For Kappa Sigmas, Bologna, Italy holds special meaning. For it was here, in "The City of Letters," that our Fraternity had its beginnings. In 1400, at the University of Bologna, Manuel Chrysoloras and his disciples formed a society for mutual protection. Their work inspired the Ritual and beliefs of a modern-day Greek-letter Fraternity -- Kappa Sigma.
The University of Bologna in the year 1400 was the center of learning in Europe. At the time of Kappa Sigma's founding in America, the University of Virginia was a centerpiece of education in the United States. On December 10, 1869, William Grigsby McCormick occupied the room at 46 East Lawn. On this chilly evening he, with four friends founded the Kappa Sigma Fraternity and planted the seed of Brotherhood.
Not only did the Founders formalize their friendship, but they also created a fraternity steeped in the traditions of the past and dedicated to the Pursuit of Learning. The new brothers recorded their bond in a Constitution and in an Oath which set forth the ideals and principles to all Kappa Sigmas today.
The Golden Hearted Virginian
Stephen Alonzo Jackson is regarded as possibly the most important man in Kappa Sigma's history. Through his efforts a struggling local fraternity became a strong national organization. He was the architect of out Ritual, writer of our Constitution, and was our first Worthy Grand Master. The following is and excerpt from the Bononia Docet, our pledge manual:
"Gentle as a woman, firm as a rock - a perfect bundle of nervous energy. His love of the Fraternity knew no bounds, and his enthusiasm was so contagious that it influenced everybody who came within his reach. His one ambition was to make Kappa Sigma the leading college fraternity of the world, and to that end he thought and worked by day and night, until the end of his busy life."
During the Fraternity's second Grand Conclave in 1878 in Richmond, Virginia, Jackson was reelected as Worthy Grand Master. In his speech, he expressed his ideal and goal of an enduring and expanding brotherhood as he addressed the Order:
"Why not, my Brothers, since we of today live and cherish the principles of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity, throw such a halo around those principles that they may be handed down as a precious heirloom to ages yet unborn? Why nor put our apples of gold in pictures of silver? May we not rest contentedly until the Star and Crescent is the pride of every college and university in the land!"
Jackson died on March 4, 1892. His legacy to the Fraternity included its Ritual, a revised Constitution, a precedent-setting Grand Conclave, the first southern Fraternity to extend a chapter to the north, and above all else, a spirit for expansion.
Today, Kappa Sigma comprises over 250 chapters and colonies in both the United States and Canada, with over 200,000 men. Kappa Sigma is the sixth largest fraternity and have approximately 150,000 brothers in North America.
History of Theta-Xi Chapter of Kappa Sigma
In 1947, a local Fraternity Chapter, known at that time as Tau Kappa Epsilon, relocated to 613 W. Pleasant Street. Over the years, this house came to be fondly called “The House On The Hill.”
In 1952, the Chapter became part of Kappa Sigma Kappa, establishing the first affiliation with a National organization.
In 1962, Kappa Sigma Kappa merged with another National Fraternity and the Chapter at Tri-State was not included, thus becoming a local organization again, retaining the Kappa Sigma Kappa name and symbols.
In 1966, the Chapter petitioned for membership in The Kappa Sigma Fraternity, and following the colonization period, 41 Charter Members received the Chapter Charter on Nov. 12, 1966.
In 1969, The Theta-Xi Chapter of Kappa Sigma sold the House On The Hill and moved to the anchor location of the new, University owned, fraternity row at 311 S. Summit Street.
After 26 years at that facility, the Chapter arranged for the purchase of 2 existing houses on 5 lots at the corner of Moss and Kinney Streets and moved to that location in 1995. After 10 years of renovations and improvements to the property, a decision was made to launch a major fundraising campaign to ultimately replace those 2 houses with a modern, new Chapter House. The fundraising and design efforts of several committees made up of dedicated alumni and undergraduate Brothers culminated on June 11, 2008 with the groundbreaking for construction of the new house.
The beautiful new Chapter House which is home to the Theta-Xi Chapter of Kappa Sigma today was completed and occupied by the first 12 resident Brothers in January of 2009.
Our Chapter Homes
|1947 – 1969
||613 W. Pleasant Street
||“The House On The Hill”
|1969 – 1995
||311 S. Summit Street
||Unit A – TSU - Fraternity Row
|1995 – 2009
||809 Moss St. & 300 S. Kinney St
||Original structures at Moss & Kinney Sts.
|2009 - The Future
||801 Moss Street
||The NEW House On The Hill
What a proud moment in our chapter history…truly anonce-in-a-lifetime event for most of us! On Saturday October 3rd at 5 pm with great pride, anticipation and excitement Actives, Alumni and guests gathered on the front porch and lawn of our newly constructed chapter house at Trine University for Dedication of the new Kappa Sigma “House on the Hill”.
Considering the logistics of communications, the sacrifices of time along with the investment of energy and resources of so many, the construction of the new house is nothing short of amazing. Great job Building and Finance Committee members and all who participated in the process!!
And as we celebrated and memorialized the completion of this project, we also commemorated and gave recognition to our lifelong bond of brotherhood. The House was dedicated in honor of Kappa Sigma Fraternity, the Theta-Xi Alumni, the Active brothers and all the young men who will follow our footsteps and be the torch-bearers of our traditions for decades to come.
In 1997 at a pivotal time in our Chapter’s history, the below listed Brothers stepped forward and loaned the fledgling House Corporation the funds needed to make a down payment on the Chapter’s current property at the corner of Moss and Kinney Streets. Since losing our lease on the University owned “Unit A” on South Summit Street two years earlier, Chapter members had been living in the two Moss Street houses during their complete renovation under a lease/ purchase option agreement with the General Contractor. Were it not for the generosity and foresight of these Brothers, to enable the Chapter to establish ownership of the Moss Street property, the New “House On The Hill” that is home to The Theta-Xi Chapter of Kappa Sigma today might not have been possible. The Order is forever in their debt.


Behavior-based robots are engineered to be mechanically reactive to input and gradually adapt their actions. What if we could apply this approach to an automated test harness? Are bots independently exploring an application under test and intelligent learning machines analyzing the results the future of software testing?
Current test automation works on the basis of creating a “shadow machine,” which captures a model of what the software should do in the form of object repositories and script logic. While these mirror systems are fast to execute, they are slow to create and slow to change. In fact, having to maintain two systems—the test harness and your tested system—in tandem generally doubles your work.
Management doesn’t want to pay to build it once; customers don’t want to pay to build it twice. This is a problem.
Tooling is touted as the answer to accelerating the speed of change in IT systems, yet shadow machines are often too detailed and heavy to keep up the pace. As a result, they are abandoned when the maintenance falls behind.
The question we should be asking is: Is this design principle the only way, or are there alternatives for leaner, lighter automation?
Robots Inspired by the World around Them
The way we build machines often mimics the human user: Cameras see like the eye. Microphones hear like the ear. And computers are built to play Go like Korean champions. Similarly, the way test automation tools are designed—with the concept that a full logical model is necessary to guide action—mirrors an older view of how the human mind works.
This “symbolic” or “classical” approach has fed the field of computing for decades. Now, however, this concept is being challenged, not just by cognition theorists, but also by the applied sciences it has nurtured for so long: robotics and AI.
As an example, take a look at the beautiful Strandbeest robots walking on Dutch beaches. These wind-propelled, lightweight machines navigate complex environments without any symbolic memory or processing. They simply react to what they sense.
These creations are radical realizations of an approach known as behavior-based robotics (BBR). First developed by Australian roboticist Rodney Brooks, BBR bots are engineered to be mechanically reactive to sensory input and gradually adapt their behavior. As a result, behavior-based robots look and act more like biological organisms than their symbol-computing counterparts. They are also relatively low-cost and low-maintenance.
How can test automation take a cue from BBR robots and self-navigate application landscapes without understanding them first? Let’s look at the design concepts behind BBR.
Designing Behavior-Based Bots
Subsumption architecture attempts to do away with the necessity of a machine fully understanding its environment before it can interact with it. Such robots are designed so that the control loop between sensory input and reaction is as short as possible, and they are tested and honed against the real world.
The solution can be purely mechanical, as in the Strandbeests using pressure differentials in plastic bottles to walk backward when encountering water. But it generally uses stacked behaviors, where higher ones make use of abilities provided by lower ones. A planet rover, for example, would have “maintain balance” as the most basic instruction, before considering the higher “wander around,” “avoid collision,” and “gather objects”. If enough of these behaviors are stacked, then complex behavior—at least to the eye of the beholder—simply emerges.
If we transfer these concepts to software test automation, we sense that we will have to abandon the notion that our “robot,” the automated test harness, will need to understand its environment, the application under test, before it can produce a useful result. Instead, it will have to be autonomous, exploratory, and immediately reactive to what it encounters.
As an example, let’s take the task of testing online forms (as suggested by Gojko Adzic). Analogous to our roving robots, the test agent’s simplest behavior could be the ability to “wander around” on the form. While doing so, it would identify any encountered controls, such as entry fields, selection fields, and button actions needed to continue. Stacked on these behaviors, it would then attempt to input data, randomly and ignorant of context or content. Such data could be sourced from both a “black list” intended to break an app (e.g., unescaped code) and a “white list” intended to pass (e.g., correctly formatted dates). With a few additional behaviors, like the ability to remember working data and deal with immediate reactions such as client-side validation, we could release our bot onto the app and see what happens.
At this point it is easy to imagine that such a test machine could be trained and improved to be able to crawl an entire application and produce a report of both blocked and accomplished paths. We can also imagine that similar bots could explore and test comparable standardized interaction topographies in UIs, APIs, web services, database interfaces, and rule or gaming engines. And all of this could be accomplished with the advantage of being largely impervious to environmental change, while being low-cost and lightweight.
Of course, there is a cost to the lack of understanding. These autonomous test agents would not be able to render judgment on whether their results are desired or not—in other words, they could not determine pass or fail. We would still need a human to separate the signal from the noise.
But what if this behavior, too, could be replaced?
Independent Learning Machines for Test Automation
Imagine now that we take advantage of cloud computing and virtual environments to run a swarm of dumb but connected test agents in parallel. The noise-to-signal ratio of such a rig would probably be rather high. To deal with this, we need to bring the power of the model back, just this time not as a static, maintenance-heavy, symbolic rendition of the app under test, but as a dynamic learning machine.
Modern learning machines are able to examine patterns and interactions and come to predict them via supervised, unsupervised, or reinforcement learning. Such a learning machine could be trained by observing a human judging pass and fail over the bot-produced reports; over time, it would anticipate the correct test verdicts with growing confidence. With every further iteration it would then grow more efficient in separating meaningful results from random testing noise, until it reaches complete autonomy.
Of course, there would be downsides. For one, the design of the BBR agents will require higher-level design skills than test automation currently does (although it already is, in practice, far removed from the “record and play” image promoted by tool vendors). And second, as friend and robotics engineer Guy Immega commented to me, autonomous learning systems are still not understood enough to be mass-produced, making any such technology experimental (for now).
However, the design of test automation tools may already have reached a boundary where it can no longer cost-efficiently keep pace with change in enterprise IT systems, and where alternative solutions can no longer be ignored.
So, the next time you fix your test scripts because the names of GUI objects have changed, imagine schools of simply engineered Strandbeests roaming the wilds of your technology stacks, doing the heavy lifting of software testing with little or no maintenance, and with intelligent learning machines evaluating their outputs.
What is the smallest possible step we could take to move in this direction? Take it, and let us know what you come up with.


