text
stringlengths 174
640k
| id
stringlengths 47
47
| dump
stringclasses 15
values | url
stringlengths 14
1.94k
| file_path
stringlengths 125
139
| language
stringclasses 1
value | language_score
float64 0.65
1
| token_count
int64 49
156k
| score
float64 2.52
5.34
| int_score
int64 3
5
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Step 1. Explain the concept
In most social-change situations there is a struggle between those who want the change and those who don’t. On the one hand, there are people who are active supporters of the change—not just people who believe in the change but people who are taking actions to make it a reality. On the other hand, there are people who are active opposers, people who actively take actions to prevent the change.
In activist work, we often are focussed on those two groups — yet most people are somewhere between. Societies (towns, provinces, etc.) include a range of groups that can be put on a spectrum from closest to the point of view of your group to farthest away. This spectrum of allies illustrates this point.
The goal of the spectrum of allies is to identify different people—or specific groups of people—in each category, then design actions and tactics to move them one wedge to the left.
Step 2. Explain benefits of this tool
Good news: in most social-change campaigns it is not necessary to win over the opponent to your point of view. It is only necessary to move the central pie wedges one step in your direction.
This is important. If we shift each wedge one step, we are likely to win, even if the hardliners on the other side never move. That means our goal is not to convince the fossil fuel industry to end themselves. Instead, it is moving the rest of the society to shut them down.
Often activists have the mistaken idea that they need to win everyone to their side (which invites despair), or that we need to change the fossil fuel industry or other people actively fighting against the campaign (again inviting despair). When organisers bring an optimistic attitude, instead of one of despair, to the task of mobilisation, it is a lot easier to get people on board.
The Spectrum of Allies also reminds us there is a need for many roles. Different actions will reach folks at different places in the spectrum, so there are many ways to support a campaign, from lobbying politicians to marching in the streets.
This tool also evaluates our work. Can we show that we are measurably moving some segment of people over to our side? If not, we need to rethink our strategy.
Step 3. Fill out the chart
This tool is even useful for small groups. Take some time to fill out the chart with specific people and groups. Note that you need to be specific to make this tool work. “The public,” for example, is far too broad to reach, and your strategy will suffer as a result. Instead, identify specific groups—groups that have a phone number, or an address –– a group you could attend a meeting of, or meet with a leader. Think of specific individuals, both politically influential, but also socially influential, like elders and community leaders. (Read more about power-mapping.)
Step 4. Review learnings and lessons
Share reflections and lessons in the whole group. The group may realise it needs to do more research. Or it may have important, interesting debates about where people are on the spectrum.
Other lessons include:
- It is a huge win if you can get a group that was slightly hostile to move into neutrality.
- It is a huge win if you can get the group/wedge next to your end of the spectrum to move into activism.
- It is usually not necessary to move the opponents a step toward you in order to win, although it can make the win happen faster.
- This tool can identify areas of research by showing where you need to know more.
- It can show the importance of mapping out a range of people: those who are directly impacted by the situation, people who think of themselves as your allies, and people who are “powerholders” (government officials, etc). All of those people may be spread out across the spectrum so it is important to notice their range and how some of them may help you focus your efforts and support different aspects of your organising.
Notice which slices your group knows a lot, or a little, about. This shows which groups you should try to meet with in order to know more about that wedge of the spectrum of allies. Create a plan to reach out to them.
For example, Jordanian activists fighting for an expansion of public transportation realised they wanted to involve people who rode buses, but didn’t know them. So they hung out at bus stops and rode the bus to initiate one-on-ones with hundreds of people, to hear their opinion and insights. (Read more about their campaign here.) | <urn:uuid:64b28051-fe47-4d9a-8e99-3460f39f871e> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://trainings.350.org/resource/spectrum-of-allies/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510528.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20230929190403-20230929220403-00102.warc.gz | en | 0.954798 | 954 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Global Volcanism Program | Image GVP-01126
The Arjuno-Welirang volcanic complex (left) and the smaller Gunung Penanggungan volcano (right) are seen here from the SE across a broad valley from the summit of Tengger caldera. A chain of small cones and craters extends across the Arjuno-Welirang complex, while the flanks of the small Penanggungan stratovolcano contain lava flows from flank vents.
Photo by Lee Siebert, 1995 (Smithsonian Institution).
This image is made available under the Public Domain Dedication CC0 license, but proper attribution is appreciated. | <urn:uuid:70c8de6e-fad5-4675-91eb-e4368c62fdf7> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://volcano.si.edu/gallery/ShowImage.cfm?photo=GVP-01126 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510528.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20230929190403-20230929220403-00102.warc.gz | en | 0.78818 | 138 | 2.875 | 3 |
- NSF-PAR ID:
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Remote Sensing
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
Beavers have established themselves as a key component of low arctic ecosystems over the past several decades. The data presented here document the occurrence, reconstruct the timing, and highlight the effects of beaver activity on a small creek valley confined by ice-rich permafrost on the Seward Peninsula, Alaska. We analyzed very high resolution satellite imagery to digitize beaver dams and stream channels from the years 2006, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2021. We also acquired Uncrewed Aircract System (UAS) imagery on 06 August 2021 and created a 5 centimeter (cm) resolution orthophoto mosaic and a 15 cm resolution digital surface model. Our data show that beaver engineering between 2006 and 2021 caused a systems-level response to a small tundra stream that promoted lateral expansion of the creek valley into an ice-rich permafrost hillslope and development of a diffuse network of stream channels expanding the area of potential beaver engineering in the future. The datasets support the findings presented in this accepted paper - Jones, B.M., K.D. Tape, J.A. Clark, A.C. Bondurant, M.K. Ward Jones, B.V. Gaglioti, C.D. Elder, C. Witharana, and C.E. Miller. Accepted. Multi-dimensional remote sensing analysis documents beaver-induced permafrost degradation, Seward Peninsula, Alaska. Remote Sensing.more » « less
Arctic landscapes are in a state of transition due to changes in climate occurring during both the summer and winter seasons. Scattered observations indicate that beavers (Castor canadensis) have moved from the forest into tundra areas during the last 20 years, likely in response to broader physical and ecosystem changes occurring in Arctic and Boreal regions. The implications of beaver inhabitation in the Arctic and Boreal are unique relative to other ecosystems due to the presence of permafrost and its vulnerability associated with beaver dams and inundation. Our study specifically examines the role of beavers in controlling surface water dynamics and related thermokarst development in low Arctic tundra regions. We mapped the number of beaver dams visible in sub-meter resolution satellite images acquired between 2002 and 2019 for a 100 square kilometer study area (12 years of imagery) near Kotzebue, Alaska and a 430 square kilometer study area (3 years of imagery) encompassing the entire northern Baldwin Peninsula, Alaska. We show that during the last two decades beaver-driven ecosystem engineering is responsible for the majority of surface water area changes and inferred thermokarst development in the study area. This has implications for interpreting surface water area changes and thermokarst dynamics in other Arctic and Boreal regions that may also result from beaver dam building activities. This geospatial dataset provides polygon vector files representing surface water area in a 100 square kilometer study area located near Kotzebue, Alaska. Surface water area maps were created using sub-meter resolution satellite imagery for the years 2002, 2007-2014, and 2017-2019. Image selection focused on cloud-free, ice-free, and calm surface water conditions with images being acquired between late-June and mid-August in a given year. All images were resampled to a spatial resolution of 70 centimeter to match the lowest resolution image in the time series prior to analysis. Within year image dates range from 25 June to 22 August with the average date of image acquisition being 17 July (table 1). Object-based image analysis was conducted in eCognition Essentials 1.3.more » « less
The 2015 spring flood of the Sagavanirktok River inundated large swaths of tundra as well as infrastructure near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Its lasting impact on permafrost, vegetation, and hydrology is unknown but compels attention in light of changing Arctic flood regimes. We combined InSAR and optical satellite observations to quantify subdecadal permafrost terrain changes and identify their controls. While the flood locally induced quasi‐instantaneous ice‐wedge melt, much larger areas were characterized by subtle, spatially variable post‐flood changes. Surface deformation from 2015 to 2019 estimated from ALOS‐2 and Sentinel‐1 InSAR varied substantially within and across terrain units, with greater subsidence on average in flooded locations. Subsidence exceeding 5 cm was locally observed in inundated ice‐rich units and also in inactive floodplains. Overall, subsidence increased with deposit age and thus ground ice content, but many flooded ice‐rich units remained stable, indicating variable drivers of deformation. On average, subsiding ice‐rich locations showed increases in observed greenness and wetness. Conversely, many ice‐poor floodplains greened without deforming. Ice wedge degradation in flooded locations with elevated subsidence was mostly of limited intensity, and the observed subsidence largely stopped within 2 years. Based on remote sensing and limited field observations, we propose that the disparate subdecadal changes were influenced by spatially variable drivers (e.g., sediment deposition, organic layer), controls (ground ice and its degree of protection), and feedback processes. Remote sensing helps quantify the heterogeneous interactions between permafrost, vegetation, and hydrology across permafrost‐affected fluvial landscapes. Interdisciplinary monitoring is needed to improve predictions of landscape dynamics and to constrain sediment, nutrient, and carbon budgets.
Increasing air temperatures are changing the arctic tundra biome. Permafrost is thawing, snow duration is decreasing, shrub vegetation is proliferating, and boreal wildlife is encroaching. Here we present evidence of the recent range expansion of North American beaver (
Castor canadensis) into the Arctic, and consider how this ecosystem engineer might reshape the landscape, biodiversity, and ecosystem processes. We developed a remote sensing approach that maps formation and disappearance of ponds associated with beaver activity. Since 1999, 56 new beaver pond complexes were identified, indicating that beavers are colonizing a predominantly tundra region (18,293 km2) of northwest Alaska. It is unclear how improved tundra stream habitat, population rebound following overtrapping for furs, or other factors are contributing to beaver range expansion. We discuss rates and likely routes of tundra beaver colonization, as well as effects on permafrost, stream ice regimes, and freshwater and riparian habitat. Beaver ponds and associated hydrologic changes are thawing permafrost. Pond formation increases winter water temperatures in the pond and downstream, likely creating new and more varied aquatic habitat, but specific biological implications are unknown. Beavers create dynamic wetlands and are agents of disturbance that may enhance ecosystem responses to warming in the Arctic.
Beaver engineering in the Arctic tundra induces hydrologic and geomorphic changes that are favorable to methane (CH4) production. Beaver-mediated methane emissions are driven by inundation of existing vegetation, conversion from lotic to lentic systems, accumulation of organic rich sediments, elevated water tables, anaerobic conditions, and thawing permafrost. Ground-based measurements of CH4emissions from beaver ponds in permafrost landscapes are scarce, but hyperspectral remote sensing data (AVIRIS-NG) permit mapping of ‘hotspots’ thought to represent locations of high CH4emission. We surveyed a 429.5 km2area in Northwestern Alaska using hyperspectral airborne imaging spectroscopy at ∼5 m pixel resolution (14.7 million observations) to examine spatial relationships between CH4hotspots and 118 beaver ponds. AVIRIS-NG CH4hotspots covered 0.539% (2.3 km2) of the study area, and were concentrated within 30 m of waterbodies. Comparing beaver ponds to all non-beaver waterbodies (including waterbodies >450 m from beaver-affected water), we found significantly greater CH4hotspot occurrences around beaver ponds, extending to a distance of 60 m. We found a 51% greater CH4hotspot occurrence ratio around beaver ponds relative to nearby non-beaver waterbodies. Dammed lake outlets showed no significant differences in CH4hotspot ratios compared to non-beaver lakes, likely due to little change in inundation extent. The enhancement in AVIRIS-NG CH4hotspots adjacent to beaver ponds is an example of a new disturbance regime, wrought by an ecosystem engineer, accelerating the effects of climate change in the Arctic. As beavers continue to expand into the Arctic and reshape lowland ecosystems, we expect continued wetland creation, permafrost thaw and alteration of the Arctic carbon cycle, as well as myriad physical and biological changes. | <urn:uuid:e1f0c657-c519-4b9a-aaac-0c0df0812edb> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10308478-multi-dimensional-remote-sensing-analysis-documents-beaver-induced-permafrost-degradation-seward-peninsula-alaska | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510734.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20231001005750-20231001035750-00002.warc.gz | en | 0.912308 | 1,909 | 3.015625 | 3 |
By Mitsunari Kanai, 8th Dan, Shihan
Chief Instructor of New England Aikikai (1966-2004)
Conclusion: Develop Eyes to Differentiate False and Truth
At the core of the practice of Aikido, more than anything else, is a continuous hard training and disciplining of one’s body and mind in order to develop wisdom. In the event of a confrontation,beast-like behavior aimed solely at protecting oneself and injuring the opponent must beavoided at all costs. To develop the determination to resolve a confrontational situation with omniscience and omnipotence (that is, using not merely technique but applying the entirety ofone’s abilities and wisdom) is BUGOKORO (Budo’s spirit/mind).
One must realize that Aikido isneither more or less than the expression and embodiment of this Bugokoro.YAMATOGOKORO is what Aikido AdvocatesBecause Aikido includes the elements of BUGI (combat techniques), it is inevitable that, attimes, the Aikido practitioner must face the possibility and the reality of confrontational circumstances. If one seriously and continuously probes into the reality of coming face-to-facewith an opponent in a show-down situation where one’s very existence is at stake, that is,where one’s survival means the opponent’s defeat or vice versa, and if one were to fully and openly recognize the inter-relation between oneself and the opponent, it would lead one to discover the most logical and efficient fighting techniques.
It is nonetheless true, however paradoxical it may seem, that in pursuing the perfection of thisprinciple, one will eventually arrive at a harmonious state, born from the insight that no matter how strong one is, one cannot continue to exist if one tries to fight against all existence.
This is the “Way” (or process) to reach harmony as advocated by Aikido.One should bear in mind, however, while trying to understand or attain the principle of harmony, that without going through the internal transformational process that begins in the state of confrontation and only after working through a critical process eventually arrives at thestate of non-confrontation, there can be no Budo.
Under normal conditions, living things live in groups, not alone. A basic feature of social existence is the development of relative descriptions or comparisons, for example, strong versus weak. Each being tries to use its individual qualities to best advantage in light of its relative strengths and weaknesses. The process that eventually led to Budo began with efforts to compensate for weakness by developing specific qualities (for example speed, or strength,or size, or facility in using weapons). Therefore, under normal conditions, living in the world leads at times to confrontational situations, and developing increasingly effective techniques for facing such confrontations eventually leads to the realization that there is always someone or something bigger or stronger than oneself.
Ultimately one realizes that the most effective defense is to merge with and become part of the opponent. This is how the principle of confrontation evolves into the principle of non-confrontation.Yamatogokoro is the idea that the reason for developing martial arts is to protect those who are unable to protect themselves from aggressors. | <urn:uuid:f212ba79-6b4d-4962-af78-5119d8853581> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | http://aikidolaforge.com/en/technical-aikido-conclusion/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510967.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20231002033129-20231002063129-00802.warc.gz | en | 0.946294 | 694 | 2.671875 | 3 |
- Clear away brain fog
- Ignite your digestive fire
- Rev up your energy
Your immune system is one of the most critical, and most fascinating, aspects of the mind-body connection. For a long time, the ability of immune cells to attack invading disease organisms was considered purely physical, even though the mechanism was not completely understood.
Then, in the ‘80s it was discovered that the immune system is highly intelligent; it became known as “a floating brain” because of the ability of immune cells to participate in the chemical messages sent by the brain throughout the body. This means that your thoughts, moods, sensations, and expectations are transmitted to your immune cells. When you meditate, these messages change in important ways.
Consider these research findings that offer very good news for anyone who mediates.
- Since your immune system responds to both negative and positive thoughts, meditation creates a positive mental environment for the immune system to flourish. This study showed a reduction of pro-inflammatory gene expression in older adults.
- A UCLA study shows that HIV positive patients who practice mindful meditation slow down the reduction of their CD-4 cell count. These are the immune cells that are associated with keeping the virus from propagating.
- Meditation boosts antibodies. A recent study confirmed that, after being given weekly meditation training for 8 weeks, 48 biotech workers had significantly higher levels of antibodies than the control group (coworkers who didn’t meditate) as well as higher levels than before the study.
- Meditation stimulates immune system brain-function regions. Mindfulness meditation has shown increases in electrical activity in the prefrontal cortex, the right anterior insula, and right hippocampus, all parts that control positive emotions, awareness, and anxiety. These are also the areas of the brain that act as a command center for your immune system. When stimulated, they make the immune system function more effectively.
These findings bring into focus a clear message: Your response to potential illness, as managed by the immune system, improves with meditation. This is in keeping with another strong message. Being susceptible to chronic disorders like type-2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and high blood pressure, conditions that are not the result of invading microbes, is also reduced through meditation. The entire mind-body system is brought into a natural state of balance, the key to what I’ve called the higher health.
Medical science proceeds through findings that provide reliable data, and we actively support such research at the Chopra Center. But your lifestyle isn’t a scientific experiment, of course, so what kind of program can you adopt that focuses specifically on preventing illness, especially in winter?
- Keep up regular meditation morning and evening.
- Reduce and avoid stress, since the immune system is easily compromised when stress hormones surge.
- Seriously address low-level chronic stresses that may be present at home or work. You are not helping your immune status by putting up with constant “minor” stress.
- Get adequate sleep, which is directly connected to brain function and hormone levels.
- Wash your hands several times a day, and always after direct contact with someone else’s skin. Doctors who make sure to wash their hands after seeing every patient reduce hospital-borne infections by more than 50 percent.
Enhance these basic steps by following seasonal Ayurvedic recommendations, too. The ancient wisdom of Ayurveda is especially appropriate when looking at how foods, herbs, massage, and other applications lead to perfect balance. Yet, at the very core is meditation—the most important and powerful way to strengthen every aspect of the mind-body connection.
Are you ready to experience the healthiest version of yourself? There exists in you a place that is free from disease, never feels pain, is ageless, and never dies. This place is called Perfect Health. Journey there with Oprah and Deepak as they reveal the secrets to lifelong wellbeing. Register for free. | <urn:uuid:f9c9c9f6-d2a5-483a-a4e4-dd6cf9ec66d8> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://chopra.com/articles/how-meditation-helps-your-immune-system-do-its-job | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510967.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20231002033129-20231002063129-00802.warc.gz | en | 0.950169 | 812 | 2.640625 | 3 |
A fictional character is a person who appears in a narrative. They may be based on real people, but they are often distinct from one another. In writing, a fictional character must fulfill certain essential qualities in order to become a memorable and interesting character. Here are four of those qualities. Then, we’ll explore the physical world of fictional characters. Hopefully, they’ll help you create a memorable fictional character. And remember, if you like a fictional character, you’ll want to find out more about it.
A literary property, also called a set, refers to the set of properties that correspond to an object or group of objects. It is important to note that fictional characters are not real objects. Their properties are the same, but they are not identical to each other. For example, a fictional character might have the same appearance as a real object. In this case, the fictional character would be a non-human. In other words, a fictional character could be a living creature or an animal.
The question of whether a fictional name refers to a fictional character is central to the semantic debate about the nature of fiction. A realist would argue that fictional names refer to fictional entities. However, this theory is problematic in several ways. The first problem with it is that it assumes an identity relation between a fictional name and a fictional character. Furthermore, it assumes a relation that is not problematic. Furthermore, this view also presupposes that a fictional name is a representation of a fictional character.
Developing motivation for fictional characters is a crucial part of creating a realistic story. Without character motivation, the plot will not be as believable as it could be. When a fictional character is motivated by a specific goal, the reader is more likely to relate to the character, which makes the story more believable. Character motivation also plays a significant role in making characters likable. There are many different ways to use motivations for fictional characters to enhance the story and make it more believable.
Character motivations can be divided into positive and negative. The former is proactive, while the latter is reactive. The protagonist’s central goal is often a solution to a problem. The protagonist’s scene motivations are often dependent on the plot of the novel. These motivations push the protagonist to complete a certain scene. A writer may have two protagonists with the same backstory, but they might have different motivations for solving each problem.
According to a new study, people form emotional attachments with fictional characters and make similar judgments about their personalities as they do about real people. The study, conducted at the University of Florida, investigates the concept of assumed similarity, or the tendency to associate similar traits with someone we don’t know. The research involved 56 fictional characters from the popular “Game of Thrones” book series and TV show. Participants were asked to rate the characters’ personality traits according to commonly studied factors.
One resource for identifying fictional characters is the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator. This test involves four different pairs of personality traits: extroversion, sensing, intuition, and openness. Each pair represents a different personality style. These four types are based on Carl Jung’s theory. The four types are different, and a fictional character may have a few of them. If a character shares many traits with a real person, they are likely to be more interesting than a fictional one.
The physical world of a fictional character or entity lacks the same inherent existence as the real world. It does not exist according to the nonexistence datum, so no empirical evidence can be offered to support such a claim. It is also impossible for a fictional entity to be a physical object. Therefore, any observation of an entity or object in the fictional world must be based on perception, not on scientific observation. Therefore, we must resort to speculation.
A fictional character can be influential for many reasons. For example, many people who were inspired to pursue careers in education were motivated by Robin Williams’ portrayal of Mr Keating in the film Dead Poets Society. Another character who inspired many to consider careers in the health care field was Ellen Pompeo, who became a nurse after reading Harper Lee’s novel Atticus Finch. But is there a relationship between the type of fictional character that a person likes and their personal beliefs?
Interestingly, this relationship is stronger for fictional characters than for real people. When we identify with fictional characters, we are more likely to experience the same emotional and mental states as the characters we identify with. We may also draw on our vMPFC to evaluate the character at a later time. However, the opposite is true as well. A fictional character is often perceived as being less important than a real person, and a fictional character may have a negative impact on our perception of a real person.
WikiProject Fictional characters aims to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of fictional characters. It supervises the creation of individual character articles, lists of characters, and general articles about characters. It also develops guidelines for articles about fictional characters. Its main goals are to improve coverage and provide sources that indicate a fictional character’s notability. You can learn more about this project and its goals on the WikiProject wiki. | <urn:uuid:c8189daf-49ed-4889-9a51-185d9b460810> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://conceptualhub.com/4-qualities-of-a-fictional-character/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510967.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20231002033129-20231002063129-00802.warc.gz | en | 0.970579 | 1,083 | 3.078125 | 3 |
What to Do Following a Diagnosis
Genetic testing focuses on individual mutations in genes, large genetic changes in chromosomes, and the levels and activity of certain proteins or enzymes. Testing can help identify the presence of a genetic disorder before or after a patient experiences symptoms. It can help provide a diagnosis, determining the chances of passing these disorders down to your children, acquiring genetic counseling, and informing treatment strategies.
