst thing you’ve ever done? Why we need to get over our reluctance to forgive each other…and ourselves.
- Would you rather the computer decided? Computers are great at following rules; people, not so much. That might be the most valuable quality you bring to the table.
- What’s love got to do with it? Wouldn’t you love to work at a place where everybody loved what they did and loved helping their clients and each other? That just might be a more ethical workplace, too.
- What’s an Enneagram? It could be the most valuable tool yet for understanding yourself, your strengths and your potential ethical pitfalls.
Who Should Attend
Leaders and others who want to make better decisions about ethical issues, themselves, and the rest of the world
Fields of StudyBehavioral Ethics
None. It is recommended, but not required, that course participants take the Enneagram test, widely available online for free.


A repository to store data.
The part of a database that stores the data. A table has columns or attributes, and the data stored in rows.
The columns in a table. All rows in table entities have the same attributes. For example, a customer table might have the attributes
city. Each attribute has a data type such as string, integer, or date.
The data entries in a table. Rows contain values for each attribute. For example, a row in a customer table might contain the values "Matthew Richardson," "Punt Road," and "Richmond." Rows are also known as records.
- Relational model
A model that uses tables to store data and manage the relationship between tables.
- Relational database management system
A software system that manages data in a database and is based on the relational model. DBMSs have several components described in detail in Chapter 1.
A query language that interacts with a DBMS. SQL is a set of statements to manage databases, tables, and data.
Restrictions or limitations on tables and attributes. For example, a wine can be produced only by one winery, an order for wine can't exist if it isn't associated with a customer, having a name attribute could be mandatory for a customer.
- Primary key
One or more attributes that contain values that uniquely identify each row. For example, a customer table might have the primary key of
cust ID. The
cust IDattribute is then assigned a unique value for each customer. A primary key is a constraint of most tables.
A data structure used for fast access to rows in a table. An index is usually built for the primary key of each table and can then be used to quickly find a particular row. Indexes are also defined and built for other attributes when those attributes are frequently used in queries.
- Entity-relationship modeling
A technique used to describe the real-world data in terms of entities, attributes, and relationships. This is discussed in Appendix C.
- Normalized database
A correctly designed database that is created from an ER model. There are different types or levels of normalization, and a third-normal form database is generally regarded as being an acceptably designed relational database. We discuss normalization in Appendix C.


Orthodontic Problems: Early Detection
Braces aren’t necessarily for teenagers anymore. If you look at high school yearbooks these days, you’ll notice less braces because most parents are bringing their children to the orthodontist earlier. In fact, the American Association of Orthodontists recommends the first visit to be around age seven. At this time, potential signs are becoming apparent and because bones and jaws are still growing it’s an ideal time to intervene to save families money with early intervention.
Although crooked adult teeth are a sure sign of the need for orthodontic appliances, there are other growth and development issues that can occur early on. Many people think that orthodontics can only be done when facial development is complete or until the adult teeth have come in. If you wait, the full correction of some orthodontic problems can become more complicated, longer, or not possible.
Some signs that may indicate that early orthodontics could be helpful are:
- Sucking thumbs after the age of six
- Teeth in top and bottom jaw don’t line up
- An overbite, crossbite or underbite
- Crowding, crooked, misshapen or overlapping teeth
- Teeth wearing unevenly
- Gum recession
Issues such as crowding are easier to address in young children because orthodontists can allow the teeth emerge from the gums in better positions utilizing tools such as palatal expanders. If a child’s mouth is too narrow, they used to need extractions. Nowadays, orthodontists can widen their smile to allow room for all or most of their teeth instead.
Getting a head start using early intervention makes orthodontic treatment down the road shorter and simpler. Ask us to evaluate your child’s teeth and contact us today for a free orthodontic exam and we will provide you with information about your child’s orthodontic health. Even if treatment is not indicated at that time, the initial consultation allows us to gather a baseline from which to follow your child’s orthodontic growth and development in our observation program. This ensures that if treatment is required, we begin at the right time for your child. Ask us to evaluate your child’s teeth from an early age.
*Photo provided thanks to the American Association of Orthodontists.


Nicotine and Other Vaping Dangers
We often hear about the vapors and the flavorings in e cigarettes and there’s much discussion as to whether these products are harmless or not. This is especially true considering the long lists of unwanted effects that come with regular smoking cigarettes. Many of these smokers who attempt to quit smoking can never quite overcome the nicotine addiction and their bodies simply find it difficult to cope without nicotine. But do the vapor from e-cigs pose a threat to your wellbeing? Is vapor from electric cigarettes as harmful to you as regular smoking cigarettes?
The simple truth is that the nicotine from the cigarettes is simply as dangerous as the nicotine within cigarettes. There are of course many different flavors that one could choose from, but most smokers find that the flavorings make the smoking experience unique and that it’s more enjoyable that way. You’ll often find that smokers benefit from the rich tastes that come with vaporizing cigarettes and this is due to the chemical and nutrient combinations that go into the making of the tasty treats. E-cigs usually do not contain these nutrients and as a result create a type of vacuum that slowly leads to your body’s elimination of them.
You might think that the taste of e cigarettes is the only danger to be worried about, but there are actually a great many other issues that are associated with vaporizing tobacco. These include issues such as lung disease and cancer. That is primarily due to the fact that both of these substances are found in vaporized nicotine.
Nicotine is really a highly toxic poison that damages and destroys the lungs over time. Nicotine can be a stimulant and has the opportunity to keep people awake for long periods of time. If you were to stop smoking and suddenly start vaporizing nicotine, this could lead to severe vitamin e antioxidant acetate deficiency within your body. This is a fairly serious deficiency and will result in extremely rare conditions and even death.
Lung disease is another issue that comes with the territory if you are mixing things like nicotine and the cigarettes. There’s evidence that shows that the electronic cigarette and nicotine can result in problems with certain forms of cancer. For example, in a single study, smokers who were subjected to secondhand nicotine had an elevated risk of esophageal cancer. That is particularly true of long-term smokers. Additionally, the chance becomes even higher if you’re a baby boomer and you also vaporize e tobacco smoke while being breast fed.
Another problem that people encounter with e-cigs is that some flavors can simply irritate the respiratory tract. Specifically, peppermint and menthol have the ability to cause a stinging sensation and increase coughing. Both of these flavorings can result in respiratory issues that can lead to asthma attacks and can in some extreme Puff Bar Flavors cases be fatal. When you combine this with the fact that nicotine is a poison that harms the lungs, it’s no wonder that vaporizing nicotine and flavored e-cigs aren’t a good idea.
A final problem that has regarding Nicotine and Lung Injury is VITAMIN E ANTIOXIDANT Acetate. Vitamin E Acetate is a common ingredient in antihistamines and decongestants. Although it is normally considered relatively safe to use, there has been a connection between VITAMIN E ANTIOXIDANT Acetate and Eonarco, which is an antihistamine that may cause allergic reactions. If you’re looking to minimize the chance to getting lung injury from vapors, you will want to stay away from fruit flavors together with any of cigarette flavorings which contain Vitamin E Acetate. If you decide to try them, you really should dilute the product first and then proceed to breathe deeply after the flavor has worn off to test for just about any lung injury. However, for flavored liquids, such as for example fruit and chocolate, you ought to be fine so long as you don’t overdo it.
You can see how e Cigarette dangers could be both hazardous and addictive. The main element to avoiding nicotine addiction and its complications is to stop smoking. You can certainly do that safely and without any nasty side effects by using a good nicotine replacement therapy. Stop smoking and avoid any tobacco products which have similar ingredients to cigarettes, such as for example chewing gum. Good luck!


In five years diving to observe manta rays, Joshua Stewart had only encountered adults – until 2016 at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico. That’s where he spotted several juveniles, a rare sight in nature, due to the declining numbers of these gentle giants and their wide global distribution.
His sighting of the juvenile mantas turned out to be a big clue to the ecological role of the area. After reviewing 25 years of dive logs and photos, Stewart, a doctoral candidate at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, realized about 95 percent of manta rays found in Flower Gardens Bank were likely young ones. In a recent paper, he suggested the area is the world’s first confirmed manta ray nursery.
