Family trees are familiar and similarly dissatisfying models in historical linguistics and in the history of religion. In linguistic pedigrees, proto-languages give way to language families that are in turn replaced by modern descendants, so that proto-Indo-European begat Germanic and her sisters; Germanic begat West, East, and North Germanic; and West Germanic begat English, Dutch, German, and Frisian. A similar diagram might illustrate how an original Christian unity was divided by schism into Catholic and Protestant, from which developed the related sects of contemporary Christianity. The problems with family trees in religious history are well known to Mormons: we are emphatically Christian, but we disavow any place in the offshoots of Catholicism that have appeared since 1517. What may be less well known is that family trees are just as unsatisfactory models in historical linguistics as well.
The more you know about a language’s history, the less family trees can describe it adequately. It seems clear enough now that there never was a cohesive speech community that spoke “West Germanic,” for example, but instead a fairly wide range of related dialects whose speakers regularly shifted in their allegiance to each other. A unified “Germanic” or “Indo-European” is similarly unlikely. It still makes sense to discuss and reconstruct features of proto-languages, but you have to assume considerable diversity in these prehistorical language communities.
Family trees are also inadequate for describing dialects and their relations to each other. It’s said that you can start walking in Portugal and continue your trip through Spain and France to the toe of Italy without ever finding a distinct linguistic border. To the extent that people speak their local dialect, they can understand speakers of the dialect across the valley without difficulty, who in turn can understand the people in the next valley over, and so on from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. And yet someone from the middle of Spain will not understand someone from the middle of France or Italy.
One attempt to deal with the inadequacies of family trees in the late nineteenth century was the wave theory. It proposed that language change emanated from centers of innovation, more or less like ripples in a pond. In some cases, one can even find documentary evidence of a linguistic feature spreading slowly up the Rhine over centuries as people adapted their speech habits to those of their neighbors. The isoglosses that define the borders of a linguistic feature extend and decline over time, sometimes joining with and reinforcing other isoglosses, even splitting one language continuum into speech communities that are not mutually intelligible. The wave theory is not perfect, and certainly not the last word in language change, but it has been a useful and stable model in dialect geography.
It seems to me that something like wave theory is necessary to account for Church history. Such a theory of Church history in a nutshell might note that the religious landscape of the Restoration in nineteenth-century New England was marked by disagreement and strife–but argument is also a form of communication, and the obstacles to shifting allegiance from one Christian sect to another seem to have been quite low. Joseph Smith appeared on the scene as a highly productive center of innovation from whom many new religious features emanated, although into an existing American Protestant environment rather than writing on a blank slate, and in competition with other voices. The isoglosses that defined Mormonism rendered it fairly impervious to influences from outside, changing it from a dialect of the second Great Awakening to a separate religion in its own right, and then the trek westward substantially isolated the new faith for nearly a century. The Church continues to be vigilant against unsanctioned innovations or relic-area conservatism that might lead to the development of schisms or differentiation into religious orders. One nice feature of the wave model is that it acknowledges the religious heritage of the first Mormon converts without requiring us to view ourselves as an offshoot of the Methodists, or something equally nonsensical.


According to research from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), construction workers sustain more traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) than any other profession. In this article, we are going to focus on mild TBIs, also known as concussions. A concussion is the most common type of head or brain injury.
“Any blow to the head must be taken seriously. While most people will recover from concussion symptoms relatively quickly, continued monitoring of the person’s physical and mental health may be necessary,” says LIUNA General Secretary-Treasurer and LHSFNA Labor Co-Chairman Armand E. Sabitoni. “It’s possible for even a mild concussion to cause long-term symptoms that require additional care.”
A study funded by the National Institutes of Health found that one in five people with a concussion may experience mental health symptoms, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression for up to six months after being injured. In comparison, mental health conditions were reported in 8-12 percent of patients who were treated for orthopedic injuries like broken legs following their emergency room treatment. This study points to the importance of doctors monitoring patients with mild head injuries to ensure their mental well-being for months following their injury.
“These findings suggest that follow-up care after head injury, even for mild cases, is crucial, especially for patients showing risk factors for PTSD or depression,” said Dr. Murray B. Stein, a professor at the University of California San Diego and one of the authors of the study.
When It Comes to Your Brain, Mild Is Serious
A concussion occurs when a sudden bump, jolt or blow to the head makes the brain rapidly bounce and twist inside the skull. The resulting bruising and tearing of delicate tissues and nerve damage can cause confusion, disorientation and loss of consciousness. When symptoms resolve in less than 30 minutes and medical scans show normal brain function, the concussion is classified as “mild.” But what these test results don’t reveal are microscopic changes in the brain that can cause headaches, memory problems and mood swings in the weeks and months after a concussion. In some instances, these symptoms can affect every aspect of life, including making it difficult to go back to work.
Preventing Head Injuries
OSHA requires employers to provide workers with hard hats when there is a risk for head injury from dropped objects, impacts or electrical shock. However, construction employers should require workers to wear hard hats regardless of the job and should implement a good housekeeping program to further reduce risk for concussions and other head injuries. For example, same level falls are a leading cause of concussions in the workplace and frequently involve slippery, cluttered and unstable walking surfaces. Good housekeeping practices include:
- Cleaning spills immediately
- Mopping or sweeping debris from walking surfaces
- Removing obstacles and clutter from walkways
- Securing (tacking, taping, etc.) mats, rugs and carpets that do not lay flat
- Covering cables that cross walkways
- Keeping working areas and walkways well lit
- Assigning a worker to check the worksite for fall hazards daily
What Else Can Employers Do?
Most concussions are minor and don’t require calling 911, but employers should ensure workers are trained to recognize symptoms indicating a serious injury and that they know when emergency assistance is needed. Workers should also know what to do while waiting for help to arrive. For example, it’s best not to move the worker and if the worker is wearing a hard hat, to leave it on. Signs of a serious head injury include:
- Severe head or facial bleeding
- Bleeding or fluid leakage from the nose or ears
- Change in level of consciousness for more than a few seconds
- Black-and-blue discoloration below the eyes or behind the ears
- Cessation of breathing
- Loss of balance
- Slurred speech
Symptoms of a concussion may not appear for several hours or even several days. The injured employee should always be seen and cleared by a health care provider before returning to work. If you or someone you know sustains a blow to the head, report any symptoms to your health care provider, even if you think they’re not related.
LHSFNA Resources for LIUNA Signatory Contractors
The LHSFNA has developed a number of toolbox talks that can help LIUNA signatory contractors and other LIUNA affiliates educate workers about the risks of head injuries and the hazards of falls in construction. Topics include:
- Head Protection
- Fall Prevention: Guardrail Systems
- Holes in Flooring and Other Openings
- Ladder Safety
- Personal Fall Arrest Systems
- Scaffold Safety
- Slips, Trips and Falls
To order these or other materials, go to the Fund’s website at www.lhsfna.org and click on Publications.
[Janet Lubman Rathner]


|Area||44,579,000 km2 (17,212,000 sq mi)|
|Population density||87/km2 (225/sq mi)|
|Countries||48 UN members 6 other states|
Asia (/, / ( listen)) is Earth's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres and sharing the continental landmass of Eurasia with the continent of Europe and shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with both Europe and Africa. Asia covers an area of 44,579,000 square kilometres (17,212,000 sq mi), about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the human population, was the site of many of the first civilizations. Asia is notable for not only its overall large size and population, but also dense and large settlements as well as vast barely populated regions within the continent of 4.4 billion people.
In general terms, Asia is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean and on the north by the Arctic Ocean. The western boundary with Europe is a historical and cultural construct, as there is no clear physical and geographical separation between them. The most commonly accepted boundaries place Asia to the east of the Suez Canal, the Ural River, and the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian and Black Seas.
China and India alternated in being the largest economies in the world from 1 to 1800 CE. China was a major economic power and attracted many to the east, and for many the legendary wealth and prosperity of the ancient culture of India personified Asia, attracting European commerce, exploration and colonialism. The accidental discovery of America by Columbus in search for India demonstrates this deep fascination. The Silk Road became the main East-West trading route in the Asian hinterlands while the Straits of Malacca stood as a major sea route. Asia has exhibited economic dynamism (particularly East Asia) as well as robust population growth during the 20th century, but overall population growth has since fallen. Asia was the birthplace of most of the world's mainstream religions including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism (or Daoism), Jainism, Sikhism, Zoroastranism, as well as many other religions.
Given its size and diversity, the concept of Asia—a name dating back to classical antiquity—may actually have more to do with human geography than physical geography. Asia varies greatly across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties and government systems. It also has a mix of many different climates ranging from the equatorial south via the hot desert in the Middle East, temperate areas in the east and the continental centre to vast subarctic and polar areas in Siberia.
The boundary between Asia and Africa is the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez, and the Suez Canal. This makes Egypt a transcontinental country, with the Sinai peninsula in Asia and the remainder of the country in Africa.
The border between Asia and Europe was historically defined by European academics. The Don River became unsatisfactory to northern Europeans when Peter the Great, king of the Tsardom of Russia, defeating rival claims of Sweden and the Ottoman Empire to the eastern lands, and armed resistance by the tribes of Siberia, synthesized a new Russian Empire extending to the Ural Mountains and beyond, founded in 1721. The major geographical theorist of the empire was actually a former Swedish prisoner-of-war, taken at the Battle of Poltava in 1709 and assigned to Tobolsk, where he associated with Peter's Siberian official, Vasily Tatishchev, and was allowed freedom to conduct geographical and anthropological studies in preparation for a future book.