Amazingly, genetic testing has been found to be able to detect heart disease, Celiac disease, Parkinson’s disease, cystic fibrosis, sickle-cell disease and trait, Wilson Disease, Tay-Sachs Disease, Stickler Syndrome, Noonan Syndrome, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Alport Syndrome, bipolar disorder, age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetes, psoriasis. Genetic cancer testing has also been successful in identifying certain forms of cancer, including breast and ovarian cancer.
How to Manage a Positive Genetic Result
If a genetic test has revealed that you have one of the conditions listed above, you may feel confused, scared, or concerned about how it will impact your daily life. Your response to a diagnosis can significantly impact your recovery and long-term outcomes, so it's important to take steps to properly care for yourself during this time. Here are a few things you can do after a diagnosis to help pave the path to recovery:
1. Take Time to Absorb the Diagnosis
Denial, anxiety, anger, fear, guilt, and grief are all normal reactions. Allow yourself to experience these emotions and work through them in a healthy way rather than fighting against them.
2. Create a Strong Support System
Reach out to your family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues so they can help you work through your diagnosis.
3. Set Boundaries
After learning about your diagnosis, others may offer advice, share stories, or provide encouragement. Setting boundaries is crucial for protecting yourself and can greatly impact your mental wellbeing.
4. Educate Yourself
Some people want to learn as much as possible about their condition, while others can find that overwhelming. Be sure to critically evaluate anything you read, and speak with your doctor if you are unsure about where to find the right sources.
5. Avoid “What If” Scenarios
After receiving your diagnosis, you will probably have to wait for more comprehensive information about your condition and treatment options. It can be challenging but avoid spending time imagining “what if” scenarios, as this only adds to stress.
Get Help When You Need It
Receiving a diagnosis for a genetic disorder can lead to a whirlwind of emotions. While it may initially be daunting, a diagnosis can also be empowering, allowing you to identify potential issues, take proactive steps to manage them, and learn to cope and adapt with your condition. | <urn:uuid:a8faa216-31b3-40ce-b258-7c3842a27899> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.healthhelpzone.com/health_guide/what-to-do-following-a-diagnosis-57090121.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510967.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20231002033129-20231002063129-00802.warc.gz | en | 0.936416 | 586 | 3.140625 | 3 |
People have always learned by doing. The Building To Teach program uses the hands-on building process to help students improve their math skills and get on a path to work-readiness. We've seen great things happen when kids build something real, whether its boats, buildings, even guitars. They learn planning, communication and responsibility–all critical job skills. They discover abilities they didn't know they had and gain confidence. And, they learn math and come to see it as a useful tool in their lives. If you teach math and want to engage your students at a deeper level, come build with us!
Visit the Building to Teach Blog to find out more.
Joe YouchaDirector, Building To Teach
Clay Maitland, Chairman | <urn:uuid:d8761f06-0611-4cd2-bc04-55a563cf8066> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.maritimetv.com/Featured-Content/Maritime-TV-Upcoming-and-Recent-Webcast-Events/Building-To-Teach/VideoId/4070/making-epoxy-and-joining-the-plywood-panels | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511075.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20231003092549-20231003122549-00702.warc.gz | en | 0.971703 | 157 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) affects the large intestine (colon) and can cause bloating, abdominal cramping and a change in bowel habits. Some patients with IBS have constipation while others have diarrhea. Some people go back and forth between the two. Although IBS is uncomfortable, it does not harm the colon.
IBS is common and more frequently affects women than men. No one knows the exact cause of IBS, but most people can control symptoms with a change in diet, medicine and stress management.
Symptoms of IBS
- Pain or cramping in the abdominal area
- Mucus in the stool
- Uncomfortable bloating
Risk Factors of IBS
- Being female—more women are diagnosed with IBS than men.
- Family history—People with a close relative, such as a parent or brother or sister, with IBS are at higher risk for IBS. It is unclear as to whether the risk results more from shared genetics or a common environment.
- Being under 35 years of age—At least half of all people who are diagnosed with IBS are under 35 years of age.
Even though IBS is not harmful, it can be confused with other conditions. IBS symptoms may be similar to other diseases such as Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis or even colon cancer. It is imperative that you see a doctor if you have significant changes in your bowel habits because IBS symptoms could be an indication of a more serious problem.
Tests to Diagnose IBS
There are no physical signs to diagnose IBS, so diagnosis usually occurs by a process of elimination. To be diagnosed with IBS, the most important symptom is abdominal pain that lasts at least 12 weeks (not necessarily consecutive). Other criteria include mucus in the stool, bloating, bowel straining and urgency and changes in the stool.
If a diagnosis of IBS seems fairly certain, a doctor may recommend treatment without any testing. If there are any reasons for concern, however, a doctor may recommend one or more of the following procedures.
- Colonoscopy- A test that examines the lining of the entire colon to check for polyps, inflammation and abnormalities.
- Flexible sigmoidoscopy- A procedure that uses a flexible tube to examine the the lower part of the colon.
- Computerized tomography (CT) scan- this test will show a cross-section of the internal organs and help diagnose other issues.
- Lactose intolerance tests- if lactase is not present in the body to break down milk sugar, you may exhibit some of the same symptoms as IBS such as cramping, bloating, constipation or diarrhea. This test can help differentiate between lactose intolerance and IBS.
- Blood test- Celiac disease, an allergic reaction to gluten, can have similar symptoms to IBS. A blood test can help exclude celiac disease.
Treatment for IBS
There is no cure for IBS, so the goal is to manage the symptoms.
- Controlling the diet—some people discover that certain foods will trigger IBS symptoms. Common triggers include alcohol, chocolate, carbonated beverages, certain fruits or vegetables or milk. Keeping a food journal and recording foods that cause constipation or diarrhea can be helpful.
- Stress management—like many other diseases and conditions, stress can make IBS worse. Planning ahead, making lists, meditating, taking time to relax and avoiding stressful situations can prevent aggravation of symptoms.
- Fiber supplements—Taking fiber supplements can help control constipation.
- Anti-diarrheal medications
- Anticholinergic medications—these drugs can help control painful intestinal spasms.
Medication for IBS
- Alosetron (Lotronex)—this medication was approved by the FDA, removed from the market, and now is approved again with restrictions. Alosetron helps relax the colon and slow down the bowels. It is only used when diarrhea is the prominent symptoms, and usually used when all other treatments have failed.
- Lubiprostone (Amitiza)—this drug increases fluids in the small intestine to help move the stool. It is generally only prescribed for patients with severe constipation when other treatments have been ineffective. | <urn:uuid:89ffdc0d-4772-4539-aa7c-b7c277e19e15> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://collegeheightsendoscopy.com/condition/irritable-bowel-syndrome-ibs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511386.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20231004152134-20231004182134-00602.warc.gz | en | 0.915962 | 915 | 2.796875 | 3 |
If you’re an avid scuba diver, you’re probably all too familiar with decompression sickness (DCS)—more commonly known as the bends—a disease that can strike astronauts, divers, and others, and arises after inadequately recompressing after changes in pressure gradients. In the marine environment, scientists long thought that many diving vertebrates—like sea turtles and marine mammals—were immune to DCS through various adaptations. That all changed when scientists discovered that beaked whales exhibited DCS conditions, similar to humans, after stranding years ago in association with military activity. And now, for the first time, new research shows that the bends can strike sea turtles, too.
In a new study recently published in Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, a team of international researchers found that sea turtles can in fact experience DCS after being brought to the water’s surface too quickly after incidental capture in fishing gear, commonly known as bycatch. The researchers studied 67 loggerhead sea turtles caught as bycatch in trawl and drift gillnets off Spain’s east coast, and discovered that nearly half (29 individuals) showed DCS symptoms of varying severity—including unconsciousness, inability to move their flippers, or death.
“This study is unique in many aspects. It is actually the first time that DCS is demonstrated in sea turtles, and actually the first time this pathological entity is confirmed (not just suspected) in any breath-holding diver through the clinical reversion of symptoms and gas re-absorption under hyperbaric treatment,” lead study author Dr. Daniel García Párraga told Oceana. “So, first we demonstrate that the condition can occur—when it was previously unclear if this animal could really decompress—and second we demonstrate we can treat affected individuals and make them survive.”
After sea turtles are brought aboard after becoming caught in fishing gear—such as on the hooks of longlines or in the nets of trawling vessels—they are typically released back into the ocean if they appear healthy. But, this study shows that sea turtles can suffer from DCS symptoms after being thrown back overboard—indicating that there is yet another threat to sea turtles beyond capture in fishing gear, say the authors.
“Even if they are surfaced alert and active after hours of immersion, the turtles could be forming bubbles as a consequence of gas off,” says Dr. García Párraga. “This brings up another potential cause of death for this animal, revealing that certain fisheries could be causing higher mortality rates than previously estimated and that certain protocols recommending direct release of awake and active by caught turtles captured in certain fisheries should be revised.”
Bycatch in commercial fishing activity is one of the greatest threats to sea turtles. Some estimates say that 63 million pounds of marine life are caught as bycatch each year—a figure that includes sea turtles, according to Oceana’s Wasted Catch report. In fact, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program reports that as many as 200,000 loggerhead sea turtles and 50,000 leatherbacks are caught each year. Because bycatch can often go unreported if there is not an observer on vessels, assessing cumulative mortality and injury rates from bycatch is difficult.
Since sea turtles are now found to be susceptible to the bends after capture in fishing gear—adding another element to preexisting effects of bycatch like death or outward injury from fishing gear—this study opens the door for modifications to fisheries and sea turtle management, as well as future studies on this topic.
“Now is the time to determine the real impact of DCS on the different fisheries, how many animals are affected, how many of them develop lesions, and how many die as a consequence of the interaction. This will allow us to propose mitigation measurements in order to minimize lethal interactions, limiting total times or depths of submersion for instance, or empowering the use of Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs),” says Dr. García Párraga.
Oceana is working to reduce bycatch of sea turtles and other marine life through a number of outlets. Oceana advocates for fishing gear modifications—such as the inclusion of TEDs that allow sea turtles to escape from fishing nets after being caught—as well as switching to more sustainable fishing gear. Oceana also pushes for fisheries activities to be halted when sea turtles are present in the area, as well as urging for fishery managers to adopt the Oceana approach to reducing bycatch: count all catch (including bycatch), cap bycatch using science-based limits, and control bycatch through effective management. Click here to learn more. | <urn:uuid:eeb5e838-cb29-4d2e-a7ae-6bad03313528> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://usa.oceana.org/blog/sea-turtles-can-get-bends-after-capture-fishing-gear-says-new-study/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511386.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20231004152134-20231004182134-00602.warc.gz | en | 0.948304 | 974 | 3.28125 | 3 |
The very first protected area for wildlife in Belize, at Half-Moon Caye, was designated in 1928 as a crown reserve for the protection of the Red-footed Booby Bird. Later, that protection status would be made a Natural Monument managed by the Belize Audubon Society and spread to include not only the island where the bird's nest, but the surrounding marine ecosystems as well. Divers heading out to dive the Blue Hole typically lunch at Half-Moon Caye and enjoy this unique place, both above and below the water.
Belize is unique in that 26% of our territories are under some type of protected status with up to 60% of our forest cover intact. In the United States, for example, 14% of the land is protected. Protection of our land in Belize began in the early 1920’s when Forest Reserves were established under the Forest Act. When independence from England was achieved in 1981, the more defined practice of Protected Areas Management was implemented via the Wildlife Protection Act and the National Parks System Act. As defined by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a protected area is “an area of land and/or sea especially dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity, and of natural and associated cultural resources, and managed through legal or other effective means.” There are seven types of protected areas in Belize, each with their own guidelines for how they may be used. These are Nature Reserve, National Park, Natural Monument, Wildlife Sanctuary, Marine Reserve, Forest Reserve, and Archaeological Reserves. Three different government agencies are responsible for the management of Belize’s protected areas; the Archaeology Department, the Fisheries Department, and the Forestry Department. The latter does allow the co-management of some of these protected areas, the Belize Audubon Society is one example.
In 1996, the Protected Areas Conservation Trust (PACT) was established to ensure the proper financial needs of our protected areas. Upon departure from Belize, all non-nationals pay a departure tax, with a portion of these funds going to PACT along with a 20% commission of all cruise ship passenger fees. PACT annually awards grants to non-government organizations and community-based organizations along with government agencies that work in conservation, protected area management and the management of natural resources. The various protected areas are important for Belize not only for conservation but also for our tourism industry. The Belize Barrier Reef alone attracts thousands of visitors annually, many that come specifically for diving or snorkeling in our pristine underwater backyard. Managed by the Fisheries Department, a Marine Reserve is defined by the IUCN as “an area reserved as a nature conservation reserve for the protection, research, recreation, education and controlled extraction in relation to marine and freshwater species and their habitats.”
Our northern resorts, Costa Blu Adults Only Beach Resort and X’tan Ha Resort, have the luxury of being within mere minutes of the popular diving and snorkeling site, Mexico Rocks. In 2015, this area on the northern part of Ambergris Caye was added under the protection status of the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, the majority of which is located about 4 miles south of San Pedro. The oldest Marine Reserve, Hol Chan is named for the Mayan words meaning “little channel.” With the exception of Mexico Rocks area, the reserve is located south of Ambergris Caye, with the snorkeling highlight site on a cut in the reef which is about 23 yards wide and 30 feet deep. Hol Chan is a very popular snorkeling site and is also often utilized for diving certification courses as it is fairly shallow yet offers a multitude of marine life. The addition of Mexico Rocks to this protected status means that the large boulder coral formations unique to this area and found only at one other site in Belize, far to the south at Glover’s Reef, will be protected far into the future.
Bacalar Chico Marine Reserve is found at the north end of the 25-mile long Ambergris Caye and has a counterpart on land in the Bacalar Chico National Park. This protected area has as its Northern border the country of Mexico, separated by a small channel said to have been dug by the ancient Maya people. National Parks, according to the IUCN is “an area reserved for the protection of natural and scenic values of national significance for the benefit and enjoyment of the general public.”
A Natural Monument is defined by the IUCN as “an area reserved for the protection and preservation of nationally significant natural features and unique characteristics for education, research, and public appreciation.” The most notable of these, is, of course, Belize’s Blue Hole, one of the most iconic images and a very sought-after diving site. As mentioned at the very beginning of this post, Half Moon Caye is another Natural Monument that most divers are familiar with and which is important for both its bird and marine inhabitants.
Organizations such as the Belize Audubon Society and Oceana play key roles in Belize of educating the public about best practices and Leave No Trace ethics. As part of the diving community, it is of interest to all of us to care about our oceans and reef environments. Divers can join PADI’s Project Aware, which empowers divers to make a lasting positive change for our oceans, one dive at a time. Across all of our Sandy Point Resorts, we host regular clean-up efforts along our shoreline for trash that washes in with the tide, always collect any garbage found while diving and also follow all regulations within the Marine Reserves that we frequent on our guided tours. To that end, the Government of Belize just released a statement in March of 2018, pledging to phase out single-use plastic bags, Styrofoam and plastic food utensils within the next year. This is encouraging and a vital step in reducing plastic waste that affects our oceans. It is our hope that through the combined efforts of government legislation, individuals and organizations our magnificent reef will remain intact long into the future. | <urn:uuid:eef13c59-d4ef-408b-86f1-e8f9455c8836> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | http://www.sandypointresorts.com/blog/2018/04/06/need-know-belizes-marine-protected-areas/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233505362.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20230921073711-20230921103711-00003.warc.gz | en | 0.948457 | 1,269 | 3.53125 | 4 |
Tractor trailers, also known as semi-trucks, semi-trailer trucks and 18-wheelers, are responsible for transporting over 70 percent of the goods and commodities in the United States. Tractor trailers are typically an 18 wheeled truck that includes the truck (the tractor) and the trailer. The tractor trailer has changed a lot since it’s conception and we have laid out some of that history below!
The First Tractor-Trailer:
Alexander Winton, in Cleveland Ohio, invented the tractor trailer in 1898 and sold his first manufactured tractor trailer in 1899. The Winton Motor Carriage Company of Cleveland manufactured and sold their first 22 cars in 1898 and these cars needed to be delivered to their buyers, and this caused him to invent the concept of the tractor trailer to help with the delivery of his vehicles to avoid the miles of wear and tear required to drive them to his customers.
The first semi-truck, which Winton called an Automobile Hauler, used a modified short-wheeled touring automobile (the tractor) with a cart (the trailer) attached to the back of it. The platform sat on top the engine portion and rested on a pair of wheels on the other end. Most cars and trucks have engines in the front, but this car had its engine in the back. The platform on this tractor trailer could only hold one vehicle. Winton did not pursue the design of his first semi-truck, but others continued to expand on the concept.
Expanding On The Concept:
August Charles Fruehauf, a Detroit blacksmith, built a carriage for someone who wanted to transport his boat in 1914 and he officially called the carriage a semi-trailer. It was a big success, and he went on to develop the carriage for many other uses, like hauling lumber. In 1918 he incorporated the Fruehauf Trailer Company, which is still a leading maker of semi-trailers today.
John C. Endebrock had experience building horse carriages and used his knowledge to develop what he call the “Trailmobile”. It was an iron chassis that was mounted on wheels and springs that could be trailed behind a Ford Model T. It was designed so that it would be possible for a single person to hook the trailer to the car, earlier trailers needed three people to hook up chassis to the car.
In the 1930’s, George Cassens was responsible for taking the vehicle hauling business to the next big step in it’s evolution. Cassens attempted to ship the new cars directly to the buyers and realized the shipment cost were extremely high for the car manufactures. Cassens saw an opportunity and offered to haul the cars from the manufacturing site to the car owners with his four-car auto trailer that was pulled with a two-ton Dodge truck.
Mack Trucks were one of the first innovators of heavy-duty commercial vehicles. Mack was founded in 1900 and developed and manufactured its own engines that made use of an automatic starter, which made the hand-crank obsolete. From 1929 to 1944, Mack produced 2,601 semi or full truck trailers and became known for building tough and durable trucks.
The logging industry had an impact on the popularity of the semi-truck. Peterbilt, a truck company, started selling its semi-trucks in 1939 and were used exclusively to haul logs from the forest to the lumber mills. T.A. Peterman, founder of Peterbilt, refurbished army trucks and equipped them with trailers specifically to haul logs.
Freightliner was founded in 1929 under the name Freightways Manufacturing as a company division to Consolidated Freightways to produce semi-trucks for company use. Freightways Manufacturing used Fageol trucks as a starting point for the design, putting the cab, the area inside the truck where the driver is seated, above the front axel of the trailer. The new truck being shorter in length allowed for the use of longer trailer. And in 1942 Freightways Manufacturing was renamed to Freightliner Corporation and as a part of their relaunch they released the first truck with an all-aluminum cab.
Over the past 100 years, the two wheeled semi-trailer that Winton invented to haul a single car has turned into the eighteen wheeled tractor trailer with three axels that we know today. Tractor trailers now transport 10.23 billion tons of freight in the United States, which is about 72.5% of the nation’s freight. All of this is possible due to the evolution of Winton’s two wheeled semi-trailer. | <urn:uuid:91024c48-a6ff-4684-a8fc-8ad2f075bcb7> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.wittebros.com/2022/04/05/the-history-of-the-tractor-trailer/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233505362.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20230921073711-20230921103711-00003.warc.gz | en | 0.975432 | 970 | 3.4375 | 3 |
2018 Theses Doctoral
Rethinking Traditional Grammars of Schooling: Experiences of White, Middle-class, Female, First-year Aspiring Multicultural Educators in Intercultural Urban Teaching Contexts
Enactment of social justice education is an important step toward rectifying pervasive discrimination woven into public schools and other American institutions. A social justice educator must develop diverse cultural competencies and also recognize oneself as a racialized participant in a system of racial inequity. The demographics of an overwhelmingly White teaching force and increasingly diverse student body creates both need and opportunity to understand the development of White multicultural educators.
This is a case study of two White, female, middle-class first-year urban teachers who had completed a social justice-oriented preparation program. Written reflections, interviews, and focus groups captured teachers’ perspectives on their first-year intercultural, urban teaching experiences. Findings illuminated experiences with cultural disequilibrium, culturally relevant teaching, critical consciousness, learning to teach, relationships, and navigating institutional knowledge.
Teachers negotiated cultural disequilibrium by both seeking new cultural knowledge, and seeking or creating experiences more consistent with schooling they experienced as students. Culturally relevant teaching emerged through teachers’ critiques of academic policy and practices that disadvantaged their students, yet were coupled with constraints that inhibited cultural synchronization in classrooms. Student achievement was considered a primary responsibility, but teachers were frustrated by accountability to fill perceived large academic gaps. Teachers simultaneously participated in and critiqued the dominant structures, stereotypes, and narratives in place in their schools
Teachers viewed themselves as life-long learners and valued foundational preservice experiences and school-based relationships to build knowledge of teaching. Teachers understood the value of relationships with families and students yet felt constrained in developing those relationships to enhance culturally relevant teaching practices. Teaching in a culture of high stakes accountability and monitoring stifled innovative teaching.
Implications for teacher supports during induction include preparing teachers to enter the induction process with an experience bank and foundational critical consciousness from which they can build in new contexts, providing opportunities for teachers to build community- and school-based knowledge and relationships as early as possible, and providing supportive mentoring that guides teachers’ critical consciousness in their new school contexts.
- Cook_tc.columbia_0055E_10845.pdf application/pdf 3 MB Download File
More About This Work
- Academic Units
- Curriculum and Teaching
- Thesis Advisors
- Zumwalt, Karen K.
- Ed.D., Teachers College, Columbia University
- Published Here
- November 9, 2018 | <urn:uuid:8df248a1-0408-4df5-a20e-0027bc4d835a> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8BP1KQV | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506399.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922102329-20230922132329-00803.warc.gz | en | 0.945638 | 535 | 2.609375 | 3 |
YORK, Pa. — According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 6.5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's disease.