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Berglund, D.R. 2002. Flax: New uses and demands. p. 358360. In: J. Janick and A. Whipkey (eds.), Trends in new crops and new uses. ASHS Press, Alexandria, VA.
Duane R. Berglund
Flax (Linum uistatissimum L., Linaceae) and certain perennial species has been used in food in Europe and Asia since 50008000 bce, and the fiber of flax stem has been used for linen cloth, and many other uses. Approximately 200 species of Linum (flaxseed or linseed) are known (Carter 1993). Flax was first brought to North America for its stem fiber to use in making of linen and paper. The stem fiber of flax makes a fine parchment paper. In the Northern Great Plains region of the United States and Canada, flaxseed has been grown as a commercial oilseed crop for over 100 years. Linseed oil is pressed from flaxseed and further extracted with a petroleum solvent. Industrial linseed is not useable for food or feed, although the linseed meal remaining as a by-product after oil extraction is used for animal feed rations. Use is increasing for flaxseed as a food. Approximately 2,340,000 bu [60,000 tonnes (t)] of flaxseed are used for food annually in Germany (Prentice 1990). Although cold-pressed flaxseed oil is not considered suitable for frying at high temperatures, flaxseed oil is used for low-temperature stir-frying in hundreds of villages in the flax-growing region of the Peoples Republic of China (Pan 1990).
Flax has been grown in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Montana since the early 1900s. North Dakota is the flax production leader with over 95% of crop area planted in 2001. In 2001 North Dakota farmers planted 214,120 ha of oilseed flax whereas the United States total flax crop area was 224,600 ha (NASS-USDA 2001). Total flax area in the United States has greatly increased in the past six years, from 38,800 ha in 1996 to 224,600 ha this past growing season. The Canadian prairie provinces produce a very large amount of oilseed flax. In 2001, 661,000 ha were planted in Canada which is approximately three times the crop area planted in the United States. Total 2000 production of oilseed flax in the United States was 273,000 t. In Canada, 2000 oilseed flax production was reported to be 707,000 t.
Flaxseed and flaxseed oil have been used for food for centuries in Asia, Europe, and Africa. More recently flaxseed has come onto its own in North America. Flaxseed has three major components making it beneficial in human and animal nutrition: (1) a very high content of alpha linolenic acid (omega-3 fatty acid) essential for humans; (2) a high percentage of dietary fiber, both soluble and insoluble; and (3) the highest content of plant lignans of all plant or seed products used for human food. Lignans appear to be anti-carcinogenic compounds (Lay et al. 1989). Scientific literature over the last 30 years supports the many expected health benefits of consuming flaxseed and cold-pressed flaxseed oil. Some of the benefits were studied directly by feeding flaxseed to people in controlled studies, and some were studied indirectly by feeding laboratory animals including mono-gastric animals which are consumed as meat or eggs. The National Cancer Institute has evaluated flaxseed, along with a number of other potential food ingredients, as a component of designer foods (Stitt 1990). Designer foods may be defined as those foods composed of one or more ingredients that contribute essential nutrients for health but also protect against certain diseases such as cancer and coronary heart disease. Several universities in US and Canada plus the Food and Drug Administration have conducted research on feeding flaxseed, with its high fiber and omega-3 fatty acid in its oil, to people or animals to evaluate potential health benefits. The apparent results have been positive.
Several authors have published details of flaxseed composition. The average composition of 11 flax cultivars are shown in Table 1 (Hettiarachchy et al. 1990).
Table 1. Composition of whole flaxseed produced in North Dakota, average of 11 cultivars.
|Lipids (DW basis)||
|Total dietary fiber||
|Fatty acid composition|
The North Dakota flaxseed cultivar Omega, a yellow or golden flaxseed is preferred in Europe and also sold in Japan, Korea, and in United States food markets. Its yellow color when ground blends well as a food ingredient. Ground or whole flaxseed can be added to almost any baked product and adds a nutty flavor to bread, waffles, pancakes, and other products if it composes 6%8% of the dry components of the recipe or formula. Some other food uses of flaxseed are: ready-to-eat breakfast cereals, breakfast drinks, salad dressings made with cold-pressed flaxseed oil, salad toppings, biscuits, meat extenders, crackers, soups, bagels, fiber bars, and cakes. Flaxseed flour is used commercially in breads in the United States by one or more large bakeries selling thousands of loaves per day (Burckhardt 1989) and by many bakeries and chain stores in Canada.
Flaxseed once ground or processed can be fed as an ingredient to poultry. So-called Omega eggs are being produced by two companies in the US and 11 companies in Canada (Henkes 1999). Omega eggs contain increased amounts (300 mg/egg) of omega-3 fatty acids and decreased amounts of saturated fatty acids (Scheideler and Lewis 1997). The increase in yolk polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) is accompanied by substantial decrease in saturated fatty acid, resulting in a healthy fat profile and more nutritional egg. Omega eggs have been consistently lower in cholesterol content from 210 mg/egg (Standard USDA egg level) to 180 mg/egg (Omega egg).
Feeding flaxseed to laying hens increases the omega-3 fatty acid in the egg by 6 to 8 times, making one egg equal to 113 g (4 oz) of cold water fish as a source of the omega-3 fatty acids. Further, research supported by the North Dakota Oilseed Council in Nebraska and Texas indicates consumption of up to 14 flax eggs/week improves the nature of blood lipids. If 5% of the laying hens in the US were fed 10% flaxseed in the ration then 60,000 ha more flax would be needed to supply the increased demand.
Several researchers have looked at the use of flaxseed in dairy cattle diets in an attempt to influence milk-fat composition. However, more research is needed before feeding flaxseed to dairy cattle will be a commercial reality. Researchers suggest that feeding flaxseed to breeding chickens and sows can increase the level of unsaturated fatty acids in the young chick and piglet. It is felt that these young animals may have tissue deficiencies in omega-3 fatty acids. Their health and livability may improve as a consequence of receiving more omega-3 fatty acids via their mothers. In the pet food industry, flaxseed is attracting attention from researchers. Feeding flaxseed may improve pet health in a similar manner as it does human health.
Gain and efficiency were greatest for cattle fed diets containing flax, and were substantially improved (P<0.05) relative to diets containing full-fat soybeans (Drouillard et al. 2000). No notable differences were evident in terms of the percentage of cattle treated for bovine respiratory disease, though cattle tended to require fewer retreatments when fed the diet containing flax. Death losses among stressed feeder calves were numerically highest for cattle fed beef tallow, and were lowest for those fed the diet containing flax. Growth performance and immunity can potentially be influenced by the source of dietary lipid.
The principal use of oilseed flax in the past has been for its linseed oil which is used in paints and coatings and other industrial uses. The use of modified other vegetable oils and petroleum products in place of linseed oil led to the reduced flax crop area. Paints and coatings containing linseed oil still are the highest quality and most durable of products. The linseed oil meal (LSOM) by-product left from oil extraction was and is used as an animal feed.
Linseed oil has recently been used as a diluent in paints and coatings. Linseed oil is a drying oil, a vegetable oil which undergoes oxidation and forms a natural, plastic-like film. The reactivity of linseed oil can be improved by the addition of metal catalysts, called driers, which promote oxidation, and by partially pre-oxidizing the linseed oil through exposure to the air. The use of linseed oil in this capacity is limited. Linseed oil has a comparatively slow curing rate, and has a tendency to soften paint films. As a diluent it cannot reduce volatile organic compound (VOC) levels to the degree required by proposed VOC regulations while still providing the desired film properties for many applications. Dilulin, a new linseed oil based reactive diluent manufactured by Cargill (Minneapolis, Minnesota), overcomes these problems.
Oilseed flax stem fiber is now being processed and used for a number of products. In addition to cigarette paper, flax fibers are being used for pulp and paper, erosion control mats, reinforcing materials in plastics and particle composite products (Domier et al. 2000). The value-added potential of oilseed flax straw is usually just burned or left in the field and sold to the three companies for $6.00 to $9.00/t. In Europe there is considerable interest in the use of natural fibers (such as oilseed flax) in interior panels, visors, and other parts of automobiles. Natural fibers like flax are blended with polypropylene or other synthetic fibers then needle-punched into a mat, a cover material can be added and then the composite can be hot pressed in one operation. North American manufacturers have started to use composites made from natural fibers. One company manufactures automotive head liners made from natural fibers (flax, hemp, jute) sandwiched between polyurethane foam. General Motors has Canadian oilseed flax fibers in the rear parcel shelf of selected models. Other vehicles also have some oilseed flax fibers in some of their interior components. Panels and molded products made from oilseed flax fiber/polypropylene mats may be very suitable for hygienic applications such as dairy plants, abattoirs, food processing facilities, etc. This composite material should combine excellent strength and durability characteristics with moisture resistance. Mats made from oilseed flax fibers with or without the addition of other materials such as polypropylene, polyethylene, cotton, wool, may be suitable for use as insulation, filters, upholstery padding, carpet backing, geotextiles for erosion control, and horticultural applications.
It is likely that the use and demand for oilseed flax will continue to increase and be utilized as a healthful food additive plus its use for animal feeding. New industrial uses of both the linseed oil and the fibers of oilseed flax also will increase the demand for this multi-use oilseed crop.