In Sweden, five years after Peter's death, in 1730 Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published a new atlas proposing the Urals as the border of Asia. The Russians were enthusiastic about the concept, which allowed them to keep their European identity in geography. Tatishchev announced that he had proposed the idea to von Strahlenberg. The latter had suggested the Emba River as the lower boundary. Over the next century various proposals were made until the Ural River prevailed in the mid-19th century. The border had been moved perforce from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea into which the Ural River projects. The border between the Black Sea and the Caspian is usually placed along the crest of the Caucasus Mountains, although it is sometimes placed further north.
The border between Asia and the loosely defined region of Oceania is usually placed somewhere in the Malay Archipelago. The terms Southeast Asia and Oceania, devised in the 19th century, have had several vastly different geographic meanings since their inception. The chief factor in determining which islands of the Malay Archipelago are Asian has been the location of the colonial possessions of the various empires there (not all European). Lewis and Wigen assert, "The narrowing of 'Southeast Asia' to its present boundaries was thus a gradual process."
Geographical Asia is a cultural artifact of European conceptions of the world, beginning with the Ancient Greeks, being imposed onto other cultures, an imprecise concept causing endemic contention about what it means. Asia is larger and more culturally diverse than Europe. It does not exactly correspond to the cultural borders of its various types of constituents.
From the time of Herodotus a minority of geographers have rejected the three-continent system (Europe, Africa, Asia) on the grounds that there is no or is no substantial physical separation between them. For example, Sir Barry Cunliffe, the emeritus professor of European archeology at Oxford, argues that Europe has been geographically and culturally merely "the western excrescence of the continent of Asia". Geographically, Asia is the major eastern constituent of the continent of Eurasia with Europe being a northwestern peninsula of the landmass. Asia, Europe and Africa make up a single continuous landmass - Afro-Eurasia (except for the Suez Canal) and share a common continental shelf. Almost all of Europe and the better part of Asia sit atop the Eurasian Plate, adjoined on the south by the Arabian and Indian Plate and with the easternmost part of Siberia (east of the Chersky Range) on the North American Plate.
The English word "Asia" was originally a concept of Greek civilization. The place name "Asia" in various forms in a large number of modern languages is of unknown ultimate provenience. Its etymology and language of origin are uncertain. It appears to be one of the most ancient of recorded names. A number of theories have been published. English Asia can be traced through the formation of English literature to Latin literature, where it has the same form, Asia. Whether all uses and all forms of the name derive also from the Latin of the Roman Empire is much less certain. One of the first classical writers to use Asia as a name of the whole continent was Pliny. This metonymical change in meaning is common and can be observed in some other geographical names, such as Skandinavia (from Scania).
Before Greek poetry, the Aegean Sea area was in a Greek Dark Age, at the beginning of which syllabic writing was lost and alphabetic writing had not begun. Prior to then in the Bronze Age the records of the Assyrian Empire, the Hittite Empire and the various Mycenaean states of Greece mention a region undoubtedly Asia, certainly in Anatolia, including if not identical to Lydia. These records are administrative and do not include poetry.
The Mycenaean states were destroyed about 1200 BCE by unknown agents although one school of thought assigns the Dorian invasion to this time. The burning of the palaces baked clay diurnal administrative records written in a Greek syllabic script called Linear B, deciphered by a number of interested parties, most notably by a young World War II cryptographer, Michael Ventris, subsequently assisted by the scholar, John Chadwick. A major cache discovered by Carl Blegen at the site of ancient Pylos included hundreds of male and female names formed by different methods.
Some of these are of women held in servitude (as study of the society implied by the content reveals). They were used in trades, such as cloth-making, and usually came with children. The epithet, lawiaiai, "captives," associated with some of them identifies their origin. Some are ethnic names. One in particular, aswiai, identifies "women of Asia." Perhaps they were captured in Asia, but some others, Milatiai, appear to have been of Miletus, a Greek colony, which would not have been raided for slaves by Greeks. Chadwick suggests that the names record the locations where these foreign women were purchased. The name is also in the singular, Aswia, which refers both to the name of a country and to a female of it. There is a masculine form, aswios. This Aswia appears to have been a remnant of a region known to the Hittites as Assuwa, centered on Lydia, or "Roman Asia." This name, Assuwa, has been suggested as the origin for the name of the continent "Asia". The Assuwa league was a confederation of states in western Anatolia, defeated by the Hittites under Tudhaliya I around 1400 BCE.
Alternatively, the etymology of the term may be from the Akkadian word (w)aṣû(m), which means 'to go outside' or 'to ascend', referring to the direction of the sun at sunrise in the Middle East and also likely connected with the Phoenician word asa meaning east. This may be contrasted to a similar etymology proposed for Europe, as being from Akkadian erēbu(m) 'to enter' or 'set' (of the sun).
T.R. Reid supports this alternative etymology, noting that the ancient Greek name must have derived from asu, meaning 'east' in Assyrian (ereb for Europe meaning 'west'). The ideas of Occidental (form Latin Occidens 'setting') and Oriental (from Latin Oriens for 'rising') are also European invention, synonymous with Western and Eastern. Reid further emphasizes that it explains the Western point of view of placing all the peoples and cultures of Asia into a single classification, almost as if there were a need for setting the distinction between Western and Eastern civilizations on the Eurasian continent. Ogura Kazuo and Tenshin Okakura are two outspoken Japanese figures on the subject.
Latin Asia and Greek Ἀσία appear to be the same word. Roman authors translated Ἀσία as Asia. The Romans named a province Asia, which roughly corresponds with modern-day central-western Turkey. There was an Asia Minor and an Asia Major located in modern-day Iraq. As the earliest evidence of the name is Greek, it is likely circumstantially that Asia came from Ἀσία, but ancient transitions, due to the lack of literary contexts, are difficult to catch in the act. The most likely vehicles were the ancient geographers and historians, such as Herodotus, who were all Greek. Ancient Greek certainly evidences early and rich uses of the name.
The first continental use of Asia is attributed to Herodotus (about 440 BCE), not because he innovated it, but because his Histories are the earliest surviving prose to describe it in any detail. He defines it carefully, mentioning the previous geographers whom he had read, but whose works are now missing. By it he means Anatolia and the Persian Empire, in contrast to Greece and Egypt. Herodotus comments that he is puzzled as to why three women's names were "given to a tract which is in reality one" (Europa, Asia, and Libya, referring to Africa), stating that most Greeks assumed that Asia was named after the wife of Prometheus (i.e. Hesione), but that the Lydians say it was named after Asies, son of Cotys, who passed the name on to a tribe at Sardis. In Greek mythology, "Asia" (Ἀσία) or "Asie" (Ἀσίη) was the name of a "Nymph or Titan goddess of Lydia."
In ancient Greek religion, places were under the care of female divinities, parallel to guardian angels. The poets detailed their doings and generations in allegoric language salted with entertaining stories, which subsequently playwrights transformed into classical Greek drama and became "Greek mythology." For example, Hesiod mentions the daughters of Tethys and Ocean, among whom are a "holy company", "who with the Lord Apollo and the Rivers have youths in their keeping." Many of these are geographic: Doris, Rhodea, Europa, Asia. Hesiod explains:
"For there are three-thousand neat-ankled daughters of Ocean who are dispersed far and wide, and in every place alike serve the earth and the deep waters."
The Iliad (attributed by the ancient Greeks to Homer) mentions two Phrygians (the tribe that replaced the Luvians in Lydia) in the Trojan War named Asios (an adjective meaning "Asian"); and also a marsh or lowland containing a marsh in Lydia as ασιος.
The history of Asia can be seen as the distinct histories of several peripheral coastal regions: East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, linked by the interior mass of the Central Asian steppes.
The coastal periphery was home to some of the world's earliest known civilizations, each of them developing around fertile river valleys. The civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and the Yellow River shared many similarities. These civilizations may well have exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel. Other innovations, such as writing, seem to have been developed individually in each area. Cities, states and empires developed in these lowlands.
The central steppe region had long been inhabited by horse-mounted nomads who could reach all areas of Asia from the steppes. The earliest postulated expansion out of the steppe is that of the Indo-Europeans, who spread their languages into the Middle East, South Asia, and the borders of China, where the Tocharians resided. The northernmost part of Asia, including much of Siberia, was largely inaccessible to the steppe nomads, owing to the dense forests, climate and tundra. These areas remained very sparsely populated.
The center and the peripheries were mostly kept separated by mountains and deserts. The Caucasus and Himalaya mountains and the Karakum and Gobi deserts formed barriers that the steppe horsemen could cross only with difficulty. While the urban city dwellers were more advanced technologically and socially, in many cases they could do little in a military aspect to defend against the mounted hordes of the steppe. However, the lowlands did not have enough open grasslands to support a large horsebound force; for this and other reasons, the nomads who conquered states in China, India, and the Middle East often found themselves adapting to the local, more affluent societies.
The Islamic Caliphate took over the Middle East and Central Asia during the Muslim conquests of the 7th century. The Mongol Empire conquered a large part of Asia in the 13th century, an area extending from China to Europe. Before the Mongol invasion, Song dynasty reportedly had approximately 120 million citizens; the 1300 census which followed the invasion reported roughly 60 million people.
The Russian Empire began to expand into Asia from the 17th century, and would eventually take control of all of Siberia and most of Central Asia by the end of the 19th century. The Ottoman Empire controlled Anatolia, the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans from the 16th century onwards. In the 17th century, the Manchu conquered China and established the Qing Dynasty. The Islamic Mughal Empire and the Hindu Maratha Empire controlled much of India in the 16th and 18th centuries respectively.