A newly approved FDA drug is meant to prevent and stop progression in those who have Alzheimer's disease. Research shows that 20% of African Americans make up that number of people who will suffer from the disease.
Researchers at the Alzheimer’s Clinical Trial Consortium are trying to get ahead of the disease by asking African Americans to take part in clinical trials.
Stephanie Monroe is a member of the Alzheimer’s Clinical Consortium and director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Access at USAgainstAlzheimers. Monroe said since African Americans are more likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, her organization wants to specifically know if the drug is safe in Black communities.
“80% of people tell us no one has even talked to them about their brain health and 80% of people tell us no one has asked them to participate in research,” said Monroe. “The same percent tell us if they were asked they would do it, so it’s not true that Blacks won’t get involved. We’ll get involved if we’re asked.”
The new FDA-approved drug, called Leqembi, was administered to patients with amyloid beta pathology, which is the hallmark feature of Alzheimer’s disease. Monroe says the drug will prevent a patient from developing Alzheimer’s disease, stop the progression in its tracks or delay symptoms.
“We need to really understand by testing all populations if that goal is going to be realized, or if we are delaying symptoms which are all great things… we haven’t had the ability to do any of that, so we’re really trying to prevent the disease in terms of symptoms or stop the disease in its tracks,” said Monroe.
Participants have to be between the age of 55 and 80 to take part in the trial. To learn more about the clinical trial or get involved, click here. | <urn:uuid:0f8d2613-fae5-4fd3-affb-8f2bdc542abd> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.fox43.com/article/news/health/newly-approved-fda-drug-alzheimers-african-americans-black-history-month-medical-fields-leqembi/521-aba517fc-adef-4746-84d8-6d2b5a1b483a | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506399.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922102329-20230922132329-00803.warc.gz | en | 0.964939 | 429 | 2.765625 | 3 |
en- as a prefix can turn an adjective or noun into a verb.
enable = make able to do something
enchant = fill (someone) with great delight; charm.
encourage = try to get someone to do something
endanger = put someone in danger
enjoy = like something
enlarge = make something larger
enlighten = fill with knowledge or understanding
ensure = make sure that something happens
enrage = make someone very angry
The suffixes -able, -ible, -ble
-able, -ible, -ble mean capable of or fit for. They are used to form adjectives.
affordable = not expensive
doable = able to be done or completed
edible = suitable to be eaten
horrible = very unpleasant or shocking, causing horror
adorable = having qualities which make a person or animal easy to love
understandable = easy to understand
visible = able to be seen
inspect, inspector, respect, aspect, prospect, retrospect, suspect, speculate, spectator, spectacle, conspicuous. | <urn:uuid:f472c629-1f21-438c-b931-d58032ae03e2> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.franklinedu.ca/ca/152/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506399.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922102329-20230922132329-00803.warc.gz | en | 0.893155 | 265 | 2.578125 | 3 |
The Samanid mausoleum is located in a park just outside the historic urban center of Bukhara, Uzbekistan. The mausoleum is considered to be one of the most highly esteemed work of Central Asian architecture, and was built between 892 and 943 A.D as the resting-place of Ismail Samani - a powerful and influential amir of the Samanid dynasty, one of the last native Persian dynasties that ruled in Central Asia in the 9th and 10th centuries, after the Samanids established virtual independence from the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad. In addition to Ismail Samani, the mausoleum also houses the remains of his father Ahmed and his nephew Nasr, as well as the remains of other members of the Samanid dynasty.
The fact that the religious law of orthodox Sunni Islam strictly prohibits the construction of mausoleums over burial places stresses the significance of the Samanid mausoleum, which is the most ancient monument of Islamic architecture in Central Asia and the sole monument that survived from the epoch of the Samanid Dynasty. The Samanid mausoleum might be one of the earliest departures from that orthodox religious restriction in the history of Islamic architecture.
The shrine is regarded as one of the oldest monuments in the Bukhara region - at the time of Genghis Khan's invasion, the shrine was said to have already been buried in mud from flooding. Thus, when the Mongol hordes reached Bukhara, the shrine was spared from their destruction. The site was only rediscovered in 1934 by Soviet archeologist V.A. Shishkin, and required two years for excavation.
The shrine has been considered sacred by local residents, and pilgrims would pose dilemmas and questions to a mullah who would reply from behind a wall in order to preserve anonymity for petitioners. The shrine was once the centerpiece of a vast cemetery where even the former Emirs of Bukhara were buried.
During the Soviet era, the local cemetery was paved over, and an amusement park was built immediately adjacent to the shrine which is still in operation. A park was also built to completely surround the shrine.
The monument marks a new era in the development of Central Asian architecture, which was revived after the Arab conquest of the region. The architects continued to use an ancient tradition of baked brick construction, but to a much higher standard than had been seen before. The site is unique for its architectural style which combines both Zoroastrian motifs from the native Sogdian and Sassanid cultures, as well as Islamic motifs introduced from Arabia and Persia.
The building's facade is covered in intricately decorated brick work, which features circular patterns reminiscent of the sun - a common image in Zoroastrian art from the region at that time which is reminiscent of the Zoroastrian god, Ahura Mazda, who is typically represented by fire and light. The building's shape is cuboid, and reminiscent of the Ka'aba in Makkah, while the heavy corner buttresses are derived from Sogdian architectural styles. The syncretic style of the shrine is reflective of the 9th and 10th centuries - a time when the region still had large populations of Zoroastrians who had begun to convert to Islam around that time.
The height of the shrine is approximately 35 feet, with four identically designed facades which gently slope inwards with increasing height. The building's architectural engineers included four internal arches for support, upon which the dome is placed. The building's "four arch" design was adopted for use in several shrines throughout Central Asia. At the top of each side of the shrine are ten small windows which provided ventilation for the interior portion of the mausoleum. | <urn:uuid:374cfb2f-833a-44fe-9f04-2b0b7f1cd6ad> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.travellino.net/places/2351 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506399.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922102329-20230922132329-00803.warc.gz | en | 0.975931 | 783 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Every day, we’re told how important eating a variety of fruits and vegetables is for optimum wellness. We hear that they can help reduce the risks of many diseases, including certain forms of cancer, and we know that they help manage weight. But are our teenagers hearing the same messages we’re hearing?
Apparently not, according to a study released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Researchers analyzed data from 10,765 high school students (from both public and private schools) who were part of the 2010 National Youth Physical Activity and Nutrition Study, and the results were alarming.
Respondents were asked how often they consumed fruits and vegetables during a one-week period (defined as whole fruit, 100% fruit juice, green salad, potatoes, carrots, and other vegetables), and on average, the teenagers ate both only 1.2 times per day.
This is a far cry from the daily recommended amounts for adolescents who participate in less than 30 minutes of physical activity daily: 1.5 cups of fruit and 2.5 cups of vegetables for females, and 2 cups of fruit and 3 cups of vegetables for males (1 cup is approximately equal to one medium apple, eight strawberries, 12 baby carrots, or one large tomato).
Nearly a third of students reported eating fruit and vegetables less than once daily. Only 16.8% of teens ate fruit at least 4 or more times daily and 11.2% ate vegetables 4 or more times daily.
Gender and Ethnic Differences
Male students ate slightly more fruits than female students, consuming fruit 1.4 times daily versus 1.2 times, respectively. Consumption of vegetables was more equal, with males consuming vegetables 1.2 times per day and females 1.3 times per day.
Vegetable consumption was lowest amongst Hispanic and black students. Non-Hispanic black students reported eating vegetables an average of once daily, and Hispanic students reported a frequency of 1.1 times daily.
The Age Factor
Fruit consumption also seemed to drop off with age – students in 9th grade reported consuming fruit 1.4 times per day, and this figure decreased to 1.2 in 10th grade, 1.3 in 11th grade, and 1.2 in 12th grade. Consumption of vegetables remained relatively stable, albeit low, with 9th to 11th graders eating their veggies 1.3 times per day, and 12th graders only 1.2 times per day.
What to Do?
While the study does not delve into the reasons why teenagers don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables, it’s clear that something needs to be done to keep our kids healthy.
The study “highlights the need for effective strategies to increase consumption,” with a particular focus on policy and environment. Programs such as Let’s Move!, Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, and the CDC’s own Communities Putting Prevention to Work are merely a start.
More exposure to different, healthy foods via school and community gardens as well as farmer’s markets can familiarize students with foods they might not normally eat. And pushing for schools to provide access to healthy foods (salad bars aren’t just for adults!) is an obvious way to influence students’ choices, since researcher Sonia Kim reminds us that “there is evidence that salad bars do increase fruit and vegetable consumption among children.”
The Bottom Line
The news on the health of our nation’s children is dismal. Just last month, a study presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Session in Orlando revealed that teens are more likely to die of heart disease at a younger age than adults do today.
In that study, researchers found that many of today’s children and adolescents have high blood sugar levels, are obese or overweight, have a lousy diet and don’t get enough physical exercise. What the scientists found most alarming is that none of the kids in the study met the criteria for ideal cardiovascular health.
Unfortunately, these habits develop at a very early age. In another recent study, researchers found that poor dietary patterns develop as early as 12 to 24 months. Young children do not consume enough vegetables or whole grains, and they consume far too many calories from solid fats and sugars. In the U.S., 10 percent of young children aged 2 to 5 are categorized as obese!
A study published in the December issue of Pediatrics indicates that today’s kindergarteners are heavier than kids brought up in the 1970s and 1980s and are on the road to becoming overweight and obese in years to come. According to study authors, even those kids who are at normal weight are gaining weight.
What’s a parent to do when we live in an obesogenic society? Set a good example. While words are important, kids learn far more from actions. That means as a parent, providing your children with healthy meals and snacks and teaching them the benefit of nutritious eating. Showing kids (boys and girls) how to make healthy meals is also important. This takes more time and effort, but it’s so important to their long-term health.
Once kids become teenagers, it becomes far more difficult to control what they eat. However, by teaching them healthy habits at a young age, teens have a greater likelihood of returning to their healthy roots as they mature into adulthood.
David H. Rahm, M.D. is the founder and medical director of The Wellness Center, a medical clinic located in Long Beach, CA. Dr. Rahm is also president and medical director of VitaMedica. Dr. Rahm is one of a select group of conventional medical doctors who have education and expertise in functional medicine and nutritional science. Over the past 20 years, Dr. Rahm has published articles in the plastic surgery literature and educated physicians about the importance of good peri-operative nutrition. | <urn:uuid:ca98628d-3730-4ccf-99cb-ffab58a3a30e> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.vitamedica.com/wellness-blog/teen-diets-severely-lacking-in-fruits-and-vegetables/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506399.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922102329-20230922132329-00803.warc.gz | en | 0.963458 | 1,207 | 3.5 | 4 |
Earlier this year, Cameron and Obama announced they will carry out “war game” cyber attacks as part of a joint defence against online criminals. Cameron described cyber attacks as “one of the big modern threats we face”, while Obama said cyber threats were an "urgent and growing danger".
The consequences of an attack for any business are apparent in recent headlines, exacerbated by poor responses to security breaches that have led to the loss of revenue and reputation.
The frequency and severity of cyber attacks will increase in 2015 and organisations will have to explore new prevention and response scenarios. Cyber security dominated decisions at The World Economic Forum in Davos this year, not surprisingly. Cisco CEO John Chambers said in a public session that “security was bad last year” and “this year is going to be much worse”. Cybercrime will worsen – it’s a lucrative and relatively risk free form of crime for those with the appropriate skills.
According to Mandiant’s M-Trends report on IT security, attackers spend an estimated 229 days on a victim’s network before they are discovered. 67% of victims are notified about security threats by someone outside of their organisation. These advanced threats use valid credentials 100% of the time, which make them extremely difficult to spot.
Cybercriminals’ tactics get more advanced every day and businesses need to safeguard against these persistent criminals, but how? By thinking like a criminal.
Criminals are not constrained by policies, ethics or the law. They are entrepreneurial, spotting chances and responding nimbly with a clear ‘eye on the prize’. There are many examples of criminals using novel, daring and imaginative methods. A Chinese gang ran an entire network of fake Apple stores – and a former bank IT administrator bet his redundancy money on the share price falling and then remotely deleted the trading systems.
Typically, these criminals are disguising themselves as legitimate users in order to commit their crimes. Attacks are not launched from outside the firewall and brute force hacks are declining. Threats are now largely ‘internal’.
In order to think like a criminal, you need to scrutinise trends – in behaviour, on the network and through activity. This will help identify the anomalies that could indicate cyber, physical, cultural and procedural vulnerabilities.
For example, take an increasing number and size of print jobs from a single person at odd hours; large file transfers out to a cloud service; and a dramatic change in the categories of websites being accessed by that individual. Seen individually, none of these actions appears malicious, but with a holistic view of activity it’s possible to spot the pattern that suggests a security threat.
This year will see an increasing number of companies using analytics across all their data – not just that which has traditionally been considered security relevant. A security intelligence platform giving you real-time security posture information can help to spot unusual event patterns as they unfold, allowing intervention before they have a chance to make a major impact.
Organisations need to move away from an over-reliance on rule-based, static defences. Security strategy should focus on a flexible, nimble approach that, when combined with continuous network monitoring can detect attacks early and allow timely defences.
Correlating more data, from more sources, makes it easier to spot patterns that might be security attacks. Teams also need to be constantly asking new questions of their data. Fraud is sophisticated and fast moving and event patterns are changing all the time at an astonishing rate. As a result, writing rules into software is just not enough to protect against attackers.
Instead, IT and security teams will need to be quick and agile, always challenging themselves to stay a step ahead of the attackers.
Sourced from Matt Davies, Splunk | <urn:uuid:a6536b1a-a5d3-4831-830a-b2354b1064bc> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://staging.information-age.com/how-think-cybercriminal-31176/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510149.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20230926043538-20230926073538-00503.warc.gz | en | 0.957134 | 772 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Buy ONET/DOT: Download
TITLE: File Clerks
DEFINITION: File correspondence, cards, invoices, receipts, and other records in alphabetical or numerical order or according to the filing system used. Locate and remove material from file when requested. May be required to classify and file new material.
1. Sorts or classifies information, according to content, purpose, user criteria, or chronological, alphabetical, or numerical order.
2. Locates and retrieves files upon request from authorized users.
3. Places materials into storage receptacles, such as file cabinets, boxes, bins, or drawers, according to classification and identification information.
4. Removes or destroys out dated materials in accordance with file maintenance schedules or legal requirements.
5. Scans or reads incoming materials to determine filing order or location.
6. Assigns and records or stamps identification numbers or codes to index materials for filing.
7. Inspects or examines materials or files for accuracy, legibility, or damage.
8. Inserts additional data on file records.
9. Authorizes or documents materials movement, using logbook or computer and traces missing files.
10. Photographs or makes copies of data and records, using photocopying or microfilming equipment.
Knowledge elements are ranked by importance.
Knowledge of administrative and clerical procedures and systems such as word processing systems, filing and records management systems, stenography and transcription, forms design principles, and other office procedures and terminology
44 Computers and Electronics
Knowledge of electric circuit boards, processors, chips, and computer hardware and software, including applications and programming
31 English Language
Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar
17 Law, Government and Jurisprudence
Knowledge of laws, legal codes, court procedures, precedents, government regulations, executive orders, agency rules, and the democratic political process
Knowledge of numbers, their operations, and interrelationships including arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, and their applications
10 Communications and Media
Knowledge of media production, communication, and dissemination techniques and methods including alternative ways to inform and entertain via written, oral, and visual media
8 Administration and Management
Knowledge of principles and processes involved in business and organizational planning, coordination, and execution. This includes strategic planning, resource allocation, manpower modeling, leadership techniques, and production methods
8 Sociology and Anthropology
Knowledge of group behavior and dynamics, societal trends and influences, cultures, their history, migrations, ethnicity, and origins
Knowledge of principles and methods for moving people or goods by air, rail, sea, or road, including their relative costs, advantages, and limitations
4 Customer and Personal Service
Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services including needs assessment techniques, quality service standards, alternative delivery systems, and customer satisfaction evaluation techniques
Knowledge of plant and animal living tissue, cells, organisms, and entities, including their functions, interdependencies, and interactions with each other and the environment
4 Fine Arts
Knowledge of theory and techniques required to produce, compose, and perform works of music, dance, visual arts, drama, and sculpture
Knowledge of transmission, broadcasting, switching, control, and operation of telecommunications systems
2 Public Safety and Security
Knowledge of weaponry, public safety, and security operations, rules, regulations, precautions, prevention, and the protection of people, data, and property
Skills elements are ranked by importance.
73 Information Organization
Finding ways to structure or classify multiple pieces of information
60 Information Gathering
Knowing how to find information and identifying essential information
Reorganizing information to get a better approach to problems or tasks
48 Problem Identification
Identifying the nature of problems
48 Reading Comprehension
Understanding written sentences and paragraphs in work related documents
Communicating effectively with others in writing as indicated by the needs of the audience
40 Product Inspection
Inspecting and evaluating the quality of products
38 Active Listening
Listening to what other people are saying and asking questions as appropriate
33 Judgment and Decision Making
Weighing the relative costs and benefits of a potential action
31 Operation and Control
Controlling operations of equipment or systems
Assessing how well one is doing when learning or doing something
29 Solution Appraisal
Observing and evaluating the outcomes of a problem solution to identify lessons learned or redirect efforts
Talking to others to effectively convey information
Adjusting actions in relation to others' actions
25 Identification of Key Causes
Identifying the things that must be changed to achieve a goal
25 Active Learning
Working with new material or information to grasp its implications
Using mathematics to solve problems
23 Idea Evaluation
Evaluating the likely success of an idea in relation to the demands of the situation
23 Critical Thinking
Using logic and analysis to identify the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches
Developing an image of how a system should work under ideal conditions
21 Learning Strategies
Using multiple approaches when learning or teaching new things
Using scientific methods to solve problems
21 Equipment Selection
Determining the kind of tools and equipment needed to do a job
19 Idea Generation
Generating a number of different approaches to problems
17 Time Management
Managing one's own time and the time of others
10 Operation Monitoring
Watching gauges, dials, or other indicators to make sure a machine is working properly
8 Systems Perception
Determining when important changes have occurred in a system or are likely to occur
8 Identifying Downstream Consequences
Determining the long-term outcomes of a change in operations
8 Operations Analysis
Analyzing needs and product requirements to create a design
Conducting tests to determine whether equipment, software, or procedures are operating as expected
6 Management of Material Resources
Obtaining and seeing to the appropriate use of equipment, facilities, and materials needed to do certain work
6 Implementation Planning
Developing approaches for implementing an idea
4 Social Perceptiveness
Being aware of others' reactions and understanding why they react the way they do
Persuading others to approach things differently
Teaching others how to do something
4 Systems Evaluation
Looking at many indicators of system performance, taking into account their accuracy
4 Equipment Maintenance
Performing routine maintenance and determining when and what kind of maintenance is needed
Determining what is causing an operating error and deciding what to do about it
4 Service Orientation
Actively looking for ways to help people
Bringing others together and trying to reconcile differences
2 Technology Design
Generating or adapting equipment and technology to serve user needs
Installing equipment, machines, wiring, or programs to meet specifications
2 Management of Financial Resources
Determining how money will be spent to get the work done, and accounting for these expenditures
Repairing machines or systems using the needed tools .
Abilities elements are ranked by importance.
80 Written Comprehension
The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing
65 Information Ordering
The ability to correctly follow a given rule or set of rules in order to arrange things or actions in a certain order. The things or actions can include numbers, letters, words, pictures, procedures, sentences, and mathematical or logical operations.
60 Category Flexibility
The ability to produce many rules so that each rule tells how to group (or combine) a set of things in a different way.
60 Near Vision
The ability to see details of objects at a close range (within a few feet of the observer)
45 Oral Comprehension
The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences
40 Wrist-Finger Speed
The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists
30 Number Facility
The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly
30 Oral Expression
The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand
30 Inductive Reasoning
The ability to combine separate pieces of information, or specific answers to problems, to form general rules or conclusions. It includes coming up with a logical explanation for why a series of seemingly unrelated events occur together.
25 Selective Attention
The ability to concentrate and not be distracted while performing a task over a period of time
25 Manual Dexterity
The ability to quickly make coordinated movements of one hand, a hand together with its arm, or two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects
25 Trunk Strength
The ability to use one's abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without "giving out" or fatiguing
25 Written Expression
The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand
25 Problem Sensitivity
The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing there is a problem.
20 Perceptual Speed
The ability to quickly and accurately compare letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object
20 Deductive Reasoning
The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to come up with logical answers. It involves deciding if an answer makes sense.
The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures
15 Speech Clarity
The ability to speak clearly so that it is understandable to a listener
The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged
15 Time Sharing
The ability to efficiently shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources)
15 Arm-Hand Steadiness
The ability to keep the hand and arm steady while making an arm movement or while holding the arm and hand in one position
15 Extent Flexibility
The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with the body, arms, and/or legs
15 Fluency of Ideas
The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a given topic. It concerns the number of ideas produced and not the quality, correctness, or creativity of the ideas.
15 Finger Dexterity
The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects
10 Speech Recognition
The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person
10 Hearing Sensitivity
The ability to detect or tell the difference between sounds that vary over broad ranges of pitch and loudness
10 Glare Sensitivity
The ability to see objects in the presence of glare or bright lighting
10 Flexibility of Closure
The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material
10 Mathematical Reasoning
The ability to understand and organize a problem and then to select a mathematical method or formula to solve the problem
The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem
10 Speed of Closure
The ability to quickly make sense of information that seems to be without meaning or organization. It involves quickly combining and organizing different pieces of information into a meaningful pattern
10 Static Strength
The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects
10 Response Orientation
The ability to choose quickly and correctly between two or more movements in response to two or more signals (lights, sounds, pictures, etc.). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body parts
5 Spatial Orientation
The ability to know one's location in relation to the environment, or to know where other objects are in relation to one's self
5 Gross Body Coordination
The ability to coordinate the movement of the arms, legs, and torso together in activities where the whole body is in motion
5 Sound Localization
The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated
5 Auditory Attention
The ability to focus on a single source of auditory (hearing) information in the presence of other distracting sounds
5 Depth Perception
The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from the observer, or to judge the distance between an object and the observer
5 Visual Color Discrimination
The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness
5 Control Precision
The ability to quickly and repeatedly make precise adjustments in moving the controls of a machine or vehicle to exact positions
5 Far Vision
The ability to see details at a distance
5 Multilimb Coordination
The ability to coordinate movements of two or more limbs together (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the body is in motion
5 Dynamic Flexibility
The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with the body, arms, and/or legs
The ability to exert one's self physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath
5 Speed of Limb Movement
The ability to quickly move the arms or legs
5 Reaction Time
The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to one signal (sound, light, picture, etc.) when it appears
5 Rate Control
The ability to time the adjustments of a movement or equipment control in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a continuously moving object or scene
Work activities elements are ranked by importance.
