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|India Country Studies index|
India - Languages of India
Languages of india
About 80 percent of all Indians--nearly 750 million people based on 1995 population estimates--speak one of the Indo-Aryan group of languages. Persian and the languages of Afghanistan are close relatives, belonging, like the Indo-Aryan languages, to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. Brought into India from the northwest during the second millennium B.C., the Indo-Aryan tongues spread throughout the north, gradually displacing the earlier languages of the area.
The oldest documented Dravidian language is Tamil, with a substantial body of literature, particularly the Cankam poetry, going back to the first century A.D. Kannada and Telugu developed extensive bodies of literature after the sixth century, while Malayalam split from Tamil as a literary language by the twelfth century. In spite of the profound influence of the Sanskrit language and Sanskritic culture on the Dravidian languages, a strong consciousness of the distinctness of Dravidian languages from Sanskrit remained. All four major Dravidian languages had consciously differentiated styles varying in the amount of Sanskrit they contained. In the twentieth century, as part of an anti-Brahman movement in Tamil Nadu, a strong movement arose to "purify" Tamil of its Sanskrit elements, with mixed success. The other three Dravidian languages were not much affected by this trend.
There are smaller groups, mostly tribal peoples, who speak Sino-Tibetan and Austroasiatic languages. Sino-Tibetan speakers live along the Himalayan fringe from Jammu and Kashmir to eastern Assam (see fig. 9). They comprise about 1.3 percent, or 12 million, of India's 1995 population. The Austroasiatic languages, composed of the Munda tongues and others thought to be related to them, are spoken by groups of tribal peoples from West Bengal through Bihar and Orissa and into Madhya Pradesh. These groups make up approximately 0.7 percent (about 6.5 million people) of the population.
As Indo-Aryan speakers spread across northern and central India, their languages experienced constant change and development. By about 500 B.C., Prakrits, or "common" forms of speech, were widespread throughout the north. By about the same time, the "sacred," "polished," or "pure" tongue--Sanskrit--used in religious rites had also developed along independent lines, changing significantly from the form used in the Vedas. However, its use in ritual settings encouraged the retention of archaic forms lost in the Prakrits. Concerns for the purity and correctness of Sanskrit gave rise to an elaborate science of grammar and phonetics and an alphabetical system seen by some scholars as superior to the Roman system. By the fourth century B.C., these trends had culminated in the work of Panini, whose Sanskrit grammar, the Ashtadhyayi (Eight Chapters), set the basic form of Sanskrit for subsequent generations. Panini's work is often compared to Euclid's as an intellectual feat of systematization.
Modern linguistic knowledge of this process of assimilation comes through the Sanskrit language employed in the sacred literature known as the Vedas (see The Vedas and Polytheism, ch. 3). Over a period of centuries, Indo-Aryan languages came to predominate in the northern and central portions of South Asia (see Antecedents, ch. 1).
Despite the extensive linguistic diversity in India, many scholars treat South Asia as a single linguistic area because the various language families share a number of features not found together outside South Asia. Languages entering South Asia were "Indianized." Scholars cite the presence of retroflex consonants, characteristic structures in verb formations, and a significant amount of vocabulary in Sanskrit with Dravidian or Austroasiatic origin as indications of mutual borrowing, influences, and counterinfluences. Retroflex consonants, for example, which are formed with the tongue curled back to the hard palate, appear to have been incorporated into Sanskrit and other Indo-Aryan languages through the medium of borrowed Dravidian words.
The Prakrits continued to evolve through everyday use. One of these dialects was Pali, which was spoken in the western portion of peninsular India. Pali became the language of Theravada Buddhism; eventually it came to be identified exclusively with religious contexts. By around A.D. 500, the Prakrits had changed further into Apabhramshas, or the "decayed" speech; it is from these dialects that the contemporary Indo-Aryan languages of South Asia developed. The rudiments of modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars were in place by about A.D. 1000 to 1300.
Around 18 percent of the Indian populace (about 169 million people in 1995) speak Dravidian languages. Most Dravidian speakers reside in South India, where Indo-Aryan influence was less extensive than in the north. Only a few isolated groups of Dravidian speakers, such as the Gonds in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa, and the Kurukhs in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, remain in the north as representatives of the Dravidian speakers who presumably once dominated much more of South Asia. (The only other significant population of Dravidian speakers are the Brahuis in Pakistan.)
It would be misleading, however, to call Sanskrit a dead language because for many centuries huge numbers of works in all genres and on all subjects continued to be written in Sanskrit. Original works are still written in it, although in much smaller numbers than formerly. Many students still learn Sanskrit as a second or third language, classical music concerts regularly feature Sanskrit vocal compositions, and there are even television programs conducted entirely in Sanskrit.
You can read more regarding this subject on the following websites:
Languages of India - Wikipedia
India Country Studies index
Country Studies main page
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Supplemental Text: Reflection
Our curriculum reveals a world rich with diverse cultural traditions, filled with both common and conflicting values. In a 1200-word essay, using MLA format, consider the questions of tolerance and understanding, especially when values of one culture are seen by others as wrong or unjust. This can happen within or between countries or regions, or even within or between families. Consider some traditions or values that we learned about which conflict with the traditions and values of other cultures. What responsibilities do we have to understand other cultures, tolerate elements of other cultures, or perhaps work to change the traditions of other cultures that we believe are wrong or unjust?
In your essay, refer to at least six readings from Hirschberg or the assigned supplements which provide examples for your essay. Additionally, you can write about examples based on your own experience. No additional research is necessary, but if you choose to refer to outside sources from your own research, you must properly credit these sources in your text and responsibly paraphrase or quote from these sources, avoiding plagiarism. All sources you’ve used and cited within your essay must be included in an MLA-formatted Works Cited list at the end of your paper. In formatting the Works Cited, see the guidance I’ve provided in many of the announcements throughout our semester, beginning with the 2/1 announcement. Of course, your best writing skills should be on display.
Underneath i attach the name of the readings
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II Century A.D.
Statue of Apollo
Firenze, Uffizi Gallery, inv. 1914 n. 162
This Apollo statue is prominent among the sculptures traceable as belonging to the founding nucleus of the Medicean collections; it was discovered in Rome in mid XVI Century and soon entered the collections of the Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici. The statue is a beautiful example of Roman replica after a Praxitelean archetype, representing the god Apollo leaning on a tree-trunk with the snake Python coiled around it. Its legibility was seriously impaired by the thick deposits of dust on top of the ancient wax layers.
At first, the restorer proceeded to ease the tension of the superficial waxes by systematically dusting and buffering with oil essence. Then it was possible to clean the old stucco repairs, making a number of new integrations with marble dust, acrylic resins and natural lime. Some retouching by brush was then necessary to harmonize the chromatic differences of the various parts.
The operations of restoration and consolidation, carried out with great expertise and sensibility, made it possible to draw up a complete graphic map of integrations and re-compositions. The accurate photographic campaign significantly updated the archive documentation for this statue. In conclusion, it can be asserted that the restoration, after decades of neglect, has restored to its original beauty a sculpture which is important not only for the original antique parts (body, parts of arms and legs) but also for its modern additions by Flaminio Vacca, one of the most prominent representatives of the XVI Century Florentine sculpture.
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Today, President Clinton hosts an Education Town Meeting at the Robert C. Byrd High School in Clarksburg, West Virginia to promote his call for national education standards and tests. In his opening remarks, the President will focus on the need for adopting standards and the bipartisan support for the strategy, including endorsements by West Virginia Governor Underwood and Massachusetts Governor William Weld. In the forum, the President will highlight the types of skills and information students must master to meet national standards by working through some sample 4th grade reading and math test problems.
The audience is comprised of 160 parents, students, teachers, business and community leaders and others interested in education. The discussion is expected to focus on national standards and how we can prepare young people for the future.
In his State of the Union Address, President Clinton called on every state to adopt high national standards and tests in 4th grade reading and 8th grade math in order to make sure that every student masters these basic skills. The new tests will be based on the widely used National Assessment of Education Progress and will measure individual student performance against widely accepted content standards used by NAEP. The tests will be available for use in the Spring of 1999.
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Texts for this Text Set have been posted daily on Instagram.
Follow @TextSets there to get daily updates!
This week, I am focusing on a set of books that have incredible Educator Guides. I am not usually a fan of teacher guides as in the past, they have not been responsive to student needs. And I certainly am not a fan of just any teacher guide (such as those I have seen on popular teacher sites). However, recently, some brilliant scholars have created educator guides for us to use. Many of these important guides help us, as teachers, unlearn harmful assumptions that we may bring to a text. In order to share these with students in a way that does not cause harm, these guides are critical. I so appreciate the experts who are supporting us with such thoughtful information and insights.
So I purchased the hardback, the ebook and the audio versions of this The 1619 Project Born on the Water, a must-have book. It is such a critical book, not just for children but for all of us. And the guide, written by the brilliant Aeriale Johnson is a true gift. The care that she took in writing this guide is evident. It is not a guide or a book to be read in one sitting and then shared quickly with children. Instead, we have to be mindful of all that Aeriale teaches us so that we can share the book with children. I’ve read through the guide once, but plan to revisit it several times as I learn, relearn, rethink and understand my role in sharing this important book with children.
I will pretty much buy any book from here on out that Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul has written an educator guide for. I learn so much from her-in her professional writing, in her authoring of Stamped for Kids and in her educator guides. The guide accompanying Stamped for Kids, as well as the guide for Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre both offer so much as we think about how we introduce history to children. Again, so much of the history in these books is history that was absent from my learning in school, so much of this is new learning for me. I can’t trust myself to teach this history well on my own. I appreciate so much the ability to have these guides to accompany these books.
The #DisruptTexts website has a set of really strong educator guides. These guides align with the core missions of #DisruptTexts and I trust and appreciate anything that any one of the co-founders shares about books and how we might approach them. The guides span K-12 but the guide for At the Mountain’s Base was especially interesting to me. I love that they remind me (and my students) to spend lots of time with the important author’s note. Check out this guide as well as the others published by the #DisruptTexts team.
I have been adamant about knowing who wrote the Educator Guides I share. Having guide authors who I trust is critical. However, for this “Lesson Kit” for We Are Still Here, I was unable to find the author of the guide. I read through it and the reason I am including it is that it helped me navigate the huge amount of information (much new-to-me) in the book and it also includes so many important resources to extend my knowledge. There is so much here to add to our understandings-for both teachers and students.
Heartdrum Imprint is another site that offers several guides for educators. If you do not know Heartdrum, Heartdrum is a new importing of Harper Collins that highlights the voices of Native creators. Many of the books have short guides to accompany them. The guides are helpful as they often share insights into the concepts and ideas specific to the culture represented in the book. I love that they have educator guides for series books because sometimes we don’t realize how much is embedded in this type of book for transitional readers. I love JoJo Makoons and love the book even more now that I’ve read and reread the guide. The guide is a reminder that we have so much to consider with every single book we share with children.
If you want to purchase any of these books, consider purchasing them from Bookelicious. Bookelicious is an amazing online independent children’s bookstore with a brilliantly curated collection and lots of incredible tools for young readers, their teachers and their parents.
One thought on “Franki’s Weekly Text Set– Using Guides to Help Us: Our Own Unlearning and For Use in the Classroom”
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tropical cyclones form in the south pacific tropics between November and April each year
of the Vanuatu population affected by natural disaster each year
Up to 540k
liters of water produced by Petros Primary School’s Hydropanel array over its lifetime
On the island of Tanna in Vanuatu, local officials needed a way to provide safe, reliable drinking water to the community. In 2015, Cyclone Pam devastated the island of Tanna, destroying 68% of rainwater harvesting structures and 70% of existing water infrastructure. Without infrastructure, water distributed through relief agencies and rainwater collected in tanks provided residents their only supply of water. Unfortunately, captured rainwater is contaminated by sulphur dust from the island’s volcano before ever reaching community cisterns. Together, destroyed infrastructure and water contamination left residents seeking a new supply of safe water.
In partnership with the Asian Development Bank, Vanuatuan officials installed twenty SOURCE Hydropanels at Petros Primary School on Tanna. Now, the community has a resilient supply of safe drinking water, despite any future disasters.
We’ve built custom solutions for water needs in more than 50 countries. Let’s build yours.
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Thinking is an art that helps to reflect, question, reason, and draw conclusions based on our experiences, knowledge, study, and insights. It’s what makes us human and has made us more civilized. Thinking encompasses of who we are and what we do, from observing, learning, remembering, judging and questioning to innovating, arguing, deciding, and acting.
All the new technologies, today that is existing on the Internet, are shaping the way we think. Creativity is not a thing that can be learned but yes can be increased by polishing your skills. Creativity is like a muscle it must be stretched challenged and occasionally pushed past its comfort zone.
Curiosity will lead you to creativity. I don't know how the human brain works but it's almost magical when you read enough or talk to enough experts when you have enough inputs new ideas start appearing.
Enhance Creativity with Technology
Here are some ways you can use technology to harness and boost creative thinking and expression in digital age include:
Technology has given us blogging which is a valuable way for the development of creative thinking and writing. Blog writing gives you a platform to openly give voice to ideas that fascinate you, encourages you to incorporate creativity in the work you share. The appreciation that you receive, the likes you get, the comments on your wall motivates you. They together add a new feel in you. A feel to do more and give your best. Some free blogging sites are Word Press, Blogger and Medium.com.
Online Art Exhibition
Today, nothing can be left hidden from the world. Everything is digitized. The internet provides with thousands of sites that allow you to display your work. The time is gone when you have to arrange exhibitions to showcase your paintings, your work. Get that paint, water hues and planning part and make some excellent craftsmanship.
With Adobe Photoshop you can give additional shades and modify hues as indicated by your taste and give a completing touch to the craftsmanship. At that point present it in an online workmanship show.
Engage Anonymously Online
Creating an account in disguise on online communities encourages natives to add content without any hesitation, to a certain extent. All usual obstacles, barriers are removed which automatically increases your creativity.
The shy creative person may abstain from sharing his ideas with a group of people, but that same individual may feel relaxed using an anonymous name online to share his thoughts, poems. YouTube, Twitter they all have a generous portion of anonymous users sharing their ideas for better or worse.
Play Educational Games
Child's education doesn't have to end after school hours. The games prepared for your smartphones and iPads will keep your young one’s mind active outside the classroom. It seems that today’s children have learned how to use smartphones from mother’s womb itself. They explore the world; what’s good and what’s bad much better than the child’s born in ’90s.
Studies show that children who play video games are highly creative. Now there are so many games that make the child strong, sharp and intelligent. Playing these educational games is a way means that technology can build the child’s physique. They will grow up as a strong, smart and intelligent human.
Do you love to sing? Do you have a problem in background music during singing? There are hundreds of app that provide you with music and you have to just sing, solving your problem of background music and you can practice or enjoy your singing. One of such app is “star maker”, that allows you to upload your talent and the entire world listens to it and rate your talent. It's providing a platform to all the shy artist and building their moral.
Youtube is a great platform where you can start your own channels for uploading your video of cooking, singing, dancing, thrilling, teaching and what not. These days what student and what a grown-up, everyone’s first preference is youtube whenever a question arises in their mind. Youtube has become a world in itself. You want to décor your house, the answer is youtube, you wish to make tasty cuisine, the recipe is at youtube, you wish to complete your child’s project, the idea is at youtube.
Your life needs some balance to ensure your creativity doesn't suffer. A lack of ideas or being unable to solve the problem could be extremely frustrating. Now the real challenge is to stretch your creativity is what are have the best features of these terrible ideas. Perhaps looking at these good ideas will spark something creative that you can transfer over to your excellent ideas.
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Federal Information Security Management Act
FISMA abbreviated as Federal Information Security Management Act. It is a executed in December 17, 2002 and enacted by the 107the United Sates Congress. It is introduced in the House by Thomas M. Davis on March 5,2002. It is passed by the House and senate without any objection and signed by President George W. Bush. Hence it is regulated by government. It is enacted when the importance of information security recognized which is in the interests of economic and national security of United States. The Title III of Federal Information Security Management act (FISMA) impose compulsion to every federal agency to develop, document and apply the security program for the information systems to protect the information and other assets from cybercrime. FISMA is responsible to assign duties to federal agencies, Office of management and Business and the National Institute of Standards and Technology(NIST). The NIST is government agency that is non-regulatory. It is responsible to develop technology metric and guidelines. Federal agencies or government organizations which comply with NIST, may also further ensure compliance with FISMA as NIST guidelines directs organizations to comply with FISMA. NIST has provide some rules to move towards FISMA compliance.
We will analyze the current and the previous administrations approaches to cyber security and analyze how each administrations succeeded in different areas and what enhancements required for the economic and information security of United States. We will also see how they enunciated them alongside the activities of people around them that mirror their needs give extraordinary understanding into the inward reasoning of the Administrations. Through an intelligent and top to bottom investigation of these issues we can see the zones in which the Administrations have enhanced digital security and give proposal on the best way to keep on improving.
Key Current Administration’s Cyber Security Tenets:
The Current Administration has plainly outlined the needs of the Administration through an assortment of talks, Executive Orders, Presidential Policy Directives, Security Frameworks, and strategy surveys . These activities are essential as cybersecurity touches every texture of our general public and one zone not concentrating on their associations cybersecurity has a considerably more extensive effect than simply that association . As the cyber risk has kept on developing all through the Current Administration it was key that they verbalize what their needs are to tending to cybersecurity.
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Monastery of the Cross (Jerusalem)
The Monastery of the Cross in Jerusalem is an Orthodox Christian monastery located in a valley in western Jerusalem to which the monastery gave it its name: the Valley of the Cross. The monastery, which by tradition traces its origins to the fifth century, is under the jurisdiction of the Church of Jerusalem. Construction of the present monastery complex began in the eleventh century by Georgian monks.
The site of the monastery is connected to legends of earlier biblical times. The oldest is that the monastery is located on the burial spot of Adam's head. Later legends place the site of the monastery at the place the tree grew that was used to build the cross of the crucifixion. The site of the tree is marked in a room of the monastery. The tree is also associated with the triplet seeding of olive, cypress, and cedar given by Abraham to Lot.
A monastery was originally built on the present site in the fifth century and was repaired in mid sixth century during the reign of emperor Justinian. During the Persian invasion of Jerusalem in 614, the monastery was largely destroyed and became deserted in the last decade of the eighth century when Arabs murdered the remaining monks.
In the eleventh century, Georgian monks began to restore the monastery. The monastery enjoyed some good times during the period of crusader occupation of Jerusalem, and by the fourteenth century the monastery had become the center of the Georgian community in Jerusalem, hosting hundreds of monks and scholars. However, after the crusaders were driven out in 1267, the Mamelukes, who then controlled Jerusalem, removed the monks, demolished the church in the monastery, and built a mosque within the monastery complex. The monks, however, were permitted to return to the monastery in 1305 as the Mamelukes relented under pressure from Constantinople.
In the sixteenth century, the Arabs, who then controlled Jerusalem, demanded that the monastery church be converted into a mosque, using as their reason that a mosque existed in the monastery complex in the thirteenth century. This attempt, however, was fended off. In 1685, control over the monastery was transferred from the Orthodox Georgian monks to the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Since then the size of the monastic population has decreased greatly over the subsequent centuries.
The monastery complex is situated behind high, fortress like walls that reflected its original situation outside the Jerusalem city walls when protection was needed during those turbulent times. The monastery church contains frescoes that were painted in the seventeenth century over original thirteenth century paintings. The remains of the ancient pre-eighth century mosaic floor are preserved in the church.
The traditions of the triplet tree of Abraham and Lot is remembered in the iconography of the monastery: a painting over the entrance door and in the Room of the Holy Tree.
While the monastery remains active today, it has been subject of vandalism. During the past several decades incidents of defacing Georgian inscriptions on frescoes with ones in Greek have occurred. The latest, in 2004, involved defacing a fresco by the Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli in which the face and accompanying inscription were vandalized.
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Whether or not the battery exceeded its design voltage, however, experts believe a cooling system was critical. Lithium-ion battery chemistries in general are "energetic," they said, and the cobalt oxide varieties of lithium-ion are particularly so.
"Not all lithium-ion batteries are created equal," Cosmin Laslau, a research analyst for Lux Research, told us. "None of them should fail. They are all essentially safe. But in the event of a failure, lithium cobalt oxide would fail earlier than the other types. Chemical bonds in lithium cobalt oxide will release oxygen earlier." Experts say the release of that oxygen can, in rare cases, lead to fire.
Many engineering teams around the world choose cobalt oxide chemistries, however, because it offers energy densities that can be up to 25 percent higher than other types of lithium-ion, such as manganese spinel (used in the Chevy Volt) and phosphate-based systems.
To counteract the higher energies, big, lithium-ion batteries in general are often used in conjunction with cooling systems, no matter whether they are cobalt-, manganese-, or phosphate-based. The Chevy Volt, for example, employs liquid coolant that circulates through 1-mm thick channels machined into 144 metal plates sitting between its lithium-ion manganese spinel cells. Similarly, the Prius PHV plug-in hybrid uses specialized fans, intake ducts, and 42 temperature sensors to actively monitor and cool its lithium-ion battery.
To be sure, the 787's 63-lb battery pack is smaller than those of today's typical electric cars, which can often exceed 400 lb. But experts said that lithium-ion batteries of all types need ways for heat to get out. "Size does make a difference," Cairns told us. "But the size of that (Boeing) battery is still substantial. If the cell casings are touching one another or have inadequate space to allow for natural convection cooling by air, then you're in for trouble."
Cairns said that he hadn’t personally seen the Boeing battery pack, however, and didn't know if Boeing engineers had provided any means for the heat to escape.
Battery experts who spoke to Design News repeatedly stressed the fact that all types of lithium-ion batteries can be safe and successful, if engineered properly. The question still being answered is whether Boeing engineers did that. “They should have stress-tested the battery with charging system as it it is installed in the 787,” Sadoway said. “I myself wouldn't fly in a 787 at this point."
We're working at the grass roots level with lithium systems in E-Scooters and we're having our problems although not quite as dramatic as Boeings. The battery management system does what it's supposed to do where temperature increases beyond a certain level opens the circuits...somewhat inconveniently after about 3 blocks of hard acceleration. Troubleshooting indicates that by disconnecting the battery, pausing, then reconnecting resets the system, and as long as a reasonable acceleration is the input the system works continuously. As soon as a higher torque (hence amperage increase) is applied to the drive system over a certain length of time the system cuts out. Our solution to this irritation is in work consisting of a hybrid battery system using lead acid for acceleration and lithium for cruise, the controller being rigged to accomodate the changes. Boeing's solution may be the same in the long run...cooling systems are just another aggravation, but hybrid battery systems rigged through a reliable controller may be slightly heavier but likely not as heavy as a cooling system and have the advantage of no dead weight (all batteries being functional)
Not so puzzling. Before you design in a cooling system, you ask how high can you go without it. For example, if a transistor is rated with a junction temperature of 150 degrees, I would let it heat up to 100 degrees before I put a fan in. Thats a 33% margin. Cooling at sea-level is not the same as cooling at 8000ft equivalent alitude in a pressuized airliner, though.
Boeing will suffer politically, regardless of the decisions they make now. Their best option is to have a replacement strategy defined and a timeline for implementation & FAA approval before the end of this week. Any more delay will cripple their Dreamliner, giving the A380 a huge advantage.
It's possible the cooling was 'built-in', i.e. the design current draw and subsiquent heat load was lower than the thermal capacity of the unit as installed. That's how zillions of the small and ubiquitous lithium batteries consumers use every day work. It'll be interesting to see how this story plays out. Certainly some mistake was made somewhere, but we seem to be jumping to conclusions
Good point William. I wonder if the energy density of the lithium-ion battery system with an additional cooling system would now be less-favorable than the energy density of the traditional/proven battery technology (without the additonal cooling system).
Chuck, do you get a sense that perhaps Boeing moved to the cobalt oxide cathode lithium-ion batteries to shed weight and then made a decision to not include a cooling system that would have added net weight? It is feasible that this type of failure is only found after the 787 is used in process and not in testing and that Boeing can find a safe fix. Gosh, I sure hope that it does not turn out to be known, debated cost-saving management decision that turns political...
The lack of a cooling system would be very puzzling. According to a friend of mine who is a battery guy, lithium ion batteries are the highest energy density and are one of the most volatile chemistries, so correct charging and cooling are of paramount importance.
Lantronix Inc. has expanded its line of controllers for sensor networks with the release of a rugged controller that improves management of automation systems used in a number of industries, including manufacturing, oil and gas, and chemicals.
Inspired by the hooks a parasitic worm uses to penetrate its host's intestines, the Karp Lab has invented a flexible adhesive patch covered with microneedles that adheres well to wet, soft tissues, but doesn't cause damage when removed.
A quick look into the merger of two powerhouse 3D printing OEMs and the new leader in rapid prototyping solutions, Stratasys. The industrial revolution is now led by 3D printing and engineers are given the opportunity to fully maximize their design capabilities, reduce their time-to-market and functionally test prototypes cheaper, faster and easier. Bruce Bradshaw, Director of Marketing in North America, will explore the large product offering and variety of materials that will help CAD designers articulate their product design with actual, physical prototypes. This broadcast will dive deep into technical information including application specific stories from real world customers and their experiences with 3D printing. 3D Printing is
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The coast around Dubai is filled with spectacular wrecks, some of which were intentionally sunk to create new habitats for marine life. Some of the wrecks date back to the 1960s and all make for very interesting insights in to the nautical history of the area. These wrecks make for fantastic night diving conditions, where a powerful torch can bring out the incredible colours of the life that has propagated the sunken ships. At night, a whole new set of marine inhabitants appear from the wreckage to forage. The wrecks have become such a haven for life, that every hole, crevice and corner is occupied by somebody.
One of the deepest dives off the Dubai Coast, the Zainab has an illicit history. Formerly called the Seasroun Five, she used to sail under the Georgian flag. On April 14th 2001, she was deliberately sunk by her crew to avoid being boarded by the US Navy after she was found to be involved in the illegal transportation of light fuel oil from Iraq. Her sinking resulted in a major oil spill on the northern Gulf coast as 1300 tonnes of fuel oil leaked from the converted holds.
The Zainab remains intact, sitting on her port side, 30 metres down on the sea bed. The wreck can be penetrated with the bridge, engine room and accommodation areas being easily accessible. The wreck site is over 70 metres in length and around 10 metres in depth.
Despite being submerged for only a relatively short period of time, the Zainab has managed to attract a variety of marine life. Large rays can be seen resting on the sea bed around the wreck while shoals of barracudas circle the ship. Schools of yellow snappers hang over the ship while batfish congregate near the bridge and wheelhouse. Small oysters carpet the wreck and juvenile fish use it as a nursery, some of whom are quite inquisitive.
Sunk in 1998 to form an artificial wreck, it lies upside down 25 metres down on the sandy floor. By resting on her cabin and deck equipment, the open area consequently caused between the deck and the sea bed provides the perfect sanctuary for all manners of sea life. Traversing under the hull is possible, provided a powerful torch is taken.
Hydrocorals, scallops, oysters and black sea squirts cover all the surfaces. In February and March, flatworms cover the sand and rocky bottom. There is a good chance of seeing large-sized cuttlefish on this site.
Originally a Panamanian dump barge, Hopper 6 was intentionally sunk by local fishermen after damage caused by a storm in Port Khalid on 18th February 1982. Hopper Barge was later raised, towed to her present location and re-sunk. Large holes were caused in her side, from the breakwater stabits during the storm.
Hopper Barge is an easy wreck to navigate, sitting upright at 25 metres depth. It’s possible to explore the holes in her starboard side if a torch is taken and it is also possible to penetrate the machinery cabins.
Guitarsharks are known to visit the wreck and large batfish are permanent residents, often following divers, apparently completely unperturbed by them. Small colourful blennies live in the small cracks and crevices while different coloured cowries can be seen.
Sheikh Mohammed Barge (SMB)/ Derrick Barge (DB1)
Another barge that was intentionally sunk to form an artificial reef, SMB was previously a purpose-built towing barge completed in 1962. SMB was sunk by the armed forces of the UAE along with a number of other surplus vessels and wrecks that form other, separate dive sites. The barge lies upside down on a flat sandy bottom, 23 metres down
SMB is one of the most interesting wreck dives off Dubai’s coast. The site is very large, allowing several groups of divers to investigate it without even seeing each other. There are numerous holes in the wreck, allowing for penetration by the more experienced and confident divers.
Barracuda and jacks hunt over the hull, while batfish and angelfish live below
The cement barge sank in 1971 during heavy weather conditions, when en route to Dubai. It sits 12 metres down, upright and relatively intact, although deterioration is starting to occur. Large cracks and holes are appearing in her hull, allowing inspection of the inside, provided a powerful torch is taken. The ship’s cargo remains in place, the cement bags can still clearly be seen. The top of the ship’s structure starts from 5 metres depth.
There are numerous holes worth investigating along the hull and the bow has collapsed, providing an opening through to the wreck. The hatch cover of the engine room is missing and the remains of the engines can be seen.
The cement barge is an excellent site for training dives of many certifications and one of the best night diving sites. There is always plenty of fish on this site. Hammour and snapper shelter under the propeller shaft while resident clownfish can be seen defending their anemones. The surfaces are covered with clams, scallops, sponges, thorny oysters, sea squirts and barnacles – even the cement bags play home to some of these creatures. A variety of fishlife resides among the holes, cracks and crevices of the wreck including anglefish, batfish and sergeant majors, many of whom are quite brazen with approaching divers. The remarkable symbiotic partnerships of gobies and shrimps can be seen across the sand around the hull. Blennies hide in the small holes and several species of small colourful dottybacks scavenge over the area. Large shoals of yellow snapper surround the wreck while juvenile barracuda form schools to patrol the outskirts. Stingrays can be seen resting in the sand, although difficult to spot as they bury themselves, with only the smallest amount of tail showing through.
The Neptune was a drill rig tender barge, accompanying the WD Kent drilling rig. The Neptune pulled off in bad weather, dragged her anchor and collided with the WD Kent, resulting in the sinking of the rig. Neptune capsized while being towed to Sharjah and now lays upside-down at 25 metres depth on the sea floor. The drilling equipment, crane boom and wreckage from the accommodation lie along the port side. The wreck is deteriorating and access can be accomplished from both port and starboard side, making it possible to swim right through.
Stingrays can be found on the sand beyond the wreckage and the crane structure has been propagated by white soft coral. Shrimps, blennies and octocorals cover the surface of the wreck. The octocorals are tiny yet come in many colours and there pulsing motions when they feed is almost hypnotic to observe.
Thinking of training in Dubai?
Our dive centre at Atlantis The Palm is uniquely placed in having access to such a variety of dive sites that an entire Advanced Open Water course can be completed, right off the beach! The centre can accommodate adventure and speciality dives including:
- Deep dives
- Wreck dives
- Underwater navigation
- Peak Performance Buoyancy
- Night dives
- Diver propulsion vehicle
- Project AWARE Fish Identification
- Project AWARE Shark speciality
- Underwater Naturalist
Russian Beach is the resident beach dive for training at Atlantis. The site offers easy entrance in to the water, with conditions appropriate for all open water dives for the Open Water scuba Diver certification. It provides the perfect environment for underwater navigation skills and certifications.
With the addition of the dive centre at Atlantis The Palm, Dubai, Al Boom Diving is the best place in the UAE to take your SCUBA diving experience up a level. Al Boom Diving is uniquely placed to offer all PADI courses, dependent on environment, as well as offering our own distinctive specialities and experiences unavailable elsewhere in the U.A.E.
Booking your Dives with Al Boom Diving
If you’re ready to take the plunge on the East Coast please call our contact centre on 04 3422 993 or email [email protected] and let them know when you want to dive!
Before booking your dives with us, please take in to consideration that safe diving and flying procedures stipulate a minimum surface interval of 12 hours after a single dive and 18 hours after multiple dives before flying. This also applies for trips up the Burj Khalifa due to the height at its top.
Al Boom Diving adheres to the PADI recommendation that if Open Water certified divers haven’t dived within 6 months or Advance Open Water divers haven’t dived within 8 months they should complete a SCUBA Tune-up. Al Boom Diving offers SCUBA Tune-ups at our Atlantis dive centre as well as the centre at Le Meridien Al Aqah. Please inform the contact centre at the time of booking if you require a SCUBA Tune-up so a session can be arranged prior to your dive trip.
The dive sites listed are the most popular sites Al Boom Diving runs trips to on the West Coast. Please be aware that other sites may be used depending on weather conditions, boat capacity and diver needs. Diving sites are decided the night before the trips are due to run and may be subject to change on the day, depending on weather and sea conditions.
Telephone : + (9714) 342 – 2993
Fax No: + (9714) 342 – 2995
Fax No: + (9714) 342 – 2995
Aquaventure Car Park, The Atlantis Hotel, The Palm Jumeirah, Dubai, UAE
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Eroded structures in Jacobi crater: a window on the past
This high-resolution image, taken by the advanced Moon Imaging Experiment (AMIE) on board ESA’s SMART-1 spacecraft, shows part of crater Jacobi in the southern hemisphere of the Moon. The rim of the crater is seen on the upper edge of the image.
AMIE obtained this sequence on 18 March 2006 from a distance of about 578 kilometres from the surface, with a ground resolution of 52 metres per pixel. The imaged area is centred at a latitude of 56.5º South and a longitude of 10.9º East, with a field of view of 27 km. North is at the right in the image.
The crater Jacobi itself is much larger than this image - about 70 kilometres in diameter - whereas this image only shows an area of about 25 square kilometres. The single prominent crater to the upper right of the image centre is ‘Jacobi W’, with a diameter of only 7 kilometres. It is possible to note the peculiar surface structure in the upper left area of the image, indicating several heavily eroded kilometre-sized craters having roughly the same size.
"SMART-1 resolution at high solar elevation angle allows us to detect eroded structures buried under more recent layers, giving another window on the past evolution of the Moon," says SMART-1 Project Scientist Bernard Foing.
This area is named after the German mathematician Carl Jacobi (1804 - 1851), who worked on elliptic functions and was active in the field of celestial mechanics.
For more information:
Bernard H. Foing
ESA SMART-1 Project Scientist
Email: bernard.foing @ esa.int
AMIE Principal Investigator
SPACE-X Space Exploration Institute
Email: jean-luc.josset @ space-x.ch
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The recent decision to move New York's presidential primary to February 5 -- which is now being called "Super Duper Tuesday" -- is not only expected to give New Yorkers more influence in choosing the Democratic and Republican nominees, it could also boost voter turnout and increase the power of urban and minority voters.
According to recent report by The Century Foundation early primaries in states like California, Nevada, New Jersey and New York mean that Latino voters in particular, "could not only affect the outcomes, but also the topics the candidates focus on, including wage and labor issues, education and immigration reform."
At the same time, though, because of the debacle in Florida in 2000, new voter identification requirements are being implemented that may have the opposite effect, discouraging minority groups from going to the polls.
Voter identification requirements have become a critical part of the national debate over election reform. Supporters of more stringent regulations argue that voter fraud is frequent enough to justify strict new identification requirements. Others disagree, arguing that the consequences far outweigh the benefits.
