Back-to-school time also means children are returning to the environment where head lice proliferate and parents are often at their wit’s end trying to find ways to get rid of them.
And the problem only seems to get worse as the lice are evolving into super bugs that are increasingly resistant to the treatments which in the past have successfully eradicated them.Head lice are pretty harmless but any creepy-crawly in our children’s hair – or our own hair – demands attention regardless of the fact that getting rid of them is sometimes easier said than done.Head lice are wingless creatures which cannot fly or even jump but move from host to host by crawling or climbing. Thus close contact between children gives them great opportunities to spread but it is important not to become complacent because head lice are not confined to children.
In fact, anyone can get head lice but they are more common in children because of the close contact children have with each other. Of course when children have them they are very likely to infest other family members. Having found head lice, the next step is to try to get rid of them.Talk to you community pharmacist about appropriate treatment. They often stock special combs as well as shampoos, cream and other products some of which contain a special insecticide.However, because insecticide resistance is common, you should test if lice are dead after using a product. If they are, treat again in seven days using the same product.
If the lice are not dead, the treatment has not worked and the lice may be resistant to the product and all products containing the same active compound. Wash off the product and treat as soon as possible using a product containing a different active compound. If the insecticide has worked, the lice will be dead within 20 minutes.It is possible a head lice product could cause a reaction and should be used with care by women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, children less than 12 months old and people with allergies, asthma or open wounds on the scalp.Your pharmacist can talk to you about how best to treat head lice and which products may work best for you or your children.


When I was in elementary school, I watched a PBS home video titled, “The Creation of the Universe.” I learned about the four fundamental forces and the search for the grand unified theory. From that moment, I have been in awe about the way that observable reality follows a few universal laws. My passion for teaching comes, in part, from sharing that spark of discovery, that moment of epiphany when a person suddenly understands a concept previously foreign to them. My philosophy of teaching starts with treating students with respect, engaging with them authentically and compassionately in order to create an environment that fosters learning, challenges students to gain scientific literacy, and encourages positive interpersonal relations.
To create that supportive environment, I strive to exemplify the skills and qualities that I want my students to gain. I interact with my students in the way that I would like them to interact with myself and with each other. I listen to their perceptions and viewpoints and accept them as authentic and worthwhile. In turn, I am genuine and compassionate with them while acknowledging the authority vested in my position. I make this explicit, starting with a section in my syllabus . This encourages intellectual risk-taking, which is vital to the learning process. For people to be comfortable playing with ideas, they must be confident that their mistakes will not be held against them, and that their difficulty with learning physics is not abnormal and not because of their background or culture. I often commiserate about how counter-intuitive some concepts are, the misconceptions I have had, and the trouble they have caused me. In fact, I value the students’ missteps, as they represent intellectual effort, and they show me where their misconceptions lie, so that I can more easily address them with guiding questions that help stretch the intellect. In a second-semester laboratory course for science majors, on an end-of-semester survey, a student wrote, “You don’t just give us answers to our questions, but challenge us to learn and understand concepts. [emphasis in original]”. Learning new concepts and unlearning misconceptions is uncomfortable, and I guide the students through that discomfort to gain new understanding and confidence that they can, indeed, learn about subjects that seem at first to be impenetrable.
Once the environment is set up to encourage learning, I help the students improve their scientific literacy. For me, this means that the students learn how scientists create knowledge, what that knowledge actually is so far, and hopefully some of the beauty and awe that brought me into this field. All of this is achieved by having the students actually do science in the classroom. This means that during demonstrations, students are predicting what will happen, observing the demonstration, and evaluating their prediction compared to what actually happened. In the lab, students are working together, learning from each other to figure out how to solve problems, make theories about how something works, and come to conclusions regarding natural phenomena. Even during the lectures, students are engaged in active learning, thinking and reasoning with the concepts. For example, I often use multiple-choice conceptual questions in a “think-pair-share” exercise, where students get to have multiple attempts at solving conceptual physics problems, first individually and then after consulting with their neighbor. In addition to waking some students up, this sort of formative assessment directly encourages risk-taking, gives practice communicating and teaching scientific concepts, and provides instant feedback with a chance to try again. Instant feedback and repeated trials in an online homework system, in particular, has been shown in studies to help level the playing field between men and women in the introductory physics course .
In upper-level courses, many of these techniques still apply. While I haven’t yet taught such a course, there is one thing that I plan to do in particular. In my Methods of Theoretical Physics course, every Friday during class, we worked on homework instead of listening to a lecture. The professor randomly assigned us to groups of three, and we assisted each other in the week’s problem set. Then the final version was due that Monday. This not only provided peer feedback and teamwork opportunities, but it also provided an opportunity to meet other students and more easily form groups on our own. This is great for people who are either not used to working on homework in groups (especially international students) and for those who may not feel comfortable approaching others to form groups, either because of shyness or because they are a member of an underrepresented minority group. Institutionalizing support structures are integral to serving those students.
As a relatively new teacher, I am excited about both studying and contributing to the Physics Education Research literature and learning from colleagues about how students best learn physics. As part of the Certification in College Teaching Program at MSU, I have taken a class on how to teach college science, attended a series of workshops, and presented some of my research in student learning at a national conference . The way I evaluate my teaching is by assessing whether the students learn. I could create a beautifully elegant explanation of a theory, but without connecting the material to the students’ prior knowledge and experiences, the students probably won’t connect with it. Then the explanation is worse than useless – my students have just become at best, less responsive, and at worst, more frightened of the subject or angry at me, neither of which aid the learning process. Exams are a major source of summative assessment for me, and the homeworks are a formative way of letting me know what problem-solving skills or concepts the students are struggling with. Beyond that, I use a group project and paper to help the students connect the material in class to their own world, and they also gain experience in working as a team. In my Art of Physics course, the students form small groups to write a paper and give a presentation on a topic of their choosing. For example, one group chose skydiving. Initially they chose it because one of the group members had gone skydiving, and they thought it would be easy and fun to talk about. They were surprised to find out how much physics was really involved in the whole process. During a feedback session on the last day of class, many students agreed that the project and paper really helped solidify the material for them. For me, it was a great way to assess their understanding of physical principles and, with a peer evaluation, their interpersonal skills as well.
When it comes down to it, I teach because I want to help make the world a better place. For me, that means helping people to better interact with each other, personally and politically. On the personal level, I try to model compassionate and authentic communication. Politically, a democracy relies on a well-informed electorate. When people become more scientifically literate, they are able to make better decisions about the well-being of our shared resources and of our planet that we call home. With these methods, I hope to help make that happen.
1. In the syllabus for my Art of Physics class, I state this: “I want to make the classroom an educational space conducive to student learning, where we interact consensually and compassionately. If we agree on expectations about how we will act, then we all will probably be happier and more productive. We will mutually agree on these expectations the first day of class, and they will form an amendment to this document. ”
2. D. A. Kashy, G. Albertelli, E. Kashy and M. Thoennessen, Teaching with ALN Technology: Benefits and Costs, Journal of Engineering Education, 89, 499 (2001).
3. Specifically the 2012 Winter Meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers
I’m Seth Hawkins and I approve this discussion!