That such a discovery was only recently made underscores how little is still known about manta rays even as they face growing conservation threats. Far off the coasts of Asia, they are caught and slaughtered en masse, their gill rakers, a feeding apparatus designed to filter plankton from seawater, extracted and sold as an ingredient for Chinese traditional medicine. Their bodies, which can grow up to 8.8m (29ft) wide, are easily entangled in fishing gear. In early 2018, the United States placed giant rays on the endangered species list.
As populations decline, scientists are working to better track their movements in hopes of designing more effective conservation plans. They also are trying to learn more about their behavior in the wild from the relatively few giant mantas in captivity.
“Tag data can show us what habitats mantas are using, which helps us define important regions for protection,” said Stewart, who is also associate director of Manta Trust, a conservation organization.
Giant manta rays, the world’s largest ocean rays and a species distinct from somewhat smaller (but still massive) reef rays, inhabit a wide belt of tropical and subtropical ocean waters across the equator, off every continent except Antarctica. They often congregate far offshore, out of sight of humans – and so very little is known about their life cycle, especially during their juvenile stage where they appear to live mostly in secluded nursery habitats. This stage is also crucial to the health of the overall population, Steward said, because mantas have few offspring and take years to reach sexual maturity.
As a next step in his work, Stewart is planning to track Flower Garden Banks’ juvenile mantas using GPS-enabled satellite tags. His goal is to understand how they use the nursery and where they go after they leave, which could give scientists insight into where else to look for other nursery habitats around the world.
Other scientists are looking to mantas released from captivity to learn more about their behaviors. At Florida’s Mote Marine Laboratory, researchers have worked with the hotel Atlantis Paradise Island resort in the Bahamas, one of just two facilities in the Western Hemisphere to house the giant manta rays. Recently, the hotel announced the release of the program’s 13th manta, “Leyley” and the sixth to be tagged by scientists.
Robert Hueter, senior scientist at Mote, led a medical evaluation of Leyley before he inserted two tiny satellite tags just beneath the skin on her back that would later transmit data on the manta’s movements, according to Mote Marine Laboratory. One tag gathers data on water depth and temperature, as well as the manta ray’s location, and sends data when the animal breaks the water’s surface. The other tag collects data until a set date when the tag detaches and floats to the surface. So far, Leyley’s location tag has not set off any pings, but when they do, her movements will be viewed online.
Georgia Aquarium is the only other facility in the Western Hemisphere to house captive giant mantas; however, it does not currently tag and release them. But Harry Webb, its project coordinator of research and conservation, works with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and Marine Megafauna Foundation to tag and track wild mantas.
“We’ve studied the seasonal migration of mantas along the northeast Florida coast for over eight years and have found that almost every spring there’s a huge migration of mantas along the near-shore area off of the Atlantic coast,” said Webb. “What we want to uncover is a bit about their natural history. We want to observe them and gain insight into why they’re here with such regularity and what makes this area so special.”
Webb said the Georgia Aquarium, which keeps the animals for educational and observational research purposes, is working to overcome common challenges to keeping mantas in captivity: Making sure these enormous animals get enough food and training them to safely receive routine veterinary checkups and care so that they can thrive outside of their wild habitats. In captivity, scientists take blood samples and perform DNA tests to learn more about manta ray biology and explore the potential for captive breeding.
Andrea Marshall, co-founder and principal scientist at the Marine Megafauna Foundation, which works with the Georgia Aquarium and other facilities that keep captive mantas, said she does not think manta rays – highly nomadic, intelligent and social animals – can thrive in captivity.
Yet, she said that tagging could be extremely useful in helping scientists not only understand the lives of wild manta rays, but also how well captive mantas assimilate with their wild counterparts upon release. She said the goal of any kind of captive manta ray research should be to protect manta rays in nature.
“We collaborate with many aquariums around the world, some of which do have manta rays in captivity,” said Marshall. “[We] try get as much science as we can from the animals that happen to be in captivity and apply these findings to protecting them in the wild.”


The conversation around women’s rights at work has been very focused on harassment lately with the #MeToo and #Timesup movements, but this year also represents a very significant anniversary for women in the workplace. It’s been 40 years since the passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.
Gillian Thomas, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, stopped by to discuss the history behind the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and what’s happened with workplace discrimination protection for pregnant workers in the following 40 years. Below is an edited transcript of the conversation.
David Brancaccio: So tell us a bit of the story of, it wasn’t really a case, this really was Congress’s thing, but what was the catalyst for the legislation back in ’78?
Gillian Thomas: So the 1964 Civil Rights Act had been in place for over a decade barring sex discrimination in employment. But a case ended up going to the Supreme Court challenging General Electric’s temporary disability benefits policy for its employees and the policy which provided for income replacement during times of incapacitation due to a medical condition expressly excluded pregnancy and childbirth. And so a group of women from General Electric challenged this exclusion as being sex discrimination under the Civil Rights Act and the Supreme Court disagreed with them. The Supreme Court found that because not all women have children then pregnancy is not a sex based characteristic. It was just another kind of medical condition that the company had decided not to cover. In the infamous words of the court they divided the people covered under the policy as “pregnant and non-pregnant” persons.
Brancaccio: I see. So that’s what happens at the Supreme Court. But this is noticed by the wider society and the reform effort is mounted.
Thomas: It really created a great deal of outrage and fairly quickly. Congress acted as it often does in response to Supreme Court decisions with which it disagrees and enacted the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. So the PDA amended Title 7 in two respects. It makes clear that sex discrimination includes discrimination because of pregnancy as well as related medical conditions. And then it also said that for all employment related purposes, whether it’s benefit policies like General Electric’s or other kinds of benefits that pregnancy must be treated the same as other medical conditions. Pregnant workers are to be treated the same as others similar in their ability or inability to work. So if you have a comprehensive health insurance plan or disability benefits plan and it covers medical conditions that are similar to pregnancy or impairments that are similar to pregnancy, you have to cover pregnancy too.
Brancaccio: All right. And at the time Democrat Jimmy Carter is the president, he signs this into law and society solves its problem.
Thomas: Oh, from your lips to God’s ears. No, I’m afraid not. And here we are 40 years later and pregnancy discrimination really remains distressingly common. I would say it’s the top kind of complaint that we get on our intake line and the kinds of discrimination we see range from the most blatant. You know, you inform your boss of a pregnancy on Monday and you’re fired on Tuesday. That still happens. It’s especially prevalent for low-wage workers, workers who don’t have a lot of bargaining power in the workplace. Then there’s also sex stereotyping that happens when someone announces a pregnancy. So suddenly you’re not sent on that big business trip that you were going to be on because your employer thinks oh you’d rather be here at home, you’d rather be resting, it’s not safe for you to travel.
Brancaccio: Which could harm a person’s career.
Thomas: Absolutely. Yeah, we see that frequently that employers take it upon themselves, maybe they do even mean well. but they take it upon themselves to decide what is healthy for a woman and her pregnancy.
Brancaccio: But on this point of one announces one is pregnant and they get fired the next day. I mean surely employers are sophisticated enough to not say it’s because you’re pregnant. Don’t they find some other pretext?
Thomas: Most of them do. You’d be surprised how blatant employers can be in this area especially in circumstances where the workers have very little bargaining power and employers frankly aren’t that afraid of the repercussions. But yes, frequently the firing will come in the form of a downsizing or some sort of probably manufactured performance problem.
Brancaccio: But help us understand what might be a more nuanced part of this which is if a person is pregnant or in a certain stage of pregnancy there actually may be parts of a job description that you can’t carry out?
Thomas: That’s right and that’s really the most active area of litigation and difficulty that we see women having these days. It involves circumstances where a woman’s job might be such that the physical manifestations of pregnancy do conflict with her ability to stay on the job. So for instance low-wage workers who are on their feet all day whether they’re working in the hospitality industry or the retail industry or a cashier in a grocery store have to be on their feet all day bending and lifting heavy loads and then also women who are in male dominated sometimes hazardous jobs like law enforcement officers or firefighters. Those are situations where I think we would all agree that it’s healthy for the pregnancy and best for doing the job that there be some temporary modifications to a woman’s position. Unfortunately, even though the law requires that employers are supposed to give the same kind of “accommodations” to pregnant workers that they do to others similar in their ability or inability to work those magic words from the PDA, they’re not doing it. And this was an issue that the Supreme Court addressed almost exactly three years ago in the Young vs. United Parcel Service decision which was a case involving a U.P.S. driver who had to occasionally lift heavy loads and asked to be excused from that.