67 Documenting or Recording Information
Entering, transcribing, recording, storing, or maintaining information in either written form or by electronic/magnetic recording.
63 Identifying Objects, Actions, and Events
Identifying information received by making estimates or categorizations, recognizing differences or similarities, or sensing changes in circumstances or events.
63 Processing Information
Compiling, coding, categorizing, calculating, tabulating, auditing, verifying, or processing information or data.
58 Performing Administrative Activities
Approving requests, handling paperwork, and performing day-to-day administrative tasks.
58 Handling and Moving Objects
Using one's own hands and arms in handling, installing, forming, positioning, and moving materials, or in manipulating things, including the use of keyboards.
56 Getting Information Needed to Do the Job
Observing, receiving, and otherwise obtaining information from all relevant sources.
35 Communicating With Other Workers
Providing information to supervisors, fellow workers, and subordinates. This information can be exchanged face-to-face, in writing, or via telephone/electronic transfer.
33 Judging Qualities of Things, Services, or People
Making judgments about or assessing the value, importance, or quality of things or people.
31 Evaluating Information Against Standards
Evaluating information against a set of standards and verifying that it is correct.
29 Implementing Ideas or Programs
Conducting or carrying out work procedures and activities in accord with one's own ideas or information provided through directions/instructions for purposes of installing, modifying, preparing, delivering, constructing, integrating, finishing, or completing programs, systems, structures, or products.
29 Interacting With Computers
Controlling computer functions by using programs, setting up functions, writing software, or otherwise communicating with computer systems.
29 Organizing, Planning, and Prioritizing
Developing plans to accomplish work, and prioritizing and organizing one's own work.
27 Inspecting Equipment, Structures, or Material
Inspecting or diagnosing equipment, structures, or materials to identify the causes of errors or other problems or defects.
23 Updating and Using Job-Relevant Knowledge
Keeping up-to-date technically and knowing one's own jobs' and related jobs' functions.
21 Communicating With Persons Outside Organization
Communicating with persons outside the organization, representing the organization to customers, the public, government, and other external sources. This information can be exchanged face-to-face, in writing, or via telephone/electronic transfer.
19 Controlling Machines and Processes
Using either control mechanisms or direct physical activity to operate machines or processes (not including computers or vehicles).
19 Estimating Needed Characteristics
Estimating the Characteristics of Materials, Products, Events, or Information: Estimating sizes, distances, and quantities, or determining time, costs, resources, or materials needed to perform a work activity.
19 Analyzing Data or Information
Identifying underlying principles, reasons, or facts by breaking down information or data into separate parts.
17 Establishing and Maintaining Relationships
Developing constructive and cooperative working relationships with others.
15 Making Decisions and Solving Problems
Combining, evaluating, and reasoning with information and data to make decisions and solve problems. These processes involve making decisions about the relative importance of information and choosing the best solution.
13 Monitoring and Controlling Resources
Monitoring and controlling resources and overseeing the spending of money.
13 Performing General Physical Activities
Performing physical activities that require moving one's whole body, such as in climbing, lifting, balancing, walking, stooping, where the activities often also require considerable use of the arms and legs, such as in the physical handling of materials.
10 Assisting and Caring for Others
Providing assistance or personal care to others.
8 Interpreting Meaning of Information to Others
Translating or explaining what information means and how it can be understood or used to support responses or feedback to others.
8 Monitor Processes, Material, or Surroundings
Monitoring and reviewing information from materials, events, or the environment, often to detect problems or to find out when things are finished.
6 Repairing and Maintaining Electrical Equipment
Fixing, servicing, adjusting, regulating, calibrating, fine-tuning, or testing machines, devices, and equipment that operate primarily on the basis of electrical or electronic (not mechanical) principles.
4 Performing For or Working With Public
Performing for people or dealing directly with the public, including serving persons in restaurants and stores, and receiving clients or guests.
4 Coordinating Work and Activities of Others
Coordinating members of a work group to accomplish tasks.
2 Providing Consultation and Advice to Others
Providing consultation and expert advice to management or other groups on technical, systems-related, or process related topics.
2 Selling or Influencing Others
Convincing others to buy merchandise/goods, or otherwise changing their minds or actions.
2 Developing Objectives and Strategies
Establishing long range objectives and specifying the strategies and actions to achieve these objectives.
2 Repairing and Maintaining Mechanical Equipment
Fixing, servicing, aligning, setting up, adjusting, and testing machines, devices, moving parts, and equipment that operate primarily on the basis of mechanical (not electronic) principles.
Work context elements are ranked by frequency (F), importance (I), responsibility (R), amount of contact (C), how serious (S), objective vs. subjective (O), automation (A), extent of frustration (E), responsible for health and safety (H), likelihood of injury (L), degree of injury (D) .
100 (F) Indoors
How frequently does this job require the worker to work: Indoors
90 (F) Sitting
How much time in a usual work period does the worker spend: Sitting?
84 (I) Importance of Being Exact or Accurate
How important is being very exact or highly accurate in performing this job?
72 (I) Importance of Being Sure All Is Done
How important is it to be sure that all the details of this job are performed and everything is done completely?
50 (F) Making Repetitive Motions
How much time in a usual work period does the worker spend: Making repetitive motions?
48 (I) Importance of Repeating Same Tasks
How important is repeating the same physical activities (e.g., key entry) or mental activities (e.g., checking entries in a ledger) over and over, without stopping, to performing this job?
45 (F) Using Hands on Objects, Tools, Controls
How much time in a usual work period does the worker spend: Using hands to handle, control, or feel objects, tools or controls?
33 (S) Consequence of Error
How serious would the result usually be if the worker made a mistake that was not readily correctable?
30 (F) Standing
How much time in a usual work period does the worker spend: Standing?
25 (F) Walking or Running
How much time in a usual work period does the worker spend: Walking or running?
20 (F) Bending or Twisting the Body
How much time in a usual work period does the worker spend: Bending or twisting the body?
17 (C) Job-Required Social Interaction
How much does this job require the worker to be in contact (face-to-face, by telephone, or otherwise) with others in order to perform it?
16 (I) Importance of Being Aware of New Events
How important is being constantly aware of either frequently changing events (e.g. security guard watching for shoplifters) or infrequent events (e.g. radar operator watching for tornadoes) to performing this job?
15 (F) Hazardous Situations
How often does this job require the worker to be exposed to harardous situations? Hazardous Situations involving likely cuts, bites, stings, or minor burns
15 (F) Kneeling, Crouching or Crawling
How much time in a usual work period does the worker spend: Kneeling, stooping, crouching or crawling?
13 (O) Objective or Subjective Information
How objective or subjective is the information communicated in this job?
13 (E) Frustrating Circumstances
To what extent do frustrating circumstances ("road blocks" to work that are beyond the worker's control) hinder the accomplishment of this job?
12 (I) Provide a Service to Others
How important are interactions requiring the worker to: Provide a service to others (e.g., customers)?
11 (L) Hazardous Situations
What is the likelihood that the worker would be injured as a result of being exposed to hazardous situations while performing this job? Hazardous Situations involving likely cuts, bites, stings, or minor burns
10 (F) Sounds or Noise Levels Are Distracting
How often during a usual work period is the worker exposed to the following conditions: Sounds and noise levels that are distracting and uncomfortable?
10 (A) Degree of Automation
Indicate the level of automation of this job.
8 (I) Coordinate or Lead Others
How important are interactions requiring the worker to: Coordinate or lead others in accomplishing work activities (not supervision)?
8 (I) Deal With External Customers
How important are interactions requiring the worker to: Deal with external customers (e.g., retail sales) or the public in general (e.g., police work)?
8 (D) Hazardous Situations
If injury, due to exposure to hazardous situations, were to occur while performing this job, how serious would be the likely outcome? Hazardous Situations involving likely cuts, bites, stings, or minor burns
6 (R) Responsibility for Outcomes and Results
How responsible is the worker for work outcomes and results of other workers?
5 (F) Deal With Unpleasant or Angry People
How frequently does the worker have to deal with unpleasant, angry, or discourteous individuals as part of the job requirements?
5 (F) Cramped Work Space, Awkward Positions
How often during a usual work period is the worker exposed to the following conditions: Cramped work space that requires getting into awkward positions?
5 (F) Frequency in Conflict Situations
How frequently do the job requirements place the worker in conflict situations?
5 (F) Climbing Ladders, Scaffolds, Poles, etc.
How much time in a usual work period does the worker spend: Climbing ladders, scaffolds, poles, etc?
5 (F) Keeping or Regaining Balance
How much time in a usual work period does the worker spend: Keeping or regaining balance?
4 (I) Supervise, Coach, Train Others
How important are interactions requiring the worker to: Supervise, coach, train, or develop other employees?
4 (I) Persuade Someone to a Course of Action
How important are interactions requiring the worker to: Persuade someone to a course of action (informally) or influence others to buy something (to sell)?
4 (I) Pace Determined by Speed of Equipment
How important is it to this job that the pace is determined by the speed of equipment or machinery? (This does not refer to keeping busy at all times on this job.)
Interest elements are ranked by occupational interest.
Conventional occupations frequently involve following set procedures and routines. These occupations can include working with data and details more than with ideas. Usually there is a clear line of authority to follow.
Enterprising occupations frequently involve starting up and carrying out projects. These occupations can involve leading people and making many decisions. Sometimes they require risk taking and often deal with business.
Realistic occupations frequently involve work activities that include practical, hands-on problems and solutions. They often deal with plants, animals, and real-world materials like wood, tools, and machinery. Many of the occupations require working outside, and do not involve a lot of paperwork or working closely with others.
Social occupations frequently involve working with, communicating with, and teaching people. These occupations often involve helping or providing service to others.
Investigative occupations frequently involve working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of thinking. These occupations can involve searching for facts and figuring out problems mentally.
Artistic occupations frequently involve working with forms, designs and patterns. They often require self-expression and the work can be done without following a clear set of rules.
Work values elements are ranked by extent.
59 Support-Mean Extent
Occupations that satisfy this work value offer supportive management that stands behind employees. Corresponding needs are Company Policies, Supervision: Human Relations and Supervision: Technical.
53 Relationships-Mean Extent
Occupations that satisfy this work value allow employees to provide service to others and work with co-workers in a friendly non-competitive environment. Corresponding needs are Co-workers, Moral Values and Social Service.
52 Working Conditions-Mean Extent
Occupations that satisfy this work value offer job security and good working conditions. Corresponding needs are Activity, Compensation, Independence, Security, Variety and Working Conditions.
30 Achievement-Mean Extent
Occupations that satisfy this work value are results oriented and allow employees to use their strongest abilities, giving them a feeling of accomplishment. Corresponding needs are Ability Utilization and Achievement.
22 Recognition-Mean Extent
Occupations that satisfy this work value offer advancement, potential for leadership, and are often considered prestigious. Corresponding needs are Advancement, Authority, Recognition and Social Status.
21 Independence-Mean Extent
Occupations that satisfy this work value allow employs to work on their own and make decisions. Corresponding needs are Creativity, Responsibility and Autonomy.
81 Moral Values
Workers on this job are never pressured to do things that go against their sense of right and wrong
66 Working Conditions
Workers on this job have good working conditions
Workers on this job are busy all the time
66 Company Policies and Practices
Workers on this job are treated fairly by the company
63 Supervision, Human Relations
Workers on this job have supervisors who back up their workers with management
Workers on this job have steady employment
Workers on this job do their work alone
50 Supervision, Technical
Workers on this job have supervisors who train their workers well
Workers on this job are paid well in comparison with other workers
Workers on this job have co-workers who are easy to get along with
Workers on this job have opportunities for advancement
38 Social Service
Workers on this job have work where they do things for other people
Workers on this job get a feeling of accomplishment
28 Ability Utilization
Workers on this job make use of their individual abilities
25 Social Status
Workers on this job are looked up to by others in their company and their community
Workers on this job plan their work with little supervision
Workers on this job make decisions on their own
Workers on this job receive recognition for the work they do
Workers on this job try out their own ideas
Workers on this job have something different to do every day
Workers on this job give directions and instructions to others
|DOT91 (Dictionary of Occupational Titles):||
206387034 File Clerk I
206367018 Tape Librarian
206387014 Fingerprint Clerk II
206367014 File Clerk II
206387010 Classification Clerk
206387022 Record Clerk
|AIM97 (Apprenticeship Information Management):||
|CEN90 (1990 Census Occupations):||
335 File Clerks
|CIP90 (Classification of Instructional Programs):||
520408 General Office/Clerical and Typing Services
520401 Administrative Assistant/Secretarial Science, General
|GOE93 (Guide for Occupational Exploration):||
070701 Clerical Handling: Filing
070503 Records Processing: Record Preparation and Maintenance
|MOC97 (Military Occupational Codes):||
|OES98 (Occupational Employment Statistics):||
55321 File Clerks
|OPM97 (Office of Personnel Management Occupations):||
|SOC98 (Standard Occupational Classification):||
43-4071 File Clerks | <urn:uuid:db471b0a-4b81-439d-8205-bfb2c972bfbf> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://occupationalinfo.org/onet/55321.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510427.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20230928162907-20230928192907-00303.warc.gz | en | 0.906627 | 6,528 | 3.09375 | 3 |
The study will obtain genetic information from children’s brain cells using innovative technologies and will be part of the Human Cell Atlas consortium’s Pediatric Networks.
August 28th, 2015 Text by WebContent
A doctor receives the results of his epilepsy patient’s MRI exam. He opens the set of dozens of images on his computer and looks at them one by one, trying to find an injury or an abnormality. In one of the axial cuts, he notices a subtle, barely perceptible difference. Is that little darker spot responsible for the seizures? There is no way to be sure. Making a diagnosis like this one is difficult, even for specialized doctors. An error could pave way to a highly invasive, risky and unnecessary surgery.
With the intention of helping both patients that suffer from neurological disorders and health professionals, researcher Wu ShinTing – from the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering (FEEC) at Unicamp and also a member of BRAINN – creates computer software that enables innovative views of MRI and PET (Positron Emission Tomography) exams. The computational tools developed by her group allow physicians access to a much larger amount of information, so they can make more accurate and informed decisions.
INTERACTION TO OVERCOME CHALLENGES
Collaborations between Ting and the medical researchers began before the creation of BRAINN. About ten years ago, Ting presented her works to researcher Fernando Cendes, today BRAINN’s principal investigator. Cendes saw potential in looking at a three-dimensional images of the brain in a different way. Instead of the traditional straight layers, he would like to visualize them in curvilinear layers. Interested in the challenge, Ting began working on the development of a new algorithm.
After much research, months of studies and improvements, a first version of the program was completed in 2010. It was able to organize all the data and images from an MRI exam and provide the user with different views of the brain, straight or curvilinear, 2D and 3D.
“We realized that, depending on the angle, certain brain structures became more evident“, says Ting. “To facilitate medical diagnosis, our program offered multiplanar and curved cuts. Although there are other similar commercial tools available, our way of interaction is different”.
“Our bet is on interactivity – the researchers can move the cutting surface as they seem fit, either vertically/horizontally or diagonally, and observe brain structures from the angle they consider the best to confirm their assumptions”.
AT BRAINN, INNOVATION NEVER STOPS
Four years later, a new version of the software – even more innovative – was developed by Ting’s group. The tool now included the visualization of PET exams aligned with MRI. Thus, the user could merge the anatomical images of the MRI with metabolic results obtained by PET.
“In addition to integrating PET with MRI, our second version offers more angles and a larger viewing area, providing a comparative analysis between the two cerebral hemispheres”, says Ting. “We also made it compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac”.
So far, the application has been primarily used in epilepsy patients. However, it has the potential to aid in the detection of brain tumors and other neurological diseases. Ting says that the next step is to integrate additional medical exams options, in order to provide doctors with more information and make their diagnosis as accurate as possible.
Our lines of research are mainly focused on the demands for computational tools that corroborate the doctor’s conjectures. We always pay attention to new proposals to investigate suspicious areas, so we would like to add exams such as SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography), DWI (Diffusion MRI) and even EEG (electroencephalogram) to our tool”, says Ting. “Some of these projects have already started and are in progress, but we still do not have a prediction for when a new version of the program will be ready”.
If you want to know more about the history of the project, and view images and videos of the software created by Ting’s group, you can access its website by clicking the following link:
July 15th, 2015 Text by WebContent
Neural probes are widely used today in neuroscience research and have many applications. These small needles, when inserted into the brain, allow the stimulation of specific regions and the recording of electrical activity. However, they are not yet produced in Brazil. With that in mind, one of BRAINN’s projects is to develop neural probes in the country for the first time.
“In 2010, researcher Hercules Neves invited me to be part of an European project of which he was coordinator, called Neuroprobes” says Roberto Panepucci, one of the researchers in BRAINN’s neural probes project. “The following year I came in contact with BRAINN, and we realized that developing neural probes here would be an interesting project.”
The activities began in 2012 with two master projects, supervised by Panepucci. Students André Malavazi and Jesus Arbey developed prototypes of the probes in the Renato Archer Information Technology Center (CTI), which have been tested with promising results.
PROBES MADE IN BRAZIL
“During electrical activity recording tests stimulated by light pulses in live animals, our probes proved to be better than the ones already available on the market,” says Panepucci. “The silicon used in neural probes being sold today absorbs light and generates an electrical interference in the neural signal. Our probes are made from polymers, so this effect was significantly reduced, caused only by interaction with the metal”.
Besides their usefulness to scientific research, neural probes produced in the country could also bring economic advantages and might be easier to obtain.
“Currently, researchers working with neural probes in Brazil need to import them,” says Roberto Covolan, one of the project’s coordinators. “By producing these devices in the country, bureaucracies related to the importing process would be avoided. The cost of the probes would also be reduced”.
TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION AND CUSTOMIZATION
One of the challenges related to neural probes is data transfer. Since the probes have many electrodes, they need to be connected to many wires. This could make it difficult to carry out experiments and may limit the minimum size of the apparatus. “For these reasons, we are now working on the development of probes that can transmit information wirelessly,” says Covolan.
The next steps of the project involve making the neural probes available to several research groups that have shown interest in the equipment.
“One of the main advantages of developing probes here is the possibility of customization,” says Panepucci. “We created a software that lets you easily draw the probes and build a prototype from it. This way the probe can be made according to the demands of the researcher“.
André Vieira, postdoctoral student at FCM/Unicamp, is one of the scientists already interested in the neural probes. Vieira works with the molecular mechanisms of epilepsy, and part of his research involves the stimulation and the recording of brain activity in animals, particularly in the hippocampus area.
Vieira has conducted tests of mechanical nature with the equipment and noticed, for instance, that in order to use them it is necessary to remove the dura-mater, the outermost layer of meninges that surround the brain. According to Vieira, this procedure might bring advantages to the experiments, as the probe would be better fixed in the brain and would thus reduce the chances of tissue injury. And the advantages of the probes go on and on.
“With neural probes it is also possible to simultaneously record activities in different regions of the hippocampus, which is not possible with an electrode,” he says. “In addition, we can isolate the activity of individual neurons”.
The next step in Vieira’s project is to carry out electrical activity recording tests. For these he will use a custom-made neural probe, which will have a greater length I order to reach the hippocampus. “We intend to conduct these tests in the upcoming months,” he says.
November 9th, 2015 Text by WebContent
The patient has been hospitalized for a few days at Unicamp´s Hospital. He has suffered a stroke. After the initial treatments were done, the doctors are now closely following his progress. Has the stroke affected the man´s brain? Are the cognitive functions intact? To be sure, the medical team applies questionnaires and perform various tests – such as asking the man to move his arms and legs.
Even though they are efficient, all attempts to understand the consequences of a stroke are indirect. Doctors cannot directly check what is happening in the most important region of the body when it comes to stroke – i.e., the brain.
“To date, measuring the blood flow in stroke patients is an unsolved problem,” says Rickson Mesquita, researcher at the Neurophysics Group (GNF) at Unicamp and a BRAINN member. He and his research group are seeking an answer to this problem; an answer that is already being developed with the help of a modern device, unique in Brazil. Tests with this prototype may even reach the clinical phase later this year.
EQUIPMENT ALLOWS TO “SEE” WHAT HAPPENS INSIDE THE BRAIN
Light is an electromagnetic wave. The light that we can see, and which we call “colors”, is but a small part of a large electromagnetic spectrum that includes, for example, X-rays and radio waves.
The difference between what we can see and what we cannot see is the wavelength. We humans are able to see the part of the spectrum which is approximately between 400 and 700 nanometers (nm) long (a nanometer is one meter divided into a billion pieces).
The color red has a wavelength around 700nm. The near infrared is called so because it has a wavelength slightly higher, between 700 and 900nm – so we cannot see it.
To help diagnose patients who have suffered a stroke, Mesquita develops technologies based in near infrared light. In a simplified way, the light in the near infrared spectrum is able to pass through the skin and skull, interacting with hemoglobin molecules in our blood. This is important because hemoglobin is responsible for carrying oxygen to our entire body. Therefore, where there is hemoglobin, there is oxygen.
Knowing this, Mesquita´s idea was to develop a small device with lasers and infrared light detectors in order to use it in medical practice.
It works like this: the light is emitted by the device, enters our body, interacts with hemoglobin molecules and comes back to the detector. However, the intensity of light that returns is different from the original – the final intensity depends on the amount of hemoglobin with which it interacted. Looking at the difference between emitted light and detected light, it is possible to infer the presence of hemoglobin – and hence of oxygen – in the region under analysis.
“The device we developed is the first in Brazil that is able to measure blood flow in the brain microvasculature,” says Mesquita. “The greatest advantage of it in relation to the monitoring currently done in hospitals is that we can see, in real time, what is happening in the brain of patients who have suffered a stroke.”
