Teaching a kid to doggy paddle is one of the first big steps in swimming lessons. Most parents of young swimmers are nervous when their little one begins swimming and that nervousness only increases when they are ready to shed life jackets or other flotation’s and go it alone. Developing a strong doggy paddle can be major step any parent or swim teacher can make to help ease some of that nervousness and help the child become a confident swimmer.
Doggy paddle, for those who are not familiar, is a simplified stroke that allows a swimmer to swiftly move through the water without submerging their heads. This stroke is very adaptable to personal preferences, which make it easy to teach. Although the concepts involved in doggy paddle are easy to understand and teach it does require time and practice to build up the endurance to swim independently for long periods of time.
Before we dive into the actual process of teaching the doggy paddle, there are some basic mechanics of swimming that are important to understand. These mechanics are fairly simple but keeping them in mind will help you understand and explain why proper form is important. They will also shed light into corrections that need to be made to help your swimmer thrive.
Basic Swimming Mechanics
- Swimming is basically using your body to push water away from you to propel you in the opposite direction. This means that if you want to move forward in the water, you will want to push the water backwards. If you want to move backwards you will need to push the water forward.
- You will push more water with a larger surface space than with a smaller one. This means that you will propel yourself further in the water with a flat hand rather than a sideways hand that slices through the water.
- Moving your body faster will not always make you move faster through the water. It is much easier and faster to use your hands to “slice” through the water but using this method does not push as much water and therefore will not propel you as far. Swimming is not about speed, but is more about power.
Teaching the Doggy Paddle
There are two basic motions that need to be developed when teaching the doggy paddle. The first of these motions is a strong flutter kick, and the second is developing a powerful arm movement.
Developing a Strong Flutter Kick
Helping your swimmer develop a strong kick is the best way to help your child become a confident swimmer. Since the legs are such a large muscle group, they carry a lot of the load for movement through the water and keeping your face out of the water. Your leg muscles are also used to being in constant use because of all the walking we do and so they tend to not tire as quickly as your arms do.
Many people assume that kicking is a natural skill because our legs are used so frequently, but this is often not the case. Teaching a child how to properly perform a flutter kick is not always an easy process. Often times, it is consuming and a little tedious, but taking the time to teach it properly will yield you a much stronger swimmer!
A proper flutter kick is performed by using straight legs and pointed toes to rapidly kick vertically at the waters’ surface. Initially you may want to ask your child to hold onto a kickboard, noodle or even hold them under the arm pits and see how they kick. Some kids already have the natural inclination to kick properly, but most kids will start with a bicycle kick (a kick that has a round movement as if they are pedaling a bicycle).
If you find yourself looking at a kick that is not straight with pointed toes, you will want to teach them this skill. It is best to begin by sitting on the wall and showing the swimmer what proper form looks like, have them replicate the form and practice kicking.
After they have successfully demonstrated the kick on the side of the pool bring them into the water and have them kick on their backs. Beginning on their back makes it easier for the child to keep their legs straight and toes pointed because the body is able to lie horizontally in the water.
After they have kicked on their back, have them flip over in the water and practice kicking with their head out the water. Do not fret if your swimmer struggles to keep straight legs and pointed toes once they are swimming on their stomachs. Since their head is out of the water it is more difficult to keep their body horizontal in the water and so many students will regress to a bicycle kick. To help rectify this you can have your student hold their kickboard with outstretched arms and keep their chin in the water. This will help them lay horizontal more easily and therefore make it easier to use proper form.
The above is the general process to teaching a flutter kick, but there is still a lot of imagination and inventiveness that will make the process fun. Below are a couple of my favorites.
Making a Pizza
Begin by sitting on the side of the pool with your student and explain that to kick correctly you will want to pretend your legs are knives. Most kids enjoy this because they do not get to use a lot of knives so if feels a little exciting.
Just like a knife your kick should have a sharp end (pointed toes). If their toes are not pointed then they will not be able to cut anything and the knife would be useless.
Next, explain that knives are made of metal and metal does not bend so their legs cannot bend. After they understand this, then explain how professional chefs are so talented that they chop things with their knives very quickly and have them practice using their “knives” to kick.
Once they have the basic movement, I have a pan that I use to help them make a pizza. First, I hold my hands underneath their pointed toes and explain that we are making a pizza and first need to chop up tomatoes to make a sauce. I have them chop my pretend tomatoes and then we scoop them into the pizza pan and spread them out. Then we “chop” up cheese and spread it out. Then I have them name whatever toppings they like and we add it to the pizza.
After all the ingredients are added, you have them put the pizza in the oven by sinking the pan under the water. As the pizza cooks you can practice kicking through the water. When their practice has yielded consistent improvement have them retrieve their pizza from the oven and enjoy pretending to eat it!
Compare your swimmers kick to a crayon with a sharp tip (pointed toes) that you don’t want to break (straight legs). You can help your swimmer understand this by asking them if they like when their crayon is dull or what happens when they break.
Once your swimmer has a proper form, ask them to choose a color for their crayons and then have them scribble a picture with rapid small kicks.
When they are ready to swim through the water explain that they are going to color a large picture. Ask them what picture they would like to color and, as they kick, ask them about the colors they are using while reminding them to keep their crayons sharp and not to break them.
If their legs keep bending you can make them switch their crayon color every time it happens so they become used to thinking about their form.
Developing a Powerful Arm Stroke
After establishing a strong kick, you will be ready to introduce the stroke to doggy paddle. When teaching the stroke you will want to begin out of the water so your student can see how the stroke is meant to look without the distortion of the water.
Once you are out of the water, have your swimmer raise their arms above their head, when in the water this would be their arms fully outstretched in front of them.
Then, with a cupped hand, have the swimmer move one hand in front of their body creating a half circle in front of them, beginning above their head all the way down to their stomach. Then their hand will become flat and slice up the middle of their body until their hand is once again above their head.
The reason their hand becomes flat and slices through the water is because it creates less resistance and helps the swimmer move further in the water faster than continuing with a cupped hand.
Then, have your swimmer practice using alternating hands. They will want to move quickly which will shorten their stroke, but slowing them down and reminding them to take a nice long stroke will pay dividends in the end. A longer stroke will propel them much further using less energy than shorter faster strokes.
There are a several games to play that will help make this stroke easier to learn. These games are best introduced outside of the water where the student can fully visualize what they are supposed to be doing. When you begin teaching outside of the water you give the swimmer an opportunity to learn without the pressure, distortion or concern that being in the water presents.
That being said, it should take less than 5 minutes outside of the water before a swimmer is ready to begin practicing in the water. As soon as they show an understanding of what you are explaining, it is time to hop back in the pool.
Scooping Ice Cream
Tell your swimmer that they are going to gather as much ice cream as they can with their ice cream scoops (hands). Have the entire pull motion, where the hand makes a semi circle with cupped hands, be a scoop of ice cream. When they reach the end of the pull, you have them drop their scoop and slice to the top of the ice cream bowl to get another scoop quickly.
This game will help them get as much use out of every stroke as possible alternating arms to get as many scoops as possible. The shorter the initial pull, the less distance they will cover with exerting similar amounts of energy. You want your swimmer to have a long stroke because they will go further using similar amounts of energy as a shorter, less effective stroke
Throwing a Ball
Pretend that your swimmer is catching a ball in the water. When she catches the ball her hand becomes cupped and she moves her hand through the water to throw the imaginary ball towards her feet.
Once she has done that, she will make a flat hand that will cut up her body to catch the next ball. Make sure that the child is alternating arm strokes.
Putting it All Together
After teaching the initial steps, it is time to put them together and practice. You can do this by having the swimmer hold onto a kick board, noodle or even your forearm and practice kicking while alternating strokes. As they become more confident, remove the flotation or only offer your hands, and then fingers as a security, before removing them all.
Can you Skip Doggy Paddle and Start with Crawl Stroke?
As a competitive swimmer and long time swim teacher, I do have to admit that I do not teach doggy paddle because it is not as efficient as crawl stroke.
The difference between the two is in the motion of the strokes during swim. A doggy paddle stroke never leaves the water, meaning your hands are always submerged, whereas the stroke for crawl stroke requires your arms to leave the water to return to the starting position. This is much more effective in movement through the water.
Crawl stroke also requires the swimmers head to go underwater, which creates a more streamlined position and therefore makes it easier to move through the water faster.
Crawl stroke is by far the more efficient stroke, but I do understand that it is not always needed when playing in the pool for young children. The reason I do not teach doggy paddle is that kids will naturally adapt crawl stroke to use in less formal situations, therefore teaching themselves doggy paddle.
By teaching a crawl stroke, I am able to instill the benefits of a superior stroke while giving the child the tools to adapt that stroke for everyday use in the water. What I have noticed in my own experience is that kids will adapt their crawl stroke to a doggy paddle while playing, but as soon as they want to race or get somewhere fast, they will begin using a full crawl stroke instead.
Teaching your child to doggy paddle will provide your child the ability to move through the water, allow them some freedom in the water and give you a little peace of mind during swim times. Once you have taught the concepts and your swimmer seems to understand, it is best to practice, practice, practice offering encouragement and praise as well as correction when needed.
What should you teach during the first swim lesson? The first swim lessons should be an assessment of the following basic skills:
- blowing bubbles,
- submerging underwater,
- floating, and
Check out this guide for all the details!
What should you take to your child’s first swim lesson? Bring proper swim attire, a warm towel, sunscreen, any applicable paperwork and a positive attitude. For more information, see this guide.