Brancaccio: And in the end?
Thomas: In the end the court reaffirmed the principle of the PDA that those who were similar in their ability or inability to work couldn’t be treated any better than pregnant workers in that situation. U.P.S. had a policy of giving modified duty assignments to three categories of workers. Those who had been injured on the job, those who qualified for an accommodation because they had a disability under the ADA and those who had lost their commercial driver’s license and it could be due to a health condition or could be just because they had a DUI that they had lost that ability to drive. And the court said those three categories were not demonstrably different from a pregnant worker who couldn’t perform her duties as a driver because of a heavy lifting restriction and so they sent it back to the trial court to assess why the pregnancy exclusion should be justified. The case ended up settling.
Brancaccio: When a working person finds out that they’re expecting a child, there’s a lot of issues that come up. They include financial, but also what happens to me at work? They may turn to you for some advice. What is it, bone up on the law and know your rights?
Thomas: Knowing your rights and being armed with the facts is always something that makes you more powerful and there are a lot of online resources that folks can look at. Most notably the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has a website and defines your rights on the job. I think the way to approach informing an employer about a pregnancy is to know you’re not required to inform. A lot of people think that they’re doing a good deed by telling the employer the minute they find out and you’re not required to do that. What I would suggest is when the time is coming to be planning a leave that there be very open and honest conversations where the worker comes armed with a plan for how to make things work while she is out and then a plan for reintegrating upon her return. This of course assumes that she has access to leave. Sadly only 13 percent of the private workforce in this country has access to paid leave and only 60 percent have access to unpaid Family Medical Leave Act protection. So it’s unfortunately a very big if when one becomes pregnant whether one is going to be able to keep one’s job.
Brancaccio: So who would get no leave, part-time workers in certain situations?
Thomas: Forty percent of the workforce is not covered by the Family Medical Leave Act which is the guaranteed 12 weeks off for recovery from childbirth so those are people who work in companies that are under 50 employees, that’s the threshold for the FMLA or they haven’t been working for an employer for a full year. And yes also having worked the sufficient number of hours in that prior year is another point of eligibility. So there are some state laws and city laws that are thankfully moving into that breach to make sure that having a pregnancy doesn’t mean losing a job but between the discrimination that workers face that is really quite blatant these days, the lack of accommodation if an employer says “I’m not going to give you that stool or that extra water break that you need to have a safe pregnancy so either defy your doctor’s orders and stay on the job or get out” or simply because the act of having a baby means that there is no leave and means that someone could actually lose her job. It’s not a great landscape.
Brancaccio: So 40 years on after this act, what do you think? The legislation needs to be tweaked or is it an enforcement issue?
Thomas: I would say both. As for enforcement I’m really quite shocked at how often employers say when we ask in litigation tell us about your anti-discrimination efforts. All they have in place is an anti harassment policy. I don’t think a lot of employers, maybe the highest tier who have fancy law firms advising them at every turn, but really especially smaller employers just don’t understand their obligations or just aren’t informed and so there’s a lot of … there are a lot of just bad decisions being made out there. But then yes I mean, we count on the federal government and our state and local law enforcement agencies like the EEOC and its analogues to be bringing these cases. The EEOC has been extremely aggressive on this front and I applaud them for that. But then there is movement afoot both in Congress and in state legislatures to enact what are called pregnancy accommodation bills and it’s essentially to enact for pregnancy the same kind of protections that disabled workers have. So the ADA says that if you have a worker with a disability you’re required to accommodate that worker, to engage in an interactive process to identify an accommodation and accommodate that worker unless it would be an undue burden. That obligation is not there for pregnant workers. So that’s the effort of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, PWFA, that’s pending in Congress and has been for the last several Congresses and have been enacted in roughly 25 states around the country.
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|“||Archangels are fierce. They're absolute. They're Heaven's most terrifying weapon.||”|
Archangels are primordial angels, being looked at as Heaven's most fearsome wrath. They were the first and strongest class of angels to be created, making them one of God's first creations. They were created in this order: Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, and Gabriel. Michael is the mightiest and the most loyal archangel, Lucifer is the most prideful and avaricious, Raphael was the most ruthless and imperious, while Gabriel was the most mischievous and deceptive.
|“||You think you created the archangels to bring light? No. You made them to create lesser beings; to make you large, to make you lord! It was ego! You wanted to be big!||”|
The archangels were the four chief angelic creations of God. They were created in this explicit order: Michael, Lucifer, Raphael and Gabriel. The archangels acted as siblings, and distinctively interacted with themselves and their father.
Some point after their creation, they and God went into war with The Darkness and together, while they couldn't destroy it, they succeeded in binding it. God then created a mark, later to be called The Mark of Cain, that would serve as both lock and key for the Darkness, which he gave to his most loved son and most trusted lieutenant, Lucifer. After the banishing of the Darkness and helping create Heaven, Michael personally raised his younger brother Lucifer, and accordingly, Lucifer took care of Gabriel, and showed him different tricks.
Following the imprisonment of the Leviathans in Purgatory and creation of mankind, God asked all his children to kneel before them. Although the other three archangels complied, Lucifer refused, and led a rebellion trying to overthrow God because when he was trusted with the Mark, it corrupted Lucifer and drove him to be jealous of humanity. Therefore, Michael, on God's command, defeated Lucifer and banished his brother out of Heaven and into Hell. During the turmoil, Gabriel escaped to Earth to avoid taking sides while Raphael chose to side with God and Michael.
After God's departure from Heaven, the archangels, according to Metatron, ferociously whined, cried, and wailed. Whilst they wanted their father back, over time, however, they began to shift their attention into ruling the Universe. Although immensely powerful themselves, to rule the universe they needed the Words of God. However, Metatron, the Scribe of God, predicted the archangels' decision, and proceeded to leave Heaven to protect the tablets and himself. Lucifer, however, was able to take possession of the Angel Tablet sometime after and had it placed in one of his crypts. The archangels were also believed to have killed Lucifer's elite order of demons, the Knights of Hell by everyone who knew of them. However, unknown to everyone, the truth was that the leader of the Knights, Cain, killed all but Abaddon himself instead of the archangels. According to Cain, only Abaddon knew the truth though Crowley somehow later found out.
For millions of years, Lucifer was imprisoned in Hell's depths, Michael and Raphael remained in Heaven under the guise of being God's representatives, and Gabriel lived among humans and the pagan deities. By 2009, the year of The Apocalypse, Gabriel fought against his three siblings and their desire to fight each other. He was subsequently killed. Sam Winchester managed to imprison Michael and Lucifer in Lucifer's Cage, leaving Raphael to take control over Heaven. Raphael was killed by Castiel two years later, and Lucifer did not return to the surface until 2016, becoming the only Archangel active and alive, his brother Michael having gone insane. As a result of Lucifer being trapped on an apocalpytic earth, Michael is the only Archangel left in Creation.
According to Castiel, they are known in Heaven as absolute, precise and wrathful creatures, as he has called them, "The most fearsome wrath of Heaven". Like all angels, their true forms are very intense, and have proven not only harmful but also fatal to humans, though Castiel also claimed that special humans can see their true forms. Their presence on Earth outside a vessel is often visualized as a blinding, pure white light, and their arrival can cause minor tremors, as shown by Lucifer when the Chapel shook as he escaped the Cage, and by Raphael while intervening to protect the prophet Chuck Shurley from Lilith. Their true voice also emits a piercing sound, which has proven to be excruciatingly painful to humans. During a subsequent appearance, Raphael caused the entire Eastern Sea Board to experience a black out and generated strong winds and heavy rainstorms. Shortly before his defeat, Lucifer's presence caused the temperature to drop drastically in Detroit.
It has been stated that Archangels are tethered to prophets. Raphael seemed to be the one who monitored and protected prophet Chuck Shurley. Before his fall, Lucifer was God's most beloved angel; he was considered beautiful, and was well respected in Heaven.
Archangels view themselves as the highest authority over all of creation since God's departure from Heaven. As leaders in Heaven, Michael and Raphael commanded the Host of Heaven, issuing orders to the "Senior Management" who were responsible for deploying angels to Earth. They did not share all their plans, especially their intention to allow Lucifer to be freed, to avoid rebellion in the lower ranks. Most of them showed little respect while interacting with humans, although Gabriel eventually confessed his appreciation of humanity even believing humans to be better than them.