"At a time when not nearly enough people vote in the United States, some political players are making it more difficult for people to vote," said Tova Wang, a fellow at the Century Foundation and a co-author of a report on voter fraud now at the center of a brewing controversy. According to Wang, the federal Election Assistance Commission rewrote the report's findings before its final release and issued a gag order to keep Wang from speaking about the report.
VOTER IDENTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS
The 2002 Help America Vote Act (known as HAVA) tried to address voter identification issues by calling for updated voting procedures and technology across the country.
HAVA requires that first-time voters present a state driver's license or the last four digits of their Social Security number at the time of registration. Voters with neither form of identification may use a valid photo ID, a current utility bill, bank statements, government check or any other government document that shows the registrant's name and address. Voters who do not supply this information at the time of registration will be asked for it at polls when they go to vote for the first time.
Although HAVA is a federal program, each state must come up with its own ways of complying with the regulations. New York State's laws largely mirror those of HAVA and are not considered overly burdensome by many election reform experts.
IS FRAUD A REAL CONCERN?
The main reason for the new voter identification regulations, proponents argue, is voter fraud. And they point to news stories that appear after nearly every election relating instances of impersonation, double voting, and even votes cast on behalf of the dead.
But the prevalence of voter fraud depends on who you ask, with Republicans generally arguing that it is widespread and Democrats typically arguing that it is not.
A lengthy, bi-partisan study (in pdf) on voter fraud conducted by the Election Assistance Commission concluded only that the issue has "created a great deal of debate among academics, election officials, and voters" and noted that "past studies of these issues have been limited in scope and some have been riddled with bias."
But that mild conclusion proved to be controversial. The New York Times reported that the editors of the report intentionally revised the findings of the primary authors to reflect the sentiments of White House officials (to view original draft report, in pdf, go here). In a statement released April 26, Wang stated "It has been my desire to participate in this discussion and share my experience as a researcher, expert and co-author of the report. … Unfortunately, the EAC has barred me from speaking." Wang continues, "As numerous press reports indicate, the conclusions that we found in our research and included in our report were revised by the EAC, without explanation or discussion with me, my co-author or the general public. … From the beginning of the project to this moment, my co-author and I have been bound in our contracts with the EAC to silence regarding our work, subject to law suits and civil liability if we violate the EAC-imposed gag order."
There has been little prosecution of fraudulent voting. Since 2000, the Justice Department has charged only 120 people of fraudulent voting. Eighty-six were convicted. This low level of prosecution been cited by some as a possible explanation for the firing of eight U.S. attorneys by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
WILL NEW REQUIREMENTS DETER VOTERS?
Advocates for minority communities argue that even minimal identification requirements can disenfranchise eligible voters, because people of color and immigrants are more often subjected to requests for identification, either properly or improperly.
In the February Special Election in Nassau County to fill a vacant State Senate seat, voting rights groups became alarmed that there might be widespread voter intimidation at the polls because of comments by Joseph Mondello, the Republican Party Chairman for New York State and Nassau County. "Our poll watchers and election inspectors will challenge people to show some kind of identification as to who they are," Mondello reportedly said. "They have a right to ask for identification to make sure you are John Smith. Our people have been cavalier about this in the past. This time, in this election, we're dearly concerned."
According to the Asian American Legal Defense Fund, overzealous poll workers have been improperly implementing identification requirements at voting places in recent elections, and minority voters and voters with limited English are the groups most often asked for identification when it is not actually required.
Research also suggests that Latinos, African Americans, and Asian Americans are less likely to vote when required to show identification than when they simply have to state their names.
THE NEED FOR VOTER EDUCATION
To avoid confusion at the polls and the disenfranchisement of voters, election reform advocates have argued for years that New York City, with such a large and diverse population, has to be sensitive to a wide array of voter needs that other localities might not need to consider.
City residents, for example, are less likely to drive or own a car than their suburban and rural counterparts, and therefore are less likely to hold a driver's license.
The personal and cultural experiences of many of New York City's immigrants, some argue, should be taken into consideration. For instance, a significant portion of New York's immigrants come from oppressive regimes where identification cards were used by authorities as a form of intimidation.
Members of these communities may be less likely to carry identification, or to provide it on demand, especially if it is not legally required.
Unfortunately many voters are unaware of their rights. And so some voters who are asked to show identification may simply decide to leave the polling station and not return. While New York may not have the strict identification requirements that other states have, some experts fear that the misuse of HAVA identification requirements, especially when it results in the disenfranchisement of a voter, could damage long and short term voter participation among minority and non-English speaking voters.
The New York City Board of Elections has been urged to increase poll worker training and voter education, to ensure that poll workers and voters are aware of the HAVA requirements and their rights. With the eventual introduction of new voting machines and processes, poll workers will be asked to perform more services for voters and voters will be less familiar with the process.
In the coming years, overall training and education will become more important for the Boards of Elections. Election reform advocates, civic groups and community organizations will be asked to play a significant role in educating voters as well.
Doug Israel is director of public policy and advocacy for Citizens Union Foundation, which publishes Gotham Gazette. Andrea Senteno is program associate.Â
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Topology is often described as the field that lets you characterize the difference between a saucer and a coffee cup, and identify the cup with a doughnut. The coffee cup and doughnut have "holes" and the saucer does not.
A little more seriously topology studies continous change ( which is not the same thing as continual change, although some confuse the two). It shows how things can change smoothly while remaining the same.
Some fields of topology (such as algebraic topology and differential topology) specialize in topology involving very special added structure, really intended to study fields other than topology. General topology sticks to things that are rather directly derived from the basic axioms of topology.
My own particular work, some of which is listed below (mostly done long ago) was to find very general structure where none had been found before.
My later work discovered some specific simple topological spaces which could act as "prime numbers" for constructing and characterizing very general classes of spaces. That is, any space in the class can be constructed from my spaces, which is the easy part, but if my spaces are constructed from other spaces one of the other spaces must be one of mine: that is the hard part, the primeness, and is something very unusual in topology.
By the time I made those discoveries my teaching interests and resonsibilities had changed dramatically into distributed computing, and I had begun to chair (for 21 years) a department which had begun to focus on computing, as well as mathematics and statistics. Most of my time was spent on those matters, but I named the main computer on which I work spectral to remind myself that someday I should get back to the work, finish it off, and publish it. That finishing is now completed, and the publishing is ready to be done.
There is a very important type of object called a "commutative ring with unit", that has been and still is very much an object of study by many mathematicians in many areas. From such a ring one can derive what is often called its "strucure space" or its "space of prime ideals" or as I will call it its "spectral space". In 1969 a characterization was given by Melvin Hochster of the topological spaces that could be spectral spaces of rings. He did this by giving a highly theoretical and complex construction of a ring to go along with such a space.
A few years after that as I discovered the "irreducible" spaces mentioned above, I began to realize that they would have to be the factors from which spectral spaces are uniquely built, and therefore that their rings would have to be very fundamental as well. But the precise construction of such rings eluded me.
A little before 2000 I discovered how to construct those rings in a special case, and already knew from topology that they were the only ones really needed to rather simply construct the other rings. So I focussed on them and began to really understand what was involved. There is now a very straightforward way to do all of this and that is what my current work, more or less sandwiched between my other duties, has done.
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|This image is comprised
of 12 X-ray images of the sun's atmosphere
taken between 1991 and 1995 in 120-day increments.
This composite image clearly demonstrates
how the sun changes during the solar cycle.
The images were taken from the Yohkoh satellite,
and can be found on the Yohkoh
Scientists became aware that the sun went through
cycles and changes by observing sunspots, the darker,
relatively cooler areas of the sun. The number of
sunspots can be an indication of the degree of solar
activity. The average number of visible sunspots varies
over time, increasing and decreasing on a regular
cycle of between 9.5 to 11 years, on average about
10.8 years. An amateur astronomer, Heinrich Schwabe,
was the first to note this cycle in 1843. The part
of the cycle with low sunspot activity is referred
to as "solar minimum," the portion with
high activity is known as "solar maximum."
The year 2000, it is believed, will be the solar maximum
for the current solar cycle.
Solar Flares and CMEs
While sunspots have been used historically to indicate
levels of solar activity, other solar features increase
in number and intensity along with the fluctuations
in the sun's magnetic field structure. Coronal mass
ejections (CMEs) and emissions of high-energy solar
flares become more common and more intense during
the period of solar maximum. This increase in solar
activity can affect us here on earth (and in earth's
orbit) by what is known as space weather.
Effects on Earth
illustration shows the earth's magnetosphere
and its interaction with the sun.
Ordinarily, the earth's own magnetic field protects
it from most of the sun's emissions. But during periods
of intense solar activity geomagnetic storms can produce
heightened, spectacular displays of the Aurora Borealis
and Aurora Australis, known as the Northern and Southern
Lights. Geomagnetic storms can also disrupt radio transmissions
and affect power grids. Energetic electromagnetic bombardments
can interfere with the transmission of radio waves and
the flow of electric current in wires. Radio operators
are familiar with solar maximum and have to deal with
an increase in static on the airwaves. Occasionally,
radio signals can be completely drowned out. Power grids
can be overloaded by these same bombardments. In 1989,
during the last solar maximum, the power grid that supplies
Canada's Quebec province was knocked out by a geomagnetic
Since satellites are outside the protection of the earth's
atmosphere, they are particularly vulnerable to the
severe geomagnetic storms that can result from solar
activity. According to stellar physicist David Dearborn,
"As the accelerated energetic gas particles from the
sun interact with the earth's magnetic field...they
slide around the earth and form current sheets
that satellites have to deal with. Satellites move from
a region of space that has one charge to an area that
has another charge, and when they cross those boundaries,
the surface of the satellite can suddenly change polarity
(as it moves into a region where there is a different
electric field). You get arcing and you get electric
currents flowing inside the satellite in places where
they're not supposed to flow, and that can be very bad
for the satellites."
In addition to these polarity changes which can damage
sensitive electronics in satellites, the increased solar
emission also causes the earth's atmosphere to "puff
out," creating increased drag on orbiting satellites.
This increased drag can cause satellite orbits to decay
more rapidly than predicted. The 100+ ton Skylab station
is a good example. Launched in 1973, the station was
supposed to remain in orbit until the 1980s. The purpose
of Skylab was, among other things, to study the sun.
Ironically, due to increased solar activity, Skylab
re-entered earth's atmosphere in 1979--raining debris
over the Indian Ocean and parts of Western Australia.
drag" caused by the previous solar
max, helped bring down Skylab early.
Solar Max 2000
It has yet to be seen whether the upcoming solar maximum
will affect us here on earth (or in earth's orbit) in
the way some of the past maximums have. Scientists still
don't completely understand all of the aspects of the
solar cycle and it's difficult to predict just how strong
the solar maximum will be. Each of the 22 solar cycles
studied since the one Heinrich Schwabe noted in 1843
has varied in intensity. One thing is certain, this
current solar cycle, #23, will be the most closely observed
ever. There will be nearly one dozen space-based observatories
watching the sun during this solar maximum. We'll be
watching, too, as we continually update Solar Max 2000
throughout the year.
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Even though the Missouri Compromise of 1820 made it possible for Missouri to become the 24th state of the Union as a slave state, many Missourians did not see eye to eye on the topics of secession and slavery. A new exhibit at Missouri History Museum, The Civil War in Missouri (running through March 16), examines the intricacies and complications in the years leading to the start of the war in 1861, as well as during the war. Curator Jeff Meyer recently talked with LN about the extensive collection that commemorates the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War.
LN: What should visitors look forward to seeing and taking in at The Civil War in Missouri?
JM: We received a federal grant for a massive conservation project, and so we were able to pull out a lot of artifacts since they’ve been conserved and are now stable. We have some artifacts in this exhibit, like a lot of flags and some uniforms and other pieces, that have not seen the light of day either at all or in decades. And, we look at some stories and events that I don’t think will be familiar to the general public. We really don’t focus so much on the battles, but we do examine the history of slavery in Missouri as the cause of what ultimately results in war. We also focus on what was happening with civilians: How war affected civilian life, and what they did to help support the war effort. For instance, we look at how the women, who remained at home because their husbands or sons or fathers had left, cared for their families and their property and made ends meet. And why did people join the fight in the first place? Early on, Lincoln didn’t really take a stand on slavery. He insisted that the war was for the preservation of the Union, but once he authorized African Americans to join the fight, he changed what the war was about.
LN: Some historians believe that Missouri sent more men into battle than any other state. Is this your thought, as well?
JM: I have heard that theory, but I haven’t had a chance to verify it. It would make sense because of the division in Missouri. There were soldiers joining both forces, but the majority of Missourians fighting in the war were fighting for the Union. A lot happened between when Missouri entered the Union as a state and the time of the war. The population exploded. There was more diversity in the state after it obtained statehood, with not only an influx of immigrants coming, but also people coming from the Northeast and the South. It had this identity crisis, and you started to see the beginnings of a bitter division that ultimately resulted in war.
LN: Camp Jackson was located on the site that is now Saint Louis University. What transpired there? And can you share some thoughts on what it was like to live in St. Louis during this time?
JM: For St. Louisans, what occurred at Camp Jackson was a pivotal event. To this point, St. Louis was somewhat removed from the violence. Camp Jackson was an encampment of state militia who were mostly pro-secessionists. They were authorized by Governor (Claiborne Fox) Jackson to set up this encampment, which was perfectly legal in St. Louis. But of course, he had this plot to seize the U.S. arsenal to create an army that would help take Missouri out of the Union. When the Union officials found out about this, they moved the arms across the river into Illinois. The threat at that point was really over, but the Union forces were commanded by this over-zealous abolitionist, Nathaniel Lyon, and he decided to go ahead and capture the encampment. Shots were fired, and it was very confusing as to who started it. Soldiers and civilians were killed, including women and children.
I imagine St. Louisans were on edge all of the time—they were likely very tense, very fearful and probably uncertain of their safety. And the Camp Jackson event was not an isolated event. The very next day, there was another skirmish between civilians and soldiers that resulted in more deaths. This was all in the city of St. Louis.
LN: What is your favorite piece in the exhibit?
JM: There’s a pocket watch that was worn by one of the Missouri State Guard soldiers at Wilson’s Creek. I love that piece because I’ve seen in other museums’ Bibles, belt buckles and canteens that have been shot and have saved soldiers’ lives. To have something like that in our collection— an object that saved a soldier’s life—is just amazing.
LN: How much do you appreciate this period in our nation’s history?
JM: This period is fascinating to me because it’s the most pivotal event of the 20th century, and it’s something that still resonates with a lot of people. I think there’s still a lot about it to examine, and I hope through this exhibit, we’re able to give people some idea of how complex it was and how difficult it was to live during this period in time.
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Picture of the Month Quiz
A 7-year-old girl was admitted with a 2-week history of recurrent episodes of right upper quadrant abdominal pain. Two days prior to hospital admission, she had fever and several episodes of vomiting. There was no history of jaundice, abdominal distention, gastrointestinal bleeding, or constipation. Laboratory evaluation revealed a hemoglobin level of 10 g/dL (to convert to grams per liter, multiply by 10) and total white blood cell count of 6.4/μL (to convert to x109/L, multiply by 0.001) (differential, 62% segmented neutrophils, 32% lymphocytes, and 6% eosinophils). The total bilirubin level was 2.4 mg/dL (to convert to micromoles per liter, multiply by 17.104). The alanine aminotransferase (132 U/L [to convert to microkatals per liter, multiply by 0.0167]), aspartate aminotransferase (126 U/L [to convert to microkatals per liter, multiply by 0.0167]), and alkaline phosphatase (1240 U/L [to convert to microkatals per liter, multiply by 0.0167]) levels were elevated. Amylase and lipase levels were normal. Transabdominal ultrasonography showed a dilated common bile duct with echogenic material and a normal gallbladder and liver. Because of the small size of the child, a 7.4-mm-diameter endobronchial ultrasonographic scope (EB1970; Pentax, Slough, England) was used for evaluation of the common bile duct from the duodenum (Figure and video [http://www.archpediatrics.com] showing evaluation of dilated common bile duct).
For a complete discussion read the Picture of the Month—Quiz Case.
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Document 12: ERA Iowa 1992, "Equality of Men and Women is no Longer Open to Debate," 1992. Box 1, ERA Iowa 1992 Collection, Iowa Women's Archives, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa.
This brochure is another produced and distributed in 1992 by ERA Iowa 1992. It takes a less apologetic, more aggressve, stance in response to the arguments used by ERA opponents. It is the first pamphlet to attack opponents as a conglomerate of the right opposed to equal rights for women. The brochure equates the opponents attacks to rhetoric and fiction. It is one of the few brochures to attribute the defeat of the 1980 campaign to sensationalist attacks from the radical religious right. The Coalition takes an aggressive stand with voters claiming that the ERA will no longer be debated. They refer to other states that have effectively adopted and implemented state ERA's. Unlike other brochures, this one does not directly attack the claims of the opposition, instead it addresses the motivation and tactics of the right and claims that equality under the law will end gender discrimination.
Equality of Men and Women is no Longer Open to Debate
135 YEARS IS TOO LONG...
Women have been left out of this state's law for 135 years.
Simply, the Equal Rights Amendment will secure equality for women and men. Even though it's true that Iowa law currently views women and men equally, the State Constitution does not. And, as we know, laws can be changed to take away rights.
No Legislature, board of supervisors, city council, school board, board of township trustees, agency, or governmental unit in Iowa will be allowed to discriminate against men or women.
Sixteen other states* have added equality provisions to their constitutions. In fact, two added it in the 1890's. In those states, the Equal Rights Amendment has been used to assure equal economic treatment, equal educational opportunities, and equal status in the courts for men and women.
*Includes: Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachustts, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming.
THEY'LL SAY ANYTHING TO SCARE AWAY EQUALITY IN IOWA
It's only fitting that Halloween falls near election day. No doubt, you'll hear many scary stories. One story goes that a group of "radicals" will be able to do all sorts of evil things by adding the Equal Rights Amendment to the Iowa Constitution.
Members of the radical religious right who tell this story won't tell you the facts...that the Amendment will simply make the constitution read, "all men and women, are by nature, free and equal..." It will also add, "Neither the State nor any of its political subdivisions shall, on the basis of gender, deny or restrict the equality of rights under the law."
Those who oppose the Equal Rights Amendment say that it provides a "stepping-stone" for women who want to legalize abortion. This is another lie. Pennsylvania has enacted some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation. It also has an Equal Rights Amendment in its constitution. Courts in that state have repeatedly said there is no connection between the two issues.
In 1980, scare tactics defeated equality. Don't let absurd statements change your heart or your mind.
By adding women to the Iowa Constitution, you ensure equality and correct an historic injustice. To not gurantee equal rights before the law to over half our citizens, the women of this state, denies justice to all of us.
By voting "yes" on November 3, you will help create an era of dignity.
Vote "yes," because equality is no longer a matter for debate.
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In accordance with allied agreement of 5 April 1945 the USSR denounced the Soviet-Japan Treaty on Neutrality and on 8 August declared war to Japan. Next day group of Soviet troops listing over 1,800,000 people, began military actions. For strategic management of the Eastern group of troops Chief HQ in the Far East headed by Marshall Vasilevskiy had been created as early as 30 June. Japan Quantoon Army, numbering 817,000 in manpower (let alone puppet troops), opposed Russian Army.
For 23 days of cut-throat fights along the 5,000-km front Soviet troops and marines, successfully moving forward, liberated the Northeast of China, Southern part of Sakhalin island and the Curilles. Shoulder to shoulder with Soviet warriors soldiers of Mongolian National Army fought. Soviet Army played the most active role in the events. Soviet troops took captives 600,000 soldiers and officers of the adversary, as well as great many pieces of arms and technics.
On September 2, 1945 in Tokyo bay, on board of American battleship "Missouri" Japan representatives signed the Act of Unconditional Surrender.
The victory of the USSR and the countries of anti-Hitler coalition over nazi Germany and militarist Japan in World War II had a world-wide historical meaning. It had also a powerful impact onto the post-war development of the mankind. The Great Patriotic War was its most important part. Soviet Armed Forces managed to preserve Motherland's existence, its freedom and independence; they liberated from fascist oppression peoples of eleven European countries, cast out Japanese occupants from Northeast China and Korea. During the four-year struggle (1418 days and nights) on the Soviet-German front the main forces of fascists were overwhelmed and taken captives: 607 divisions of Vermaht and its satellites. In battles with Soviet Armed Forces Hitler's Germany lost over 10,000,000 people (80% of all the war losses), over 75% of all the materiel.
But the price of the victory was a gigantic one. The war carried away 27,000,000 lives of Russians (according to approximate counting), including 11,000,000 soldiers, killed in action.
For the years of Great Patriotic War over 1,000,000 commanders perished, died of wounds, were missing. In the adversary's rear and on occupied territories there perished about 4,000,000 partisans and subterranean fighters. The USSR lost 30% of its national wealth. The occupants destroyed 1710 Soviet cities, towns and settlements, over 70,000 villages, 32,000 industrial production units, 98,000 collective farms and 2,000 state farms; 6,000 hospitals, 82,000 schools, 334 universities and institutes, 427 museums, 43,000 libraries. Only direct material harm came up to 679,000,000,000 roubles (in prices of 1941), and general expenses - to 1,890,000,000,000 roubles.
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On Living Life Well
Echoes of the Words of the Buddha from the Theravada Tradition
This collection of talks by internationally known Buddhist scholars, given as part of Colgate University study-abroad programs, presents complex Buddhist insights into living life guided by the Noble Eightfold Path, and how to live more freely through it. Set in the context of Sri Lankan culture, topics include:
- Psychological well-beingThe basis for ethical livingDiscerning meaning in this lifeThe centrality of meditationThe monastic experienceDimensions of historical development of Theravada tradition in Sri LankaPatterns of formationA way to respond constructively to our global human foiblesExplanations of ancient religious practices still current today.
Engaged discussions with American students and question-and-answer sessions are included.
421 pages; ISBN 9781928706908
, or download in
- Academic > Religion > Indian Religions > Buddhism > Practice of Buddhism. Forms of worship > Modifications, schools, etc.
- Academic > Religion > Indian Religions > Buddhism > Societies, councils, associations, clubs, etc.
- Academic > Religion > Indian Religions > Buddhism > History
- Religion > Buddhism
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These functions are declared in the main Allegro header file:
typedef struct ALLEGRO_TIMEOUT ALLEGRO_TIMEOUT;
Represent a timeout value. The size of the structure is known so can be statically allocated. The contents are private.
See also: al_init_timeout
Return the number of seconds since the Allegro library was initialised. The return value is undefined if Allegro is uninitialised. The resolution depends on the used driver, but typically can be in the order of microseconds.
void al_init_timeout(ALLEGRO_TIMEOUT *timeout, double seconds)
Set timeout value of some number of seconds after the function call.
See also: ALLEGRO_TIMEOUT
void al_rest(double seconds)
Waits for the specified number seconds. This tells the system to pause the current thread for the given amount of time. With some operating systems, the accuracy can be in the order of 10ms. That is, even
might pause for something like 10ms. Also see the section
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Cardiopulmonary Syndrome Overview
Cardiopulmonary syndromes are conditions of the heart and lung that may be caused by cancer or by other health problems. Four cardiopulmonary syndromes that may be caused by cancer are covered in this summary:
- Dyspnea (shortness of breath).
- Malignant pleural effusion (extra fluid around the lungs).
- Malignant pericardial effusion (extra fluid in the sac around the heart).
- Superior vena cava syndrome (a blocked superior vena cava, the large vein that takes blood back to the heart).
This summary is about cardiopulmonary syndromes in adults and children with cancer. Section titles show when the information is about children.
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Date of this Version
By 1890, the number of North American bison (Bison bison) in the United Sates was reduced to about 500 animals. At that time, a few private ranchers started small herds from remnant survivors of the hide trade. Fredrick Dupree saved nine calves on his ranch near the Moreau River in South Dakota.
Between 1901 and 1913, three fenced preserves were created in the state. James Philip, a Pierre rancher, purchased the Dupree herd in 1901. The state of South Dakota created Custer State Game Preserve in 1913. The Federal government, in concert with the American Bison Society, created the Wind Cave National Game Preserve in that same year. The future propagation of the species was thereby assured.
During the 1920s and 1930s, the herds grew began to grow beyond the capacity of their perspective enclosures. After James Philip’s death, his heirs dismantled the herd through a series of sales and hunts. Custer State Park (renamed in 1919) briefly attempted live sales of the surplus animals, but by the mid 1920s was slaughtering animals for their meat. Wind Cave National Park (renamed in 1935) distributed its excess to public zoos and parks and private individuals. After the demand for live buffalo decreased in the 1930s, Wind Cave began to give surplus animals to Indians, first as meat and later creating a new herd on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
The shortages of WWII led to increased demand for buffalo meat beginning in 1942. Custer State Park (CSP) expanded its slaughtering operations. The Pine Ridge herd was terminated in 1945 and most of the animals were sold to a Michigan entrepreneur. The remaining head were added to CSP. After the war, as a result of efforts to control brucellosis, the surplus from Wind Cave was driven into CSP where they were slaughtered for meat.
The preservation of the buffalo is considered a conservation success story. Much of that success is attributable to the prodigious rates of reproduction of the animals. The history of the first South Dakota herds suggests it is one thing to create a reserve, and quite another to manage it.
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Post subject: GMAT Number Theory (Data Sufficiency)
Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 6:00 am
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2009 6:56 pm Posts: 32
Does r have exactly four distinct positive factors?
(1) r is the product of two numbers, each of them prime numbers. (2) r = 57
r could be the product of 2 x 2 because the question doesn't say whether the two prime numbers are distinct or not. When the two numbers are the same r has 3 not 4 factors. (1, 2,4) Therefore the answer must be (B) not (D)
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Family History Through the Alphabet – I is for …where would we be without them?
ICT stands for "Information and Communication Technologies" - essential for the 21st Century Genealogist.
Here's a dictionary definition (so we are all singing from the same songsheet):
ICT refers to technologies that provide access to information through telecommunications. It is similar to Information Technology (IT), but focuses primarily on communication technologies. This includes the Internet, wireless networks, cell phones, and other communication mediums.
In the past few decades, information and communication technologies have provided society with a vast array of new communication capabilities. For example, people can communicate in real-timewith others in different countries using technologies such as instant messaging, voice over IP (VoIP), and video-conferencing. Social networking websites like Facebook allow users from all over the world to remain in contact and communicate on a regular basis.
Modern information and communication technologies have created a "global village," in which people can communicate with others across the world as if they were living next door. For this reason, ICT is often studied in the context of how modern communication technologies affect society. Source: http://www.techterms.com/definition/ict
Please take some time to to reflect on your genealogy activities and think how the absence of ICT from your life would have an IMPACT on your practices.
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If the joint that connects your big toe to your foot has a swollen, sore bump, you may have a bunion.
More than half the women in America have bunions, a common deformity often blamed on wearing tight, narrow shoes, and high heels. Bunions may occur in families, but many are from wearing tight shoes. Nine out of ten bunions happen to women. Nine out of ten women wear shoes that are too small.
Too-tight shoes can also cause other disabling foot problems like corns, calluses and hammertoes.
Most bunions are treatable without surgery. Prevention is always best. To minimize your chances of developing a bunion, never force your foot into a shoe that doesn't fit. Choose shoes that conform to the shape of your feet. Go for shoes with wide insteps, broad toes and soft soles. Avoid shoes that are short, tight or sharply pointed, and those with heels higher than 2 1/4 inches. If you already have a bunion, wear shoes that are roomy enough to not put pressure on it. This should relieve most of your pain. You may want to have your shoes stretched out professionally. You may also try protective pads to cushion the painful area.
If your bunion has progressed to the point where you have difficulty walking, or experience pain despite accomodative shoes, you may need surgery. Bunion surgery realigns bone, ligaments, tendons and nerves so your big toe can be brought back to its correct position. Orthopaedic surgeons have several techniques to ease your pain. Many bunion surgeries are done on a same-day basis (no hospital stay) using an ankle-block anesthesia. A long recovery is common and may include persistent swelling and stiffness.
Your young teenager (especially girls aged 10-15) may develop an adolescent bunion at the base of his or her big toe. Unlike adults with bunions, a young person can normally move the affected joint. Your teenager may have pain and trouble wearing shoes. Try having your child's shoes stretched and/or getting wider shoes. Surgery to remove an adolescent bunion is not recommended unless your child is in extreme pain and the problem does not get better with changes in shoe wear. If your adolescent has bunion surgery, particularly before they are fully grown, there is a strong chance his or her problem will return.
If you have a painful swollen lump on the outside of your foot near the base of your little toe, it may be a bunionette (tailor's bunion). You may also have a hard corn and painful bursitis in the same spot. A bunionette is very much like a bunion. Wearing shoes that are too tight may cause it. Get shoes that fit comfortably with a soft upper and a roomy toe box. In cases of persistent pain or severe deformity, surgical correction is possible.
The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons
6300 N. River Road
Rosemont, IL 60018
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Medical genetics service now being piloted at the Cornell University Hospital for Animals
For centuries, people have plotted their physical course with the help of maps. With the complete genetic mapping of the canine and many other species, "maps" are now available to help us chart courses of action based on our animals’ genetic compositions.
The Cornell University Hospital for Animals has begun offering medical genetics counseling to the owners of pediatric dogs/cats and to dog/cat breeders who are looking to make breeding decisions based on the genetic make-up of the animals. Medical genetics is the branch of medicine concerned with the effect of genetic variation on development and health and also with the study, diagnosis, management, and prevention of disease in individuals and communities.
"Scientists, veterinarians, and breeders have long been aware of the common genetic defects seen across species, and various lists of them have been drawn up over the years," said Dr. Rory Todhunter, who is a professor of surgery at the College and is leading the Hospital's efforts in this area. "As one of the fastest growing fields in human and veterinary medicine, medical genetics is already impacting the way we respond to inherited conditions that threaten quality of life. Understanding the predisposition for a condition opens up options for earlier medical and surgical intervention for pets”.
To be launched in October 2011, the service will be piloted with guidance from Dr. Magret Casal, associate professor of medical genetics at the University of Pennsylvania who is currently completing a sabbatical at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Casal specializes in veterinary genetics, pediatrics, and reproduction. Her research interests are focused on the characterization, genetic basis, and treatment of canine genetic skin disorders that also occur in humans.
Cornell will offer appointments for patients that present with a variety of conditions that may be considered inherited or congenital. Quality breeding practices, onsite genetic counseling and phone consultations will be offered to breeders. Breed specific genetic testing panels will be offered, so that breeders avoid having to send their samples to multiple institutions. The results of these panels will be discussed with the owners as part of genetic counseling, if desired by the breeder/owner.
"The Cornell University Hospital for Animals is committed to meeting unmet veterinary medical needs,” said Dr. William Horne, hospital director. “Through the medical genetics service, we expect to meet the needs of breeders who are dedicated to the health and well-being of the breed as well as to companion animal owners who want to do everything possible to ensure that their pets are happy and well cared for.”
If you would like to learn more about our Pediatrics and Medical Genetics service, please contact Dr. Marta Castelhano or Dr. Rory Todhunter at (607) 253-3060 or by e-mail at [email protected].
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very few were actually produced prior to 1945, the Beetle undoubtedly
went on to become one of the major success stories of the 20th Century.
The car that needs little introduction, Adolf Hitler's dream of
building a low-cost car for the masses has proved to be a huge hit
for decades and now boasts over 21 million sales, and production
continued until recently in South America.
Designed by Ferdinand Porsche
with a rear-engined, air-cooled design,
very few were actually produced prior to 1939 and production did
not continue until 1945, then as a 1100cc model with non-syncro
gearbox, cable brakes and very little chrome.
Growing in size from 1131cc to 1200cc through the 50's, the range
expanded with the attractive Karmann Ghia
sports models and a cabriolet
with a pram-like hood.
As other vehicles became faster and more powerful, the beetle too
had larger engines installed (1300 and 1500 models) throughout the
Buyers did however start to tire of the Beetles noisy and slow characteristics,
and German made beetles began to decline after VW introduced the
incredibly popular front-engined Golf
Production finally ceased in 1977. Today, the Beetle is somewhat
of a 'cult' car, and "split-window" models from the early 50's,
as well as Karmann Ghia and Cabriolet models can command high prices.
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For Immediate Release
READ ACROSS AMERICA DAY, 2011
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Hidden in the pages of books are extraordinary worlds and characters that can spark creativity and imagination, and unlock the potential that lies within each of our children. Reading is the foundation upon which all other learning is built, and on Read Across America Day, we reaffirm our commitment to supporting America's next generation of great readers.
Cultivation of basic literacy skills can begin early and in the home. It is family who first instills the love of learning in our future leaders by engaging children in good reading habits and making reading a fun and interactive activity. Regardless of language or literacy level, every adult can inspire young people to appreciate the written word early in life. Parents and mentors can help build fundamental skills by reading aloud to children regularly, discussing the story, and encouraging children to ask questions on words or content they do not understand. By passing a passion for literature on to our sons and daughters, we prepare them to be lifelong, successful readers, and we provide them with an essential skill necessary for academic achievement.
Teachers also play an integral role in our students' lives, and educators can help prepare our children to meet the challenges of tomorrow by making reading a key component of classroom activities. Our Nation's young people rely on the critical thinking and analytical skills gained from reading to build other areas of knowledge, including the subjects of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The next generation's ability to excel in these disciplines is crucial to America's strength and prosperity in the 21st century.
Read Across America Day marks the birthday of Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known to the world as Dr. Seuss. Through amusing wordplay and engaging tales, his stories have helped generations of young Americans enjoy reading and sharpen basic reading skills, vital tools for their future success. With parents, teachers, and communities working together, we can ensure reading is a national priority and American pastime. By recommitting to improving literacy and raising the expectations we have for our students, for our schools, and for ourselves, we will win the future for our children and give every child a chance to succeed.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 2, 2011, as Read Across America Day. I call upon children, families, educators, librarians, public officials, and all the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of March, in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fifth.
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Long Term Player Development
LONG-TERM PLAYER DEVELOPMENT
The Long-Term Player Development (LTPD) is a national program that sets out a comprehensive development pathway for soccer players in Canada.
It is player-centered, coach-driven, and administration, sport science and sponsor supported.
The Canadian Soccer Association adapted the soccer-specific LTPD from the Long-Term Athlete Development model (LTAD), which is a scientific model for periodized athlete training and development designed by the Canadian Sport Centres.
It is based on the natural stages of physical, mental, and emotional growth in athletes, and has already been adopted by major sports organizations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Canada.
LTPD is designed to:
1. Promote lifelong enjoyment of soccer and physical activity. 2. Provide a structured player development pathway. 3. Describe best practices for elite player development. 4. Create long-term excellence.
The LTPD is broken down into seven different stages of development.
As a general overview, LTPD: • Eliminates gaps in the player development system. • Guides planning for optimal athlete performance at all stages. • Provides a framework for program alignment and integration, from volunteer club coaches to national and professional teams. • Follows scientific principles and practical coaching experiences.