“We can see, for example, if the brain of ischemic stroke patients are receiving blood and oxygen properly”, explains the researcher. “Moreover, it is possible to individualize treatment according to the specific characteristics of each patient we are seeing.”
The project, which began in 2013, had its first results at the end of 2014. The tests were done in healthy volunteers and confirmed the accuracy of the equipment. Now, the next step is to take the idea to hospitals and monitor stroke patients.
TECHNOLOGY TO STUDY HEALTHY BRAINS
The device developed by Mesquita and his group can also be used to study healthy brains. One example is its application in research of brain networks, in which the goal is to understand how different regions of the brain are interconnected. The function of the device is to help determine which brain structures are active when certain activities and stimuli are present, since in these cases they have increased blood flow and consume more oxygen than regions not involved in the processes.
“The use of optical devices for brain networks studies has grown in the last five years,” said Mesquita. “They have advantages over magnetic resonance imaging, which can also be used for this purpose. Optical devices are more practical, portable and allow you to perform tests with patients standing and in more natural situations. ” | <urn:uuid:4bc23ea0-9741-41a9-bc36-7f49a92193ae> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.brainn.org.br/en/category/destaques/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510427.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20230928162907-20230928192907-00303.warc.gz | en | 0.955887 | 2,708 | 3.03125 | 3 |
To sign up to receive the latest Canadian Energy Centre research to your inbox email: [email protected]
Download the PDF here
Download the charts here
People are interested in the question of whether a barrel of oil produced by the Canadian upstream oil sector is becoming cleaner on an emissions per barrel basis.
To answer this important question, this CEC Fact Sheet examines historical emissions intensity numbers, expressed on a kilograms CO2 equivalent (CO2e) per barrel basis, from Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC). We look at Canadian upstream oil sector (defined as the sum of the oil sands subsector and the conventional oil subsector) over time.
Tracking the historical emissions intensity of Canada’s upstream oil sector
Emissions intensity is the emission rate of a given pollutant relative to the intensity of a specific activity or industrial production process. Emissions intensity is determined by dividing the amount of absolute emissions by some unit of output, such as GDP, energy used, population, or barrel of oil produced.
Reducing emissions intensity means reducing the amount of greenhouses gases (GHGs) emitted per unit of output. The aim in focusing on emissions intensity is to retain a meaningful target regardless of shifts across a company’s portfolio.
Overall Canadian oil emissions intensity per barrel down by over 13% since 2000
Using ECCC numbers, drawn from the 2023 National Inventory Report (NIR), between 2000 and 2021, the emissions intensity of the Canadian upstream oil sector fell from 75.1 kilograms CO2e per barrel to 65.2 kilograms CO2e per barrel, an overall reduction of over 13 per cent (see Figure 1).
Blending the oil sands subsector and the conventional oil subsector into a total emission intensity for the Canadian upstream oil sector masks some important trends for the two subsectors.
Oil sands emissions intensity down by over 29% since 2000
Oil sands subsector emissions intensity fell from 125.7 kilograms CO2e per barrel in 1991 to 79.3 kilograms CO2e per barrel in 2021, a decline of nearly 37 per cent.
And, between 2000 and 2021, the emissions intensity of the oil sands subsector fell from 111.8 kilograms CO2e per barrel in 2000 to just under 79.3 kilograms CO2e per barrel in 2021, a decline of over 29 per cent (see Figure 1)
Source: Derived from Government of Canada, 2023(a) and Government of Canada, 2023(b)
Notes: Intensities are based on total subsector emissions and relevant production amounts. They represent overall averages, not facility intensities.
Conventional oil emissions intensity down by over 32% since 2000
Since 2000, the emissions intensity in the conventional oil sector has fallen from 63.2 kilograms CO2e per barrel to 42.9 kilograms CO2e per barrel in 2021, a decrease of over 32 per cent (see Figure 1).
Summing Up: Canada’s upstream oil sector continues to become cleaner on an emissions per barrel basis
Clearly since 2000, the Canadian upstream oil sector is becoming cleaner on an emissions per barrel basis.
As emissions intensity in the Canadian upstream oil sector continues to decline, along with Canada’s highly rated ESG performance, the Canadian barrel of oil has the potential of becoming the barrel of choice on the world stage.
This CEC Fact Sheet was compiled by Lennie Kaplan at the Canadian Energy Centre (www.canadianenergycentre.ca). The author and the Canadian Energy Centre would like to thank and acknowledge the assistance of two anonymous reviewers in reviewing the original data and research for this Fact Sheet.
References (as of May 2, 2023)
Government of Canada, 2023(a). Calculation of oil and gas emissions intensity. Custom tabulation; Government of Canada, 2023(b). 2023 National inventory report: greenhouse gas sources and sinks in Canada, 1990 to 2021. <https://bit.ly/3KKyeUu>.
Creative Commons Copyright
Research and data from the Canadian Energy Centre (CEC) is available for public usage under creative commons copyright terms with attribution to the CEC. Attribution and specific restrictions on usage including non-commercial use only and no changes to material should follow guidelines enunciated by Creative Commons here: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND. | <urn:uuid:9c51e18d-be5b-43bc-8416-4a03a23b5781> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.canadianenergycentre.ca/canadian-oil-continues-to-get-cleaner-on-an-emissions-per-barrel-basis/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510427.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20230928162907-20230928192907-00303.warc.gz | en | 0.889835 | 904 | 2.875 | 3 |
To use all functions of this page, please activate cookies in your browser.
With an accout for my.chemeurope.com you can always see everything at a glance – and you can configure your own website and individual newsletter.
- My watch list
- My saved searches
- My saved topics
- My newsletter
A calcite sea is one in which low-magnesium calcite is the primary inorganic marine calcium carbonate precipitate. An aragonite sea is the alternate seawater chemistry in which aragonite and high-magnesium calcite are the primary inorganic carbonate precipitates. The Early Paleozoic and the Middle to Late Mesozoic oceans were predominantly calcite seas, whereas the Middle Paleozoic through the Early Mesozoic and the Cenozoic (including today) are characterized by aragonite seas (Wilkinson et al., 1985; Wilkinson and Given, 1986; Morse and Mackenzie, 1990; Lowenstein et al., 2001; Palmer and Wilson, 2004).
Additional recommended knowledge
The most significant geological and biological effects of calcite sea conditions include rapid and widespread formation of carbonate hardgrounds (Palmer, 1982; Palmer et al., 1988; Wilson and Palmer, 1992), calcitic ooids (Sandberg, 1983; Wilkinson et al., 1985), calcite cements (Wilkinson and Given, 1986), and the contemporaneous dissolution of aragonite shells in shallow warm seas (Cherns and Wright, 2000; Palmer and Wilson, 2004). Hardgrounds were very common, for example, in the calcite seas of the Ordovician and Jurassic, but virtually absent from the aragonite seas of the Permian (Palmer, 1982).
Fossils of invertebrate organisms found in calcite sea deposits are usually dominated by either thick calcite shells and skeletons (Wilkinson, 1979; Stanley and Hardie, 1998, 1999; Porter, 2007), were infaunal and/or had thick periostraca (Pojeta, 1971), or had an inner shell of aragonite and an outer shell of calcite (Harper et al., 1997). This was apparently because aragonite dissolved quickly on the seafloor and had to be either avoided or protected as a biomineral (Palmer and Wilson, 2004).
Calcite seas were coincident with times of rapid seafloor spreading and global greenhouse climate conditions (Stanley and Hardie, 1999). Seafloor spreading centers cycle seawater through hydrothermal vents, reducing the ratio of magnesium to calcium in the seawater through metamorphism of calcium-rich minerals in basalt to magnesium-rich clays (Wilkinson and Given, 1986; Lowenstein et al., 2001). This reduction in the Mg/Ca ratio favors the precipitation of calcite over aragonite. Increased seafloor spreading also means increased volcanism and elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and oceans. This may also have an effect on which polymorph of calcium carbonate is precipitated (Lowenstein et al., 2001).
|This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Calcite_sea". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.| | <urn:uuid:aaa9ac41-2e78-4aed-aea6-73f30e38fe20> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.chemeurope.com/en/encyclopedia/Calcite_sea.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510529.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20230929222230-20230930012230-00203.warc.gz | en | 0.876868 | 691 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Over recent years, there has been debate over where political power is situated within a liberal democratic state. A liberal democracy can be seen to ensure the rights and freedoms of individuals through the enshrinement of such into law. This essay will seek to analyse where political power lies in the USA from an elitist standpoint. Whilst in theory political power seems shared in the USA, especially considering the large power individual states wield thanks to federalism, one will find that there is still a situation that is similar to the classical elitist principle of ‘a class that rules and a class that is ruled’ (Mosca, 1939), of which the former still holds a significant proportion of political power. Whilst classical elite theory will be used in comparison to the power concentration amongst the political elite, this essay will also argue that the political power distribution in the USA is more comparable to the modern power elite theory characterised by C. Wright Mills, and therefore provides a clearer picture as to the distribution of political power in the USA. However, this essay will also critique whether the political power in the USA really does reflect that outlined by the elitist argument, and whether in years to come the concentration of political power towards the elites may dissipate.
If you need assistance with writing your essay, our professional essay writing service is here to help!Essay Writing Service
One example of where there is clear elitist dominance of the political power is when we look at the breakdown of the House of Representatives, in terms of the educational background of its members. In the 115th Congress, 94.1% of all House Members hold a bachelor’s degree, with 60% also holding a degree beyond that level of education (Manning, 2018). From this data we can see that the vast proportion of the country’s political representative were educated in higher education, with nearly 10% being educated at one of the eight Ivy League institutions (Morella, 2010). Therefore, the majority of USA’s legislators form what Evans would describe as a ‘socially cohesive group’ (Evans, 2006), however it is a group that does not represent the rest of the population, as less than 50% of Americans are recorded as attending or have attended higher education (Foundation, 2018). This shows that a small group of elites that do not represent the broader population, oversee the making of large amounts of political and legal decisions, further reinforcing the belief that significant political power within the USA is indeed held by the elite. However, this problem is much more than a temporary issue, as Domhoff (2012) argues that the rich will ‘coalesce’ into an upper class that it will socialise and educate its children in. In other words, the elite that are educated in the prestigious institutions will have the funding to educate their children in such institutions, with their offspring filling their shoes and maintaining the social elitist bubble. This was also a theory of Mosca’s, who stated that oftentimes elite power was transferred through inheritance (Mosca, 1939). There is strong evidence for this when looking at Harvard University’s student economic background. The median parental income of a Harvard student sits at $168,800, over three times the national median (Bolotnikova, 2017). What this characterises is a situation where the majority of students attending prestigious institutions – which will ultimately pave the way to the superior power-wielding job opportunities – are from highly privileged backgrounds, and therefore highlight a cycle where the children of elites, are educated by elite institutions, and will join the echelons of the elite consequently. This can be attributed to the sheer cost of attending these private colleges, where tuition costs average $34,740 per annum (CollegeData, 2017), over 50% of the annual median household income in the United States (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2018). Even with financial aid, this puts the elite education provided by these private institutions well out of reach financially for the majority of American families. Therefore, one can conclude that legislative power within the USA is held by a small group of elites, whose education and position is ‘closed off’ (Evans, 2006) from the rest of society.
However, there is increasing empirical evidence of a switch in trend from the concept of intergenerational influence on power, and more to a situation where elite job prospects for graduates of university are more based upon their skill set and success in higher education, and now with more students than ever completing higher education, the intergenerational influence of family origin on post educational attainment has ‘completely vanished’ (Maxwell, 2017). Therefore, if socio-economic background of students is becoming less important than educational success when it comes to post-graduate job prospects, then over the years coming one may see a change in the demographic makeup of the people manning the top jobs in the country, and therefore there might be a dilution of the elite makeup in such groups. If this trend continues to occur, then one could conclude that political power is becoming increasingly shared by multiple social classes, and not just the elite. This may limit the effectiveness of the perspective of elitism when trying to understand where political power lies in the USA.
A core standpoint of classical elite theory is that the ruling group of elites that hold the significant political power are ‘closed off’ from the ruled public, and that they are selected based upon their ‘economic, political or ideological resources’ (Evans, 2006, p. 39). In other words, one cannot simply join this group of elites, due to the various monetary and societal barriers that would stand in the way. A prime example of how the American elite are ‘closed off’ from the rest of the public is the wealth discrepancy. As of 2013, the highest 1% in America owned 36.7% of the nation’s wealth, with the top 20% owning 89% of the wealth (Domhoff, 2012). This trend has only worsened, with the discrepancy being at its worst in the last 50 years. Therefore, a larger proportion of the nation’s wealth is owned by the same proportion of the population, highlighting that the monetary gap between the ‘ruled’ and the ‘ruling’ is still significant. Whilst wealth in its broad term may seem ambiguously linked to political power, the top 1% of the population own 35% of stocks in the USA as of 2010 (Domhoff, 2012). This means that not only do the elites in the country own substantial wealth in the form of assets, but also own a dominating proportion of stocks compared to the rest of the country. With stock ownership comes strong business influence, meaning that the unequal wealth ownership links not only to personal gains, but leads to the elite having tremendous influence in the corporate sphere as well. Around half of the country’s banking, legal and communications assets are owned by the social elite (Dye, 2012 ). This once again highlights the over-representation by the social elite in the political sphere, as it is also estimated that 250 men and women hold the ‘most influential posts’ in the federal government (Dye, 2012 ). This holds true the elitist perspective that a vast amount of power across the board is held by the elites in society, and the fact that a few hundred individuals make over 50% of key political and corporate decisions highlights the presence of elitism in the decision-making process in the United States of America.
More modern elite theory can be attributed to Wright Mills (1956), who wrote that power was concentrated to three elite groups: the leading military officials, the chief executives of corporation and the political leaders of the legislative and executive branches. This close relationship between the ‘corporate rich’ and the ‘political directorate’ led to a decentralisation of power from professional politicians to ‘outsiders’ from big corporation (Mills, 1956, pp. 167-9). This corporate influence on political decisions goes by the name of lobbyism in America. Lobbyists spend hundreds of millions of dollars through the media, and donating to political candidates PACs to try to influence said politician’s opinion on certain legislative issues. By promising to control legislation to fit the corporations’ agenda, candidates can receive millions of dollars. A prime example of this would be Hilary Clinton’s campaign committee, which had over $563,756,928 worth of funding (OpenSecrets, 2016). This huge sum of money donated mostly from corporation’s highlights big business’ ability to influence political candidates and the public’s perception of these frontrunners. In 2016, only 18% of Hilary Clinton’s financial contributions to her campaign were of donations smaller than $200 (OpenSecrets, 2016). Through the funding of campaign ads and countrywide rallies, political candidates can become the face of newspapers and gain far more media attention than other candidates, which in turn will lead to a stronger influence on the public to vote for them. In comparison, Bernie Sanders campaign fund total of $228,154,501 came in a majority from small donations (57.70%), so not only did he raise substantially less than Clinton, but the majority of his donations came from individuals rather than big business, the polar opposite of the former. The difference in these financial contributions therefore highlights the sheer financial contributions that the corporate elite funnel into political candidate races, in exchange for promises to fit their agenda. Therefore, it is fair to say that Mills concept of the three groups of elites being interwoven with the corporate elite having increasingly more influence in politics, leads one to conclude that the corporate elite have substantial political power when it comes to aiding the outcome of elections and furthering their agenda with political allies. One can also conclude that the political power distribution in America today is more easily explained through power elite theorists such as Mills as opposed to more classical elite theory.
Our academic experts are ready and waiting to assist with any writing project you may have. From simple essay plans, through to full dissertations, you can guarantee we have a service perfectly matched to your needs.View our services
However, one may question whether Mills power elite theories ring true in today’s world, with the political sphere filled with new political parties and pressure groups. Pluralists such as Dahl (1961) would emphasise that some pressure groups provide and exert a good challenge to the political elite over some decisions, and therefore help to check the political power of a society and reduce oligarchical power. An example of this is the pressure group 350.org’s protest and opposition to Obama’s proposal for the Keystone XL pipeline, eventually resulting in Obama deciding to reject the proposal (350.ORG, 2015). Examples like this highlight the pluralist’s belief that power is not concentrated, but rather dispersed and interest groups can be successful in balancing attempts to take power. This goes some way to challenge the elitist belief that the interwoven elite institutions work to each other’s benefit. However, this argument is flawed, because the state tends to listen and appease the pressure groups to which fits their agenda. An example of this would be Trump’s staunch defence of gun rights and support towards the NRA, resulting in a $30,000,000 campaign donation (Gambino, 2018). To conclude, the pluralism critique of elitism goes to little extent to dispel the belief that most of the political power lies with the elite in America.
Thus, in conclusion, political power in the United States lies significantly in the hands of the corporate and political elite, from the big business owners who can strongly influence political agendas, to the socially homogenous group of educated elites that man the positions in the legislative, executive and even the judiciary, where all 12 supreme justices went to Ivy league schools (Wan, 2018). This creates a situation where much of the political decision making is done by a group of individuals who represent a minute proportion of the population of the United States, a group that is well and truly cemented into the upper echelons of society. Therefore, it can be stated that the elitist perspective of power presents a very strong argument as to where the political power lies. Furthermore, the situation currently in the United States clearly resonates very strongly with Wright Mills’ theories relating to the three interwoven groups of elites, as there is undeniable evidence of the strong influence the corporate elite have in pushing or controlling the agenda of political candidates through election campaign financing. However, whilst the current state of power balance in the United States can draw similarities to the original elitist theories of Mosca and Evans, that of the elite being ‘closed off from the ruled (Evans, 2006), new data argues that it is becoming increasingly likely that the socio-economic background of individuals carries less weight when compared to educational success, and this may lead in the future to a move away from the generational elite patterns, and one may see more individuals penetrating into this once closed group of elites. At present though, political power still lies very much in the hands of the elite in the United States of America.
350.ORG, 2015. https://350.org/kxl-victory/. [Online]
Available at: https://350.org/kxl-victory/
[Accessed 1 December 2018].
Bolotnikova, M. N., 2017. Harvard’s Economic Diversity Problem. [Online]
Available at: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2017/01/low-income-students-harvard
[Accessed 1 December 2018].
CollegeData, 2017. What’s the Price Tag for a College Education?. [Online]
Available at: https://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tmpl.jhtml?articleId=10064
[Accessed 27 November 2018].
- Dahl, R., 1961. Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. 2nd ed. s.l.:Yale University Press.
Domhoff, G., 2012. The Class-Domination Theory of Power, Who Rules America?. [Online]
Available at: https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/class_domination.html
[Accessed 28 November 2018].
Dye, T., 2012 . The Power Elite. [Online]
Available at: https://www1.udel.edu/htr/Psc105/Texts/power.html
[Accessed 3 December 2018].
- Evans, M., 2006. Elitism. In: e. a. Hay, ed. The State. s.l.:s.n., p. 39.
Foundation, L., 2018. A Stronger Nation, Tracking America’s progress toward 2025. [Online]
Available at: strongernation.luminafoundation.org/report/2018/#nation
[Accessed 30 November 2018].
Gambino, L., 2018. NRA contributions: how much money is spent on lawmakers?. [Online]
Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/16/florida-school-shooting-focus-shifts-to-nra-gun-lobby-cash-to-lawmakers
[Accessed 2 December 2018].
Manning, J. E., 2018. Membership of the 115th Congress: A Profile. [Online]
Available at: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44762.pdf
[Accessed 26 November 2018].
- Maxwell, C. D. U. K. H. &. H. W. ed., 2017. Elite Education and Internationalism: From the Early Years to Higher Education. s.l.:Palgrave Macmillan US.
- Mills, C. W., 1956. The Power Elite. s.l.:Oxford University Press.
Morella, M., 2010. Harvard, Stanford, Yale Graduate Most Members of Congress. [Online]
Available at: https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/10/28/harvard-stanford-yale-graduate-most-members-of-congress
[Accessed 4 December 2018].
- Mosca, G., 1939. The Ruling Class. s.l.:McGraw-Hill Book Company Inc..
OpenSecrets, 2016. OpenSecrets. [Online]
Available at: https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate?id=N00000019
[Accessed 2 December 2018].
U.S. Department of Commerce, 2018. Income and Poverty in the USA: 2017. [Online]
Available at: https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/income/news-updates/updates.html
[Accessed 27 November 2018].
Wan, W., 2018. Every current Supreme Court justice attended Harvard or Yale. That’s a problem, say decision-making experts.. [Online]
Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/07/11/every-supreme-court-justice-attended-harvard-or-yale-thats-a-problem-say-decision-making-experts/?utm_term=.78fc7dbae6f8
[Accessed 2 December 2018].
Cite This Work
To export a reference to this article please select a referencing stye below:
Related ServicesView all
DMCA / Removal Request
If you are the original writer of this essay and no longer wish to have your work published on UKEssays.com then please: | <urn:uuid:4b77f85d-be74-4a5c-9901-22ebab2a4b9d> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://hk.ukessays.com/essays/politics/where-does-political-power-lie-in-liberal-democratic-states.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510781.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20231001041719-20231001071719-00103.warc.gz | en | 0.934202 | 3,739 | 2.703125 | 3 |
- To draw Lewis Structures for molecules and polyatomic ionswith one central atom.
Introduction to Lewis structures
A Lewis structure is a way to show how atoms share electrons when they form a molecule. Lewis structures show all of the valence electrons in an atom or molecule. The valence electrons are the electrons in the outermost shell.For representative elements, the number of valence electrons equals the group number on the periodic table.To draw the Lewis structure of an atom, write the symbol of the atom and draw dots around it to represent the valence electrons.
Note that hydrogen is often shown in both group 1A and group 7A, but it has one valence electron – never seven. Also, helium is shown in group 8A, but it only has two valence electrons.
Representing a Covalent Bond Using Lewis Structures
Nonmetals can form a chemical bond by sharing two electrons. Each atom contributes one electron to the bond. For example, two hydrogen atoms can form a bond, producing a molecule of H2. Using Lewis structures, we can represent this as follows:
Two fluorine atoms can form a molecule of F2 in the same fashion. Note that each atom must contribute one electron to the bond.
Atoms can form more than one bond. In a water molecule, an oxygen atom forms two bonds, one to each hydrogen atom.