The relationships between archangels and their true vessels can be complex. Holding an archangel is psychologically damaging to a human; Raphael's vessel Donnie Finnerman was left a drooling, catatonic mess after possession. Lucifer's continued presence in Nick, an alternate vessel, causes the human's body to breakdown, as evidenced by burn-like marks, scarring and tears on his skin. Lucifer's vessels can be strengthened with demon blood to better survive the ordeal; Castiel later commented that Lucifer was drinking gallons of blood to keep his body intact. However, when Lucifer transferred to Sam, Nick would die. Despite his contempt and hatred for humanity as a whole, Lucifer showed some sympathy towards Nick, and towards Sam Winchester, his true vessel. Michael, though condescendingly, was willing to explain his position to Dean Winchester while occupying his father, and promised not to leave Dean a "drooling mess" after his service and even promised to restore John Winchester, whom he was possessing, to "better than new", which he later did. This implies that, possibly because of their deep contempt for humanity, archangels leave their vessels in a dilapidated state not as a consequence of possession, but out of sheer spite.
Death revealed that it was the archangels that fought off and entrapped the Darkness that existed before God created the universe. God and Lucifer both later stated that it took the four archangels to weaken the Darkness enough for God to lock her away and even then God could barely do it.
God tells the Winchesters that the archangels are beings of primordial creation. As a result, it is extremely difficult, but not impossible, for God to resurrect them from the dead unlike lesser angels such as Castiel. However, God states that resurrecting archangels would take time.
Powers and Abilities
|“||No one gives us the right; we take it.||”|
— Lucifer comments on his and his brothers' powers.
in Hammer of the Gods
|“||Whatever we want,we get!||”|
— Raphael describing his and his brothers' absolute authority.
in Free To Be You and Me
|“||No-one makes us do anything!||”|
— Gabriel's description of his and his brother's powers.
in Hammer of the Gods
Archangels are the highest type of celestial being, possessing an immense amount of supernatural power that makes them among the oldest and most powerful beings in the universe. All four Archangels together are powerful enough to weaken The Darkness, the most powerful entity in existence, albeit assisted by God. They possess the powers and abilities that are inherent in all angels, but to a much higher degree, arguably the highest degree with their power just under that of God himself. The Archangels are held in extremely high esteem by angels, being looked upon as "fierce" and "absolute" in power and capability. Archangels have a vast supply of power and can create most things out of thin air.
- Lower Tier Nigh-Omnipotence - Archangels have a tremendously vast supply of power; they can accomplish almost anything they desire with only some exceptions. Only God, The Darkness, and Death can defeat them. A great display of their power is also everything from the ability to create alternate universes to, collectively and assisted by God, being able to stand up to The Darkness. Archangels rank in age in this specific order: Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, Gabriel. As for the power line, the order is the same, with Lucifer and Michael being equals, or Michael very slightly stronger. They are far older than The Universe itself.
- Angelic Possession - Even archangels require vessels to manifest physically on Earth and need their consent to do so.
- Highly Advanced Holy White Light - Archangels can blast basically anything into oblivion with holy energy. This power can also be controlled and concentrated from completely obliterating something to only severely damaging it.
- Super Strength - As the first and most powerful angels, Archangels can exert or apply extreme immense amounts of physical force to people, objects, creatures, and beings. They can overpower and kill anything, besides God, Death, or The Darkness.
- Super Stamina - Archangels' vessels need nothing to maintain their strength, to strive, or operate, as they are self-sufficient. "Falling", or being banished doesn't affect their powers at all, whereas it causes normal angels to lose the ability to smite and heal.
- Telekinesis - Archangels can move matter with their mind.
- Teleportation - Archangels can disappear and reappear anywhere that's not sigil-protected instantly. Even after Metatron's Spell, Lucifer was still able to teleport, as his wings are fully intact.
- Apporting - Archangels can teleport people, objects and lesser angels to wherever they want.
- Telepathy - Archangels can read and feel/sense the thoughts of humans.
- Empathy - Archangels can read, and feel/sense the emotions of humans.
- Precognition - Archangels can see into the future, although they do not always see the full picture; as Michael has apparently been "wrong", and neither Lucifer nor Gabriel foresaw their defeats.
- Memory Manipulation- Archangels can erase, fabricate and restore the memories of people.
- Shapeshifting - Archangels can change form, as Lucifer did when he appeared to Nick using Sarah's visage. He also did this to Sam while using Jessica's visage. Gabriel also demonstrated this ability several times, in conjunction with his reality warping abilities.
- Reality Warping - Like some Angels and Seraphs, Archangels can alter reality, albeit to a greater degree. This ability is better demonstrated by the archangel Gabriel, who can create anything he wants out of thin air and can even put people in a TV universe.
- Chronokinesis - Archangels can travel and send themselves, and/or others, backwards or forwards through time.
- Resurrection - Archangels can bring deceased individuals back to life.
- Power Granting - Archangels can grant protection or powers to other beings as shown when Raphael made Crowley immune to Castiel's angelic killing touch.
- Supernatural Perception - They can sense and perceive beings and things that are naturally invisible, such as Reapers and even Horsemen. Lucifer was able to casually look at Death's true form upon his release.
- Weather Manipulation - Practically every Archangel changes the weather upon first emergence. The sheer presence can drastically alter the Earth's weather and surroundings, and they are capable of causing raging storms and generating strong air-currents
- Pyrokinesis - Archangels can manipulate, control and generate fire. They can incinerate any other angel type, all demons, all fairies, alphas, all monsters, deities, and humans with a tap. Michael incinerated Anna, burning her from the inside out.
- Thermokinesis - Archangels can alter the temperature of their surroundings. Lucifer's presence could cause a massive drop in temperature, and he could cause ice to form on a window just by breathing on it. He was also able to heat up a pair of Supernatural Handcuffs until they popped off of his wrist. Michael was also to cause a door knob to heat up drastically to prevent Adam from escaping.
- Electrokinesis - Archangels can manipulate, control and generate electricity with such an intensity that they can cause coastal blackouts as seen when Raphael manifested before Dean and Castiel. With a snap of his fingers, Lucifer was able to disable a fire alarm and turn on music.
- Terrakinesis - Archangels can cause full-fledged earthquakes, regardless of whether they are in a vessel or not.
- Molecular Combustion - Archangels have demonstrated the ability to explode lower angels into their component molecules with snaps of their fingers.
- Regeneration - If they are in some way harmed, they can instantly heal all non-fatal wounds.
- Mental Projection - Archangels can communicate with humans by projecting images into their minds. Lucifer used this to communicate with his vessels Nick and Vince Vincente to get a "yes" from them. Once his cage was damaged, Lucifer was able to use this power to communicate with Sam Winchester in the form of visions.
- Flight - Like regular angels, archangels have demonstrated flight, though not when in a vessel.
- Healing - Archangels can cure any disease, wound, or injury. Michael even said that after he used Dean, he would just simply undo all the damage done to his body.
- Biokinesis - Lucifer was able to cause a man to die of a massive cerebral hemorrhage.
- Nigh-Omniscience - Being around for billions/trillions of years, the Archangels have vast knowledge and awareness about many things. Even when Lucifer was trapped in the cage, he had knowledge about what Sam has been through.
- Eidetic Memory - Like all angels, the Archangels have the faces of every prophet who has existed or will exist etched into their memories. This ability also makes them aware of reality warping and timeline changes.
- Immortality - Archangels aren't affected by time or disease and don't need to breathe, eat, or sleep to sustain themselves. They predate creation and the universe itself making them more than 13.8 billion years old.
- Invulnerability - Archangels cannot be damaged or injured by anything that's at least not supernatural.
- Immunity - Archangels have immunity to that which affects lesser angels. Michael was not killed by holy fire as lesser angels are, and Lucifer is one of the five things in all creation that the Colt cannot kill, though it can still inflict pain upon him for a time.
- Astral Projection - Archangels can display their wings like any other angel.
Despite them being very powerful, the archangels possess a few weaknesses which are common to all angels.
Harming, Misleading, Banishing, and Trapping
- Angel Banishing Sigil - An angel banishing sigil can banish an archangel.
- Lot's Stone - Lot's Stone can destroy an archangel's vessel.
- Enochian sigils - They can conceal a person's location from all angels, including archangels. Enochian sigils were also used to keep Lucifer confined in a cage in Limbo.