Benefits for coaches and clubs
• Information and education on effective coaching and practice methods. • Guidelines for appropriate game structures.• Guidelines on appropriate competition levels. • Established pathways for player development for all levels of ability and ambition. • Affirmation of best practices for coaches and club administrators.
Benefits for players and parents
• Better understanding of what makes a good soccer program. • More players learning at their level and having fun. • Appropriate game and league structures (e.g. size of balls, goals, field, etc.). • More opportunity for players to realize their athletic potential. • More coaches who are knowledgeable in leading safe, effective practices.
Benefits for all
• Competitive behaviour is fostered in players, while over-competitive behaviour is discouraged in adults (e.g. coaches and parents). • Players, parents, coaches, and administrators understand that players are unique and therefore different in interest and aptitude. • Players stay involved in the sport throughout their lives (as players, coaches, referees or club administrators). • Soccer grows, and lifelong wellness is promoted for players of all ages, genders, and levels of ability and disability.
For more on the LTPD and its stages of development, please follow this link to download the LTPD brochure: LTPD Brochure
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Bede: The Explanation of the Apocalypse
THE EXPLANATION OF THE APOCALYPSE
TRANSLATED BY THE REV. EDW. MARSHALL, M.A., F.S.A.
FORMERLY FELLOW OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLL., OXFORD.
Oxford and London:
JAMES PARKER AND CO.
Bede's Introductory Letter to Eusebius, with the
Rules of Tychonius
THE Explanation of the Apocalypse by Ven. Beda is the earliest of the many works of our
own writers on that Book, and, as such, may well deserve to appear in a form accessible to
English readers. But independently of this, it is a commentary of much value and
interest in itself, as is shewn by the constant use of it by Isaac Williams in his volume
on the Apocalypse (The Apocalypse, with Notes and Reflections, Lond. 1852), and the
notices of it in two recently-published Lectures of the Bishop of Lincoln (On the
Millennium, Lond. 1875), who also, in his "Introduction to the Book of
Revelation," terms it, "A valuable and interesting exposition" (Greek
Testament, Gen. Ep. and Rev., p.152, 1872).
The chief characteristics of Beda's method of exposition may be thus stated.
The several visions are considered not to be successive, but contemporaneous, with
occasional recapitulations, and to represent the condition of the Church in all ages,
under different aspects. The thousand years, in the twentieth chapter, are
interpreted of the present period of the Church's existence, in accordance with the
opinion of St. Augustine, in the second part of his De Civitate Dei. The attention
is closely directed to the text, and to corresponding passages of Holy Scripture, that the
meaning of the symbolic language may be elicited. The previous exposition of
Tichonius is mainly, but not exclusively followed. Beda appears, for example, to have
adopted several opinions from St. Gregory the Great, and Primasius, as well as St.
The date of the " Explanation" is circ. A.D. 710-716. It is
described by Beda as an "Exposition." But it is called an
Explanation" in the printed editions of his works.
The translation is made from the edition of the Works of Beda by Dr. Giles,
Lond. 1844, vol. xii., which, in this part at least, is merely a reprint of the earlier
text. The notes are limited to the references required by the text, and the
occasional notice of various readings, with some illustrations from other writers. Some
additional notes will be found at the end.
For the sake of conciseness, the text, as read by Beda, which is not given completely
even in the editions of the original Latin, where there frequently occurs the sign of
omission, has not been translated in full. But the Commentary itself, by the
addition of the usual numbering of the verses, and the insertion of catchwords in
Clarendon type, has been rendered available for use with the original Greek, or with any
translation. These words, though not necessarily so, are yet, by far the most
frequently, from the Authorised Version. Care has been taken that the version may be
as literal an one as is consistent with a proper rendering into English.
It may be stated, on information derived through the favour of Mr. E. A. Bond, that the
MS. of the thirteenth century in the British Museum, No. 223 of the Harleian Collection,
containing a Commentary on the Apocalypse, ascribed in the colophon to Beda, is a
different work from that printed in Dr. Giles' edition.
Return to top of page
Explanation of the Apocalypse
LETTER OF BEDA TO EUSEBIUS
Eusebius, or Huaetberht, was Abbat of the Monastery of Jarrow, to which he was
unanimously elected on the resignation of Ceolfrid, in A.D. 716. Besides his
obedience in the monastic life, he was distinguished for his "industry in writing,
singing, reading, and teaching." His Letter to Pope Gregory II. on the occasion of
his appointment, sent by Ceolfrid, is in part preserved. See Beda's Vita SS. Abbat. Mon. in
Uuiram. et Gyr., ch. xiv sq.
TO THE BELOVED BROTHER, EUSEBIUS,
BEDA SENDS GREETING.
THE Apocalypse of St. John, in which God was pleased to reveal by words and figures the
wars and intestine tumults of the Church, seems to me, brother Eusebius, to be divided
into several sections.
In the first of these, after a copious preface to strengthen the faith of the weak, and
a description of the sufferings of the Lord and of the glories which followed, he sees one
like unto the Son of Man clothed with the Church, Who, after He has related what has
happened, or is about to happen, in the seven Churches of Asia in particular, recounts the
general conflicts and victories of the whole Church. And here, designedly, in the sixth
place He has foretold that the Jews are to be made subject to the Church, and that there
is to be a trial of the world at large, and that He Himself will come quickly; and He
places in the seventh the lukewarm Laodicea. For "when the Son of Man cometh, will
He," dost thou think, "find the faith in the earth?" [Luke 18.8]
Then in the second section, after that the four living creatures in the throne of God,
and the twenty-four elders, have been described, he sees the Lamb, on the opening of the
seven seals of the closed book, unfold the future conflicts and triumphs of the Church.
And here, according to the custom of this book, he preserves the order unto the sixth
number in the series; and then he passes by the seventh, recapitulates, and concludes the
two narrations with the seventh. But the recapitulation is also itself to be
understood according to its place, for sometimes he recapitulates from the commencement of
suffering, sometimes from the middle period, and sometimes with a view to speak of the
last affliction only, or a short time before. But this he observes as a fixed point, to
recapitulate after the sixth.
Next, in the third section, under the likeness of seven angels sounding with a trumpet,
he describes the various events of the Church.
In the fourth, under the figure of a woman bringing forth, and a dragon persecuting
her, he reveals the toils and victories of the same Church, and assigns to both combatants
their due rewards. And here the words and actions of seven angels are also recorded,
but not in the same manner as above. So in mystic wisdom he almost always retains this
number, for neither in his gospel nor his epistles is the same John accustomed to say
anything with remissness and brevity.
Then, in the fifth section, by seven angels he has overspread the earth with the seven
In the sixth, he has manifested the condemnation of the great whore, that is, of the
In the seventh, he has shewn the ornament of the Lamb's wife, the holy Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God.
I have also thought that the seven rules of Tichonius [fl. c. 390], a man of the most
learning among those of his sect [The Donatists], should be briefly enumerated, inasmuch
as those who are desirous to learn, receive great assistance from them for understanding
the Scriptures. The first of these is concerning the Lord and His body, when there is a
transition from the Head to the body, or from the body to the Head, and yet no recession
from one and the same person. For one person speaks, saying, "He set a chaplet upon
me, as a bridegroom, and adorned me with an ornament as a bride" [Is. 41.10]; and
yet, certainly, it must be understood how much of this belongs to the Head, how much to
the body; that is, how much to Christ, how much to the Church.
The second is concerning the twofold body of the Lord, or rather, concerning the true
and simulated body of the Lord, as St. Augustine was better pleased that it should be
termed. So the Church says I am dark and comely, as the tents of Kedar, and as the
curtains of Solomon" [Song of Solomon 1.5]; for she does not say, I was dark
and am comely, but she has said that she is both, because of the fellowship in sacraments,
and the commingling for a time of the good and bad fish within one net, seeing that the
tents of Kedar belong to Ishmael, "for that he shall not be heir with the son of the
free woman [Gal. 4.20].
The third is concerning the promises and the law, which may otherwise be expressed as
concerning the spirit and the letter, or concerning grace and the commandment This
appears to St. Augustine to be itself a great question, rather than a rule to be applied
to the solution of questions. For it was through failing to understand this that the
Pelagians either began, or increased their heresy.
The fourth is concerning species and genus. For species is a part, but genus the
whole of which it is a part, as each state is a part of the whole province, and each
province a part of the whole world. These terms, accordingly, have come to the
knowledge of persons in general, so that even the unlearned understand what is enjoined in
any imperial command. This takes place also in respect of men, as the things which are
said of Solomon are out of proportion to him; and it is only when they are referred to
Christ and the Church, of which He is part, that they become clear. Yet the species is not
always exceeded, for such things are often said as more evidently agree with it also, or
perhaps with it alone. But when there is a transition from the species to the genus,
as if Scripture were still speaking of the species, there the attention of the reader
ought to be on the watch.
He lays down a fifth rule, which he names concerning times, and it may, as appears to
me, also be called concerning numbers. This he states to be of force, even in the
case of legitimate numbers, by the figure synecdoche. For the figure synecdoche is either
to infer the whole from a part, or a part from the whole. And by this manner of
speaking is the question of the resurrection of Christ also solved. For unless the
last part of the day on which He suffered is taken for the whole day, that is, with the
addition of the past night too, and unless the night in the latter part of which He rose
again is taken for a whole day, that is, with the addition of the dawning Lord's day,
there cannot be the three days and three nights, in which He foretold that He should be in
the heart of the earth [Matt. 12:40]. Now by legitimate numbers he means those which
the divine Scripture more eminently commends, as the seventh, or tenth, or twelfth; by
which, for the most part, either the whole course of time, or the perfection of anything
is designated, as, "seven times in a day I sing praise unto Thee," [Ps. 98
(AV 99): 164)] is nothing else than, "His praise was ever in my mouth"
[Ps. 33:2 (AV 34:1)] And they are of the same value also when they are multiplied
either by ten, as seventy and seven hundred, in which case, the seventy years of Jerusalem
may be taken spiritually for all the time during which the Church is among aliens; or by
themselves, as ten by ten are a hundred, and twelve by twelve are a hundred and
forty-four, by which number the whole body of the saints is denoted in the Apocalypse.
The sixth rule Tichonius calls recapitulation. For some things are stated in the
Scriptures as if they follow in the order of time, or are related in the succession of
events, when, indeed, the narration is tacitly recalled to what has been omitted. As
it is said in Genesis, "These are the sons of Noah, in their tribes and their
tongues. By these are the isles of the nations upon the earth overspread [Gen.
10:32; 9:19] and immediately, "But the whole earth was of one lip, and of' the same
speech" [Gen. 11.1] So it seems to be stated, as if at the very time when they were
dispersed, they all had one language, when rather, by a recapitulation, he was secretly
adding in what manner the tongues were divided.
His seventh rule is, concerning the devil and his body. For sometimes that is
stated in respect of the devil which cannot be recognised in himself, but only in his
body; as the Lord saith, among other things, to the blessed Job, in exposing the deceit
and power of this enemy, "Will he make many prayers to thee, or will he speak soft
things to thee? [Job 41:3]. And it is not the devil himself who is anywhere read of
as repentant, but his body, which, when condemned at the last, will say, Lord, Lord,
open unto us" [Matt. 25.11].
So then, if any one will observe carefully, he will find these rules to prevail in all
the canonical Scriptures, and especially in the prophetical parts, as well as in the
Apocalypse, that is, the Revelation of St. John the Apostle, which the same Tichonius both
understood with a lively apprehension, and expounded with truthfulness, and in a
sufficiently Catholic sense, excepting only those places in which he endeavoured to defend
the schism of his party, that is, the Donatists. For here he laments the
persecutions which they endured from the religious Emperor Valentinian, as heretics, when
their churches, and followers, and houses, and possessions were given up into the hands of
the Catholics, and their priests were driven into exile; and he calls these things
martyrdoms, and boasts that they were foretold in the same Apocalypse. Now we have
followed on our part the sense of this author in the present work, but in so doing we have
omitted some things beyond the purpose which he inserted, in order that we may be more
compendious; and we have taken care to add many more, which to him, as a man of genius,
and who flourished, as was said of him, like an open rose among thorns, appeared plain and
unworthy of investigation; and this we have done, so far as we have been able to attain,
either by the tradition of masters, or the recollection of reading, or even our own
capacity; for this, too, is among the commandments which we have received, to return to
the Lord with usury the talents which have been committed to us. Now, although it
had seemed fit that the aforesaid work should be divided into three short books <a> to relieve the mind; for in some way
or other, as the blessed Augustine says: The attention of the reader is refreshed by
the termination of a book, as the toil of the traveller by resting at an inn" [Contr.
adv. leg. et. proph., Bk. I. Ch. 33]; nevertheless, that it might be rendered more
easy for those who search to find, it was thought good that the continuous order of
paragraphs should be preserved through out, which I had previously noted in the book
itself by prefixing marks. For, as I think that the indolence of our nation, I mean
of the English, ought to be taken into account,--which too, not long since, that is, in
the time of the blessed Pope Gregory, received the seed of faith, and has cultivated the
same remissly enough, so far as reading is concerned,--I have arranged my plan, so as not
only to elucidate the sense, but also to compress the sentences, inasmuch as brevity, if
it is clear, is wont to be fixed in the memory more than prolix discussion.
I bid thee farewell in Christ, most beloved brother, and desire that thou mayest deign
to be ever mindful of thy Beda.
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<a> The first Book extends to ch. viii. I, the second
to ch. xiv. 20, and the third to ch. xxii. 21. The seven sections into which Beda
considered (supra, pp.1-3) the Apocalypse to be divided, are these, Sec. I, ch. i. 1-iii.
22; sec. 2, ch. iv. 1-vii. 17; sec. 3, ch. viii. I xi.18 ; sec. 4, ch. xi. 19-xv. 8 ; sec.
5, ch. xvi. I-xvi. 21; sec. 6, ch. xvii. I-xviii. 25; Sec. 7, ch. xix. 1-xxii. 21. Return
Bede (The Venerable Beda): The Explanation of the Apocalypse,
Translated by Edward Marshall, (Oxford and London: James Parker and co. 1878)
This text is part of the Internet
Medieval Source Book. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and
copy-permitted texts related to medieval and Byzantine history.
Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright.
Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational
purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No
permission is granted for commercial use.
© Paul Halsall, July 1998
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Q: "I'm really interested in knowing what's in the food I eat, and would like to know if I am meeting my nutritional needs. Why do many food products not have Daily Intake labelling and should I trust the ones that don't?"
A: Percentage Daily Intake (%DI) only started appearing on food labels in 2006. It looks like a row of small curved boxes, called thumbnails, that contain numbers and percentages. These are meant to give you an easy graphic representation of how much one serve of the food contributes to your day's total intake.
This labelling is not compulsory. Some manufacturers choose to display it, while others don't. And of those that do, some display just the %DI thumbnail for energy (kilojoules), while others may include this as well as seven other nutrients: protein, total fat, saturated fat, carbohydrate, sugars, fibre and sodium. Breakfast cereals usually show three B vitamins and iron as well.
There can be many reasons that a manufacturer may not display this information. The obvious one is that it's expensive to redesign and reprint packaging so larger food companies are better able to absorb these costs than smaller businesses. Larger companies also have the technical staff to do the calculations.
Some manufacturers don't want to draw attention to an unhealthy product - would you buy a chocolate bar if you knew it gave you an entire day's intake of kilojoules? However, even if the %DI is not shown, you can work it out yourself.
Just divide the figures from the nutrition table on the back (which is required by law) by your whole day's intake to get a percentage. So something with 870kJ will give you 10% of the average intake of 8700kJ. You'll find your daily energy requirements on the nutrition information page in this website.
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Surrounded by river Ganga in south, Gandak in west, the Vaishali district lies in the Bihar State of India, and the district spreads over an area of 2036 km2. Located at the middle Gangetic plain region, Bihar is one of the poorest states in India, and it is surrounded by Jharkhand, UP and West Bengal states in south, west and east respectively and it shares its border with Nepal in the northern part.
Karnal district is a part of the indo-gangetic plain and has a well spread network of western Yamuna canal flowing from north to south and forming eastern boundary of the district. The district lies in the Haryana State of India. Bordered by Punjab and Himachal Pradesh to the north and Rajasthan to the west and south, Haryana state is one of the most economically developed regions in South Asia and its agricultural and manufacturing industry has experienced sustained growth since 1970s.
During the month of November, CIAT researchers from Cali and Nairobi implemented participatory action research in 4 CCAFS sites in East Africa. The participatory research was part of a multi-disciplinary project that aims to combine data on inherent soil properties, as well as ecological and land degradation status of the sites.
My village Madhyapur Thimi is known as the green vegetable garden of Kathmandu valley, where majority of Newars (ethnic group) are still engaged in agriculture, mostly in vegetable production. We grow a variety of vegetables
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Laryngomalacia (LM) is a disorder of the larynx in infants that can cause respiratory and, at times, associated feeding difficulties. The causes of laryngomalacia have not been cornered, some evidence suggests there may be a genetic link.
Infants with laryngomalacia will often present with inspiratory stridor, a sort of wheezing or high-pitched squeak that occurs during breathing. While in rare cases surgery is needed, most cases of laryngomalacia are healed through rest and time. A particularly helpful practice is avoiding gastroesophageal reflux in children with laryngomalacia; children with laryngomalacia who experience associated digestive issues like reflux can exacerbate the condition and even experience additional collapse of the larynx.
This is where Chibebe's Slumber Pods come in. The Chibebe's Slumber Pod has been designed to significantly alleviate reflux and make a huge difference to a child with laryngomalacia. With this in mind, we are committed to raising awareness of this disorder and supporting all the parents and bubs suffering from this condition. We support the organization Coping With Laryngomalacia in its efforts to improve the lives and conditions of children suffering from this condition.
If you live in Australia, and your baby has LM, Tracheomalacia (TM) or Bronchomalacia (BM), and you would like to benefit from the Chibebe Slumber Pod program to ease their discomfort, please visit CWL at http://www.copingwithlm.org/.
Please note that Chibebe do not accept the above mentioned requests through the Chibebe website. You must visit the CWL site for any enquiries relating to the Slumber Pod Program held with CWL.
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Group hopes to preserve Ulysses S. Grant's last refuge
WILTON — Mount McGregor is well known as being home to a correctional facility but is often forgotten as being an important landmark in history. It was atop Mount McGregor that Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, spent the last six weeks of his life before succumbing to throat cancer.
It was June 1885 when Grant left his New York City home for a cottage in Saratoga County. Already given his cancer diagnosis and the grim outlook of imminent death that came with it, Grant was determined to complete his memoirs as a means to provide financial security for his family. Grant had been ruined financially when a junior business partner embezzled the invested capital.
The cottage was owned by Joseph W. Drexel, who offered it to the former president as a place to spend his last days. On the good days, Grant sat on the cottage’s front porch or was wheeled to an overlook for views of the upper Hudson and lower Champlain valleys, the Green Mountains, the Berkshires and the Taghkanic Hills. On bad days, Grant would remain in bed, looking out a nearby window at the same view.
Today there is no view from the cottage — trees have grown up to block it. But visitors can walk to the overlook and see the same vista, albeit with more development than Grant could ever have imagined in his day. Drexel’s cottage still stands in good structural shape but needs a multitude of repairs. The sun, wind and weather have damaged the building’s exterior. The trim is weathered, the paint is peeling and the chimney is just beginning to separate from the side.
“Nobody has kept their eye on this,” said Lance Ingmire, the president of the Friends of Ulysses S. Grant Cottage. “We cannot let our historic sites fall apart just because of mismanagement of money at the state level.”
The inside of the cottage remains identical to when Grant took his last breath there on July 23, 1885. Family members stopped the clock then, leaving the bed, his clothing, and other personal effects just as they were when he was alive.
Ingmire said there is repair work to be done inside as well.
His own interest in Grant and the historical site is deeply personal. Ingmire said one of his ancestors served as the conductor, bringing Grant’s body from the mountain. The family has a piece of cloth that draped the casket and Ingmire possesses a photo of a healthy Grant on the steps of the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs, said to be Grant’s initial introduction to the local area. Ingmire, well-known for his organization of the fall Civil War encampments, has only been involved with the Friends of Ulysses S. Grant Cottage for about a year.
Asked to give a speech at an annual meeting, Ingmire was soon approached about taking on a more active role with the organization. He has responded with zest, embarking on a campaign of public education and fundraising to have the cottage repaired and maintained in the way it should have been all along. Additionally, he has high hopes for making some much needed and important changes to the visitor’s center associated with Grant’s cottage.
While the cottage is completely controlled by the state Department of Parks and Recreation, the visitor’s center is under complete control of the Friends organization. The building itself is an old garage donated to the Friends by the state Department of Corrections a number of years ago. Ingmire is currently working with the Department of Parks and Recreation, which also controls the surrounding property, to conduct an engineering study related to a severe drainage problem on the site. Continued...
Ingmire said drainage on the site is inadequate, resulting in water pooling on the floor of the visitor’s center. At times of heavy rain, the water reaches a height of 2 inches and flows through the center.
“This takes away from what we want to give to the visitors,” Ingmire said.
While tours are conducted at the cottage, the details of Grant’s life and death are found in the visitor’s center. Ingmire said the center is a place where visitors can take their time to view videos, read documents and see displays that will provide additional details not covered in the cottage tour.
Ingmire said there are a number of local people, himself included, who would like to offer their personal collections for public display at the visitor’s center but are prohibited from doing so because of the conditions of the center.
While the engineering study will likely be completed by the Department of Parks and Recreation, any repairs or construction to the center will be funded by the Friends organization. The organization works with an annual budget of about $40,000, most of which is paid out as salaries for the site interpreter, tour guides and gift shop staff.
To learn more about the historic site and its needs, go to www.grantcottage.org. The site provides a brief chronology of Grant’s life and information on how to offer donations or become a member of the organization.
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This blog aims to supplement the daily coverage published online and in the paper.
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The small country of Guinea-Bissau along the African west coast is home to a population of roughly 1.6 million people, most of whom are employed in agriculture. The country’s small population limits environmental impacts, but farming has nevertheless reduced the extent of Guinea-Bissau’s mangrove forests, according to a report issued by the United Nations Environment Programme.
Much of Guinea-Bissau’s agriculture involves rice farming. The country’s largest ethnic group, the Balanta, began rice paddy cultivation in the late seventeenth century. North of the capital city of Bissau, rice cultivation has transformed the landscape along two coastal rivers, the Mansôa River (pictured) and the Gêba River (visible in the large image). The Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) on NASA’s Landsat 7 satellite acquired this image of the area on December 2, 2006.
To develop rice paddies, farmers must cut through the mangrove forest and fashion mud dikes that restrain ocean tides. Mangroves need contact with the ocean, however, so they rapidly die in the wake of these changes to the landscape. Farmers clear the undergrowth through agricultural fires. In the image, the remaining mangroves appear as bands of dark green in patches along the banks of the Mansôa Rivers. Areas of intensive rice cultivation border the mangrove belts, appearing as areas of pale gray.
Despite agriculture’s negative impact on mangroves, Guinea-Bissau made progress toward sustainability in other ways. The country’s percentage of protected surface area rose from 3.2 percent in 1990 to 7.3 percent in 2000, and remained at the higher level five years later. Over the same period, per capital carbon dioxide emissions fell from 0.2056 to 0.1752 metric tons.
- United Nations Environment Programme. (2008). Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment. Division of Early Warning and Assessment, United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, Kenya.
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data provided by the United States Geological Survey. Caption by Michon Scott.
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8.1 Signals look like noise!
One of the most important practical questions which arises when we are designing or using an information transmission or processing system is, "What is the Capacity of this system? — i.e. How much information can it transmit or process in a given time?" We formed a rough idea of how to answer this question in an earlier section of this set of webpages. We can now go on to obtain more well defined answer by deriving Shannon's Equation. This equation allows us to precisely determine the information carrying capacity of any signal channel.
Consider a signal which is being efficiently communicated (i.e. no redundancy) in the form of a time-dependant analog voltage, . The pattern of voltage variations during a specific time interval, T, allows a receiver to identify which one of a possible set of messages has actually been sent. At any two moments, & , during a message the voltage will be & .
Using the idea of intersymbol influence we can say that since — there is no redundancy — the values of & will appear to be independent of one another provided that they're far enough apart () to be worth sampling separately. In effect, we can't tell what one of the values is just from knowing the other. Of course, for any specific message, both and are determined in advance by the content of that particular message. But the receiver can't know which of all the possible messages has arrived until it has arrived. If the receiver did know in advance which voltage pattern was to be transmitted then the message itself wouldn't provide any new information! i.e. the receiver wouldn't know any more after its arrival than before. This leads us to the remarkable conclusion that a signal which is efficiently communicating information will vary from moment to moment in an unpredictable, apparently random, manner. An efficient signal looks very much like random noise!
This, of course, is why random noise can produce errors in a received message. The statistical properties of an efficiently signalled message are similar to those of random noise. If the signal and noise were obviously different the receiver could easily separate the noise from the signal and avoid making any errors.
To detect and correct errors we therefore have to make the real signal less ‘noise-like’. This is what we're doing when we use parity bits to add redundancy to a signal. The redundancy produces predictable relationships between different sections of the signal pattern. Although this reduces the system's information carrying efficiency it helps us distinguish signal details from random noise. Here, however, we're interested in discovering the maximum possible information carrying capacity of a system. So we have to avoid any redundancy and allow the signal to have the ‘unpredictable’ qualities which make it statistically similar to random noise.
The amount of noise present in a given system can be represented in terms of its mean noise power
where R is the characteristic impedance of the channel or system and is the rms noise voltage. In a similar manner we can represent a typical message in terms of its average signal power
where is the signal's rms voltage.
A real signal must have a finite power. Hence for a given set of possible messages there must be some maximum possible power level. This means that the rms signal voltage is limited to some range. It also means that the instantaneous signal voltage must be limited and can't be beyond some specific range, . A similar argument must also be true for noise. Since we are assuming that the signal system is efficient we can expect the signal and noise to have similar statistical properties. This implies that if we watched the signal or noise for a long while we'd find that their level fluctuations had the same peak/rms voltage ratio. We can therefore say that, during a typical message, the noise voltage fluctuations will be confined to some range
where the form factor, , (ratio of peak to rms levels) can be defined from the signal's properties as
When transmitting signals in the presence of noise we should try to ensure that S is as large as possible so as to minimise the effects of the noise. We can therefore expect that an efficient information transmission system will ensure that, for every typical message, S is almost equal to some maximum value, . This implies that in such a system, most messages will have a similar power level. Ideally, every message should have the same, maximum possible, power level. In fact we can turn this argument on its head and say that only messages with mean powers similar to this maximum are ‘typical’. Those which have much lower powers are unusual — i.e. rare.
8.2 Shannon's Equation.
The signal and noise are uncorrelated — that is, they are not related in any way which would let us predict one of them from the other. The total power obtained, , when combining these uncorrelated, apparently randomly varying quantities is given by
i.e. the typical combined rms voltage, , will be such that
Since the signal and noise are statistically similar their combination will have the same form factor value as the signal or noise taken by itself. We can therefore expect that the combined signal and noise will generally be confined to a voltage range .
Consider now dividing this range into bands of equal size. (i.e. each of these bands will cover .) To provide a different label for each band we require symbols or numbers. We can therefore always indicate which band the voltage level occupies at any moment in terms of a b-bit binary number. In effect, this process is another way of describing what happens when we take digital samples with a b-bit analog to digital convertor working over a total range .
There is no real point in choosing a value for b which is so large that is smaller than . This is because the noise will simply tend to randomise the actual voltage by this amount, making any extra bits meaningless. As a result the maximum number of bits of information we can obtain regarding the level at any moment will given by
which can be rearranged to produce
If we make M, b-bit measurements of the level in a time, T, then the total number of bits of information collected will be
This means that the information transmission rate, I, bits per unit time, will be
From the Sampling Theorem we can say that, for a channel of bandwidth, B, the highest practical sampling rate, , at which we can make independent measurements or samples of a signal will be
Combining expressions 8.11 & 8.12 we can therefore conclude that the maximum information transmission rate, C, will be
This expression represents the maximum possible rate of information transmission through a given channel or system. The maximum rate we can transmit information is set by the bandwidth, the signal level, and the noise level. C is therefore called the channel's information carrying Capacity. Expression 8.13 is called Shannon's Equation after the first person to derive it.
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Apr. 13, 2000 CHAPEL HILL -- A common gene appears to boost the risk of coronary heart disease among smokers, according to a new study of heart disease and heart attack patients in four U.S. communities.
The study, conducted by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health faculty and colleagues at other institutions, found that smokers faced almost twice the risk of heart problems if they carried the gene GSTT1 than if they did not.
A report on the research appears in the April issue of Atherosclerosis, a scientific journal. Authors include Drs. Rongling Li, former postdoctoral fellow; Andrew F. Olshan, associate professor; James S. Pankow, assistant professor; Herman A. Tyroler, professor; Gerardo Heiss, professor; and Lloyd E. Chambless, research associate professor, all of public health at UNC-CH.
Using data collected between 1987 and 1993, scientists studied 14,239 people enrolled in the continuing Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study, a federally supported effort to improve understanding of risk factors for heart attacks and strokes. Subjects lived in Forsyth Co., N.C., the northwest suburbs of Minneapolis, Washington County, Md. and Jackson, Miss.
During the period studied, 458 people suffered heart attacks or were newly diagnosed with heart disease, Pankow said. The final sample consisted of 400 cases and 890 others who served as controls.
"Subjects already had been asked about their smoking habits and had provided a blood sample for genetic analysis, and so we looked more closely at those people who had had heart problems," he said. "We found that those who had heart attacks and heart disease were more likely to be smokers, which was nothing new because it agreed with many other studies conducted around the world.
"What was new was that individuals without the gene had about a 60 percent greater risk of heart problems if they smoked and that those with the gene had about a 180 percent greater risk," Pankow said. "Among people who don’t smoke, the gene seems to make no difference in heart disease."
Roughly four of five study subjects carried the GSTT1 gene, which is thought to be important in the body’s ability to process chemicals found in tobacco smoke, he said. The gene already has been linked to some other smoking-related illnesses such as bladder cancer.
"We’ve known for a long time that smoking is bad for the heart, but we don’t fully understand why," Pankow said. "We hope this research will provide some clues."
Others participating in the research were Drs. Eric Boerwinkle and Molly Bray of the University of Texas Health Science Center’s Human Genetics Center, and Gary S. Pittman and Douglas A. Bell of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, N.C. Other collaborating institutions were Johns Hopkins and Wake Forest universities and the universities of Minnesota and Mississippi.
The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute supported the study.
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Mar. 30, 2010 The rise of multidrug resistance in gonorrhoea-causing bacteria is threatening to make this sexually-transmitted infection extremely difficult to treat. Professor Catherine Ison, speaking at the Society for General Microbiology's spring meeting in Edinburgh, highlighted the very real possibility that strains of Neisseria gonorrhoeae resistant to all current treatment options could emerge in the near future.
Professor Ison, from the Health Protection Agency (HPA) in London, described how some strains of the gonococcal bacteria that cause the disease are now showing decreased sensitivity to the current antibiotics used to treat them -- ceftriaxone and cefixime.
Gonorrhoea is the second most common bacterial sexually-transmitted infection and if left untreated can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy and infertility in women. Current treatment consists of a single dose of antibiotic given in the clinic when prescribed, by mouth for cefixime and by injection for ceftriaxone.
"Choosing an effective antibiotic can be a challenge because the organism that causes gonorrhoea is very versatile and develops resistance to antibiotics very quickly," explained Professor Ison. "Penicillin was used for many years until it was no longer effective and a number of other agents have been used since. The current drugs of choice, ceftriaxone and cefixime, are still very effective but there are signs that resistance particularly to cefixime is emerging and soon these drugs may not be a good choice," she said.
Bacteria isolated from patients diagnosed with gonorrhoea are tested for their susceptibility to various antibiotics to monitor patterns of resistance at a local and national level. Ongoing monitoring of antimicrobial resistance is critical to ensure that first-line treatments for gonorrhoea remain effective. "There are few new drugs available and so it is probable that the current use of a single dose may soon need to be revised and treatment over several days or with more than one antibiotic will need to be considered," Professor Ison warned. "If this problem isn't addressed then there is a real possibility that gonorrhoea will become a very difficult infection to treat," she said.
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Former Secretary of Agriculture Senator Mike Johanns, R-Neb., has co-sponsored legislation that would protect animal agriculture from any greenhouse gas regulations put forth by the Environmental Protection Agency. Last Friday, EPA announced it had determined that greenhouse gases may endanger public health or welfare. The ruling faces a 60-day public comment period.
Johanns says this EPA proposal could have devastating consequences to the livestock sector. "This 'cow tax' could cost farmers and ranchers tens of thousands of dollars per farm per year," he said.
The proposed legislation would amend the Clean Air Act to preclude regulation of naturally occurring livestock emissions, including methane and carbon dioxide. If the EPA definition of air pollutants includes methane, USDA estimated that any agricultural operation of more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle, 200 hogs or 500 acres of corn would be subject to emission fees.
Ranking Member of the House Agriculture Committee Frank Lucas, R-Okla., says this EPA decision is just another example of how much this administration is out of touch with the realities of the current fragile U.S. economy.
"I fear this sets up the opportunity for a push to do sweeping cap and trade legislation as an alternative to the EPA regulatory action," Lucas said. "Cap and trade is not a viable alternative and will only be destructive for American farmers and the general economy. We must seek a workable solution to this problem; solutions that will not put greater burdens on our farmers and ranchers."
Also joining the growing list of critics of the EPA decision is the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. They have voiced their opposition of using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases.
"While the Clean Air Act has done a good job of cleaning up pollutants, it is not adequately equipped to address global climate change," explains NCBA Chief Environmental Counsel Tamara Thies. "Congress never intended to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, and any attempts to use it for this purpose would be devastating for the U.S. economy."
Thies says if the EPA moves forward with this finding, the agency would have unprecedented control over every sector of the U.S. economy.
"Regulation of greenhouse gases should be thoughtfully considered and voted on by Congress," Thies said. "Allowing the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act would impose untenable burdens, expenses and restrictions on industry, families, and our Nation as a whole."
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Solar Breakthrough: Better Crystals, "Oven-Baked" and Painted On
Barring huge subsidies, bringing solar energy to the masses -- from your home to your cell phone -- requires a major drop in the cost of the technology. Treehugger has reported on many advances. Last week, a group of researchers in Australia and China announced they had moved one step closer to the "holy grail of cost-effective solar energy."
According to Professor Max Lu of the University of Queensland, Australia, the team has grown "the world's first titanium oxide single crystals with large amounts of reactive surfaces, something that was predicted as almost impossible." Here's the deal: titanium oxide -- a plentiful, renewable and non-toxic mineral often found in white paint -- is known for its ability to absorb UV light and produce electrons that can break down compounds on its surface. That makes it useful in self-cleaning windows and "pollution-eating" concrete. It can also be used in low-cost and low-efficiency solar cells, also known as Gratzel cells. Up until now, the challenge, tackled by coating titanium oxide in dyeshas been to make the stuff efficient over a large surface area, so the material can both absorb ample light and conduct electricity well. But growing more reactive titanium oxide cells could indeed be a breakthrough. Says Lu:
The researchers also say the technology could be used to split hydrogen from water to create energy and to decontaminate water. While it may be a decade before the technology can be used in solar cells, says Lu, the decontaminating applications may be five years away.