Asia is the largest continent on Earth. It covers 8.8% of the Earth's total surface area (or 30% of its land area), and has the largest coastline, at 62,800 kilometres (39,022 mi). Asia is generally defined as comprising the eastern four-fifths of Eurasia. It is located to the east of the Suez Canal and the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus Mountains (or the Kuma–Manych Depression) and the Caspian and Black Seas. It is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean and on the north by the Arctic Ocean. Asia is subdivided into 48 countries, three of them (Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkey) having part of their land in Europe.
Asia has extremely diverse climates and geographic features. Climates range from arctic and subarctic in Siberia to tropical in southern India and Southeast Asia. It is moist across southeast sections, and dry across much of the interior. Some of the largest daily temperature ranges on Earth occur in western sections of Asia. The monsoon circulation dominates across southern and eastern sections, due to the presence of the Himalayas forcing the formation of a thermal low which draws in moisture during the summer. Southwestern sections of the continent are hot. Siberia is one of the coldest places in the Northern Hemisphere, and can act as a source of arctic air masses for North America. The most active place on Earth for tropical cyclone activity lies northeast of the Philippines and south of Japan. The Gobi Desert is in Mongolia and the Arabian Desert stretches across much of the Middle East. The Yangtze River in China is the longest river in the continent. The Himalayas between Nepal and China is the tallest mountain range in the world. Tropical rainforests stretch across much of southern Asia and coniferous and deciduous forests lie farther north.
A survey carried out in 2010 by global risk analysis farm Maplecroft identified 16 countries that are extremely vulnerable to climate change. Each nation's vulnerability was calculated using 42 socio, economic and environmental indicators, which identified the likely climate change impacts during the next 30 years. The Asian countries of Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were among the 16 countries facing extreme risk from climate change. Some shifts are already occurring. For example, in tropical parts of India with a semi-arid climate, the temperature increased by 0.4 °C between 1901 and 2003. A 2013 study by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) aimed to find science-based, pro-poor approaches and techniques that would enable Asia's agricultural systems to cope with climate change, while benefitting poor and vulnerable farmers. The study's recommendations ranged from improving the use of climate information in local planning and strengthening weather-based agro-advisory services, to stimulating diversification of rural household incomes and providing incentives to farmers to adopt natural resource conservation measures to enhance forest cover, replenish groundwater and use renewable energy.
|Rank||Country||GDP (PPP, Peak Year)
millions of USD
|Rank||Country||GDP (nominal, Peak Year)
millions of USD
Asia has the second largest nominal GDP of all continents, after Europe, but the largest when measured in purchasing power parity. As of 2011, the largest economies in Asia are China, Japan, India, South Korea and Indonesia. Based on Global Office Locations 2011, Asia dominated the office locations with 4 of the top 5 being in Asia: Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul and Shanghai. Around 68 percent of international firms have office in Hong Kong.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the economies of China and India have been growing rapidly, both with an average annual growth rate of more than 8%. Other recent very-high-growth nations in Asia include Israel, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Cyprus and the Philippines, and mineral-rich nations such as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Brunei, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman.
According to economic historian Angus Maddison in his book The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective, India had the world's largest economy during 0 BCE and 1000 BCE. China was the largest and most advanced economy on earth for much of recorded history, until the British Empire (excluding India) overtook it in the mid-19th century. For several decades in the late twentieth century Japan was the largest economy in Asia and second-largest of any single nation in the world, after surpassing the Soviet Union (measured in net material product) in 1986 and Germany in 1968. (NB: A number of supernational economies are larger, such as the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or APEC). This ended in 2010 when China overtook Japan to become the world's second largest economy.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japan's GDP was almost as large (current exchange rate method) as that of the rest of Asia combined. In 1995, Japan's economy nearly equaled that of the USA as the largest economy in the world for a day, after the Japanese currency reached a record high of 79 yen/US$. Economic growth in Asia since World War II to the 1990s had been concentrated in Japan as well as the four regions of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore located in the Pacific Rim, known as the Asian tigers, which have now all received developed country status, having the highest GDP per capita in Asia.
It is forecasted that India will overtake Japan in terms of nominal GDP by 2020. By 2027, according to Goldman Sachs, China will have the largest economy in the world. Several trade blocs exist, with the most developed being the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Asia is the largest continent in the world by a considerable margin, and it is rich in natural resources, such as petroleum, forests, fish, water, rice, copper and silver. Manufacturing in Asia has traditionally been strongest in East and Southeast Asia, particularly in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, India, the Philippines, and Singapore. Japan and South Korea continue to dominate in the area of multinational corporations, but increasingly the PRC and India are making significant inroads. Many companies from Europe, North America, South Korea and Japan have operations in Asia's developing countries to take advantage of its abundant supply of cheap labour and relatively developed infrastructure.
According to Citigroup 9 of 11 Global Growth Generators countries came from Asia driven by population and income growth. They are Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Mongolia, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Asia has four main financial centers: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai. Call centers and business process outsourcing (BPOs) are becoming major employers in India and the Philippines due to the availability of a large pool of highly skilled, English-speaking workers. The increased use of outsourcing has assisted the rise of India and the China as financial centers. Due to its large and extremely competitive information technology industry, India has become a major hub for outsourcing.
In 2010, Asia had 3.3 million millionaires (people with net worth over US$1 million excluding their homes), slightly below North America with 3.4 million millionaires. Last year Asia had toppled Europe. Citigroup in The Wealth Report 2012 stated that Asian centa-millionaire overtook North America's wealth for the first time as the world's "economic center of gravity" continued moving east. At the end of 2011, there were 18,000 Asian people mainly in Southeast Asia, China and Japan who have at least $100 million in disposable assets, while North America with 17,000 people and Western Europe with 14,000 people.
With growing Regional Tourism with domination of Chinese visitors, MasterCard has released Global Destination Cities Index 2013 with 10 of 20 are dominated by Asia and Pacific Region Cities and also for the first time a city of a country from Asia (Bangkok) set in the top-ranked with 15.98 international visitors.
|Source: "UN report 2004 data" (PDF).
The figure for 2012 is provided by PopulationData.net.
East Asia had by far the strongest overall Human Development Index (HDI) improvement of any region in the world, nearly doubling average HDI attainment over the past 40 years, according to the report's analysis of health, education and income data. China, the second highest achiever in the world in terms of HDI improvement since 1970, is the only country on the "Top 10 Movers" list due to income rather than health or education achievements. Its per capita income increased a stunning 21-fold over the last four decades, also lifting hundreds of millions out of income poverty. Yet it was not among the region's top performers in improving school enrollment and life expectancy.
Nepal, a South Asian country, emerges as one of the world's fastest movers since 1970 mainly due to health and education achievements. Its present life expectancy is 25 years longer than in the 1970s. More than four of every five children of school age in Nepal now attend primary school, compared to just one in five 40 years ago.
Japan and South Korea ranked highest among the countries grouped on the HDI (number 11 and 12 in the world, which are in the "very high human development" category), followed by Hong Kong (21) and Singapore (27). Afghanistan (155) ranked lowest amongst Asian countries out of the 169 countries assessed.
Asia is home to several language families and many language isolates. Most Asian countries have more than one language that is natively spoken. For instance, according to Ethnologue, more than 600 languages are spoken in Indonesia, more than 800 languages spoken in India, and more than 100 are spoken in the Philippines. China has many languages and dialects in different provinces.
Many of the world's major religions have their origins in Asia, including the five most practiced in the world (excluding irreligion), which are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Chinese folk religion (classified as Confucianism and Taoism), and Buddhism respectively. Asian mythology is complex and diverse. The story of the Great Flood for example, as presented to Christians in the Old Testament in the narrative of Noah, is first found in Mesopotamian mythology, in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Likewise, the same story of Great Flood is presented to Muslims in the Holy Quran, again in the narrative of Noah, Who according to Islamic mythology was a Prophet and Built an Ark on Allah's Command to save the True Believers from the Great Flood (Great Calamity). Hindu mythology also tells about an Avatar of the God Vishnu in the form of a fish who warned Manu of a terrible flood. In ancient Chinese mythology, Shan Hai Jing, the Chinese ruler Da Yu, had to spend 10 years to control a deluge which swept out most of ancient China and was aided by the goddess Nüwa who literally fixed the broken sky through which huge rains were pouring.
Judaism, the oldest of the Abrahamic faiths, is practiced primarily in Israel, the birthplace and historical homeland of the Hebrew nation which today consists equally of those Israelites who remained in Asia/North Africa and those who returned from diaspora in Europe, North America, and other regions, though sizable communities continue to live abroad. Jews are the predominant ethnic group in Israel (75.6%) numbering at about 6.1 million, although the levels of adherence to Jewish religion are unspecified. Outside of Israel there are small ancient communities of Jewish still live in Turkey (17,400), Azerbaijan (9,100), Iran (8,756), India (5,000) and Uzbekistan (4,000).
Christianity is a widespread religion in Asia with more than 286 million adherents according to Pew Research Center in 2010, and nearly 364 million according to Britannica Book of the Year 2014. Constituting around 12.6% of the total population of Asia. In the Philippines and East Timor, Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion; it was introduced by the Spaniards and the Portuguese, respectively. In Armenia, Cyprus, Georgia and Asian Russia, Eastern Orthodoxy is the predominant religion. Various Christian denominations have adherents in portions of the Middle East, as well as China and India. Saint Thomas Christians in India trace their origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century.
Islam, which originated in Saudi Arabia, is the largest and most widely spread religion in Asia with at least 1 billion Muslims constituting around 23.8% of the total population of Asia. With 12.7% of the world Muslim population, the country currently with the largest Muslim population in the world is Indonesia, followed by Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Iran and Turkey. Mecca, Medina and to a lesser extent Jerusalem are the holiest cities for Islam in all the world. These religious sites attract large numbers of devotees from all over the world, particularly during the Hajj and Umrah seasons. Iran is the largest Shi'a country.