In reading through Plutarch’s attack on Colotes and his Epicurean views (“That It Is Not Possible To Live Pleasurably According To The Doctrines of Epicurus“), I was struck with the importance of the theme of “confident expectation” in Epicurean thought, which is also mentioned by James Warren.
The point is that it is extremely important that we have confident expectation that the pleasures we are experiencing now will continue. If we have a fear that we are going to lose them, then even as we experience those pleasures they will be diluted with that fear, and we will not experience the purity of the pleasure that would be possible if we did not have that fear. See PD 12. “It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn’t know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.”
And here is the classic statement of the concept, presumably from Epicurus himself, in Vatican Saying 33: The cry of the flesh is not to be hungry, thirsty, or cold; for he who is free of these and is confident of remaining so might vie even with Zeus for happiness.
Also, and this one certainly by Epicurus himself, in his letter to Menoeceus: “To habituate one’s self, therefore, to simple and inexpensive diet supplies all that is needful for health, and enables a man to meet the necessary requirements of life without shrinking, and it places us in a better condition when we approach at intervals a costly fare and renders us fearless of fortune.” [i.e. – without shrinking from, and fearless of the fortune of, threats to our loss of ability to sustain our health]
This concept is closely related to the references in the Epicurean texts to “stable condition” – the confident expectation is that of maintaining the stable condition of pleasure – and it unifies several of the subsidiary aspects of Epicurean theory:
1 – What is the benefit of “simple living” except for the confident expectation that it gives us that we will be able to continue it in the future, because it is easy to do?
2 -Why are we really concerned about the gods except for the need to gain a “confident expectation” that they will leave us alone?
3 – Why do we need to be concerned that the state of death is nothingness except for the “confident expectation” that we will not be tortured after death?
4 – Why do we need to refute the deterministic philosophers except for the need to have a “confident expectation” that our actions to control our circumstances and maintain our pleasures can succeed?
5 – What is the benefit of “self-sufficiency” and the “freedom which is the greatest benefit” of it? Is it not mainly that it gives us a “confident expectation” that our pleasures will continue?
6 – And in a general sense, is this not the same with the virtues as a whole? It is obviously not for the sake of courage or prudence or wisdom alone that we seek those tools, and they are not necessarily pleasurable in themselves. Are they not the means by which we gain the “confident expectation” that our lives and pleasures will continue?
These formulations could be turned around and stated as “____ drives away the fear of _____,” but it is a more positive way to say it as “____ gives us the confident expectation that pleasurable living will continue and _____ will not occur. More wordy, perhaps, but this formulation focuses on the action we can take to rid ourselves of the fear, rather than focusing on the fear itself. And not only is this more positive, but it provides a tighter link to the reason for the action in the first place. HOW does learning about the gods drive away fear? HOW does living simply help? HOW does being able to defend ourselves against our neighbors help us? By giving us a “confident expectation” that the gods will not interfere with our lives, by giving us a confident expectation that we will be able to continue to sustain our lifestyle, and by giving us a confident expectation that our neighbors will not interfere with us.
Pleasure as the only good was an idea held earlier by the Cyreniacs, but a key difference between them and Epicurus, as Warren points out, is that Epicurus held that if we actively pursue control over our circumstances, we can have a confident expectation that our pleasures will continue over time. Warren sees this is a pleasure in itself, and no doubt it is. But we should not pass over the fact that this describes the mechanism by which the other tools work, and helps us understand how to use them. For another example, the way we tune how simply or not we live, or how strongly we stick to “necessary pleasures,” and how we evaluate what “necessary” means, is to evaluate whether the particular action reasonably leads to a confident expectation that the result in the future will be pleasure rather than pain. We have no need to live less simply than is necessary to ensure our confident expectation of continued future pleasure. And we have no need to focus on the “necessity” of a pleasure except to the extent that we are confident that we can sustain it. It is not only the effort required to get unnecessary pleasures, but the effort required to keep them – which may not be at all possible – that we have to consider in pursuing them in the first place.
Other examples from the Epicurean texts:
- Vatican 33. The cry of the flesh is not to be hungry, thirsty, or cold; for he who is free of these and is confident of remain so might vie even with Zeus for happiness.
- “the surest guarantee of security” – PD 40. Those who possess the power to defend themselves against threats by their neighbors, being thus in possession of the surest guarantee of security, live the most pleasant life with one another; and their enjoyment of the fullest intimacy is such that if one of them dies prematurely, the others do not lament his death as though it called for pity.
- Also “conviction which inspires confidence” – PD 28. The same conviction which inspires confidence that nothing we have to fear is eternal or even of long duration, also enables us to see that in the limited evils of this life nothing enhances our security so much as friendship.
- Vatican Saying 34 – We do not so much need the assistance of our friends as we do the confidence of their assistance in need.
- Vatican Saying 7. For an aggressor to be undetected is difficult; and for him to be confident that his concealment will continue is impossible.
- Diogenes of Oinoanda (from a passage that people question as to whether it really applies to Aristotle). The issue of the flux is one of confidence – we have to have confidence that it is not so rapid that our senses cannot comprehend it: “Now Aristotle and those who hold the same Peripatetic views as Aristotle say that nothing is scientifically knowable, because things are continually in flux and, on account of the rapidity of the flux, evade our apprehension. We on the other hand acknowledge their flux, but not its being so rapid that the nature of each thing [is] at no time apprehensible by sense-perception. And indeed [in no way would the upholders of] the view under discussion have been able to say (and this is just what they do [maintain] that [at one time] this is [white] and this black, while [at another time] neither this is [white nor] that black, [if] they had not had [previous] knowledge of the nature of both white and black.”