"The beauty of our technique is that it is very simple and cheap to make such materials at mild conditions. Now that the research has elucidated the conditions required, the method is like cooking in an oven and the crystals can be applied like paints."
Similar research into low-cost disruptive solar technologies last year -- at the NJ Institute of Technology, at Massey University, and especially at the University of Notre Dame -- also relies on nanostructures to create high efficiency solar cells. Using a readily available compound like titanium oxide instead of silicon in solar cells may not only prove cheaper and more efficient, but, potentially much more sustainable too.
What is also worth noting is the origin of some of this research: China. Cheap solar wouldn't just help bring down pollution over some of the world's most polluted cities, but would help bolster China's determination to leapfrog the US and Europe in sustainable technologies, in a kind of green tech war that can only help everyone.
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“Scary, yet peaceful,” says Yiwei Wang, a graduate student in environmental studies at University of California, Santa Cruz.
She is part of the Santa Cruz Puma Project, a group that finds and collars mountain lions at Loch Lomond Reservoir in the Lompico area. The big cat Wang talks about had been sedated and collared and had awakened but was napping when her project leaders left her alone with it for a while.
Even though she is young, Wang, a native of Santa Clara, is a veteran field researcher. She even studied in Australia, where a bird stole her wedding ring. (She remains ringless.)
Veronica Yovovich, from Chicago, is also a team member and grad student, but her route was more circuitous than Wang’s, taking her to a dinosaur lab and a job in biotech before she realized she wanted to be out in the field helping animals.
They have both spent time setting up cameras, using antennas to get coordinates from the GPS collars, putting roadkill bait in cages and sleeping on the ground. Field studies are marked by long periods of waiting and researching, with sudden spirals of heart-pounding excitement.
The GPS collars signal every six hours, alerting researchers to the pumas’ locations. Chris Wilmers, assistant professor of environmental studies at UCSC and leader of the Puma Project, receives those signals as text messages. While teaching, he will sometimes stop the class, saying, “I’m getting a text from 14F.” Then he will tell his students what the animal’s coordinates are. It’s like the mountain lion is tweeting him, “Want to join me for a latte?”
The field work in Santa Cruz is the first phase of a 10-year research and conservation effort to study and protect the Bay Area puma population, in partnership with the Felidae Conservation Fund and the California Department of Fish and Game.
You can join Yovovich, Wang and me for a nature walk at Loch Lomond on July 17. They will take their equipment, and we might pick up some mountain lion signals.
We will meet up with Chris Berry, water resources manager for the city of Santa Cruz, and chief ranger Scot Lang, too.
Would you like to join Berry for the Father Secchi Dip-In?
No, you do not have to take your swim suit. In 1865, Father Pietro Secchi, scientific adviser to the pope, was the first to use discs to measure the clarity of the water in the Mediterranean. With a few minor changes, scientists are still using the instrument today. We will lower one into Loch Lomond to check the transparency of the water.
Berry and Lang will also show us how to check for turbidity and what that means for the health of the lake. Plus, we will learn about native red-legged frogs and western pond turtle projects and about the effects of non-native species, such as “killer bass” and bullfrogs.
The city of Santa Cruz named the reservoir Loch Lomond after the largest lake (loch) in Scotland, and the recreational areas after the clans that lived there, as an homage to the Scottish settlers of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Officials even flew to Scotland to carry back a cup of water from that lake to christen our Loch Lomond.
Thanks to the good folks at the city of Santa Cruz, you will be able to take your well-behaved, leashed dog with you on our walk. Also, a big thanks goes out to the San Lorenzo Valley Water District for its environmental education grant that makes these free nature walks possible.
Carol Carson is an environmental activist who writes a regular nature column for the Press-Banner. She has been a docent at Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park and taught courses on Big Basin State Park for UCSC Extension. She can be reached at [email protected].
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Learn about the silent epidemic affecting girls who play sports, from Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sports, by Michael Sokolove.
The human knee is a wondrous thing, at once the most athletic part of the musculoskeletal system — without its bend the muscles could not thrust for running and jumping — and often the most fragile. It is a jointed column, formed by the intersection of four bones. The femur, the large bone in the thigh, connects by ligaments to the tibia, the main bone in the lower leg.
Next to the tibia and running parallel to it is a smaller bone, the fibula. Between the femur and the tibia are the menisci and the articular cartilage. The menisci act as a natural shock absorption system, and the articular cartilage, which lines the end of the bones, is similar to a layer of ice providing a near frictionless surface during motion. The patella, what we commonly call the kneecap, rides on the joint as the knee bends. Running through, over, and around this mechanism is a network of muscles, ligaments and tendons.
The anterior cruciate ligament is one of two ligaments that form a cross (hence cruciate) in the joint, under the kneecap. The posterior cruciate ligament, or PCL, which tears very rarely, is in the back and the ACL is in the front of the knee.
Considering the size of the job it performs, which is to stabilize this large, important joint, and all the mischief its failure can cause, the ACL is tiny, about thirty millimeters long, smaller than a little finger and less than ten grams in weight. Its shape is rectangular, as if you took a section of a rubber band and stretched it against a flat surface. The ACL’s main job, says William Garrett, is to “restrain abnormal motion. It keeps the lower leg, the tibia, from sliding forward, and to a lesser degree, prevents the tibia from rotating internally.”
An ACL tear happens on the field of play in one of two ways: contact, which is the most frequent cause in football (a shoulder pad or a helmet crashes into the knee, buckling it), and noncontact, which is the predominant cause in other sports. In a noncontact injury, an athlete lands from a jump — a rebound, a headed ball — and then crumples to the ground. Or she is sprinting and suddenly folds to the ground just as she decelerates to turn.
The mythology is that athletes blow out their ACLs while cutting, but the injury usually occurs just before that, in the slowing-down phase. The leg in the direction of the turn, or the plant leg — the left leg when cutting to the left, the right when going right — is always the one that suffers the injury. It is usually painful, especially if there is other, collateral knee damage. But what an athlete is often most immediately cognizant of is a sudden sense of instability, a feeling that something — it’s not clear what — has collapsed under her.
An ACL does not tear so much as it utterly disintegrates. It pulls away from the femur and turns into a viscous liquid. Researchers know the force required for this to occur: 2,000 newtons, a newton being a unit of measurement. They could not learn this, of course, from volunteer medical subjects — you can’t ask someone to tear an ACL to further medical knowledge — so they used cadaver knees. They increased the force on these cadaver tibias to determine the level that causes ACLs to rupture.
But what actually causes that force of 2,000 newtons to settle in the ACL, rather than being more evenly absorbed in the lower leg and up the trunk — and why it happens sometimes but not most of the time — is a source of ongoing research and debate. Since its cause is not clear, an ACL tear is a perplexing injury, not easy to prevent. “I’m an injury epidemiologist, and I’ve been doing this for a while now,” Steve Marshall, the lead researcher on a vast ACL research project funded by the National Institutes of Health, told me. “This is the first time I’ve studied something where I can’t show you what did the damage. If we were reconstructing an incident where a child fell down a staircase, I could say, OK, he got a laceration here because that’s where he hit the handrail. Or he rolled his ankle, or whatever. If it’s a car crash, you say, OK, the road was slick, a crash occurred, and a loose object in the car came up and hit someone on the head. But here, you can look at a video of an injury all day long, and what you see is people in the air. People landing. People cutting. What we can’t actually see is what tears the thing apart. No other acute injury is analogous, where you cannot clearly see the cause and effect.”
Why are female athletes so much more likely to suffer the injury? There are suspicions, all of them under study: Women have wider Q angles, the measurement taken of the line between the middle of the kneecap and the center of the hip. It is more common for them to have knee valgus (knock-knees), meaning their knees collapse inward when they run. They are more upright when they run and cut. Some women have quadriceps muscles that are out of balance with their hamstrings: the quads are stronger and may “overfire” and rip the ACLs. There could be hormonal reasons or even causes related to shoe design. (Most women’s athletic shoes are simply smaller versions of men’s shoes, despite what is known about differences in anatomy, gait, and even the shape of the foot — and despite the intense efforts of Nike and other sporting goods companies to both celebrate the female athlete and capture her share of the market.) There could, as well, be a neurological component, a garbled message — an error in the motor program — that gets passed from the brain to the knee.
When the injury does occur, however, it is one of the easiest orthopedic events to diagnose. An MRI examination is generally just a formality. For starters, the injured athlete often hears a loud pop as the ACL blows, and if she doesn’t hear it, others on the field often do, even amid the hurly-burly of an ongoing game. And almost any experienced athletic trainer can make the diagnosis as soon as he puts his hands on the injured joint. It feels mushy to the touch. When the athlete stands, the knee feels unstable under her, as if the injured leg were planted in a bowl of jelly.
An ACL cannot be stitched back together or otherwise repaired. Surgeons must graft a new ACL in its place, usually from the patient’s own tissue, by taking a snippet of the patellar tendon or part of the hamstring tendon. Occasionally an ACL from a cadaver is used, especially if the patent has had multiple ACL tears and no more of her own tissue is available to harvest.
A knee, obviously, has no intelligence of its own. It cannot know what team it is playing for, or what coach. But it is sensitive to speed of play, intensity of play, and frequency of play. One of the cruelest things about the ACL injury is that it devastates the ranks of the best female athletes, those who compete with the most skill and passion.
Just kicking the ball around in a rec league with some semiskilled, semifit players? An ACL tear is probably not an issue. You are probably moving too slowly and taking too much care to stay out of one another’s way to be at a high risk. But playing on a go-go club team and seeing some kind of future for yourself in your sport — a spot on the high school varsity or maybe even a chance to play in college? Your odds are far worse.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Sokolove, author of Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sports (Copyright © 2008 by Michael Y. Sokolove), is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the author of and Hustle: The Myth, Life, and Lies of Pete Rose and The Ticket Out: Darryl Strawberry and the Boys of Crenshaw. He and his family live in Bethesda, Maryland.
- Read Chapter 1 of Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sports
- See the book’s Table of Contents
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Nazis in Norway and Beyond
This is addressed mainly to the approximately 800 relatives of the murdered and injured people in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik, in July of 2011
- The Roots
Distomo is a Greek village in central Greece that one meets on his way to Delphi, the famous place of antiquity that a great part of the population of Earth have visited, as it is fashionable to do so, without anyone ever telling them that it was a place of corrupt and murderous priests. In 1944 the Nazi occupiers of Greece burned the village of Distomo to the ground and executed 228 villagers. The "reason" that the Nazis did this was that Greek Resistance fighters had killed Nazi soldiers. This is the famous "Distomo" that Angela Merkel is struggling tooth and nail to ignore.
The following paragraphs were excerpted from the ZNet Commentary "Terrorists Against Occupiers" of August 10, 2004:
"The place was a house in T. The time was AD.... The terrorists were A.V. and E.H. The occupiers were informed about the hiding place of the terrorists by a collaborator. The occupiers attacked the terrorists in the house. The terrorists fought back. Two of the attacking occupiers were killed by the terrorists. The occupiers killed A.V., but E.H. survived seriously wounded. Then the occupiers left T. The inhabitants of T. made 'a fatal misjudgment', they thought that the occupiers got 'those they wanted' and left. However, four days later the occupiers came back.
They arrested 66 men of T. and shoved them in a shed where they were subjected to the 'psychological torture' of imminent execution. A few hours later they were driven to the top of a mound so that they could witness the blowing up of their houses, one after the other, according to the decision of the occupiers. Then they drove the women, the children, and the old people in a concentration camp taking care as 'punishment' to separate the children from their mothers. Of the 66 men, 31 never saw their home place again. Most of them died in concentration camps. Some were executed. The women, the children, and the old people returned to their destroyed homes three years later.
- The place was the fishing village of Telavag, in Norway. (Now, it is Falluja, in Iraq.)
- The year was AD 1942. (Now, it is AD 2004)
- The terrorists were the Resistance fighters Arne Vaerum and Emil Hvaal. (Now, it is any Iraqi Resistance fighter.)
- The occupiers were the Nazis (Now, they are the American soldiers.)
- The explosives used by the Nazis were dynamite (Now, the US military use helicopter ordnance.)
- The concentration camps were: Grini, Sachsenhausen, etc. (Now, they are: Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, etc.)
Telavag was the Norwegian Distomo.
Further down that Commentary we read:
"The collaborator through history has been one of the most loathsome of humans. The spectrum of collaborators is quite wide extending from the "elite" Quisling down to the lowly policeman. The value of the collaborators to the occupier is inestimable. It is not an exaggeration to say that an occupation cannot exist without the help of the collaborators. This explains why the Iraqis gradually shifted their attacks mostly against the Iraqi collaborators instead of mostly against the American occupiers...
... The Nazi collaborators of Telavag in Norway have the blood of 31 of their fellow countrymen on their hands. I do not know if they paid for this blood." [End of the excerpt]
However, I know what happened to the collaborators in Greece, after the 1941-1944 Nazi occupation: Since 1945 the British and, especially, since 1947 the Americans, "transformed" them into part of the Greek economic and governing elite!
The world knows quite well, but hides the fact, that the US has protected the remnants of the Nazis all over the world after the Second World War and has "used" them as a political instrument since 1945. Although, this is documented with thousands of pages, it sounds like an exaggeration. Let us try to examine this:
"The Nazi defendants at Nuremberg were 22. Of these defendants...about one third were related by blood, marriage, or otherwise to Americans (or other Anglos). Was this a diabolical statistical anomaly? Does this have any significance that deserves some kind of scrutiny? A general comment could be that at this level of the Nazi or American elites nationality is of no great importance. The members of this elite grow up and live in a separate and rather homogeneous universe. However, that this "Americanism" (acquired through blood, etc) did not prevent the evolvement of these individuals to Nazis and finally to the fate at Nuremberg should not be overlooked.
This Nuremberg "surprise" prompts us to reverse the question: what was the influence of "Germanism" on "Americanism"? There are two principal sources of influence of the Germanic peoples on the population of America. The German immigrants in America and the inundation ofAmerica with Nazis, starting a few days after the death of Hitler...
... Let us start with the immigrants. The year of 1848 was a year of social revolution all over Europe. There were revolts in France, Italy, Austria,Hungary, England, Ireland, Switzerland, and Germany. The revolts were crushed by the various kings, Emperors, etc. In Germany after the revolt failed tens of thousands of the revolted Germans fled to America. These immigrants are known as the 'Forty-eighters'...These German freethinkers were a kind of "protosocialists" who had a dream to "enlist the United States as an agent of world revolution or as the center of a world republic" and they considered the American Revolution as "the best remaining hope for a redemption of mankind"... The contribution of the German-American immigrants to the advance of humanitarian radicalism not only in the US but all over the world should be honored (and should be researched diligently by historians). The German Haymarket martyrs, the radical Germans of Missouri, of Pennsylvania, of Wisconsin, of Texas, etc as protosocialists were a breed worthy of great respect... " [Excerpts from the ZNet Commentary, "The US and the Nazis" of February 11, 2006]
What about the other "source of Germanic influence" in the US; the Nazis?
"Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945. The surrender of the Nazis was signed on May 8, 1945. Eleven days later, on May 19, 'a military transport plane with windows blackened to hide its notorious cargo...' brought in Washington, D.C. the first Nazis, Herbert Wagner and his two assistants 'and then kept [them] hidden from immigration authorities' ". ("Secret Agenda", Linda Hunt, St. Martin's Press, 1991, p. 6, 7).
The true number of Nazis planted in the US is impossible to know until the CIA opens its files. There were various programs with assorted code-names ("Overcast", "Paperclip", etc) designed to smuggle Nazi scientists (by the thousands) and (inexplicably) Nazi SS regulars (by the tens of thousands). It seems that the US militaries who were recruiting the Nazis after 1945 considered the SS as something similar to the US Marines, so they did their utmost to send them to the US.
Most of the older Nazis (scientists, etc) went straight to the US centers of power. Take the case of General Walter Dornberger. He was one of those responsible for the death of "At least 20,000 prisoners -many of them talented engineers who had been singled out for missile production...- [and who] were killed through starvation, disease, or execution..." Dornberger, after working for the US Air Force, went into the private industry and "eventually rose to be a vice-president in the Bell Aerosystems Division of the Textron Corporation... He died peacefully in June 1980." (Christopher Simpson, "Blowback", Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988, p. 27, 28).
The younger SS Nazis, who were brought to the US with their families (!), given free passage, board, emergency funds (with taxpayers money), and assisted to find jobs (at a time when American engineers were laid off), dispersed in the lower levels of the American society.
Did these Nazis, planted in the US society, influence it? The US government's "use of Nazis and collaborators in intelligence programs has left a mark on the life in the United States itself. This impact is what is known in spy jargon as "blowback," meaning unexpected and negative-effects at home that result from covert operations overseas." (Simpson, p. 5). [Excerpt again from the ZNet Commentary of February 11, 2006]
An additional, and very "interesting" aspect of Nazism in relation to the US is the following bit of information about one of the icons of America; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Holmes’ Social Darwinism inevitably drove him to, also, become a fervent “Eugenicist”. That is, he became an adherent of “Eugenics”, a racist pseudoscience that promoted the idea of wiping away all human beings deemed “unfit”, preserving only those who conformed to a “Nordic” stereotype. Which, was and is, the core of Nazism!
“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
[This was written by Holmes, in 1927, for the majority in the case of (Carrie) Buck v. Bell, upholding Virginia’s compulsory sterilization law. Carrie Buck became an unwed mother at the age of 17 after she was raped by a relative of her foster parents; therefore she was sexually promiscuous like her mother Emma Buck who was committed to a state institution.]
As a matter of fact, the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials quoted the, above mentioned, words of Holmes in their own defense!
So, Greece and Norway since 1945 have been under the "tutelage" of the US. Very simple to "prove": both are members of NATO. That is of a US "construct" that was (and is) a military instrument for US domination on the planet.
[Note: In the early 1960s I worked as a civil engineer for the Greek Air Force Public Works. By "Greek Public Works" it was meant works for the NATO airfields in Greece! The works in Greece were supervised for NATO, by a Norwegian engineering colleague named Viborg (I do not remember his first name), in addition to a Briton, a Turk, and an American.]
Of course, the US decided to dominate the planet in order to promote democracy. To do that it based its acts on the legacy of "Wild" Bill Donovan and the Dulles brothers. Who had contacts with the Nazis as early as 1943, two years before the end of the Second World War, in 1945, while ordinary Americans were dying fighting the Nazis.
Here is an example of this effort to promote democracy as described by Phil Agee in his book "Inside the Company" (the "Company" being the CIA). Agee relates how he summoned the usual team of neo-Nazi thugs in Quito, where he was part of the local CIA station, and supplied them with explosives. The thugs then blew up the main door of the Cathedral of the city. Next day, the papers angrily denounced the Maoists for carrying out that sacrilegious act. Agee and his colleagues were having a party with champagne, in the US Embassy, to celebrate their successful "operation".
This does not mean that the US conspired with Anders Behring Breivik to carry out his Christian duty. It means that the US by protecting the Nazis and the neo-Nazis and by using them as instruments of policy has created a breed of monsters that are spread all over the planet. Breivik is one of them.
Even worse than that, the neo-Nazis have entered in the Parliaments of the world. In Greece, dressed up with the mantel of "populism", they attempt to present themselves as regular human beings. They even "fight" for the rights of the "proletariat" more fervently than the... communists! By the way, the term "Nazi" is colloquial for the German word "Nationalsozialist", that is they are not only nationalists (i.e. "patriots")
but also "socialists"!
[Very Important Note: According to Samuel Johnson (), that great British intellectual: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel!" How apt in the Breivik case!]
First, let us examine the term "monster". Is Breivik a monster? Was Hitler a monster?
Let us then, do the following mental exercise: Suppose that today we meet Breivik in the street and suppose that we angrily call him a "monster". Probably he will smile with an arrogant smile of self-satisfaction on his face. Now, suppose that, instead, in a calm and earnest way, we call him an "asshole". Probably he will be so angry that he would try to attack us, if he could.
The (Merriam) dictionary gives the following definition for "monster": "wicked, or cruel person". A rather weak characterization for Breivik or for Hitler. There is no need to define the term "asshole". Its meaning is universally and easily understood.
That an asshole is easily attracted to Nazism or neo-Nazism, is almost an axiom.
Yet, it is instructive to compare Breivik, the individual asshole, to more 'illustrious" members of his "tribe"; George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo (of Berkeley), John Negroponte (the Greek), etc, etc. If the criterion is the number of dead and injured, then Breivik with only about 180 is small fry compared to the above "comrades" of his. W. Bush is responsible for more than one million. The Clintons (man and wife) for about 5 hundred thousand Iraqi infants. The Reagans (man and wife) for more than 2 hundred thousand in Central America. For the time being the number is not known for Obama and his wife.
As it usually happens with people like Breivik, they are classified as "psychotic loners".
No! Breivik is not a "psycho". He is, simply, an asshole. No one calls W. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al "psychos". What even their fellow-elites called them was: "crazies". So, Breivik can be characterized as a "crazie" not as a "psycho".
Whether an asshole is borne or "made" is a rather academic question. However, experience shows that the family, especially the mother, has a great influence. Can anyone ignore the fact that, Barbara, the mother of George Bush had a lot to do with who W. Bush turned out to be?
[Parenthesis: Here is a "vivid" case of the influence of parents on their children through example: About 25 years ago in the Greek town of P... I came to know two brothers, A... who was the butcher of the town and B... who was a shepherd tending sheep and goats. The shepherd supplied the butcher with meat from his herd by slaughtering the animals himself. After B..., the shepherd, married he had twin boys. Two very beautiful blond kids, which grew close to their father and the herd. When the kids were four or five, one of the sheep dogs gave birth to some puppies. The twins, imitating their father, slaughtered all the puppies. End of the Parenthesis.]
Whether it was Breivik's mother who turned him into an asshole who found "comfort" in neo-Nazism, again, it is rather irrelevant for the 800 relatives who lost their sons, daughters,
brothers, etc. on the island of Utoya and in the buildings in Oslo. What is relevant is how these relatives should pay tribute to the victims of Breivik.
Flowers and praying in churches maybe a way to survive the first unbearable hours. That period is gone.
There is only one way to pay respect and tribute to the young people who lost their precious chance to experience the joy and the sadness of their life. That way is: to act.
The first act should be, for the 800 relatives, to come together and start talking to one another. Then, collectively, decide what their future acts should be.
Here is a proposal for a possible series of actions:
- Appeal to the rest of the world to participate in your actions. Of the six billion humans on our planet, if one subtracts the younger than 18, the older than 70, the people that are so destitute that they struggle to stay alive each day, the 1/3 of any given population that consider themselves as "conservative" (Republicans, Christian Democrats, etc), and the elite of any society, one is left with about 1.3 billion of ordinary people that will be willing and able to participate in the taking of decisions and subsequently in the actions of the Utoya relatives.
- Examine and discuss, what seems to be a truism: that the "official" state and the "official" justice should have nothing to do with the punishment of Breivik.
Could this be a "truism"?
Let us start at the "de facto" top of the world the US and the US Supreme Court. There are nine persons in the US Supreme Court who decide what is just and how the peoples of the world (not only the Americans) should live. Two of these nine persons are Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. [No need to elaborate about them!]
Then, there are the numerous "representatives" of the population (plus their friendly "lobbyists") in the Congresses and the Parliaments of the world, who "manufacture" the laws. An unbelievable charade!
This, in its basics, is the justice system of the world in the 21st century.
[Note: I was present in the courtroom when, at 1:30 pm, the presiding judge announced that the three military leaders of the 1967 dictatorship in Greece were condemned to death. At 1:45 pm Karamanlis (uncle), the then Prime Minister, commuted the sentence to "life in prison", as directed by the US embassy. This kind of justice is not simply a charade it is immoral. End of Note.]
Breivik, should not be left to be part of this charade.
To us "outsiders" Norway seems to be an economic and social "paradise". Nevertheless, justice by a handful of persons is unacceptable. Also, we should not ignore the fact that the "officials" of almost all countries of the world have an agenda to please the Lord, i.e. the US elites, as mentioned above about NATO etc. These elites do not wish to lose their assets (following the CIA jargon), that is their neo-Nazi thugs.
So, what is to be done is that the Utoya relatives and their millions of possible world
supporters should decide and demand that Breivik be punished collectively by them not "officially".
- Decide, collectively, what the punishment for Breivik should be.
Does the Christian suggestion of "eye for an eye" hold for Breivik? The authors of this advice had a moral reason to suggest that the punishment should be equal to the crime, because the society it addressed then had the propensity to go for "two eyes, plus two ears, plus... for an eye". The benign justice of the civilized West considers "eye for an eye" as too un-Christian. So Breivik will get 21 years, according to the "official" justice system.
So, suppose that one condemns Breivik to die 70 times, or 80 times; equal to the number he murdered. [The present official system of justice considers this sentence as rational, symbolic or what?] In essence one is doing Breivik a favor. He will not have the trouble to commit suicide in his cell sometime in the future. Ilse Koch, the "bitch" of Buchenwald committed suicide while in prison, although one cannot say who is "tougher" Koch the "bitch" or Breivik the "asshole".
Also, the notion of avoiding "cruel and unusual punishment" has been an unbelievable exercise in hypocrisy. The very same people that support this notion do not give a shit about "unusual cruelty" when they use Napalm, Agent Orange, or drones to burn, poison, or dismember infants, children, and women. Crimes carried out this very minute by the US, in its NATO metamorphosis.
Breivik's expressed wish was to have an international forum through which to expand his Christian, "nationalistisch", and racist wisdom to the "washed" and blond masses.
Let him have this forum!
Let Nuremberg be the first of a long [very long] series of forums for Breivik's expressed wish. The team of the Utoya relatives and their world supporters after demanding to have Breivik in their custody they will hand him to the local "chapter" of their team in Nuremberg who will organize a forum for Breivik in the bigger local stadium, with tens of thousands of ordinary people attending. Then, with Breivik standing alone in the middle of the stadium, these ordinary people will ask him to answer their questions. This should last as long as the people deem it is necessary (an adjective used by Breivik himself).
Then, the series of forums could continue with stadiums filled by ordinary people, in Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Athens, Ankara, Gaza, Cairo, Tunis, New York, San Francisco, and on, and on. As long as it is deemed to be necessary.
It is not unreasonable to expect that at some point Breivik will realize that he is a mere asshole. That could be his punishment. No one will physically touch him or be violent against him. This is unusual punishment, but not cruel. It is moral punishment.
Let these stadiums be a boomerang to the world of neo-Nazism that breeds individuals like Breivik in Athens, in Rome, in Dresden, in Texas, and so on.
After that the "official" justice can have Breivik and do with him whatever they think is proper; execute him, incarcerate him, send him to Obama, etc.
However, the Utoya team, which by now after the stadiums could have evolved to a "World Utoya Movement" would be in a position not only to find and deal with the world Breivik neo-Nazis, but reach for something greater and nobler.
They will be in a position to face and defeat the David [Rockefeller]-Murdoch juggernaut of immorality, cruelty, and violence. To stop Iraqi-Afghanistan-type of aggression. To help the young people of Tahrir Square and beyond retain the dignity they earned with their blood, or to help the young people who are dying to gain that dignity with their blood in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Palestine, etc. Even help the ordinary Americans disentangle themselves from the embrace of that juggernaut and join the rest of the honest world.
This could be a deeply felt paying of respect to the young people of Utoya and Oslo.
Of course, there are two problems that could arise with the above proposals:
First: The above proposals will be characterized by people as utopian, and will be described with words as chaos, anarchy, etc. It rests with you, the relatives of Utoya and Oslo, a significant force of 800 pained people, and with your world supporters of millions, to honestly judge the validity and the feasibility of these proposals. History is replete with utopian struggles that have advanced the human race.
Second: The Obamas and their European underlings, the "creators" of Breiviks, and the Murdochs of the world will try to stop you. They will not be able to do that if 1.3 billion of humans are to support you.
A final remark: Why is so much blood spilled by religion; Christians, Muslims, Zeus, Mars, etc?
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While it has long been considered that there are only three types of boundary that enclosethe earths tectonic plates, a new class of plate boundary, amagmatic accretionaryridge segments, has recently been recognized as well as a new class of ocean ridge:ultra-slow spreading. This is the direct consequence of the successful investigationsof the very-slow spreading Southwest Indian and Arctic Ridge systems promoted byInterRidge. Amagmatic accretionary ridge segments are a new class of accretionaryplate boundary distinct from magmatic accretionary ridge segments. Amagmatic accretionarysegments are marked by deep troughs often floored by mantle peridotite,with only thin or scattered basalt flows. They represent plate failure originating nearthe base of the plate following the zone of lithospheric necking unlike magmatic accretionarysegments, where the plate fails from the top. Unlike stable transforms andmagmatic accretionary segments, amagmatic accretionary segments may assume anyangle to the spreading direction and replace both orthogonal segments and transformfaults over large sections of ocean ridge. Magmatic and amagmatic accretionary segmentscan stably coexist, one connected to the other for many millions of years, ormay displace one another as mantle thermal structure, composition, ridge geometryor spreading rate change. Ultra-slow spreading ridges are a new class of ridge thatform where the effective spreading rate for mantle upwelling falls below12 mm/yr.The ESR is the orthogonal component of the spreading rate measured perpendicularto the ridge trend. Magmas erupted along ultra-slow spreading ridges may be alkalineand/or isotopically and incompatible trace element enriched compared to typicalMORB. Ultra-slow spreading ridges consist of linked magmatic and amagmatic accretionarysegments and are as mechanically, morphologically and petrologically distinctfrom slow-spreading ridges, as slow-spreading ridges are from fast. The SouthwestIndian Ridge, and the Arctic Ridge system from Iceland to 3E on the Gakkel aretransitional ridges between slow and ultra-slow, with long sections alternating betweenslow and ultra-slow behavior. This is similar to the situation for intermediate spreadingridges, which have long sections that alternate between fast and slow behavior. Apparently,then, there are two classes of intermediate spreading ridges: intermediate-fastand intermediate-slow, representing the transitions from fast to slow and from slow toultraslow spreading.
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- Informal Style
- Levels of Usage
- Lionel Trilling on Mark Twain's Colloquial Prose Style
- "On Familiar Style" by William Hazlitt
- Word Lengthening
Etymology:From the Latin, "conversation"
Examples and Observations:
- "Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech.”
(Thornton Wilder, interview in Writers at Work: First Series, ed. by Malcolm Cowley, 1958)
- "I find a conversational tone in writing--as in telephoning--carries further than shouting."
(James Gibbons Huneker, letter to Emma Eames, 1913)
- Mark Twain's Colloquial Style
"Out of his knowledge of the actual speech of America Mark Twain forged a classic prose. . . . [Twain] is the master of the style that escapes the fixity of the printed page, that sounds in our ears with the immediacy of the heard voice, the very voice of unpretentious truth."
(Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination, 1950)
"We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed--only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all--that night, nor the next, nor the next."
(Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884)
- George Orwell's Colloquial Style
"There is not much to do with [George] Orwell's novels except read them. Nor is there much to be said about his style. It was colloquial in diction and sinewy in construction; it aimed at clarity and unobtrusiveness and achieved both."
(Richard H. Rovere, Introduction to The Orwell Reader, 1961)
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
(George Orwell, 1984, 1949)
- Joseph Epstein on the Conversational Style in Essays
"While there is no firmly set, single style for the essayist, styles varying with each particular essayist, the best general description of essayistic style was written in 1827 by William Hazlitt in his essay 'Familiar Style.' 'To write a genuine familiar or truly English style,' Hazlitt wrote, 'is to write as any one would speak in common conversation who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.' The style of the essayist is that of an extremely intelligent, highly commonsensical person talking, without stammer and with impressive coherence, to himself or herself and to anyone else who cares to eavesdrop. This self-reflexivity, this notion of talking to oneself, has always seemed to me to mark the essay off from the lecture. The lecturer is always teaching; so, too, frequently is the critic. If the essayist does so, it is usually only indirectly."
(Joseph Epstein, Introduction. The Best American Essays 1993. Ticknor & Fields, 1993)
- The Downside of Breeziness
"Breeziness has become for many the literary mode of first resort, a ready-to-wear means to seeming fresh and authentic. The style is catchy, and catching, like any other fashion. Writers should be cautious with this or any other stylized jauntiness--especially young writers, to whom the tone tends to come easily. The colloquial writer seeks intimacy, but the discerning reader, resisting that friendly hand on the shoulder, that winning grin, is apt to back away."
(Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd, Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction. Random House, 2013)
- Colloquial Like
"Here’s my latest reminder on the use and misuse of 'like.'
"Using 'like' as a conjunction, to introduce a full clause, is common in casual conversation. But this colloquial construction grates on the ear of many sophisticated readers, and we should generally avoid it.
"And yet . . . it’s never hard to find new examples:
At 92, Mr. Harman looks and sounds like he is 72, and he is determined to keep it that way.Such an easy fix here, and shorter, too: 'At 92, Mr. Harman looks and sounds 72.'"
(Philip B. Corbett, "The Trouble With ‘Like.’" The New York Times, Aug. 31, 2010)
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With record warmth visiting the D.C. area this week, now is a good time to revisit the ongoing imbalance we’ve seen between very warm and very cold temperatures.
That imbalance is massive, and it’s growing.
Three years ago, I wrote that the number of daily record highs was outnumbering record lows by a 7 to 1 ratio since the year 2000. Even after the harsh “polar vortex” winters of 2014 and 2015, this pattern hasn’t significantly changed.
Records for daily high temperatures are now outpacing record lows by an 8 to 1 ratio since the year 2000, and more than 16 to 1 since the year 2010. These ratios are far higher than any decade before the 21st century — including the warm 1930s.
Statistically speaking, we would expect a comparable number of warm and cold temperature records over time. Instead, rising temperatures caused by greenhouse gas emissions and urbanization are greatly tipping the scales toward record warmth — a pattern we’ve seen not just locally, but nationally as well.
Since 2010, Reagan National Airport — D.C.’s official weather station — has logged 115 records for either warmest daily (afternoon) high or (overnight) low temperature. That’s 16.4 times the number of daily cold records (defined as either the coldest maximum or minimum temperature).
If we consider only the record high maximum and record low minimum temperatures, the ratio more than doubles (35 to 1), as shown in the chart below. Notably, in February 2015, D.C. finally set a daily record low temperature for the first time this decade. Apart from this, most of D.C.’s daily cold records from the early 20th century remain intact.
Source: Justin Grieser, The Washington Post
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Writing A Top-Quality Critical Response Essay: Techniques To Use
Do you need to write a critical response essay? If so, you will surely want it to be as top-quality as possible. Here are some great techniques to help you on your way:
What is it?
A critical response essay, as you may expect, is an essay where you are giving a critical response to a piece of writing –this could be another essay or a work of literature, for example. Whatever the subject of the critical response may be, its purpose is to summarize the source’s main idea and to respond to it critically.