The Bahá'í Faith originated in Asia, in Iran (Persia), and spread from there to the Ottoman Empire, Central Asia, India, and Burma during the lifetime of Bahá'u'lláh. Since the middle of the 20th century, growth has particularly occurred in other Asian countries, because Bahá'í activities in many Muslim countries has been severely suppressed by authorities. Lotus Temple is a big Baha'i Temple in India.
Almost all Asian religions have philosophical character and Asian philosophical traditions cover a large spectrum of philosophical thoughts and writings. Indian philosophy includes Hindu philosophy and Buddhist philosophy. They include elements of nonmaterial pursuits, whereas another school of thought from India, Cārvāka, preached the enjoyment of the material world. The religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism originated in India, South Asia. In East Asia, particularly in China and Japan, Confucianism, Taoism and Zen Buddhism took shape.
As of 2012, Hinduism has around 1.1 billion adherents. The faith represents around 25% of Asia's population and is the second largest religion in Asia. However, it is mostly concentrated in South Asia. Over 80% of the populations of both India and Nepal adhere to Hinduism, alongside significant communities in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Bali, Indonesia. Many overseas Indians in countries such as Burma, Singapore and Malaysia also adhere to Hinduism.
Buddhism has a great following in mainland Southeast Asia and East Asia. Buddhism is the religion of the majority of the populations of Cambodia (96%), Thailand (95%), Burma (80%–89%), Japan (36%–96%), Bhutan (75%–84%), Sri Lanka (70%), Laos (60%–67%) and Mongolia (53%–93%). Large Buddhist populations also exist in Singapore (33%–51%), Taiwan (35%–93%), South Korea (23%–50%), Malaysia (19%–21%), Nepal (9%–11%), Vietnam (10%–75%), China (20%–50%), North Korea (1.5%–14%), and small communities in India and Bangladesh. In many Chinese communities, Mahayana Buddhism is easily syncretized with Taoism, thus exact religious statistics is difficult to obtain and may be understated or overstated. The Communist-governed countries of China, Vietnam and North Korea are officially atheist, thus the number of Buddhists and other religious adherents may be under-reported.
Jainism is found mainly in India and in oversea Indian communities such as the United States and Malaysia. Sikhism is found in Northern India and amongst overseas Indian communities in other parts of Asia, especially Southeast Asia. Confucianism is found predominantly in Mainland China, South Korea, Taiwan and in overseas Chinese populations. Taoism is found mainly in Mainland China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. Taoism is easily syncretized with Mahayana Buddhism for many Chinese, thus exact religious statistics is difficult to obtain and may be understated or overstated.
Muslim men praying in Turkey
Some of the events pivotal in the Asia territory related to the relationship with the outside world in the post-Second World War were:
|This section needs expansion with: More information about general cultural topics other than Nobel prizes. You can help by adding to it. (June 2011)|
The polymath Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali poet, dramatist, and writer from Santiniketan, now in West Bengal, India, became in 1913 the first Asian Nobel laureate. He won his Nobel Prize in Literature for notable impact his prose works and poetic thought had on English, French, and other national literatures of Europe and the Americas. He is also the writer of the national anthems of Bangladesh and India.
Other Asian writers who won Nobel Prize for literature include Yasunari Kawabata (Japan, 1968), Kenzaburō Ōe (Japan, 1994), Gao Xingjian (China, 2000), Orhan Pamuk (Turkey, 2006), and Mo Yan (China, 2012). Some may consider the American writer, Pearl S. Buck, an honorary Asian Nobel laureate, having spent considerable time in China as the daughter of missionaries, and based many of her novels, namely The Good Earth (1931) and The Mother (1933), as well as the biographies of her parents of their time in China, The Exile and Fighting Angel, all of which earned her the Literature prize in 1938.
Also, Mother Teresa of India and Shirin Ebadi of Iran were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their significant and pioneering efforts for democracy and human rights, especially for the rights of women and children. Ebadi is the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to receive the prize. Another Nobel Peace Prize winner is Aung San Suu Kyi from Burma for her peaceful and non-violent struggle under a military dictatorship in Burma. She is a nonviolent pro-democracy activist and leader of the National League for Democracy in Burma (Myanmar) and a noted prisoner of conscience. She is a Buddhist and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China" on 8 October 2010. He is the first Chinese citizen to be awarded a Nobel Prize of any kind while residing in China. In 2014, Kailash Satyarthi from India and Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education".
Japan has won the most Nobel Prizes of any Asian nation with 24 followed by India which has won 13.
Amartya Sen, (born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory, and for his interest in the problems of society's poorest members.
Other Asian Nobel Prize winners include Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Abdus Salam, Robert Aumann, Menachem Begin, Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko, Daniel Kahneman, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Ada Yonath, Yasser Arafat, José Ramos-Horta and Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo of Timor Leste, Kim Dae-jung, and 13 Japanese scientists. Most of the said awardees are from Japan and Israel except for Chandrasekhar and Raman (India), Salam (Pakistan), Arafat (Palestinian Territories), Kim (South Korea), and Horta and Belo (Timor Leste).
In 2006, Dr. Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the establishment of Grameen Bank, a community development bank that lends money to poor people, especially women in Bangladesh. Dr. Yunus received his PhD in economics from Vanderbilt University, United States. He is internationally known for the concept of micro credit which allows poor and destitute people with little or no collateral to borrow money. The borrowers typically pay back money within the specified period and the incidence of default is very low.
The Dalai Lama has received approximately eighty-four awards over his spiritual and political career. On 22 June 2006, he became one of only four people ever to be recognized with Honorary Citizenship by the Governor General of Canada. On 28 May 2005, he received the Christmas Humphreys Award from the Buddhist Society in the United Kingdom. Most notable was the Nobel Peace Prize, presented in Oslo, Norway on 10 December 1989.
|Brunei||408,786||5,765||Bandar Seri Begawan|
|United Arab Emirates||5,314,317||83,600||Abu Dhabi|
Within the above-mentioned states are several partially recognized countries with limited to no international recognition. None of them are members of the UN:
References to articles:
A government census published earlier this year indicated there were a mere 8,756 Jews left in IranSee Persian Jews#Iran
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Seamless steel pipe (SMLS) is formed by drawing a solid billet over a piercing rod to create the hollow shell, without welding or seam.It is suitable for bending and flanging. The most advantage is increasing the ability of withstanding higher pressure.Seamless steel pipe can be cut,threaded or grooved.And the coating method includes black/ red lacquer,varnish painting,hot dip galvanization,etc.
Welded steel pipe (steel pipe manufactured with a weld) is a tubular product made out of flat plates, known as skelp, that are formed, bent and prepared for welding.
First of all, they have many differences in manufacturing processes, which are as follows:
Concentricity: The manufacturing process of seamless pipes is to punch a hole in a stainless steel blank at a temperature of 2200°F. This high-temperature tool steel is softened by stamping and drawing and formed into a spiral shape from the hole. This kind of pipe has uneven wall thickness and high eccentricity.
Therefore, the ASTM standard allows the wall thickness difference of seamless pipes to be greater than that of welded pipes. The slotted tube is made of precision cold rolled sheet (4-5 feet) per roll width. The maximum wall thickness of these cold rolled sheets is usually 0.002 inches. The steel plate is cut to a width πd, where d is the outer diameter of the tube. The wall thickness tolerance of the slit tube is small, and the wall thickness is very uniform throughout the circumference.
Welding performance: There is a certain difference in chemical composition between general pipes and seamless pipes. The production of seamless pipe steel composition only meets the basic requirements of ASTM. The steel slotted pipe produced contains a chemical composition suitable for welding. For example, elements such as silicon, sulfur, manganese, oxygen, and triangular ferrite are mixed in a certain proportion, which can produce solder melting and easy transfer of heat during the welding process, so that the entire weld can be penetrated. Steel pipes lacking the above-mentioned chemical composition, such as seamless pipes, will produce a variety of unstable factors during the welding process, and are difficult to weld and impermeable to welding.
Grain size: Generally, the metal grain size is related to the heat treatment temperature and the time to maintain the same temperature. Therefore, the grain size of the annealed slit pipe is the same as that of the seamless pipe. If there is a seam pipe with the least cold treatment, the weld grain size is smaller than the weld metal grain size, otherwise the grain size is the same.
Strength: The strength of the pipeline depends on the alloy composition, so seamless pipes and slotted pipes containing the same alloy and the same heat treatment are essentially the same strength. After tensile test and three-dimensional vibration test, slotted pipe tearing almost only occurs far away from the welding point or heating area. This is because there are fewer impurities in the weld and a slightly higher nitrogen content, so the strength of the weld is better than other areas. However, the joint pipes of the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Association can only withstand 85% of the allowable pressure, mainly because the data collected as early as today has improved the welding equipment. ASME stipulates that 100% of seamed pipes can withstand allowable pressure after ultrasonic testing. Similarly, Europe and Asia also provide seamed pipes to ensure the quality of their welding performance through eddy current testing. Eddy current testing requires the approval of legal procedures and the license held by the organization. Trent eddy current testing is approved by the Swedish Ministry of Electricity. ASME low current loss is based on the quality performance of the slotted tube.