US mercury export ban welcomedPublished by MAC on 2008-10-07
A bill, soon expected to become law in the US, will ban the export of mercury. However, it does not cover continued emissions of the toxic metal from coal-fired power plants, which are the country's biggest single source of ambient mercury pollution.
The Daily Green
30th September 2008
U.S. companies would no longer be able to export mercury, a toxic metal that impairs the development of children, under a new law passed by Congress.
President Bush is expected to sign the bill, which was co-authored by Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for president, according to the Chicago Tribune, which deserves some credit for inspiring the bill, after publishing accounts of mercury contamination in fish.
The bill plugs a hole in regulations designed to limit pollution that contaminates fish.
Many women have unsafe levels of mercury in their blood, primarily from eating fish like tuna and other predators, and the mercury can damage developing fetuses, or infants who are breast-feeding.
Mercury pollution begins most often with mining, burning coal or making cement. It is also used in medical devices, electronics and other manufactured goods.
The concern with exports is that the toxic metal ends up in countries with weak regulations, and because the metal is dispersed widely after being released into the atmosphere by smokestacks, even distant pollution sources can rain down mercury close to home.
Ocean pollution can affect populations anywhere, given that fish caught in one part of the world is often sold in another.
Obama-sponsored mercury-storage bill sent to President Bush
Legislation would ban export of the metal in 2013
By Michael Hawthorne
30th September 2008
Stockpiles of toxic mercury kept by industry soon will be stored safely in the United States instead of ending up on the world market where it might pollute the environment.
Under bipartisan legislation Congress sent to President George W. Bush Monday for his expected signature, mercury exports would be banned in 2013 and the Energy Department would be required to store the heavy metal permanently.
The bill's chief sponsor, Sen. Barack Obama, introduced the bill in response to a 2005 Tribune series about mercury contamination in fish.
Although the number of U.S. companies that use mercury in industrial processes or products is declining, concerns are growing over exporting the silvery metal to loosely regulated industries in developing countries.


Carrots are an ideal vegetable crop for container gardening. While you may not grow some of the giants you have seen at your supermarket or in competitions, many carrot varieties grow very well in limited space. Small varieties that grow in ball shapes, such as Thumbelinas, are obvious choices. Plant in a pot at least 1 foot deep to expand your carrot-growing options to include most varieties currently available for planting. Carrots prefer a rich soil high in organic matter, which is much easier to control in containers than in the ground.
Mix potting soil and compost together in a 1:1 ratio. Do not use soil from your garden or yard, as it could contain soil-borne diseases or insects that might harm your carrot seedlings.
Mix 1/3 peat moss or coir into the potting soil/compost mix. Be aware that there is an ongoing controversy over whether or not harvesting peat moss is harmful to the environment. See The "Carnivorous Plant FAQ" link below for details with which to make an informed decision.
Sow carrot seeds at a depth of about 1/2 inch. Sow as many as you like, as close together as you like. Keep in mind, however, that you will need to thin out the seedlings once they reach a certain height. Overseeding helps protect against those few seeds that inevitably do not germinate, but grossly overseeding will just waste your precious seeds.
Cover over the seeds lightly with soil. Water using either a watering can or a garden hose with an adjustable sprayer attachment. Choose a gentle spray setting, if using the latter. Settings labeled "mist" or "shower" usually work well. Do not choose a forceful spray, as this will displace seeds and soil. Seeds will sprout in about 7 to 14 days.
Apply a good all-purpose vegetable fertilizer according to package instructions. This fertilizer should be applied approximately once every week to two weeks once carrots have established themselves.
Thin out your seedlings to one per half-inch when they reach 1 inch in height. Re-pot or use the seedlings you remove. All parts of the carrot plant are edible for humans, and many animals eat them too--rabbits especially love the tops, so save them for any pet bunnies you may have.
Water regularly. Carrots require consistent watering in order to stay strong and resist diseases and pests. Containers dry out more quickly than in-ground gardens, so you will need to monitor the water situation carefully. Consider buying a moisture meter to keep in the pot. This handy tool will help you to avoid over- or under-watering your carrots.