Chemists normally represent a bond using a line instead of two dots. The structures of H2, F2, and H2O would usually be drawn as follows:
Only the bonding electrons are shown using lines.Nonbonding electrons are always shown using dots.
The bonds on the previous sectionare called single bonds.Each bond contains two electrons (one bonding pair). A pair of atoms can also share four electrons or six electrons. If the atoms share four electrons, the bond is called a double bond.For example, the bond in O2 is a double bond.
A double bond is normally depicted with two parallel lines.
If the atoms share six electrons, the bond is called a triple bond. Triple bonds are rather rare, but the bond in N2 is a triple bond.
A triple bond is depicted with three parallel lines.
Drawing Lewis structures for molecules with one central atom: two rules
In Chem 101A, we will focus on drawing Lewis structures of molecules and polyatomic ions that have one central atom with several other atoms attached to it. Such molecules are very common, and they provide a foundation for understanding structures of more complex molecules. To begin, you must know two essential rules for drawing Lewis structures.
Rule 1: In any molecule or ion with the general formula ABn, the unique atom (A) is in the center and all of the B atoms are attached to A.
For example, the basic arrangements of the atoms in SO3, NH4+, and PCl5 are:
Do not ever draw a structure like the ones below!
Rule 2: Lewis structures are not intended to show the actual shape of the molecule; they only show which atoms are bonded to each other.
None of the molecules above actually look like the structures here.For example, the actual shape of SO3 is:
Drawing Lewis structures for molecules with one central atom: five steps to success
The following procedure will give you the correct Lewis structure for any molecule or polyatomic ion that has one central atom.
Step 1: Figure out how many electrons the molecule must have, based on the number of valence electrons in each atom.When drawing the structure of an ion, be sure to add/subtract electrons to account for the charge.
Step 2: Connect the atoms to each other with single bonds to form a “skeleton structure.”Be sure that you follow rule 1 in the previous section.
Step 3: Add enough electrons (dots) to the outer atoms to give each of them a total of eight electrons around them.(Exception: do not add electrons to hydrogen atoms.) This tendency of atoms to have eight electrons around them is called the octet rule.
Step 4: Count the electrons in your structure.If you need to add any more based on your count in step 1, add them to the central atom.The electron count in your final answer must match the count from step 1.
- If the central atom has 8 or more electrons around it, you’re finished.
- If the central atom has fewer than 8 electrons around it, but all of the surrounding atoms are from group 7A, you’re finished.
- Otherwise, move a nonbonding electron pair from an outer atom to a bond (i.e. make a double bond). If the central atom now has 8 electrons around it, you’re finished. Otherwise, repeat this process until the central atom has 8 electrons.
Example: drawing the Lewis structure of CO32–
Step 1) Figure out how many electrons the molecule must have.
Carbon has 4 valence electrons
Each oxygen has 6 valence electrons
The -2 charge means that there are 2 extra electrons
Total: 4 + (3 × 6) + 2 = 24 electrons
The final answer MUST have this number of electrons‼!
Step 2) Attach the atoms to each other using single bonds (“draw the skeleton structure”)
Step 3) Add electrons to all outer atoms (except H) to complete their octets.
The outer atoms are the oxygen atoms here. Each outer atom needs three electron pairs, since it already has one bonding pair.
(1 line = 2 electrons)
Step 4) Count the electrons in the structure.
This structure has 24 electrons.
3 lines = 6 bonding electrons
18 dots = 18 nonbonding electrons
total = 24 electrons
Does this match the count you got in step 1?
CO32–: should have 24 electrons (from step 1)
Our structure has 24 electrons – check! It MATCHES!
If the central atom has 8 or more electrons, you’re done.
The carbon atom has only 6 electrons around it, so we aren’t finished yet…
If the central atom has fewer than 8 electrons, but all of the outer atoms are in group 7A, you’re done.
The outer atoms are oxygen atoms, and oxygen is in group 6A, so we aren’t finished yet…
Otherwise, create an extra bond by changing one of the nonbonding pairs into a bonding pair. (Exception: don’t do this if all of the outer atoms are from group 7A.)
Notice that this step does not change the total number of electrons in our structure. It just moves 2 electrons to a different location.
If the central atom still has fewer than 8 electrons around it, do this as many more times as you need.But do not go beyond 8 electrons on the central atom.When you reach 8 electrons, you’re done.
Chemists often draw square brackets around the structure of a polyatomic ion and write the charge outside the brackets, like this:
Note: we could have put the double bond in two other locations.Any of the three options is fine; you only need to draw one of them.
(If you’re wondering “what about resonance??”… we’ll get to that later on.)
Example: Drawing Lewis structures for BF3, PF3 and BrF3
Next, we’ll look at three molecules side-by-side.The molecules are BF3, PF3, and BrF3, all of which have a central atom bonded to three fluorine atoms.
Step 1) Figure out how many electrons each molecule must have.
BF3: 3 + 7 + 7 + 7 = 24 electrons
PF3: 5 + 7 + 7 + 7 = 26 electrons
BrF3: 7 + 7 + 7 + 7 = 28 electrons
The final answers MUST have these numbers of electrons‼!
Step 2) Attach the atoms to each other using single bonds (“draw the skeleton structure”).
Step 3) Add electrons to the outer atoms, to complete their octets.
Each outer atom needs three electron pairs.
Step 4) Count the electrons in each structure.
Each of these structures has 24 electrons.
3 lines = 6 bonding electrons
18 dots = 18 nonbonding electron
total = 24 electrons
Do these match the counts you got in step 1?
BF3: should have 24 electrons (from step 1)
Our structure has 24 electrons – MATCHES
PF3: should have 26 electrons (from step 1)
Our structure has 24 electrons
WE NEED TO ADD 2 MORE ELECTRONS
BrF3: should have 28 electrons (from step 1)
Our structure has 24 electrons
WE NEED TO ADD 4 MORE ELECTRONS
If the counts do not match, add the remaining electrons to the central atom.
Step 5) If the central atom has 8 or more electrons around it, you’re done.
If the central atom has fewer than 8 electrons around it, but all of the outer atoms are in group 7A, you’re done
Note: these six elements from group 7Aare called halogens:F, Cl, Br, I At, Tn. You’ll only see the first four of them in chemical compounds; the last two are extremely radioactive.
Breaking the Octet Rule
The central atom in a structure often violates the octet rule.Electron-deficient atoms are rare, but expanded octets are fairly common with elements in the 3rd row and beyond.
In BF3, the central atom only has 6 electrons around it. We say that the boron atom is electron deficient.
In BrF3, the central atom has 10 electrons around it. We say that the bromine atom has an expanded octet.
Note that it is also quite common for the central atom to makemore than four bonds.Here are a couple of examples:
Don’t panic if you see such molecules. Just follow the rules for drawing Lewis structures, and you’ll get them right!However, you must note that outer atoms never violate the octet rule.
Using formal charges to determine how many bonds to make, a different perspective...
If we draw the Lewis structure for PO43– ion using the rules you’ve seen earlier, we come up with the structure below.It has the correct number of electrons (32), and every atom satisfies the octet rule.
However, many textbooks (and websites) insist that the structure below is a better one, even though the phosphorus atom has ten electrons around it:
The first structure follows the rules for drawing structures. So why do chemists add a double bond? To understand, we need the formal charges on the atoms in each structure…
Many chemists prefer the second structure because it gives us a couple of zeroes.However, the phosphorus atom in the second structure violates the octet rule. So which structure is best?? The answer is that either structure is legitimate.Both structures give us all of the information we need about phosphate ion; they allow us to predict the shape of the molecule, the angles between the bonds, and whether the molecule is polar.
So which structure should YOU draw on a test? Be sure to check with your instructor, but most willaccept either one.However, the first structure is easier to figure out, because it’s the structure you produce when you follow the provided rules.The second structure requires more work.Therefore, we recommend that when you draw a structure that satisfies the octet rule, you stop there without adding more bonds.
WARNING: Some students come to Chem 101A having been taught to draw Lewis structures with extra double bonds.
If you’re familiar with Lewis structures and you like the extra bonds… congratulations! You have less to learn – you already know all of this stuff.
If you draw structures with extra bonds, they have to be correct.For example, a structure for phosphate that has two double bonds is not acceptable.
Also, a structure for nitrate ion (NO3–) that has two double bonds is not acceptable, even though it gives you more zeroes.The structure with one double bond is the only acceptable one.
If you don’t know why the structures I’ve labeled “unacceptable” are not allowed, don’t risk losing points by adding extra bonds when the central atom already has eight electrons.
Using formal charges to evaluate which is the bestcentral atom...
Generally, you are told which atom is the central bonding atom in the molecule. However, if it is unclear, or if you are asked to decide which atom is central, formal charges can be used to decide. The following is an example.
Example: calculating the formal charges in HCN and HNC
For the arrangement HCN,the Lewis structure: H–C\(\equiv\)N:
The formal charges work out as follows:
For the arrangement HNC,the Lewis structure: H–N\(\equiv\)C:
The formal charges work out as follows:
Both Lewis structures have a net formal charge of zero, but note thatthe formal charges on the first structure are all zero! Thus the first Lewis structureis predicted to be more stable, and it is, in fact, the structure observed experimentally. In general, the closer the formal charges are to zero, the more stable the structure. Remember, though, that formal charges donotrepresent the actual charges on atoms in a molecule or ion. They are used simply as a book-keeping methodfor predicting the most stable Lewis structure for a compound.
Contributors and Attributions
James Armstrong, City College of San Francisco
Torrey Glenn, City College of San Francisco | <urn:uuid:b0a90b18-42fd-486b-948e-9ad1ae2e8fce> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://sugarbarbados.com/article/9-3-drawing-lewis-structures | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510781.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20231001041719-20231001071719-00103.warc.gz | en | 0.894402 | 2,913 | 4.1875 | 4 |
What Are Some Examples of AI?
In this section, we’re going to get into the specifics of AI and cover some use cases that are being used across a variety of sectors, including Finance, Hospitality, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Product Development, and Smart City Infrastructure.
Natural Language Processing
Natural Language Processing allows computers to make sense of all kinds of communication, from handwritten chicken scratch to speech. This capability has given rise to all sorts of technologies from better spam filters to SIRI.
Finance. AI can help financial institutions bring NLP to large volumes of text and speech data to extract information, gain insights, and streamline manual tasks. Consider bringing automated summarization to legal documents, earnings reports, or job applications.
Hospitality. Interactive chatbots can create custom itineraries and book multiple points of travel. With natural language processing, “I want to go to Paris.” can lead to your customers booking air travel, lodging, restaurant reservations, and hotel tickets all from a single interface.
Healthcare. Natural Language Process can bring automation and summarization to the process of sharing, evaluating, and summarizing patient case files. (See our related case study).
Product Development. Natural Language Processing can support faster prototyping, intelligent programming assistants to make it easier for your team to write code, and machine learning to automatically refactor code.
Retail. Natural Language Processing can help your customers find exactly what they are looking for by speaking to an AI agent in a real way. Suddenly, “I’m looking for a wedding gift for my brother” becomes a back and forth conversation to give the buyer exactly what they want.
Smart City Government. NLP agents can comb social media and automatically aggregate it into actionable insights about how to improve your city. For example, multiple tweets complaining about potholes could surface that as a high-priority item for city planners.
Image processing enables computers to make sense of visual information and detect patterns therein. When thinking about image processing, consider all kinds of footage from photos taken by camera to footage taken by drone. Furthermore, because AIs aren't limited to the visible light spectrum, computers can bring intelligence to thermal imaging, LIDAR, etc.
Finance. Use image processing to keep tabs on markets of importance. For example, monitor shipping docks to keep tabs on supply chains, Walmart parking lots to anticipate fluctuations in retail demand, or oil wells to anticipate commodities futures.
Hospitality. In the Doordash age, how dishes photograph can be just as important as how dishes taste. With image processing technologies, restaurants can optimize plating to ensure that their most profitable dishes are getting the most attention. Similarly, hotels can use image processing to optimize the design, layouts, and promotional photography of their properties.
Healthcare. Use image processing on x-rays to detect disease. So far, AI has been used to detect breast cancer, early-stage Alzheimer’s, pneumonia, eye diseases, bacterial meningitis, and lots of others.
Product Development. By photographing items prone to design errors (like tires), product developers could train an image processing model to identify defects and predict recalls prior to going to production.
Manufacturing. Image processing can help you identify defects across the production line. By imbuing this system with artificial intelligence and self-learning capabilities manufacturers can save countless hours by drastically reducing false-positives and the hours required for quality control.
Retail. Intelligent Video Analytics can automatically and efficiently reduce shoplifting, predict burglaries before they happen, and improve loss prevention at point-of-sale — using the security cameras you already have.
Smart City Infrastructure. Most major cities have a vast network of live traffic feeds. By processing this footage using machine learning, city managers can not only respond to major traffic events automatically but also prevent them. When powered by AI, processing video means cities can have less congestion, better visibility on forthcoming disasters, and alerts for available street parking or expired meters.
You can think of predictive analytics as the ability of an AI model to condense huge volumes of data into insights that people can use and understand.
Finance. Financial organizations have used predictive analytics to identify and target more profitable customers; better manage cash flow; anticipate demand fluctuations, and mitigate risk.
Hospitality. AI can use occupancy data, guest feedback, and self-reported guest data to gauge which upgrades or repairs should be implemented first and which improvements will deliver the best return.
Healthcare. Predictive analytics can be used in all sorts of ways to prevent undesirable outcomes. It can reduce patient no-shows, preempt 30-day hospital readmissions, predict resource allocation across divisions and service centers, and improve overall patient satisfaction.
Product Development. AI models can make accurate predictions about the scope and budget of your initiatives to limit cost overruns and schedule slips.
Smart City Infrastructure. Historical and geographical data can be put to work to predict where crimes are likely to take place. Such “pre-crime” initiatives have seen impressive results across big cities like LA, Chicago, and London.
Machine learning is an automated process that AI algorithms use to integrate a wealth of information and turn them into action. In the case of predictive analytics, the integration of information leads to prediction. In machine learning, that integration can lead to all sorts of outputs as we’ll discuss below. Furthermore, machine learning uses recursive training to ensure that the conclusions its making are ever-more accurate and useful.
Finance. By analyzing billions of data points, fraud detection systems can actively learn and calibrate in response to new (or potential) security threats.
Hospitality. Most hotels know to adjust their pricing to adjust for seasonal fluctuations in demand; however, machine learning enables elastic pricing at all points of sale to ensure that both hotels and restaurants aren’t leaving a single dollar on the table.
Healthcare. Whereas disease detection typically relies on image recognition models, pharmaceutical research finds patterns in much more complex datasets. It’s unsurprising, then, that machine learning is being used at over 150 startups and 40 pharmaceutical companies to detect and deliver new molecules.
Manufacturing. Machine learning can transform a wealth of data coming from IoT enabled devices into action and automation. Machine learning systems can not only predict when manufacturing equipment needs to be pulled for maintenance but automatically reallocate other resources and lines to offset any losses in productivity.
Product Development. When integrated into the product development process, artificial intelligence makes everything, well, better. Software ships faster with fewer errors. Products leave the factory floor with better reliability and a lower risk of recall. Supply chain predictions are accurate and reliable.
Retail. Machine learning enables brick-and-mortar stores to get the same level of demographic and customer information as their eCommerce counterparts can. Learn who your customers are, how they move through your store, and how store layouts affect purchase decisions.
Greater Customer Personalization
In the AI space, we can think of greater customer personalization as one of the major capabilities enabled by machine learning. By integrating a galaxy of relevant information, companies are helping customers service the perfect recommendation at the perfect time.
Finance. Machine learning can help customers surface the perfect financial product or investment opportunity by integrating a wealth of information such as customer age, credit risk, etc.
Hospitality. Hotels and restaurants are starting to use AI to surface all sorts of thoughtful touches such as a guest’s preferred newspaper, toiletries, pillows, etc.
Healthcare. Healthcare models can transform a patient’s entire medical case file into a personalized health and treatment plan.
Manufacturing. Artificial intelligence is giving rise to all kinds of opportunities for personalized manufacturing. In one use case, companies are using AI to help their customers get custom-built clothing. In another, companies are using AI to produce artificial organs.
Retail. Customizations and recommendations across eCommerce are common but these technologies are coming to brick-and-mortar stores also. Through digital portals and interactive kiosks, AI can help retail stores hyper-customize their signage for each shopper that passes, integrating information about the weather, the shopper’s gender or emotional state, or fluctuations in the supply chain.
Smart City Infrastructure. AI is the master of processing routine requests and detecting abnormalities. Governments can exploit these capabilities to disseminate information, deal with citizen requests, or detect wasteful spending or fraud. | <urn:uuid:204ce19d-6595-4e31-8fa4-43f3d3b17cc4> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.manceps.com/ai-guide/ai-guide-chapter-3-full | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510781.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20231001041719-20231001071719-00103.warc.gz | en | 0.910387 | 1,753 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Textile and Activism
Year: 2018 -2019
The project involved working with women from the Sakinah Group based in the Al Meezan Centre (Dumbreck) to explore women’s activism in Britain over the past century, with particular focus on the women’s suffrage movement.
The Sakinah (which means peace in Arabic) group comprises largely of women from Pakistan and India who migrated to Scotland in the 60’s and 70’s who traditionally wear the head scarf or Dupatta draped over the head. The women are skilled in textile and embroidery work – something they were taught when growing up as young girls.
We wanted the project to allow the women to use existing skills, while learning how to work in new creative ways with textiles, to create a meaningful and symbolic piece of art work.
The project allowed the women to engage in creative learning to explore the historical women who campaigned for women’s rights. This in turn helped them in their self-development and understand the importance of having their voice heard and becoming leaders of their own lives. | <urn:uuid:6daeef41-c48a-4870-93d2-23f9eabed479> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.pariagoodarzi.com/textileandactivism | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510994.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20231002100910-20231002130910-00003.warc.gz | en | 0.966262 | 227 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Click here to see post in BSL.
On 12th and 13th January 2017, the kick-off meeting for the DESIGNs project (Deaf Employment for Sign Language Users in the EU) took place in Dublin, Ireland.
The 30-month project is modeled on the recently completed Justisigns project, which was funded through the European Commission’s former Leonardo Da Vinci Lifelong Learning programme and produced a range of resources for Deaf communities, sign language interpreters and police officers relating to deaf people’s access to justice in police settings (see here for video summarizing key outcomes).
The DESIGNS project is funded through the current European Commission’s ERASMUS+ Key Action 2 Strategic Partnerships, and brings together 7 partners from 4 EU countries who are renowned experts in the fields of Deaf Studies research, education and training, employment, sign language interpreting and Deaf community advocacy.
The project is promoted by the Interesource Group Ireland, and the partners are the Centre for Deaf Studies at Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), the Department of Languages & Intercultural Studies at Heriot-Watt University (UK), the Deaf Studies Group at the Humboldt University of Berlin (Germany), the European Union of the Deaf and the European Forum of Sign Language Interpreters (Belgium) and AHEAD – Association for Higher Education, Access and Disability (Ireland).
There is a direct link between early education, attainment of professional and/or educational qualifications, advancement into the labour market and social inclusion. Apart from financial autonomy, work and paid employment serves to develop a sense of belonging with positive mental health benefits and identification with the wider community (National Disability Authority, 2005). However, Deaf people continue to face barriers in education, employment and access to services such in healthcare, legal and social welfare settings.
In a report on poverty in the Deaf community, Conama and Grehan (2001) state that Deaf people experience higher rates of poverty, social exclusion and employment. Factors such leaving school with no examination nor qualifications, inadequate support for the use of sign language has resulted in a worrying picture and 80% of Deaf adults have literacy problems compared to 25% of the population as a whole.
Research and data on unemployment is under reported and inaccurate. “Deafness and hearing loss” is often used to report data, and sign language users who are Deaf is under-researched. The World Federation of the Deaf also reports that figures on (un)employment are inaccurate and difficult to quantify (Hauland & Allen, 2009).
The overall aim of the project is to create research-driven, evidence-based VET and CPD training resources and exchange best practices across Europe to facilitate greater participation of Deaf sign language users in employment.
This will be achieved by developing the following work package products:
- Creating training packages for deaf job seekers who are reported to be un- or under-employed;
- Creating training packages for employers to increase their awareness of deaf job applicants and job candidates to so that deaf job applicants have a better chance in succeeding in employment
- Creating training packages for sign language interpreters as part of their continuous professional development to understand the nature of interpreting in employment settings
The kick off meeting in Dublin involved the research consortium getting together to discuss and plan project milestones and tasks. In addition, a ‘townhall’ meeting was held in cooperation with the Irish Deaf Society at Deaf Village Ireland, to launch the project to local Deaf community members by giving an overview of various issues related to deaf people and employment and a description of the project. The event was live streamed through the Irish Deaf Society’s Facebook page, and the video can still be seen with presentations interpreted between English and International Sign.
The research input from Heriot-Watt University is being led by Professor Jemina Napier and a deaf research assistant will join the team at a later date. A newly arrived deaf PhD student – Mette Sommer – will be conducting research on the lived experiences of deaf people at work – so her research will also complement the DESIGNS project.
The goal will be for Heriot-Watt University to cooperate with key stakeholder organisations in Scotland, including the British Deaf Association, Action on Hearing Loss, the Scottish Association of Sign Language Interpreters and the Association of Sign Language Interpreters UK, Deaf Action’s Employability Service.
A community information event will be hosted at Heriot-Watt University sometime in the coming months, so keep an eye out for information about the event and the project. | <urn:uuid:2648cfc3-e40d-4f09-ae9f-6a2aee7fe7f5> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://lifeinlincs.org/?m=201701 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511106.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20231003124522-20231003154522-00803.warc.gz | en | 0.945268 | 958 | 2.53125 | 3 |
The standing portrait of Lincoln (left) was created soon after the American Civil War. Although it hung in many classrooms, Lincoln never posed for it. Instead, an unknown entrepreneur created it by cutting-and-pasting a headshot of Lincoln taken from a photograph by Mathew Brady (middle) onto a portrait of the Southern leader John Calhoun (right). This was done because there were hardly any appropriate ‘heroic-style’ portraits of Lincoln made during his life. In the Calhoun image, the papers on the table say “strict constitution,” “free trade,” and “the sovereignty of the states.” In the Lincoln image, these words have been changed to read, “constitution,” “union,” and “proclamation of freedom.”