- Lucifer's Cage - This cell can hold any angel, therefore including archangels, without any internal means of escape.
- The Colt - While the Colt could not kill Lucifer, it still caused him considerable pain and he was unconscious for a short amount of time when he was shot in the head.
- Holy Oil - Archangels can be trapped in a loop of holy fire for a period of time. Lucifer could extinguish the holy fire in a few minutes after being trapped in it. Raphael was able to escape from holy fire off-screen. Holy fire was unable to kill Michael unlike lower angels but it caused him great pain and banished him temporarily. Unlike his siblings, when contained by holy fire, Gabriel acted as if it would contain him permanently unless released.
- Heaven's Weapons - All of Heaven's weapons acting together can hurt and might kill Raphael.
- Hand of God - The power from a Hand, is capable of knocking an Archangel down and prevents them from using their powers temporarily.
- Magic - Powerful magic and spells can have limited effect on an archangel as Rowena could paralyze Lucifer briefly and Kali could bind Gabriel to herself.
- Hyperbolic pulse generator - It is capable of expelling an archangel from their vessel.
- Mark of Cain - The Mark is capable of corrupting even Archangels, as seen with Lucifer.
- Archangel Blades - An Archangel Blade can harm and kill an archangel.
- Souls - Imbued with 50,000 souls, Castiel could banish Raphael. Consumption of millions of souls and Leviathans gave Castiel so much power that he could snap his fingers and obliterate Raphael.
- Primordial Entities - God can negate an archangel's powers completely. The Darkness can effortlessly kill an archangel.
- Lance of Michael - A weapon created by Michael in order to kill Lucifer slowly and painfully.
- Dean Winchester (not used) - Michael's true vessel.
- Sam Winchester (currently not used) - Lucifer's true vessel.
- Nick (deceased/current vessel) - Lucifer's "Plan B" vessel. Repaired and improved in 2016 by Crowley to act as Lucifer's vessel once more.
- Jimmy Novak (deceased, body still used by Castiel) - Originally, Castiel's true vessel. Lucifer took over his body after Castiel agreed to possession. Lucifer was later expelled from Jimmy by the Darkness.
- Donnie Finnerman (deceased) - Raphael's first vessel. Killed when Balthazar used Lot's salt on Raphael which only Raphael survived.
- John Winchester (deceased) - Michael's temporary vessel, restored to normal once Michael was finished. Was killed in 2006 by Azazel.
- Adam Milligan (sealed in Lucifer's Cage) - Michael's replacement vessel. Incapacitated when he, along with Michael possessing him, are thrown into Hell by Sam where Adam still remains.
- Unnamed male (deceased) - Gabriel's only known vessel. Was killed along with Gabriel by Lucifer.
- Unnamed female (deceased) - Raphael's second vessel. Was killed along with Raphael by Castiel.
- Multiple unknown (deceased) - Lucifer's temporary vessels he went into after being ripped from Castiel by Amara. All destroyed because of their inability to contain him.
- Vince Vincente (deceased) - After multiple other vessels, Lucifer was able to find a vessel that could contain him, a rock star. Vince lasted for about a month before deteriorating completely.
- Jefferson Rooney - Lucifer possessed the President of the United States for a short time following the death of Vince Vincente. Lucifer was ultimately exorcised from Rooney by Sam Winchester with a hyperbolic pulse generator. Rooney survived his brief possession.
- Season 2
- Season 3
- Season 4
- Season 5
- Sympathy for the Devil (Lucifer)
- Free To Be You and Me (Raphael and Lucifer)
- The End (Lucifer)
- Changing Channels (Gabriel)
- Abandon All Hope... (Lucifer)
- The Song Remains the Same (Michael)
- Point of No Return (Michael's presence)
- Hammer of the Gods (Gabriel and Lucifer)
- Swan Song (Michael and Lucifer)
- Season 6
- Season 7
- Season 9
- Season 10
- My Brother's Keeper (mentioned only)
- Season 11
- Out of the Darkness, Into the Fire (Michael and Lucifer, mentioned only)
- Baby (Lucifer, posing as young John Winchester in Sam's vision)
- O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Lucifer)
- The Devil in the Details (Lucifer; the other three mentioned only)
- Into the Mystic (Lucifer)
- The Vessel (Lucifer)
- Beyond the Mat (Lucifer)
- Hell's Angel (Lucifer)
- Don't Call Me Shurley (mentioned only)
- All in the Family (Lucifer)
- We Happy Few (Lucifer; the other three mentioned only)
- Season 12
- Keep Calm and Carry On (Lucifer, mentioned only)
- Mamma Mia (Lucifer)
- The Foundry (Lucifer)
- American Nightmare (mentioned only)
- The One You've Been Waiting For (mentioned only)
- Rock Never Dies (Lucifer)
- LOTUS (Lucifer)
- Stuck in the Middle (With You) (Lucifer; Michael mentioned only)
- Family Feud (Lucifer)
- Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell (Lucifer)
- The British Invasion (Lucifer; Michael mentioned only)
- The Future (Lucifer)
- There's Something About Mary (Lucifer)
- All Along the Watchtower (Lucifer)
- Season 13
- Even though in some religions there are many archangels and 7 of them are the favorites of God, only four have been confirmed in Supernatural - Michael, Lucifer, Raphael and Gabriel - and a few fans have argued that the fact that Metatron (when asking if Sam and Dean worked for any of the archangels in The Great Escapist) only mentioned these four archangels would suggest that there aren't any other archangels in Supernatural. Though given Metatron's lowly position within Heaven, before leaving and cutting himself off from angel radio, there could be more that he was unaware of.
- Metatron was described as an Archangel in one of the Word of God tablets, but he revealed that he was simply an angel that was chosen to be a scribe.
- Michaelmas, also known as the Feast of Saint Michael, is a Christian festival observed on September 29, to honor the Archangels, specifically Michael, and sometimes Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel. This day is also coincidentally the birth date of Adam Milligan, Michael's second vessel.
- The archangels are collectively one of the most dangerous and powerful antagonists in the entire series. So far, they have not been shown working alongside each other.
- Season 5 is the only season in which all four archangels are active. By Season 12, only Lucifer is, as Raphael and Gabriel are dead and Michael is in The Cage.
- While it is unknown what an Angel Suppressing Sigil would do to an archangel, Sam was able to use the angel banishing sigil against Lucifer successfully in The Vessel, showing that archangels can be affected by that sigil.
- It was originally believed by the Men of Letters that the Archangels were responsible for the extermination of the Knights of Hell except Abaddon, it was actually the Knights' founder, Cain. Whether or not this rumor was started by the angels or by Cain himself is currently unknown.
- Gabriel, so far, is the only archangel to only use one vessel.
- Michael is the only archangel who wasn't introduced with a vessel specifically for him. For Lucifer, it was Nick; for Raphael, it was Donnie; and for Gabriel, it was his unnamed vessel.
- Lucifer is the only Archangel to impregnate a human in the series.
- Raphael is the only Archangel to use both a male and female vessel.
- It has been implied that Cain and Abel, as their blood line contains the vessels of Michael and Lucifer, also could've been vessels for the latter.
- Lucifer's eyes are shown to glow reddish orange in O Brother Where Art Thou, this implies that the color Archangels eyes would glow with the same color whereas the eyes of Castiel and other angels glow bright blue. However it is unknown if this trait is unique to Lucifer. It is possible that Lucifer appeared that way as he makes use of theatrics when talking with certain people, such as Sam and Dean, to psychologically get under their skin.
- In Season 12, Lucifer's eyes often glow in this color, proving this is his natural eye color.
- All four archangels have acted as antagonists towards the Winchesters, however, only Gabriel and Lucifer have become at least temporary allies to them.
- The Archangels are the only creations of God confirmed to exist pre-Universe, and thus his only known primordial creation.
- ↑ We Happy Few
- ↑ The Monster at the End of This Book
- ↑ Brother's Keeper
- ↑ We Happy Few
- ↑ We Happy Few
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Sympathy for the Devil
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Free To Be You and Me
- ↑ The End
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Changing Channels
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Abandon All Hope...