With the declaration by the United Nations on Thursday that Colombia has reduced its coca crop by 25 percent, meaning Peru has likely passed the country as the world’s largest cultivator of coca, Colombians can breathe a sigh of relief. Ravaged by a decades-long civil war in large part funded by that country’s massive drug trade, Colombia is now making progress in bringing its conflict with the FARC rebel group to an end.
But success in Colombia far from heralds the end of the drug war, and decreasing production there only illustrates the degree to which the manufacture of drugs — in particular cocaine — is shifting globally. Even as the traditional strongholds of cocaine use — North America and Europe — witness decreases in the drug’s prevalence, cocaine is becoming more popular elsewhere in the world, particularly in Asia and South America. With economies booming and incomes rising, the once-favorite drug of American yuppies is now more accessible to the new upper classes of the developing world.
Welcome to the new cocaine war.
The story of declining coca production in Colombia and its gradual shift to Peru is part of a long-running trend in cocaine manufacturing. Since the 1990s, crackdowns in one Latin American country have pushed production elsewhere. While cocaine production has generally decreased over the past decade, that decline has been centered in Colombia.
New drug-consumption trends are creating something of an altered picture. Though the rate of drug use remains far lower in Asia than elsewhere in the world, drugs, including cocaine, have made remarkable inroads on the continent in recent years. For Latin America’s cocaine barons, growing disposable income in Asia has created a potentially lucrative market. In July 2012, for instance, authorities in Hong Kong seized their largest-ever shipment of cocaine, valued at a whopping $98 million.
That trend is mirrored in the United Nations’ annual drug report from this year, which documents how the share of global cocaine use is moving away from regions like North America and into other countries:
The prevalence of global cocaine use tells a similar story:
But as methods of making the drug have changed, and as the production and distribution of cocaine have evolved, the drug’s customers have changed too. These changes have undermined the widespread perception that cocaine is predominantly a rich man’s drug. The United Nations has examined this question and found that in Latin America cocaine use is far less tied to increases in income, which likely reflects the availability of the drug along supply routes and the presence of cheaper versions of the drug. In Europe, meanwhile, higher rates of cocaine use are associated with greater levels of per capita income.
With the cocaine market gradually shifting away from the United States, cartels are now moving into countries like Brazil. With its 5,000-mile border with Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia — the world’s three-largest cocaine producers — smuggling the drug into Brazil is a relatively easy and lucrative enterprise. From there, the drug either hits the domestic market or is shipped to Africa en route to Europe. Providing 36.8 percent of global cocaine demand, the United States is still far and away the world’s largest market for the drug. But Brazil is not far behind, with 17.7 percent of the global market. Though trendlines on cocaine usage are moving the right direction in the United States — cocaine use has dropped by an estimated two-thirds in 30 years — drug cartels can still make enormous sums off of moving the drug into the U.S. market.
Colombia’s success in decreasing coca production can be largely attributed to its militarized approach to dealing with its cartels and an aggressive eradication program. Politicians in both Colombia and the United States are likely to point to the U.N.’s findings about coca production as an example of the success of the so-called Plan Colombia.
But as cocaine begins to move out of Colombia, other markets are opening up for the drug, ensuring its continued prevalence both in Latin American and elsewhere around the world.


Young Adult Girls and LiteraturePresentation Transcript
Young Adult Girls and Literature LIB 617 Research in Young Adult Literature Fall 2008
Girls as teenagers
Excerpt from A Therapist's Guide to Teenage Girls :
For girls, adolescence poses a unique set of challenges. Sports, education, and career still reflect traditional gender lines, and girls are expected to stay on one side while boys stay on the other. If girls fail to play by society's rules, she sufferers ridicule, mockery, and labels regarding her sexual orientation.
What are the biggest problems for teen girls today?
Let them tell you.
In voices that ring with hope and pain, girls describe the search for identity and the pain of exclusion. “There is a pressure to act in a certain way, dress a certain way, and look a certain way,” says a 15-year-old Asian American girl from Massachusetts. “When girls don’t meet these ‘qualifications,’ they get teased or ridiculed.”
Voices of a Generation : Teenage Girls on Sex, School, and Self (1999)
More Independent, Yet Lacking Self Esteem
Teenage girls today are more independent and see greater opportunities available to them than their baby boomer parents did at their age, according to a survey of health educators by The Vagisil Women’s Health Center (SM). Yet, these same girls also have less self-confidence and weaker self-images than their parents’ generation
Part of the first generation that is reaping the full benefits of the women's movement, today's American girl is maturing with a new sense of possibility and psychological emancipation. Dr. Kindlon provides us with an in-depth portrait of the alpha girls born leader who is ready to explode into adulthood and make her mark on the world and, by her example, serve as an inspiration for women everywhere.
A website for teen girls
gURL.com is a leading online community and content site for teenage girls. It contains stories, games and interactive content produced with an independent editorial voice.
what is gURL about?
gURL is a different approach to the experience of being a teenage girl.
We are committed to discussing issues that affect the lives of girls age 13 and up in a nonjudgmental, personal way. Through honest writing, visuals and liberal use of humor, we try to give girls a new way of looking at subjects that are crucial to their lives.
Please see our note to parents about that.
Choosing books for girls
Amelia Bloomer Project
After searching through hundreds of current titles, the Amelia Bloomer Project of the Feminist Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table of the American Library Association honors 30 titles for the fifth annual Amelia Bloomer list. The criteria used by the Amelia Bloomer Committee in selecting books include:
• Significant feminist content
• Excellence in writing
• Appealing format
• Age appropriateness for young readers
Appropriate for Bloomer?
Several key markers:
• Would the story [for fiction] change if the protagonist were male instead of female?
• Does the material show an awareness of gender-based inequalities with action to change these?
• Do females blaze new trails for themselves and those who follow them?
• Do females use power for purposeful action and empowering others?
• Is the character [or subject of informational books] true to herself?
• Do girls and women take on nontraditional roles?
2006 Amelia Bloomer List
She’s just a New York City girl living with her artist mom… NEWS FLASH: Dad is prince of Genovia. (So that’s why a limo meets her at the airport!)
DOWNER: Dad can’t have any more kids. (So there’s no heir to the throne.)
SHOCK OF THE CENTURY: Like it or not, Mia Thermopolis is prime princess material.
THE WORST PART: Mia must take princess lessons from her dreaded grandmère, the dowager princess of Genovia, who thinks Mia has a thing or two to learn before she steps up to the throne.
A “typical” girl book series?
Best Books for Teenage Girls?
An Amazon.com Listmania list by “lopurplestar11”
Princess Diaries Four-Book Set (Princess Diaries; Princess in the Spotlight; Princess In Love; Princess in Waiting) by Meg Cabot
Gutsy Girls: Young Women Who Dare by Tina Schwager
About a Boy by Nick Hornby
Bend It Like Beckham (Bite) (Bite S.) by Narinder Dhami
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
“ The Sisterhood is ultimately about friendship. It’s about loving the people around you in an unconditional way. Sometimes that means being honest and challenging with your friends—saying the hard things rather than taking the easy way. It’s also about receiving that kind of love with grace.”
A more “girly” book?
A companion book
“ . . . a terrific little bomb of a book for girls in the 8-to-11-years-old range. It’s set up in an old-school Boy Scout Manual fashion, but is filled with up-to-the-minute good advice, and plenty of pleasant distractions besides.
YA Lit schizophrenic?
Young-adult literature has always had a split personality. On the front shelf are books that adults hope girls will read: dramas with spunky heroines and melodramas with a moral. But push open the secret compartment, and you find the books girls read on the sly (even girls who don’t usually read): Forever Amber and Judy Blume’s Forever (especially the “Ralph” scene).
Psst, Serena is a slut. Pass it on
Books with bite for girls only?
As Shakespeare knew, love burns high when thwarted by obstacles. In Twilight , an exquisite fantasy by Stephenie Meyer, readers discover a pair of lovers who are supremely star-crossed. Bella adores beautiful Edward, and he returns her love. But Edward is having a hard time controlling the blood lust she arouses in him, because—he’s a vampire.
Review from Amazon reproduced on Stephenie Meyer’s Reviews for Twilight page
YA Girls’ Literacies
FINDERS, Margaret J. Just Girls: Hidden Literacies and Life in Junior High . New York: Teachers College Press, 1997.
Finders provides a rich portrait of adolescent girls in middle school--the “social queens” and the “tough cookies.” She follows the girls, focusing on what they read and write--not just school-sanctioned activities but also the important “hidden literacies”--signing yearbooks, writing notes, bathroom graffiti, and reading teen ‘zines. She interviews and interacts with the girls in and out of the classroom, on sleepovers, mall visits, and other recreational activities. Highlighting the importance of friendship, family, and social networks in girls’ sense of themselves, she suggests that literacy plays an important role in maintaining friendship groups and in the construction of self. The book questions many common assumptions about early adolescence, most importantly the “good girl” role so often assigned to and reinforced in female students.
Book reviews , Adolescence , 00018449, Spring 1997, Vol. 32, Issue 125