Presentation on theme: "THE Marshmallow test: executive functioning in children and teens"— Presentation transcript:
1 THE Marshmallow test: executive functioning in children and teens With Educational InterventionsPresented by David T. Andersen, Ph.D.
2 Topics for Today: Part One Definition of Executive Functioning (EF).Looking at the neurological basis for EF.The Marshmallow test: emotional control and behavioral inhibition.The importance of neuroplasticity and mirror neurons in the development of EF skills, especially the skills of inhibition and emotional control.
3 Topics for Today: Part Two Attention and executive functioning.The influence of working memory and the capacity to self monitor on reading comprehension.Teaching EF skills.
4 Executive Functioning: Definition Executive Functioning Skills are a set of eight inter-related cognitive operations, mediated by the frontal lobes, that are responsible for goal directed, problem solving behavior.
5 EF DefinedThese cognitive operations consist of the capacity to inhibit or resist an impulse (Inhibit), to shift freely from one activity or mental set to another (Shift), and to regulate emotional responses (Emotional Control). In addition, executive functioning includes the capacity to initiate or begin a task or activity (Initiate), to hold information in mind for the purpose of completing a task (Working Memory), to manage current and future oriented task demands (Plan/Organize), to keep track of one’s possessions (Organization of Materials), and to monitor one’s own performance or to pay attention to the effect of one’s behavior on others (Monitor).
6 An additional EF definition Steven Feifer, a prominent school neuropsychologist, suggests that executive functioning can also be thought of as a set of multiple cognitive processes that act in a coordinated way to direct cognition, emotion, and motor functions.
7 Why Focus on Executive Functioning? The emergence of executive functioning deficits in PPT conversations. EF skills have become a main focus for psychologists, neuroscientists, and educators. Cognitive neuropsychology in general is a hot topic and it seems to be the direction in which school psychology is headed.As LD classifications seem to diminish, there has been a greater emphasis on EF skill deficits.Most importantly, EF skills are essential to academic and social success.The Marshmallow Test: Behavioral inhibition and emotional control
8 Left Hemisphere: Cerebral Cortex, Cerebellum, and Brain Stem
9 Frontal LobesEvolutionary Perspective: Frontal lobes are the most recent addition to the human brain.Frontal lobes comprise about 33% of the entire cerebral cortex for humans (about 15% for monkeys, 8% for dogs).Studies have shown that in mammals, the higher and more complex degree of social living, the more frontal lobe architecture there will be.The function of the frontal lobes is often compared to the function of an orchestra conductor.
13 Frontal Lobes (Continued) Developmental Perspective: Last part of the brain to fully mature (between 18 to 20 years of age). This has legal implications in cases of capital crimes.However,in terms of neuroplasticity, the brain never ceases to develop.
14 NeuroplasticityRefers to the discovery by neuroscientists that the structure and functioning of the brain changes, in children and adults, due to experience.Experience for the nervous system involves the activation of neural firing in response to a stimulus. When neurons become active, their connections to each other grow and supportive cells proliferate. This is how experience shapes neural structure.
16 NeuroplasiticityNeuroplastic changes not only generate structural alterations, they also are accompanied by changes in brain function, mental experience (feelings and emotional balance), and physical responses to stress.An important axiom in neuroscience is:“Cells that fire together, wire together.”Indeed, learning can be defined as the associations between neurons that are developed through repeated neural firing.
17 NeuroplasticityNeuroplasticity was found through advances in neuro-imaging techniques, the discovery of mirror neurons, and the results from autopsies, hemisphere-ectimies, and strokes.
18 Neuroplasticity (Continued) This has significant implications for educators.Skills that you have not learned, you can learn through repetition, sustained attention and effort in mastering the skill, and having the skill modeled (and scaffolded) by more competent peers and adults (one of Vygotsky’s main ideas).
19 NeuroplasticityMirror neurons are important to neuroplasticity in that they refer to processes within our social brain that perceive the intentional, goal directed actions of others and link this perception to the priming of the motor systems needed to engage in the same action. In other words, what we see, we become ready to do or to feel.
20 Neuroplasticity, inhibition, and emotional control Example from the attachment theory and emotional intelligence literature: Young children learn to regulate emotions through empathically based interactions with parents and other caregivers. These interactions set up the neural pathways from the frontal lobes to the amygdala, part of the emotional brain.
21 Emotional Control: The Marshmallow Test Revisited The ability to regulate emotions derives in part from early attachment experiences with caregivers where emotions were consistently (not perfectly) recognized, validated, empathized with, and seen as opportunities for intimacy, social relationships, and goal attainment.
22 Emotional ControlRelational experiences throughout life promote the development of self regulation in the brain, specifically, the pre-frontal regions. This insight – that neural pathways develop in response to interpersonal relationships – has generated the research in the new field of interpersonal neurobiology.
23 Emotional Control: The Marshmallow Test Revisited Researchers have found that over time, the interpersonal regulation of affect becomes internalized into self-soothing and the capacity to regulate inner states.Studies have shown that children born into a family where parents do not respond to the child’s affective experience have deficits in brain functioning as early in life as one year.The EF skill of emotion regulation in children and teens involves the ability to be aware of, tolerate, put into words, and use emotions adaptively to regulate distress.
24 Summary: The Importance of Appropriate Emotional Regulation The awareness and integration of affect that is characteristic of behavioral inhibition and emotional control has been shown to increase creativity and cognitive flexibility while improving decision making and problem solving skills. In other words, appropriate emotional control enhances cognitive performance. It also has been shown to be associated with several important mental health benefits.
25 Part Two: Executive Functioning Skills and Attention Executive Functioning Skills refer to a set of inter-related cognitive operations that are responsible for purposeful, goal directed and problem solving behavior. These operations are all mediated by the frontal lobe.Sustained Attention is a core or foundational skill that is important to several domains of EF. Sustained Attention refers to the ability to direct and maintain a focused attention on a specific stimulus.Selective Attention refers to the ability to attend selectively to stimuli in the environment.
26 Executive Functioning Skills and Attention Sustained Attention and Selective Attention are requirements for basic information processing and they are skills mediated by the right dorso-lateral cortex of the frontal lobe. The function of attention has been compared to the combined effects of a spotlight and a vacuum cleaner and it is the primary way neural structures develop. That is, the brain learns mainly from what the mind attends to.
27 Executive Functioning, Attention, and ADHD William James, a well known philosopher and one of the founders of the field of psychology, famously said in the late 1800’s.“The education of attention would be an education par excellence.”ADHD is seen as a frontal lobe dysfunction where the neurons responsible for attention and the inhibition of behavior are “asleep.” Stimulant medications work because they target and stimulate these neurons.
28 EF Skills (Continued)There are two strands of EF: Behavioral Regulation (BR) and Metacognition (MC).BR: Inhibit, Shift, Emotional Control.MC: Initiate, Working Memory, Plan/organize, Organization of Materials, and Monitor.
29 Working Memory, Monitoring and Reading Of children identified as having specific learning disabilities, the great majority (over 80%) have a disability in the area of reading.On the WISC-IV, the two test indices that best predict successful readers are the Verbal Comprehension and Working Memory Indices. Verbal Comprehension looks at concept formation (vocabulary), social judgment, and abstract thinking; working memory in reading refers to the capacity to remember the information that comes at the beginning of a sentence or paragraph so that the information that comes later makes sense. Good readers have good working memory.
30 MonitoringGood readers also have the metacognitive ability to monitor their performance. This means that a successful reader pays attention to comprehension and quickly becomes aware if the material has not been understood.In contrast, poor readers will decode large sections of the text before they become aware of comprehension deficits.
31 Teaching EF SkillsIn general, children who have executive functioning issues require structure in their daily lives, clear and simple directions on how to accomplish tasks, clear expectations, and lots of praise when they display even the smallest EF skills.Remember to create an environment that functions as a surrogate frontal lobe. Examples would include graphic organizers, sticky notes, and nonverbal signals from teacher to student to help the student refocus or to inhibit behavior.
32 Teaching EF SkillsStated another way, when teaching executive functioning skills, it is important to create an environment that functions as an executive function. Through repetition, modeling, and engagement with the specific intervention, neural pathways develop in the student that are then used for both behavioral regulation and meta-cognitive skills.
33 Teaching EF SkillsOverlearned tasks are less likely to overwhelm a student’s existing capacity for EF skills. For example, learning to drive a stick shift at first takes all of your attention. When shifting becomes automatic, one can simultaneously drive and think about other tasks.Explicitly demonstrate problem solving strategies that the student will need in class. This helps with the EF skills of initiating and monitoring.
34 Teaching EF SkillsReading: requires attention, impulse control, cognitiveflexibility, working memory, and self monitoring.Math: requires attention, self monitoring, planning and organizing, working memory, and impulse control.Writing: requires working memory, self monitoring skills, and the capacity to initiate a task or activity, and the integration of information from several brain centers.