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 Swan Song
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 The Song Remains the Same
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Hammer of the Gods
- ↑ Mystery Spot
- ↑ Good God, Y'all
- ↑ Rock Never Dies
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 Point of No Return
- ↑ Rock Never Dies
- ↑ Swan Song
- ↑ Into the Mystic
- ↑ Hell's Angel
- ↑ Sympathy for the Devil
- ↑ Mamma Mia
- ↑ LOTUS
- ↑ The Vessel
- ↑ The Third Man
- ↑ Caged Heat
- ↑ Family Matters
- ↑ Brother's Keeper
- ↑ The Man Who Would Be King


Some writers, in particular, novelists, become “italics happy.” Once they’ve discovered the slanty writing, it’s as if they’ve struck it rich. More accurately, they have stumbled on fools gold. Using italics in fiction or non-fiction is much more specialized and a lot rarer — or should be — than many know.
Don’t get me wrong. Italics do have their purposes. Here are their major legitimate uses.
In my fantasy series, The Lore Of Efrathah, for instance, I use a number of “foreign” words (actually words of an imaginary language), and some are repeated throughout. Consequently, on their introduction, I put the words in italics, but thereafter they appear in regular roman type. Here’s an example from Book 1, Hunted, with a little extra so you can see in context what the word means:
“Alán!” Eljosh cried. “Bring him alán!”
Those close to Mikkán moved back to make room for a light-haired council member rushing forward. From a pouch at his side, he yanked out a pinch of dried leaves, then grasped Mikkán’s forearm and crushed the leaves into a powder he sprinkled over the burn.
A second legitimate use of italics, more common in non-fiction, is to set off a word used as a word rather than as that which it means.
For example, someone may ask, “Do we capitalize president?”
In such an instance, the writer is referring to the word “president,” and not the person which such a word represents. The proper way to punctuate that sentence would be to italicize president, as I did here because I too was using the word as a word.
A similar use of italics exists for individual letters used as letters, with the exception of letters used for grades. Here’s an example:
I often mistakenly type b when I mean to type p.
A fourth use of italics is for titles of “free standing” works such as books, magazines, movies, the name of a TV series, plays, and so forth. Consequently,
I read an article in Time magazine entitled “Go For The Gold.”
Other titles that are set in italics are art works, formally titled art exhibitions, and photographs. Specific names of ships, planes, and trains (but not names of their makes, classes, or models) are also italicized.
One last legitimate use of italics in general writing (there are others in specialty publications such as scientific journals when writing about genes or genuses): Italics may be used sparingly for emphasis. From Chicago Manual Of Style:
Overused, italics quickly lose their force. Seldom should as much as a sentence be italicized for emphasis and never an entire passage (7.49, 15th edition).
Along this line, in non-fiction a key term may be italicized on its first occurrence to draw attention to itself. From that point on, it would be set in roman type.
Fiction writers may think I’ve left off one of the most significant uses of italics: when writing interior monologue. Not so. I haven’t left it off because interior monologue, or what Chicago terms “unspoken discourse” (which would include silent prayer) does not require italics. Instead, quotation marks are used, or no identifying punctuation at all.
Here’s another example from Hunted:
Jonathan crossed to the alcove. “I know you must be disappointed.”
Without looking up, Jim nodded. “Disappointed” was the G-rated version of what he was feeling, but could anyone blame him for a twinge of despair? He might never see his parents again, might not reconnect with his sister or teach his hero-worshiping nephews, Matt and Allen, his signature crossover dribble and stop-on-a-dime jump shot.
There you have it. Italics ought to be rare nuggets, not flashy baubles too common to do any good. Authors, use them sparingly.
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If this article was helpful, you might also be interested in “Quotation Marks And Where They Belong.”


AbstractCan the smart city provide a new perspective for public and academic libraries? How does the smart city impact the libraries as cultural and scientific assets? And how can libraries contribute to the development of the smart city? An overview of recent library models, like the learning center or the green library, reveals affinities with the concept of the smart city, especially regarding the central role of information and the integration of technology, people, and institutions. From this observation, the paper develops the outline of a new concept of the smart library, which can be described in four dimensions, i.e., smart services, smart people, smart place, and smart governance. However, the smart library concept does not constitute a unique model or project, but a process, a way of how to get things done, that is less linear, less structured, and more creative and innovative. Also, smartness may not be a solution for all library problems. View Full-Text
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Schöpfel, J. Smart Libraries. Infrastructures 2018, 3, 43.
Schöpfel J. Smart Libraries. Infrastructures. 2018; 3(4):43.Chicago/Turabian Style
Schöpfel, Joachim. 2018. "Smart Libraries." Infrastructures 3, no. 4: 43.
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The Unpredictable Species
What Makes Humans Unique
The Unpredictable Species argues that the human brain evolved in a way that enhances our cognitive flexibility and capacity for innovation and imitation. In doing so, the book challenges the central claim of evolutionary psychology that we are locked into predictable patterns of behavior that were fixed by genes, and refutes the claim that language is innate. Philip Lieberman builds his case with evidence from neuroscience, genetics, and physical anthropology, showing how our basal ganglia--structures deep within the brain whose origins predate the dinosaurs--came to play a key role in human creativity. He demonstrates how the transfer of information in these structures was enhanced by genetic mutation and evolution, giving rise to supercharged neural circuits linking activity in different parts of the brain. Human invention, expressed in different epochs and locales in the form of stone tools, digital computers, new art forms, complex civilizations--even the latest fashions--stems from these supercharged circuits.
The Unpredictable Species boldly upends scientifically controversial yet popular beliefs about how our brains actually work. Along the way, this compelling book provides insights into a host of topics related to human cognition, including associative learning, epigenetics, the skills required to be a samurai, and the causes of cognitive confusion on Mount Everest and of Parkinson's disease.
Philip Lieberman is the George Hazard Crooker University Professor Emeritus at Brown University. His books include Toward an Evolutionary Biology of Language and Eve Spoke: Human Language and Human Evolution.


Now along this journey, light transmission can encounter some hazards. So there can be some
lesions that will block this journey and result in various forms of visual impairments. So we’re going
to take a look at various visual impairments based on the location of the lesion. So first,
we’re going to have a lesion of the entire optic nerve. That lesion is shown right here.
In this case, the lesion will produce a loss of vision in the right eye, anopia. If we look here,
this is the right eye, this is the left eye and we can see that the right eye has gone dark, black.
It’s not perceiving anything or it’s not conveying anything to the primary visual cortex.
Transmission’s been blocked completely here. What are some of the causes of this type of lesion?
There are a couple. One could be trauma or another one could be inflammation of the optic nerve,
so we have optic neuritis. Here, we’re going to shift the lesion to the left optic nerve.
It’s not going to be a complete lesion as we saw with the right optic nerve. Instead,
it’s going to be a partial lesion of the left optic nerve. It’s going to be this lateral half.
So if we take a look at what’s going on here, here’s your temporal retina. This is the path
that’s being blocked. So just the left temporal retina is being blocked in that pathway. What will
happen here is you'll have a loss of the left temporal retina. That will result in blindness
of the left nasal visual field. That is shown right in through here where this area of the left eye
has gone dark. This is left nasal hemianopsia. Causes of this visual deficit could be a tumor
just compressing the lateral side of the left optic nerve or it could be a form of arterial dysfunction
and so there’s a disruption in the blood supply to just this lateral component of your optic nerve.
This could occur also on the right side. Another form of a lesion is where the lateral portion
of the right optic nerve is damaged at the optic chiasma. That is shown right in through here.
So if we look at how the axons are travelling through this area, we will see that the nasal
retina of the right eyeball right in through here, this pathway is uninterrupted. It crosses over here
and then continues to the left primary visual field. What is disrupted, however, is the temporal
retina from the right eye. See, that pathway is blocked. You’re also going to get a blockage
of the nasal retina from the left eye. It’s crossing over here and then the lesion is
sufficient enough to interrupt its transmission of the action potentials to the primary visual cortex.
What will happen here is you’ll have a loss of right temporal retina and blindness of the right
nasal visual field. That is shown right in through here. This is right nasal hemianopsia
which are also involving the left eye as well. Its deficit is this area here which is a left upper
temporal quadrant anopsia. So this part goes black or dark as it can no longer perceive
this visual information. This disorder is kind of like a slice of a pie. So this is referred to
as pie in the sky disorder when we have this left upper temporal quadrant anopsia.
Cause of this: again, we’re looking at a structure that would lie lateral to the optic chiasm.