Corrosion resistance: The corrosion resistance also depends on the composition of the alloy. The fully heat-treated seamless pipe has the same chemical composition and the corrosion resistance of the slotted pipe is consistent. ASTM provides supplementary tests to prove that the corrosion resistance of the weld is equal to or better than that of the metal being welded. In an acid chloride environment, insufficient heating at the weld will accelerate the corrosion of the slit pipe, but it is only required for corrosion testing. In fact, the environment is not that bad. Bending and extension: The weld extension specified by ASTM is verified by the following test: bend 45° to 90°, flatten along the weld; then rotate the seam pipe and repeat the above steps to make the inner diameter of the weld bend 180°. In the case of tearing or separation between crystals at 40 times magnification, the weld quality that meets the standard is not allowed. The bending radius of the pipe is controlled by the alloy composition, and the minimum bending radius is generally 2D.


A rational look at Lynx Reintroduction
In the last few years the concept of rewilding, restoring natural habitats and processes and exploring possibilities for reintroduction of lost species, has risen in the conservation world. There are extreme opinions on both sides of the debate. Some projects in the UK have already begun, particularly in the Scottish highlands, where overgrazed glens are being replanted and deer populations culled. Ecological processes need to be restored to maintain habitats; keystone species such as the Beaver can do this, although conflicts can arise in more human influenced environments. To allow woodland regeneration to take place with minimal damage and disturbance, many argue an apex predator is needed to control herbivores and change the consistency of their grazing behaviours. Unanimously it is agreed that the best candidate to do this is the Eurasian Lynx (Lynx Lynx). An ambush predator adapted to live in forest habitat and also a solitary animal, this means that the likelihood and severity of any potential livestock attacks would be lower than Bears or Wolves.
The ‘Lynx UK Trust’, an independent Community Interest Company, launched into the public eye in 2015 announcing their intention to begin consultations and licence applications to commence trial releases at several sites. Whilst raising a great deal of awareness and dealing with social and national media very well so far in my opinion, their early approach was perhaps a little over enthusiastic. Things have since simmered down, with a sensible approach of national then local consultations, with one initial trial site rather than six. Whether this application is successful or not, I hope and believe that a trial reintroduction will happen in the not too distant future.
Recently, the National Sheep Association released, with much fanfare, a report on the wider consequences of Lynx reintroduction. In fairness this seems sensible given that sheep farmers would be the group at risk from potential conflict. Predation rates in other countries vary, so it is worth analysing the reasons why and which might be applicable to the UK, on which opinions vary, although the only way to truly find out would be to have a trial reintroduction. Having gone through the report, it does raise some interesting points and questions, but also has some flaws which are worth looking at.
The first major flaw is that the report doesn’t seem to address the trial, instead focusing on a seemingly overnight full reintroduction scenario. What would differ in a trial? It would cover a relatively small area, involve six monitored animals and be under heavy scrutiny, for a scientific study. If it doesn’t work out then the licence would require the Lynx to be recaptured and probably released abroad. Therefore no disastrous level of damage would be likely and a compensation scheme would be in place. Anecdotal evidence features in the report, showcasing a farming couple in Gloucestershire, on a case where they alleged a ‘big cat’ had taken sheep over a number of years. Whilst undoubtedly distressing, there is no concrete proof of a big cat in the area, it could have been from a multitude of possible species and would have been an illegally released animal from captivity with limited hunting skills, therefore far more likely to predate on livestock. The trial proposal would use animals taken from the wild.
A comparison with Raven attacks on sheep lacked any real relevance, whilst heading into game bird predation concerns is stepping away from the National Sheep Association’s remit, maybe influenced from other sectors. Capercallie population impacts are not supported by evidence from Europe and as long as trial sites are away from their current UK range it would not be an issue. Capercallie do not occur on sheep pasture so why are they in the report? The guard dog case study was from the USA and focused on Wolves and Coyotes, whereas an example from Europe where they are used in areas where Lynx predation does occur on livestock would have been far more appropriate.
We also have to remember that whilst sheep farming is a major land-use, it is not the only land use. Lynx could be beneficial to crop farming and forestry through the displacement and reduction of Deer. Scotland is also obligated to plant 100 000 hectares of new woodland by 2022, providing a large amount of potential new habitat, a figure not including conservation planting projects. Another anti-Lynx argument, not fielded in the report, is that Lynx would devastate the Scottish Wildcat population. With no evidence of this from any of the countries where the Lynx and European Wildcat co-exist, studies showing predation to be incredibly rare, this seems like a desperate argument with no real substance. Common sense suggests that two animals with large territories and different prey bases won’t come into contact often. With field projects currently carrying out excellent practical conservation work on wildcats, in around ten years we will hopefully have stable populations in multiple areas meaning we could reintroduce the Lynx with confidence.
In terms of tourism, I think it is hard to calculate the exact the revenue in the long term, as the trial period would undoubtedly create an increased level of interest. However, it is certainly plausible that local people could run tours looking at field signs of Lynx and other wildlife as a part of a wider income. There are also hides open for tourism in Poland and Estonia with proven records of Lynx sightings, showing that it can be possible. Visitor centres showcasing captive Lynx, employing local people and selling local produce are certainly viable, as many nature reserve visitor centres demonstrate. The loss of all our apex predators, and with it a major part of our natural heritage making the countryside ever poorer, should be a source of embarrassment in the UK, especially with the progress made in mainland Europe. Surely a progressive approach from the sheep farming representative bodies would be to work with a trial to explore the issues around reintroduction rather than to fight against it creating a divisive ‘us against them’ mentality. I would also like to see more major conservation charities support licensed trials of Lynx reintroduction, standing by a view is infinitely better than sitting on the fence.
References and Further Reading
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pni0Ycb_O8 – a live studio debate on Lynx reintroduction providing lots of interesting points on both sides.
5,370 total views, 2 views today


Pool noodles are not just for swimming pools! These colorful foam tubes can be used in creative and educational ways in the classroom. Here are 15 genius ideas on how to incorporate pool noodles into your teaching:
- Math Manipulatives: Cut pool noodles into different lengths and use them as hands-on tools for teaching measurement, fractions, and counting.
- Alphabet Fishing: Write letters on small foam pieces and attach them to pool noodles. Students can use these “fishing rods” to catch letters and practice letter recognition.
- Sensory Path: Create a sensory path by attaching pool noodles to the floor with Velcro. Students can walk or hop on the noodles, enhancing their balance and coordination.
- DIY Pencil Holder: Cut a pool noodle into small sections and glue them together to create a unique and colorful pencil holder for each student.
- Word Building: Cut pool noodles into small discs and write letters on them. Students can use these discs to build and spell words.
- Number Line: Create a number line by cutting a pool noodle in half lengthwise and writing numbers on it. Hang it on the wall or floor to help students visualize number sequencing.
- Indoor Bowling: Set up a bowling lane using pool noodles as pins and a small ball. Students can practice addition skills while keeping track of their scores.
- Obstacle Course: Use pool noodles to create an obstacle course in the classroom. Students can crawl under or jump over the noodles, developing gross motor skills.
- STEM Activities: Use pool noodles to construct bridges, tunnels, or structures for STEM challenges. Students can explore engineering concepts while building with noodles.
- Story Retelling: Cut pool noodles into smaller pieces and use them as props for retelling stories. Students can act out scenes from their favorite books using these versatile foam pieces.
- Handwriting Practice: Fill a pool noodle with sand or rice and seal the ends. Students can trace letters on the noodle, enhancing their handwriting skills and sensory perception.
- Science Experiments: Cut pool noodles into rings and use them as buoyancy aids in science experiments. Students can explore concepts of density and flotation.
- Sight Word Hopscotch: Write sight words on individual pool noodles and arrange them in a hopscotch pattern. Students can jump on the words and say them aloud for reinforcement.
- Quiet Seating: Place cut pool noodles on the bottom of chair legs to reduce noise and prevent classroom disruptions caused by scraping chairs.
- Cooperative Games: Use pool noodles for cooperative games like “Noodle Tag” or “Noodle Hockey.” These games promote teamwork, cooperation, and physical activity.
These genius ways to use pool noodles in your classroom will not only add fun and creativity to your lessons but also engage students in hands-on learning experiences. Give them a try and watch your students’ excitement soar!


Antibody and cellular therapies for treatment of covid-19: a living systematic review and network meta-analysis
In patients with non-severe covid-19:
Casirivimab-imdevimab (Regen-Cov) probably reduces hospitalisation;
Bamlanivimab-etesevimab, bamlanivimab, and sotrovimab may reduce hospitalisation.
Convalescent plasma, IVIg, and other antibody and cellular interventions may not confer any meaningful benefit.
BMJ 2021; 374 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n2231 (Published 23 September 2021)Cite this as: BMJ 2021;374:n2231
As of 14 September 2021, more than 225 million people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, and total deaths have surpassed 4.6 million.1 Because covid-19 represents a significant threat to global health, coordinated international efforts to identify evidence based therapies have resulted in over 2900 registered clinical trials. Approximately 12% of these trials are investigating cellular or antibody-based therapies such as convalescent plasma, intravenous immunoglobulins (IVIg), or antiviral antibodies.2
Given their favourable toxicity profile and historical (though variable) mortality benefit over the years, these harvested and manufactured antiviral antibodies represent attractive therapeutic options for covid-19. Indeed, based on this historical evidence combined with early clinical trial data, several countries have issued authorisation for emergency use of convalescent plasma for the treatment of hospitalised patients with covid-19. Several countries have also authorised the use of antiviral monoclonal antibodies of covid-19.7
Unlike drugs, stem cells, convalescent plasma, and IVIg cannot be manufactured; thus, production is limited by the number of donors. Since these products have established therapeutic applications in the treatment of congenital and acquired diseases,8 one can, in the absence of clear evidence for use in covid-19, anticipate challenges related to resource allocation.