35 Educational Interventions Educational Interventions need to function as a surrogate frontal lobe (See handout). Repetition is essential.Problem BehaviorsThinking SystemsInstructional StrategiesDifficulty Getting Started -slow/unable to begin a new task, activity, or assignmentExecutive Function:Initiate• provide written and oraldirections;• check that directions are clear;• begin work with mentor;• segment the work into smallinitial steps;• fold student's paper in halves,quarters, accordion patterns and ask them to work on just the first space
36 Disorganized - poor time management skills; inability to planahead; difficulty with sequencing; messy desk/locker; failure to turn-in work although it is complete; misplaces books/materials; writtenwork appears messy and lacks coherence.Executive Function:Organization• external organizers (calendars, watch with alarm);• instructional chart withsequence of steps articulated;• instruction chart posted on desk top on index cards or stickies;• daily schedule, routines, rituals;• study buddy;• assistive listening devices;• keyboarding instruction and computer;
37 Distractible - not responding when called upon; poor task completion; difficulty distinguishing importantinformation/ main idea from less important; skipping from oneactivity to the next.Executive Function: Sustained Attention• preferential seating;• instruction on appropriateacademic level;• assignments that are highlyengaging;• hands-on learning, based on interests and strength;• reducing the number of items per assignment;• alternating response modes;• permitting students to workproblems in an unusual order (bottom to top);• using external non-verbal cues to prompt student to return to task;• increasing the amount ofimmediate feedback (e.g., circulate during independent work and correct some of each student's work to provide immediate feedback);• using cooperative learning after the strategies have been taught to whole class;
38 Hyperactive - difficulty staying in chair; high level of gross-motor activity (younger children); restlessness (adolescents); seekssensory stimulation (chewing, tapping, leg swinging);Executive Function:Sustained Attention• providing acceptableopportunities for movement rather than attempting to restrict activity;• providing a specific number of walking passes (e.g.,sharpening pencil, drinks of water, access to books, wall charts);• providing small manipulables to channel activity from gross to fine motor (e.g., clay, stress balls);• establishing work centers asopportunity to move to choiceactivity;• standing random-drills;• restating rules before theopportunity for rule infraction;• increasing proprioceptivefeedback (consult with OT or PT);• instructional strategies that use tactile materials
39 Impulsive - shouts out answers without being called upon; exhibits risk taking behaviors; does not think about consequences of behavior; difficulty following rules; difficulty taking turns;Executive Function:Inhibition• teaching self-monitoring skills;• teaching self-regulating skills;• teaching the behavior you want to see;• giving positive feedback 5 to 8times more frequently than negative ones;• teaching student verbal or motor response to use while waiting (e.g., holding up a "HELP" card, writing note to self so he will remember)
40 Memory - inconsistent and/ or poor recall of previously learned information; reduced reading comprehension with long and/or complex sentences; forgetting assignments, social commitments.Executive Function: Working Memory; Attention• segment study time into smaller units; structured breaks; alternating subject matter• mute-sensory instruction;• establish lesson context andlinks to prior knowledge;• highlight most importantfeatures (color coding, shapes, size emphasis);• provide opportunity for novelrepetitions until student achieves automaticity of basic skills/facts
41 Self-Monitoring and Evaluation - lacks "internal voice, " the internal dialogue to self-coach and/or guide thinking and behavior; unaware that his/her behavior is inappropriate, annoying to others; difficulty checking work once completed;Executive Function:Monitoring• role model by thinking out loud;• provide non-judgmentalfeedback to establish sequence and causality of events;• provide rubric on desktop for correcting work and provide structured practice in using it
42 Transition - difficulty transitioning between activities, subjects, classes; repeats same idea, question afterreceiving a response; repeats same error even when told it is incorrectExecutive Function: Sustained Attention• provide three-part transitioncues (stopping, moving to, and starting);• develop transition rituals;• create transition songs, games, activities (primary grades)
43 ReferencesDamasio, Antonio (2005) Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York, NY. Putnam.Davidson, Richard, & Begley, Sharon (2012). The Emotional Life of Your Brain., New York, NY., Hudson St. Press.Gilgun, J. (2010) Executive Function & Self Regulation in Children. E: books, Smashwords Edition.Greenberg, Leslie (2010). Emotion Focused Therapy., Washington, DC., American Psychological Association.Kaufman, C. (2010). Executive Function in the Classroom. Baltimore, MD., Paul H. Brookes Publishing
44 ReferencesLeDoux, Joseph (1996). The Emotional Brain., New York, NY., Touchstone.Seifer, S. G. & Toffalo, D.A., (2007) Integrating RTI with Cognitive Neuropsychology. Middleton MD., School Psychology Press.Schore, A.N. (2003). Affect Dysregulation and the Disorders of the Self. New York, NY., NortonSiegel, Daniel (2007). The Mindful Brain. New York, NY., Norton.
45 Appendix I: Empirically supported functions of the middle prefrontal cortex Body regulation in terms of monitoring the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.Attuned communication with others.Emotional balance.Response flexibility: the capacity to pause before responding.Empathy.Insight.Fear modulation.Morality.
46 Appendix II: Improving Adult EF Mindfulness meditation: There are over 1000 peer reviewed journal articles in psychology on the mental health benefits of mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness has been shown to improve cortical functioning in the right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex and it has been shown to prevent the adverse effects of aging on the capacity for attention. Mindfulness has also been shown to increase left prefrontal lobe and immune system functioning.Exercise: Increases cognitive abilities and the EF skill of memory. Exercise is associated with neurogenesis in the hippocampus - part of the limbic system that is important to memory. Exercise has also been shown to have several mental health benefits.
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Parvo-Vac (Canada)This page contains information on Parvo-Vac for veterinary use.
The information provided typically includes the following:
- Parvo-Vac Indications
- Warnings and cautions for Parvo-Vac
- Direction and dosage information for Parvo-Vac
Parvo-VacThis treatment applies to the following species:
For use in swine only
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION: Parvo-Vac is for vaccination of healthy swine as an aid in preventing reproductive failure caused by porcine parvovirus (PPV). The vaccine is prepared by chemically inactivating a porcine parvovirus strain grown in an established swine cell line, and combining the viral fluids with a sterile adjuvant.
DISEASE DESCRIPTION: PPV is a major cause of swine reproductive failure. Infection in susceptible swine is generally subclinical. However, infection of pregnant females may involve the developing fetus. Stillbirths, mummified fetuses, embryonic death, and infertility (SMEDI) are the chief manifestations of the disease. Reproductive failure generally occurs when susceptible females are exposed during the first 70 days of gestation. Thereafter, the fetuses may survive in utero infection. The PPV agent is enzootic in the United States1 and has a worldwide distribution. Thus, a large proportion of adult swine carry antibodies or disseminate the virus.2 When maternally acquired antibodies decline below protective levels, stock is at risk.
SAFETY AND EFFICACY: Postvaccination reactions were not observed in experimental pigs vaccinated with Parvo-Vac or in swine vaccinated under field conditions in extensively safety trials. In efficacy studies, vaccination of seronegative gilts before breeding protected 95.7% of developing fetuses from infection and death after challenge with virulent PPV. In contrast, 46.3% of the fetuses from nonvaccinated control gilts became infected and died following the same challenge. Previous studies have shown that PPV vaccination can produce consistent protection despite low hemagglutination inhibition antibody titers.3
Directions For Use
1. General Directions: Shake well. Aseptically administer 2 mL intramuscularly.
2. Primary Vaccination: Administer a single 2-mL dose to healthy sows 14-60 days before breeding. Healthy gilts, however, should receive a single 2-mL dose as near as possible to 14 days before breeding; if gilts are vaccinated sooner, persisting maternal antibodies may interfere with vaccination.
3. Revaccination: Semiannual revaccination with a single dose before breeding is recommended.
4. Good animal husbandry and herd health management practices should be employed.
1. Store at 2°-7°C. Prolonged exposure to higher temperatures may adversely affect potency. Do not freeze.
2. Use entire contents when first opened.
3. Sterilized syringes and needles should be used to administer this vaccine.
4. Do not vaccinate within 21 days before slaughter.
5. Contains gentamicin as preservative.
6. As with many vaccines, anaphylaxis may occur after use. Initial antidote of epinephrine is recommended and should be followed with appropriate supportive therapy.
7. This product has been shown to be efficacious in healthy animals. A protective immune response may not be elicited if animals are incubating an infectious disease, are malnourished or parasitized, are stressed due to shipment or environmental conditions, are otherwise immunocompromised, or the vaccine is not administered in accordance with label directions.
1. Mengeling WL: Porcine Parvovirus: Frequency of naturally occurring transplacental infection and viral contamination of fetal porcine kidney cell cultures. Am J Vet Res 36:41-44, 1975.
2. Johnson RH, Donaldson-Wood CR, Joo HS, et al: Observations on the epidemiology of porcine parvovirus. Austr Vet J 52:80-84, 1976.
3. Mengeling WL, Brown TT, Paul PS, et al: Efficacy of an inactivated virus vaccine for prevention of porcine parvovirus-induced reproductive failure. Am J Vet Res 40:204-207, 1979.
Technical inquiries should be directed to Pfizer Animal Health Technical Services, (800) 366-5288 (USA), (800) 461-0917 (Canada).
For veterinary use only
U.S. Veterinary License No. 189
Pfizer Animal Health, Exton, PA 19341, USA, Div. of Pfizer Inc., NY, NY 10017
® Registered trademark of Pfizer Products Inc; Pfizer Canada Inc., licensee
Presentation: Available in 10 dose vials.
NAC No.: 11980694
16,740 TRANS-CANADA HIGHWAY, KIRKLAND, QC, H9H 4M7
|Technical Services Canada:||800-461-0917|
|Technical Services USA:||800-366-5288|
|Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the Parvo-Vac information published above. However, it remains the responsibility of the readers to familiarize themselves with the product information contained on the Canadian product label or package insert.|
Copyright © 2015 North American Compendiums. Updated: 2014-12-03