The administration of projects has been profoundly altered by technological advancements, which have resulted in the creation of novel tools and approaches that increase both efficiency and production. There are many services with information on how to speed up or technically improve your work computers and other devices without the need to call wizards or programmers, an abundance of programs with a pleasant interface for cleaning and troubleshooting. Companies must use these innovations to simplify their operations to maintain their competitive edge in the market. This article will investigate the role that technology plays in the efficiency of project organization, stressing the relevance of technology as well as providing an outline of how it may be utilized efficiently.
Within the realm of project organization, innovation has always been one of the most important motivating factors. During the early stages of project planning, technology breakthroughs made it possible to manage and monitor initiatives in more effective ways. In today’s world, technology has become an ever more essential part of the optimization of the procedures involved in project structures.
It Helps Managers Better Understand Their Tasks
Many different factors contribute to the significance of innovation in its improvement. To begin, technology may assist managers in better comprehending the tasks they are working on. By employing data analytics and other technologies, managers can clearly understand how their projects are developing and where there may be prospective difficulties.
More Effective Communication And The Usage Of Program Cleaner
Second, the use of technology may assist managers in more efficiently communicating with the teams they oversee. Tools for instant communication like Slack and Zoom make it possible for managers to exchange knowledge and directions with their employees in a much more timely manner. This may be useful for preventing projects from getting off course and ensuring that everybody is on the equal page. For instance, if you wish to delete an app or just uninstall it from your Mac, clicking here will solve it immediately. How? Well, if you want to keep your Mac efficient and working smoothly with a single clean up, you need to understand how to erase the programs properly. And that’s where you will get appropriate information for sure.
In addition, technology may assist managers in automating operations that are often performed. This may free up their ime so that they can concentrate on more strategic responsibilities. For instance, there are a variety of software applications available for organizing projects that may automate operations, such as the assigning of tasks, the monitoring of progress, and the reporting of results. Furthermore, the use of technology may assist supervisors in more successfully collaborating with many other stakeholders. For instance, using cloud-based project administration software makes it simple for leaders to collaborate on projects and exchange data with other members of their teams from any location on the planet.
To maximize the effectiveness of technology in program management, you must understand that it will be taking a constantly crucial role. A clear image of how their operations are developing and where they might face potential difficulties may be obtained by superiors via the use of data analytics and immediate communication solutions. Technology may also assist them to automate operations that are monotonous and improve their ability to interact with other partners.
Why is it Important to Use Technology in Project Management?
Utilizing various forms of technology in the organization of projects is essential for a variety of reasons. The fact that it may assist supervisors in improving the efficiency of their initiatives is one of the most essential factors. Supervisors can more readily assess progress, discover difficulties and possible problems, and adjust their plans appropriately when they make use of technology. In addition to this, supervisors may use technology to improve their communication with their employees, customers, and other stakeholders by taking advantage of this tool.
Using software in digital project management is essential for several reasons, one of which is that it enables managers to manage their time better. For instance, they can automate operations such as budgeting and work assignments when they use software specifically designed for project management. This may save up time that would have otherwise been spent on these duties, enabling managers to concentrate on parts of their projects that are more vital.
So, the use of technology in project organization may also contribute to an improvement in the overall quality of projects. Project managers may verify that their work satisfies all of the essential criteria and standards for their work by using various tools, such as software for quality assurance. This may help avoid possible difficulties further down the road and ensure that projects are properly finished.
How Do They Help?
Program directors may benefit from technology in a variety of different ways. To start, it may make it easier for managers to keep track of the many initiatives and responsibilities within their purview. Technology may also help practitioners interact with their teammates more successfully, which can result in enhanced management and project execution. In particular, computers can help executives use their time more efficiently. Last but not least, technology may also assist managers in developing more efficient strategic timelines, which can increase the overall effectiveness of the project’s organization process.
How Can Technology Be Used In Management?
Many different applications for management may make use of technology. It may assist managers in keeping track of assignments, communicating with members of their team, and making choices. Software may also assist managers to teach their personnel. They can now design training courses that are more participatory and interesting thanks to technological advancements. In addition, they may be utilized to develop simulations that provide workers with the opportunity to practice their abilities in a risk-free setting.
The streamlining of project management places a high priority on real collaboration as among the most critical factors. It makes it possible for managers to communicate in real-time with employees of their teams, regardless of where in the globe those team members may be. This enables managers to swiftly address difficulties, make choices, and ensure that operations remain on schedule.
Instant communication may be achieved via a variety of different methods. Instant messaging is arguably the one that has the most users (IM). This enables managers to communicate quickly with their teams by sending brief messages and receiving answers in real time. Streaming video, voice over internet protocol (VoIP), and even social networking are among more alternatives. Managers must have a method that allows them to simply and rapidly communicate with the people on their teams. This makes it possible to swiftly find solutions to difficulties and guarantees that projects remain on pace.
Maintain An Accurate Record Of Activity Time
Modern software for managing projects has functions that make it simple to keep tabs on and quantify the quantity of work that has been completed for a specific project. Interfaces for project management may be used to assist teams in determining which project tasks are currently being worked on without requiring the participation of project team members. Monitoring repeated duties might take away from the concentration that is required for difficult projects. Thus, leverage technology to optimize workflow operations. You will question the individuals on your team that operate there about their present activities.
You can save time when delegating tasks and checking in on the work of a specialized team member by instructing your project senior managers to use a sensing element with easy integration. This will ensure that employees perform their assigned activities as considered necessary for the project to be successful. You can improve the productivity model for your institution’s project managers by utilizing technology. This will allow employees who are in roles of managing projects, as well as senior managers, to have easy access to the information that is driving the success of your project and maintaining a good bottom line.
Taking Advantage of Technology in Project Management
Technology has evolved to the point that it is now an essential component in the improvement of project management. Now we cannot even imagine life, workflows, or education without modern technologies. This is because technology enables directors to preserve time and money while also enhancing communication and cooperation between participants of the group. Most instant messengers, programs for communicating with employees, teams among themselves, programs for tracking finances, the work of employees, for speeding up devices and computers are actively used in the work of every person every day. It is essential to use tools that are intended to enhance both speed and effectiveness to get the most out of the technological advancements available in the field of project management.
Programs for instant messaging, online groupware and project managing software are among the most widely used of today’s innovations in this niche. When managers make use of these technologies, it is much simpler for them to monitor due dates, tasks, and statements of progress. Additionally, they can exchange files and papers with other members of the team in real time, which enables it to be much simpler for the team to collaborate on projects.
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That breastfeeding can provide a slew of health benefits for babies and their mothers isn’t news, but for the first time, international scientists have put a dollar amount on that benefit.
In comprehensive papers published Thursday in The Lancet Breastfeeding Series, scientists discerned that globally, the cost of lower intelligence linked with the decision not to breastfeed equated to about $300 billion annually— a number similar to the value of the global pharmaceutical industry.
Authors wrote that while the health benefits of breastfeeding may be well known in developed countries, mothers in poorer countries are actually likelier than those in rich countries to breastfeed their children.
"Supporting breastfeeding makes economic sense for rich and poor countries, and this latest breastfeeding study proves it," Series co-lead Dr. Cesar Victora, an emeritus professor from the International Center for Equity in Health, Post-Graduate Programme in Epidemiology, Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil, said in a news release.
Limited or nonexistent maternity leave had a direct impact on a mother’s decision to breastfeed, and the growing market of breast milk substitutes has also contributed to mothers’ choices, the series found.
Study authors noted that about 820,000 child deaths—about 13 percent of all deaths of children under age 5— could be prevented each year by improving breastfeeding rates.
The series involved studying the benefits, determinants and trends in breastfeeding from 28 systematic reviews, 22 specially commissioned meta-analyses and more than 1,300 studies. Authors calculated the costing data by analyzing a 2015 meta-analysis that suggested longer breastfeeding is linked with higher performance on cognitive tests among children and adolescents. Researchers found that those children who had higher performances had an average of three IQ points higher than those who performed worse. That effect translated to better academic performance, greater long-term earnings and improved productivity, according to the release.
Health-wise, researchers found that greater rates of breastfeeding would prevent about half of all diarrhea episodes and one-third of respiratory infections. Authors also said that, for each of the first two years a mother breastfeeds throughout her life, she sees a 6 percent lower risk of breast cancer, as well as a reduced risk of ovarian cancer. Breastfeeding already helps prevent 20,000 breast cancer deaths each year, the authors noted, but increased rates could help prevent an additional 20,000 deaths linked with the disease.
"Breastfeeding is a powerful and unique intervention that benefits mothers and children, yet breastfeeding rates are not improving as we would like them to— and in some countries, are declining,” Victora said in the release.
Breastfeeding rates at 12 months in the U.S. were about 27 percent in 2011, according to the most recent data available, which was included in a 2014 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2011, 79 percent of infants were breastfed immediately after they were born, and 49 percent were breastfed at 6 months.
In the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark, rates are even lower than those in the U.S. at 12 months: Only 1, 2 and 3 percent of children, respectively, are breastfeed at that age. Those are some of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world, the series authors noted.
Series authors concluded that if breastfeeding rates in the U.S., China and Brazil increased to 90 percent, and if rates in the U.K. increased to 45 percent, treatment costs for common childhood illnesses would save at least $2.45 billion in the U.S., $29.5 million in the U.K., $223.6 million in China, and $6.0 million in Brazil.
“We hope the scientific evidence amassed in this Series will help revert these negative trends,” Victora said, “and create a healthier society for everyone— mother, child, poor and rich."


What is diverticulitis?
Diverticular disease (also diverticulosis) is a condition in which the bowel (large intestine) forms small pouches (diverticula) that bulge outward through the bowel wall. This typically develops due to increased pressure in the bowel, weakness of the bowel wall, or from straining during bowel movements. Many people with diverticular disease have no symptoms, or symptoms that are not very troublesome. Some people with diverticular disease experience constipation, diarrhea and low belly pain. More troublesome symptoms are sometimes the result of infection or inflammation in these pouches (diverticulitis). The symptoms of infection may come on quickly, and include blood in the stool and fever. Treatment is only required in people who experience symptoms. This may involve antibiotics or, rarely, surgery.
Many people with diverticular disease do not have symptoms until they develop diverticulitis. Typical symptoms include changes in bowel habits (alternating diarrhea and constipation), bloating, nausea, vomiting and belly pain. If the diverticula are infected and inflamed, they may cause fever, belly pain and blood and pus in the stool. Symptoms are due to inflammation, irritation and sometimes infections forming in the out-pouching of the bowel.
The diagnosis is usually made on the basis of medical history and physical examination. A computed tomography (CT) scan may be needed to identify the location of the inflammation in the bowel and confirm the diagnosis.
Treatment is based on the severity and stage of diverticular disease. Affected people with no symptoms usually do not need treatment. People who have diverticulitis (infection and inflammation of the pouches) may receive antibiotics to treat the infection. In severe or complicated cases, surgery might be needed to stop bleeding, drain pus, or even remove parts of the bowel. However this is very uncommon.
The risk of getting diverticular disease and diverticulitis increases with age, and most commonly affects people older than 60 years of age. Eating a low-fiber diet (a diet high in processed foods) has often been seen as a cause, although the link is not clear.
Many people with diverticular disease do not have symptoms and do not require any treatment. Diverticulitis (inflammation and infection of the pouches) is often treated with antibiotics and people recover well if there are no complications. Some people may experience recurrent episodes of diverticulitis. Younger people may have a higher risk of severe disease and recurrence.
Eating foods which are high in fiber may help prevent diverticular disease and episodes of inflammation of the pouches (diverticulitis).
Other names for diverticulitis
- inflamed pockets in the lining of the large intestine


Part I Introduction, Ch.2 Law of Nations or Perpetual Peace? Two Early International Theories on the Use of Force »
Daniele Archibugi, Mariano Croce, Andrea SalvatoreFrom: The Oxford Handbook of the Use of Force in International Law
Edited By: Marc Weller
This chapter considers the law of nations (LN) and the perpetual peace projects (PPP), two intellectual traditions giving rise to an international theory aimed at regulating or abolishing the use of armed force. It examines the role of the LN and the PPP in the emergence of modern international law and of international organizations and peace movements, and how they influenced and were influenced by the rise of the modern European states. It charts the history of both traditions and the emergence of the state as the main player in internal and international politics before concluding with a discussion on the use of armed force concerning four main cases which were the subjects of considerable debate within both the LN and the PPP: war among states, the right to resist or to fight a revolution against an oppressive regime, humanitarian intervention, and the use of force against stateless indigenous populations.