In contrast, monoclonal antibodies are very easily scalable once they are identified, but production can be time consuming.9 Therefore, in the midst of a global pandemic in which resource management is fundamental, timely summaries of available evidence and associated guidelines are crucial.10
A living systematic review is dynamic and captures all relevant data published over time.13 Network meta-analysis, which combines direct and indirect evidence to compare interventions, can provide robust information regarding the relative efficacy of interventions that may not have been compared head-to-head due to feasibility or other constraints.14
Objective To evaluate the efficacy and safety of antiviral antibody therapies and blood products for the treatment of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19).
Design Living systematic review and network meta-analysis, with pairwise meta-analysis for outcomes with insufficient data.
Data sources WHO covid-19 database, a comprehensive multilingual source of global covid-19 literature, and six Chinese databases (up to 21 July 2021).
Study selection Trials randomising people with suspected, probable, or confirmed covid-19 to antiviral antibody therapies, blood products, or standard care or placebo. Paired reviewers determined eligibility of trials independently and in duplicate.
Methods After duplicate data abstraction, we performed random effects bayesian meta-analysis, including network meta-analysis for outcomes with sufficient data. We assessed risk of bias using a modification of the Cochrane risk of bias 2.0 tool. The certainty of the evidence was assessed using the grading of recommendations assessment, development, and evaluation (GRADE) approach. We meta-analysed interventions with ≥100 patients randomised or ≥20 events per treatment arm.
Results As of 21 July 2021, we identified 47 trials evaluating convalescent plasma (21 trials), intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) (5 trials), umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (5 trials), bamlanivimab (4 trials), casirivimab-imdevimab (4 trials), bamlanivimab-etesevimab (2 trials), control plasma (2 trials), peripheral blood non-haematopoietic enriched stem cells (2 trials), sotrovimab (1 trial), anti-SARS-CoV-2 IVIg (1 trial), therapeutic plasma exchange (1 trial), XAV-19 polyclonal antibody (1 trial), CT-P59 monoclonal antibody (1 trial) and INM005 polyclonal antibody (1 trial) for the treatment of covid-19. Patients with non-severe disease randomised to antiviral monoclonal antibodies had lower risk of hospitalisation than those who received placebo: casirivimab-imdevimab (odds ratio (OR) 0.29 (95% CI 0.17 to 0.47); risk difference (RD) −4.2%; moderate certainty), bamlanivimab (OR 0.24 (0.06 to 0.86); RD −4.1%; low certainty), bamlanivimab-etesevimab (OR 0.31 (0.11 to 0.81); RD −3.8%; low certainty), and sotrovimab (OR 0.17 (0.04 to 0.57); RD −4.8%; low certainty). They did not have an important impact on any other outcome. There was no notable difference between monoclonal antibodies. No other intervention had any meaningful effect on any outcome in patients with non-severe covid-19. No intervention, including antiviral antibodies, had an important impact on any outcome in patients with severe or critical covid-19, except casirivimab-imdevimab, which may reduce mortality in patients who are seronegative.
Conclusion In patients with non-severe covid-19, casirivimab-imdevimab probably reduces hospitalisation; bamlanivimab-etesevimab, bamlanivimab, and sotrovimab may reduce hospitalisation. Convalescent plasma, IVIg, and other antibody and cellular interventions may not confer any meaningful benefit.
Systematic review registration This review was not registered. The protocol established a priori is included as a data supplement.


New planetoid named after rain god
A new 'planetoid' orbiting between Neptune and Pluto has been named "Huya" after the mythical rain god of the Wayuu people of Venezuela, astronomers announced.
The minor planet was found in March 2000 by Venezuelan and U.S. astronomers using a powerful telescope located at the Centre for Astronomical Studies observatory in Merida, Venezuela.
The team was led by Professor Ignacio Ferrin, an astrophysicist at the University of the Andes in Colombia, and was provisionally dubbed 2000 EB173 when it was first discovered.
Under the rules that govern the naming of astronomical bodies, managed by the International Astronomical Union, an association of astronomers, the object must be named after a mythological god.
The tiny frozen world, which takes 248 years to orbit the Sun, is about a quarter the size of the furthest known planet from the Sun, Pluto, and one of the biggest objects to be found in our solar system since Pluto was discovered in 1930.
Thousands of so-called minor planets orbit the Sun, most of them uneven-shaped asteroids beween Mars and Jupiter. Huya is second in size only to the asteroid Ceres, and at 5.91 billion km from he Sun, one of the most distant known.
In March, after determining its orbit, the Venezuelan astronomers baptised the light-red planet Juya (pronouced Hoo-ya), but later changed the spelling to 'Huya' to avoid phonetic confusion in the English pronunciation of the name. "We wanted to make sure it had the connotations of a Venezuelan indigenous god," Ferrin told reporters.
Temperatures on Huya's surface barely reach above -180°C, and it has a diameter of between 700 and 750 km. Ferrin said he felt like Christopher Columbus discovering uncharted lands when his team at first stumbled across the object.
While the planet was unlikely to be anything but a dead, frozen world, that did not sent his enthusiasm for the possibility life might exist elsewhere in he universe. "We cannot be alone in the universe," he told reporters. "It's like thinking there is only one elephant in the jungle."


Empathy plays a foundational role in morality and some argue that a lack of empathy is to blame for today’s toxic political environment. Empathetic reactions emerge early in life and are modulated by interpersonal and contextual factors, especially group membership. Yet surprisingly little research has been undertaken to empirically asses if individual differences in empathic ability can explain political attitudes and behaviour. This article addresses this lacuna by identifying the effects of empathy in the context of the United Kingdom. Empathy is measured with a battery of ten items for 7691 respondents. The results demonstrate that empathic ability is a consistent predictor of attitudinal and behavioral differences between citizens, such as ideology, policy preferences, partisan identity, strength of partisan identity, turnout, and vote choice in elections and referendums. Remarkably, the empathy scale used in this article is better at predicting a number of attitudes and behaviors than the Five Factor Model, which has important consequences for the study of the effects of personality traits in political psychology.


Silica brick is a refractory product regarding silicon dioxide as a main component and its content is above 93%. It is made of quartzite as a raw material, and a small amount of mineralizer is added to be fired at a high temperature. It belongs to acidic refractory,which has strong resistance to acid slag erosion, but it is strongly eroded by alkaline slag. It is easily destroyed by oxides containing Al2O3, K2O and Na2O,but it has good resistance to oxides such as CaO, FeO and Fe2O3.
The mineral composition of silica brick is a coexisting multiphase structure such as tridymite, cristobalite, a small amount of residual quartz, and a glass formed at a high temperature.
The higher deformation temperature of the load is the excellent characteristic of silica brick. Its melting point is close to the melting point of the quartz and cristobalite (1670℃, 1713℃) and fluctuating between 1640℃ and 1680℃. After re-calcining, silica bricks will undergo irreversible volume expansion due to the continued conversion of the quartz remaining in the bricks. In the interval from 300℃ to near the melting point, the volume of silica brick is stable and it will have a total volume expansion of about 1.5% to 2.2% when heated to 1450℃. However, this expansion will make the joints tight and ensure that the masonry has good air tightness and structural strength.
Meanwhile, the biggest disadvantage of silica brick is its low thermal shock stability, followed by low refractoriness (generally 1690℃~1730℃), which limits its application range.
Silica bricks are mainly used in coke ovens, glass melting furnaces, acid steelmaking furnaces and other thermal equipment.
Silica Bricks For Coke Ovens
The modern coke oven is a large-scale thermal equipment built of tens of thousands of tons, nearly thousands brick-type refractory materials, which the amount of silica bricks account for 60%~70%. The silica brick for coke oven is mainly composed of tridymite, which is mainly used for building regenerator walls, chutes, combustion chambers, carbonization chambers and furnace roofs of coke ovens. Silica bricks for coke ovens mainly have the characteristics of high load softening temperature, high thermal conductivity, good thermal shock resistance, and volume stability at high temperatures.
Silica Bricks For Glass Kilns
Silica bricks for glass kiln are used to build high temperature parts of glass tank kiln. They have the following characteristics:
- Chemical Resistance
- Volume DensityIs Small
- No Pollution To Glass
- VolumeIs Stability At High temperature, And The Furnace Body Will Not Change due to temperature fluctuations.
Want to know more about silica bricks features and uses? Just Contact us right now! You will get you want!


Breast of the bunch: supporting breastfeeding mothers
How UNICEF Philippines is upholding children’s right to be healthy by supporting breastfeeding mothers
Seven breastfeeding mothers sit in a circle outside a rural health centre in Vinzons, Camarines Norte province. “I breastfeed my baby because I want him free of sickness,” says Joanna, who has come to the counselling group with her first baby. “It’s affordable, nutritious and easy to prepare,” adds a mother of two, nodding in agreement.
UNICEF’s work is based on upholding children’s rights, including the right to be healthy. Research has shown that exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of a child’s life is the best way to ensure their future health and development.
According to the World Health Organization, breast milk gives babies all the nutrients they need for the first six months of life and helps protect them from disease, including gastro-intestinal infections, childhood diabetes, eczema, obesity and asthma. It also reduces the mother’s risk of getting ovarian or breast cancer later in life.
However, in the Philippines, many mothers spend hard-earned cash buying formula milk instead of breastfeeding, putting their babies’ health – and sometimes their lives – at risk. In 2003, the National Health and Demographic Survey found that only 16 per cent of infants in the Philippines were exclusively breastfed, with signs that the culture of breastfeeding was in decline. This is largely due to misconceptions and the aggressive marketing of formula by milk companies.
“Nine out of ten mothers in this area breastfeed,” Herminia Icatlo, the rural health midwife at the Vinzons breastfeeding group, says. “But working mothers often mix feed, so their babies don’t get the best milk all the time. Sometimes they don’t prepare the bottle properly or use contaminated water, so the baby gets diarrhoea.”