Links and References
MacDougall, C. (1958, 2nd ed.). Hoaxes. Dover Publications: 80.
Mitchell, W.J. (1992). The Reconfigured Eye. MIT Press: 204-208. | <urn:uuid:ad288c84-0249-4a42-8651-0d929b6b35a5> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | http://hoaxes.org/photo_database/image/lincolns_portrait | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511406.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20231004184208-20231004214208-00703.warc.gz | en | 0.964913 | 223 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Professional laser cutting refers to technology-based cutting and engraving of materials with the use of a laser. The laser cuts into materials according to the shapes desired by the end user. The process is regularly used in industrial manufacturing of plastics, metals and other materials. However, it can also be adopted for small businesses and schools. You may look at a cut or engraved material and wonder just how this was achieved. Well, here are some machines used to ensure that the work is professionally accomplished:
- Fiber Lasers – Fiber lasers can be classified as a laser within the solid state classification. The machine generates a beam which is amplified to glass fibers which have been specially designed. The glass fibers are energised through the use of pump diodes. The laser beam used in this machine is generated by a seed laser. Fiber lasers have a small focal diameter compared to other devices of a similar type. The fiber lasers are well crafted to provide high-contrast markings during plastic laser cutting. One advantage of the lasers is that they offer exceptional service. They also require no maintenance. Such features not only make the fiber lasers suitable for plastic laser cutting but also metal cutting and engraving.
- Crystal Lasers – The second machine used in professional laser cutting is the crystal laser. Just like the fiber laser, the crystal laser machines emanate from the solid state lasers. Electric diodes are used for the pumping of lasers which are to be used during marking applications. The lasers in this category are named with regards to the element used during doping as well as the fitted crystal. The wavelength in this type of laser is suitable when it comes to plastic laser cutting. However, the crystal lasers are much more expensive than the fiber lasers. The lasers also require the pump diodes and the crystal to be replaced with time. They can be used for professional laser cutting of metals, plastics, coated metals and ceramic.
- Carbon Dioxide Lasers (Gas Lasers) – The CO2 lasers can be classified under gas lasers due to the carbon dioxide gas mixture stimulated electronically. They come with a smaller wavelength which makes them suitable for use in non-metallic materials such as plastic. The lasers are quite efficient because they offer a good quality beam. They are mostly used for laser cutting of materials such as plastic, wood, acrylic among others. | <urn:uuid:fe121cc2-a2e8-45ac-a7af-c45c45431db5> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | http://spydersweb-is.com/2017/10/16/types-of-professional-laser-cutting-machines/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511406.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20231004184208-20231004214208-00703.warc.gz | en | 0.957885 | 472 | 3.21875 | 3 |
(Our suggested observation no. 1; 20 October, 2021)
The Sun and Venus are at least seven billion years old. They emerged simultaneously from the primordial cloud of the Solar System. The Sun has gathered most of the mass of the primordial cloud into itself. Its little brother, the Andrea-star, has attracted most of the remaining mass to itself. From the small remainder of the mass of the primordial cloud, the primordial planets were formed. What fell into the centre of the mass of the whole system during the following billions of years formed into one of these primordial planets, Venus. This means that in reality in our Solar System is not Venus "dancing" around the Sun, but the Sun is "dancing" around Venus. We know all this from our Solar System prehistory.
I have presented several arguments for the correctness of this prehistory in my books, and also in the previous articles of this blog. But, still, a deeper need for a direct observation of this "dance" with "our own eyes" remains, doesn't it? Is such an observation possible? Yes, it is possible, and we discuss it here below. Already 20 years ago, when I first described this possibility, there were available numerous animation programmes of the planetary motion of our Solar System. I used one of them on my PC at the time. The reasoning behind it was the following.
If the Sun were in the centre of mass, we could see the Sun in the same point of the stellar background (the so-called fixed stars) year after year and Venus would appear quite regularly with its orbital period of 224.7 days somewhere on its orbit around the Sun. However, if Venus actually lies at the centre of the Solar System's mass, then the situation changes quite dramatically. We still define the terrestrial year according to the same principle as before; that is, the time interval between two moments when the Sun appears in the same point of the background from our point of view. Venus, however, does not care about our definition, of course. It makes the Sun dance around itself, once with the period of 224.7 days (because of the mass of the Sun itself) and the second time, with the period of 247.19 years (because of the mass of the Dark Companion, which is what I call the remnants of the Andrea-star that are not visible to our eyes). However, since every movement is to be understood relatively, we can also consider the dance of the Sun around Venus as a dance of Venus around the Sun. And it is precisely the slower step of Venus' dance around the Sun that we can observe quite comfortably on our own home computer. All we need is an astrophysical programme that can animate the movement of the planets of the Solar System. What comes out of such an animation is shown in the series of sketches below.
The first of these shows the starting positions of my planetary animation at that time (on 6 April 2002). The relatively immobile cosmic background is marked here by the ten grey coloured dots with the names of the stars, or groups of stars (Pleiades), which lie at a distance of between 8.7 light years (Sirius) and 1600 light years (Deneb) from us. For comparison, we should know that the light from the Sun takes only about 8 minutes to reach the Earth. In this relation, the cosmic background of our animation is indeed (almost) immobile. We start the animation of the planetary motion at any location on Earth and at any time. In my case, this was the sky over Berlin on 6 April 2002. The Sun is placed in the centre of the map. The names of the planets are clear: J -Jupiter, S -Saturn, M - Mars, V- Venus, m - Mercury. It is important that the interval of the animation is set exactly to one year. At the beginning of our animation, little Mercury was hiding behind the Sun. Above all, we diligently record all the positions of Venus year by year. We observe that over the next eighty years certain patterns build up in the planetary motion.
On the next sketch, after eighty years, we have plotted all eighty positions for Venus only. For the rest of the planets we have shown only some of the first positions. The rest of their positions are symbolised by the corresponding lines. Mercury passes through a closed ellipse several times during this period. It is even closer to the Sun than Earth and Venus, so we never see it far from the Sun. The remaining three planets visible to the naked eye, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, orbit further away than the Earth, so we only see the "open" parts of their orbits behind the Sun.
What interests us here is the distribution of Venus' positions. They are by no means scattered throughout the orbit. Rather, they are grouped in tens in eight sections of the orbit. We have labelled these sections on the following sketch in the order of their visit by Venus with the marks V1 to V8.
Why does the apparent orbit of Venus around the Sun divide into eight sections? The answer lies in the construction of the true orbit of the Earth around the Sun and Venus simultaneously (see after the Rosetta orbit of the Earth). The Earth (with us, the observers of the animation) actually takes eight years to return to the initial position of its orbit. In the intervening years, our true observing position is at seven different points in the solar system. Because of this, the apparent position of Venus (which in reality is stationary because it lies at the centre of the system's mass) slowly shifts. With each passing year, the centre of mass of the Sun's dark companion shifts by about four parts per thousand of its orbit (exactly one in 247.19). Thus, from our observation post on Earth, we see the apparent position of the centre of all mass in Venus also correspondingly shifted on our "egocentric" background of stars determined to the Earth year.
Let us run the animation for another eighty years. After these years, the mass of the Dark Companion has already left about two thirds of its orbit behind. The same applies to the apparent orbit of Venus around the Sun.
The mass of the Dark Companion ends its course around Venus in the following eighty-seven years and returns to the position from 2002, the initial year of our animation. In the same time Venus also returns to its initial position observed by us on Earth. After that, the dance of the two old "ladies", the Sun and Venus, goes on and on into the next revolution, as it has done for seven billion years.
These 247 images of Venus coming together year after year as individual "pearls" to form a "string of pearls" in the sky never fail to impress me. Such behaviour can probably not be explained by any other idea than that of the existence of the Dark Companion's mass. Animation used properly, as we have just seen, can tell an impressive story even without claiming any space probes. And it is certainly cheaper and more accessible to everyone. | <urn:uuid:31ca0499-962d-4fee-be29-3008e902fb5c> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://naturics.info/scientific-evidence/so1-the-cosmic-dance-of-the-two-old-ladies/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511406.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20231004184208-20231004214208-00703.warc.gz | en | 0.951969 | 1,453 | 3.734375 | 4 |
What do you think of when you hear the term “sports fitness”? Do you see football players on the field, soccer players scuffling over a ball, a volleyball team at the beach, or a tennis match? There is a tendency to understand the term to mean the sport itself, rather than a way to stay fit.
People engage in sports for specific recreation-related reasons like entertainment, competition, or self-satisfaction. Because sports involve physical activity, most fitness experts and health care professionals know that sports is one way to stay fit and healthy. Sports fitness, as opposed to “exercise” or “physical fitness,” however, involves developing a skill or ability. Sports fitness is an opportunity for personal growth.
Sports enthusiasts may be more likely to maintain a healthy lifestyle (although some would question that assertion) because of the inherent discipline and physical demands. But sports fitness can also mean weight loss, better mobility, greater energy, and a host of the things we use to describe good health. Sports fitness is a character-building pursuit.
Sports do teach people to value their health. Without health, they couldn’t maintain the energy and vitality necessary to participate. Especially if they are in professional sports, their livelihood may depend on their fitness and health. Sports fitness is a lifestyle.
Let’s assume, for a minute, that you are a person who needs more exercise to get or stay physically fit and healthy. You have many options: gyms, health centers, home exercise. You can do aerobic exercise routines, undertake a weight training program, or spend hours on an exercise bike or treadmill. Those are all beneficial activities. But some of us find them boring. We won’t stick to them because we’re not having fun. Sports fitness is fun!
One way to get healthy and have fun at the same time is to pursue sports fitness. You can get your workout on the basketball court or baseball field. You can enter swimming competitions or run marathons. These exercise routines involve other people, interaction, and FUN! So, let’s say you’ve decided to get your exercise through sports fitness.
There are some things you should know about things you can do to assure sports fitness is a safe, healthy program for you:
1. Get a Lot of Fluids
We can go days, even months, without food. But we can’t live without frequent drinking water. It’s the most important nutrient we’ll ever consume. And when you’re engaged in sports, you perspire more, losing that precious liquid gold. In fact, if you lose too many fluids without replacing them, you could have very serious health problems. In the extreme, you could die.
So when you’re engaged in strenuous exercise, you should always drink water to replace what you’re losing through sweat. Some sports involve losing fluids so rapidly that it would not be possible to replace them with water alone. In fact, drinking too much plain water at once can lead to a toxic reaction (water intoxication) due to an unhealthy balance of electrolytes in the body. To avoid dehydration and water intoxication while playing sports, experts recommend sports drinks. They come in three categories.
Isotonic sports drinks contain a similar balance of water and other nutrients as in the human body, including 6-8% sugar. Hypertonic sports drinks contain less water and more sugar than the human body. Hypotonic sports drinks contain more water and less sugar than the human body. Most of the sports drinks on the market are isotonic.
No matter which you choose, sports drinks have two important ingredients you won’t find in plain water: carbohydrates and electrolytes. Carbohydrates help keep energy levels up, and a proper balance of electrolytes (made up of sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, chloride, phosphate, and hydrogen carbonate) is essential to well-being. Drinking a lot of fluids is essential for sports fitness.
2. Eat more Fruits and Vegetables
The strenuous exercise involved in sports rapidly depletes the body of essential vitamins and minerals. Fruits and vegetables contain essential nutrients. When you’re engaged in sports fitness program, make it a habit every day to eat a dark green vegetable, a yellow or orange fruit or vegetable, a red fruit or vegetable, beans or nuts, and a citrus fruit like oranges. Sports fitness involves a healthy, balanced diet.
3. Protect your Bones
Obviously, people involved in sports fitness are at a higher risk of injuries, including broken bones. The more you can do to keep your bones strong, the better off you will be. Be sure your diet includes calcium sources like sardines, tofu, and dairy products, etc. You might also consider adding a calcium supplement to your daily routine. Not only will your bones withstand the bumps and crashes you get on the court or field, you’ll be getting a head start in fending off the dreaded osteoporosis.
4. Warm Up and Cool Down
You may strain a muscle or fall prey to another type of injury if you’re body isn’t loose and limber when you start playing any kind of rigorous sport. Like runners, stretching routines are a great way to get limber. And more active warm-ups get your heart rate going gradually.
After the game is over, don’t go straight to the clubhouse or bar. Do a few cool down exercises to gradually release tension and transition to less activity. You have fewer sore muscles and less tightness if you do. Sports fitness involves responsible preparation and follow-through.
Participating sports is a great way to get and stay physically fit and to have an active, interesting social life. Sports fitness allows you to meet more active people interested in health and fitness who can help you stay motivated and involved. The best thing about sports fitness is that you get a great workout while you’re having a great time. It’s the best of both worlds! | <urn:uuid:07eafe59-ed8c-45d9-9968-7125ce9cc98c> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.bestsoccertop.com/fun-and-fitness-through-sports-4-tips-for-sportspeople/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511406.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20231004184208-20231004214208-00703.warc.gz | en | 0.940057 | 1,252 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Dilemmas and Deep Challenges
This part of the paper steps back from the problems regarding the media and its content considered earlier in the review and looks at some additional challenging dynamics and problems that are noted in the research and that communicators must grapple with.
Put briefly, the problem goes deeper than factors such as how many African Americans are involved in media content production, or the assumptions of content producers about their audiences. These challenges involve fundamental patterns in human cognition (e.g., the difficulty of focusing on systemic as opposed to anecdotal information) as well as dilemmas inherent in a fraught topic where it may be all too easy to offend or alienate one audience while appealing to another, or to trigger one problematic perception while combating another.
The Difficulties of Structural Thinking
As explicit, individual racism (i.e., the attitude that blacks are “inferior”) has gradually receded in recent decades, structural racism has emerged as a key concept in the analysis of race-biased perception — the idea that there are systemic and institutional barriers that impede racial equality, even if individuals were no longer racially biased (e.g., see “Thinking Change,” Center for Social Inclusion, 2005).
Unfortunately, due to fundamental tendencies in human reasoning, there is a natural kind of “cognitive blindness” to patterns that are systemic and statistical in nature (see Aubrun et al., 2005). The result is that most attempts to draw attention to the phenomenon of structural racism meet with resistance and even backlash on the part of broad sections of the American public. The media contributes to this pattern by consistently transforming matters of structural racism into reports that emphasize individual stories and individual outcomes. (O’Neil, 2009)
Unfortunately, the literature offers no clear, evidence-based way forward for addressing this deep challenge more effectively.
Anxiety and “The Other”
Many studies have shown that anxieties (e.g., about terrorism, or loss of a job) can lead to a more conservative outlook, including negative attitudes towards those perceived as “other” (e.g., Amodio, 2009; Jost et al., 2007). The result is that communications on issues even remotely connected to race can still end up triggering exclusionary negative racial attitudes, simply by evoking anxious feelings about the world — whether having to do with economic problems, war, or other threats. And in a time period that is particularly anxious for reasons that have little to do with race, it is predictable that racial attitudes and policy preferences will deteriorate.
Fundamental/Universal Challenges to Race Relations
This is a rich area of study that attempts to sort out patterns specific to a particular society from potentially more universal aspects of interracial dynamics. Both kinds of factors are certainly relevant to black male achievement in the U.S., and this review focuses on challenges more specific to this country, since these represent particular challenges that are potentially more amenable to change — e.g., through different patterns of media ownership, or training of journalists.
On the other hand, the universal type of challenge is also worth keeping in mind. For instance, there is a consistent body of evidence showing that people have more trouble differentiating the faces of other-race individuals — and this effect seems to hold when blacks look at white faces, as well as when whites look at black faces (e.g., see Meissner & Brigham, 2001).
Causation vs. Correlation
A great deal of social science literature quantifies the disparities in outcomes between African Americans and others — e.g., black children suffer disproportionately high rates of obesity. Typically, these studies carefully distinguish between causation (x causes y) and correlations (x and y tend to be related). Causes are harder to prove and establish with confidence, especially in extremely complex situations like school success or incarceration rates, where a number of factors may be at work.
Unfortunately, the resulting focus on outcomes (as opposed to causes) can make social science a problematic resource for communicators. Correlations (e.g., black male-ness and poor school scores go together) are open to different interpretations (e.g., poor test scores are evidence of bias against black males vs. black males are “inherently” less well-equipped for school). In fact, depending on the assumptions that the audience is already making, a communications emphasis on disparities of outcome can reinforce people’s prejudices rather than drawing their attention to racial injustice.
In some cases, researchers are able to point to disparities in both inputs and outcomes, and can explicitly point to causes. For example, a report about race-based health disparities in California highlights the causes rather than the effects, namely that black children receive less physical education in school and have low rates of access to green space and therefore suffer disproportionately from obesity and other problems:
Much of Los Angeles is park poor, and there are unfair park, school, and health disparities based on race, ethnicity, income, poverty, youth, and access to cars. Children of color disproportionately live in communities of concentrated poverty without enough places to play in parks and schools . . .The human health implications of the lack of physical activity are profound. These children disproportionately suffer from obesity, diabetes, and other diseases related to inactivity. (Garcia & White, 2006)
But in many cases, researchers can only speak with confidence about correlations and disparities of outcome, which may not be as compelling.
Warts-and-All vs. Idealization
The first section of the review focused in part on how the media portrayal of black males is incomplete — not a full and accurate portrayal of their real nature, lives, and experience. But presenting a full and accurate warts-and-all portrait of black males is problematic because of the well-documented tendency to blame victims for their problems (e.g., see Brown et al., 2003). Advocates face a dilemma in which any discussion of how the actions and choices of black men and boys contribute to their problems can end up reinforcing the idea that black males “have mostly themselves to blame.” On the other hand, not discussing black men’s choices or their consequences evokes charges that communicators are not realistic, for instance, or not asking enough of black men (see the earlier reference to Larry Elder). Portraying black men and black boys as passive victims of fate has additional drawbacks.
Cognitive scientists and psychologists have described a basic pattern of human thinking — confirmation bias — which means that when people are given information, they tend to hear the parts that confirm what they already believe, and disregard the information that contradicts what they believe (e.g., Nickerson, 1998). This pattern creates problems for analysts who want to fully describe the problem of black male outcomes (e.g., relating to success gaps, family dysfunctions, or attitudes towards education), because they run the risk of “confirming” negative biases. There is little empirical research as yet to aid advocates in dealing with this dilemma.
The Role of Black Masculinity
Feminist scholars have pioneered the study of gender as a social construction, overturning the assumption that gender roles are an essential, relatively fixed part of human nature. They have looked at how forces like media, cultural beliefs, ideology, and history all shape people’s gender expectations and their lived experience as men or women. Although this kind of analysis initially focused more on whites than blacks and more on women than men, there is a growing, rich literature that treats black masculinity as a similar object of study. (Brooks & Hebert, 2006)
Many analysts take as their starting point the way in which black maleness has interacted with the history of racism. Hypersexuality, violence, misogyny, and athleticism are all exaggerations of maleness that serve to caricature and stereotype black males and black masculinity. (Tucker, 2007; hooks, 2004)
Media imagery of blacks continues to stress gender and sexuality. As mentioned earlier, when it comes to males, the media leans towards individuals such as athletes, rappers, pimps, absent fathers, and criminals. Even “positive” portrayals of black men often highlight variations on these types. The stereotypes play out in both black and white communities, and analysts believe they are a major source of the distortions that interfere with black male success. (Mutua, 2006) In fact these exaggerated masculine types in the media come to symbolize a (narrow) path for success in society.
Most analysts attribute the durability of these attitudes first and foremost to white male anxieties about the threat of black men having sexual access to white women. The caricature of black masculinity has long been both the thing that excuses white oppression and stimulates the fear that motivates it.
On the other hand, addressing the issue can mean coming to grips with how black males themselves may embrace these stereotypes, often as a form of resistance to the lack of power they feel they have to actually shape their lives. In other words, black males, with ample encouragement from the media, may often “confirm” the hyper-masculine stereotypes. Among scholars we find a full range of responses to this dilemma. For instance, media stereotypes of hyper-masculine black males are treated as:
- false biases (Jones, 2009);
- partially true, but exaggerated by race hostilities and the media (Burrell, 2010);
- true, with the implication that black males should get their act together (see Neal, 2006);
- true, though black males are not at fault since:
- they unfortunately buy into stereotypes and expectations just like everyone else (Hutchinson, 1996);
- they face limitations created by a society that expects black males to behave in stereotypical ways, so that stars and athletes that embody those stereotypes are the ones lionized in popular culture (Tucker, 2007);
- many of these behaviors have structural causes (e.g., lack of real power for black men; criminal justice system undermines black family structures, and so on).
In terms of methods, most of the literature is not rooted in quantitative or experimental data. Feminist studies owes much to literary criticism, and most of the studies that look at the media’s role in the portrayal of black masculinity are based on interpretation and analysis of particular texts, movies, and television shows. For example, Orbe (1998) looked at MTV’s reality show, Real World; Dines (2003) analyzed the content of cartoons in men’s magazines; and MacDonald (2005) analyzed the television drama Homicide to demonstrate how the construction of black masculinity is depicted on television.
The Problematic Appeal of a “Color-Blind” Society
One of the characteristics of the current period is the assertion that although racism may have been prevalent in the past, it is no longer a significant problem. In fact, asserting that white racism is the source of black people’s problems is caricatured as not only excuse-mongering, but a form of “reverse racism.” (Schram, 2003)
Of course, most serious scholars treat discrimination and race-based effects as highly significant and current. Moreover, consciousness of race is important to seeing and solving the problem.
Race consciousness [is] a necessary antidote in order to effectively oppose, resist and reveal the institutionalized, systemic, and normative character of racism . . . moving beyond a liberal individualist framework of analysis, with its stress on “neutrality,” “colourblindness,” and “integration” into an otherwise unchanged dominant society. (Warner, 2006)
But scholars have observed that the political right has systematically made use of “color-blind” framing to derail constructive discourse and policymaking to address the effects of discrimination:
In the Right’s view, affirmative action and other programs designed to address institutional racism . . . become both unnecessary . . . and unjust (since they do not discount race and consider individual merit alone). Using polemical and divisive tactics, the Right attacks affirmative action as “racial quotas,” “preferential treatment,” and “reverse discrimination.” It cynically takes the language of the Civil Rights Movement, including the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., himself, to argue that individuals should be judged by their merit and character and not by their skin color . . . And, it warns that preferential treatment accorded to a particular ethnic or racial group will create resentment among others (read Whites). (Aziz, 2002)
One result of this framing has been that the media shy away from explicitly acknowledging bias as an underlying cause for social problems. (Williams, 1997) Advocates or media figures who do insist on bias as a primary cause are attacked for being obsessed with race and therefore part of the problem themselves. As a result, the public discourse about race has become more polarized and toxic, and much less likely to serve as a vehicle for open discussion in media that are often risk-averse when it comes to genuine controversy.