Chicken Math For The Budding Production Flock
How much space does a chicken need and other key questions
Chicken math is more than counting your eggs before they hatch. For those of us who want to expand our home flock enough to feed more than just ourselves, there’s some vital chicken math to calculate. If you’re looking to start a flock that may even (gasp) turn a profit for a small farm or youth project, then this article should serve you well.
Things like square floor space, linear feeder space, birds per nest box and how many birds a single water nipple can serve all represent important physical chicken math. This is the math behind the basic operation of a happy flock. Then there is the financial side of a flock.
It’s okay to run a hobby flock, but if you want your flock to at least pay for its self or turn a buck, then understanding some basic business chicken math will help and guide you along your journey.
Floor space per bird is a debated topic these days, and the answer is dependent on who you ask. An adult hen should have at least one and a half square feet of space according to Penn State Extension Service. The Merck Veterinary Manual suggests a whopping three feet squared per hen, so somewhere between those two numbers is likely best. The University of New Hampshire recommends two square feet per broiler bird if you’re growing meat birds. When you’re deciding how to build a chicken coop, knowing how many birds you want in a flock will help determine the size of your coop.
Chickens like to roost, and roosts add space to your existing barn or coop. I’m fond of using a good old two by four for a perch because they’re cheap and sturdy. Be sure to supply six linear inches of roost space per bird in the flock. Having plenty of roost space is particularly important when introducing new chickens to an existing flock. Having room for new hens to escape the floor and evade aggressive pen mates will help ease the transition.
Penn State Extension Service suggests one nest box per every four hens, although Virginia Tech suggests one box per every five hens. Most commercial operations shoot for one nest per six hens, so again, the ideal number is up for debate.
Feeders come in all shapes and sizes. Regardless of the type of feeder, there should be three inches of linear feeder space per bird to avoid competition between birds. Unlike floor space and nests, everyone seems to be on the same page with the three-inch rule for feeder space.
If you’re using an open-trough-style waterer, you’ll need to supply at least one inch of linear trough space per bird. This measurement rule includes round bell water dispensers and steel double-wall waterers. If you’ve made the transition to nipple valves, which is a far better system in so many ways, you’ll want one nipple valve per every 10 hens. I’ve seen some suggest up to 15 hens per valve, but more the merrier in my opinion. As a side note, as you’re looking into how to raise baby chicks, remember that day one is a perfect time to start birds on a nipple valve system. Unlike with trough systems, I’ve never had a chick drown on a nipple valve, and I’ve never seen a flock not take to a valve system.
Take into account how thick you want your bedding pack to be when you design new coops. I strongly suggest a deep bedding system of at least 12 inches or more. Having a deep bedding pack of pine shavings makes litter management a breeze, and you’ll quickly realize that time is not plentiful in farming.
When I coop in a laying flock, I use a bedding pack of about 18 inches thick. This gives me a bedding pack that should last a full 12 months if nothing catastrophic happens, like a significant water leak. The time and effort saved by only having to coop out the barn once a year is an enormous time saver.
The same depth bedding pack will survive two groups of broilers, which is 12 weeks of broiler bird population. I grow pullets to six weeks old these days, then sell them to backyard farmers. I can get up to four batches of chicks through one bedding pack. All this presumes that you’re following proper biosecurity procedures and that no flock has had an illness.
Two hundred layer chicks will burn through about 600 pounds of chick starter in six weeks, in my experience. A hundred broiler birds will eat about the same from day-old to six weeks. Birds eat exponentially more feed as they age, so be prepared.
The Business Side
Feed is one of the most significant costs associated with running a production flock. Buying feed one 50-pound bag at a time, while paying retail prices, will kill your chances of turning a profit. Research feed mills in your area and see if they allow small bulk pickup on site.
When I was running a small layer operation and growing broilers or turkeys, I would take my truck to the local feed mill and load up 55-gallon drums with the feed I needed. It’s a far more cost-effective way to buy feed, but it’s either equipment-intensive or labor-intensive. Don’t forget to consider your chicken feed storage situation, since spoiling your feed investment will cut deep into your profits too.
Feed conversion ratios are part and parcel of the critical chicken math equation for a successful flock. Big production farms get quite technical over conversion ratios, but for our purpose, merely understanding the concept will help.
Some breeds of birds are better at converting feed into eggs or meat than other breeds. I love the Barred Plymouth Rock, but they are a dual purpose bird that is a jack of all trades and a master of none. If you need a bird for a home flock that can provide meat and eggs, then they’re a great fit. When you’re trying to run an egg business, these birds will consume more feed to produce a single egg than, say, a commercial Leghorn or a sex-link variety.
Effectively, the equation looks like this; (Feed In):(Eggs out). It’s as simple as that. In a meat bird flock, your ratio is; (Feed In):(Dressed Weight Out). Understanding this concept will help you pick the best bird for your production flock.
Buying In Bulk
Feed is not the only opportunity to save money by buying in bulk. If you have a flock of 100 layers, you’ll find that buying virgin egg cartons in bulk is the best solution to your packaging needs. Additionally, purchasing bulk egg boxes gives you the opportunity to brand your egg cartons for that professional look.
Please don’t reuse cartons like so many people do. Reusing containers from USDA processing plants (aka all commercial egg suppliers) is illegal. If you don’t deface the branding, USDA markings, and the packing plant code, it’s mislabeling. The USDA frowns on that, and so does your local health department.
|By The Numbers|
|Floor Space||1.5′ to 3′ sq per bird|
|Roost Space||6 inches per bird|
|Nest Box||1 box per 4 to 6 hens|
|Feeder Space||3 inches per bird|
|Water Trough||1 inch per bird|
|Nipple Valve||1 per 10 birds|
|Bedding||12″ depth or more|
Profit And Loss
The most critical chicken math you need to do in a flock you’re keeping for profit is: are you making money? Tracking where your money went and where you earned the most will help you make business decisions down the road. Without these numbers, you’ll be “winging it.” Keeping these records in a basic excel sheet works well, or you can get fancy with a free accounting program. In either case, knowing the numbers can help you spot problems like higher-than-expected costs, or lack of profits. These numbers helped me find my niche in pullet growing, which is the best business model for me.
By The Numbers
Perhaps these numbers will help you raise a happy flock. Perhaps running the numbers with your children’s 4-H or FFA project will give them insight and teach them about business basics. Maybe, just maybe, these numbers will help you make your hobby a profitable venture. In either case, Let us know if this information helped you by commenting below!