Know your subject.
In order for you to accomplish the task of giving your own thoughts on the topic at hand, you must first make sure that you have an excellent grasp of the topic. You also need to make your critical response essay engaging, analytic and well-informed.
So before you even begin writing, make sure that you know what you’re writing about! Make plenty of notes and jot down ideas. Also read other critical responses to the work at hand. You should be able to find these at your campus or public libraries, as well as on the web. It’s important that you express your own point of view with this type of essay, but it needs to be an informed point of view, so make sure you know how it compares to critiques written by others.
Make a plan.
Once you have performed your research, it’s time to make a rough plan for your essay. Make a list of the key points you want to include. Work out which things you want to place together. Then you can come up with titles for rough chapters and decide on how many you’ll need.
A critical response essay begins with the introduction. Here you should introduce the source material you are writing a response on, and outline the specific topics of interest that you are exploring in your essay. Also mention what conclusions you may reach.
The main body.
After the introduction comes the body text. Here you will divide your critical response into relevant chapters, where you will explore the ideas and responses you put forward in depth.
Lastly comes the conclusion. You should briefly restate what your aims and objectives for the essay were, how you have explored these and summarize your conclusions, before ending on a main conclusive point.
If you need more help in formulating your critical response essay, this site should be of invaluable assistance:
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Crude oil produced in North America’s Bakken region may be more flammable and therefore more dangerous to ship by rail than crude from other areas, a U.S. regulator said after studying the question for four months.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration announced its preliminary conclusion three days after a BNSF Railway Co. train carrying oil caught fire after a collision in Casselton, North Dakota.
The regulator “is reinforcing the requirement to properly test, characterize, classify, and where appropriate sufficiently degasify hazardous materials prior to and during transportation,” it said in a statement posted on its website today.
About three quarters of the oil produced in North Dakota is shipped by rail rather than pipeline. U.S. regulators, including the Federal Railroad Administration, began examining whether Bakken crude is more risky to move by rail following an explosion of railcars carrying North Dakota crude in Lac Megantic, Quebec.
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Public Voices, Public Selves
Self-Fashioning and Gender in the Eighteenth Century
Over the past three decades women’s history has developed from a marginal topic into an accepted, even expected, approach to the study of the past. Along the way, historians from Gerda Lerner and Joan Scott onward have grappled with how exactly to write history that includes women. Some historians have focused on what Lerner calls "compensatory history," exploring the actions and experiences of exceptional, notable women. Others have focused on "contribution history," history that looks at the ways in which women contributed to the historical narrative we already know. Both approaches have been criticized, the first for focusing on women who were, by definition, not representative of some hypothetical “average” woman’s experiences, and the second for accepting a historical narrative that portrays women’s history as separate from and marginal to real or important history. With the increasing emphasis on gender rather than women some of those issues have been resolved, notably the need to consider women in relation to, and as part of, the rest of the world, rather than isolated from it. On the other hand, gender studies have tended to increase the focus on the relative power relations between men and women while consistently assuming gender as a distinguishable and relevant category (see, as examples, Fletcher and Wiesner).
Many writers have explored the fluidity of identity and self during the eighteenth century, and there is a consensus (among scholars such as Shoemaker, Stone, Todd, and Wahrman) that gendered identities in particular went through serious changes during the period. There has been heated discussion about what those changes were, what they meant, and even when exactly they occurred. Did the industrial revolution and the growth of the public sphere mean that women were locked into docile and demure domesticity, were the changes mostly rhetorical and women’s lives go on much as before, did a group of women actually engineer a position of domestic moral superiority to create a platform for public debate? Were changed gender roles a result, at least in England, of anxiety created after the former colonies in America declared independence and thereby questioned the very core of national identity (Vickery, Bannet, Gallagher, Wahrman)?
Even those writers who argue in favor of women being actively involved in the formation of gender roles and identity seem to assume that for women as a group, being women was the defining element of their identities. As Nina Baym put it, “all current [feminist] theory requires sexual difference as its ground.” She was writing over twenty years ago, but on this particular issue little seems to have changed. For research purposes, women in history have been defined by their gender as categorically as any legal disposal of them as femes covert ever managed.
Assuming gender to be the defining element of women’s identity is a useful way to learn something about what women as a group experienced and how women as a group were experienced–clearly all women shared certain experiences, expectations and legal restrictions. However, understanding the implications of the structural position of “woman” does not necessarily tell us anything about how individual women negotiated their environment. Neither does it help us understand how particular women could defy society’s expectations, much less how segments of society could accept and even embrace public acts of disobedience against prescribed behavior.
Beyond understanding how notions of gender shifted over time, and beyond exploring how women (and men) adapted the way they framed their actions to fit those shifts, it is relevant to ask what role gender played in the construction and presentation of self. I want to explore whether gender really was a primary category of identity on which everything else was dependent, or whether, as I suspect, it was a negotiable category, sometimes important and sometimes subordinate to other priorities.
In the first part of my dissertation I will set out the public expectations for women in general in eighteenth-century England and what current research says about women’s actual behavior (e.g., Backscheider, Jones, Turner), to highlight the tension between the prescribed ideal (the structural expectations) and the actual practices of women in the public sphere.
To explore how individual women negotiated and presented public selves and dealt with their gender, I will then look at the writings of a group of women (one American, the others English) who, in different ways, flouted gendered expectations to claim a voice in the public sphere. In order of birth date they are Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Elizabeth Montagu, Catharine Macaulay, and Mercy Otis Warren. I will do a close reading of their texts ranging from private and public correspondence to essays, pamphlets, and published books, in order to examine the different tropes the authors made use of to create legitimate public voices and to chart how (and to what extent) they related to the issue of their gender.
After a comparison of their strategies I will examine the texts of some of the women’s contemporaries to get an idea of how their respective strategies of self-presentation were received. I will survey what strategies seem to have been accepted by the women’s readers and correspondents and what claims to legitimacy were rejected and on what grounds. I will pay particular attention to whether gender consistently appears as a primary category of evaluation or whether it was perhaps a negotiable issue, for instance more important for critics than sympathetic readers (see for instance, Burke’s references to Macaulay as a “Republican Virago”).
I will also attempt to determine to what extent the women under consideration appear to have modified their strategies depending on the reaction of their audience (making their public selves even more of a collaborative and fluid construct) and to what extent they resisted external attempts at definition.
The women whose writings and public selves I have chosen to explore were active mostly during the eighteenth century and were established as writers and speakers in the public sphere in England or the Early American Republic. I picked women whose contributions to public discourse were clearly in ostensibly male genres; women who at least in part established their public position based on nonfiction writing. I made this decision because it appears that the spectacular success of female novelists during the second half of the century made fiction a more ambiguous sphere and because women who wrote primarily on the topic of women leave open issues of audience and sphere of discourse. Women who engaged in genres of public discourse such as politics, history, moral philosophy, and theology were reaching out to a broader, mostly male, and more unambiguously public readership than women who only wrote texts for private consumption. Another criterion was the availability of both public and private writing, to provide examples both of direct appeals to their public and more private or indirect presentations of self.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) was a prolific writer of poems, of historical narratives and, especially, of letters. During her lifetime her official publication was limited, but it is clear that she intended her letters to be widely read and she was involved in several public writing endeavors (a collaboration on poetry with Alexander Pope, an article for Addison’s Spectator, etc.) She organized, and prepared for publication after her death, a collection of letters written as she accompanied her husband on his travels as the Ambassador to Turkey. She brought back from her Turkish venture the practice of smallpox vaccination that she introduced to England (decades before Edward Jenner popularized vaccination with cowpox). Her interests, as she puts it in a letter to the Abbé Conti, spanned “from religion to tulips” (Montagu, Letters 178), and she is sometimes described as an amateur anthropologist, strongly concerned with the relationship between cultural traditions and human nature.
Elizabeth Montagu (1720–1800), married to a nephew of Lady Mary, was a hostess, literary critic, and writer who helped organize and lead London’s bluestocking society. She came from money and her husband was wealthy. After his death she managed her money well enough to become one of the wealthiest women of her time. Her salon was frequented by, among others, Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, David Garrick, and Horace Walpole. She was a patron of a number of writers including Hannah More, Frances Burney, Anna Barbauld, Sarah Fielding, and Anna Williams, and herself published a piece of literary criticism entitled An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear. She was also a prolific letter writer.
Mercy Otis Warren (1728 –1814) was born and lived all her life in Massachusetts. She was a playwright, poet, and historian who was very active in the ideological debate surrounding the American declaration of independence. In addition to writing satirical plays, poems, political pamphlets, and a history of the American Revolution, she corresponded with many of the founding fathers–her private writings include letters to and from Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, and both John and Abigail Adams.
Catharine Macaulay (1731–1791) was a historian like Warren, and indeed the two were friends and correspondents. Macaulay’s History of England was immensely popular during her lifetime and seen as a radical alternative to the politically conservative history published by David Hume. Macaulay was a staunch advocate of liberal political principles; she sparred with Hume and wrote a spirited defense of the French Revolution in response to Burke’s Reflections.
I am considering the inclusion of the philosopher Catherine Trotter Cockburn (1679–1749), novelist and playwright whose A Defence of Mr. Locke’s Essay earned her the appreciation of Locke himself and the admiration of Leibnitz. In the Defence she argues that Locke’s epistemology sufficiently accounts for the origin of moral concepts and refutes charges that Locke’s theories exclude the possibility of immortality. Also under consideration is the philosopher Mary Astell (1666-1739), a high Tory Anglican and believer in the divine rights of kings whose political conservatism did not keep her from propagating some quite radical ideas about education for women in A Serious Proposal for the Ladies. Her correspondence with the Cambridge Platonist John Norris was published at his insistence as Letters Concerning the Love of God. Both Cockburn and Trotter wrote on religious topics and were politically conservative, and therefore, at least on the surface, even less likely than the previous four women to challenge societal norms by participation in public sphere.
All of the women whose writings I explore came from the gentry, although their fortunes varied. They were all better educated than most women of their time, although some had been educated by their families and others were self-taught. All of them, except Mary Astell, were married, although some wrote as wives and others only as widows. They all established an active, legitimate public voice in fields that were considered outside the scope of female activity, in subject areas that spanned from political theory and history to theology, moral philosophy, and literary analysis. My hypothesis is that the tropes they used to establish their public voices were as varied as their individual circumstances and, furthermore, that each writer used different tropes at different times and adapted her story depending on the reaction she got from her readers and correspondents.
In “The Self-Fashionings of Olympe de Gouges” Gregory Brown explores how the playwright and later abolitionist constructed and modified a public self depending on what aspect, what category of her personality seemed most useful at any given time. Thus, she would at times address the world in terms of being a writer with certain connections, at times make her plea as a vulnerable woman, and yet at other times simply describe herself in terms of an outsider. I expect to find a similar variety of strategies and constructed public selves, each molded to fit the individual needs and possibilities of each woman, some tropes heavily dependent on gender identity (either leaning on or excusing it) and other tropes marginalizing or ignoring gender completely.
In addition to illuminating how the individual women negotiated their public selves and used, ignored, or “overcame” their gender, I hope to demonstrate the need for gender studies that explore gender differences without assuming that gender was always a stable or even relevant aspect of the presentation of self. Janet Todd has shown how women writers in the early modern period hung out different “signs” representing themselves, depending on what their environment expected and demanded of them at different times. I suggest that whereas some of those signs only differed in how they reflected the gender of their writers, other signs did not rely on gender as an identifying marker at all. “Gender” remains an indispensable category for historical study, but much remains to be done in order to determine how relevant a category it was at different points in time to the lives of women in history.
Several aspects of my academic history have helped to prepare me for this project. An undergraduate degree in English Literature with a focus on the period 1550-1900 gives me a foundation in textual analysis and the literary environment I will be exploring. A masters degree in Humanities, with a focus on social and political theory and cultural anthropology, has given me a broad understanding of culture as something heterogeneous and contested and has prepared me to explore the tension between individual agency and social construction of self. Doctoral study focused on the cultural and intellectual history of early modern Europe has given me the requisite period background and exposed me to the historiographical debates in the field.To assist me in further research and preparation of this dissertation, I have asked the following faculty members to serve on my committee. Dr. Gerald Soliday, associate professor of historical studies, teaches early modern European social and cultural history, including the social history of literature. His knowledge of historical developments during the period as well as his clear understanding of both the methodological and the interpretive issues involved will be invaluable to my work. Dr. Daniel Wickberg, associate professor of historical studies, teaches American and European intellectual history. His insights into the intellectual environment of early modern England and America will be of particular help to me, especially for the colonial section of the research. Dr. Pamela Gossin, associate professor of literary and historical studies, teaches classes on early modern professional women and auto/biographical writing. Her experience in both of these fields as well as her interdisciplinary approach will be particularly useful to me as I explore the use of letters, pamphlets and treatises as auto/biographical narratives. Dr. Patricia Michaelson, associate professor in literature, teaches courses on eighteenth-century women writers in England. Her understanding of the period, in terms of literary trends and the general cultural environment, will contribute greatly to my research.
Many of the letters are published, as are their other writings. What is not published can be found in manuscripts in archives or libraries located in New York, Boston, and London.
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On this day in 1962, the Vatican and Russian Orthodox Church signed the Metz Accord, in Metz, France. This secret agreement allowed for the Russian Church to send observers to the Second Vatican Council in exchange for the Catholic Church not condemning the Soviet Union’s atheistic communism.
Since eliminating religion was part of its ideology, the Soviets spent decades executing and torturing clergy, sending churchgoers to labor camps and closing churches. To make matters worse, the policy was not consistent. For example, Premier Joseph Stalin began promoting the Russian Orthodox Church in 1945 to boost Soviet morale following World War II, but then Nikita Khrushchev reversed it by beginning his own campaign against the church in 1959.
When the Second Vatican Council announced that it would meet, it was apparent that a condemnation of communism would be damning to Soviet “diplomacy” and its efforts to expand the ideology into other countries. So the Cardinal of the Curia, Eugène Tisserant, who represented Pope John XXIII, and Nikodin, who represented the Russian Orthodox Church, met and reached this secret but monumental agreement.
Two months later, more than 2,000 bishops, sisters, observers and laymen began the first of four sessions between 1962 and 1965. Vatican II produced 16 documents that laid the foundation for the modern Catholic Church. Sadly, communism was not part of the discussion.
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This is a great article by Dieter Wanczura from the website Artelino
The intaglio printmaking techniques work by incising into the surface of a plate (steel, copper etc.) with tools or with acid. Afterwards the plate is coated with ink. The surface is wiped clean so that the ink remains only in the incised areas. Finally a dampened paper is pressed against the plate.
By Paul Binnie born 1967
Engraving is the oldest and most common of the intaglio techniques. Lines are cut into a metal plate using a tool called burin or graver. After the process of incising lines has been finished, the plate is inked. Then the surface of the plate is cleaned and only the ink in the incised lines is left. A dampened paper is put on the plate. With the paper being pressed firmly against the plate, it absorbs the ink left in the lines.
In the beginning copper plates were used. This technique required a professional engraver with skills that could be acquired only in a long apprenticeship. The disadvantage of the use of copper was the limited number of impressions.
Like for a woodcut, hardly more than 2000 or 3000 impressions could be obtained from one plate. This changed drastically with the invention of steel plates by Thomas Lupton in 1822. Now the number of impressions was nearly unlimited.
By Ryohei Tanaka born 1933
For etchings the plate is first covered with an acid-resistant wax or resin ground. Then the image is incised into the wax or resin layer with an etching needle. Finally the plate is dipped into acid. The acid bites into the exposed lines where the wax or resin was removed. These acid-bitten areas hold the ink.
It is one of the very old techniques dating back to the fourteenth century when it was used to apply decorations on armor. Rembrandt in the middle of the seventeenth century pushed the etching technique to new heights.
For the drypoint technique, the lines of the image are scratched directly into a plate with a sharp needle called the drypoint needle. Where treated with the needle, rough metal edges are thrown up, the so-called burr. This burr holds the ink very well. Different from engraving, this burr is not removed before the printing process. The drypoint technique typically produces prints with irregular, more fuzzy lines.
For the plates, tin or copper is the preferred material for the drypoint technique. From a commercial point of view, drypoint has the disadvantage of a fast wear of the plates.
By Kaoru Saito born 1931
Mezzotint is another intaglio technique. It was invented by Ludwig van Siegen, a German soldier, around 1642. Later it was improved by Abraham Blooteling and became were popular in England and was sometimes called la maniere anglaise.
For the mezzotint print, the surface is completely marked with a dense network of lines. For this process, a tool called a rocker is used. When a print is drawn at this stage, it would show a rich black only. Therefore in the next step, the plate is smoothed in the areas where the artist wants the color to print in a lighter tone or not at all.
Mezzotint requires high skills as the working process goes from dark to light. It is an ideal technique for creating shadowed areas and different tonal qualities. It therefore was particularly used for portraits.
By Emiko Aida
Aquatint is a special form of etching. It is created by etching sections rather than lines of a plate. First a porous ground of powdered or melted resin or asphalt or a similar ground is dusted onto the plate.
Next the plate is heated from below and as a result the applied dusty coat adheres to the metal and is acid-resistant. The acid is spread over the plate and bites into the tiny holes left in the coating.
Similar to mezzotint, aquatint is a technique to produce prints with the effect of printing rather whole areas than just lines. Typical for acquatint are the finely dotted areas.
A stipple print is created from a metal plate upon which the design has been produced using different sized small dots grouped together in order to create areas of continuous tone. The technique of stipple goes back to the fifteenth century.
Lithography was invented in 1798 by Alois Senefelder. He used the technique to print sheet music. One year later, Senefelder even had it patented in Munich. The name comes from the Greek word lithos which means stone. The technique is based on the fact, that water and grease do not like each other.
The design is drawn on a special, flat stone (limestone) or on a metal plate with a greasy water-repellant substance (greased crayon or a greasy ink called tusche).
By Zhang Minjie, born 1959
Then the stone was dampened with water and inked. The ink is absorbed by the greasy parts only. To enhance this effect, the plate can be treated with a chemical fluid after drawing the image. Afterwards a print can be produced by putting the plate in a press.
Like for the woodcut, several plates - one for each color - are used to produce a color lithograph print. A colored lithograph is called a chromolithograph.
Detail from Galloping Horses
In later years, the stone plate was more and more replaced by the use of zinc plates. Examples of early artists who used this technique, are Goya, Gericault and Delacroix. But until the late 19th and the 20th century it was more seen as a technique for producing commercial printing stuff like advertising posters. Lithography took an upswing with artists like Toulouse-Lautrec or Marc Chagall.
Silk screen or Screen Printing
By Hideaki Kato born 1954
Silk screen is the same as Screen printing. Another expressions is serigraphy or stencil printing. There are many variations to this technique. What they have in common, is the use of a screen and a stencil. The screen can be made of silk or nylon.
The stencil is suspended to the bottom of the screen. For modern printing the stencil can be replaced by a method of photoprinting. The print is produced by applying ink/color across the screen. The whole image is produced by using several screens with specific stencils - one for each color. A famous example for a silk screen print is Andy Warhol's popular print series of Marilyn Monroe from 1967.
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A time for courage
First published as an editorial in the Christian Science Sentinel
For some people, just facing daily life takes courage. The news too often fills the heart with despair, and along with family or relationship problems, illness, or financial strain, one could feel overwhelmed. Yet each day millions of people persevere and overcome even the most hopeless situations.
Stories of the brave sacrifices made by men and women during times of war fill the pages of books and the screens of movie theaters. And most kids grow up hearing tales of explorers taking desperate risks in all kinds of adventures, from scaling high mountains to treasure hunting in the deep seas. But what of the quieter, humbler acts of courage that people undertake every day - the courage to stand for ethical standards, to say no to dishonesty, to choose constructive activity over apathy, or to side with an unpopular but worthy cause? These decisions may not be recounted in adventure stories, but they're deeply valuable. They provide the signposts to a world that is not chaotic and cold, but to one where promise and progress are basic human rights.
Jesus' life offers a timeless study in courage. For example, in the face of ridicule, when people "laughed him to scorn" because he claimed that a synagogue leader's daughter who was reported dead was actually only "sleeping," he courageously acted on his convictions - and healed her. He ignored the taunts because he knew that God's law was of life, never of death (see Mark 5:22-24, 35-43).
Jesus' acts of courage were magnificent, but he also showed the humility to be courageous in small ways - as in the story of inviting a tax collector, Zaccheus, to dine with him when others spurned the man. Or when he asked his disciples to wait so he could determine who had touched his robe in the middle of a throng of people. He relied so completely on God's direction for even the simplest and most immediate decisions of his life.
Nineteen hundred years later, Mary Baker Eddy also found that with God's help, her courage was sufficient to meet any formidable task. Faced with debilitating illness, poverty, and homelessness, this New England Christian and thought-leader discovered a source of spiritual courage that was infinite, providing the foundation she needed to persevere in the daily struggles of life as well as to bring forth her discovery of God's laws of healing, which she named Christian Science.
Rising above what looked like overwhelming odds during an era when women's rights were minimal, she accomplished what might have seemed unimaginable to her at an earlier time in her life - the writing of a book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," that has changed the lives of countless thousands of readers; and the founding of a college that taught metaphysics and healing, a worldwide Church, three magazines, and an international newspaper. Acknowledging the source of what enabled the master Christian, Jesus, to achieve so much, she could also have been talking about her own life when she wrote, "Immortal courage fills the human breast and lights the living way of Life" ("The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," page 191).
Mary Baker Eddy knew the source of her own and of everyone else's courage to be God. And as these exemplary lives attest, trusting God's promise of unceasing love can give each of us the courage to step outside our own comfort zones and extend ourselves beyond what we presently imagine we can do for humanity.
The world needs our courage. And not just acts of bravery. The world needs, as the word courage implies, our mental and moral strength to persevere. In an age caught up in wars and corporate corruption, each act of selflessness contributes to the world's good, and proves that humanity is inherently loving and compassionate. These acts put the lie to the inevitability of war and corruption, and show the truth that, as the Lord's Prayer promises, "Thy kingdom come." Not will come, but is come, now.
Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God
is with thee
whithersoever thou goest.
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|Nevada Historical Marker #152|
"Situated between Black Rock Desert on the east and Smoke Creek Desert on the west, the townsite of Gerlach lies in country long occupied by prehistoric man. John C. Fremont traveled through Northern Paiute Indian lands, when he camped here in 1843 and named "Boiling Spring" 1/4 mile north of town. This is also emigrant country; the Noble Road left the Applegate-Lassen Trail at Black Rock Springs, went past this site and southward through Smoke Creek Desert toward Susanville. The town was established when the Western Pacific Railroad was constructed in Nevada 1905-1909. It still functions as a railroad division headquarters. [S.R. 447 in Gerlach (Washoe)]"
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A ‘pandemic’ in progress
The IDF World Diabetes Atlas (2015), released on November 14, 2015, reports 415 million adults (20 -79) living with diabetes; an increase of 33 million in the 2 years since the 2013 Atlas.
A surveillance imperative
As rates of type 2 diabetes among youth increase, surveillance information is critical to inform health policy makers, track success of prevention and treatment strategies, and increase awareness among health care providers, families and youth.
Mental health issues often accompany, or are amplified by, the onset of diabetes. The interactions can complicate diagnosis of either condition. Front line caregivers acknowledge that training on this aspect is variable, as is access to training and funding for staff, especially social workers.
A surveillance gap
Despite persistent efforts by the International Diabetes Federation and many other organizations worldwide, it remains difficult to assemble, update and compare reliable and reasonably complete data about youth living with diabetes.
Surveillance data for youth living with diabetes are sparse, especially so for those with Type 2. Such data for youth living with mental illness are relatively better but often reported inconsistently with respect to conditions included, gender and age. Surveillance data for youth living with diabetes and comorbidities are even more difficult to find.
IDF (Brussels) World Diabetes Atlas (2015) counts the 20 – 79 age group only, PHAC Diabetes in Canada (2011) includes children but does not distinguish between Type 1 and Type 2, ICES Diabetes Results (2011) includes 20 years and older, OPDN Current Survey (2012/13) provides breakout by Type but no age stratification and is acknowledged as incomplete for Type 2.
“You are correct that more research is needed in the epidemiology of type 2 diabetes in children and young adults. For the 2015 IDF Diabetes Atlas we were not able to find sufficient data on type 2 diabetes in people under the age of 20.”
– email communication from IDF (Brussels), November 19, 2015.
Inability to quantify aside, it is widely agreed that Type 2 diabetes among children and youth is escalating rapidly worldwide. It can no longer be viewed as ‘adult onset diabetes’. Children as young as 8, or younger, are being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes among children and youth is estimated by the IDF to be growing by 86,000 per year worldwide. The IDF World Diabetes Atlas (2015) estimates that the number of children worldwide living with Type 1 diabetes has exceeded half a million for the first time.
SFBLF Surveillance Research Project – 2017
[If you have knowledge of studies relevant to this project or can point us at related sources of information, we would be very grateful for your help. Please contact our Research Analyst to share any insights, comments or to seek additional information]
- Describe and assess the status of surveillance data available for youth and young adults living with diabetes including comorbid complications and mental health issues.
- Describe related studies in progress or planned.
Age range: 8 to 25 years of age
Geography: Primary focus on Canada, Australia, the US, UK and possibly two or three other countries; and with reference to major international sources such as IDF, WHO, UN, relevant national/regional organizations and research centres and networks
Conditions: Type1, Type 2 and selected list of complications including most frequently occurring comorbid mental problems.
Epidemiology: Disease surveillance including both prevalence and incidence
- A professional report describing the current status and presenting comparative analyses of gaps and inconsistencies in data sets.
- Identification of opportunities and needs for improved surveillance
Target Completion Date: August 31, 2017
SFBLF is committed to:
* protecting the privacy and confidentiality requirements of all who work with us to help achieve our goals; donors, partners, volunteers as well as participants in any study undertaken by SFBLF;
* securing essential permissions, respecting rights and sensitivities of study participants;
* describing the results obtained from any study undertaken by SFBLF accurately and without bias;
* obtaining prior agreement from partners before sharing study results with third parties where applicable.
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There are several types of basement construction. The basement foundation of a home provides the strength to keep the home and foundation standing in all types of weather and environmental changes. There are three types of basement construction that are the most common. These are:
- Poured concrete
- Block, masonry walls
- Precast panels
Poured concrete basement are the most common and the choice that most people prefer. This type of basement construction starts by pouring footing for the basement foundation. After these are set, forms are used to hold the poured concrete wall in place as they dry. Poured concrete walls tend to be stronger than other types of basement walls.
A block or masonry wall is the least expensive for basement walls. This type of basement wall construction are made from cinder blocks. This method requires less time than other methods of basement construction. To increase the durability of this type of basement construction, steel rebar is sometimes used to reinforce the masonry wall.
Precast panel basement wall construction is the method where the walls are molded at another location. Then the walls are transported to the building and place on footers. This type of basement construction is quite strong but is not as commonly done as poured or block basements.
No matter what type of basement wall you may have, each type has its own sets of problems that can arise. A block concrete basement wall will bow easier than other types due to the pressure against the walls that weakens the mortar joints.
High hydrostatic pressure outside a poured concrete basement can cause water to seep through due to the pressure creating floor and wall cracks.
Precast panel basement construction can have moisture problems if the joists are not properly sealed causing moisture vapor to get trapped in the panels. These panels can also attract insects unless they have been treated with boric acid.
Whatever type of basement foundation you have, Epp Concrete can help. We fix basements!
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The majestic Andean condor is one of the world’s largest flying birds, with an 11-foot wingspan and up to 33 pounds in weight. Condors have become rare in northern South America due to hunting and habitat loss, but remain present in Patagonia and abundant in certain areas. In the Patagonian and Andean Steppes, these scavengers used to consume guanaco and vicuña carcasses almost exclusively, but they now feed also on remains of livestock and introduced species such as European hares and red deer.
Andean condors have been extirpated from much of Patagonia because they consume poisoned livestock that are placed by producers to kill predators. They are also hunted by people who believe they are hunters and kill their livestock.
We work with livestock producers and government agencies to improve populations of the Andean condor’s natural food species and to reduce the use of poisons to control carnivores throughout Patagonia. We also assist park rangers to monitor condor roosting and nesting sites to keep track of population status. Finally, our research seeks to better understand the links between condors and their native food species, to inform broader conservation schemes involving suites of species in the region.
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HIV/AIDS: Vaccination & Natural Resistance
Vaccination & Natural Resistance
HIV Vaccine: The Holy Grail of Containment
An AIDS vaccine that works in the United States may not be effective in other parts of the world because there are different strains that are predominant in different geographic areas.
In the mid-1980s, United States Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler predicted a brief epidemic for AIDS and said, “there will be a vaccine in a very few years and a cure for AIDS before 1990.” Today, it is still recognized that the best hope for stopping the pandemic lies with a vaccine. Vaccines eradicated smallpox and contained polio, but the prospect for an AIDS vaccine is nowhere in sight.
How Can This Be?
One problem is that HIV protects itself by producing chemicals that block antibodies from killing it. However, the larger problem relates to the number of different strains of HIV. In reality, HIV is not a single virus, but a family of related virus subtypes called “clades.” The AIDS pandemic has been caused by eight clades, labeled A through H, of HIV-1. In addition, new strains are continuously being generated because HIV changes rapidly through mutation and genetic recombination, which mixes genetic information from virus subtypes to create new ones.
The eight HIV-1 subtypes are not evenly distributed around the world. Rather, they exist in distinct geographic clusters. For example, subtype B is most prevalent in Europe, North and South America, Japan, and Australia, while subtypes A, C, D, and E are spreading rapidly in Africa and Asia. This family diversity suggests that a single vaccine would be unlikely to cover all clades. In fact, some researchers lament that an effective vaccine for industrialized countries would not work against the HIV subtypes prevalent in the developing world.
Researchers generally agree that for a vaccine to be truly effective both humoral (antibody) and cell-mediated (B cells and killer T cells) arms of the immune system need to be activated. Antibodies can protect against initial infection, while B cells and killer T cells confer long-term immunity. Regrettably, our current vaccine candidates have been unable to induce both types of protection.
Yet the search continues with glimmers of hope. Researchers have made progress in prodding the body to track down and destroy HIV-infected cells for up to two years. Even if a vaccine fails to prevent infection, such medications could still limit the course of disease, keeping viral loads low, and reduce the risk of serious complications.
Natural Resistance to HIV Infection
Some people with HIV exposure don't progress to AIDS. In the mid to late 1990s, scientists noted that persons with one copy of a mutated gene were less likely to become infected with HIV, while individuals inheriting two copies of the mutated gene were highly resistant to HIV infection. The mutated gene, called CCR5-32, helps HIV invade T cells. The gene defect prevents the host cell from binding with the HIV. Unfortunately, the gene defect is rare, with about 1 percent of whites having two genes with the CCR5 mutation and even fewer nonwhites.
Excerpted from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Dangerous Diseases and Epidemics © 2002 by David Perlin, Ph.D., and Ann Cohen. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Used by arrangement with Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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Lorises–small, nocturnal primates found throughout Asia–are threatened by wildlife trade at levels that may be detrimental to their survival, according to researchers from Malaysia, Australia and the UK.
A study, recently published in the American Journal of Primatology, examined the trade in slow and slender lorises in Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Indonesia and found clear cultural differences between countries in the way the animals are viewed, says a media release from TRAFFIC, the joint wildlife trade monitoring program of IUCN and WWF.
“Surrounded by superstition, it is believed in South and Southeast Asia that eating loris flesh can treat leprosy, tonics made from lorises are claimed to heal wounds and broken bones and help women regain strength after childbirth, while in Sri Lanka slender loris body parts may ward off the ‘evil eye’ and can be used to curse enemies.
“Finally, their tears are a secret ingredient in love potions. Every year thousands of lorises are caught to supply such uses,” TRAFFIC said.
A Bengal loris streteched and dried for sale. Lorises are often sold in this way for traditional medicinal uses in Cambodia and Laos.
Photo © TRAFFIC Southeast Asia
The animals are also in demand from the pet trade, especially in Indonesia, despite the animals possessing a toxic bite. “In humans a slow loris bite can lead to anaphylactic shock and even death. As a result, in trade slow lorises often have their teeth removed,” TRAFFIC explained.
“The tendency to freeze when spotted by humans makes lorises particularly vulnerable to collectors. Our study shows that people catch lorises any time they see them, usually while out looking for other animals. This makes the problem of the loris trade a difficult one to tackle,” said Anna Nekaris of the Nocturnal Primate Research Group at Oxford Brookes University, and lead author of the study.
The trade is also illegal: Lorises are protected by national laws in every country where they occur naturally and international in slow lorises is banned through their listing in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
The study found that lorises are traded openly in large numbers at animal markets, especially in Indonesia and Cambodia.
“The open trade in these animals highlights a serious lack in enforcement–laws are ignored by wildlife traders who are obviously not afraid of legal repercussions,” said Chris Shepherd of TRAFFIC Southeast Asia, an author of the study.
“This exemplifies the lack of seriousness in dealing with wildlife crimes, which is leading to many species becoming increasingly rare.”
Vincent Nijman of the Oxford Wildlife Trade Research Group and an author of the paper stressed the importance of continued monitoring of legal and illegal wildlife trade and proper analysis of these data.
“It is very easy for this kind of trade to slip under the radar, despite perhaps thousands of lorises being traded annually. Irregularities in trade, as observed in our studies, indicate that the authorities should be more vigilant and stress the need for improved monitoring and intervention.”
The authors proposed that local knowledge and beliefs about lorises should be used when framing conservation policies to protect these, and other threatened wildlife species in Asia.
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For years now, we've been slathering on the sunscreen. What's in those containers and are they really good for you?
First off, let's look at skin cancer. Actually, skin cancers have always existed; however, there has been an increase in the lifetime risk of developing invasive melanoma - in 1935, the risk was 1 in 500; it is now 1 in 55. Processed, acidic food is a major contributor as is the level of pollutants and toxins in today's world.
INGREDIENTS. Active ingredients in sunscreens come in two forms, mineral and chemical filters. Each uses a different mechanism for protecting skin and maintaining stability in sunlight. The most common sunscreens on the market contain chemical filters. These products typically include a combination of two to six of the following active ingredients: oxybenzone, avobenzone, octisalate, octocrylene, homosalate and octinoxate. Mineral sunscreens use zinc oxide and/or titanium dioxide. A handful of products combine zinc oxide with chemical filters. Unfortunately, most of the chemical filters are carcinogens and can cause cancer! Those toxic ingredients are also poisoning our oceans, lakes, and rivers.
THERE'S YOUR SIGN! Chemical filter sunscreens ruin bikinis. They destroy the elastic, fade the colors, and even oxidize the metal clasps. Imagine what they're doing to your skin...
SKIN is the largest organ of the body which detoxifies just like your liver, kidneys, and lymph system. When sunscreen is applied, we are basically basting in a chemical bath as the sun bakes those carcinogens deep into the tissue.