Laminated timber structure:
A resistant and energy-efficient material
"The laminated timber design is part of the energy efficient construction of the future. Wood is sustainable, CO2 neutral and a highly effective insulator, creating excellent living conditions. One of wood's specific advantages is its ability to reduce energy use. Bearing in mind the growing importance of energy-efficient construction methods, construction with wood will hold an increasingly important role in the future."
Ecological and natural material
Laminated Timber Structure Projects
Examples to draw inspiration
Manufacture of laminated timber beams provides for countless forms to adapt to the most cutting-edge designs. Look at some of our noteworthy examples


Can small protected areas still deliver large benefits for both people and nature?
New research from Papua New Guinea demonstrates that locally managed marine areas effectively protect grouper spawning aggregations. And with modest expansions, these protected areas can greatly improve their conservation benefits.
Local Protection for Local Benefits
Known to the local community as manang, the brown-marbled grouper reigns king on the coral reefs of northeastern Papua New Guinea (PNG). Patterned in chocolate and white, these apex reef predators can reach lengths of 1 meter and weigh up to 10 kilograms.
“This species is very important for both commercial fisheries and the local community,” says Pete Waldie, a marine ecologist and PhD candidate at James Cook University’s ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.
While an important food source, the grouper are also at risk of being overfished — they’re a long-lived, slow growing fish that takes years to reach sexual maturity. The species is currently listed as near threatened by the IUCN.
Just offshore of Dyual Island, in PNG’s New Ireland Province, more than a thousand grouper from three species gather each year between March and July to breed in what’s known as a fish spawning aggregation. To protect their resource and help curb overfishing, the local community, Leon, partnered with The Nature Conservancy to establish a small locally managed marine area, or LMMA, in 2004. Designated as a no-take zone, this 0.2 square kilometer patch of reef would allow the fish to breed undisturbed.
A 0.2 km2-protected area sounds absurdly small, especially when compared to the massive marine protected areas scattered across the world’s oceans. But marine conservation works a bit differently in Melanesia — bigger is not better. Communities in PNG own the land, reefs, and other natural resources adjacent to their traditional home, a system known as customary tenure. In many areas that ownership system is further broken down to different clans within the community, each having the obligation to care for their patch of reef exclusively. Small LMMAs — typically averaging around 1 km2 throughout Melanesia — match this tenure system and are widespread throughout the region.
“If a community owns 10 kilometers of reef and they protected all of their traditional fishing grounds people would starve, because there would be nowhere to go fishing,” explains Rick Hamilton, director of The Nature Conservancy’s Melanesia program.
The size of any community’s fishing grounds is also limited by manpower — Waldie says that 90 percent of the fishing is done with hand-carved dugout canoes, so fishing grounds are limited by how far someone can paddle in one day.
Previous research by Conservancy scientists showed that despite its small size, establishing the LMMA (known locally as Bolsurik) directly resulted in more grouper in the water. But was protecting the spawning aggregation site enough to ensure a healthy population and protect the grouper year-round?
Acoustic Telemetry, Spaghetti Tags, and Social Surveys
To answer these questions, Waldie and his colleagues used a combination of high-tech acoustic telemetry and low-tech tagging to figure out exactly where the grouper were during spawning and how far they dispersed in between aggregations.
With the help of the local community and Tapas Potuku, the Conservancy’s community conservation coordinator in New Ireland Province, Waldie captured 29 grouper in May and June of 2013. They surgically fitted each fish with a small acoustic transmitter. “It’s a small capsule and that sends out a coded ping,” says Waldie. “So seven beeps in a row that tells you ‘I am fish number seven.’” They also attached spaghetti tags — long strips of plastic coded with a phone number — so the fishermen could call in with the date and location if they caught any of the study fish.
Then Waldie and Potuku moored 20 acoustic receivers throughout the reef, anchoring them to the reef with stainless steel cables. Those receivers recorded each time a transmitter-equipped fish swam within approximately 100 meters. “Its like a piece of candy at the supermarket checkout,” explains Hamilton. “Every time the fish swims past the receiver it gets swiped.”
After two years, Waldie and his colleagues had enough data to understand how and where the grouper were moving in relation to the LMMA. Their results were published today in Royal Society Open Science.
“We found that the LMMA is doing exactly what it was set up to do,” says Waldie, protecting all of the tagged grouper during the week-long fish spawning aggregation. But they also found that all of the grouper left the LMMA during the non-spawning season, dispersing to the surrounding 16 km2 of reef and leaving them vulnerable to fishing or other outside threats for 90 percent of the year.
But the grouper didn’t go far — all stayed within 16 km2 of the LMMA and many dispersed no more than 1 or 2 km2. “So if we center protection around the spawning sites and expand the LMMA to a size of 1 to 2 km2,” says Waldie, “then we can protect a large proportion of the population year round.” He estimates that such an expansion would protect 30 to 50 percent of the fish during the non-spawning season.
Waldie and his colleagues also conducted social surveys as part of the research to better understand how the community felt about their LMMA. Potuku explains that fishers in the local community had differing opinions of the LMMA when it was first established. Now, the survey results show that a significant majority of community members felt the LMMA benefited their livelihoods, the community, and the environment. “The support of the local community is the only thing keeping these conservation efforts working,” says Waldie. With high levels of community support, a small expansion of the protected area is not out of the question.
“Hopefully other communities around New Ireland Province and PNG will use the management actions and approach taken by this community as a model they too can replicate within their marine tenure,” adds Potuku.
Beyond the Bolsurik LMMA, Waldie’s results bode well for the success of LMMAs throughout Melanesia. If the same limited-dispersal pattern holds true in other locations and for other species, then communities can significantly improve protection for their fish populations for a very small cost.
“The bigger, sexier western-style protected areas doesn’t work in areas where people are highly dependent on marine resources and have customary ownership,” says Hamilton. “Waldie’s results are further support for the concept that small LMMAs can have significant fisheries benefits, even for large species, if they are placed in the right location.”
Originally published at The Nature Conservancy.


Airborne or not?
The debate rages when no less than 239 scientists recently attached their signatures to an open letter published in the Infectious Disease Society of America. The content of the letter? The scientists suggest that virus – SARS-CoV-2 – may spread by airborne transmission, lingering in the air for hours within lighter “microdroplets.”
The letter challenges the most recent guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO), urging the institution to recognize airborne transmission as a significant route of CoviD-19 infection, and plan accordingly.
“Hand-washing and social distancing are appropriate, but in our view, insufficient to provide protection from virus-carrying respiratory microdroplets released into the air by infected people,” states the letter,
The World Health Organization has said the coronavirus is only confirmed to be airborne during aerosol-generating medical procedures performed in health care settings, such as intubation. It says the virus primarily spreads through larger respiratory droplets, which don’t travel as far, which is why maintaining social distancing of about six feet has been recommended. (Read: The COVID19 Saga: The Airborne Debate)
As is known, SARS-CoV-2 can be airborne in specific situations, most especially in the healthcare setting where there is aerosol generating procedures such as suctioning, intubating or procedures that involve the upper airway. That is why wearing of appropriate PPE, and ventilation should be strictly observed by frontliners.
A study published in the Centers for Disease Control, Emerging Infectious Disease data base last March 2020 by Zhen-Dong Guo et. al states that smaller droplets that can remain airborne don’t necessarily contain enough virus to infect someone. But this is an area of active research and may change.
So can is SARS-CoV-airborne? The verdict is not yet COMPLETELY and ABSOLUTELY out (read: no conclusive evidence yet). However, International Health authorities are investigating and reviewing their guidelines after the appeal.
The World Health Organization’s COVID-19 technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove said the UN health agency would seen consolidate the growing knowledge and information around transmission. Van Kerkhove said they will be issuing a brief in the coming days which will outline everything that they have in this area.
What if SARS-CoV-2 becomes Airborne?
All of the laid out precautionary measures against the CoviD-19 virus are actually adequate: proper wearing of face masks, observing social distancing and avoiding gatherings, avoiding places with poor ventilation as much as possible, frequent hand-washing, etc. There are no drastic changes in the measures, just stricter compliance.
Airborne transmissions bring with it new complications. For one, if the virus is airborne, simply talking sans a can spread the virus. So can singing so.
So I hope my neighbor doing Karaoke nightly (and everyone for that matter, since it’s a popular Filipino past-time) would limit it, or give us all a favor and at best stop for now.
The possibility of airborne transmission is not new, even if the evidence is not yet definitive. There is no change in the precautionary measures, but more prudence should be observed, and for good readon: new evidences always tend to make people act like hoarders.
Wear face masks, avoid crowded areas and enclosed spaces with poor ventilation.
Limit trips outside the house to necessities only and practice physical distancing, work from home if possible, and disinfect regularly.


Jean-Baptiste Greuze was born at Tournus on 21 August, 1725. He was the sixth child (of nine) of a master-tiler. Little is known about his childhood, but he did study for a short time at Lyons under Grandon, an indifferent painter of portraits. Greuze then went to Paris, and applied to the Academy. He was accepted at the Academy in June of 1755, and the painter Silvestre and the sculptor Pigalle encouraged his early efforts.
His work soon caught the attention of La Live de Jully, an influential collector who began to take an interest in him. In 1755 his Lecture de la Bible; exhibited privately by La Live, was a great success. The public, intrigued by the touching sentiment and the novelty of the subject matter, was also enthusiastic when the picture was exhibited at the Salon later that same year.
Pigalle introduced Greuze to Abbé Gougenot, a rich amateur, who took the young artist under his wing. Thanks to Gougenot's patronage, Greuze was able to make a trip to Italy. After the journey, Greuze painted Italian genre scenes, portraits and head-studies of women. These often-excellent portraits show that he was quite capable of comprehending and conveying reality, but he wished to make some more striking contribution to art. Greuze wished to raise art above the everyday, no more art for art's sake, but art harnessed to moral and educational purposes.
At the 1761 Salon his Village Betrothal was brilliantly successful - Diderot praised it to the skies and for the next ten years enthusiastically championed his protégé. At this point, Greuze become the high priest of the religion of the heart, and followed up with a long series of homiletic pictures which delighted a sentimental-minded public.
The importance of Greuze is historical rather than artistic. He wished to express the spirit of his age, an age that longed to be touched. His interests were literary, and he attempted to paint a novel in each of his works. Truth was not enough, he arranged and re-arranged nature, striving to pose as virtuous, but hoping to titillate as well. It is this chord of falseness and his over-stated appeals to sentimentality, which strike modern viewers, and leave us disdainful of his lack of confidence in art unsupported by narrative. That his impetus is public instead of private is painfully obvious in his pandering to the 19th century sensibility. Where he hoped to elevate art and affect society, he instead created parodies that do not move the modern viewer in any meaningful way. Although he did indeed succeed in expressing something of the spirit of his age, in speaking the new language of the heart, he sacrificed his art to his ambition.
In 1769 he made a bid for admission to the Academy as an 'historical painter' with his Septimus Severus reproaching his son Caracalla for an attempt on his life; but the work was very badly received by the Academicians. Greuze was apprised, much to his disgust, that he was admitted only as a 'genre painter', which was then considered a much inferior category. As he was inordinately vain, this setback left him an embittered man. To add to his troubles, the unseemly behaviour of his pretty wife, Anne-Gabrielle Babuty, embarrassed him and eventually led to their estrangement. Withdrawing from the Salon exhibitions, he showed his work henceforth in his own studio, and the public flocked to see them.
Thanks to the sale of his pictures and the prints engraved from them, he had amassed a considerable fortune; but the Revolution ruined him. Ferociously independent, rancorous, proud, and quick to take offence, the humourless, puritanical artist ended his days in extreme poverty, his one consolation being his daughter's devoted companionship. He died in 1805.
contributed by Gifford, Katya


Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first female doctor to become qualified in England, has been given a doodle on Google's homepage to mark her 180th birthday. Anderson paved the way for women's medical education in Britain by opening a school of medicine for women.
Born in 1836 in Whitechapel, London, to a pawnbroker with 12 children, she received a good education. Her decision to become a doctor was made after she met Dr Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor to graduate in the US.
However, the road to becoming a doctor was not an easy one. Unable to be accepted into any medical school, she enrolled as a nursing student at the Middlesex Hospital. She attended classes with male colleagues but was eventually barred after complaints were made.
She finally took the Society of Apothecaries examination and qualified in 1865, taking advantage of a loophole in admissions for the Society of Apothecaries. The society immediately amended its rules to stop other women from obtaining a medical licence to practise.
In 1866, she was appointed a medical attendant at the St Mary's Dispensary in London. She was however determined to become a qualified doctor. She learnt French and applied for a medical degree from the University of Sorbonne in Paris after she found out that the faculty of medicine's dean was in favour of admitting women.
Despite this she was still refused entry into the British Medical Register. She married James Anderson in 1871 and had three children. Garrett set up the New Hospital for Women at the St Mary's Dispensary in 1872, and went on to co-found the London School of Medicine for Women in 1894, the only teaching hospital in Britain that offered places to women.
She worked at the school and was appointed as dean from 1883 to 1902. Following her death in 1918, the school was renamed the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital and is now part of what is currently the medical school at University College London.
That was just one of the many firsts achieved by Anderson. She retired to Aldeburgh in Suffolk in 1907. Within a year, in November 1908, she was elected as Mayor of Aldeburgh, a position previously held by her father, which also made her the first female mayor and magistrate in England.


Located in the offices of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Department is a small machine, whose purpose is to use algae to clean wastewater. This bioreactor is the creation of Christopher Sales, an assistant professor in the CAEE department, and Jacob Price, a third-year engineering doctoral candidate. The device uses algae, which can disrupt aquatic environments to nutrients out of wastewater.
“Typically, when [nutrients such as nitrate, phosphorus and ammonia] get into rivers or any body of water, they cause natural algal blooms,” Sales said. Algal blooms can cause illnesses in birds, fish and mammals; for example, Dungeness crabs are currently considered inedible by humans due to concentrations of domoic acid in their bodies.
“The idea is instead of having these algae blooms occur in the environment, why not harness them, why not keep them within the reactor system?” Price explained that humans excrete products such as urea and proteins in their waste. The activated sludge in treatments is designed to oxidize to reduce carbon. The organic carbon is transformed into carbon dioxide and released into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, ammonia-oxidizing and nitrogen-oxygen bacteria can transform reduced nitrogen into nitrite and nitrate. Large wastewater treatment plants take wastewater that has already been treated for organic carbon and place it in a large chamber. The material is oxidized so that the ammonia becomes nitrite and nitrate. In a third chamber, in which there is no aeration, bacteria use the nitrite and nitrate as electron acceptors similar to the way humans use oxygen. The nitrogen gas from the process is released back into the atmosphere. This process is expensive to conduct, so many companies end up releasing the ammonia or nitrate into waterways. This excess nitrogen allows for the development of algae blooms.
“If we were to use this mixed community of algae and bacteria together, before we were to release [the wastewater], the algae and the bacteria in the algae community would be growing in the reactor itself, so what’s leaving is finally cleaner. And once it hits the receiving water, you’re less likely to have those algae blooms,” Price continued.
“When we pass that dirty water through the algae, the whole goal is to have clean water that comes out, so that when we dispense that water into open water bodies, it keeps the quality,” Sales said. The concentration of suspended solids in the bioreactor’s effluent is much less than the maximum limit imposed by the law.
The algae were obtained from a fountain on South Street near the University of Pennsylvania campus. “It’s a natural microbiota, so there are both algae and bacteria in there,” Sales said.
Price estimated that there are between 350 and 400 microbial species in the algae community. In comparison, most photoreactor studies have a much smaller number of species, topping off at about 40 species.
Wastewater treatment is typically conducted using activated sludge. Activated sludge is traditionally composed of heterotrophic bacteria. The activated sludge process takes wastewater influent and mixes it in an aeration vessel. The aeration provides dissolved oxygen to the various bacteria, which use the oxygen to eat the organic carbon and respire carbon dioxide. When the influent leaves the tank, the bacteria is taken to a clarifier and recycled back into the aeration vessel. Meanwhile, the water that goes through the clarifier is relatively clean, though it is often further disinfected afterward.
The machine is based off of designs from previous research of Sales, and it was later designed and built by Price. The bioreactor is powered by two separate pumps. One pump recycles the water; it takes the water from the recycle vessel and pumps it into the bottom of the reactor. The reactor fluid passes through the biomass zone, leaves the reactor through the top port, and returns to the recycle vessel. The second pump takes influent, or feed, from its own vessel and pumps it into the recycle vessel. “Instantaneous mixing occurs because we have aeration there. As that feed vessel pump is pumping the influent into the recycle vessel, it displaces the effluent port on the recycle vessel,” Price explained. “So for one drop that comes in, another has to leave.”
“Before I became an assistant professor here, Mira Olson had already started working on algae a little bit, and her main focus was looking at how algae can treat landfill leachate,” Sales said. “I started working on that for my post-doc, but we didn’t adapt the reactor we had in that paper until [Price] got here when he started about two and a half years ago.”
“The next big step is scaling up the system. So right now we just have the laboratory scale system, and we’ve been able to demonstrate that it works, but to really put it into practice we need to make it a lot larger because the flows of wastewater that go through a wastewater treatment plant are really high, especially for a large city like Philadelphia. It’s on the orders of millions of gallons per day, whereas our reactor is so small we’re actually only putting out [tens of gallons per day],” Sales said.
Price’s current research involves studying the total metabolic capabilities of the bacteria species in the community. “I’m also tracking community and diversity information, so how does the community change over time or in reaction to different influent contents. And then on top of that, I’m not just interested in the community itself, but also what the community is doing,” he said.


Legend of Shami Tree
Associated with Dussehra is the legend of Shami tree found in our epic Mahabharata. The Pandavas who were on their 14 years of exile in the forests, were to spend another year in disguise. They possessed many divine and distinctive weapons due to their skill as well as penance.
A lesser-known tradition associated with the festival relates to the Mahabharata, specifically to the one year incognito exile period the Pandavas underwent following a preceding 12 year vanvas, or forest exile, that was imposed on them. Disguise being indispensable, they found it necessary to lay aside the many divine and distinctive weapons that they possessed. They secreted these in a â€˜Shamiâ€™ tree (Prosopis spicigera) near their incognito residence.
When the year ended, they returned to the spot, found their weaponry intact, and worshiped (in thanksgiving) both the Shami tree and the Goddess Durga, presiding deity of strength and victory. Meanwhile, the Kauravas had invaded that area, suspecting the residence of the Pandavas there. Upon finishing their devotions, the Pandavas made straight to battle, and won the contest comprehensively. The day that all these events occurred on has since been known as â€œVijayadashamiâ€, where â€œVijayaâ€ is the Sanskrit word for â€œVictoryâ€. The fact of the comprehensive success of the Pandavas in their endeavour has been extrapolated to the everyday ventures of the common man today. People exchange Shami leaves and wish each other victory in their own ventures and efforts.


Official Definition of the Term "Jew" in the Government-General, July 24, 1940
Regulation for the Definition of the Term "Jew" in the Government-General July 24, 1940
Where the word "Jew" is used in Legal and Administrative Provisions in the Government-General, it is to be interpreted as follows:
1) Anyone who is a Jew, or is considered a Jew, in accordance with the Legal Provisions in the Reich;
2) Anyone who is a Jew, or is considered a Jew, and is a former Polish citizen or stateless person, under § 2 of this Regulation.
1) A Jew is a person descended from at least three fully Jewish grandparents by race.
2) A person is considered a Jew if he is descended from two grandparents who are full Jews by race and a) if he was a member of the Jewish Religious Community on September 1, 1939, or joined such a community subsequently;
b) if he was married to a Jew on the date on which this Regulation came into force, or married a Jew subsequently;
c) if he is the product of extramarital intercourse with a Jew in accordance with para. 1 and was born after May 31, 1941.
3) A grandparent is automatically considered a full Jew if he was a member of a Jewish community.
1) Where the concept [person of] Jewish Mischling is used in Legal and Administrative Provisions of the Government-General, it is to be interpreted as follows:
a) a person who is a Jewish Mischling in accordance with the Reich Legal Provisions;
b) any person who is a former Polish citizen or stateless, and is descended from one or two grandparents who are full Jews by race, unless he is considered a Jew under § 2, para. 2.
2) The provisions under § 2, para. 3 apply similarly.
1) A business enterprise is considered Jewish if the owner is a Jew in accordance with § 1.
2) A business enterprise which is owned by a Limited Company is considered Jewish if one or more members who are personally responsible are Jews....
3) A place of business is also considered Jewish if it is in practice under the dominant influence of Jews.
4) The provisions under para. 1-4 also apply to Associations, Endowments, Institutions and other organizations which are not business enterprises.
Legal and Administrative Provisions issued for Jews apply to Jewish Mischling only where this is expressly stated.
This Regulation comes into effect on August 1, 1940.Cracow, July 24, 1940
The Governor General
VB1GG, 1940, pp. 231-232.
Copyright ©2004 Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority


“A landmark volume for the study of Andean maritime communities and an essential addition to the bookshelves of all archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists interested in fishing societies.”—Yuichi Matsumoto, Yamagata University
“Long overdue. A valuable resource for understanding past and present research on Andean maritime communities and their differing roles in greater Andean societal development.”—Mary Glowacki, bureau chief and state archaeologist, Florida Division of Historical Resources
Maritime Communities of the Ancient Andes examines how settlements along South America’s Pacific coastline played a role in the emergence, consolidation, and collapse of Andean civilizations from the Late Pleistocene era through Spanish colonization. Providing the first synthesis of data from Chile, Peru, and Ecuador, this wide-ranging volume evaluates and revises long-standing research on ancient maritime sites across the region.
These essays look beyond the subsistence strategies of maritime communities and their surroundings to discuss broader anthropological issues related to social adaptation, monumentality, urbanism, and political and religious change. Among many other topics, the evidence in this volume shows that the maritime industry enabled some urban communities to draw on marine resources in addition to agriculture, ensuring their success. During the Colonial period, many fishermen were exempt from paying tributes to the Spanish, and their specialization helped them survive as the Andean population dwindled. Contributors also consider the relationship between fishing and climate change—including weather patterns like El Niño.
The research in this volume demonstrates that communities situated close to the sea and its resources should be seen as critical components of broader social, economic, and ideological dynamics in the complex history of Andean cultures.
Gabriel Prieto is assistant professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Florida. Daniel H. Sandweiss, professor of anthropology and climate studies at the University of Maine, is coeditor of El Niño, Catastrophism, and Culture Change in Ancient America.


Here’s the thing: Sugar itself isn’t inherently bad. It gives you energy and occurs naturally in many healthy foods, like fruits, veggies, and dairy, says Jen Bruning, MS, RD, registered dietitian nutritionist and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics.
The problem is when you overdo it on *added* sugar — the kind found in processed foods and drinks. Consistently consuming too much can contribute to obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes; mess with your mood; and even give you more wrinkles. Plus, eating too much added sugar may exacerbate inflammation — which is particularly important when you have rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or other forms of inflammatory arthritis.
How Added Sugar May Worsen Arthritis Symptoms
Consuming too much processed sugar causes the body to release pro-inflammatory proteins called cytokines, says Bruning. Cytokine levels are already high when you have inflammatory arthritis; that chronic inflammation is what causes pain, swelling, and stiffness in your joints.
Overindulging in high-sugar foods also stokes your appetite and can cause weight gain. “Added sugar contributes calories with no nutritional value,” explains Joy Dubost PhD, RDN, registered dietitian nutritionist and food scientist in the New York City area. “When you’re overweight or obese, that fatty tissue produces hormones that can put you into more of an inflammatory state.”
In fact, a review of research found obesity can lead to more active and severe rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis. Extra weight also puts more pressure and stress on the joints, which can worsen the pain and stiffness associated with inflammatory arthritis, say experts.
Another effect of too much sugar in your diet: too many harmful compounds called AGEs (advanced glycation end products) form in the blood, which also contribute to chronic inflammation.
How to Stop Eating So Much Sugar
You can’t cut sugar out completely, but you can trim your sugar intake — and possibly help improve your arthritis symptoms — with these tips:
1. Prioritize your sweets
If you can’t live without a double dose of sugar in your morning coffee, but don’t necessarily need a heavy dessert after dinner, drop dessert from your diet first, suggests Bruning. Then wean yourself from two sugars in your coffee to one, then to none or an acceptable non-nutritive sweetener. “Making slow changes that you can live with will help you stick with them in the long run,” says Bruning.
2. Say no to soda
Sugar-sweetened beverages are the biggest contributors of sugar in our American diets, says Dubost. A 20-ounce bottle of a popular soda brand contains 16 teaspoons of added sugar and 240 calories. Research shows that regularly consuming sugar-sweetened drinks is linked to weight gain and obesity, which can worsen arthritis symptoms. And a small study found that drinking the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar from soda per day led to an increase in inflammatory markers.
3. And go easy on coffee concoctions
That’s because a medium pumpkin spice latte from one popular coffee house has more than 12 teaspoons of sugar and 420 calories; a medium frozen mocha swirl from another chain contains about 35 teaspoons of sugar and 730 calories. That’s right — in one drink. Some flavored syrups are all sugar, says Dubost. Unsweetened tea and coffee are your healthiest options, she adds, but if you prefer flavor, consider the syrups made with non-nutritive sweeteners.
4. Look for “added sugars” on food labels
You never really know how much sugar a given food has until you read the nutrition facts label and ingredients list. Seemingly non-sugary foods like crackers, nut butters, or frozen dinners can have a lot more hidden added sugar than you might realize. Reading labels can give you a sense of what’s in the foods you eat regularly so you can start comparing.
You’ll start to see the new FDA-mandated nutrition facts panels on more packaged foods, which includes a separate line for grams of “added sugar” per serving. (Other changes: calories per serving and serving size will be bigger and bolder.) Companies have until January 1, 2020 to change their labels, though. If your favorite foods haven’t made the switch yet, you can check the manufacturer’s website for the info, suggest Dubost; or look for a SmartLabel, where you can scan a QR or digital code on the package and get detailed information on the product.
5. Or scan the ingredients list
Ingredients in a given food are listed by weight; if there’s sugar in the top three, says Dubost, you know the product contains a lot. There are at least 61 different names for sugar listed on food labels. Some common ones include sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup, as well as cane sugar, dextrose, invert sugar, maltose, and rice syrup, among others. Honey and molasses may be more “natural,” but they still count as added sugar, says Dubost.
6. Downsize sugary food portions
Opt for one scoop of ice cream, not a sundae; a bite-size piece of chocolate, not a whole bar; a small flavored coffee, not the supersize cup. All of these are simple switches that allow you to satisfy your sweet tooth while you still cut back on sugar, suggests Bruning.
7. Consider your condiments
One tablespoon of ketchup has nearly a teaspoon of sugar; the same amount of barbecue sauce has more than a teaspoon. Look for brands with no added sugar, suggests Dubost; or flavor your foods with fresh salsa, yellow mustard, herbs or spices, which tend to be very low in sugar. Another surprise source of sugar: jarred sauces.
8. Swap in fruit
Fruit is naturally sweet, and as part of a balanced diet, your body can process the natural sugars in fruit without causing an increase in inflammation, says Bruning. Opt for an all-fruit spread on whole grain instead of jams and jellies with added sugar, for example. Or add slices of bananas or fresh strawberries to sweeten your oatmeal instead of brown sugar. Frozen or canned fruit works too, but choose fruit canned in water or natural juice, not syrup.
9. Skip sugary cereals
These can rank among the worst when it comes to added sugar: One popular kid cereal has 16 grams of sugar in just one cup — that which you might expect. But healthier-sounding granola can have even more. Check the label and ingredients list — whole grain should be first, says Dubost.
10. Eat full-fat foods
You see “low fat” on a label and assume a food is healthier, but these products often contain the same amount of calories and usually more sugar than their full-fat counterparts. That’s because when companies remove fat, they often use more sugar or salt to make the food taste better. Case in point: yogurt. A 6-ounce container of plain yogurt contains nearly 8 grams (or 2 teaspoons) of sugar; the low-fat version has almost 12 grams.


It amazes me how many people confuse the importance of vulnerability scanning with penetration testing. Vulnerability scanning cannot replace the importance of penetration testing, and penetration testing on its own cannot secure the entire network.
Both are important at their respective levels, needed in cyber risk analysis and are required by standards such as PCI, HIPAA and ISO 27001.
Penetration testing exploits vulnerabilities in your system architecture, while vulnerability scanning (or assessment) checks for known vulnerabilities and generates a report on risk exposure. Both penetration testing and vulnerability scanning depend mostly on three factors:
- Risk and criticality of assets
- Cost and time
What is Penetration Testing?
Penetration testing scope is targeted, and there is always a human factor involved. There is no such thing as automated penetration testing. It requires the use of tools, sometimes a lot, but it also requires an extremely experienced person to conduct the testing.
A good penetration tester always—at some point—crafts a script, changes the parameters of an attack and/or tweaks the settings of the tools (s)he is using during a test.
Penetration testing can operate at the application- or network-level or be specific to a function, department or a number of assets. Alternatively, one can include the whole infrastructure and all applications. But that is impractical in a real-world scenario because of cost and time.
You define your scope on a number of factors, which are mainly based on risk and the importance of an asset. Spending a lot of money on low-risk assets that may take several days to exploit is not practical. After all, testing requires high-skilled knowledge, and that’s why it is costly.
Additionally, testers often exploit a new vulnerability or discover security flaws that are not known to normal business processes, something which can take from days to few weeks. Because of its cost and its higher-than-average chance of causing outages, penetration testing is often conducted once a year. All reports are short and to the point.
What is Vulnerability Scanning?
On the other hand, vulnerability scanning is the act of identifying potential vulnerabilities in network devices such as firewalls, routers, switches, servers and applications. It is automated and focuses on finding potential and known vulnerabilities on the network- or application-level. It does not exploit the vulnerabilities. Vulnerability scanners merely identify known vulnerabilities and hence are not built to find zero-day exploits.
Vulnerability scanning scope is business-wide and requires automated tools to manage the high number of assets. It is wider in scope than penetration testing. Product-specific knowledge is needed to effectively use the product of vulnerability scans, which are usually run by administrators or a security person with good networking knowledge.
Vulnerability scans can be run on any number of assets to ascertain known vulnerabilities. You can then use those scans to eliminate more serious vulnerabilities affecting your valuable resources quickly using the vulnerability management lifecycle.
The cost of a vulnerability scan is low to moderate compared to penetration testing, and it is a detective control as opposed to a preventive measure like penetration testing.
The Center for Internet Security (CIS) Perspective
The Center for Internet Security (CIS) is a good point of reference for examining the core differences between vulnerability scanning and penetration testing. CIS maintains an actionable, prioritized list of 20 foundational security controls widely accepted as an authoritative guide to cybersecurity best practices.
Control #3, “Continuous Vulnerability Management,” calls on security practitioners to “Continuously acquire, assess, and take action on new information in order to identify vulnerabilities, remediate, and minimize the window of opportunity for attackers.” Since the CIS Controls are prioritized, this particular control holding a spot in the top six “basic controls” is an indicator of how fundamental and necessary it is to any security program.
The control “Penetration Tests and Red Team Exercises: Test the overall strength of an organization’s defense (the technology, the processes, and the people) by simulating the objectives and actions of an attacker” is at the #20 spot on the controls list. Even though it takes last place, it’s still important enough to be included in the top 20 best practices, but it’s certainly less critical than the controls that come before it on the list.
Both vulnerability scanning and penetration testing can feed into a cyber risk analysis process and help determine controls best suited for the business, department or practice. They must work together to reduce risk, but to get the most out of them, it is very important to know the difference, as each is important and has a different purpose and outcome.
To learn more about how Tripwire can help you scan for vulnerabilities, click here.