You can resize objects
to make them longer or shorter in only one direction or to make
them proportionally larger or smaller.
can also stretch certain objects by moving an endpoint, vertex,
or control point.
With LENGTHEN, you can change
the included angle of arcs and the length of the following objects:
- Open polylines
- Elliptical arcs
- Open splines.
The results are similar to extending and trimming.
- Drag an object endpoint dynamically
- Specify a new length or angle as a percentage
of the total length or angle
- Specify an incremental length or angle
measured from an endpoint
- Specify the object's total absolute length
or included angle
STRETCH, you relocate the endpoints of objects that lie across or within
a crossing selection window.
- Objects that are partially enclosed by
a crossing window are stretched.
- Objects that are completely enclosed
within the crossing window, or that are selected individually, are
moved rather than stretched.
To stretch an object, you specify a base point
and then a point of displacement.
To stretch with precision, use object snaps,
grid snaps, and relative coordinate entry.
Scale Objects Using a Scale
With SCALE, you can make
an object uniformly larger or smaller. To scale an object, you specify
a base point and a scale factor. Alternatively, you can specify
a length to be used as a scale factor based on the current drawing units.
A scale factor greater than 1 enlarges the object.
A scale factor between 0 and 1 shrinks the object.
Scaling changes the size of all dimensions of
the selected object. A scale factor greater than 1 enlarges the
object. A scale factor less than 1 shrinks the object.
When you use the
SCALE command with annotative
the position or location of the object is scaled relative to the
base point of the scale operation, but the size of the object is
Scale Objects Using a Reference
can also scale by reference. Scaling by reference uses an existing
distance as a basis for the new size. To scale by reference, specify
the current distance and then the new desired size. For example,
if one side of an object is 4.8 units long and you want to expand
it to 7.5 units, use 4.8 as the reference length.
You can use the Reference option to scale an
entire drawing. For example, use this option when the original drawing
units need to be changed. Select all objects in the drawing. Then
use Reference to select two points and specify the intended distance.
All the objects in the drawing are scaled accordingly.
To stretch an object
To scale an object by a
To scale an object by reference
To change the length of
an object by dragging


Paper is one of the simplest and most essential pieces of human technology. For the past two millennia, the ability to produce it in ever more efficient ways has supported the proliferation of literacy, media, religion, education, commerce and art. It has created civilizations, fostering the fomenting of revolutions and the stabilizing of regimes. Witness history’s greatest press run, which produced 6.5 billion copies of Máo zhuˇ xí yuˇ lu, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Zedong), or the fact that Leonardo da Vinci left behind only 15 paintings but 4000 works on paper. Now, on the cusp of “going paperless”—and amid rampant speculation about the effects of a digitally dependent society—we’ve come to a world-historic juncture to examine what paper means to civilization. Through tracing paper’s evolution, Mark Kurlansky challenges common assumptions about technology’s influence, affirming that paper is here to stay. Paper will be the history that guides us forward in the twenty-first century and illuminates our times.


Newton’s third law tells us that for every action, there’s an equal reaction going the opposite way. It’s been reassuring us for 400 years, explaining why we don’t fall through the floor (the floor pushes up on us too), and why paddling a boat makes it glide through water. When a system is in equilibrium, no energy goes in or out, and such reciprocity is the rule. Mathematically, these systems are elegantly described with statistical mechanics, the branch of physics that explains how collections of objects behave. This allows researchers to fully model the conditions that give rise to phase transitions in matter, when one state of matter transforms into another, such as when water freezes.
But many systems exist and persist far from equilibrium. Perhaps the most glaring example is life itself. We’re kept out of equilibrium by our metabolism, which converts matter into energy. A human body that settles into equilibrium is a dead body.
In such systems, Newton’s third law becomes moot. Equal-and-opposite falls apart. “Imagine two particles,” said Vincenzo Vitelli, a condensed matter theorist at the University of Chicago, “where A interacts with B in a different way than how B interacts with A.” Such nonreciprocal relationships show up in systems like neuron networks and particles in fluids, and even, on a larger scale, in social groups. Predators eat prey, for example, but prey doesn’t eat its predators.
For these unruly systems, statistical mechanics falls short in representing phase transitions. Out of equilibrium, nonreciprocity dominates. Flocking birds show how easily the law is broken: Because they can’t see behind them, individuals change their flight patterns in response to the birds ahead of them. So bird A doesn’t interact with bird B in the same way that bird B interacts with bird A; it’s not reciprocal. Cars barreling down a highway or stuck in traffic are similarly nonreciprocal. Engineers and physicists who work with metamaterials—which get their properties from structure, rather than substance—have harnessed nonreciprocal elements to design acoustic, quantum, and mechanical devices.
Many of these systems are kept out of equilibrium because individual constituents have their own power source—ATP for cells, gas for cars. But all these extra energy sources and mismatched reactions make for a complex dynamical system beyond the reach of statistical mechanics. How can we analyze phases in such ever changing systems?
Vitelli and his colleagues see an answer in mathematical objects called exceptional points. Generally, an exceptional point in a system is a singularity, a spot where two or more characteristic properties become indistinguishable and mathematically collapse into one. At an exceptional point, the mathematical behavior of a system differs dramatically from its behavior at nearby points, and exceptional points often describe curious phenomena in systems—like lasers—in which energy is gained and lost continuously.
Now the team has found that these exceptional points also control phase transitions in nonreciprocal systems. Exceptional points aren’t new; physicists and mathematicians have studied them for decades in a variety of settings. But they’ve never been associated so generally with this type of phase transition. “That’s what no one has thought about before, using these in the context of nonequilibrium systems,” said the physicist Cynthia Reichhardt of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. “So you can bring all the machinery that we already have about exceptional points to study these systems.”
The new work also draws connections among a range of areas and phenomena that, for years, haven’t seemed to have anything to say to each other. “I believe their work represents rich territory for mathematical development,” said Robert Kohn of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University.
The work began not with birds or neurons, but with quantum weirdness. A few years ago, two of the authors of the new paper—Ryo Hanai, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago, and Peter Littlewood, Hanai’s adviser—were investigating a kind of quasiparticle called a polariton. (Littlewood is on the scientific advisory board of the Flatiron Institute, a research division of the Simons Foundation, which also funds this editorially independent publication.)
A quasiparticle isn’t a particle per se. It’s a collection of quantum behaviors that, en masse, look as if they should be connected to a particle. A polariton shows up when photons (the particles responsible for light) couple with excitons (which themselves are quasiparticles). Polaritons have exceptionally low mass, which means they can move very fast and can form a state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC)—in which separate atoms all collapse into a single quantum state—at higher temperatures than other particles.


Feast of Saint Agatha in Catania, Sicily
One of the largest religious festivals in the world takes place the first weeks of February in the Sicilian city of Catania when it honors its patron saint, Sant’Agata. Some estimate that up to a million people line the streets to honor this martyred young woman with Sicilian roots.
Saint Agatha was a teenager from a wealthy family when she was approached by a Roman prefect. She refused his advances, and he had her tortured in many ways, including the severing of her breasts, which is why Saint Agatha is often depicted holding her amputated breasts on a platter. Indeed, she is the patron saint of bell-founders because of the shape of the severed breasts.
Saint Agatha was then sentenced to be burned at the stake, but an earthquake saved her from that fate; instead, she was sent to prison where St. Peter the Apostle appeared to her, healed her wounds, and filled her dreary prison cell with light.
Saint Agatha died in prison around 250 A.D. when she was just 15 years old. In the 11th century, her body was found to be “incorrupt,” i.e., showing no major signs of decomposition, and parts of her incorrupt body still exist today.
The Festa di Sant’Agata in Catania starts with Mass at dawn on 3 February; then a statue of Saint Agatha holding her relics is placed on a 40,000 pound silver fercolo, or carriage, which is pulled up Via San Giuliano by 5,000 men. The celebrations continue into Saint Agatha’s feast day of 5 February.
Here are some sights and sounds of the festa; especially moving are the cries of the faithful and the nuns chanting at dawn:
Along with Catania and bell-founders, Saint Agatha is also the patron saint of San Marino, Malta, bakers, nurses, firefighters, breast cancer patients, and rape and torture victims.