WHAT'S THE SOLUTION? We need sunshine for vitamin D absorption. Get some sun (20 minutes) before 9 a.m. or after 4 p.m. Use organic, reef-safe, mineral based sunscreen to protect skin. A great local brand is LittleHandsHawaii.com Consider doing some research and making your own - it's Google-able!
FUN FACT: Coconut oil has an SPF of 4, which blocks 75% of UV radiation. 75% protection is about 45 minutes of sun exposure.
Stay healthy and be happy - mahalo for being a Pualani Hawai'i Mermaid!
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Last updated: 20 Oct, 2014
Mental health well being and mindfulness can be improved by brain training. Brain training exercises will enhance the mind in cognitive areas of learning skills,problem solving skills, working memory and fluid intelligence. Brain training contributes to mental well being as it helps the user to reach his or her full intellectual ability, helps people reach their full potential by making learning easier, trains the brain to deal with data,information and logic. A healthy, active brain brings a sense of well being and as brain training is scientifically proven to raise a child or adults IQ, coping and understand life's, school or business challenges becomes easier.
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Therefore, in recent years, many actions against inactivity have come to the fore. For instance, diverse pedometer devices have been developed to help people reach certain physical activity goals, like walking 30 minutes per day. However, an equivalent recommendation for disabled people using wheelchairs is missing and the few studies that have dealt with this issue concluded that commercial physical activity measurement devices are not appropriate for them.
This project has the objective of developing an embedded physical activity measurement system for disabled people using wheelchairs, by exploiting on-body and wheelchair-mounted wireless sensors.
This project will gather together data scientists (Pr. Perez-Uribe), embedded systems designers (Pr. Upegui & Pr. Giandomenico), biomechanics experts (Pr. Schmitt) and Human motricity and handicap experts (Pr. Degache).
During the first phase of the project, we will use diverse configurations of sensors (motion, ECG, EMG) to assess the physical activity of able-bodied people on a wheelchair.
We will first use off-the-shelf sensors to capture data and apply feature-extraction and machine learning techniques to the sensor readings in order to come-up with non-linear models matching the relationship between raw data and energy expenditure, provided by a portable metabolic cart. In parallel, we will develop our own embedded hardware to optimize size, maximize comfort, and minimize costs.
Diverse activities like resting, deskwork, and wheelchair propulsion along different surfaces and slopes will be considered. During the second phase, we will evaluate our system with disabled patients suffering from Spinal Cord Injury in collaboration with the Swiss Paraplegic Centre or the SuvaCare (the HESAV team will submit a project proposal in October to fund their contribution during this phase).
The result of this project will be an embedded system for home monitoring of the physical activity of disabled people, which can be used to promote ACTIvity as an antiDOTE to illness exacerbation, and for instance, to track the evolution of mobility during rehabilitation.
ACTIDOTE aims at closing a gap regarding the availability of self-tracking/motivational devices among disabled people.
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General strategies for performance enhancement and their rationale: (a) reducing dimensions of active materials, (b) formation of composites, (c) doping and functionalization, (d) tuning particle morphology, (e) formation of coatings or shells around active materials, (f) modification of electrolyte.
Source: Materials Today, Volume 18, Issue 5, June 2015, Pages 252–264
This review covers key technological developments and scientific challenges for a broad range of Li-ion battery electrodes. Periodic table and potential/capacity plots are used to compare many families of suitable materials. Performance characteristics, current limitations, and recent breakthroughs in the development of commercial intercalation materials such as lithium cobalt oxide (LCO), lithium nickel cobalt manganese oxide (NCM), lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (NCA), lithium iron phosphate (LFP), lithium titanium oxide (LTO) and others are contrasted with that of conversion materials, such as alloying anodes (Si, Ge, Sn, etc.), chalcogenides (S, Se, Te), and metal halides (F, Cl, Br, I). New polyanion cathode materials are also discussed. The cost, abundance, safety, Li and electron transport, volumetric expansion, material dissolution, and surface reactions for each type of electrode materials are described. Both general and specific strategies to overcome the current challenges are covered and categorized.
Graphene based batteries are lighter, more durable with higher capacity of energy storage.
The potential of graphene for batteries becomes more and more obvious. Recently, Saint Jean Carbon announced that it ...
GaN Semiconductor Devices Market to Grow at 17% CAGR By 2024 and Reach >US$3.4 Billion
Market Research illustrates the growth opportunities of the global GaN semiconductor devices at US$3,438.4 million by...
CVD Single Layer Graphene Significantly Enhances Fuel Cell Efficiency
Graphene is increasingly studied as a promising platform for developing novel separation technologies in applications...
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Bloating and weight gain are two different things. Abdominal bloating is described as a feeling of tightness or fullness around the stomach. It can also be ascribed as unintentional weight gain, a condition when you don’t intend to gain weight.
Bloating Weight Gain
- Bloating affects everyone in different ways. It could be in the form of abdominal tightness, or slightly bloated abdomen.
- The condition may be painful or cause shortness of breath. One’s stomach begins to cramp and pains become severe, and it can occur anywhere in the body and changes its location quickly.
- Women complain of weight gain and bloating few days before menstrual period. Bloating is also a common PMS symptom, which usually occurs due to excess water retention (water bloat).
What Causes Bloating?
- The plausible reasons for bloating weight gain include persistent constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, overeating, reflux, lactose intolerance and intestinal gas. The general perception as the cause of bloating is eating or drinking certain foods.
- It is an indication that food is not being digested correctly.
- Extreme bloating can be caused by the inadequate intake of water.
- Fatty foods, dairy products and foods high in sugar (sugar intolerance) may also cause bloating.
- Aerophagia (air swallowing, a nervous habit), partial bowel obstruction, gastric dumping syndrome, ascites, tumours Alvarez' syndrome, fiverticulosis and celiac disease, splenic-flexure syndrome, polycystic ovary syndrome and ovarian cysts are other less common reasons for bloating.
- Medications for medical conditions may cause bloating as they promote retention of fluid within the body, especially steroids, tranquilizers, antidepressants and lithium. If you suspect that prescription for a medical condition is increasing your weight, consult your health care provider.
- Depression and anxiety could also make you eat more and exercise less.
Importance of Digestion
- Water benefits the body by aiding digestion as it supports a majority of the body's daily functions. Once these foods get digested, bloating will fade.
- Meals high on fat are difficult to digest, and cause spasms and bloating. One can do several things to digest fats, walking for few minutes after meal is the easiest way.
Bloating and unnecessary weight gain can be prevented with an engagement in physical activity, which encourages activity in the bowels. Moreover, abstain from excess chewing of gums or intake of carbonated drinks, especially the ones with high fructose or sorbitol to prevent unintended weight gain.
Read more articles on Weight Gain
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
1. How long should young children hold a yoga pose?
Children should practice yoga at their own pace and according to their own unique abilities. That being said, the general rule of thumb is that each pose should ideally be held anywhere from 10-15 seconds or longer, depending on the age of the child.
2. How many poses should a child do in one session?
There are 56 poses in The ABCs of Yoga for Kids book, and children need not do every pose each time they practice. Instead, they can pick a handful to practice at a time.
3. What are some of the benefits of yoga for kids?
Yoga for kids develops discipline, increases focus and concentration, builds balance and flexibility, tones internal glands and organs, and promotes calmness and eases stress. It also strengthens fine and gross motor coordination in children, improves their visual-motor and auditory processing, aides in the cognitive functions of sequencing and memory, and heightens body awareness and self-control.
4. Why should kids practice yoga?
Yoga is a healthy outlet to balance the busy lives of today’s children. Not only is it the ideal way for kids to naturally unwind and obtain physical activity at the same time, but yoga also paves the way for life-long tradition of health and fitness. Lastly, it is a non-competitive form of exercise, suitable for children of all ages and sizes and varying degrees of athletic abilities.
5. How do you instill a desire in our youth to take up yoga?
The key to encouraging children to practice yoga is making it fun. The goal is to make yoga enjoyable for kids so that they can stay engaged with their yoga practice to learn fitness, relaxation, concentration, and awareness. The key is maintaining the children’s interest in what they are doing. Retaining a light tone and intermixing games with the poses keeps the young child’s attention while at the same time fulfilling the educational goal of yoga for kids.
Contact the ABCs of Yoga for Kids
Copyright 2008 - 2016 ♥ Teresa Power
Stafford House Books ♥ P.O. Box 291 ♥ Pacific Palisades, CA 90272
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So maybe Count Dracula had it right after all. It looks like that young blood has some really good stuff in it. The lab of Tony Wyss-Coray at Stanford has been studying the causes of the aging of the brain. As baby boomers get older and older they get more and more interested in how to keep their brains young.
The Wyss-Coray lab used parabiosis to see if there might be something in the blood that regulates brain aging. Parabiosis is a surgical technique that connects the circulatory systems of two mice. It is sort of like taking two mice and turning them into Siamese twins. Sorry mice, I’m sure it is no fun, but it is for the sake of science. For controls they connected young mice to young mice, and old mice to old. Not surprisingly, nothing much happened.
But when they connected young mice to old mice, Eureka! The brains of the old mice started behaving like they were much younger! The brain stem cells, which normally slow down in old mice, became active and divided more. Neurogenesis, the formation of new neurons, was kicked back on in the old brains. The reverse effects also took place in the young mice receiving old blood. Their cognitive functions declined, as measured by performance on maze tests, and by studies of their synaptic plasticity.
Was the active element in the shared blood cells or plasma? To test this they injected old plasma into young mice and vice versa. They found that the plasma was sufficient for the brain effects, so cells were not necessary. Then they examined the plasma carefully to better define the differences in young and old. They found a cytokine, CCL11, which elevates in concentration in both old mice and people. When they injected CCL11 into the blood of young mice it was able to cause aging effects very similar to that of old blood.
So, if you have a young brain and want an old one, they have the answer. Shoot up some CCL11. But, if you have an old brain and want a young one, the more likely scenario, they still are not sure what to do. Perhaps inactivate your CCL11, maybe with antibodies? They don’t describe this experiment, but it would seem a possibility. Or wait until they discover the active ingredient in the young blood that provides the neuronal fountain of youth? Or hunt the night for beautiful young women, so you can drink their blood?
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Join us for an Illinois State study.
Illinois is located in the central part of the United States. It is a very diverse state ranging from big cities to little towns and family farms. It has manufacturing, banking, tourism, agriculture, mining, timber, and technology sectors. Sometimes Illinois is considered a microcosm of the United States as a whole.
Illinois was first explored by French trappers in the 1670s. Fort Peoria was established in 1680 as the first permanent settlement in the area. From that time French Canadians began to settle along the Mississippi River. In 1763 the region, which had been part of French territorial claims was ceded by British after their win in the French and Indian War. Not long after it would pass in to the hands of the brand new country of the United States of America. In 1818 Illinois became the 21st state.
Chicago gradually became the largest city over time, using its ports on Lake Michigan to make it a trade hub for the west. Cattle and other livestock were brought there from farms and ranches as far away as Texas and Wyoming for slaughter. This in turn created an opportunity for food packaging plants and other factories as well as making Chicago into a rail hub. In addition Illinois’ rich mineral resources meant mining and ore processing plants began to spring up. The rapid industrial growth led to shortages of labor, driving wages up. In order to get cheap labor labor agents from Chicago began to spread their message of jobs to poor European countries like Italy and Eastern Europe. Soon Chicago was flooded with immigrants who didn’t understand the language, laws, or customs of their new country. They were easily taken advantage of and with big business and government colluding in corruption, the labor movement was born.
Today Chicago is a major financial and industrial powerhouse in the world. It also has major problems with government and business corruption, organized crime, drug trade, and gangs. People die every day of gun violence in this city where guns are banned.
- Make a poster showing the flag, tree, motto, nicknames, a few images and some facts of Illinois. Add the map, below, to your poster.
- Make a demographic bar graph showing the major ethnic groups of Illinois.
- There are two prominent families in Illinois State politics. Learn about one or both of them. They are the Stevenson family, including Adlai Stevenson, a reformer who tried to clean up Chicago politics, and the Daley family, including Richard Daley, who was Chicago’s longest serving mayor ever. Write a report on what you learn.
- Find out which foods are iconic in Illinois and make some to try. You can not go wrong with a Chicago style deep dish pizza.
- Learn more about the Illinois State Capitol building.
Map of Illinois Exploration
Print this Illinois Map. Use a student atlas to label the major cities, waterways, and landmarks. Color the map. You may consider coloring the map to match the landscape, color it as an elevation map, or use it to create a distribution map for population, rainfall, political parties, religion, or any other distribution of people or resources.
- The region Illinois is located in is sometimes referred to as the “Heartland”. Heartland means the center of the country geographically. The connotation is that this region is the heart of America, a place where everyday Americans work hard, live life for their families, worship God, and build freedom. The specific states included in the heartland differ according to who you talk to.
- Though Illinois was never a slave state, many residents of Illinois held slaves even after laws against it were passed. In 1820 a law preventing free slaves from settling in Illinois was passed. And blacks were generally prevented from living in the state by prejudice and abuses. But Illinois also became an abolitionist stronghold in the years running up to the Civil War.
- Chicago controls the politics of the whole state of Illinois. In Illinois the voice of rural and small town and medium city people is never heard. Do you think this is a problem? If so, what can be done about it?
- The 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago was one of the most influential World’s Fairs of all time. It was there that America first grasped the wonders of electricity. Learn more about it.
- Have you ever heard tell of Mrs. O’leary and the wayward cow of song? Well, it really happened. A cow in Mrs. O’leary’s barn behind her home kicked over a lantern and the whole city of Chicago burned to the ground. Learn more about it and sing the song for your kids.
- The University of Chicago was one of the most influential and prominent players in 20th century history. It was there that modern education movements of John Dewey were formed, the fiscally conservative economics of the Chicago Boys was championed, and the Manhattan project was developed. Eighty-nine Nobel Laureates, forty-nine Rhodes Scholars and nine Fields Medalists have either graduated from there or taught there.
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George was 'discovered' by English crusaders in the Holy Land, and became associated with England's crusading nobility, and eventually found favour with the Plantagenet Royal House. Through the devotion of the King and his courtiers, George came to be adopted as the patron saint of the Realm.
Of course, the Kings retained their own Royal Arms, pictured above and below, reminding everyone of their Norman heritage. (Two lions for Normandy, the third added by Richard Cour-de-lion during his reign in the twelfth century)
So today is a very English day, and is often ignored in a very English way too! In defiance of the Anglican dean of Southwark, I'll defy political correctness (or even ecclesiastical correctness) and post the words to a national treasure:
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountain green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
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The COMPRESSOR is driven from the engine crankshaft or one of the auxiliary shafts. The three common methods of driving the compressor from the engine are gear, belt, and chain. The compressor may be lubricated from the engine crankcase or self-lubricating. Cooling may be either by air or liquid
Figure 7-39.- Typical air brake system.
from the engine. Compressors, having a displacement of approximately 7 cubic feet per minute (cfm), have two cylinders, while those with a displacement of 12 cfm have three cylinders.
The reciprocal air compressor (fig. 7-40) operates continuously while the engine is running, but the governor controls the actual compression. The operation of the compressor is as follows:
The partial vacuum created on the piston downstroke draws air through the air strainer and intake ports into the cylinder.
As the piston starts its upstroke. the intake ports are closed off, and the air trapped in the cylinder is compressed.
The pressure developed lifts the discharge valve, and the compressed air is discharged to the reservoirs. As the piston starts its downstroke. pressure is relieved, closing the discharge valve.
The purpose of the compressor GOVERNOR is to maintain the air pressure in the reservoir between the maximum pressure desired (100 to 110 psi) and the minimum pressure required automatically for safe operation (80 to 85 psi) by controlling the compressor unloading mechanism.
In the type O-1 governor (fig. 7-41) air pressure from the reservoir enters the governor through the strainer and is always present below the tower valve and in the spring tube. As the air pressure increases, the tube tends to straighten out and decrease pressure on the valve.
When the reservoir air pressure reaches the cutout setting of the governor (100 to 110 psi), the spring load of the tube on the tower valve has been reduced enough to permit air pressure to raise the tower valve off its seat. This movement of the lower valve raises the upper valve to its seat, which closes the exhaust port. Air then flows up through the small hole in the lower
Figure 7-40.- Typical two-cylinder reciprocal air compressor.
valve and out the upper connection to the unloader assembly located in the compressor cylinder head. When the unloader valves open, the compression of air is stopped.
When reservoir pressure is reduced to the cut-in setting of the compressor governor (80 to 85 psi), the governor tube again exerts sufficient spring pressure on the valve mechanism to depress and close the lower valve and open the upper valve, thereby shutting off and exhausting the air from the compressor unloading mechanism and compression is resumed.
The pressure range and setting should be checked periodically using an air gauge known to be accurate. Pressure range may be changed in the type O-1 governor by adding shims beneath the upper valve guide to decrease the range, or removing shims to increase the range. Pressure settings may be changed, if necessary, by turning the adjusting screw to the left to increase the setting or to the right to decrease the setting.
The strainer should be removed periodically and cleaned. Check the governor periodically for excessive leakage in both the cut-in and cutout positions. If the governor fails to operate properly, it should be repaired or replaced.
In the type D governor (fig. 7-42) when the reservoir pressure reaches the cut-out setting (100 to 110 psi), the governor diaphragm is subjected to sufficient air pressure to overcome the spring loading.
This action allows the valve mechanism to move up, permitting the exhaust stem to close the exhaust valve and to open the inlet valve. Reservoir pressure then passes through the governor to operate the compressor unloading mechanism. stopping further compression of the air compressor.
When the reservoir pressure is reduced to the cut-in setting (80 to 85 psi). the spring loading within the governor overcomes the air pressure under the diaphragm. The valve mechanism is actuated, closing the inlet valve and opening the exhaust valve, thereby shutting off and exhausting the air from the compressor unloading mechanism and compression is resumed.
Pressure range and setting should be checked periodically, using an accurate air gauge. The pressure range (pressure differential) between loading and unloading of the type D governor is a function of the design of the unit and should not be changed. The designed range for this governor is approximately 20 percent of the cutout pressure setting. The pressure settings of the type D governor may be adjusted by turning the adjusting nut clockwise to increase or counterclockwise to decrease the settings.
Both strainers should be removed periodically and cleaned or replaced. The governor should periodically be checked for leakage at the exhaust port in both the cut-in and cutout positions. If the governor fails to operate properly, it should be repaired or replaced.
Figure 7-42.- Type D governor.
When the reservoir air pressure reaches the maximum setting of the governor, air under pressure is allowed by the governor to pass into a cavity below an unloading diaphragm. This air pressure lifts one end of the unloading lever, which pivots on its pin and forces the unloading valves off their seats. With the unloading valves off their seats, the unloading cavity forms a passage between the cylinders above the pistons. Air then passes back and forth through the cavity between the cylinders and compression is stopped. A drop in air pressure below the minimum setting of the governor causes it to release the air pressure from beneath the unloading diaphragm, allowing the unloading valves to return to their seats resuming compression.
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This press release is available in French.
A new diagnostic technique which may greatly simplify the detection of Alzheimer's disease has been discovered by researchers at McGill University and the affiliated Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital (JGH). Their results were published June 8 in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. There is currently no accepted blood test for Alzheimer's, and the diagnosis is usually based on expensive and labour-intensive neurological, neuropsychological and neuroimaging evaluations.
Dr. Hyman Schipper and colleagues at the Lady Davis Institute and McGill University utilized a new minimally-invasive technique called near-infrared (NIR) biospectroscopy to identify changes in the blood plasma of Alzheimer's patients, changes which can be detected very early after onset, and possibly in pre-clinical stages of the disease.
Biospectroscopy is the medical form of spectroscopy, the science of detecting the composition of substances using light or other forms of energy. In NIR spectroscopy, different substances emit or reflect light at specific, detectable wavelengths.
In this study, Schipper and his colleague Dr. David Burns - head of McGill's Biomedical Laboratory for Informatics, Imaging and Spectroscopy at the department of chemistry - applied near-infrared light to blood plasma samples taken from patients with early Alzheimer's dementia, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) == an intermediate state between normal cognition and dementia -- and healthy elderly control subjects at the JGH/McGill Memory Clinic. Using this technique, the researchers were able to distinguish Alzheimer's from healthy controls with 80 per cent sensitivity (correct identification of patients with the disease) and 77 per cent specificity (correct identification of persons without the disease). A significant number of subjects with MCI tested positively with the Alzheimer group, indicating that the test may be capable of detecting Alzheimer disease even before patients' symptoms meet clinical criteria for dementia.
"We are very encouraged by these data and look forward to testing this potential diagnostic tool in larger-scale studies", said Schipper, Director of the Centre for Neurotranslational Research at the JGH and professor of neurology and medicine at McGill. Researchers have been searching for a minimally-invasive biological marker that differentiates Alzheimer's disease from normal aging and other neurodegenerative conditions for decades.
"The advent of a simple blood test for the diagnosis of early Alzheimer's", remarked Schipper, "would represent a major achievement in the management of this common disorder".
Schipper is a noted expert in brain aging and neurodegeneration, and is also medical director (neurosciences) of Molecular Biometrics Inc., a McGill technology-transfer spinoff which licensed the innovative biospectroscopy approach used in this study. In addition to Alzheimer's disease, Molecular Biometrics is currently developing this diagnostic platform for application in Parkinson's disease, in vitro fertilization and maternal-fetal health.
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Joseph Johnson’s bookshop at 72 St Paul’s Churchyard, London, served as a hub for some of the most important writers and artists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. William Godwin’s diary records his attendance at Johnson’s monthly dinners from the mid-1790s to around 1810. (The tradition was continued, after Johnson’s death in 1809, by his great-nephew Rowland Hunter, who inherited a half-share of the business.)
Perhaps this is not surprising, given Johnson’s close personal and professional association with Godwin’s first wife, Mary Wollstonecraft. Her tragic early death brought Godwin and Johnson closer together. Johnson, we know, helped Godwin with the funeral arrangements and supplied him with biographical notes on Wollstonecraft’s early years for his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, co-published by Johnson and G. G. and J. Robinson in 1798.
What might be more surprising is that about a decade after Wollstonecraft’s death, Johnson became not only Godwin’s friend but also his vocational adviser, as Godwin worked to get his own publishing venture up and running. Together with his second wife, Mary Jane Godwin, he launched a publishing imprint and bookstore dedicated to children’s and educational books, a subspecialty of Johnson’s and a lucrative market. The Godwins’ ‘Juvenile Library’ was located first in Hanway Street, a few blocks from the British Museum’s original Montagu House site, and later at 41 Skinner Street (near the present-day Holborn Viaduct), very close – perhaps too close – to Newgate Prison.
The market for children’s books was strong (and expanding), but Godwin was a first-time bookseller and publisher, and had not served a formal apprenticeship. He had understandable difficulties in the trade. His friends and acquaintances supported him, however, and, three years into his venture, in spring 1808, they rallied to provide him with a capital fund. Johnson was involved with this plan from the beginning, helping to sketch out a strategy for Godwin to move forward as a publisher and bookseller on a stronger footing.
A surviving letter from Johnson’s newly published correspondence gives us a window onto these plans. On 21 March 1808, prompted by a visit from Godwin, Johnson wrote to Richard ‘Conversation’ Sharp, a politically, and, as his nickname suggests, socially active London merchant and dissenter. Johnson explained that Godwin had just received a friendly enquiry from Whig MP William Smith about his financial situation. ‘This has brought him to me’, Johnson wrote to Sharp, ‘with a statement of his affairs & desiring my opinion, a very unpleasant office but I cannot refuse him’.
Johnson’s letter to Sharp addresses two issues: Godwin’s current stock and some practical actions that might now be taken to stabilize his finances. The first, Johnson noted, ‘consists principally of books composed by himself & a friend [i.e. Mary Jane Godwin] which have been well received, & bid fair to become stock books for children & young people’. Godwin published children’s books by other writers, perhaps most notably Tales from Shakespear (1807), by Charles and Mary Lamb, but Johnson had in mind Godwin’s own volumes, written under the pseudonym Edward Baldwin, Esq. These included Fables Ancient and Modern (1805), The Pantheon: or Ancient History of the Gods of Greece and Rome (1806), and The History of England (1806) – books that received positive reviews from the British Critic, the Monthly Mirror, and even the Anti-Jacobin Review.
So much for Godwin’s assets, but what to do next? Johnson proposed a three-part plan to help to continue and expand the business. The current stock of books should first of all be advertised, and with ‘common attention’ Godwin could anticipate £300 per year from the sale of these and subsequent children’s books. The other facets of Johnson’s plan were more challenging. Godwin at this time stood £1500 in debt and Johnson was one of those who had already lent him money. Johnson wrote that, should Godwin’s other creditors agree, ‘I will put my bond into the fire’. But even with all of these debts cancelled, Godwin would still require fresh capital to move forward: Johnson estimated that ‘there should be raised from £1500 to 2000£ either as gifts or loans without interest for, say 10 years’.
The plan went ahead with the opening of a public subscription. The Whig peers Lord Holland and Lord Lauderdale took the lead, and Johnson made the arrangements. Promised contributions totalled £1,220 even before the lists were formally opened. There is no record of the total collected, but it was a very large sum.
Johnson clearly wished to see his old friend succeed in the book trade, where he might find a steady income, support his growing family (including Wollstonecraft’s two young daughters), and help to educate young readers. But Johnson’s intervention in the spring of 1808 was one of his last opportunities to help Godwin navigate the contemporary book trade. When Johnson died in 1809, Godwin was bereft of a loyal friend and a valuable guiding hand.
The rescue plan that Johnson outlined in his letter to Sharp is representative of his lifelong endeavours both to assist his friends and to promote the work of writers in whom he believed. This cocktail of common sense, kindness, and business acumen is on display throughout the letters published in The Joseph Johnson Letterbook.
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Cameras Keep Watch Over Fire-Prone Regions Across San Diego County
Monday, October 10, 2016
Dozens of earthquake sensors located atop mountains and hillsides across San Diego County are also being used to help detect wildfires. The high-tech instruments that measure seismic motion and monitor climate hazards, are also equipped with cameras that allow fire officials to keep watch over remote fire-prone regions.
“If a fire were to start it would be seen on these cameras right away,” said Frank Vernon, research geophysicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and leader in the development of the alert network.
“You can see the state of the county on a real time basis,” he said, pointing to a large screen displaying dozens of streaming images.
The AlertSoCal system includes 64 cameras positioned in 16 remote locations across San Diego, Riverside and Imperial counties. The project is a partnership among UC San Diego, the County of San Diego and San Diego Gas & Electric.
Vernon said it represents a new era in firefighting and gives fire officials widespread views of tinder-dry mountains and canyons and on-demand time-lapse imagery for up to 12 hours.
Some of the most recently installed cameras are equipped with pan-tilt-zoom capability, Vernon said.
“We can actually zoom in at specific things, point at something over here and get better higher resolution imagery,” he said.
The real time imagery can allow firefighters to gain control of a blaze at the first wisp of smoke, leading to earlier evacuations and saving lives and homes, Vernon said. He wishes the technology would have been fully implemented in 2003.
“In 2003 I was in Scripps Ranch and was one of the first houses burned down on that morning in October,” Vernon said. “Most of my neighborhood burned down.”
Vernon said he’s in the process of testing even more advanced technology: cameras that can detect infrared and software that tracks smoke. The cameras can automatically alert first responders of a fire without a person having to monitor streaming imagery.
The online hazard alert system is also accessible to the general public, Vernon said.
“Anybody can look at these things,” he said. “The incident command centers are looking at them, I will be looking at them since I am very interested in this topic and then the general public as well can look at them also.”
See the streaming imagery here.
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CSU student tracking killer kitties
FORT COLLINS — There’s no doubt about it: Kitties can be killers.
And now a CSU student is studying where cats go when they roam about neighborhoods alone. Ashley Gramza has attached GPS trackers to several dozen cats in the Boulder area and is monitoring their daily movements. She’s also tracking how many animals the cats kill and bring home.
The tally in the first four months: 25 small mammals and 11 birds.
“My main goal is to better inform cat owners of the risks their cats may incur and impose on the landscape,” Gramza said. “We know that cats wreak havoc on island ecosystems.”
A separate study by University of Georgia researchers using cameras and released this summer found that cats brought home only about 25 percent of the animals they killed, finding they ate about 30 percent of their kills and left 49 percent of their kills where they died.
Gramza’s study is slightly different than the UGA one — that one used 60 cats wearing cameras. In her study, the cats wear tiny transmitters providing an exact map of their movements. Gramza plans to use the data she collects to help cat owners decide whether they should follow laws like the one in Fort Collins requiring cats to be leashed whenever they’re outside.
The Larimer Humane Society, which is charged with enforcing the city’s cat-leash law, says cat owners who let their cats out unleashed face a $100 fine, the same faced by dog owners. The agency says it’s safer for cats and the community to keep kitties either inside or on a leash.
In the last year, the society’s animal-control officers issued 390 citations for at-large domestic animals in Fort Collins, both dogs and cats. In that same period, 1,547 stray cats were brought into the society’s shelter by both officers and the public. The society doesn’t break out cat vs. dog tickets, said spokeswoman Stephanie Ashley.
Ashley said the society believes domestic cats should be leashed or kept inside, regardless of the local laws.
“It protects the animal and protects other animals. It minimizes the chance they’ll come into contact with other wildlife and minimizes their chances of getting lost,” she said. “They’re hunters by nature.”
Gramza’s research aims to answer just how far cats wander in their nocturnal hunts. So far, she said, the cats in the study don’t go much more than a few blocks away from home.
“They’re not wandering that far. They’re definitely sticking close to home,” she said. “My goal is to learn what the risks might be, and inform cat owners with as much information as possible to minimize these risks, if there are any.”
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The Author is speaking about literal hope and how it never leaves us. She talks about how it lingers in our soul and it will always be there. It then goes on to say that in our toughest times and when we think we have lost all hope because our pain or struggle is so extreme. You can still find hope because it never leaves your soul. At the end it talks about how hope will help you through the little storms or even big storms and it will never ask anything of you. It's like a person who gives and expects no favors in return.
In the first stanza of the poem it gives off a very good visual of what she is comparing hope to. She compares the feeling of hope to a bird. Her use of the word perches makes it very easy to imagine a bird sitting on our soul waiting to be called on. I think how the poem says "And sings the tune without the words-" helps that visual as well because birds can't sing the words but they can only sing the tune.
In the second stanza of the poem it shows a lot of imagery. On the second and third line it says " And sore must be the storm - That could abash the little bird" it gives you that good image of a bird being intimidated by something that's bigger than it. It's a great example of something that makes us loose hope in our selfs. Just like that little bird. It also says on the last line "That kept so many warm -" that gives feeling out of the poem because that bird (hope) was once so great and it helped everyone and it got you through it, But then the storm (struggle) makes it week and discouraged comes. It says that storm has to be sore or large to discourage the bird (hope). So I think it gives off a good vibe that our hope is always there and it's very hard for it to go away.
In the third and final stanza it once again gives off good imagery of you having hope through anything and everything. It says "I've heard it in the chillest land - And on the strangest Sea - " It gives off the feeling of our trials and hardships in our life. In the last two lines it says "Yet - never - in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of me." I think these two lines gives off like a little emotion because it makes you realize that hope is actually always there.
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The Rail network and passenger journeys
Full print version, including charts and tables
Passenger transport by rail has its origins in 1820s Northern England, spurred by the work of industrial engineers like George Stephenson, who developed the first locomotive capable of travelling faster than galloping horses.
The importance of the railways as a public good, or perhaps as a means to facilitate the movement of labour to growing industrial centres, was recognised early on. An 1844 Act of Parliament required every route to run a basic (i.e. third-class), affordable service.
Between 1848 and 1899 the length of the railway in Great Britain tripled, from less than 5,000 miles to over 18,000 miles. The growth in infrastructure was accompanied by rising numbers of passengers. The 28m journeys taken in 1844 had increased to 288m by 1870, and 1.4bn by 1908.
Though the growth infrastructure had slowed by the start of the 20th century, the rail network in 1908 and 1948 would have reached from London to Perth (Western Australia) and back, stretched
out. But by 2012, the intrepid passenger would have been stranded on the coast of Western Australia. The major catalyst for this paring back of the network was the publication in 1963 of the Beeching Report, which concluded that:
“… after the post-war growth of competition from road transport, it is no longer socially necessary for the railways to cover such a preponderant part of the total variety of internal transport services as they did in the past.”
The report accelerated route closures, and within seven years, the network was a third shorter than it had been in 1963, and 50% of stations were put out of service, including Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Trouble House Halt and Windmill End.
The 20th century ended, unexpectedly, with a boom in rail travel that has continued into the 21st. More journeys are now being taken than at any time since 1927, and the priority afforded to the motor car in transport policy has receded. The high-speed line from London to Birmingham, if it goes ahead, will represent the largest investment in overland rail since the Victorian era, and a small number of the branch routes closed under Beeching have been reopened. The shadow of Beeching’s axe may no longer be cast so ominously over the UK’s branch lines, but a return of the slow train from Oswestry to Buttington still looks like a distant prospect.
Track and travel
The chart shows the total length of the rail route and the number of passenger journeys in Great Britain.
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NCERT / CBSE NOTES | Class 8th (VIII) : Chapter Summary
When People Rebel - 1857 and After
Causes of the Revolt of 1857
The Revolt of 1857, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Uprising of 1857, the Great Rebellion, the Indian Mutiny, the Sepoy Mutiny, are the different names for India’s First War of Independence against the British.
The Doctrine of Lapse, introduced by Lord Dalhousie, was used to annex many Indian states like Satara, Sambalpur, Udaipur, Jhansi and Nagpur. The subsidiary alliance policy was used to forcefully annex Awadh.
The Company hence planned to bring an end to the Mughal dynasty. It stopped minting the name of the Mughal king on its coins, and declared that Bahadur Shah Zafar would be the last Mughal king. The land revenue systems introduced made the lives of the peasants and the zamindars miserable. Huge taxes were levied forcing the peasants to borrow money from moneylenders, who seized their lands if they failed to pay back the loan.
The British also brought in many reforms in Indian society. They encouraged widow remarriage, stopped the evil practice of sati and gave importance to English-language education.
In 1850, a law was passed that made it easier to convert to Christianity. Those who converted were allowed to inherit the property of their ancestors. The sepoys were also dissatisfied by the Company’s rule and were unhappy with the conditions of their service, pay and allowances.All these reforms stifled the Indians, and they felt that their traditions, customs and religions were being destroyed.
Some of the rules that the Company introduced were also against their religious sentiments. The cartridges by sepoys to be used were greased with the fat of pigs and cows, which was against their religion. This was the trigger that unified the sepoys for the Revolt of 1857.
Retaliation by the Company
The Great Rebellion, in May 1857 as a mutiny of the sepoys in Meerut, erupted into civilian revolts and smaller mutinies in central India and the upper Gangetic Plains. The scale of the Revolt of 1857 intimidated the Company, and it decided to use all its might to repress it.
The scale of the upheaval frightened the Company, and it began to strengthen its military by bringing in men and material from England and passing new laws to convict the rebels easily. In September 1857, the Company recaptured Delhi, and in October, Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was captured and sentenced to life imprisonment.