A serious shortage of physicians is expected to hit the United States over the next 10 years unless multipronged interventions are undertaken, according to a “Viewpoint” article appearing recently in JAMA.1
Darrell Kirch, MD, and Kate Petelle, MPhil, representatives of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in Washington, DC, say that acute shortages are expected, irrespective of the type of provider setting or geographic location.
Demographic change is an important contributor to workplace shortages, the authors note. According to current projections, the US population will increase by 12% between 2015 and 2030. Notably, the population of individuals age 65 and older is predicted to grow by 55%, with a resultant surge in demand for healthcare services for this age group.
They also point out that more than one-third of currently employed physicians will be age 65 or older within a decade. Retirement decisions among these physicians will be an important determinant of physician supply, they say.
Physician supply projections
The 2017 update of physician workforce projections released by AAMC shows a probable shortage of between 40,800 and 104,900 physicians in the United States by 2030. Shortages have already been noted in both urban and rural communities and affect both specialty and primary care.
Nonphysician practitioners: helpful but not a remedy
Dr Kirch and Ms Petelle say that the employment of nonphysician clinicians, such as physician assistants and advanced practice nurses, has been widely touted as a means of satisfying the increasing demand for physicians.
However, they are quick to acknowledge that while an expanded role for nonphysician healthcare professionals “may help mitigate shortages to a certain point,” nonphysician practitioners are not qualified to deliver the exact same services as physicians.
A multipronged approach is needed to solve the physician shortage, the authors say. “The US healthcare system is in a transformational moment, representing an important opportunity to develop better practice models, create a culture of interprofessional team-based care, advance medical technology, and develop a diverse healthcare workforce that serves all individuals in the United States,” they write.
They also call for medical schools and residency programs to train an adequate number of physicians to satisfy the growing need. At present, however, caps placed almost 20 years ago on federal Medicare funding for residency training make it difficult to expand graduate medical education. Congress, they add, should raise these caps. Otherwise, there will not be sufficient growth in the number of physicians.
- Kirch DG, Petelle K. Addressing the Physician Shortage: The Peril of Ignoring Demography. JAMA. 2017;317(19):1947-1948. doi: 10.1001/jama.2017.2714 [Epub ahead of print]
This article originally appeared on Medical Bag


|Description: This detail of a map of Florida shows railroads and major cities and towns current to 1932 for Nassau County. Major waterways are shown, as well as lakes, town, islands, and marsh. Other notable features are Seminole Indian Reservations, canals, and railroads. Features included in this detail are Amelia Island, Callahan, and Hilliard.|
Place Names: Nassau, Saint Marys River, Kings Ferry, Orange Bluffs, Gross, Crandall, Chester, Fernandina, Nassau, Tisonia, Callahan, Kent, Crawford, Bryceville, Cambon, Dinsmore, Amelia Island, Hilliard
ISO Topic Categories: boundaries, transportation, inlandWaters, oceans
Keywords: Nassau County, physical, political, transportation, swamps, everglades, wetlands, physical features, county borders, railroads, boundaries, transportation, inlandWaters, oceans, Unknown,1932
Source: , (, : US Department of the Interior Geological Survey, 1932)
Map Credit: Courtesy the private collection of Roy Winkelman.


Why is this loop heavy code so slow in Python? Possible Project Euler spoilers
Diez B. Roggisch
deets at nospam.web.de
Mon Sep 3 00:29:01 CEST 2007
Wildemar Wildenburger schrieb:
> Martin v. Löwis wrote:
>>>> (2) it is a interpretation language
>>> Not quite. It's compiled to byte-code - just like Java (would you call
>>> Java an 'interpreted language' ?)
>> Python is not implemented like Java. In Java (at least in HotSpot),
>> the byte code is further compiled to machine code before execution;
>> in Python, the byte code is interpreted.
> OK, good. Naive question now comming to mind: Why doesn't Python do the
> latter as well?
because of the dynamic nature of it. Java is statically typed, so the
JIT can heavily optimize.
OTH psyco IS a JIT-compiler to optimize certain calculations which are
mostly of a numerical nature. But this can't be done to the extend it is
possible in java.
More information about the Python-list


WATS & Incident Reports
Before there were “800” numbers there was Wide Area Telephone Service (WATS). A WATS line allowed a company or organization to make unlimited long-distance calls in a specified geographic area for a flat monthly fee. In the early ’60s, a call from one county to another was often billed as “long-distance,” and long-distance calls were expensive. Cell-phones, of course, did not exist.
Many rural communities in the South did not yet have direct-dial for long-distance, so out-of-area calls had to be placed through the local operators who were all white (“Ma Bell” did not hire Blacks in the South for anything but the most menial positions). Operators in league with the Sheriff or Citizens Council would often block or tap calls from freedom fighters. But a WATS line allowed civil rights workers to bypass the local operators, which meant they could reach their offices when under siege by cops or the Klan. And with a WATS line, long-distance charges were billed to the organization and calls could be made from pay-phones, or the phones of local folk who had little money for phone bills. It was understood, of course, that Movement WATS lines were tapped and bugged by every law enforcement agency from the FBI down to the local beat constable. And anything said over the WATS line was passed on by the cops to the Klan and White Citizens Council.
At SNCC, CORE, COFO, and SCLC offices in cities such as Jackson, Greenwood, Atlanta and Baton Rouge, the life-saving WATS lines were manned (or, more accurately, woman-ed) around the clock, 24 hours a day, recording incidents of violence and arrest, dispatching doctors and lawyers to aid the injured and incarcerated, alerting organizers of danger and need, notifying media and Justice Department of abuses and outrages, and coordinating support and assistance nation-wide.
As the calls came in over the WATS line hour by hour, the substance of each call was added to each day’s “WATS Report” and summaries were prepared and distributed to the press and Movement supporters around the country.
There is no doubt that there are Freedom Movement activists alive today who would have been killed or maimed had word not gotten out quickly of Freedom Houses under attack by Klan night-riders or of activists being “detained” by southern sheriffs.
James Forman. SNCC. June 24-26, 1964
SNCC? COFO? Undated possibly 1964
undated (possibly 1965)
WATS Report Incident Summaries
January 1-8 1964
MFDP. Oct 18-Nov2, 1964
Raw Daily WATS Reports
Some of the reports listed below are from the COFO WATS line in Jackson, some are probably from the SNCC office in either Atlanta or Greenwood. We’ve tried to guess which is which, but we can’t be sure we guessed right.
Before Freedom Summer ~ 1964
Freedom Summer ~ 1964
from June 21 & 22
Note: By July of 1964 there may have been three different WATS lines in operation. One in the COFO office in Jackson, one in the temporary SNCC national office in Greenwood, and it’s probably that the original SNCC WATS line in Atlanta was also still in operation. We’ve tried to guess which report are COFO and which SNCC, but it’s all guesswork.


A cherry tomato is a rounded, small fruited tomato thought to be an intermediate genetic admixture between wild currant-type tomatoes and domesticated garden tomatoes.
Cherry tomatoes are believed to go as far back as Aztec Mexico at least in the 15th century CE. Cherry tomatoes have been popular in the United States since at 1919. Recipes using cherry tomatoes can be found in articles dating back to 1967. The most common modern species of cherry tomatoes was developed in Israel in 1973.
Source: Wikipedia Encyclopedia
Camera: Canon P&S PowerShot A720 IS