Definition of atrocious in English:
- This helps to explain why murder is such an atrocious crime.
- It was possibly the most atrocious monstrosity every pulled off on American soil.
- They watched the hideous spectacle, stunned by the monster's atrocious acts.
- The generally poor and occasionally atrocious quality of the writing doesn't help.
- It's unforgivably bad journalism, laughably poor sub-editing, and atrocious proof-reading.
- The weather was atrocious, with heavy snow and high winds.
- Example sentences
- 90 per cent of people here drive atrociously.
- After making my first tuition payment last week, I'm thinking of launching a one-man crusade against the atrociously high cost of higher education today.
- Factory-farmed chickens are transported and slaughtered under atrociously inhumane conditions, says Weisberg.
- Example sentences
- Stravinsky was, in Adorno's opinion, evading existentialist man's duty to confront his own times in all their complexity and atrociousness.
- In her autobiography she said curiosity had made her take the job, but 60 years on she admits she failed to let herself see the atrociousness of the regime she worked for.
- In the opinion of the Chamber, there is no doubt that considering their undeniable scale, their systematic nature and their atrociousness, the massacres were aimed at exterminating the group that was targeted.
Whereas nowadays atrocious tends to describe something such as bad weather or poor English, it used to be a stronger word which referred to great savagery, cruelty, or wickedness, as in Charles Darwin's reference to ‘Atrocious acts which can only take place in a slave country’ (1845). The source of the word was Latin atrox ‘fierce or cruel’, based on ater ‘black’ and literally meaning ‘black-looking’. Atrocity (mid 16th century) has not had its sense weakened in the same way.
Words that rhyme with atrociousferocious, precocious
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
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The yellow sand rises as high as white cloud;
The lonely town is lost amid the mountains proud.
Why should the Mongol flute complain no willows grow?
Beyond the Jade Gate vernal wind will never blow!
These words of poet Wang Zhihuan (688-742) echoes through the centuries as he speaks of the Jade Gate in the Great Wall of China. To the Chinese of old, this gate in Xinjiang was the edge of the known world and an outpost before the legendary far Western regions of the world.
The liminal, mythological role of the Jade Gate in Chinese thinking is what the poem allures to and whether keeping some enemies out or not, great walls and their gates seem to be a lot more about the mythologies and makings of us and them.
The ruins of the Jade Gate lie in a final, large bend of the Great Wall, to the west of the last border town of Dunhuang and on the rim of the vast Taklamakan desert. Its name refers to caravans full of jade that entered it from the desert kingdom of Khotan to be transported east along the Silk Road to central China. You can get here today by a 80 km bus ride from Dunhuang, which is well worth a visit also for other reasons.
The Great Wall of China is rather a whole range of walls in different places that were built, changed and rebuilt over more than 2 000 years. Construction of these walls started in the Warring States era in the 7th or 6th century BC and went on until 17th century Ming dynasty times. The main idea was to protect against raids and invasions from nomadic groups from the Steppes in the north.
Chinese walls protected against some invasions, though many raiders and invaders managed to cross them without too much trouble, most obviously the Mongols conquering all of China in the 13th century.
The Great Wall is a main tourist attraction today, of course, and especially some reconstructed parts of it to the north of Beijing. It should best be seen as dark heritage since the cost in human lives building these walls must have been truly terrible.
Entering China proper at Jiayuguan
The western end of the major stretch of the Ming era Great Wall was in the Jiayu Pass at Jiayuguan city in Gansu province. Like the reconstructed sections outside Beijing this is also a major tourist site, where you get to visit a system of rebuilt and touristified fortresses and gates. It’s impressive for sure.
Ming walls at Mutianyu
Most majestic of the preserved walls are the Ming era ones in the mountains to the north of Beijing, which you visit on day tours from the city. I had a look myself at a place called Mutianyu where you can have ice cream, buy souvenirs and walk some kilometres of ancient wall.
The pointlessness of walls such as these seems to me a monument over human ambition and stupidity. In the long run they do not keep people out or prevent invasions but inflict vast collective, mental damage to entire peoples by separating us and strengthen the making of mutually excluding us and others.
In Berlin, the wall may have fallen, but similar walls between people are on the rise worldwide though we should have known much better by now.


Scabies -- or human itch mites -- are eight-legged critters that burrow into the upper layer of your skin. There, they lay eggs. Once the eggs hatch, the mites climb to the surface of your skin, where they spread to other parts of your body. They can also spread to other people.
A severe form of scabies called “crusted scabies” (or Norwegian crusted scabies) sometimes happens in people who have weakened immune systems. It gets its name from the thick crusts of skin that form from large numbers of scabies mites and eggs.
Scabies can live on the human body for 1 to 2 months. They can live in bedding or furniture for 2-3 days.
How Do You Get Them?
Scabies is very contagious. It is spread from one infected person to another through direct, prolonged, close physical contact. Nursing homes, extended care facilities, prisons, and childcare centers are frequent sites for scabies outbreaks.
Healthy adults most often get these mites through sexual contact with an infected person.
You can’t get scabies from pets.
What Are the Symptoms?
Your first signs that something is wrong will be intense itching (especially at night), and a pimple-like rash. You might notice these symptoms all over your body. Or they may be limited to certain areas, like your wrist, elbows, genitals, butt, or the webbing between your fingers.
Children might experience itching or rash on their head, face, neck, palms, and on the soles of their feet.
You might also notice burrows on your skin. These are tiny, raised, grayish-white or flesh-colored lines on your body. They’re caused by the mites digging their way into your skin.
If you have crusted scabies, you might not have the itching or rash that scabies is known for.
If you’ve had scabies before, you might develop symptoms after just a few days of being exposed to the mites. But if you’ve never had it, you may not have any symptoms for up to 6 weeks. Still, you can spread the mites to others -- even if you don’t show signs of infection yourself.
How Is Scabies Diagnosed?
Your doctor may be able to tell you have the mites by checking the rash or burrows on your body. They might also try to remove one of the mites from its burrow. They’ll do this either by scraping your skin or pulling the parasite from its burrow with a thin needle.