how old is the lamp?
History of the Light Bulb
Let us see where all of this energy efficient lighting “thing-y” had its origins.
The invention of the light bulb is usually attributed in Britain to Joseph Wilson Swan and in the United States to Thomas Alva Edison (who first marketed the device successfully). However, it is now believed that Heinrich Göbel built functional bulbs three decades earlier. Alexander Nikolayevich Lodygin developed an incandescent light bulb around the same time. Many others also had a hand in the development of a practical device for the production of electric light.
In 1801 Sir Humphry Davy, an English chemist, made platinum strips glow by passing an electric current through them, but the strips evaporated too quickly to make a useful lamp. In 1809 he created the first arc lamp, which he demonstrated to the Royal Institution of Great Britain in 1810, by creating a small but blinding arc between two charcoal rods connected to a battery.
In 1820 a British scientist Warren De la Rue enclosed a platinum coil in a vacuum tube and passed an electric current through it. The design was based on the concept that the high melting point of platinum would allow it to operate at high temperatures and that the evacuated chamber would contain less gas molecules to react with the platinum, improving its longevity. Although it was an efficient design, the cost of the platinum made it impractical for commercial use.
In 1835 James Bowman Lindsay demonstrated a constant electric light at a public meeting in Dundee. He stated that he could “read a book at a distance of one and a half feet”. However having perfected the device, to his own satisfaction, he turned to the problem of wireless telegraphy and did not develop the electric light any further.
In 1841 Frederick de Moleyns of England was granted the first patent for an incandescent lamp, with a design using powdered charcoal heated between two platinum wires.
In 1854, the German inventor Heinrich Göbel developed the first ‘modern’ light bulb: a carbonised bamboo filament, in a vacuum bottle to prevent oxidation. In the following five years he developed what many call the first practical light bulb. The Internet has spread the story of an 1893 lawsuit establishing his priority, but there was no such lawsuit.
Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914) was a physicist and chemist born in Sunderland, England. In 1850 he began working with carbonized paper filaments in an evacuated glass bulb. By 1860 he was able to demonstrate a working device but lack of a good vacuum and an adequate supply of electricity resulted in a short lifetime for the bulb and inefficient light. By the mid-1870s better pumps became available, and Swan returned to his experiments. Swan received a British patent for his device in 1878. Swan reported success to the Newcastle Chemical Society and at a lecture in Newcastle in February 1873 he demonstrated a working lamp that utilised a carbon fiber filament, but by 1877 he had turned to slender rods of carbon. The most significant feature of Swan’s lamp was that there was little residual oxygen in the vacuum tube to ignite the filament, thus allowing the filament to glow almost white-hot without catching fire. From this year he began installing light bulbs in homes and landmarks in England and by the early 1880s had started his own company.
Across the Atlantic, parallel developments were also taking place. On July 24, 1874 a Canadian patent was filed for the Woodward and Evans Light by a Toronto medical electrician named Henry Woodward and a colleague Mathew Evans, who was described in the patent as a “Gentleman” but in reality a hotel keeper. They built their lamp with different sizes and shapes of carbon held between electrodes in a glass globe filled with nitrogen. Woodward and Evans attempted to commercialize their bulb, but were unsuccessful. Nonetheless, Thomas Edison considered their approach sufficiently promising that he bought rights to both their Canadian and US patents before embarking on his own light bulb development program.
After many experiments with platinum and other metal filaments, Edison returned to a carbon filament that burned for forty hours (first successful test was on October 21, 1879; it lasted 13.5 hours). Edison continued to improve this design. By 1880 he had a device that could last for over 1200 hours using a carbonized bamboo filament.
In January 1882, Lewis Latimer received a patent for the “Process of Manufacturing Carbons,” an improved method for the production of light bulb filaments which was purchased by the United States Electric Light Company.
In Britain, the Edison and Swan companies merged into the Edison and Swan United Electric Company (later known as Ediswan which was then incorporated into Thorn Lighting Ltd). Edison was initially against this combination, feeling that his patents would hold up against Swan’s claims, but to avoid a court battle, the merger was made. Eventually, Edison acquired all of Swan’s interest in the company. Swan sold his United States patent rights to the Brush Electric Company in June 1882. Swan later wrote that Edison had a much greater claim to the light than he.
The United States Patent Office had ruled on October 8, 1883 that Edison’s patents were based on the prior art of William Sawyer and were invalid. Litigation continued for a number of years. Eventually on October 6, 1889, a judge ruled that Edison’s electric light improvement claim for “a filament of carbon of high resistance” was valid.
© Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb


Metro Vancouver is the most at-risk urban area in Canada when it comes to the effects of climate change, says the Coastal Cities at Risk project.
“In an OECD report, (Metro) Vancouver is rated 15th for exposed assets, with $55 billion at risk, and 32nd in terms of population at risk, with 320,000 people exposed,” the Vancouver Sun quotes Cities at Risk as saying.
In its latest release, Cities at Risk points out there are approximately 220,000 people who live at or below sea level in the region – protected by 127 kilometres of dikes which were not built to withstand the expected sea level rise.
The Vancouver Sun notes that the provincial government set new guidelines last year for sea dikes and land use in coastal flood-hazard zones as part of the effort to manage an expected sea level rise of 1.2 metres in the next 100 years.
For the City of Vancouver, this meant adopting a plan that calls for all new construction that could be subject to flooding to be built up an additional metre, to 4.5 metres above sea level.
“We did that immediately with the West Fraser Lands development River District,” Sadhu Johnston, Vancouver’s deputy city manager, told the Sun. “They basically raised the entire development one metre without it causing any problems. They built the sidewalks and the streets higher as well,” he said.
The city is also planning to design and install electrical and mechanical equipment so that a building’s ground floor can flood without major disruption, Johnston told the Sun.
For low-lying municipalities like Richmond, BC, the Vancouver Sun notes that dealing with the threat of flooding is business as usual.
“The core of our strategy over very, very long term is to basically build the island up,” John Irving, Richmond’s director of engineering, told the Sun. “Contrary to some popular misconceptions, Richmond is not below sea level, it is largely at one metre and above the mean tide level. It’s not like New Orleans or anything like that. If you look at the Fraser Port Lands or the Aspac development around the Olympic oval, those lands have already been built up to four, five, six metres elevation and beyond.”
But Richmond is not rushing to build up its dikes just yet. Irving says to pay for upgrades that may not be needed for 100 years doesn’t make a lot of sense.
“Most of the infrastructure we build, in terms of water mains and dikes and everything, if you’re lucky you get 100 years’ lifespan out of it, but it might only last 40 or 50 years and then you’re rebuilding it,” Irving told the Sun. “So we’re planning for it, but we wouldn’t necessarily run out and try to build up all the dikes another metre today.”
Still, rising sea levels are certainly on peoples’ minds in and around Metro Vancouver. Vancouver residents may have noticed the painted blue stripes on the bottom of the Cambie Bridge, part of a city-commission art project, “A False Creek,” intended draw attention to the effects of climate change in the region.
For more on the assessment from Cities at Risk, be sure to read the Vancouver Sun article here.


What is the Heartbleed Bug?I know a number of media outlets have given a variety of descriptions, but I have taken this one from the Heartbleed website (www.heartbleed.com):
“The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This weakness allows stealing the information protected, under normal conditions, by the SSL/TLS encryption used to secure the Internet. SSL/TLS provides communication security and privacy over the Internet for applications such as web, email, instant messaging (IM) and some virtual private networks (VPNs).
The Heartbleed bug allows anyone on the Internet to read the memory of the systems protected by the vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL software. This compromises the secret keys used to identify the service providers and to encrypt the traffic, the names and passwords of the users and the actual content. This allows attackers to eavesdrop on communications, steal data directly from the services and users and to impersonate services and users.”
In short, the software technology that some organisations use to protect connections and transfer of information has a vulnerability. This could allow someone to monitor and see the data transfer of information, even though it is in a secure tunnel.
The following cartoon may be a light hearted look at the vulnerability, but it has some very far reaching consequences:
Fixing the Heartbleed vulnerability
The software package in question, OpenSSL, needs to be patched. That sounds like a straightforward request, but as a user you will have very little interaction to do this. This software is often used on websites to allow it to create secure tunnels, but the reliance is on the website administrator to put these upgrades in place to remove the vulnerability. The secure tunnel relies on the exchange of digital certificates to prove the tunnel should be trusted, but if these certificates have been compromised, they will need to be revoked and reissued. Again, this is a task for the website administrator.
Aside from websites, various IT manufacturers use OpenSSL to secure access to their solutions, whether it’s the administration console, remote access certificates, etc. The reliance then is on the manufacturer to upgrade their solution with a patched version of OpenSSL, compile their solution and test it, before then releasing it for public consumption. Most of the bigger manufacturers released statements within hours, and updated versions of code within days. There are still some manufacturers who have done neither.
Next stepsIf you are a user of a website that uses OpenSSL, ensure they have updated to a version without the vulnerability and as a precaution, change your password.
As an administrator of a website that uses OpenSSL, ensure the site has been updated to a version without the vulnerability, then revoke and reissue the certificate. Prompt the users to change their password, and ensure they receive the reissued certificate.
As an administrator of an IT solution that uses OpenSSL, follow the manufacturer’s guidelines, which will be to update or patch the software to the latest version, which will include the fix to the OpenSSL issue. It may still be necessary to revoke and reissue the certificate, as well as change any passwords.
Most importantly, check your systems are no longer vulnerable after any changes. There are a number of services that can check, including a complimentary check the organisation I work for is offering. More information around that service can be found here: www.mti.com