In March 1858, the Company recaptured Lucknow, and in June, Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi was killed. Tantia Tope was killed in April 1859. Hundreds of rebels, nawabs, sepoys, kings and civilians were tried and executed by the British.
By the end of 1859, the Company regained its control over India. According to a new act in 1858, the ruling powers of India were transferred to the British Crown. The Governor-General of India was given the title of Viceroy, who was a representative of the Crown. The British annulled the policy of Doctrine of Lapse and recognized the right of an adopted son. They also decided to increase the proportion of European soldiers in the army.
The British held the Muslims responsible for the revolt, and so confiscated their property and treated them with hostility. The revolt also made the British respect the traditions and religions practised in India. They framed policies to protect the land rights of zamindars.
The Revolt of 1857
The Revolt of 1857 was one of the first wars of Indian independence against the British. This revolt can aptly be termed the first war of Indian independence against the British. Kings, peasants, tribals, landlords and we sepoys, all were dissatisfied with the British rule.
The start of the revolt was on the 29th of March, 1857, when Mangal Pandey, attacked his officers. The attack by Mangal Pandey is considered one of the first acts of what came to be known as the Great Rebellion or the Sepoy Mutiny.
The sepoys wanted an end to the British rule and make Bahadur Shah Zafar their leader. In Delhi, sepoys killed many British officers, confiscated their ammunition and set their buildings on fire. A week after the British were evicted from Delhi, a wave of mutinies began in different parts of the country. More and more regiments rebelled and joined other troops at nodal places like Kanpur, Delhi and Lucknow.
Near Kanpur, Nana Saheb and in Lucknow, Birjis Qadar and his mother Begum Hazrat Mahal, contributed a lot to the uprising. Birjis Qadar was the son of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah. In Jhansi, Rani Lakshmibai, Tantia Tope and the sepoys together fought against the British. The mutiny saw the emergence of many new leaders like Ahmadullah Shah from Faizabad, Bakht Khan from Bareilly and Kunwar Singh, from Bihar.
The revolt scared the British and shook the very foundation of their rule in India.
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5 Easy Ways to Motivate Students
How to motivate students for them to achieve their potential is high priority for our education system.Motivation in school is something most kids struggle with but if students, parents, and teachers cooperate with each other, studying won't be such a hardship.
The Importance of Positive Feedback To Motivate Students
Believe it or not but there are teachers and parents indeed who have difficulty saying simple words like "good job" and "congratulations". They may be merely words, but never underestimate its impact on a child's morale. Knowing that their hard work, no matter how small, is appreciated always motivates a child to do better next time.
The Right Time, Place, and Reason for Studying
Kids can be more motivated by studying if they know and understand the importance of studying. You need to speak their language so that they'll appreciate your efforts in making them study hard. If you want them to study, the best way to do that is to make them want the same thing as well.
The right environment is also crucial for motivating students. Having their own study table in their bedroom is good, but a bed in proximity could make them feel more impatient? If possible, have them study in your library, office, or a place where there are no possible distractions.
Students won't be motivated if your demands are too excessive. Be reasonable with your expectations. Don't expect them to devote all their free time to studying. Having them do so isn't healthy anyway. Choose the appropriate schedule and amount of time for their studies and your child will be more motivated to do what you want.
To Motivate Students Help Them Develop Goals
Simply asking them to "study harder" won"t be enough. Giving them a routine for studying at home is a good start, but it"s not enough. People of all ages are more motivated when they have actual goals to focus on.
A good goal is SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.
General goals are difficult to achieve because they ask too much. Goals are more motivating if they state exactly what you should be after. Goals must also be measurable; if not, how can you know when you've achieved your goal? For students, goals are usually measured by their grades or certain academic or interscholastic achievements like being voted class president or winning a championship.
Goals must be realistic in the sense that they're something a person can actually do. Goals must also be attainable. Given the circumstances and resources of a student, is the goal still achievable?
Lastly, goals must be time-bound as time can also be a source of motivation. With a deadline to meet, your child will be motivated to work hard early and diligently.
Rewards and Repercussions To Motivate Students
No person is too old for rewards. It's just a matter of choosing the right reward to motivate them. You%u2019ll have to speak with your child to know what kind of reward they'll be most motivated with. But there must be repercussions at the same time for additional motivation.
Repercussions, however, must be minor in comparison; you don't want to motivate your child by fear and coercion, do you?
Motivate by Example
Last but not the least, be a role model to your child. You may not have the same goals, but whatever methods you apply to reach your goal can be something your child could adapt for his own goals.
Do all these and your child will be properly motivated in school!
House Tips | Auto Tips | Sports/Hobbies | Grandma's Tips |
Wisdom & Humor |
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Emilio Jacinto (15 December 1875 – 16 April 1899) was known as the “Brains of the Katipunan.” He was a Filipino revolutionary and writer.
Jacinto was born on 15 December 1875 in Trozo, Tondo, Manila to Mariano Jacinto and Josefa Dizon. His father having died shortly after he was born, Jacinto was sent to live with his uncle, Don Jose Dizon. He was educated in both Spanish and Filipino and attended the Colegio de San Juan Letran. He later transferred to the University of Santo Tomas where he studied law; however, he did not finish the course.
At the age of 19, Jacinto joined the Katipunan and became one of its leaders. He served as Andres Bonifacio's secretary and fiscal, and also supervised the manufacture of gunpowder to be used by the Katipuneros in battle. A gifted writer, Jacinto also became the editor of Ang Kalayaan, the newspaper of the Katipunan. He wrote the Kartilya ng Katipunan which contains the rules and regulations of the movement. He also wrote the poem “A La Patria,” which was inspired by Dr. Jose Rizal's Mi Ultimo Adios, under the pen name of Dimas Ilaw.
Jacinto was mortally wounded in a battle in Majayjay, Laguna and died on 16 April 1899 at the age of 24. His remains were later transferred to the Manila North Cemetery.
Date of Issue: December 15, 1975
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Snaggy Ridge Indian Rhyolite Quarries
By Dakota Bricker
For over 11,000 years Snaggy Ridge was mined by Indians for a very dense, volcanic rock called rhyolite (MacDonald 47), that they used to make arrowheads and rock tools that litter ground of the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States (Carr). Located one mile southeast of Caledonia State Park in Michaux State Forest, is the Snaggy Ridge Indian Rhyolite Quarries. The quarries are in Carbaugh Run Natural Area, a protected archeological site. What rhyolite is and how it got on Snaggy Ridge, the time period Indians used and mined rhyolite and how they used the rhyolite, mining techniques on Snaggy Ridge, and the distribution and trade of rhyolite over the Mid-Atlantic region are many facts the public does not know.
Rhyolite, (or Metarhyolite as it is called by scientist), is a volcanic rock. There are many types of rhyolite units. The unit on Snaggy Ridge is a mottled rhyolite that has "thin, black streaks and bands set in bluish-gray and yellow-gray to light-brownish rock" (Fauth 20). Rhyolite can be found also with pink or purplish colors. Rhyolite formed in the Snaggy Ridge area around 600 million years ago. This area was constantly erupting. The rock formed was originally basalt later turning to rhyolite. This left most of the area rhyolite with the exception of "the coarse-grained metabasalt that is restricted to a few localities in the valley of Rocky Mountain Creek, and near Carbaugh Run between Snaggy Ridge and Mt Newman" (Fauth 18). Then, sediment was brought to Snaggy Ridge and was dropped off there by an ancient sea. Then, around 240 million years ago, movements in the earth's crust caused mountain building and metamorphosed the sedimentary rocks into quartzite, leaving traces of quartz on Snaggy Ridge which can still be seen today. Around 100 million years ago the volcanic activity stopped (Fauth 13-15). All this activity caused rhyolite to become abundant on South Mountain from Snaggy Ridge to Harpers Ferry. This makes it the largest source of rhyolite in Pennsylvania and in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. This provided a great source of hard rocks, in abundance, conveniently located next to an animal trail running through Blacks Gap, for Indians to use to make points for spears, arrows, and other tools for thousands of years (MacDonald).
Indians used rhyolite for thousands of years. Indians started to use rhyolite in the middle of the Paleo Period around 9,500 B. C. Rhyolite was very hard so was a very useful rock to make hard points that will be sharp and can kill an animal. Rhyolite use stayed the same in the early Archaic Period (8,000 B.C.-6,800 B.C.). In the middle Archaic Period (6,800 B.C.-3,300 B.C.) the population increased due to the forest changing from evergreen forest to hardwood forest. This increased the amount of game for food, resulting in the increase of spear points made from rhyolite. In the research done in the Juniata sub-basin, out of all the artifacts found, 32% were made from rhyolite (MacDonald 66). In research done on Snaggy Ridge, charcoal was found in pits where Indians dug to mine rhyolite and was carbon dated. The charcoal was found to be used for cooking or for warmth and was dated to be 8,000 years old. This puts the charcoal back to the middle Archaic, proving that the quarries were being extensively mined at the latest the middle Archaic Period and possibly before (Carr). Rhyolite increased to37.9% of all the artifacts found, dated to the late Archaic Period (3,300 B.C.-1,800B.C.), showing that rhyolite use is increasing. All the rhyolite found in the Juniata sub-basin can be traced back to rhyolite on Snaggy Ridge, (MacDonald 95). In the Terminal Archaic Period (1,800 B.C.-1,000B.C.) rhyolite use again increased. Points made in this period required hard rock that can easily be made into points. Rhyolite fits all these needs (MacDonald 113). During the Woodland Period (1,000 B. C.- Arrival of Europeans) rhyolite use gradually decreased until the arrival of the Europeans. Mining at Snaggy Ridge finally stopped around the beginning of the 1 700s when trade was opened up between white men and Indians. Indians switched from stone tools and points to metal tools, points, and black powder muskets.
Rhyolite was used for many things. It was used to make stone spear points like the Susquehanna Broad Point. The Susquehanna Broad Point was a spear point that was used a lot during the Terminal Archaic Period. 95% of Susquehanna Broad Points were made from rhyolite (Geasey, Ballweber 1 12). Broad Points found in Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic region were most likely made from rhyolite from Snaggy Ridge. Rhyolite was also used to make stone tools like scrappers, hammer stones for food processing, and hammer stones for mining. Also, rhyolite was used for sledge hammers, hammers, axes, hatchets, knives, drill bits, leather punches, tomahawks, and for jewelry like gorgets (Wilbur). Later, during the Woodland Period, bow and arrow s were invented and put into use. 1ndians then started using rhyolite to make arrowheads. To make arrowheads and spear points they used a technique called knapping. Knapping is the process used to chip and flake a rock material into a point for a spear, arrow, knife, etc. This process is used throughout the history of Native Americans to make these points.
Archaeologist have discovered that most mining of the ridge during the Paleo and early Archaic Periods were probably just Indians going to Snaggy Ridge and picking up pieces of rhyolite from the outcrops. If there was mining going on, it wasn't very often and not common because of lndians being nomadic during this time period. In the middle Archaic Period, Indians, who stopped being nomadic and started living in one area, had more time on their hands and started going for quality rhyolite buried under the surface. Most of the actual mining happened during the Terminal Archaic Period. Because the exposed rhyolite was very hard to work with, the Indians started digging. Due to the moisture of the ground, the workable rhyolite that was easy to make into a point or tool was under the ground. Under the soil and small - pieces of rock rubble, about two meters (about 6 feet) down are large, naturally formed rhyolite blocks, that were 50 cm by 50 cm by 100 cm (Carr), and weighing about 1,650 pounds. The rhyolite naturally breaks into these blocks and the cracks are soon overcome with roots of trees. After many years of roots rotting growing back hard clay soil develops made from shoulder bones of an elk, Indians removed the rubble above the block and the hardpan between the blocks. To pry the large block from the ground, they used large hammer stones and rhyolite wedges. All this digging left large pits in the ground that can still be seen today on Snaggy Ridge (Carr).
After the block was exposed to the air, large basalt hammer stones, that were most likely from the closest source at Carbaugh Run or possibly from Rocky Mountain Creek, were used to break the blocks into large flakes to make them more portable. Then, the Indians would take these flakes to a place like a rock shelter or what is called a processing station to make them into small flakes that could be carried to their camps. "Breaking up the large blocks into more portable flakes so they could be easily made into tools at a more comfortable spot is the process which produced the massive piles of chipping debris', (Carr). The processing stations and rock shelters are marked by piles of chips that can still be seen today.
After the rhyolite was processed into something small enough to carry, they would head back to their camp with the rhyolite that was mined in "woven fabric bags or wooden baskets" (Fergus, 29). Points and tools, made to be used on the hunt or in camp, were made at camp and not at the mines (Carr). The Ebbert Spring Archaeological Site, located south of Greencastle, PA is a good example of an Indian camp. Most points found at the site are 95% rhyolite and rhyolite chips were found in abundance there. This shows that they brought the rhyolite back to camp and knapped the points there. Indians also camped next to Carbaugh Run in the valley between Snaggy Ridge and Mount Newman. A large amount of chips and unfinished spear points were found by archaeologists to confirm that Indians did camp there. Like other camps, Indians would take their rhyolite that was mined and take it to their camp, five hundred feet below the ridge, along Carbaugh Run to finish making their points (Fergus 30).
The Snaggy Ridge Quarries were shared by the Indian Tribes. It was considered a safety zone like the hunting land in Kentucky (Carr). Within the boundary of the quarries, Indians had to be respectful and treat each other as a brother, even though they may be from enemy tribes. When you step out of the boundary, then you can kill your enemy. This was because the Indians believed the Great Spirit gave them this gift to all to ensure survival. This made the quarries a sacred place and "a high religious significance" (Carr). In fact, Carr found a spearhead made of rhyolite. This was not dropped by accident, but probably buried there as an offering. Indians took the rock from the ground and they would return some as an offering (Fergus 30).
Rhyolite pieces can be found all over the Mid-Atlantic region, but sources of rhyolite are spotty. To get the pieces of rhyolite all over the Mid-Atlantic region there had to be some kind of trade among the Indians. The three main sources of rhyolite on the east coast are in Massachusetts, the Carolinas, and South Mountain in Pennsylvania and Maryland, with the major source on Snaggy Ridge. There was some trade of rhyolite during the Paleo Period. In the archaeological final report about the dig in the Juniata Sub-basin there was non-local rhyolite found that came from Snaggy Ridge (MacDonald 48). How did the rhyolite get there? Indians during this period were nomadic. They covered large amounts of land following the herds spreading rhyolite and other lithic material all over Pennsylvania. Snaggy Ridge, the major source of rhyolite, is conveniently located next to Blacks Gap which was an animal trail through the mountains that Indians traveled as the only local route through South Mountain connecting the Great Valley to the Piedmont region. The trail also goes west towards the Juniata Sub-basin and through a lot of the archaeological areas located there and studied for the final report done by MacDonald. The rhyolite found at the Juniata Sub-basin clearly shows that the mines were definitely in use around 9,500 BC, (MacDonald).
During the early Archaic Period, rhyolite use and population stayed the same meaning no increase in trade. In the investigation at the Juniata Sub-basin 7% of tools and points that were found was rhyolite (MacDonald 60). In the middle Archaic population increased due to the evergreen forest turning into hardwood forest. Use of rhyolite increased within 2,000 years very dramatically. In the Juniata Sub-basin rhyolite increased from 7% to 32 % meaning trade increased. Rhyolite found at the Juniata Sub-basin is from Snaggy Ridge. In the late Archaic rhyolite increased to 38% of artifacts in the Juniata Sub-basin (MacDonald).
During the Transitional (or Terminal) Archaic Period, Indians mined Snaggy Ridge more often than Indians in other periods (Carr). During this period of 800 years the spear points styles being made required a hard rock with the ability to flake easier. "Rhyolite fits this criteria"(MacDonald 109). During this period was when the Susquehanna Broad Point was made. "Almost all Susquehanna Broad Points are made of rhyolite" (Fogelman 150). The Broad Points that were possibly made from rhyolite from Snaggy Ridge have been found in the Susquehanna River Valley, Juniata River, New Jersey, and Delaware. The Susquehanna Broad Points in these have a similar make. This leads to a theory that they were possibly made by the same tribe. This means that there could have been some control of the quarries (Carr).
During the Transitional (or Terminal) Archaic Period, the Indians developed the invention of the canoe. The canoe opened more trading opportunities. With the canoe Indians could take rhyolite as far as the rivers end, extending trade as far south as Virginia and West Virginia. During the Woodland Period, Indians still mined rhyolite from Snaggy Ridge, but the use decreased slowly until the arrival of the Europeans. Trade opened up to the Europeans and metal was being used by the Indians. There have been traces of rhyolite from Snaggy Ridge found on "islands on the Susquehanna River, Upper Delaware River, Potomac River, Shenandoah River in Virginia, Genesee and Mohawk Valleys in New York, and on the Delmerva Peninsula." (Fergus 30).
Indians for 11,000 years have been using Snaggy Ridge. This normal ridge in South Mountain is normal to us, but sacred and a gift from the Great Spirit to the Indians. Though how little known this quarry is to the public, it is far from little when looked at through history. From the rhyolite the first formed there, to the mining techniques and many uses of the rock by the Indians, to its trade to its final resting place all over the Mid Atlantic region, the ridge is rich in history. You'll never know what is in your backyard.
Carr, Kurt W, and James M. Adovasio.Ice Age Peoples ofPennsylvania. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2002.
Carr,KurtW. E-mail Interview. 19 Oct. 2007.
Fauth, John L. Geology of the Caledonia Park Quadrangle Area- South Mountain, Pennsylvania. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Geological Survey, 1992.
Fergus, Charles. Natural Pennsylvania: Exploring the State Forest Natural Areas. Mechanicsburg, PA. Stackpole Books, 2002.
Fogelman, Gary L. "Experiments on City Island." Indian Artifact Magazine. May. 2001: 24-25.
Fogelman, Gary L. Projectile Point Typologvfor Pennsylvania and the Northeast. Tubotville, PA: Fogelman Publishing Company, 1988.
Geasey, Spencer O, and Hettie L. Ballweber. "Prehistoric Utilization of the Highland Metarhyolite Outcrop in the Maryland Blue Ridge Province." Archaeology of Eastern North America #19. Attleboro, MA: Eastern States Archeological Federation, 1991. 108-112.
MacDonald, Douglas H. Pennsylvania Archaeological Data Synthesis: The Upper Juniata River Sub-Basin II (Watersheds A-D) Final Technical Report. Monroeville, PA: GAl Consultants, Inc, 2003.
Wilbur, C. Keith M.D. Indian Handcrafts. Guilford, CT: The Globe Pequot Press, 2001.
The son of Mr. and Mrs. Calvin Bricker Jr., Dakota, a senior in James Buchanan High School, presented information from his paper on the Snaggy Ridge Rhyolite Quarries to the historical society at its regularly scheduled meeting in January 2010. At the end of his senior year Dakota, who is entering Shippensburg University, received one of the Glazer Scholarships, the school 's award for the senior excelling in history, the Charles Brightbill Scholarship presented by the Fort Loudon Historical Society, and the Joan C. McCulloh History Award presented by the Mercersburg Historical Society; "
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MCH stands for "mean corpuscular hemoglobin" in hematology. Corpuscles are red and white blood cells. Hemoglobin is the oxygen-carrying pigment in red blood cells. Mean refers to the average weight of hemoglobin per red blood cell. High MCH means more hemoglobin than normal for a person's age and gender, which -- counterintuitively -- can indicate a particular type of anemia.
Corpuscles Prevent Corpsehood
Hemoglobin makes red blood cells red. It binds oxygen, allowing the blood stream to carry it to each cell in the body. All of your cells are completely dependent on oxygen for survival. When the capacity of blood to carry oxygen is diminished, it's called anemia. Anemia is usually associated with too little hemoglobin -- whether because there are too few red blood cells, or because each cell has less hemoglobin than normal. However, a small percentage of cases involve higher-than-normal hemoglobin.
Too Big and Failing
High MCH can be a sign of macrocytic anemia. "Macrocytic" means that the red blood cells are larger than normal, but "anemia" means that the overall amount of hemoglobin in the blood is lower than normal. So in macrocytic anemia, there's usually more hemoglobin per extra-large red corpuscle, but not enough red corpuscles or hemoglobin overall to get all of the body's cells the oxygen that they need.
These unusually large and heavy red corpuscles are often associated with deficiency or malabsorption of vitamin B12 and folate. Underlying causes can include liver problems, autoimmune diseases, severe hypothyroidism, bone-marrow diseases, use of certain medications and alcohol abuse. Megaloblastic macrocytic anemia means there's a problem synthesizing immature red blood cells in the bone marrow itself. Nonmegaloblastic macrocytic anemia can have a variety of causes that may occur at different stages of the red blood cells' life cycle. High MCH and macrocytic anemia are symptoms, not diseases in themselves. It's extremely important that you work with your physician to determine and treat the underlying problem.
A few conditions can give a false reading of high MCH, including hyperlipidemia -- high cholesterol plus high triglycerides; cold agglutinin disease -- a rare autoimmune disease; and hyperglycemia -- high blood sugar, such as in diabetes. Incorrect storage of blood samples can also cause false positive results for high MCH.
- Medical University of South Carolina: Mean Corpuscular Hemoglobin Determination
- Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center: Mean Corpuscular Hemoglobin (MCH)
- American Academy of Family Physicians: Evaluation of Macrocytosis
- Patient.co.uk: Macrocytosis and Macrocytic Anemia
- VascularWeb.org: Hyperlipidemia
- Patient.co.uk: Cold Agglutinins
- Chad Baker/Photodisc/Getty Images
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BIRD OF THE WEEK: August 7, 2015 SCIENTIFIC NAME: Ara rubrogenys
POPULATION: 670-2,700 adults
IUCN STATUS: Endangered
HABITAT: Dry inter-Andean valleys of south-central Bolivia
Found only in dry scrub forests of Bolivia, the handsome Red-fronted Macaw was adopted as a regional symbol of pride and identity in 2012, and now decorates official government vehicles and buildings.
Despite this increase in local awareness, this large parrot — like other macaws, including the Lear's, Blue-throated, and Military — is still in high demand by the illegal pet trade. Other threats include habitat loss, persecution as a crop pest, and contamination by pesticides applied to crops.
Since natural tree cavities are scarce in its habitat, the Red-fronted Macaw nests on steep-sided river cliffs. Its diet includes seeds and fruit, particularly cactus fruit, which provide both nourishment and moisture in its arid habitat. The macaws in turn serve as an effective seed disperser for the cacti.
Unfortunately, native food sources are often scarce because of habitat destruction for agriculture, grazing, or firewood. This leads the birds to feed extensively on cultivated crops, particularly corn, sometimes resulting in persecution by farmers.
Sign up for ABC's eNews to learn how you can help protect birds
Red-fronted Macaws form monogamous bonds with their mates and maintain them year-round. Adults and their young remain on the breeding grounds until May, then congregate in a few large flocks in agricultural areas.
Like other parrots, they are highly social and fly, forage, and roost in groups of up to 30 individuals.
With support from ABC, local partner Asociación Armonía established the 120-acre Red-fronted Macaw Nature Reserve to protect the largest known breeding colony of the species. An ecotourism lodge opened in 2006 with proceeds going to the local communities.
ABC and Armonía continue working together to reduce persecution and illegal trafficking of Red-fronted Macaws, which remains their greatest threat.
In cooperation with other partners, local communities, and municipalities, ABC has also helped designate two areas totaling 500,000 acres, in the heart of the Red-fronted Macaw's range, where agricultural development, timber extraction, and hunting are restricted.
Donate to support ABC's conservation mission!
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With multicolor, fringe-tipped petals in bold sunset red, yellow and orange all summer long, blanket flower (Gaillardia spp.) is a plant you'll want to include in a sunny garden. Blanket flower has two main species: an annual wildflower called Indian blanket (Gaillardia pulchella), and perennial blanket flower (Gaillardia aristata), which grows in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 3 through 8. There's also a hybrid mix of the two -- also called blanket flower (Gaillardia x grandiflora) -- a short-lived perennial in USDA zones 3 through 10. You collect seed to save for the next season's plants or to create more of the attractive perennials in the same way.
Monitor your blanket flowers in late summer, watching for the petals to fall and the remaining round center of the daisylike flower to turn white. The white is at the wide end of the cone-shaped seeds, which are packed tip-first into the round central seed head.
Put on garden gloves. The stems and seed heads are covered with small hairs, particularly on the annual variety, which can cause an itchy allergic reaction.
Snip off the seed heads with clippers. You can clip off the stems at their base to neaten the plant up for fall at the same time.
Roll the seed heads between your gloved hands over a bowl or paper bag to dislodge the dried seeds. Each seed head holds hundreds of the tiny seeds -- each 1/16 to 1/8 inch long, including the white tail.
Place the seeds in a paper envelope marked with the blanket flower variety.
Place 2 tablespoons of powdered milk or uncooked rice inside a small square of paper towel. Pull up the ends of the paper towel and secure them with a rubber band to make a bundle. Place the bundle in the bottom of a glass or plastic jar and place the seed envelope inside. Powdered milk or rice help keep the seeds dry and viable.
Store the jar in the refrigerator or other consistently cool place until planting time in early spring.
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The History of WHO
WHO is the first global health organization. It replaced or absorbed many regional and national health bodies.
In the latter half of the 19th century, after several severe cholera epidemics, a series of international sanitary conferences were held in Europe to coordinate policy and practice around quarantine and disease management. The League of Nations established a health organization in 1920, and there were regional bodies as well. But the establishment of the United Nations in 1945 marked a period of aggressive internationalism and international organization-building, and though health was not initially thought to be under the U.N.'s purview, a motion by the Brazilian and Chinese delegates to establish an international health organization was unanimously accepted. A group of health experts who were working on emergency relief in the wake of World War II were charged with the task of drafting a constitution to define the structure and mandate of the body that would become known as the World Health Organization.
The work of WHO is mainly carried out by a secretariat; secretariat staff are led by a director-general and work in areas identified by an executive board and ratified by an assembly.
The secretariat consists of thousands of health and other experts and support staff who work at headquarters, regional offices, and in member countries around the world. At the top of this bureaucracy is the director-general, who is elected for a five-year term. A new director-general, Dr. Jong-Wok Lee, was nominated by the executive board and elected by the assembly in May 2003. This native of South Korea was trained as a medical doctor in Seoul and completed a Masters of Public Health in Hawaii. He worked for WHO for 19 years before being elected to his current post.
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Students will be able to create dances to represent dreams.
- Ask students to share some of their dreams for the future. Ask them what they would like to be when they get older and what they would like to accomplish.
Explicit Instruction/Teacher modeling(20 minutes)
- Read aloud A Dance Like StarlightBy Kristy Dempsey.
- Have students turn to a partner and share what happened in the story.
- Ask students to share their retellings with the class, writing key details on the board.
Guided practise(10 minutes)
- Tell students that the girl from A Dance Like StarlightWent after her dream of being a ballerina.
- Explain that dance can be used to express emotions and dreams, just like the dreams of the girl in the book.
- Pick a dream of yours to represent through a dance (e.g. being a teacher). Compose a short dance to represent this dream.
Independent working time(15 minutes)
- Have students create their own dance to represent a dream.
- Hand out paper to students and have them draw pictures to record the steps of their dances.
Support: Provide more explicit modeling about possible dance moves that can be used to represent different dreams.
Enrichment:Have students write words to describe each step of their dance.
- Assess how students are composing dances and how they are representing their dreams through movement.
Review and closing(5 minutes)
- Call on pairs to share their dances with the class and explain how they relate to their dreams for the future.
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Black Cumin Benefits
Black Cumin Powder (Nigella sativa) of the Ranunculaceae family is one of the most commonly used medicinal plants throughout the Middle East. Black seeds are known to have many medicinal properties and are widely used in Greco-Arab and Islamic medicine. Nigella sativa seeds have been used for centuries as a spice and food preservative, as well as a protective and curative remedy for numerous diseases. The seeds are the main source of the active compounds of the plant. Here, we discuss dietary and medicinal uses of black cumin seeds in general.
Black seeds were used by ancient Egyptian and Greek physicians to treat nasal congestion, toothache, as a diuretic to promote menstruation, and to increase milk production. The seeds, known as black seeds, black cumin, or “Habatul-Barakah” in Arabic, have long been prescribed in Greco-Arab and Islamic medicine as well as in Indian and Chinese traditional medicine (Chapter 10) for prevention and treatment of a wide range of diseases, including bronchial asthma, headache, dysentery, infections, obesity, back pain, hypertension, and gastrointestinal problems.
Black Cumin Seeds
Black seed is one of the most famous herbs used in Islamic phytotherapy. In a famous adnth, the Messenger of AllIh said, “black seed is a cure for every disease except death.” In another tradition, we learn that the companions of the Prophet used to take five to seven black seeds, crush them, combine them with oil, and apply it to their nostrils. Ibn πabnb also confirms that the Prophet used to prescribe black seed as snuff. In a more detailed tradition, the Prophet Muham- mad said, “In black seed is a healing from every illness except al-sIm.” It was said, “O Messenger of AllIh, what is al-sam?” He replied, “Death.” Then he said, “These two [honey and black seed] are not predisposed to the heat or the cold or natural constituents, but they are both a healing wherever they are.” In another hadith, the Messenger of Allah said, “Let these black seeds fall upon you for they contain a cure for every disease except death.” He also said, “The best medicine is cupping, costus, and black seed.” According to Ibn Habib, the Prophet used to take black seed soaked in honey every morning and evening to preserve his memory and to fight phlegm.
Therapeutic potential and toxicological properties of the seeds have been extensively studied. In recent years, scientific journals have published numerous articles pointing to potential therapeutic properties N. sativa, including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, hypotensive, antinociceptive, choleretic, uricosuric, antidiabetic, and antihistaminic, immunomodulatory, anticancer, and antifertility effects.
Antioxidant Activity Oxidative damage to macromolecules and cellular structures is implicated in the pathophysiology of several diseases. The cause of this oxidative damage has been connected to an imbalance in the prooxidant (free radicals) and the antioxidant (scavenging) factors, either as a result of increased generation of free radicals caused by excessive oxidative stress or due to the poor scavenging capability in the body. Reactive oxygen radicals (ROS), produced mainly by macrophages and neutrophils, are electrically charged molecules that attack cells, tearing through cellular membranes to react and create havoc with the nucleic acids, proteins, and enzymes present in cells and tissues. Therefore, the interest in herbal- derived antioxidant agents and their use in preventing and treating these diseases have recently increased. One of the potential properties of N. sativa seeds is the ability of one or more of its constituents to reduce toxicity due to its antioxidant activities.
In vitro investigations reveal that the seeds have the following properties:
. Protection of erythrocytes against lipid peroxidation and protein degradation.
. Protection of laryngeal carcinoma cells from LPS/cortisol-induced apoptosis.
. Inhibition of the hemolytic activities of snake and scorpion venoms.
The following in vitro studies indicate that the observed antitoxic effects of the seeds could be attributed to their antioxidant properties:
. Pretreatment of LPS-activated peritoneal macrophages with aqueous extract of the seeds caused a significant decrease in nitric oxide (NO) production.
COMMONLY USED HERBAL MEDICINES IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
. Thymoquinone efficiently inhibited iron-dependent microsomal lipid peroxidation in vitro in a concentration-dependent manner.
. Thymoquinone induced significant protection of isolated hepatocytes against tertbutyl hydroperoxide induced toxicity evidenced by decreased leakage of L-alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and alkaline phosphatase (AP).
. Thymoquinone reduces at no toxic concentrations, NO synthesis, and decreases both gene expression and protein synthesis levels of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) in supernatants of LPS-activated macrophages.
. Activation of polymorphonuclear leukocytes with thymoquinone showed protective effects against superoxide anion radical either generated photochemically, biochemically, or derived from calcium ionophore, indicating to its potent
superoxide radical scavenger.
Üçal, Muammer, et al. “Comprehensive Profiling of Modulation of Nitric Oxide Levels and Mitochondrial Activity in the Injured Brain: An Experimental Study Based on the Fluid Percussion Injury Model in Rats.” Journal of Neurotrauma, vol. 34, no. 2, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., Jan. 2017, p. 475.
Üçal, M., Kraitsy, K., Weidinger, A., Paier-Pourani, J., Patz, S., Fink, B., … Schäfer, U. (2017). Comprehensive Profiling of Modulation of Nitric Oxide Levels and Mitochondrial Activity in the Injured Brain: An Experimental Study Based on the Fluid Percussion Injury Model in Rats. Journal of Neurotrauma, 34(2), 475.
Üçal, Muammer, Klaus Kraitsy, Adelheid Weidinger, Jamile Paier-Pourani, Silke Patz, Bruno Fink, Marek Molcanyi, and Ute Schäfer. 2017. “Comprehensive Profiling of Modulation of Nitric Oxide Levels and Mitochondrial Activity in the Injured Brain: An Experimental Study Based on the Fluid Percussion Injury Model in Rats.” Journal of Neurotrauma 34 (2). Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.: 475.
Healthy immune system
The complex fatty acid profile
Supports cardiovascular health
Help support hair, nails, and skin.
Decrease inflammation throughout the body
Helps with allergies
Ingredients: Wild harvested Black Seed
Parts Used: Raw Black Seed
Forms: Two ounces of powder or 60 vegetable capsules (550-600 mg).
How to use:
Powder: Take one tsp of dried powder in 8 oz. of favorite juice or smoothie, two times a day.
Capsules: Take 2-4 capsules a day with water or a favorite beverage.
The gel caps we use are Vegicaps (vegetable) and are all-natural. No Animal By-Products, Starch Free, Wheat Free, Dairy Free, Preservative Free, Ethylene Oxide, and Sulfite FREE!
Legal Information: The Food and Drug Administration has not evaluated these statements. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Copyright ©2020, All rights reserved
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Battle of Guilin–Liuzhou
The Battle of Guilin–Liuzhou (simplified Chinese: 桂柳会战; traditional Chinese: 桂柳會戰; pinyin: Gùilǐu Huìzhàn), also known as the Battle of Guiliu was one of the 22 major engagements between the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) and Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
This battle was the third of the three-part Battle of Henan-Hunan-Guangxi, also known as Operation Ichigo. As part of the said Operation, a major aim of this attack was to connect the pieces of Japanese-held territory, and also, to destroy airbases in the area which were housing USAAF aircraft.
Starting on 16 Aug 1944, the Japanese 11th and 23rd Armies began to move into the northeastern region of the Guangxi Province. The total of 120,000 Chinese troops fought an effective delay action campaign that did not allow the 150,000 Japanese troops to reach Guilin (Kweilin) and Liuzhou until 1 Nov. Guilin and Liuzhou were defended largely by troops who had recently retreated from the Fourth Battle of Changsha, therefore not only under-strength but also morale-broken.
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Yesterday while standing in a long line with Maggie, I came up with a word game to pass the time. It turned out to be pretty fun, and I played a few rounds with Kathy later on as well. Here’s how it works:
- Player one selects a starting word.
- Play then alternates between player two and player one, each trying to create a new word by adding, subtracting, or changing a single letter.
- Once a word has been used once, it’s off-limits — you can’t use it again in that session.