Imagine for a moment that Congress woke up one morning, realized that the United States was suffering from a paralyzing long-term unemployment crisis, and, in a moment of progressive pique, decided to create a welfare program aimed at middle-aged, blue-collar workers.
The one thing everybody could probably agree on is that it should help all those jobless 50-somethings find employment, right?
Well, as NPR's Planet Money argues in an eye-opening story, it turns out there already is a "de facto welfare program" for those struggling Americans. The problem is, instead of getting the unemployed back on their feet, it pays them to give up work for good.
I'm talking about Social Security's disability insurance program, which over 20 years has quietly morphed into one of the largest, yet least talked about, pieces of the social safety net. Since the early 1990s, the number of former workers receiving payments under it has more than doubled to about 8.5 million, as shown in Planet Money's graph below. More than five percent of all eligible adults are now on the rolls, up from around 3 percent twenty years ago. Add in children and spouses who also get checks, and the grand tally comes to 11.7 million.
That rapid, under-the-political-radar expansion has turned the program into a massive budget item. As of 2010, its monthly cash payments accounted for nearly one out of every five Social Security dollars spent, or about $124 billion. In 1988, by comparison, it accounted for just one out of eight Social Security dollars. Because disabled workers qualify for Medicare, they also added $59 billion to the government's healthcare tab.
Are disabilities just becoming more common? According to economists such as MIT's David Autor, the evidence says no. The workforce is indeed getting older, and thus more ailment prone. But Americans over 50, who make up most disability cases, report much better health today than in the 1980s. And demographers have found that the percentage of Americans older than 65 suffering from a chronic disability has fallen drastically since then. In the end, economists Mark Duggan and Scott Imberman estimate that, at most, the graying of America's workers explained just 4 percent of the increase in the rate of disability program participation for women, and 15 percent for men, through 2004.
Instead, it seems two things have happened: Qualifying for disability got easier, and finding work got harder. As the Planet Money piece puts it, "there's no diagnosis called disability." According to the letter of the law, disability recipients must prove they are too physically or mentally impaired to hold a job. And early in the program's life, the most commonly reported ailments were easy-to-diagnose problems such as heart-disease, strokes, or neurological disorders. But after the Reagan administration began trying to thin out the program's rolls in the early 80s, an angry Congress reacted by loosening its criteria. Suddenly, subjective measures like self-reported pain or mental health problems earned more weight under Social Security's formula. Today, the most common diagnoses are musculo-skeletal issues, such as severe back pain, and mental illnesses, such as mood disorders -- health problems where the line between a disability and a mild impairment is far blurrier.
Just as the bar for disability fell, the economy turned on the working class. Factories laid off their assembly workers. The service sector picked up the slack. Wages stagnated for anyone without a college diploma. These changes have made disability more attractive for reasons both obvious and subtle. Although program's payments are small -- the average benefit is a bit over $1,000 per month -- they're not much worse than a minimum wage job. Better yet, they're indexed to inflation, meaning they sometimes rise faster than wages, and come with generous government healthcare. For former blue-collar workers who feel they've lost all hope of finding employment, or who don't want to spend their last years leading to retirement standing all day at McDonald's, disability isn't a bad offer.
It's little surprise then that, as MIT's Autor notes, disability applications tend to rise and fall with the unemployment rate (as shown in his chart below), or that most applications come from workers who have recently lost jobs.
If you're a conservative, the reasons to worry about all this are obvious. There are probably a couple million people who could work if absolutely necessary, and are instead choosing to subsist on taxpayer money. The system, from that perspective, is simply being abused.
But the failures here should be obvious to liberals, too. If the job market is so miserably weak that these workers cannot find jobs -- that they are choosing to live in government-guaranteed poverty rather than take a chance on the labor market -- we need to find a better solution than paying them to sit while their skills atrophy. As of now, that's all we seem to be doing. Despite Clinton-era changes to the program that made it possible for participants to ease back into the work force without losing all their benefits, less than one percent of Americans who go on disability ever leave the program.The surge in the numbers of Americans who are now living off of Social Security's disability insurance program is troublesome. But it reflects the harsh reality of an ongoing jobs crisis that is leaving millions of people unemployed or under-employed, barely scraping by, desperate to find work or better jobs.
Moreover, that program, is headed for bankruptcy. As of last year, Social Security's disability trust fund was on pace to run dry by 2016, which would lead to an automatic 21 percent benefit cut affecting all of the program's participants, including the millions who truly can't work because of their impairments.
Like I said, even if we wanted a new welfare program for the struggling poor, this wouldn't be the way to run it.
Conservatives will point out that incentives are all wrong but liberals will point out the real problem is gross inequality, lack of jobs and affordable healthcare as the U.S. government panders to the financial elite, like big banks and rich private equity fund managers who made off like bandits in the fiscal cliff deal, leaving millions of people struggling in this economy to collect disability checks.
But what really worries me is that even those Americans who are working and managing to save something on the side, their retirement dreams are evaporating, and many of them will likely have to enroll in this "de facto welfare program" before they reach retirement age.
And the real losers in all this are the unemployed, under-employed and especially persons struggling with a disabling condition who need this insurance program to survive. As the program heads for bankruptcy, they will get hit harder than anyone else.
Also, one of the comments to the Atlantic article above struck me:
Keep in mind that some disabled people WANT to work but employers are less than willing to make accommodations. I'd love to work. I HAVE worked. I'm currently in school so that I can get a great job. The problem is that most employers aren't willing to work around my "absences" related to my illness. They hear chronic, frequent atypical migraine and freeze up. If more employers were open to telecommuting and flexible work hours, there would be less of a need for disability for pain related absences for people who WANTED to work.The sad fact is that far too many employers treat persons with disabilities as a liability instead of an asset. I bet you many truly disabled people on Social Security's disability program would much prefer to work for an employer who can accommodate their disability and recognize the value they can bring to their workforce.
Finally, while I'm happy to see the unemployment rate for people with disabilities dropped to a four-year low as the job market improves, the latest from Allsup points out the discrepancy in the unemployment rate between people with disabilities and those with no disabilities is concerning:
The fourth quarter 2012 unemployment rate for people with disabilities dropped to its lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2008. The number of people with disabilities applying for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) also reached a four-year low, according to a study by Allsup, a nationwide provider of SSDI representation and Medicare plan selection services.
While this may seem to indicate that the worst of the economic crisis has passed, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities was still 70 percent higher than for those with no disabilities during the fourth quarter of 2012, according to the Allsup Disability Study: Income at Risk. The full study is available at http://www.allsup.com/Portals/4/allsup-study-income-at-risk-q4-12.pdf
Specifically, the unemployment rate averaged 12.4 percent for people with disabilities and 7.3 percent for people with no disabilities during the fourth quarter of 2012. This compares to 13.7 percent for people with disabilities and 7.9 percent for people with no disabilities during the third quarter of 2012. These figures are based on non-seasonally adjusted data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"The discrepancy in the employment rate between people with no disabilities and people with disabilities is concerning," said Tricia Blazier, personal financial planning manager for Allsup. "If more people with disabilities capable of working were provided the opportunity to do so, the trust fund for the Social Security disability program would be stronger. These individuals would be paying into the trust fund just as other workers do."
Beginning in 2013, the projected assets of the Disability Insurance Trust Fund will fall below 100 percent of the annual costs, according to the 2012 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds (2012 OASDI Trustees Report). The DI Trust Fund is projected to exhaust its reserves in 2016.
At that time, revenues from payroll taxes will cover only 79 percent of benefits. This means there would be a 21 percent cut in benefits to the millions of people with disabilities so severe they are unable to work, as well as to their families. At year-end 2012, more than 8.8 million disabled workers received an average monthly benefit of $1,130.34, and nearly 2.1 million children and spouses of disabled workers relied on average monthly benefits of nearly $334.
SSDI Applications Continue to Decline
While the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is still significantly higher than for people with no disabilities, the number of people with disabilities applying for SSDI has declined for the second year in a row.
The Allsup Disability Study: Income at Risk shows that 638,223 people with disabilities applied for SSDI during the fourth quarter of 2012, down from 726,026 for the previous quarter. The quarterly number of applications has not dropped below this level since the fourth quarter of 2008, when there were 577,306 applications.
In 2012, 2.82 million people filed SSDI applications, compared to 2.88 million in 2011. Applications are now down 3.92 percent from the record high of nearly 2.94 million SSDI applications in 2010. The average age of people applying for SSDI is 53.
"The average age of SSDI applicants is about midway in the baby boom generation, so it's likely SSDI applications will remain elevated," Blazier said. "Because of this, more is needed to educate people with severe disabilities about their SSDI benefits. It's also important people understand their options for rejoining the labor pool if their condition improves in the future."
Many people confronted with a disabling condition wait longer than they should to apply for SSDI benefits. Often, Social Security disability applicants must wait several months or years before they receive their benefits. For example, nearly 1.89 million SSDI claims are pending with an average cumulative wait time of more than 800 days, according to Allsup's analysis of the Social Security disability backlog.
Blazier recommends individuals understand the following:
1. Who is covered by Social Security disability insurance?
To be covered, a person must have worked and paid into the SSDI program through payroll taxes (FICA) for five of the last 10 years. They also must be disabled before reaching full-retirement age (65-67) and must meet Social Security's definition of disability. Generally, this means being unable to work because of a verifiable mental or physical impairment expected to result in death, or which has lasted, or is expected to last, for at least 12 months.
2. When should someone with a severe disability apply for SSDI benefits?
Anyone with SSDI coverage who is unable to work because of a severe disability expected to last 12 months or longer or is terminal should apply as soon as possible. It can take two to four years to receive benefits, during which time many people struggle financially as a result of lost income and, often, mounting healthcare costs. The sooner someone applies the sooner he or she may begin to receive monthly benefits. They also are eligible for Medicare 24 months after they start receiving SSDI cash benefits.
3. Is SSDI representation needed?
Individuals can apply for SSDI on their own. However, there are several advantages to having a Social Security disability representative. This is especially true at the initial application. For example, more than half of Allsup claimants are awarded benefits at the initial application level compared to just 34 percent nationally.
4. Can someone with SSDI benefits ever return to work?
Yes. If a person's condition improves to the point where they can return to work, Social Security offers a trial work period, which allows someone to test their ability to work over at least nine months and receive full SSDI benefits no matter how high their earnings. In addition, Social Security's work incentives include the extended period of eligibility, which lasts 36 months. Once someone's benefits stop because they have substantial earnings, they still have five years in which benefits can be reinstated without going through the SSDI application process again -- if they must stop working because of their disability. This is known as expedited reinstatement. Additionally, it's possible to continue Medicare coverage for up to 93 months.
Individuals can determine their Social Security disability benefits using Allsup's free online Social Security benefits calculator. For a free evaluation, or for more information about eligibility for Social Security disability benefits, contact Allsup's Disability Evaluation Center at (800) 678-3276.
Allsup is a nationwide provider of Social Security disability, veterans disability appeal, Medicare and Medicare Secondary Payer compliance services for individuals, employers and insurance carriers. Founded in 1984, Allsup employs more than 800 professionals who deliver specialized services supporting people with disabilities and seniors so they may lead lives that are as financially secure and as healthy as possible. The company is based in Belleville, Ill., near St. Louis. For more information, go to http://www.Allsup.com or visit Allsup on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/Allsupinc.I provided the information above for people who are confronted with a disabling condition and need help applying for disability insurance. If you're confronted with a disabling condition, inform yourself and know that you have every right to collect disability insurance and even work during this time if you feel capable.
Below, Fox News hypes the high number of people receiving federal disability benefit payments to push myths about the program and suggest many recipients are "moochers" and "takers." In fact, a majority of applicants are denied benefits, and experts agree the higher levels of disability recipients are a direct result of the recession and an increased number of women receiving benefits (if video doesn't work, click here).
And CNBC's resident claptrap, Rick Santelli, screams it's all about incentives, propagating more myths on Social Security's disability program. If you want to know the truth, read this comment on Media Matters for America.