An article in the New York Times describes research that supposedly linked a rare gene mutation to autism:
Dr. Matthew W. State, a professor of genetics and child psychiatry at Yale, led a team that looked for de novo mutations [= mutations that are not in the parents] in 200 people who had been given an autism diagnosis, as well as in parents and siblings who showed no signs of the disorder. The team found that two unrelated children with autism in the study had de novo mutations in the same gene — and nothing similar in those without a diagnosis.
“That is like throwing a dart at a dart board with 21,000 spots and hitting the same one twice,” Dr. State said. “The chances that this gene is related to autism risk is something like 99.9999 percent.”
It is like throwing 200 darts at a dart board with 21,000 spots (the number of genes) and hitting the same one twice. (Each person has about 1 de novo mutation.) What are the odds of that? If all spots are equally likely to be hit, then the probability is about 0.6. More likely than not. (Dr. State seems to think it is extremely unlikely.) This is a variation on the birthday paradox. If there are 23 people in a room, it is 50/50 that two of them will share a birthday.
When Dr. State says, “The chances that this gene is related to autism risk is something like 99.9999 percent,” he is making an elementary mistake. He has taken a very low p value (maybe 0.000001) from a statistical test to indicate the likelihood that the null hypothesis (no association with autism) is true. P values indicate strength of evidence, not probability of truth.
One way to look at the evidence is that there is a group of 200 people (with an autism diagnosis) among whom two have a certain mutation and another group of about 600 people (their parents and siblings) none of whom have that mutation. If two instances of the mutation were randomly distributed among 800 people what are the odds that both instances would be in any pre-defined group of 200 of the 800 people (defined, say, by the letters in their first name)? The chance of this happening is 1/16. Not strong evidence of an association between the mutation and the actual pre-defined group (autism diagnosis).
Another study published at the same time found an link between autism and a mutation in the same gene identified by Dr. State’s group but again the association was weak. It may be a more subtle example of the birthday paradox: If twenty groups of genetics researchers are looking for a gene linked to autism, what are the odds that two of them will happen upon the same gene by chance?
If the gene with the de novo mutations is actually linked to autism, then we will have insight into the cause of 1% of the 200 autism cases Dr. Smart’s group studied. When genetics researchers try so hard and come up with so little, it increases my belief that the main causes of autism are environmental.
Thanks to Bryan Castañeda.


Chapter 1. School Life
Chapter 2. Experiencing Nature
Chapter 3. Eating to live or Living to eat
Chapter 4. In the Community
Chapter 5. Home and Family
Chapter 6: Cultures of the World
Regresar a Sitio Web del Académico
Dear students: Click on the chapter you will like to review. Additional exercises, videos and games can be linked from there. Feel free to post your comments, doubts, questions or suggestions. See you around!


by Ang Hoon Seng
Chinese calligraphy is a most distinctive form of art, due primarily to the etymology of the Chinese characters which are basically different from other languages. It is pictographic, indicative and phonetic.
Calligraphy is unique and abstract because of the pictorial nature of the Chinese characters, which remain unchanged for some two thousand years. It has become one of the distinctive features of Chinese civilisation and an integrated part of Chinese life.
Calligraphy has been considered the highest form of Chinese art because of its abstract nature.
In the past, every student must learn calligraphy as part of the study curriculum. The Imperial examinations required a reasonably high standard of calligraphy from all scholars. Even today, the Chinese leaders are highly respected if they are able to use the brush to convey a message.
Chinese calligraphy has expanded beyond the boundaries of China. The art of calligraphy today is practiced by the overseas Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, because of their traditionally close ties with China.
The strokes must be forceful and appropriately controlled like music while the words, lines, and layout must be well coordinated.
Calligraphy is music without sound. It is like a human with skeleton, flesh, blood and tendon. Moreover, a good calligraphy should be alive spiritually.
Apart form the artistic value, calligraphy has practices usage and form an integral part of the Chinese way of life. Calligraphy has been widely used fir various purposes ranging from signboards of shops, restaurants, to national and major institutions such as universities, museums, etc. They are written by contemporary renowned calligraphers. The Chinese believe that forceful and well balance, characters would bring good luck and prosperity. Individual characters like 福(Fu) means good luck. 寿(Shou) represents longevity, and couplets 福联(fu lian) citing quotations from great poets, respectable scholars and great philosophers are hung in the homes for celebrating the lunar new year, marriage and other auspicious occasions. Calligraphy has also been used for tombstones, temples and other memorials. They are engraved in stone by skillful craftsmen. It is apparent that different styles of writing must be used for different purposes. For example, if the signboard of a business is written in wild- cursive style or 狂草(kuang-cao) , its purpose is totally defeated because nobody could understand it.
Calligraphy is not difficult to learn; but it also not easy to master and perfect. Apart from practicing the brush, a good calligrapher must have a good knowledge of the Chinese language and culture, particularly the classical Chinese literature, poetry and prose. In addition, one must possess an upright personality.
To develop his own styles of writing, he must seriously study the many masterpieces left behind by the ancient great masters.
About Chinese Calligraphy
Ang Hoon Seng composing a piece for the Blue Mansion, Penang.


When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe
Oxford University Press
The second world war would see an unlikely band of librarians, archivists, and scholars travel abroad to aid the Allies’ cause. Galvanized by the events of the war into acquiring and preserving the written word, as well as provide critical information for intelligence purposes, they set off on missions to collect foreign publications and information across the continent. They travelled to neutral cities in search of enemy texts, followed a step behind advancing armies to capture records, and seized Nazi works from bookstores and schools. When the war ended, they found looted collections hidden in cellars and caves. Their mission was to document, exploit, preserve, restitute these documents, and even, in the case of Nazi literature, to destroy them.
While armies have seized enemy records and have taken rare texts as booty throughout history, it was only in World War II that collecting books and documents became an American war aim. In her fascinating work, cultural historian Kathy Peiss reveals how book and document collecting became part of the new apparatus of intelligence and national security, military planning, and postwar reconstruction. Focusing on the ordinary Americans who carried out these missions, she shows how they made decisions on the ground to acquire primary sources that would be useful in the war zone as well as on the home front.
These collecting missions also boosted the postwar ambitions of American research libraries, offering a chance for them to become great international repositories of scientific patents, literature, and historical sources. Not only did their wartime work have lasting implications for academic institutions, foreign-policy making, and national security, it also led to the development of today’s essential information science tools.
Illuminating the growing global power of the United States in the realms of intelligence and cultural heritage, Peiss tells the story of the men and women who went to Europe to collect and protect books and information. Her narrative broadens and enriches the debate over the use of data in times of both war and peace.


Time and History 11:55 P.M. Guy Fawkes Arrested
About major and minor historical events around the clock such as Guy Fawkes's attempt to blow up the English Houses of Parliament at 11:55 in the evening.
HISTORY AROUND THE CLOCK
11:55 in the Evening
Nov. 4, 1605. Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up the English Houses of Parliament but was arrested in the cellars directly beneath the Lords' Chamber.
With other conspirators disguised as coal merchants. Fawkes had smuggled 36 barrels of gunpowder into the vaulted cellars and hidden them under bundles of wood, and empty bottles. One of the Catholic conspirators, however, decided to write to Lord Monteagle, a Catholic peer, warning him not to attend the opening of Parliament, which was set for Nov. 5. The anonymous letter read: "Retire to the country, for though there may be no appearance of any stir, yet I say they shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament, yet shall they not see who hurt them."
Monteagel immediately informed the authorities. At first a search of Parliament revealed nothing, but Monteagle decided to make one final check. Just before midnight Fawkes was found in the cellar, claiming he was just a servant looking for his master. But Monteagle noticed that the woodpile seemed out of proportion. He also thought Fawkes to be "a very tall and desperate fellow." The explosives were found and Fawkes was arrested. King James I ordered particularly brutal tortures for Guy Fawkes: "The gentler tortours are to be first usid unto him, et sic per gradus ad ima tenditur [and by degrees into hell] and so God spede your goode worke." After suffering extreme agony on the rack, Fawkes signed a confession and named the other conspirators. The following January he was hanged and drawn and quartered in front of the Houses of Parliament.
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Believe it or not, it’s time for the kids to go back to school! Time to break out the school supplies, lunch boxes, and – of course – backpacks. Backpacks are a popular and practical way for students to carry all of the necessities they require throughout the school day. When used correctly, they are designed to distribute weight among some of the strongest muscles in the body. When used incorrectly over time, backpacks can cause injuries to muscles and joints.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that a backpack weigh no more than 10-20% of a child’s body weight. If a heavy backpack is worn incorrectly on the shoulders, unnatural spine compression can occur, leading to shoulder, neck, and/or back pain.
Here’s some advice from our neck and back specialists to make sure your child is using the right backpack, and using it correctly to prevent injury.
Choose the right backpack.
When shopping for a backpack, be sure to choose one that is the right size for your child. In addition, look for:
- Wide, padded shoulder straps
- A padded back to provide cushioning
- Made of lightweight material
- Multiple compartments to help distribute weight
- A waist belt
Use backpacks the right way.
Those two shoulder straps are there for a reason! Encourage your child to always use both shoulder straps to make sure weight is distributed evenly across the back. Wearing one strap or choosing a pack that only has one strap can throw off your child’s center of balance and lead to shoulder and back pain. The straps should be tightened so the backpack fits close to the body. A backpack should sit evenly in the middle of the back and not sag down too low, as this can aggravate the back muscles.
Pay attention to the way your child picks up their backpack. They should bend at the knees, rather than the waist, and lifting should not be a struggle.
Lighten the load.
Less weight is always better when it comes to your child’s back. Make sure children are only carrying items that are required for that day, and only bringing home the materials required for homework each night. Encourage your kids to use their locker or desk throughout the day to store items they don’t need. When packing a backpack, use all of the compartments, and pack the heaviest items low and towards the center of the pack to help distribute weight.
It is important to avoid unnecessary strain on your child’s muscles and joints as they continue to grow. Encourage your child or teenager to keep you informed of any numbness, tingling, or discomfort that may indicate a poor backpack fit, or too much weight being carried. Do not ignore any consistent back pain in children or teenagers. Be sure to make an appointment with your child’s primary care provider if they experience back pain that doesn’t improve.