- The player who is unable to come up with a valid move loses the round.
- Valid moves are limited to words in the dictionary. No proper nouns may be used.
- Special starting rule: if player two can’t think of a valid move from the starting word, then player one must be able to make a valid move from that word, or she loses the round. (This prevents player one from starting with “antidisestablishmentarianism”, for example.)
Example play session:
- P1: CAT
- P2: COAT
- P1: COATS
- P2: COTS
- P1: CODS
- P2: CODA
- P1: CODE
- P2: CODED
- P1: CODES
- P2: MODES
- P1: MODEL
- P2: MODELS
- P1: YODELS
- P2: YODEL
- P1: can’t think of anything, so P2 wins the round
Try it out, and let me know what you think!
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apple a day keeps the doctor away” We all know about this quote. We also
familiar with the apple, and we know it has enormous health benefits. Apple is
the most popular fruits around the world. What makes it so unique? What is its
health benefits? Why does the doctor suggest an apple every day?
Apples contain a rich amount of antioxidants, flavonoids, fiber. The antioxidants may help to lower the risk of cancer, diabetes, and heart diseases.
Here are the 7 Amazing Health Benefits of
Apples contain Nutrients
are considered the powerhouse of nutrition. If a person drinks two cups of
fruits, it contains a 2000 calories diet. But if a person eats a medium size of
an apple, it contains, Vitamin c 15%, fiber 5 grams, potassium 7%, vitamin K
6%, calories 96 and carbs 30.
you know apples contain the fear amount of polyphenols? To get the best
benefits from apples to leave the skin on and eat it.
Apple is good for Weight Loss
makes apples so special? It has high fiber and water. According to the study,
the people who eat an apple before the meal they feel fuller than other people.
If a person eats an apple every day, they get 200 calories than who don’t eat
A study shows us drinking a glass of apple juice is helpful to lose weight. It has high fiber, which is essential to losing weight.
Lower the Risk of Stroke
Apples have many benefits, and one of them is good for your heart. Apple contains high fiber, which is suitable for the cholesterol level. A study shows us, people who ate fruits a day including apple, they are developing their blood pressure.
also contain polyphenols, which are essential for the heart. So, eat an apple
every day and reduce the risk of heart diseases.
Lower the Risk of Diabetes
A different study showed who eat an apple every day they are less suffered from debates. Another research shows us it lowers the risk of diabetes 28%. Even having 3-4 apples per week has the same result.
contains polyphenol antioxidant, which helps to prevent the tissue cell.
Apple May Help Prevent Cancer
studies show apple cure cancer. Apple ranks second to barries antioxidant. The
antioxidant helps to cure cancer. However, Italian studies found that eating an
apple every day lowers the risk of colorectal cancer. Even several studies
found eating apple once a day prevents lung and prostate cancer.
Good for Bone Health
fruits is give a good bone. The researcher found the antioxidant and
anti-inflammatory of fruits are the reasons behind the strong bone.
One study shows us, especially apple, is good for the bone. People who eat apples they lost less calcium from the body. Which is really good for the health.
Apple May help to Protect Your
juice may help you to age-related mental decline. The brain is the most
valuable part of the human body. Without the mind, the human is nothing but a
doll. Apple juice may give you a healthy brain with a powerful memory. Our mind needs some relaxation. Do you wanna know more about
mind relaxation? You can visit sunshine
Apple is suitable for human, and eating an apple
every day may lower the risk of major diseases like cancer, debates, heart
problem. So, eat an apple every day to live a healthy life.
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The Fridrich method or the CFOP method (cross, F2L, OLL, PLL) is a fast method for solving the Rubik’s Cube created by Jessica Fridrich. It consists of four. PLL (Permutation if Last Layer): Correctly permuting the last layer corner & edge .. the F2L, know the Full PLL and 2 look OLL, and finally go for the full OLL too. So I’m really new to all these terms. Can someone explain to me what the acronyms PLL / OLL / and F2l mean? (And any others that exist).
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How to Speedsolve the Rubik’s Cube
If you perform each algorithm as quickly as humanly possible, you don’t leave yourself much time to analyse the cube and isolate the next corner-edge pair you want to solve. There are lots of algorithms for doing this, but I like this one the best. Lol step is called CPLLas it aims to permute the corners – that is, move them to their correct positions like this:.
How to Solve the Rubik’s Cube. First Two Layers In general this refers to the solving of the first two layers of the cube in one step by forming cross and then inserting corner edge pairs. This can’t be solved as simply, but the idea is exactly the same.
Archived from the original on 26 September Members Current visitors New profile posts Search profile posts. This idea of finding an empty space on the cube and pkl it to build a corner-edge pair is crucial to F2L, as of course you want to be able to construct each of the four F2L pairs without disturbing any previously solved ones.
COLL and CLL both mean different things to other cubers, and sticking to convention makes things a lot easier for everyone involved. Solve the wooden ball puzzle How To: Why don’t you give it a try – go to the timer pageset inspection time to 15 seconds and see if you can produce a solution to the cross plk in your head. If you had no correct edges in your last layer, you can just use one of the above lpl anyway, like with the corners in the previous step.
F2L OLL PLL | Rubik | Pinterest | Cube, Rubiks cube algorithms and PLL
The first algorithm either requires you to shift your hand position to twist the F face or start using some peculiar thumb movements. There are five such cases that you should learn the algorithmic solution for, and they’re all in this nice little table:.
I’ve been putting the cross at the top. Speedcubing Guide So you’ve gone through the beginner’s method a few times, and maybe you can solve the cube unaided every time.
PLL gets the same treatment, as we’ll be permuting the corners first and then the edges. That’s called 2-look PLL. This page was last edited on 17 Decemberat This page was last edited on 17 Decemberat But sometimes it can be advantageous to disturb unsolved spaces by choosing a space to build your corner-edge pair that also assists the creation of the next pair.
And to add on to all of ;ll – I get the Olp method I think.
How to Speedsolve the Rubik’s Cube – CFOP Method Explained
It takes practise, and the next little section is all about how to be better at F2L. Even though you can already solve this case using the beginner way, I would take the time to practise and learn this algorithm now. I’m at about 1: This might seem like a trivial difference to you, but each little pause adds up, and when you’re trying to really push down your solve time every second counts. I can’t ever see myself making ‘homemade’ algorithms.
It’s ok, no olp has to know. But you could also place the white-red piece by doing this: You will have to rely on them in practically every solve until you learn every other F22l and PLL algorithm, which will take you some time and effort. Have a go on your cube, and see if you can work out how to solve any of the pairs. I’m pretty sure that’s how I’ve been solving it. You aren’t satisfied with people standing around for 2 minutes while you solve it because that guy at the office didn’t believe you.
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Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is an infection spread by tick bites and is endemic in mainland Europe and Scandinavia, as well as Asia. Most people who catch TBE will not have any symptoms, though it can cause flu-like symptoms and in a small number of cases can progress to more serious disease involving the central nervous system. The risk from TBEV is currently assessed as very low for the general population.
The findings are part of ongoing research by Public Health England (PHE) and the Emerging and Zoonotic Infections National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Protection Research Unit at the University of Liverpool
Dr Mara Rocchi of the Moredun Research Institute who contributed to the study says:
“TBEV might have been brought to the United Kingdom on migratory birds, such as blackbirds and redwings, which are known to transport ticks over wide distances. Our main finding is that TBEV is likely to be established and maintained in specific areas of the UK."
A TBEV infection stimulates the production of antibodies that are very similar to those generated by the Louping ill virus. As such, researchers at Moredun carried out a comparative study with Louping ill in more than 1300 deer to help identify the location of deer populations where the TBEV virus may be prevalent
Dr Rocchi says:
“Despite a large number of samples having originated in Scotland, the prevalence of antibodies to Louping ill virus in deer was much lower than that detected in Norfolk, and no TBEV-positive ticks were found."
The virus has been detected in a small number of ticks in Thetford Forest, the largest lowland pine forest in Britain located in a region between the north of Suffolk and the south of Norfolk in England. The virus has also been found in a region between Hampshire and Dorset. Further work is under way to identify the distribution of TBEV infected tick populations.
Dr Nick Phin, Deputy Director, National Infections Service, Public Health England, said:
“Tick-borne encephalitis virus, which is endemic in many European countries, has been found for the first time in a very small number of ticks in two locations in England. These are early research findings and indicate the need for further work; however, the risk to the general public is currently assessed to be very low."
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This article was adapted from the official release from Public Health England: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/tick-borne-encephalitis-virus-detected-in-ticks-in-the-uk
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Our school ethos is value driven with good values taught integrally to all that we do. We want all our children to grow up valuing themself, others and the environment.
Values are principles that guide behaviour. At Rugby Free Primary School all adults are encouraged to model values and to give time for reflective practices. We believe that this empowers individuals to be effective learners and good citizens.
We promote and teach values to our pupils with British Values being a particular focus, however alongside this, we have six key school values which we focus on one of in depth each half term.
Each half term begins with a special values Assembly focusing on the half terms focus value. Throughout the half term, we particularly celebrate children’s behaviour which embraces this value.
Our Key School Values are:
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A recent conversation with a colleague found us discussing the topic of firemanship. What is it that makes one a good fireman and how can we work to become better at this trade? The fire service is a dynamic craft that requires mastery in many disciplines. Our success is rooted in a few broad areas, which we attempted to break down. This discussion resulted in the development of the Pillars of Firemanship. Behind the haughty name is a simple idea. The five pillars are the general areas which support our craftsmanship. Each of us is stronger or weaker in certain areas, but true mastery requires holistic improvement. We must focus on strengthening our weak points, while maintaining our strengths. A deficit in any domain will stunt our growth or, worse, lead to the gradual collapse of our abilities as a whole.
The 5 Pillars are:
1. Knowledge – Knowledge of methods. Book smarts.
2. Skill – Ability to practically apply knowledge in the field. Requires countless repetitions/experience.
3. Humility – Recognition of one’s constant need for improvement. Checking your ego.
4. Wellness – Mental and physical fitness. Exercise, sleep, nutrition.
5. Mettle – Ability to face difficult situations with resiliency. Push through challenges and succeed.
These five traits support one another in our career development. They are all connected and none is more important than another. By understanding this, we can take an objective view at our own performance to identify weaknesses and correct them.
Knowledge is the foundation for our fireground abilities. It is one of the two traits, the other being skill, which we must attain after entering the fire service. The majority of our fire service knowledge is acquired after joining the trade. Our basic knowledge is developed during initial academy training. We then build on it with continued education throughout our career. Knowledge includes the contents of textbooks, like IFSTA manuals. It also includes data, like that obtained from research by UL and NIST. With that said, we must realize that knowledge alone will not give us the ability to perform on the real-world fireground. That is where skill comes into play.
Skill is the ability to combine learned knowledge with experience and practically apply it in the field. Experience is obtained from a few sources. Our initial experience is gained by proxy through our senior firefighters and officers. They impart years of field tried and tested experience upon us. They correct our textbook methods and teach us the right way to do things in the real world. Though it may be written off as anecdotal, handed-down experience proves to be accurate and effective. As our time on the job increases, we develop our own experience. This may come in the form of actual fires or in training. To master the skills of our trade, we must complete hundreds or thousands of repetitions. Reps on the drill ground will always pay dividends on the fireground. Experience gained during training should not be discounted. At the same time, we tend to be terrible at gauging our own level of experience. This is where humility becomes a factor.
The human mind is a fickle thing. To approach a given scenario and complete the necessary task, we must have some measure of confidence in our knowledge and skill. We build this confidence through completing repetitive skill evolutions. Yet, without care our ego can allow our confidence to exceed our ability. This can lead to ignorance of our weaknesses and the progressive decline of our skillset. In the words of Epictetus, “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” We must find a balance by regularly checking our ego.
Keeping a personal skill log is one way I try to keep an accurate measure of my experience or lack thereof. This is a tally of specific skills performed and lessons learned on runs and in training. It allows me to look back on tangible data and see the number of times I’ve performed a skill in the last six months, rather than guessing based upon memory. Generally, our memories give us more credit than we deserve.
Another excellent way to keep your ego in check is to get out of your local fire service bubble. Train with other companies, shifts, or departments. Attend classes in other counties or states. Leave your departmental safe space. You are sure to encounter individuals who are more skilled than you in every area of the fire service. This is a great way to remind yourself that you have room to grow. Plus, you’ll meet new peer mentors to gather knowledge and experience from. By keeping our egos under control, we retain the ability to expose the areas where we are lacking (knowledge, skill, wellness) and continue our self-development.
Wellness is much more than being able to run far or pick up heavy weights. It encompasses our physical and mental fitness as a whole. Exercise is a major factor for sure. All the knowledge and skill in the world is worthless if you can only work for five minutes before becoming gassed. We must have a firm foundation of basic strength balanced with aerobic conditioning to work for extended periods. Too much strength training will erode our conditioning and vice-versa. There is no general workout plan for the fire service as a whole. A fitness regimen must be tailored to each individual’s strengths and weaknesses.
Yet, wellness goes beyond exercise. Our bodies our complex machines. In order for them to perform well, we must consume the right fuel. You wouldn’t put straight gas in a chainsaw and expect it to run long. This doesn’t mean that we have to swear off ice cream or cookies. Have one bowl instead of two. Moderation is key. We must also allow our body and mind to recover. Engage in relaxing activities off-duty and get adequate amounts of sleep. We may need to decompress by talking about tough calls or frustrations with peers. Once again, nutrition and sleep requirements vary between people. Without getting technical, if you feel like crap most of the time, something is off. Find what works best for you.
The final Pillar, perhaps the most important, and the hardest one to learn. Mettle is the ability to face difficult situations, push through the challenge, and succeed. Mental toughness and resiliency are other ways to describe mettle. When things get tough in a workout, training, or real-world scenario, mettle is the attribute that allows us to ignore the hardship and persevere. As important as physical wellness is, our mind usually makes us quit long before our body is truly exhausted. The human mind seeks out comfort and safety, but to improve we must face hardships and challenges. Mettle allows us to switch off the comfort-seeking voice in our brain.
Developing mettle requires dedication and determination to a cause. If you are determined to run more and improve your endurance, you’ll get up earlier to go for a run. If you want to get more reps in throwing ladders, you’ll fit it in where you can, even if it means training alone after dark. If you want to complete a tough evolution, you’ll dig deep and make it happen.
Considering a few influential senior men in my career, mettle is the trait found between them. None are powerlifters or marathon runners. They aren’t health food gurus. Yet, time and time again I’ve seen them work circles around firefighters half their age. Part of that may be wisdom through years of skill acquisition, allowing them to perform their given assignment with no wasted effort. However, some of it must be attributed to a determined work ethic and resiliency. The will to work until the job is done, regardless of how tired they may feel.
Resiliency and mental toughness can be developed over time. There is specific training directed at helping you overcome your mind. There are also resources outside the fire service, particularly from the military, to guide you in improving your mental performance.
In closing, we must realize that firemanship encompasses more than one’s ability to stretch a line, recite a textbook definition, or deadlift twice their bodyweight. It is a sum of many parts and true mastery of the craft requires a balanced and holistic approach. We must be willing to admit where we fall short in order to improve. We should help others whose weakness may be one of our strengths and, likewise, seek to learn from those who excel where we are deficient.
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Comet Pan-STARRS slices through the night sky like a bright blade of light in this stunning image by an amateur astronomer.
Skywatcher Joseph Brimacombe captured this comet photo on May 23 from New Mexico using a FSQ 10.6-cm and STL11K camera at 10h 07m UT (mid-point). The image was taken in a single 30-minute exposure.
In this image, the comet Pan-STARRS' anti-tail can be seen stretching to the right. The anti-tail is one of the three tails that appears to come from a comet as it passes close to the sun. It's called the anti-tail because, when viewed from Earth, it appears to project from the comet's coma (or head) toward the sun. This makes it opposite to the other tails of the comet, the ion and dust tails. [See more amazing photos of comet-Pan-STARRS by stargazers]
Comet Pan-STARRS, named after a telescope in Hawaii, is thought to have an elliptical orbit around the sun that creates an 110,000-year path. The comet was discovered in June 2011 by astronomers using the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), a telescope that searches for near-Earth objects from a perch atop Haleakala volcano in Hawaii. The comet is officially known as comet C/2011 L4 Pan-STARRS.
On March 10, the comet made its closest approach to the sun, flying within 28 million miles (45 million kilometers) of the star before heading on its way back to the outer solar system.
Comet Pan-STARRS is one of several comets in the night sky in 2013. Later this year, the much-anticipated Comet ISON will make its closest approach to the sun and could potentially become the "comet of the century" if it lives up to the expectations of some astronomers.
Comet ISON was discovered in September 2012 by amateur astronomers in Russia and will approach within a mere 800,000 miles (1.2 million km) of the sun on Nov. 28 during its pass through the inner solar system. If the comet survives the encounter, it could flare up into a brilliant night sky object, potentially shining as bright as the full moon seen in daylight conditions.
But the comet could also fizzle out, so astronomers are keeping close tabs on Comet ISON to track its progress.
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(RxWiki News) Whether you're ready for them or not, the winter months are upon us. It's time to make sure your family knows how to stay safe and healthy this winter.
Follow these steps to keep yourself and your family safe this winter.
Cold temperatures can cause your body to lose heat. As a result, you may be at risk of developing hypothermia or frostbite. Some people are at a higher risk for hypothermia or frostbite. Those at higher risk are older adults, those who stay outdoors for long periods and infants sleeping in cold rooms.
To stay safe, dress appropriately when you head outside. Proper dress may include the following:
- A warm hat
- A scarf or knit mask to cover your face and mouth
- Sleeves that are snug at the wrist
- Mittens (instead of gloves because mittens are warmer than gloves)
- A waterproof and windproof coat
- Waterproof boots
- Warm socks, such as socks made of wool
- Several layers of loose-fitting clothing (an inner, middle and outer layer)
- For the inner layer, opt for clothes made of wool, silk or polypropylene. (avoid cotton)
- For the middle layer (insulation layer), aim for clothes made of wool, goose down or fleece.
- For the outer layer, opt for a coat that is breathable and rainproof and windproof.
In addition, make sure to cover parts of your body that are more likely to be affected by frostbite, such as the ears, cheeks, chin, fingers, nose and toes.
The early stage of frostbite is called frostnip. It is marked by the following signs:
- Red and cold skin (the skin may start to turn white but is still soft)
- Tingling and/or stinging
Signs and symptoms of hypothermia include the following:
- Feeling cold (possibly with shivering)
- Slurred speech or mumbling
- Feeling very sleepy
- Shallow breathing
If a loved one is experiencing hypothermia or frostbite, seek immediate medical attention.
Prepare Your Home
As the temperature drops, more people tend to stay indoors. As a result, it is even more important to prepare your home for the winter months.
Be sure to do the following:
- Have your heating system serviced by a professional to make sure it is clean, working properly and adequately ventilated to the outside.
- Examine fireplaces and chimneys
- Make sure your smoke detector is working properly. Test batteries each month and replace them twice a year.
- Make sure your carbon monoxide (CO) detector is working properly to alert you if the deadly, odorless, colorless gas is present in your home. Check that the batteries work. A good way to remember this is to change the batteries when you change your clocks in the fall and spring. To protect your family from carbon monoxide, be sure to keep camp stoves and generators out of the house, basement or garage.
- Insulate your home by installing weather strips around windows and doors.
Be Safe During Travel and Outdoor Recreation
Walking on ice is very dangerous. In fact, many weather-related injuries are due to falls on ice-covered steps, driveways and even porches. Make sure to keep your walkways and steps free of ice. Cat litter and sand may help reduce the risk of slipping.
Also, remember that cold weather makes the heart work harder. If you have heart disease or high blood pressure, be sure to take extra caution and follow your doctor’s advice about performing hard work in the cold, such as shoveling snow. Work slowly and do not overdo it with your outdoor chores.
If you will be engaging in an outdoor activity like hiking, notify your friends or family of where you will be and your expected time of return.
Written By Anyssa Garza, PharmD, BCMAS
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is an architectural pattern, which at the same time is also a Multitier architecture, used in software engineering. In complex computer applications that present a large amount of data to the user, a developer often wishes to separate data (model) and user interface (view) concerns, so that changes to the user interface will not affect data handling, and that the data can be reorganized without changing the user interface. The model-view-controller solves this problem by decoupling data access and business logic from data presentation and user interaction, by introducing an intermediate component: the controller.
MVC Pattern description
It is common to split an application into separate layers: presentation (UI), domain logic, and data access. In MVC the presentation layer is further separated into view and controller. MVC encompasses more of the architecture of an application than is typical for a design pattern.
The domain-specific representation of the information that the application operates. Domain logic adds meaning to raw data (e.g., calculating whether today is the user’s birthday, or the totals, taxes, and shipping charges for shopping cart items).
Many applications use a persistent storage mechanism (such as a database) to store data. MVC does not specifically mention the data access layer because it is understood to be underneath or encapsulated by the Model.
Renders the model into a form suitable for interaction, typically a user interface element. Multiple views can exist for a single model for different purposes.
Processes and responds to events, typically user actions, and may invoke changes on the model.
MVC is often seen in web applications, where the view is the actual HTML page, and the controller is the code that gathers dynamic data and generates the content within the HTML. Finally, the model is represented by the actual content, usually stored in a database or XML files.
Though MVC comes in different flavors, control flow generally works as follows:
1. The user interacts with the user interface in some way (e.g., presses a button).
2. A controller handles the input event from the user interface, often via a registered handler or callback.
3. The controller accesses the model, possibly updating it in a way appropriate to the user’s action (e.g., controller updates user’s Shopping cart).
4. A view uses the model (indirectly) to generate an appropriate user interface (e.g., the view produces a screen listing the shopping cart contents). The view gets its own data from the model. The model has no direct knowledge of the view.
5. The user interface waits for further user interactions, which begins the cycle anew.
By decoupling models and views, MVC helps to reduce the complexity in architectural design, and to increase flexibility and reuse.
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Stop cancer with the mighty bean
(Health Secrets) If you are worrying about cancer, including beans in meal planning could go a long way to ease your mind. Research has shown that beans and other legumes work in many ways to stop cancer, and provide plenty of other health benefits as well.
Beans belong to the legume group of vegetables, which includes lentils and pulses. Most of the health benefits to be gotten from eating beans extends to the entire group.
The link between eating beans and lowered risk of cancer was established several years ago. In a broad reaching study using data from 41 countries, researchers found that eating beans reduced incidence of death from breast, prostate and colon cancer. As the years have gone by, more and more studies have linked bean eating with reduced risk for many other types of cancer.
Eating beans stops breast cancer
More recently data from the Nurses Health Study II, among the largest and longest running investigations of factors influencing women’s health, was evaluated to see which flavonol-rich foods were protective of breast tissue in premenopausal women age 26 to 46. Researchers found that among the major food groups tested, beans and lentils were most protective, while tea, onions, apples, string beans, broccoli, green pepper and blueberries showed no ability to provide protection.
The 4 Corners Breast Cancer Study was unique in having Hispanics, Native Americans, and non-Hispanic white women as participants. Scientists found a relationship between consumption of beans and a reduction in breast cancer risk in Hispanic women consuming a native Mexican diet characterized by high bean and other legume intake. These women showed a breast cancer risk only two-thirds that of non-Hispanic whites eating the typical American diet high in processed foods, red meat and sugar.
Beans and other legumes are a food staple in many regions of the world, where they are consumed quite frequently and in large quantities to provide low glycemic energy, protein and fiber. Almost across the board, incidence of breast cancer is significantly lower in these regions.
Men can benefit from frequent bean eating too
Lifestyle factors play a role in a diagnosis of prostate cancer, just as they do in a diagnosis of breast cancer. French researchers assessed the association of fiber and prostate cancer in 3313 men followed for a median time of 12.6 years, during which 139 developed prostate cancer.
When the researchers compared men in the highest quartile of consumption of dietary fiber, such as found in beans and other legumes, to consumption of men in the lowest quartile, they discovered that risk of prostate cancer was cut almost in half in those eating the most beans and other legumes. However, no association between lower prostate cancer risk and consumption of cereal, vegetable and fruit fiber was observed. Study authors suggested the mechanism of action was reduction of inflammation.
Beans stop renal, gastric and colon cancer
Plant-based fiber-rich foods such as beans and legumes have a positive effect on renal (kidney) carcinoma and the chronic conditions associated with it, according to recent research. Significantly lowered risk of renal cell carcinoma was observed in those eating beans and other high fiber foods.
People eating dried beans, other legumes, and bean soup show a significantly reduced risk of colon cancer. Data from the Polyp Prevention Trial indicated that eating more beans provides strong protection against recurrence of colon polyps.
Women who ate four or more servings of beans and other legumes weekly had their risk of colon cancer lowered by one-third, in a study with 35,000 participants. A related study found that people who once had colon cancer were able to reduce their risk of recurrence by 45 percent by frequent bean eating.
There’s a secret at work in these studies
What’s the secret that lets beans turn out results like these? It’s called inositol hexaphosphate, or IP6 for short, and it’s a powerful cancer fighting compound found in abundance in beans. Another feature of beans known as inositol pentakisphosphate (IP10) is so powerful that was found to inhibit the growth of tumors in mice all by itself!
Beans top the list in antioxidants
Beans and all the legumes are anti-aging superstars because of their high antioxidant levels. Pinto, kidney and red beans fill three of the four top slots for overall best antioxidant protection, beating out other fruits and vegetables, according to the Department of Agriculture. If they had rated black beans, they surely would have taken the fourth slot.
Why these particular beans? As it is throughout the plant world, color is key. The darker and more intense the color, the greater the antioxidant protection to be had by those eating them.
Beans are a terrific protein source. Add some cheese to make a complete protein. Beans are super versatile, and a pound of organic beans can be bought for about a dollar. What could be better?
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This Life Cycles lesson plan also includes:
- Join to access all included materials
Students explore the parts of a flower and pollination of flowers. For this plants lesson, students use an interactive whiteboard to label the parts of a plant and the functions of each part. Students complete a worksheet as an assessment.
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The greatest testament to the importance of eating locally can be found in a tomato
Bite into a good one, picked straight from the vine, and you may not recognize the tangy sweetness. That's the flavor that comes from fresh-from-the-field produce, and it's part of Don Wambles' argument for eating homegrown foods. "Because of the freshness and the taste, it's so much better than [food] I can find at a grocery store," says Wambles, a longtime farmer, the current director of the Alabama Farmers Market Authority, and president of the nonprofit Farmers Market Coalition.
These days, there's a lot of talk of buying fresh and eating locally, and the swelling local food movement has people from Washington State to Washington, D.C., vowing not to eat food grown more than a couple hundred miles from their homes. Meanwhile, according to a 2006 U.S. Department of Agriculture survey, there are more than 4,000 farmers markets in the United States. "It's estimated that local food will be a $7 billion part of the food market," says Jennifer Wilkins, PhD, RD, director of Cornell University's Farmers Market Nutrition Program. "It's still a very small part of the overall food market, but it's growing." The trend has gained such steam that the New Oxford American Dictionary named "locavore"—a term describing a person who eats locally grown food—its 2007 word of the year.
Taste is the most tangible advantage—just think of those firm and flavorless supermarket tomatoes. But intensified flavor hints at a bigger—and better—aspect of eating food that was grown nearby: increased nutrient levels. "Produce that is allowed to ripen in the field generally has a higher vitamin C content," says Sue Nicholson Butkus, PhD, RD, extension nutrition specialist with Washington State University's nutrition education program. "The reality is that if you get tomatoes right out of the field, the vitamin C content is higher, as well as other nutrients. And I would believe that would hold true for other produce, too."
Picking and shipping methods play a major role in the nutrient content of produce. The fruits you purchase at your local supermarket were likely grown in far-off places, harvested prematurely, gassed to prevent ripening, and then transported thousands of miles. According to a 2000 study published in the journal Postharvest Biology and Technology, extended periods of time in storage, elevated temperatures, and bruising all contributed to lower levels of vitamin C in fruits and vegetables. The study also showed that prematurely picked produce that ripened in transit or on store shelves (think tomatoes, apricots, and peaches) had lower levels of vitamin C than its field-ripened counterparts. So even if a faraway grower handles your Chilean plums without the slightest bump or bruise, your produce is still being picked early and spending a great deal of time getting to you.
Local produce, Wilkins notes, is typically grown for its taste and nutrition instead of ease of transport. It's handled by fewer people and sold within 24 hours of being picked ripe from the vine. For this reason, many locavores choose farmers market fruits and vegetables (which aren't necessarily organic) over organic produce shipped in from out of state—or across the globe. And then there is the matter of selection. "If [supermarkets] have tomatoes, they have tomatoes," says Wambles. "If you go to the farmers market, they may have eight or nine varieties. Your selection usually is much greater." You also may find a bigger assortment of less common produce, like Jerusalem artichokes, kohlrabi, tart cherries, and parsley roots.
Of course, one of the primary reasons Americans have started jumping on the local eating bandwagon has to do less with chemistry and more with psychology. "It's the taste and the freshness that draws them back, and they eat more of it. They subconsciously become healthier eaters," says Wambles. That, and you're not tempted to buy seven frozen dinners just because they're on sale. "If you look at the food that's available at a farmers market, it's like the whole center of a supermarket is gone," says Wilkins.
But shopping at a farmers market isn't just about buying food. It's about making connections with the farmers who grow what you eat. Ask the supermarket checkout clerk for tips on cooking with kale, and the most you may get is an awkward stare. But with local producers, inquire about growing methods, produce varieties, and suggested recipes, and you'll get cooking tips and background on how your food was grown.
In the end, there's a deeper meaning associated with eating locally that supersedes the convenience of quickly crossing off items on your grocery list. And that can go beyond one's personal experience. "When we have to ship food long distances it takes a lot of fossil fuels to get it from point A to point B," says Wambles. "Here in America, our food takes an average of 1,500 miles [to get to the supermarket]." Purchasing from local farmers creates less pollution from transportation and in turn reduces your carbon footprint. You're also supporting growers who observe sustainable farming practices instead of the few industrial farms that churn out meat and produce in high volume. (These megafarms are also the culprits behind unhealthy meat production; there's a greater chance that your local farmer raises antibiotic- and hormone-free, pasture-raised chickens, cows, and pigs.) Many locavores are driven by economics, too. "One hundred percent of what you pay for goes to the farmer," says Wilkins. By supporting nearby farms, you're breathing life into your local economy.
For Wambles, a trip to the farmers market makes for a synergy among all of these virtues. The local eating experience just can't be replicated at the supermarket, he says. Butkus agrees. "It's so important that [you] enjoy eating," she says. "I can't think of any other way to enjoy it than to bite into a fresh apple."
The recipes on these pages make the most of that experience, with a summertime feast that capitalizes on what the farmers market has to offer. The menu is easy, allowing you and your guests plenty of time to linger at the table—and to dwell on the pleasures of eating locally.
If trekking to the farmers market isn't an option, consider joining a community supported agriculture (CSA) program. Available in many places throughout the United States, CSAs allow you to support local farmers by purchasing weekly shipments of just-picked fruits and vegetables. While each CSA operates differently, most trade your membership payment for bundles of their farmed goods. Before you commit, weigh the benefits and drawbacks. Some may find that the amount of food provided each week is too much to use. Others love that they don't have to go out of their way to purchase good-for-you foods. "For people with diabetes, it's probably very advantageous," says Washington State University's Butkus. "It's there. If you don't eat it, it spoils." And there's also that spiritual component, she adds: "a higher connection to the seasons." Check out www.localharvest.org to find a CSA in your area.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between an Ophthalmologist, an Optometrist and an Optician?
· An optometrist is a Physician who assists patients with the health of the eyes and related health issues. Optometrists are trained to treat and prescribe medication for many eye health diseases. An optometrist is also trained to prescribe glasses or contact lenses to improve vision.
· An ophthalmologist is a medical doctor specially trained to treat and perform operations on the eyes.
· An optician is a specialized practitioner who designs, fits and dispenses lenses for the correction of a person's vision. Opticians determine the specifications of various ophthalmic solutions-from prescription, to eyeglass frames and lens technology-that will give the necessary and best correction to a person's eyesight.
Can all three-ophthalmologist, optometrist and optician-perform an eye exam?
Only an ophthalmologist and optometrist can perform a comprehensive eye exam.
Why is a regular eye exam so important?
Eyes are the windows to your health.
An eye care provider can spot signs of certain health problems -- not only eye disorders like cataracts and glaucoma, but also systemic illnesses like diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease. Sometimes the signs of these diseases are visible in, on, or around the eyes long before other symptoms appear. Even if you have 20/20 vision, a comprehensive eye exam can be a measure of a person's overall health. The eyes are the only part of the body where arteries and veins can be viewed without having to perform surgery. Eye care providers can see signs of stroke, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, brain tumors and multiple sclerosis, to name a few.
In addition, they can determine whether a person with age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, retinitis pigmentosa, or cataracts is suffering also from low vision, which is a condition associated with these age-related eye diseases.
What does an eye exam consist of-are there certain things the eye care provider sees when he/she looks into a patient's eyes?
Ideally, the eye examination consists of an external examination, followed by specific tests for:
· Visual acuity (the ability to detect fine details and is the quantitative measure of the eye's ability to see an in-focus image at a certain distance
· Pupil function (how light enters the retina)
· Extraocular mobility (do the eyes move easily up, down, left and right)
· Visual fields (what is the extent of vision in the peripheral field)
· Intraocular pressure (does the patient show signs of glaucoma)
· Ophthalmoscopy through a dilated pupil (allows the doctor to see the interior of the eye-retina, optic disc, macula and fovea, and posterior pole)
What are people talking about when they mention the 20-20-20 rule?
A 2012 survey by The Vision Council found that nearly 70 percent of U.S. adults experience some form of digital eye strain while using their electronic devices. Throughout the day, it's a good idea to let your eyes relax by focusing on something other than the computer screen. An easy practice is to use the 20-20-20 rule: Every 20 minutes, take your eyes off your computer and look at something 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds.
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Haematuria is the presence of blood in the urine.
Blood that you can see in the urine is called macroscopic haematuria, the urine may appear pink, red, or cola coloured. It takes very little red blood cells in the urine to produce red urine. Urinary blood that’s visible only under a microscope is known as microscopic haematuria and is found when your doctor tests your urine. Either way, it’s important to determine the reason for the bleeding.
Causes of blood in the urine includes:
Your doctor may organise further tests to work out the cause of blood in the urine. These include:
Urine tests: the morphology of red cells in the urine can be examined under the microscopic to determine if the red cells are filtered through the glomerulus or caused by bleeding from the urinary tract. Urine testing can also check for urine infections or the presence of cancer cells in the urine.
Imaging tests: Your doctor might recommend a computerized tomography (CT) scan, which uses radiation and a powerful computer to create cross-sectional images of the inside of the body; or an ultrasound exam. Ultrasound uses a combination of high-frequency sound waves and computer processing to produce images of your kidneys and bladder.
Cystoscopy: a narrow tube fitted with a tiny camera is inserted into the bladder to closely examine both the bladder and the urinary tract for signs of disease
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