Dun Eochla Stone Fort on Inishmore, with standing tourist.
Dun Eochla is a circular bivallate (double walled) stone fort located near the highest point on Inishmore (Arainn), the largest of the Aran Islands. It is an Irish Historic Monument in the care of the Irish Board of Works.
It was subjected to some restoration work in the late 19th Century. The original construction date of Dun Eochla is estimated to be between 550 and 800AD. It is thought to have been the dwelling place for an extended family and their animals. It may have replaced an even older settlement.
It is a dry stone wall type construction. The main inner wall is 5m high at its highest point and 3.5m thick.
It has not been excavated so the date that is ascribed to it is based on the visible remains.
History of This image on RedBubble
Techie Photographic Details
Taken on a Canon 5D Mk II with a 24-70 zoom lens at 70mm. Exposure: f18 1/320. Minimal post-production processing in Aperture.


“It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.”
– René Descartes
Third grade is an exciting year at Carlthorp School. While enjoying themselves, third graders focus on developing personal responsibility, independence, and learning basic study habits.
The third grade American Indian social studies curriculum frames the year. With trips to the Chumash Museum, third graders begin to broaden their understanding of American history. The Tribe Report allows the children to show their mastery of the writing process and also introduces them to formal aspects of a research paper. The completion of this report is the proudest moment of the year.
Third graders are ready for Current Events! Finding topical articles in the newspaper or children’s news magazines, the students learn to digest information and present it in their own words in front of the class. By the end of the year, the children are confident and composed in front of an audience as you can see when they present a musical revue, Ode to the Code.
Small-group study in English, math, and reading helps to prepare the children for the upcoming challenges of fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Trips to the Art Room, the Science Lab, and Spanish class help round out the day.


Anybody who’s a part of the IT industry will have come across the word “container” during the course of his/her work. After all, it’s one of the most overused terms right now, which also indicates different things for different people depending on the context. Standard Linux containers are nothing more than regular processes running on a Linux-based system. This process category is separate from other process groups thanks to Linux security limitations, resource limitations, and namespaces.
Identifying the Right Processes
When you boot one of the current crop of Linux systems and view a process with cat /proc/PID/cgroup, it immediately becomes known that this process occurs in a cgroup. Once you take a closer look at /proc/PID/status, you begin to notice capabilities. Then you can view SELinux labels by checking out /proc/self/attr/current. Also, seeing /proc/PID/ns gives you a listed view of namespaces the process is currently in.
Thus, if a container gets defined as a process that has resource constraints, namespaces, and Linux security constraints, it can be argued that each process on the Linux system is present in a container. This is precisely the reason why Linux is often considered containers and vice versa.
The term “container runtimes” refer to tools used for modifying resource limitations, namespaces, and security, and also for launching the container. The idea of “container image” was initially introduced by Docker, and pertains to a regular TAR file comprised of two units:
- JSON file: This determines how the rootfs must be run, including the entrypoint or command required to run in rootfs once the container starts, the container’s working directory, environment variables to establish for that particular container, along with a couple of other settings.
- Rootfs: This is the container root filesystem which serves as a directory on the system resembling the regular root (/) of the OS.
What happens is, Docker starts to “tar up” the rootfs while the JSON file develops the base image. The user is now able to install extra content in the rootfs, thereby forming a fresh JSON file, and then tar the variation between the actual image and the new picture with the updated JSON file. Thus, a layered image is created.
Building Blocks of Containers
The tools that are commonly used for forming container images are known as container image builders. In some cases, container engines are responsible for this task, but numerous standalone tools can also be found for creating container images. These container images or tarballs are taken by Docker, and then moved to a web service. This enables them to be later pulled by Docker, which also develops a protocol for pulling them and dubs the web service as container registry.
The term “container engines” are programs capable of pulling container images from the container registries and then reassembling them onto the container storage. If that’s not all, container engines are also responsible for launching container run times.
The container storage is generally a COW or copy-on-write layered filesystem. Once the container image gets pulled down from the container registry, the first thing that needs to be done is untar the rootfs so it can be placed on disk. In the event that multiple layers are present in the image, every single layer gets downloaded and then stored on a separate layer of the COW filesystem. This means every single layer contains a separately stored layer, which increases sharing for the layered images. Container engines tend to support multiple kinds of container storage, such as zfs, btrfs, overlay, aufs, and device-mapper.
Once the container engine has completed downloading the container image to the container storage, it must form a container runtime configuration. This runtime configuration is a combination of input from the user or caller as well as the content from container image specification. The container runtime configuration’s layout as well as the exploded rootfs are often standardized by the OCI standards body.
The container engine releases a container run-time that is capable of reading the container run-time specification, modifying the Linux cgroups in the process along with Linux namespaces and security limitations. Afterward, the container command gets launched to form the PID 1 of the container. By now, the container engine is able to relay stdout/stdin back the caller while gaining control over the container.
Please keep in mind that several of the container run-times get introduced for using various parts of the Linux so the containers can be isolated. This allows users to run containers with KVM separation. They are also able to apply hypervisor strategies. Due to the availability of a standard run-time specification, the tools may be launched by a single container engine. Even Windows may use the OCI Run-time Specification to launch Windows containers.
Container orchestrators are a higher level. These tools help coordinate the execution of containers on various different modes. They interact with the container engines for managing containers. Orchestrators are responsible for telling container engines to start the containers and wire networks together. They can monitor the containers and introduce ones as the load expands.
Benefits of Containers
Containers provide numerous benefits to enable the DevOps workflows, including:
- A simple solution for consistent development, testing and production environments
- Simpler updates
- Support for numerous frameworks
When the user writes, tests and deploys an application within the containers, the environment stays the same at various parts of the delivery chain. This means collaboration between separate teams becomes easier since they all work in the same containerized environment.
When software needs to be continuously delivered, it requires application updates to roll out on a constant, streamlined schedule. This is possible with containers as applying updates becomes easier. Once the app gets distributed into numerous microservices, every single one gets hosted in a different container. If a part of the app gets updated by restarting the container, the rest of it remains uninterrupted.
When performing DevOps, it helps to have the agility to switch conveniently between various deployment platforms or programming frameworks easily. Containers provide the agility since they are comparatively agnostic towards deployment platforms and programming languages. Nearly any kind of app may be run inside the container, irrespective of the language it’s written in. What’s more, containers may be moved easily between various kinds of host systems.
There are plenty of reasons why containers simplify the DevOps. Once system administrators understand the basic nature of the containers, they can easily use that information when planning a migration at the organization.
Author: Rahul Sharma