Referenced in everything from Home Alone to the horror movie Scream and the source of countless parodies, Edvard Munch's painting The Scream (1893) is one of the most famous paintings of all time. Sometimes also referred to as The Cry, Munch's painting The Scream is known for its expressionistic colors, bright swirling sky, and of course its mysterious subject: a person clasping their face, screaming in anguish alone on a dock. Why is the person screaming? What is the meaning of the painting The Scream by Edvard Munch?
The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's painting The Scream (1893) was painted at the end of the nineteenth century during a unique transitional period in art history, sometimes referred to as the fin de siecle. While artists were once interested in painting their subjects objectively since their success was often measured by their technical skill, by the end of the nineteenth century brave artists like Edvard Munch were starting to use art to express inner thoughts, feelings and emotions instead, often by painting with bright, exaggerated colors and simple shapes. Though reviled by art critics and considered too radical in their time, artists like Munch and even Vincent Van Gogh paved the way for Expressionism and the even more progressive modern art movements of the twentieth century.
So what is the meaning and story behind The Scream? In what he referred to as his "soul painting," Edvard Munch reveals an honest and perhaps even ugly glimpse of his inner troubles and feelings of anxiety, putting more importance on personal meaning than on technical skill or "beauty," a traditional goal of art. According to Munch's diaries, the idea and inspiration for The Scream was very autobiographical, with the modern art painting's content closely based on a personal experience first recorded in an 1892 diary entry which Munch later adapted into The Scream painting and finally, in 1895, a poem.
What does the famous Edvard Munch quote associated with The Scream painting mean? In the quote, Munch describes what initially sounds like a relaxing evening out in Norway, taking a walk at dusk with some friends beside the fjord. While watching a vivid sunset might sound relaxing and enjoyable, for Munch it was a moment of existential crisis. In what sounds like a panic attack, Munch describes feelings of exhaustion while overwhelmed by an almost violent wave of anxiety. Like most panic attacks, Munch's experience by the fjord was a lonely internal struggle, as his two friends walk on without him, completely unaware of the artist's upset.
Like Van Gogh's Starry Night, the landscape of The Scream painting almost vibrates with a swirling and overwhelming feeling and emotion. In the manner of a true Expressionist painter, Munch uses bright colorful imagery to express his chaotic emotional state in that moment, both in his poem and in his painting. Munch draws attention to the momentary intensity of the landscape with brightly saturated, contrasting colors as the â€œredâ€ sky ignites above the "bluish black" water. While Munch mentions feeling "unspeakably tired" in his poem, his painting also suggests his lightheadedness and helplessness in the situation, with the person in the foreground seemingly being pulled into the painting's eerily sentient background.
At the end of his poem, Munch mentions hearing "the enormous infinite scream of nature." In fact, the original German title given by Munch to his work was Der Schrei der Natur ("The Scream of Nature"). Where does the "infinite scream of nature" come from? According to his poem, Munch was psychologically anguished during his experience by the fjord. In the painting, the subject's mouth and whole face are pulled into the recognizable shape of a scream, but Munch tells us that he heard the scream — importantly, he does not say that he himself actually screamed (at least not out loud). Is this primal scream really coming from the person in the painting or somewhere else?
The repeated use of the word "blood" in Munch's poem, in combination with the twirling, swirling, and whirling warm tones used in the background suggest an external, physical threat. What is the source of violence in this seemingly isolated landscape in Norway? As it turns out, art history sources indicate that a slaughterhouse was within earshot of the spot illustrated in The Scream painting. The proximity of the slaughterhouse could very well account for Munch's repeated mentions of "blood" in connection with the painting. The haunting screams of dying animals could possibly account for the "infinite scream of nature" that Munch heard.
Was the slaughterhouse the only source of screaming anguish in The Scream? Like Vincent Van Gogh, throughout his life Edvard Munch struggled with anxiety and insanity — both on a personal level and indirectly, through his family. In fact, his mentally ill sister was hospitalized at the time The Scream was painted in 1893. Along with a slaughterhouse, the very mental asylum where Munch's own sister was hospitalized was located very nearby, too. Was the scream Munch heard actually coming from the insane asylum where his sister was? The true meaning behind The Scream may very well come back to the decidedly ugly, even hideous, sounds of living beings undergoing both physical and emotional suffering in the modern age.
Who is the person in The Scream? In his poem, Munch describes almost an all-consuming black hole hell where "tongues of fire" savagely lick at the frazzled and overwhelmed person, unidentifiable as either man or woman. On first glance, Munch's quote makes it seem that the painting is a self-portrait of the artist himself. While his experience by the fjord may have inspired The Scream, the hairless fetal person in The Scream painting is unrecognizable as either a male or female and has a gaunt, skull-like face. Due to the ambiguity of the subject's gender, the sexless person depicted in the painting may be Munch, or it actually may be Munch's sick sister, hospitalized in the asylum nearby. In fact, it could be anyone...
What is the meaning of Edvard Munch's 1893 modern art painting The Scream? When it all comes down to it, a "scream" is above all a sound and an auditory sensation. The screaming of both the dying animals and the cries overheard coming from the nearby insane asylum, however faint they may have been, give an added and potent personal meaning to the painting's simple title. Did Munch hear a scream that was in fact a mixture of While the painting may have autobiographical and personal significance for Munch, one reason why The Scream painting is still so famous even today is because it is so universal in its meaning. Anyone can look at The Scream and feel something.
Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night is one of the most famous pieces of art today. But what is the true meaning of Van Gogh's masterpiece?
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What is the meaning of artist Edward Hopper's diner painting Nighthawks? The scene seems to come straight out of classic Hollywood film noir.
What is the meaning of the famous Surrealist artist Salvador Dali's melting clocks painting "Persistence of Memory"?
The futurist movement in particular was dedicated to capturing both time and motion in art, creating paintings of movement.
What does Starry Night Over the Rhone mean? The meaning of Starry Night is often debated and analyzed, but less attention is given to the meaning behind Starry Night Over the Rhone, one of Van Goghâ€™s first â€œstarry nightâ€ paintings.
What is the meaning of the painting American Gothic (1930) by Grant Wood? Interpretation and analysis of this famous example of 20th century American regional art.
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At Easter, Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from death and the tomb. We praise God who raised, and thereby vindicated, the falsely accused Innocent One who three days earlier was executed by crucifixion at the hands of an occupying Roman military force. Considered one of the cruelest, most humiliating methods of capital punishment, the cross was reserved by the Romans for slaves who were thieves and for rebels who were not Roman citizens. Especially during the highly charged atmosphere of the Passover festival, which commemorates the Israelites' earlier liberation from the oppressive Egyptians, the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, and his troops were on red alert for insurrectionist threats from Zealots among the Jewish population.
Meanwhile, the religious council in Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin, accused Jesus before Pilate of being precisely such a malcontent: "We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is an anointed king" (Luke 23:2b). They apparently hoped that focusing attention on this man from Galilee might forestall any Roman counterinsurgency reprisals. In a succinct articulation of this sort of consequentialist reasoning, Caiaphas, the high priest, averred: "[I]t is better ... to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed" (John 11:50). This is a quintessential case of scapegoating.