There are currently around 200 breastfeeding counselling groups in Camarines Norte. “We teach mothers how to breastfeed and tell them about nutrition and protecting their baby’s health.” Herminia says. The groups also tackle some of the myths and misinformation around breastfeeding, such as that it’s painful or that breastfeeding mothers lose their figures more quickly. In fact, breastfeeding need not be painful if you learn how to do it properly and it actually helps mothers lose the eight gained during pregnancy.
Making the case
On the advocacy side, UNICEF supported the Department of Health in its Supreme Court case against formula milk companies over the implementing rules and regulations of the Philippine Milk Code, which tightened the rules for advertising breast milk substitutes. “That received impressive global attention, including a documentary called Formula for Disaster,” Elham Monsef, Nutrition Specialist at UNICEF Philippines says. “It brought the issue back to people’s attention.”
“It has unfortunately become engrained in people’s minds that if you want to do good for your child you should be giving them infant formula and that if you’re giving breast milk then you must be poor,” Elham continues. “The formula companies are using very high profile personalities within the entertainment industry to promote their products and messages.”
In one such advert, a young girl is shown playing the violin in front of an orchestra in a huge auditorium, with everyone standing up and applauding. “The advert implies that this child has become brilliant because she had infant formula,” Elham says. “Then you see the face of a young lady in the slums and she has this look of bliss as if to say: ‘if only I could afford to do the same for my child’.”
Perhaps the biggest danger is that mothers feel pressured to buy something and those who can’t afford formula end up buying cheaper powdered milk, which is not designed for infants. “This damages the lining of the baby’s stomach, causing bleeding and diarrhoea, which can be fatal,” Elham says. “It’s particularly worrying in emergency situations, like after the recent typhoons and flooding, where children are already at risk of disease and malnutrition.”
Another key challenge is the high proportion of mothers in the Philippines who work. Maternity leave is typically just two to three months and when women return to work, they often feel that they cannot continue breastfeeding and that the only alternative is to use infant formula.
“There’s a lack of awareness about expressing and storing breast milk,” Elham explains. “Mothers need support from their employer to provide a breastfeeding room, a fridge or even just a small private area where they can express their milk. They can then store it to feed their babies the next day.”
UNICEF’s breastfeeding programme is focused on creating supportive communities and environments to allow mothers to breastfeed, through one-to-one counselling and support. It’s an approach that is already bringing real change for mothers and their babies, as the members of the Vinzons breastfeeding counselling group can attest.
Mercedes Juan, Nutritionist at Camarines Norte Provincial Health Office, says the support from UNICEF has been invaluable. “UNICEF has funded infant and young child feeding training for municipal health workers across the province,” she says. “These workers then train the others who couldn’t go to the training. Our aim is to have a trained health officer, nurse and doctor in every municipality.” The training focuses on how to counsel mothers, listening to their concerns and helping them find their own solutions, rather than telling them what to do.
Twenty years ago, the world made a set of promises to all children when it adopted the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). While great progress has been made since then, children’s rights are still being denied and much remains to be done. In the Philippines, the ongoing battle to educate the public about the benefits of breastfeeding is one way in which we can help uphold children’s right to be healthy.
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Designing Schools explores the close connections between the design of school buildings and educational practices throughout the twentieth century to today. Through international cases studies that span the Americas, Europe, Africa and Australia, this volume examines historical innovations in school architecture and situates these within changing pedagogical ideas about the ‘best’ ways to educate children. It also investigates the challenges posed by new technologies and the digital age to the design and use of school places. Set around three interlinked themes – school buildings, school spaces and school cultures – this book argues that education is mediated or framed by the spaces in which it takes place, and that those spaces are in turn influenced by cultural, political and social concerns about teaching, learning and the child.
'An excellent contribution to the school design literature, the book is especially suited to readers interested in the history of open-plan schools and in different methodological approaches. Since many of the essays address the open-plan school, readers can explore how these schools embodied Cold War values of individualism and freedom, how teaching conventions challenged their success, and how national contexts produced variations in the rise and fall of this model.' - Rachel Remmel, History of Education Quarterly, University of Rochester
'Discerning and indispensible, Designing Schools: Space, Place and Pedagogy takes us to Australia, Europe, the United States, Africa, and Latin America to learn about school buildings in the twentieth century. This thematically organized and generously illustrated book, written by experts in the field, tracks changes in architectural design, pedagogy, childhood, space, place, technology, and nationality. Designing Schools also introduces the teachers, architects, and other adults who wanted to build better schools for an astonishing array of boys and girls--rich and poor, rural and urban, white, Aboriginal, African American, and African children— although the outcomes were not always praiseworthy. A welcome addition to the new and exciting field of children, space, and schools.' - Marta Gutman, PhD, Professor of Architecture (History & Theory), The City College of New York/CUNY and The Graduate Center/CUNY
'The wealth of evidence and argument in Designing Schools for the cultural significance of school architecture is overwhelming. This book puts the materiality of schooling back into the centre of our efforts to understand how teaching and learning have changed over the last century. Relationships between modernism in school design and efforts to develop progressive pedagogies are only part of the argument. The chapters in this book explore new dimensions of old questions such as the significance of the school in the making of populations conceived in racial, gender and class terms. Designing Schools challenges its readers to imagine schools as spaces as much as places, and the meanings they develop within a variety of geographical, cultural and temporal settings that include urban, suburban and rural—national, colonial and post colonial. Designing Schools is significant enough to change the ways we think about schooling.' - Craig Campbell, Editor, History of Education Review, University of Sydney
1. Architecture and the School in the Twentieth Century Julie Willis Part 1: Lessons from History 2. From Looking to Seeing, or This Was the Future … Ian Grosvenor 3. Building Ruins: Abandoned Ideas of the School Martin Lawn 4. Postwar Schools: A Personal History Elain Harwood Part 2: School Buildings 5. The Classroom is Another Place? Ernest J. Kump’s ‘Ideal’ Learning Environments for Californian Schools, 1937–1962 Philip Goad 6. Educational Facilities Laboratories: Debating and Designing the Postwar American Schoolhouse Amy F. Ogata 7. Creating Friendly School Environments: ‘Casual’ High Schools, Progressive Education and Child-Centred Culture in Postwar America Dale Allen Gyure 8. Open Shut Them: Open Classrooms in Australian Schools, 1967–1983 Cameron Logan 9. The Balance between Intimacy and Interchange: Swiss Schools During the 1960s Marco di Nallo Part 3: School Cultures 10. Making Schools and Thinking through Materialities: Denmark, 1890–1960 Ning de Coninck-Smith 11. Domestic Spaces and School Places: Vocational Education and Gender in Modern Australia Kate Darian-Smith 12. ‘We Make No Discrimination’: Aboriginal Education and the Socio-spatial Arrangements of the Australian Classroom Julie McLeod and Sianan Healy 13. Model Schools for Model Cities: Educational Facilities as Monuments to Planning Reform Amber Wiley 14. The Nigerian ‘Unity Schools’: The UNESCO-IDA School Building Programme in Africa Ola Uduku Part 4: School Spaces 15. Quiet Stories of Educational Design Catherine Burke 16. Hans Coper and Paul Ritter: Tactile Environments for Children in Postwar Britain and Australia Geraint Franklin and David Nichols 17. Bristling with Opportunity: Audio-visual Technology in Australian Schools from the 1930s to the 1980s David Nichols and Hannah Lewi 18. Digital Classrooms and the New Economies of Attention: Reflections on the End of Schooling as Confinement Inés Dussel Index


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ACS News Service Weekly PressPac: August 14, 2019
Nanoparticle therapy targets lymph node metastases
Metastasis, in which cancer cells break free from the primary tumor and form tumors at other sites, worsens the prognosis for many cancer patients. The lymph nodes — glands of the immune system located throughout the body — are typically the traveling cells’ first destination. Now, researchers have developed a strategy to target metastases in lymph nodes for destruction, before they can cause cancer at other locations. They report their results in ACS Nano.
Soon after a patient is diagnosed with cancer, they typically undergo lymph node biopsies to determine if their cancer has spread. However, this surgical procedure can cause pain, infection and other problems. Studies have shown that cancer cells travel from tumors to specific lymph nodes primarily through tiny vessels called lymphatics, which carry immune cells and fluid rather than blood. So, a treatment that could be injected into the bloodstream, enter a tumor and then pass through the lymphatics might treat metastases. Hong-Jun Li, Jin-Zhi Du and colleagues had previously developed a nanoparticle delivery tool, called iCluster, that travels through the bloodstream to a tumor. It’s a large cluster of nanoparticles, and the acidic environment of the tumor causes iCluster to disassemble into its smaller components, which can penetrate deep into tumors and deliver chemotherapies. But the team wondered whether these smaller nanoparticles could also pass through the lymphatics that connect the tumor to lymph nodes.
To find out, Li, Du and colleagues injected iCluster, labeled with a red dye, into the bloodstream of mice with transplanted tumors. By fluorescent imaging, they observed that small nanoparticles carrying the chemotherapy drug cisplatin could indeed pass through the lymphatics from the tumor to adjoining lymph nodes. In another experiment, the researchers treated mice with primary tumors before metastasis with iCluster, and a couple of days later, surgically removed their primary tumors, similar to what would be done for cancer patients. About 40% of the treated mice were still alive 110 days later. That’s in contrast to the untreated mice — all of them died from metastases within 51 days of surgery. Then, the team tested the therapy on mice that already had metastases. The iCluster-treated mice lived longer, and upon autopsy, had far fewer tumors than untreated mice.