New Zealand, Enemy Aliens and the Great War Experience, 1914-1919
Central to this book is an examination of the extent to which proimperial sentiment, concepts of citizenship and national identity, increasing European settlement and a progressively volatile European scene set the tone for the manner with which the dominion’s British settlers treated its enemy alien counterparts. Themes discussed include the public’s reaction to war; the government’s internment policy; the establishment of anti-German trade organizations; and the challenges facing Prime Minister William Massey, whose wish to remain fair and just towards enemy aliens often brought him into direct conflict with the more hostile anti-German elements within New Zealand society.
Chapter Three ‘Proof of Loyalty’: Naturalization, Enemy Aliens and the Public Response 69
Chapter Three ‘Proof of Loyalty’: Naturalization, Enemy Aliens and the Public Response The outbreak of war in August 1914 handed the New Zealand government the extra burden of dealing with enemy aliens. This burden proved, in both theory and practice, one of the most contentious home front issues for Massey’s administration during the four-year conf lict. A series of emer- gency measures was introduced against enemy aliens, including placing them under surveillance, ensuring they could not leave the country, arrest- ing military reservists and, if necessary, interning those deemed a danger to domestic security.1 Initially it was believed that, in its most simplistic form, an enemy alien was someone from an enemy power resident in New Zealand who had not become a naturalized Briton. Therefore, those who had become naturalized Britons – in some cases decades previously – could legally expect to be exempt from these emergency measures, as well as the raft of other legislation introduced under the War Regulations Act in November 1914.2 The naturalized Briton was not, however, safe from scrutiny. War Regulations defined an enemy alien to include, ‘any person who has been naturalized in New Zealand and who would have been an enemy alien had he not been so naturalized, and also includes any person reasonably sus- pected of being an enemy alien.’3 With this piece of legislation, naturalized 1 Arrests were made as early as 10 August in the four major centres of Wellington, Christchurch, Auckland and Dunedin; Dominion, 11 August 1914, 6. Internment of those...
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China — the world’s largest emitter of carbon-dioxide — expects power demand to grow by 5 percent annually and plans to more than double its power generation capacity by 2030 to meet its relentless demand though a mix of fossil fuel and renewable energy-powered plants.
Half of China’s new plants will be powered by renewable energy, but dirty coal remains — and will remain for the foreseeable future — the most important fossil fueling China’s growth. China may add 1,583 gigawatts of capacity and attract $294 billion in renewables investment by 2030 even though the coal will still account for more than 50 percent of power generation.
While the environment might appreciate the rise in renewables, the specter of coal still haunts the atmosphere. To this end, China has indicated it may invest an additional $340 billion in energy-saving and emissions-reducing projects. In addition, the Chinese Environment Ministry is considering stricter controls on vehicle and industry pollution.
Beijing is also boosting solar-power targets as it seeks to curb pollution that spurred unrest about dirty air and water resources. It is expected that once renewables are added, carbon emissions from power generation could start to decline by 2027.
China accounts for half of the world’s coal consumption, and while coal-fired capacity will drop as renewables and gas generation rise, the fuel’s share in the power mix will remain at a high of 58 percent in 2030 — though this projection is considerably lower than what we’re seeing now. For 2012, that figure was a horrifying 72 percent.
China aims to cut total coal consumption to below 65 percent of total primary energy use by 2017 as part of a comprehensive new plan to tackle air pollution. Beijing will stop approving new thermal power plants in key industrial areas. China would also aim to raise the share of non-fossil fuel energy to 13 percent by 2017, up from 11.4 percent in 2012. Its previous target was 15 percent by 2020.
The government is encouraging big companies such as Sinopec (NYSE:SNP) to strengthen their commitment to protecting the environment. To that end, Sinopec has announced it would invest 22.9 billion yuan (about $3.7 billion) on an environmental protection plan. But Sinopec’s hand is being forced here, and the government is playing it tough, announcing that it will stop approving new refining projects for the two top state oil firms — Sinopec and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPZ:CH) — because they have failed to meet key pollution targets for 2012.
Last year, China asked seven cities and provinces to put in place regional caps and pilot programs for trading emission rights. China ranks first in the world in attracting clean energy investment, receiving $ 65.1 billion in 2012. The country has provided nearly $40 billion dollars to other countries’ solar and wind industries over the past decade. Chinese companies have made at least 124 investments in solar and wind industries in 33 countries over the past decade, more than half of which were made in 2010 and 2011. Most of the investments were in developed countries, led by the U.S., Germany, Italy, and Australia.
Originally written for OilPrice.com, a website that focuses on news and analysis on topics of alternative energy, geopolitics, and oil and gas. OilPrice.com is written for an educated audience that includes investors, fund managers, resource bankers, traders, and energy market professionals around the world.
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Distracted Driving program provides logical and factual information to help you make better driving decisions. There are three main types of distraction: Visual - taking your eyes off the road, Manual - taking your hands off the wheel, Cognitive – taking your mind off what you're doing. Distracted driving is any non-driving activity a person engages in that has the potential to distract him or her from the primary task of driving and increase the risk of crashing. While all distractions can endanger drivers' safety, texting is the most alarming because it involves all three types of distraction. This training video demonstrates distracted driving and the consequences of such actions. Driver distraction could present a serious and potentially deadly danger. In 2009, 5,474 people were killed in U.S. roadways and an estimated additional 448,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes that were reported to have involved distracted driving. Distracted driving comes in various forms, such as cell phone use, texting while driving, eating, drinking, talking with passengers, as well as using in-vehicle technologies and portable electronic devices. An important addition to your Defensive Driving library.
Runtime: 19 Min.
The CD-ROM of written materials may include: Leaders Guides, Questions & Answers, Manuals, and Power Points.