Our primary culprit here is our internal carotid artery. So if there’s a weakness in the wall of the
internal carotid artery, there’s an aneurysm, you have dilatation. That aneurysm can put
pressure on just this general area here and cause this kind of deficit. This could occur on the
opposite side as well. Here, we have a simpler lesion in that the optic chiasm has been
lesioned completely. We see that lesion right in through here. So any of the fibers that are
crossing are blocked at this particular point. This will cause bitemporal hemianopsia.
So, you see the temporal regions here of the left and right eyes going dark.
Causes? Again, you’ve got to think about what’s in this area. You have the pituitary gland.
So an expansion of a pituitary tumor could put pressure on the optic chiasm and cause
this type of lesion. Another type of tumor is a craniopharyngioma. That too can grow and
involve the optic chiasm causing this lesion. Now, we’re looking at a lesion of the optic tract.
This tract runs from the optic chiasm to the lateral geniculate body on each side. So here’s
the right one. This is the one that’s involved. So we see a complete lesion then through this
right optic tract. This will cause left homonymous hemianopsia. What goes dark here
would be the temporal retina of the left eye and then the nasal retina of the right eye.
Causes of this form of lesion would be a tumor of the temporal lobe because the temporal lobe
is in this area. So if the tumor grows into this right optic tract, that could cause a lesion.
If there’s an abscess of the temporal lobe, that abscess can also disrupt the transmission
of our visual pathway along the right optic tract. Of course, this can occur on the left side
as well. Another point at which a lesion can occur is along the optic radiations.
The optic radiations can be completely lesioned or they may be partially lesioned. We’re going to look
at a partial lesion, two types of partial lesions of our optic radiations. The first one here
is a lesion of the right upper optic radiations. These are a part of Baum’s loop. They’re starting
to terminate on your primary visual cortex in this area. So this could be a side of the lesion here
or it could be a little more proximal or closer to the lateral geniculate bodies. This will result
in left homonymous inferior quadrant anopsia. If we take a look here, here’s the quadrant
that’s disrupted in the left temporal retina. Then here’s a quadrant that’s disrupted on the right
side but on the nasal side. Causes here could be a parietal lobe tumor or an occipital lobe tumor
putting pressure on this part of the pathway. Lesions can also occur along the lower optic
radiations as we see in through this area here. This is also starting to include the upper,
so we kind of want to just look at this right in through here. Lesions of the lower optic
radiations, these axons that are travelling here form Meyer’s loop. They will result in a darkness
here and here of each eye. This is termed left homonymous superior quadrant anopsia.
Causes of this would be a tumor. It could be a tumor of the temporal lobe or a tumor
of the occipital lobe. Then, of course, you can have a disruption of the entire optic radiations.
In here we have a complete lesion on the right side of the optic radiations. This then results
in left homonymous hemianopsia. So you can see the darkness here in the left eye and then
the disruption here at the right eye. Causes would be tumors, could have arterial dysfunction,
interruption of blood flow to this area, or a trauma injury to the brain in this particular area.
What are some of the causes of this lesion? First, we can have tumors again disrupting this final
pathway to the primary visual cortex. Arterial dysfunction could also cause a lesion to the entire
optic radiations. Trauma is another possibility or cause to this particular visual deficit.


To Remember was inspired by “Seven Fallen Feathers” written by Tanya Talaga. It is the account of seven indigenous high school students who died in Thunder Bay.
Five of the bodies where found in the river or Lake Superior.
The seven feathers in this piece represent the light and spirit we have lost when these children died. The black outlined feathers commemorate the missing and murdered Indigenous women and children. The smallest feathers represent the many ten year old children who are committing suicide on reserves.
May we with the Truth and Reconciliation Council be guided by the seven principles of the Anishinaabe: respect, truth, love, honesty, wisdom, humility and bravery. Every Canadian should read “Seven Fallen Feathers” and put an end to this cultural genocide.


Alternator refers to a special device that has the capacity to transform mechanical energy to alternating electrical energy. Large alternators are commonly used or seen in power stations that are run by steam turbines. However, in most instances, the term is commonly used to refer to an electromechanical device that is present or seen in automobiles. The device is very helpful in vehicles because it charges the battery when the engine of the automobile starts to run. To know how much does the electromechanical device cost, let us look at the estimated prices of the device for various models of automobiles.
Estimated Price of the Electromechanical Device
How much does an alternator cost? The price of this electromechanical device depends on the model and type of automobile where it will be used. However, the price of this device usually ranges from $60 to $300. Consumers who want to purchase alternators for a 2000 to 2004 Ford Focus should prepare $190 while those who own Honda Accord 1993 should allot $275 to $300. The cost of the electromechanical device for 1996 Saab ranges from $125 to $135.
Individuals who own Toyota Corolla 1998 to 2001 can replace the alternator of their vehicles for as low as $32. Vehicle owners who have the latest models from Isuzu, Chevrolet as well as General Motors Corporation can buy the electromechanical device for their vehicles for as low as $112.
Additional Information and Other Important Details
To make sure that the electromechanical device is functioning well, it is best to look at the factors that commonly affect its efficiency like copper loss, bearing loss as well as cooling loss. In addition, the functionality of an alternator depends on its size as well as its speed.
New models of the device have a voltage regulator, which is very important to create a constant voltage. With the use of a voltage regulator, the electromechanical device can function very well and efficiently since the regulator allows the device to create low current.
To ensure that the voltage regulator is functioning well, most manufacturers of automobiles connect the regulator with a computer system in a vehicle. By connecting the regulator to the computer system, vehicle owners can always monitor if the engine load and air temperature are normal. In addition, they can also evaluate whether the electromechanical device is efficient. Above all, by just looking at the computer system, automobile owners can tell if the battery in the vehicles is charging.


Kansas drought part of natural cycle, say farmers
A farmer sifts through arid topsoil under a ruined crop on a farm last August in Kansas. Today the shortage of moisture on the land is threatening the new crop planted last autumn. photograph: getty
Crops are suffering but few here are convinced global warming is to blame
“We may not raise a bushel of grain here this year but it will not be because of global warming,” says Kenny Henriksen, a crop and livestock farmer in Jewell County, Kansas.
Henriksen is meeting five farmer friends at Pinky’s coffee shop in the close-knit town of Courtland, population 340, for one of their regular get-togethers. They discuss farming matters such as how much they get for a bushel (about 25kg) of corn.
Just 40 miles east of the geographic centre of the 48 United States on continental America, Courtland has fared better than many towns where crop production has been threatened by a severe two-year drought across Kansas and other states on the US plains and midwest.
Farmers in Courtland draw on surface water to feed their crops, and don’t need to drill for water like their counterparts in western Kansas. They have also invested heavily in centre pivots, the spider-like rotating sprinkler systems that dot the land, watering areas of up to half a mile wide.
Kansas, the 15th-largest US state by size and 33rd by population, is the country’s largest wheat producer and sixth-largest corn producer.
The state traditionally makes up almost a fifth of the total US wheat production, yielding a crop worth about $1 billion a year.
This year the state will struggle to reach its typical production levels. Kansas and her neighbouring states – Colorado to the west, Nebraska to the north and Oklahoma to the south – are enduring a severe drought or worse, according to official US climatology statistics.
The shortage of moisture on the land is threatening the new crop planted last autumn and recent data suggests there is no sign of rain coming any time soon, threatening millions of acres of wheat.
The US government has designated 1,297 counties across 29 states as disaster areas, making farmers eligible for billions of dollars of low-interest emergency loans.
The government also subsidises crop insurance for farmers, which, along with high crop prices, has saved many communities. Farmers are also paid federal grants on a per-acre price for turning their farms into conservation grasslands to prevent over-farming and to ease the strain on water supplies.
The average rainfall across Kansas is normally between 15 and 35 inches of rain a year. Last year just 11 inches fell on average, coupled with an exceptionally hot summer of soaring temperatures.
By the time the Republican River reaches the farmers in northern Kansas from Colorado via the many wells dug in Nebraska, there is not enough water to nourish their farms.
In the face of this devastating drought and climate-related disasters, President Barack Obama has marked the fight against climate change high on his list of second-term goals.
“Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms,” he said in his recent inaugural speech, drawing much focus as part of his ambitiously progressive plan.