Food allergies are a problem, especially if you want answers. Just ask often-confused consumers -- or the researchers who recently tried to put a finer point on the topic.
In their noble attempt to establish the prevalence, diagnosis, management and prevention of food allergies, researchers at Stanford University, Rand Corp. and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Healthcare System searched databases, analyzed reviews, assessed controlled trials and compared sample sizes. Their conclusion largely seems to be: What a mess.
Or in their words: "There is voluminous literature related to food allergy, but high-quality studies are few. Prime needs for advancement of the field are uniformity in the criteria for what constitutes a food allergy and a set of evidence-based guidelines on which to make this diagnosis."
Their review of food allergy research was published in the May 12 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
For starters, the researchers found, there is no agreed-upon definition of food allergies. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which funded their work, endorses this definition: "an adverse immune response that occurs reproducibly on exposure to a given food and is distinct from other adverse responses to food, such as food intolerance, pharmacologic reactions, and toxin-mediated reactions."
Works for me -- but not apparently for everyone. Such a definition wasn't used in all the research on the matter.
If researchers can't even agree on the definition, you can see how finding common ground on prevalence and diagnosis may be a problem. And as for management ...
The researchers did establish that food allergies affect more than 1% or 2% of the population (but less than 10%). They couldn't confirm, as many believe, that such allergies are actually increasing; nor could they prove that elimination diets will work, even for non-life-threatening reactions. Immunotherapy? It seems promising, but again, no one can say (yet, at least) that it will offer long-term, or safe, relief.
Suffice to say, people allergic to a specific food -- or who think they're allergic to a specific food -- shouldn't expect hard and fast guidance any time soon.
Here's Stanford University's press release on the review, plus a post from the school's Scope blog.
In the latter, the writer recalls a former schoolmate's allergy to milk at a time when food allergies seemed rare. (That's hardly the case now.) My family, on the other hand, was more familiar with the confusion in the food allergy field. An otherwise charming relative blamed it for the loud and seemingly endless throat-clearing after every indulgence of hot-fudge sundae cake -- indulgences that, in retrospect, were surprisingly frequent. Only as an adult was she tested for allergies. Only as an adult did she come to realize she'd bedeviled us all for no reason whatsoever -- no reason having to do with food allergies in any case. Some allergies are outgrown, yes; this apparently was not the case here.
(As for you, Mr. Allergic to Milk but Not Almost-Shocking Amounts of Ice Cream ... let's just say, I'm skeptical. Charmed in an amused way but skeptical. ...)
But I digress. Here's an L.A. Times story of a few months back explaining in more traditional form why allergies are overdiagnosed, confused and what-not: Think you have food allergies? Think again
As that story states:
With a glut of nonspecialist doctors now offering allergy testing to patients, results that can be difficult to interpret, symptoms that can be wide-ranging and people's insatiable need to find explanations for whatever ails them, foods are frequently blamed for crimes they did not commit.
Though allergies or intolerances (and recognition of them) do appear to be on the rise, there are far more people who erroneously think they have problems with specific foods.
Here are two related stories: Accuracy of allergy tests varies and Cause of rise in real food allergies is unclear.
And here's more on the promising but still unproved immunotherapy: Therapy to suppress peanut allergies is reported: "By taking small but increasing doses of the food, five children can now freely eat items containing peanuts, an allergist says in presenting the results of two clinical trials."
As for people who do, in fact, have food allergies -- which can be life-threatening and thus are not to be taken lightly -- the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network offers advice on how to protect against foods blamed for 90% of such allergies: milk, egg, peanut, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy and wheat.
It offers a wealth of other resources as well, as does MedlinePlus' overview of food allergies. Check out the latter's distinction between food allergy and food intolerance. It's one of the issues that make hard and fast answers in this field so difficult. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, meanwhile, offers a rundown of allergy research.
Then sign up to receive emails from the Food and Drug Administration about recalls and safety alerts. Often, products are pulled from store shelves because they contain undeclared allergens. For most people, consuming them wouldn't be a problem. For some people, it could prove deadly.
With researchers still trying to get to the bottom of food allergy prevalence and management, consumers shouldn't become food-allergy hypochondriacs, but they should try to protect themselves as best they can.
-- Tami Dennis
Photo: Allergic to milk? Sensitive to it? Or just don't like the stuff? Sometimes, it's hard to say. (This is soy milk, FYI -- offering double the confusion.)
Credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times


As the wood warblers swarm north, it may seem odd to have a post that does not concern itself with birds at all. Instead it will celebrate one of the UK’s most spectacular natural events. Our own avian migration cannot compete with that of Northern America, but we can take comfort in the fact that we have Bluebells. Restricted to northern Europe, their real stronghold is in Britain where more than half of the world’s flowers can be seen during early May.
To use the term “carpet of blue” may be cliched, but it perfectly describes the astounding abundance of the gracefully arched flower stems as they cover the woodland floor.
As the ice sheets melted and retreated, British, or Common Bluebells, were able to re-colonise before rising sea-levels separated the area that is now the British Isles from the continent. The English Channel acted as a barrier to prevent other flowers from recovering their former footholds, so our wildflower species count is low, but the blooms are magnificently profuse.
Pathways that wind through bluebell woods are thickly lined with the flower stems of Hyacinthoides non-scripta and a delicate scent fills the air on a warm spring afternoon. True Hyacinths sprang from the blood of the Greek God Apollo and were marked by his tears, so legend tells us. The Bluebell’s specific name, non-scripta (un-marked) differentiates it from the larger, showier true hyacinths and indicates that Apollo must been in a much better humour by the time he visited our cooler climes.
Every so often, a mutant gene exerts itself and white bells appear on the flower stem.
In folklore, Bluebells are closely associated with fairies and pixies. It is said that a child who enters a bluebell wood alone will never be seen again and that anyone who picks a flower will incur the displeasure of the tiny woodland folk. ‘Tis true that anyone who plucks a bloom in modern times will have more than just the pixies to contend with as the flowers are protected by law to prevent people from digging up the bulbs to plant in their own gardens.
These pictures were taken in King’s Wood, near Maidstone in Kent King’s Wood is an ancient woodland of coppiced Sweet Chestnut. Coppicing is a method of woodland management whereby selected areas of the wood are cyclically harvested and new growth sprouts from the stumps of the old growth. This creates excellent growing conditions for wildflowers and Bluebells in particular seem to thrive.


Diamond cleavage is a straight-lined crack in a cut diamond. Diamond cleavage is one of many inclusions, or flaws, that reduce the value of a diamond. Diamond cleavage reduces the value of diamonds not only because it is a cosmetic flaw, but also because cleavage can eventually lead to a break in the diamond.Continue Reading
There are two types of diamond cleavage: feather-like cleavage and cleavage fissures. Gemnation offers images of both types of inclusions and many other common diamond inclusions. Most diamonds contain inclusions, since there are not many perfect diamonds in the world, and those that are perfect are extremely expensive. However, most diamond inclusions do not have much effect on the appearance or strength of the diamond.
Additionally, the inclusions of a diamond are what make it unique and identifiable if lost or stolen. Diamond cleavage is one of many inclusions, or flaws, that may reduce the value of a diamond if too pronounced. Clouds are small impurities or voids that look like dust particles in the diamond. Bearding is another inclusion that looks like little hairs along the girdle of the diamond. Another inclusion happens when minerals or crystals, such as other diamond or garnet crystals, are trapped inside a diamond.Learn more about Precious Metals & Gems


Understanding how the brain is wired
Dr. Julie Lefebvre, scientist in the Neurosciences and Mental Health Program at The Hospital for Sick Children, was awarded a 2015 Sloan Research Fellowship in Neuroscience for her work to understand the fundamental mechanisms of how the brain is wired.
Dr. Lefebvre’s research involves studying the roles of genes in the complex formation of neural circuits. “I hope to bridge my work to advance our understanding of how genetic alterations affect brain development and other brain disorders,” says Dr. Lefebvre.
She aims to identify how nerve cells form specific patterns of neural connections that are essential for proper development and functioning of the nervous system. Her research will provide insights into how neural circuits assemble in a healthy brain, and how defects in these developmental pathways contribute to abnormal brain function and neurodevelopmental disorders.
Dr. Lefebvre received her bachelor of science from McGill University and earned her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania for research on neuromuscular development. She completed postdoctoral work at Harvard University, investigating molecular mechanisms of neuronal morphogenesis and circuit formation in the retina. She joined The Hospital for Sick Children in December 2013.
Learn more about the Sloan Research Fellowships
* Julie Lefebvre is one of 24 Canadian winners of major international research awards in 2015 featured in the publication Canadian excellence, Global recognition: Celebrating recent Canadian winners of major international research awards.


A psalm to give instruction
Text: Psalm 78
The purpose is stated in the first seven verses. Purpose of this psalm is to prevent future generations from acting like previous generations toward God. Asaph sings about the mighty works the LORD did in Israel before bringing David to the throne. But after each wondrous work the children of Israel forgot God. This song contains mighty works of the LORD punctuated by men forgetting the LORD.
The song is like a celebration for David’s ascension to the throne and a warning to future generations particularly of David’s descendants. This song records the transition of God’s presence from Shiloh in Ephraim to Jerusalem in Judah. Why did the LORD do this? The song tells you why. Ephraim was the son of Joseph. It was Joseph who was thrust into leadership because he followed the LORD. Joshua was from the tribe of Ephraim and Joshua was the one that led Israel into the promised land. But once in the promised land Ephraim became full of wickedness. When you get to 1 Samuel the ark of God is in Shiloh which is in Ephraim. Samuel is from Ephraim. But there is no man in Ephraim that possesses the leadership qualities God is looking for. Look at verses 9, 59, 65-70. David is chosen by God because he is a man after God’s own heart.
Look at verse 41. You believe God is all powerful. There are doctrines of God in theological classes about the omnipotence of God meaning He is all powerful. He is in control of everything. But verses like this say the opposite. It says God was limited. Which makes much more sense considering the world we live in. If the LORD was in control of everything there would be no hatred, murder, theft, bitterness, abortions, crooked politicians, and everyone would be saved. The LORD didn’t make anyone come to church tonight. You came because you chose to.
The psalmist uses words like they tempted God, they provoked God, they flattered God, and they accused God. We’re going to look at the things that limited the LORD according to this song. The issue over and over is a lack of belief evidenced by a failure to remember and keep God’s law. Notice verses 22, 32, 57 that characterize Israel as unbelieving and unfaithful.
Ephraim refused to contend for the faith (vss 8-11)
- They’re equipped. They have an inheritance. But they’re going to let sin run rampant in the inheritance.
- Jude 1:3 Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.
Failed to believe God’s provision (vss 17-19, 21-22)
- Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God. Quench not the Spirit.
Faithless in light of the LORD’S wondrous works (vs 32)
Flattered God (vss 36-37)
Turned back, provoked, grieved God (vss 40-42)
Brought in idols (vss 56-58)
- At the end of Judges it was an Ephrathite named Micah who hired a Levite to make idols for him.
The LORD is looking for someone to represent His leadership on the earth. And when He finds that soul, He takes them from what they’re doing, and raises them up into a position of greater influence (vss 70-72).