The authors acknowledge funding from the National Key R&D Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Guangdong Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholars, the Program for Guangdong Introducing Innovative and Entrepreneurial Teams, Guangdong Provincial Pearl River Talents Program, Outstanding Scholar Program of Guangzhou Regenerative Medicine and Health Guangdong Laboratory, Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program by CAST, the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province, Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and 111 Project.
Note: ACS does not conduct research, but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies.


Monday, November 5, 2012
HISTORY OF A SONG: EDELWEISS
In the 1965 film adaptation, the song is also sung by the Captain earlier in the film as he rediscovers music and a love for his children. It was introduced in the original Broadway production by Theodore Bikel.
While The Sound of Music was in tryouts in Boston, Richard Rodgers felt Captain von Trapp should have a song with which he would bid farewell to the Austria he knew and loved. He and Oscar Hammerstein II decided to write an extra song that Captain von Trapp would sing in the Kaltzberg Festival (Salzburg Festival in the film) concert sequence towards the end of the show. As they were writing it, they felt that this song could also utilise the guitar-playing and folk-singing talents of Theodore Bikel, who created the role of Captain von Trapp on Broadway. In the movie, the song was sung surprisingly well by non singer Christopher Plummer.
The Lindsay and Crouse script provides a metaphor of the edelweiss flower, as a symbol of the Austria that Captain von Trapp, Maria and their children knew would live on in their hearts despite the Nazi Anschluss (annexation of their homeland.) As such, the metaphor of this song builds on an earlier scene when Gretl presents a bouquet of edelweiss flowers to Elsa Schraeder during her visit to the von Trapp household. Rodgers provided a haunting waltz-time melody, based on simple romantic Biedermeier era tunes like Hänschen klein and others, to the simple Italian style ritornello lyric that Hammerstein wrote about the appearance of the Edelweiss flower. This song turned out to be one of the most beloved songs in the musical, and also one of the best-loved songs of Rodgers and Hammerstein.
This song was the last song that Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote together; Hammerstein was suffering from stomach cancer, which would take his life nine months after The Sound of Music opened on Broadway.
Although the stage production uses the song only during the concert sequence, Ernest Lehman's screenplay for the film adaptation uses the song twice. Lehman created a scene that makes extra use of the song. This scene, inspired by a line in the original script by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, calls for Captain von Trapp to sing this song with his children in their family drawing room and rediscover the love he felt for them. Lehman also expanded the scope of the song when it was sung in the Salzburg Festival concert scene so that Captain von Trapp and his family would call the crowds to join in the song with him, in defiance of the Nazi soldiers posted around the arena. It is interesting to note that one of the Nazi commandants is shown singing in a baritone, revealing that he cares more for Austria than for the Reich.
The great popularity of the song has led many of its audience to believe that it is an Austrian folk song or even the official national anthem. However, Austria's official anthem is "Land der Berge, Land am Strome". Hugh Fordin in his biography of Oscar Hammerstein speaks of "the ability of the authors to simulate the quality of an authentic folk song..."Ol' Man River" had the ring of a black laborer's song...Thirty years later "Edelweiss was widely believed to be an old Austrian song, though Oscar...composed it for the Sound of Music."


The Production of Communication Signals at the Air–Water and Water–Substrate BoundariesJournal of Comparative Psychology
AbstractThe 2 interfaces of the aquatic environment, the boundary between air–water and water–substrate, have distinctive physical characteristics that facilitate the production of communication signals. Recent evidence suggests that animals living on or near these boundaries use the interface to generate signals in 2 ways: (a) by producing a signal that propagates along the interface or (b) by producing a signal at the interface that is transmitted and detected within 1 of the component media. By examining the diversity of behaviors used to produce signals at these boundaries, the authors illustrate how human perception of these environments may cause researchers to incorrectly assume the environmental context of signal-generating behaviors and overlook modalities of communication pertinent to the animal.
Copyright2002 American Psychological Association.
Citation InformationSean C. Lema and John T. Kelly. "The Production of Communication Signals at the Air–Water and Water–Substrate Boundaries" Journal of Comparative Psychology Vol. 116 Iss. 2 (2002) p. 145 - 150
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/slema/11/


Backup for Critical Processes
In many industries, there are processes so critical that extraordinary methods must be taken to ensure that those processes are not halted or even stalled. To facilitate this, end users in many industries implement hot standby, or redundant systems. While it might not be practical for end users to implement a hot standby solution with a very expensive distributed control system (DCS), many end ...
In many industries, there are processes so critical that extraordinary methods must be taken to ensure that those processes are not halted or even stalled. To facilitate this, end users in many industries implement hot standby, or redundant systems.
While it might not be practical for end users to implement a hot standby solution with a very expensive distributed control system (DCS), many end users, consulting engineers, system integrators, and others are now learning that PLC hot standby solutions can offer high availability in a more cost effective hardware and software combination.
Hot standby means having two sets of process controls operating simultaneously, with the contingent or back-up system able to assume control of the process immediately if the main system falters or fails. The critical function of hot standby is to prevent an unanticipated process interruption that could result in lost production time, equipment damage, and lost raw materials.
Such systems have widespread acceptance in industries where process failure can be costly, such as petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals. There are also applications in less obvious industries, including food and beverage, water and wastewater treatment facilities, material handling, baggage handling, and certain security and control applications in marine industries.
In many process industries, if a unit stalls or fails, the nature of the ingredients coupled with the condition of the process could very well result in serious damage to expensive and highly sophisticated equipment. Results include possible loss of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars in destroyed raw product and equipment, plus lengthy downtime for repairs. In some applications, a batch could solidify, forcing workers to chip out the ruined product and thoroughly clean the internal surfaces of the vessel, resulting in further downtime and loss of profit.
How does a company determine it needs a hot standby system? The first step is to evaluate the consequences of a system failure—in both time and expense—and weigh those consequences against the cost of a redundant system.
In a food or beverage application, a process failure could result in ingredients being mixed in the wrong proportions, ruining the entire batch. If the process failed while ingredients were being added, there might be no way to determine if the right amount had been added and the batch will be wasted.
Losing control of a water or wastewater treatment plant process is not only costly, it’s potentially hazardous because untreated or partially treated sewage can be released into the environment resulting in fines and other measures taken by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
A system or equipment failure in a pharmaceutical application can mean improper portions of ingredients in the manufacture of medications. When making tablets, for example, a process failure can upset the delicate balance of the ingredients and ruin an entire batch of medication.
Hot standby solutions are critical in many aspects of maritime applications. Imagine the impact of losing control in any of several critical processes on an ocean-going vessel, including power management, engine control, ballast control, tank leveling and fuel transfer. While there may be manual backup systems, losing any of these processes could be problematical at sea.
Identify the real hot standby
Not all hot standby systems are created equal. If a company decides it needs this depth of protection, it must do some research to ensure the system can perform the most critical functions properly. Here are four tests that can determine whether or not a system is truly hot standby:
Hot standby PLCs operate in parallel, connected to each other, to their I/O networks, and to their larger control systems via Ethernet.
When switchover occurs from the primary to the secondary system, does it happen within one logic cycle? A true hot standby system take system control within one logic cycle, so there is no data loss and the application is not upset or disturbed in any way.
When there is a changeover, does the secondary take control of the I/O within one logic cycle? If not, the I/O does not experience a “bump-less” transfer. This can cause valves to slam open or closed needlessly causing wear and possible damage from pressure spikes. Without smooth control in the transfer from primary to secondary, the system can actually generate more problems. When using a true hot standby system the transfer is seamless.
Is all primary system data transferred to the secondary? Any hot standby system will transfer some data, but many not transfer all of it. This can cause problems because the secondary system may not have all the most recent information to control the system properly because it may revert to old process data, setpoints, etc., when it assumes control. If the system cannot address the fault immediately, the delay could cause damage. With a true hot standby system, all data transfers to the secondary system, ensuring the most current information.
Does the hot standby system automatically manage network addresses for the primary PLC, or does the operator have to develop a scheme to swap addresses from the primary to the secondary system? With a true hot standby system, addresses switch automatically with no additional work required of the operator.
Cost investment vs. equipment failure
The case for specifying a hot standby system can be compelling in the right application. The potential for process interruptions with their resulting costs has to be weighed against the cost of installing additional equipment. Moreover, a standby system that cannot provide full functionality may be little better than no standby at all. Designs that cannot make an emergency changeover within one logic cycle or that lose current operating data can cause as much damage as stopping the process altogether.
Failure scenarios and their associated costs must be weighed against the cost of a hot standby system. With duplicate processors, control networks, I/O, and PLCs, the equipment expense can be significant, but may be lower than the expense of rebuilding or replacing failed equipment. New technologies are making the choice easier because it is now possible to provide true hot standby support using a technologically advanced PLC where it would have been necessary to use a DCS for such applications in the past.
A collaborative process
The key is to have redundancy in the system: racks for local CPUs, communications to the I/O, communication networks, and power supplies. If the application has redundant power sources, it’s not going to lose power if they are fed from separate locations. The entire system will not be lost if a network is down. The ultimate objective is to reduce the possibility of component failure.
Once a business case has been made to justify the cost of adding a standby system, process engineers and technicians who operate the critical equipment should work with a system integrator to design the system strategy. With their intimate knowledge of the operation, those engineers and technicians should be deeply involved in the process, providing the integrator with important specifications and insights into how the hot standby system must mesh with the rest of the operation.
Once in place, a properly configured hot standby system can provide a critical layer of protection for an entire plant or process unit, preserving materials, equipment, and an uninterrupted production schedule.
Stephen L. Arnold is senior product specialist, Telemecanique Automation & Drives division of Schneider Electric North America. Reach him at email@example.com .