The farmers in northern Kansas are not convinced that climate change is to blame, however. They and their fathers suffered droughts in the 1930s and 1950s, and as a recently as 2004 – the past two years are just another cycle, they argue.
“There is a lot of scientists and PhDs wanting to claim this is climate change and we are going to be dealing with this for years. It’s not something that is in our thoughts,” says Courtland farmer Brad Peterson.
“I don’t know if I believe that global warming is the reason,” says another farmer, Richard Lindberg. “We have been held back and have been limited to the water we use in irrigating our farms.”
Further east, where the drought is much more severe, the opinion is no different.
“In western Kansas we sit to the east of the Rocky Mountains, where it is drier. I remember the 1955/56 drought and 1988. My dad went through the 1930s and had to move to the west coast,” said Ron Neff, a farmer in Selden, 150 miles west of Courtland.
“It is a natural phenomenon. They want to talk about carbons and needing to take pollutants out of the air but I don’t think it is connected.”
In 2008, one of the better harvest years, Neff produced about 130 bushels per acre of “dryland corn”; last year the land yielded just 15 bushels an acre on average.
Rise in temperatures
Chuck Rice, a professor of soil microbiology and a climate change expert at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, says there is no doubt that droughts are cyclical but temperatures clocked last year in the most recent dry spell have beaten historical records.
“The records weren’t just slightly broken; they were significantly higher,” he said.
Some farmers acknowledge that this drought is the worst they have ever seen, he says, though he accepts that most argue that it is no different from anything that went before.
“In the heartland of the US that is the prevailing view among many because we have these cycles all the time,” said Rice. “But our analysis over 100 years shows we are seeing longer growing periods, with earlier springs and later falls. With a longer growing season you are going to need more water.”
Farmers aren’t convinced, and in a “Red” state like Kansas, Republican supporters believe Obama’s concerns about climate change are driven by something else.
“Everything he says is for his agenda,” says Kenny Henriksen, without elaborating, before sipping on a coffee in Pinky’s diner.


The information processing theory is an attempt to explain how our brain experiences, processes, and retains information. I’m going to give a very short explanation of the theory, and then look at how it can help us as teachers. For a still brief but more in-depth look at the theory, read this article at education.com.
As you can see in the image above, the information processing theory has three parts, sensory memory, working memory, and long term memory. Sensory memory is used to process all the stimuli we experience, for example what we see, hear or feel. Here stimuli is processed and either filtered out or sent to working memory. For example, right now my air-conditioner is running. Its sound is being processed by my sensory memory, but, when I’m concentrating on writing this article it doesn’t get sent to my working memory. It’s not an important stimuli, so it is filtered out. Information stays in sensory memory for a few seconds at most.
When our sensory memory deems a particular stimulus important, it sends that information to working memory. This is where we assign meanings to things. For example, if the air-conditioner starts to make some odd grinding noise, that information would be sent to my working memory where I would assign meaning to it. Is it broken? Should I turn it off immediately? Both sensory and working memory are limited in how much information they can hold. Because of this, it is important to know about something called chunking. Working memory can only hold 5 to 9 pieces of information at a time. Because of this limitation, it is helpful to group information into chunks. The best example of this is a long string of numbers. If I asked you to remember 10 random numbers, you may struggle a bit, but if you put those numbers into meaningful groups of 3, for example, you could remember them easily.
Long term memory, unlike sensory and working memory, can hold vast amounts of information for long periods of time–forever. The two most important parts of long term memory are encoding and retrieval. Encoding refers to the strategies we use to remember things. For example, when you meet someone and want to remember their name, you might say it over and over again in an attempt to make it “stick” in your long term memory. Retrieval refers to the methods we use to bring information stored in long term memory back to working memory. Imagine if all the information in our heads was in working memory, our consciousness, all the time. We would be flooded with information! We could never process it all.
The above is a very brief explanation of a rather large theory. Again, I suggest you read this article at education.com for more information.
What I want to focus on is how this theory can help us as teachers, and the most important thing to consider here is encoding. Encoding is learning, and, as teachers, we have to focus on this process. For example, how much time do you spend standing in front of the class lecturing? Is listening to a teacher talk an effective way for students to encode a new language into their long term memory? No, it’s not, but there are still a lot of teachers out there who insist on “teaching,” standing and delivering knowledge to students. To become better teachers, we need to look at every lesson plan we make and think about encoding. Is the lesson actually moving information into long term memory, or is it just busy work used to pass the time.
Another important part of long term memory, according to the theory, is organization. Studies have shown that new information that is linked to existing information stored in long term memory is much easier to encode and retrieve. Have you ever made your students memorize long lists of vocabulary words? It’s a common practice, but it is not an efficient way for students to learn. Sure, those students will be able to pass a vocabulary test, but they won’t be able to recall and use those words when they need them because they are not linked to anything useful. When developing language learning lessons, we must always think about organization. Is the information being linked to something useful so it can can be recalled and used later, or is it just isolated information that is, for the most part, a waste of time to memorize since it won’t be recalled.
Obviously, this is a very simple post about a large and complex theory that attempts to make sense of our brains. That being said, we have a lot to think about in terms of practical information–just in regards to encoding and organizing. As language teachers, we always need to check that we are following best teaching practices, so we don’t waste our students’ time.


Artificial intelligence combats cyber attacks
In 2016, two-thirds of German companies were targeted in a cyber attack. Since then, the Federal Office for Information Security found in its 2018 report that the situation has become even more perilous. And it is more elaborate. Artificial intelligence is one response to the increasingly complex nature of cyber criminality.
“Today, virtually every company is a target”, reports Ingrid Lauterbach of Deutsche Bank. “These days, the Internet and social media provide excellent opportunities for scammers.” It has long progressed from individual hackers or petty criminals with IT skills: The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution estimates 50 billion euro worth of damage each year through online attacks. The figure can be attributed to cyber criminals operating within increasingly professional structures. AI systems continue to play an important role within these organisations; bots, for example, are being used to optimise their attacks through machine learning. Independent strategies for solutions in autonomous IT systems are also playing a greater role in the planning and execution of phishing campaigns. Such developments highlight the real dark side of artificial intelligence, which must be defeated with its own tools.
Trends and patterns
Whereas criminals use the advantages of machine learning for their own benefit to specifically search for weaknesses in a system, the technology also opens many doors to defend against attacks. Security providers use AI systems to collate abnormalities within large quantities of data, for example. This method allows for a company’s data flow to be analysed for evidence of suspected outside attacks. That also makes it easier to identify spam or phishing mails.
Thanks to pattern recognition, it’s even easier for AI-based systems to uncover hidden channels via which data are stolen. To that end, they must be trained to be able to differentiate between suspicious processes and ‘normal’ irregularities. Self-learning algorithms can be configured to internal company structures to quickly and efficiently infer information about the state of an abnormality. One of the key advantages of the software is that unlike traditional security systems, AI-based solutions can include a Group’s entire global network. That allows for quicker, more effective action.
Christian Nern, Head of Security at IBM Germany forecast in DEKRA Solutions Magazine that AI-based security analysis systems will be able to proactively recognise attacks in the near future and also be able to defend against them. IBM’s ‘Watson for Cyber Security’, for example, extrapolates information on threats at any given time. The system belongs to the “first generation” of AI-security systems, continues DEKRA Solutions. These products search through pre-structured data and are capable of unambiguously recognising identifiable risks. The “second generation” involves recognising complex attack scenarios with the aim of combating them automatically too. Christian Nern explains that this innovation race between attacker and defender could ultimately reach stalemate: “In that case, the two AI systems will glare at each other like two angry wolves for a brief moment before the underdog becomes aware of his weaknesses and instinctively withdraws.”
The human factor
Yet such a scenario misjudges a key aspect of each type of criminality: the human factor. Although cyber attackers may be using increasingly autonomous tools, they are not developing criminal powers of their own. In turn, that makes it difficult to tackle them in a virtual environment only. “Cyber criminals require contact with the real world”, says Sociologist Jonathan Lusthaus in an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Even if it’s just to live or sell their products and obtain money. Each transaction becomes real at some point. Nobody can act anonymously at all times.” When considering all of the benefits that AI systems have to offer in the fight against organised crime online, it’s worth regularly bearing the following in mind: a person is always behind it.
Author: Editorial team Future. Customer.
Image: © Michael Traitov– AdobeStock