The widely disseminated report from the New York Times, “Proficiency of Black Students Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected” (Nov. 9, 2010, p. A22) is a case in point. The detailed article focuses on the effort to understand and address the school achievement gap for black males, yet the idea of discrimination is never raised. Readers are left to fill in their own explanation as to why young black boys do more poorly in school than their black sisters, more poorly than Latino boys, and worse than low-income whites.
Efforts to open up the conversation on problems of race will have to address or reverse this problematic imbalance — namely that in most media contexts, mentioning, much less insisting on, the role of discrimination is treated as a controversial or even racist stance, whereas failing to mention the role of racial discrimination (even when it is clearly warranted) is considered a neutral or impartial stance. As Winant puts it, “a refusal to engage in ‘race thinking’ amounts to a defense of the racial status quo, in which systemic racial inequality and . . . discrimination . . . are omnipresent” (quoted by Warner, 2006). (Winant, 1997)
Implicit Bias as a Political Tool
Further interfering with an open and constructive conversation about race is the way in which race has been used by politicians. Discourse about “welfare dependency” and the economic and social burdens of “handouts” have become a code for stoking and taking advantage of racial tensions in ways that help certain politicians and certain political projects (e.g., anti-tax, small government rhetoric).
When Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan swept California in the 1966 gubernatorial election, he sounded not only the familiar antitax, anti–social spending, antibureaucratic themes but at the same time baited “welfare mothers.” He brought the house down when he asserted that welfare recipients are on a ‘‘prepaid lifetime vacation plan.’’ (A careful survey experiment shows that voters hear these as code words for black welfare poor.) (Gilens, 1996)
It is clear that the public image of African Americans has suffered immensely by serving as a political football in the struggle between conservatives and progressives as they have sought to define some of the fundamental questions of the country — the distribution of wealth, the role of social policy and of government itself, the strength and direction of public institutions, and so on.
On this point, it is worth quoting at length from Sanford Schram’s 2003 work, Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform:
With the “old-fashioned” brand of racism now largely discredited, we inhabit a discursive moment defined by a mixture of corrosive racial resentments, fears of being labeled “racist,” and uncertainties about whether it is wise to speak of race at all. Too often, race now operates by stealth, embedded in ostensibly neutral language. (Williams, 1997; Ansell, 1997) Many conversations take on a “we all know what we’re talking about” feel, trading on race-coded euphemisms regarding “urban” and “inner city” problems, “cultural backgrounds,” the need for “personal responsibility,” the troubles of the “underclass,” and so on. As George Orwell noted many years ago (1954), such euphemistic language nourishes political ideas that cannot bear the cold light of direct analysis; it protects the existing social order at the expense of clear thought and open deliberation.
The Limits of Communication — Contact Theory
Finally, the social science literature suggests strongly that communications efforts, while important, must always be considered alongside other more direct, experiential strategies. In particular, it is critical to continue finding creative ways of promoting direct contact (of a positive kind) between black males and others in American society.
Numerous scholars have adopted or tested aspects of “contact theory” — the hypothesis that interpersonal contact is an important causal factor for reducing prejudice of all kinds. (See one of the most seminal works in the field: Gordon Allport’s study The Nature of Prejudice, 1954.) A carefully researched and highly cited 2006 review of over 500 studies found that contact theory is overwhelmingly supported by the data, and that contact typically reduces prejudice towards whole groups, even including groups not included in the study.
Not only do attitudes toward the immediate participants usually become more favorable, but so do attitudes toward the entire outgroup, outgroup members in other situations, and even outgroups not involved in the contact. (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006, p. 766)
The studies involved groups of all kinds — defined by race, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, and other characteristics — and found similar patterns across all types of prejudice, as measured in a variety of different ways, from survey self-reports to experimental tests of implicit attitudes.
It is true that certain factors can significantly reduce the positive effects of contact:
Institutional support for contact under conditions of competition or unequal status can often enhance animosity between groups, thereby diminishing the potential for achieving positive outcomes. (Ibid., p. 766)
But these are far and away the exceptions to the rule. Overall, researchers believe the studies indicate “that the process underlying contact’s ability to reduce prejudice involves the tendency for familiarity to breed liking,” and also point out that the effects can last:
To date, findings from longitudinal studies typically have shown the persistence of the prejudice reduction achieved by contact. (Ibid., p. 768)
In short, advocates for better outcomes for black males almost certainly need to focus some of their efforts on promoting increased contact between black males and others. Certain types of contact are ideal — e.g., individuals of equal status working together to achieve common goals — but the literature establishes that a very wide range of types of experiences will almost certainly help reduce bias and improve outcomes. | <urn:uuid:be46a135-af1a-4878-98da-85d263157d85> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://opportunityagenda.org/messaging_reports/media-representations-black-men-boys/dilemmas-and-deep-challenges/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506027.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20230921105806-20230921135806-00103.warc.gz | en | 0.94036 | 3,936 | 2.640625 | 3 |
What is a sorption coefficient?
Kd is the sorption coefficient (L3 M) The larger the value of Kd, the greater the degree to which a contaminant is sorbed by the sorbent. A linear isotherm signifies that for all concentrations of contaminant in water, there will always be proportionally the same sorbed concentration.
What is soil sorption coefficient?
Soil adsorption coefficient (Kd) measures the amount of chemical substance adsorbed onto soil per amount of water. It is also known as Freundlich solid-water distribution coefficients (Kf).
What is Kd partition coefficient?
The parameter known as the partition (or distribution) coefficient (Kd) is one of the most important parameters used in estimating the migration potential of contaminants present in aqueous solutions in contact with surface, subsurface and suspended solids.
What is Kd in chromatography?
The partition or distribution coefficient (Kd), is defined as the ratio of concentration of a compound in two phase at equilibrium. For two such immiscible phases A and B the value for this coefficient is a constant at given temperature and given by the expression.
How is kow measured?
A rapid laboratory estimate of Kow may be obtained by measuring the retention time in a high-pressure liquid chromatography system (If interested in retention time prediction refer to this article); the logarithm of the retention time and the logarithm of Kow have been found to be linearly related.
What is KD in organic chemistry?
The ratio of solubilities in the two solvents is called the distribution coefficient, KD = C1/C2, which is an equilibrium constant with a characteristic value for any compound at a given temperature.
What does high Kow mean?
This means that the smaller the log Kow, the more soluble the substance is in water. Consequently, this means the higher the log Kow, the more soluble the substance is in fatty (nonpolar) substances.
How do you calculate Kd partition coefficient?
The calculation of Kd is concentration on the solids (mg kg–1 dry solid) divided by concentration in the pore water (mg L–1), giving units of L kg–1.
What is Koc partition coefficient?
Thus a normalised organic carbon to water partition coefficient (KOC), described as the ratio between the sorption coefficient Kd, and the organic carbon content of the sorbent, in units of mass of organic carbon (OC) per mass of soil (g OC/g soil) is commonly used to assess the extent to which an organic chemical is …
What is considered a high Kow value?
Measured values of Kow for organic chemicals have been found as low as 10-3 and as high as 107, thus encompassing a range of ten orders of magnitude. In terms of log Kow, this range is from -3 to 7.
What does Kow measure?
■ INTRODUCTION. A compound’s octanol−water partition coefficient (KOW) is a measure of its hydrophilicity/lipophilicity.
How do you read Kow?
How is Kd adsorption calculated?
The best approach is to use Kd = qe/ce. The unit of your Kd now is L/g( i.e mg/g divide by mg/L). Convert the Kd in L/g to a dimensionless quantity by multiplying by molar mass of the element in g/mol, 15.56 mol/L. That is L/g * g/mol * 15.56 mol/L = dimensionless Kd.
What is organic carbon partition coefficient?
The organic carbon water partition coefficient is a dimensionless number defined as the ratio of a chemical’s concentration absorbed per unit mass of soil, to its concentration in the aqueous phase.
What are the units of KOC?
What is the sorption coefficient normalized to the organic carbon content?
The sorption coefficient normalized to the organic carbon content ( Koc) reflects the fact that soil organic carbon is the major sorption domain for neutral organic compounds.
Is sorption an oversimplification of the process?
Nevertheless, it is clear from many studies, particularly those investigating kinetic aspects of sorption, that this is an oversimplification of this process.
What is Soil sorption distribution coefficient Kd?
The most frequently used parameter to indicate the soil mobility of a chemical is the soil sorption distribution coefficient, Kd, defined as the concentration ratio of solute in aqueous and solid phases at equilibrium. The Kd is usually normalized to the organic carbon content foc yielding Koc = Kd / foc.
What are the factors affecting the sorption kinetic process?
In general, the sorption kinetic process depends on adsorbate properties (size and functional groups), adsorbent texture (pore size), and surface heterogeneity (surface chemistry) [38,50,51]. | <urn:uuid:83c1d4a7-8353-426f-b55d-13dcef6c1ea7> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.toccochicago.com/2022/09/29/what-is-a-sorption-coefficient/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506027.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20230921105806-20230921135806-00103.warc.gz | en | 0.912725 | 1,051 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Friday, March 13, 1998
Geologic Disposal Not Acceptable to PublicAfter $7 million and nearly a decade, an independent panel assessing a plan to bury nuclear fuel waste deep in the Canadian Shield has handed the issue back to the government.
Panel chairman Blair Seaborn said yesterday the plan conceived by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) appears technically sound, but the Canadian public is not buying the concept.
In 1978, the government of Canada and Ontario directed the AECL to develop the concept of deep geological disposal. Three years later, a statement was issued saying that a disposal site could not be selected until after full public hearings. In 1988, the federal government referred the concept to public review and in 1989, Seaborn's panel was appointed.
- "As it now stands, the AECL concept for deep geological disposal has not been demonstrated to have broad public support."
- "The concept in its current form does not have the required level of acceptability to be adopted as Canada's approach for managing nuclear waste."
Nuclear Not a Solution
According to a U.S. study, every dollar invested in energy efficiency displaces seven times as much CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions as the same dollar invested in nuclear power (Keepin and Kats study). In addition, the Royal Society of Canada found that "improved energy efficiency is the key to stabilizing energy-related CO2 emissions over the next two decades" (the COGGER Report: Committee On Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions). Nuclear power is not even mentioned in the Royal Society study as a viable alternative energy source to fossil fuels.
Irene Kock of the Nuclear Awareness Project stated, "Nuclear power is not a solution for climate change. It is a cynical gambit on the part of the global nuclear power industry to save itself from being phased out. In addition to the risk of catastrophic accidents, nuclear power is hazardous because of pollution from day-to-day operations. All stages of the nuclear fuel chain, including uranium mining, processing, refining, fuel fabrication, reactor operations and nuclear waste handling, emit radioactive, carcinogenic pollutants."
[ Radioactive Waste Sub-Directory ] [ COMPLETE DIRECTORY ]
Since March 27th 1996, there have been over
100,000 outside visitors to the CCNR web site, plus
(counter reset July 2nd 1998 at midnight) | <urn:uuid:68aa160e-5aea-4c29-8e80-555c45d690bb> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://ccnr.org/fearo_hlw.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506421.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922170343-20230922200343-00003.warc.gz | en | 0.937842 | 502 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Renewable energy has been around for decades, but recent advances have made it more accessible and cost-effective than ever before. As the world looks for ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change, renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydropower are becoming increasingly popular. Here’s what you need to know about the latest advances in renewable energy.
Solar energy is the most widely used form of renewable energy in the world. Advances in solar technology have made it more efficient and cost-effective. One of the most significant advances is the development of perovskite solar cells, which are more efficient and cheaper to produce than traditional silicon cells. Perovskite cells can be made using simple manufacturing processes, which means they can be produced at a lower cost, making solar energy more accessible to more people.
Wind energy is another popular form of renewable energy. Advances in wind turbine technology have made it more efficient and cost-effective. One of the most significant advances is the development of offshore wind farms. Offshore wind farms can generate more power than onshore wind farms because the wind is stronger and more consistent offshore. Advances in turbine design have also made wind turbines more efficient, which means they can generate more power with less wind.
Hydropower is a reliable source of renewable energy that has been around for decades. Advances in hydropower technology have made it more efficient and cost-effective. One of the most significant advances is the development of pumped storage hydropower. Pumped storage hydropower systems store energy by pumping water from a lower reservoir to a higher reservoir when excess electricity is available. When electricity is needed, the water is released, and the turbines generate power.
One of the biggest challenges with renewable energy is that it is intermittent. The sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow. Advances in battery technology have made it possible to store energy when it is generated and use it when it is needed. Battery storage systems can store excess energy from solar panels or wind turbines and release it when electricity is needed. This makes renewable energy more reliable and helps to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels.
In conclusion, the latest advances in renewable energy are making it more accessible and cost-effective. Solar, wind, and hydropower are becoming more efficient, and battery storage is making renewable energy more reliable. As the world looks for ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change, renewable energy sources will play an increasingly important role in our energy mix. | <urn:uuid:1bc12ed1-d465-4447-92f3-23a171fd8d99> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://questlation.com/you-need-to-know-about-the-latest-advances-in-renewable-energy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506421.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922170343-20230922200343-00003.warc.gz | en | 0.946365 | 545 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Imagine going out on a damp winter night, wearing waders and a headlamp, in search of a large, elusive salamander that spends most of its life underground.
I was lucky enough to do exactly that more than a decade ago when working at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection NJDEP). I had been invited to accompany scientists to vernal pools to study Eastern tiger salamanders, an endangered amphibian with an early breeding season.
It was awe-inspiring to see these foot-long salamanders making their way toward the water to find a mate. One lesson that has always stayed with me is the critical importance of protecting vernal pools in this state we’re in, for the survival of tiger salamanders and many other amphibians.
You may be wondering: What exactly is a vernal pool?
Vernal pools – also known as intermittent or ephemeral ponds – are temporary bodies of water filled by snowmelt, rain and rising groundwater for at least two consecutive months. These pools are usually full in the spring – thus the name vernal, meaning “of, in, or appropriate to spring.”
Most vernal pools are natural, but some can be man-made. By mid-summer, almost all will dry up.
For amphibians, the advantage to breeding in vernal pools is the lack of fish that would otherwise feast on their eggs and larvae.
“Because they’re temporary, they can’t hold fish populations. A major predator is removed,” explained NJDEP Assistant Commissioner David Golden, a trained biologist and expert on vernal pools.
Seven New Jersey amphibians, including some that are threatened or endangered, are “obligate” species entirely reliant on vernal pools. They include Eastern tiger, blue-spotted, marbled, Jefferson and spotted salamanders, along with wood frogs and Eastern spadefoot toads.
Another 16 New Jersey amphibians breed in vernal pools but are more flexible and can sometimes reproduce in pools with fish. These species include Southern gray treefrogs, Pine Barrens treefrogs, long-tailed salamanders, carpenter frogs, Fowler’s toads, Northern gray treefrogs, Northern spring peepers, bullfrogs, and four-toed salamanders.
With spring almost upon us, many amphibians are moving from their upland winter hibernation spots to vernal pools. Although the migration routes are short from the human perspective, many are hazardous because roadways separate upland forests from breeding pools.
Amphibians migrate on rainy nights when the temperature is above 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Fortunately, a corps of volunteer “crossing guards” mobilizes each spring at some of the busiest crossings to slow traffic. In other places, roads are shut down entirely.
For example, for the past 20 years East Brunswick Township has closed Beekman Road on spotted salamander migration nights. The town’s Environmental Commission invites families to come out and see the crossings for themselves, and the schools teach amphibian ecology.
Liti Haramaty, an East Brunswick Environmental Commission member who regularly brings spotted salamanders to local schools, says children are fascinated by the creatures.
“I’ll take a salamander out of the box, show it to the kids, and ask them where they think it’s from,” she said. “They say Brazil, the Amazon rainforest, Australia. I tell them, no, these are from right here in town. They’re from the last remaining vernal pond in East Brunswick, and we want to protect them.”
Vernal pools are also important for wading birds, turtles, snakes and mammals, as well as rare plants and invertebrates like fairy shrimp and dragonflies. Turtles found in New Jersey’s vernal pools include wood turtles and spotted turtles.
New Jersey has an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 vernal pools, on both public and private property.
According to Golden, those that have been surveyed and found to have either one obligate amphibian species, or two non-obligate species, are eligible for special protections. But many vernal pools are not surveyed or protected.
Vernal pools face many challenges, including pollution, filling for development projects outside of the regulated Pinelands and Highlands regions, and damage from off-road vehicles. Another factor is climate change, which has brought warming temperatures and new weather patterns of drought alternating with intense rainfall.
“Climate change is a big risk for amphibians, but I still think that habitat loss due to development is a bigger risk,” said Golden. He noted that while protecting vernal pools is important, it’s equally important to save upland areas where amphibians winter.
Spring is a perfect time to visit a vernal pool in the deep woods and witness nature at its best. As dusk approaches on an early spring evening, listen for male frogs courting females and look for salamanders heading toward their breeding ponds.
If spring rains are dependable, vernal pools will stay wet just long enough for amphibian eggs to hatch into larvae, grow and metamorphose into adults, and finally leave the temporary pools for the dense forest.
New Jersey’s animals and plants rely on specific habitat types for their very existence. That is why we must protect diverse landscapes to protect our state’s biodiversity.
To learn more about vernal pools, go to the state Division of Fish and Wildlife webpage at www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/ensp/vernalpool.htm.
And for more information about preserving New Jersey’s land and natural resources, visit the New Jersey Conservation Foundation website at www.njconservation.org or contact me at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:fa22becb-f6d3-4312-9e17-6fe1880c0b88> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://thelinknews.net/2022/03/03/vernal-pools-here-today-gone-tomorrow-the-state-were-in-by-jay-watson/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506421.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922170343-20230922200343-00003.warc.gz | en | 0.938095 | 1,248 | 3.390625 | 3 |
DISTRICT OF LAKELAND NO. 521Serving Emma, Christopher, Anglin & McPhee Lakes, and a portion of the Boreal Forest Region.
Lakeland District Protective Services:
Planning & Development:
- About Us
- Emergency Response Plan
- Emergency Measures Co-ordinator
- Emergency Planning For You
- 'Be Prepared' Links
- Upcoming Events
- Volunteer Application
General Policy & Information:
Emergency Planning for Individuals & Families
KNOW THE RISKS IN OUR AREA
Natural hazards vary from region to region in Canada. Knowing what to do is an important part of being prepared. Find out about risks in your region and how to prepare for different situations.
Canadians should also be aware that other hazards can trigger emergencies that may affect them. These emergencies could be bomb threats, chemical spills or infectious disease outbreaks.
See the Get Prepared homepage for more information.
MAKE A PLAN FOR EACH RISK
Think about your kids at school or elderly parents across town. If phones don’t work, or some neighbourhoods aren’t accessible, what will you do?
Having a family emergency plan will save time and make real situations less stressful. build a family emergency plan online.
PREPARE A 72-HOUR KIT
In an emergency, you will need some basic supplies. You may need to get by without power or tap water. Be prepared to be self-sufficient for at least 72 hours.
You may have some of the items already, such as food, water and a battery operated or wind-up flashlight and battery operated radio. The key is to make sure they are organized and easy to find. Would you be able to find your flashlight in the dark? Make sure your kit is easy to carry and everyone in the household knows where it is. Keep it in a backpack, duffle bag or suitcase with wheels, in an easy-to-reach, accessible place, such as your front-hall closet. If you have many people in your household, your emergency kit could get heavy.
It’s a good idea to separate some of these supplies in backpacks. That way, your kit will be more portable and each person can personalize his or her own grab-and-go emergency kit. Use the Government of Canada’s Emergency Kit page for more information.
Don’t forget to create a plan for your pets See ‘Your Pets and Emergency Preparedness’ for planning tips before, during and after an emergency.
- The Government of Canada has an excellent website on Emergency Preparedness at http://www.getprepared.gc.ca
- Emergency Preparedness booklets provided by the Government of Canada-Get Prepared are available for free at the District of Lakeland office to Lakeland ratepayers.
If you would like more information on emergency preparedness or would like preparedness information presented to your community group, contact our Emergency Measures Coordinator. | <urn:uuid:646f849f-b3da-40fd-b3de-3c806342d1e1> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.lakeland521.ca/departments-services/emergency-management-organization/emergency-planning-for-individuals-families/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506421.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922170343-20230922200343-00003.warc.gz | en | 0.91163 | 636 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Some neurological conditions require to be treated surgically. With proper diagnosis, thoughtful case selection, a neurosurgeon that is experienced and expert in the field, and proper post-operative care, the majority of the cases have a favorable outcome.
The peripheral nerves relay messages from the body through the spinal cord to the brain. They are spread over the entire body, and they allow the body to feel and move consciously. Because they are located all over the body, peripheral nerves are susceptible to more damage from physical injury. Peripheral neuropathy refers to what happens when multiple nerves lose their function, impairing the ability to move or feel adequately. This neurological disorder can affect animals as well as humans. Without proper veterinary treatment, peripheral neuropathy can make it difficult to perform day-to-day activities and reduce an animal’s quality of life.
Causes of Peripheral Neuropathy
Peripheral neuropathy occurs when the myelin, a fatty lipid material that protects the nerve fibers, deteriorates. This process is called demyelination and it impairs the ability of the nerve to receive and send out electrical signals. What causes this demyelination varies, but your veterinarian may attribute it to one of the following reasons:
- Genetics: Hereditary peripheral neuropathy cannot be prevented, but it can be identified and treated early on. Pets whose family members have peripheral neuropathy may have a higher chance of developing it.
- Immune Disease: Diseases like arthritis can cause the immune system to attack the body and damage the nerves.
- Metabolic Disease: When the body cannot process food into energy correctly, the body suffers from conditions like high blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess fat, etc, that can cause damage to the nerves.
- Infection: Certain parasites can wreak havoc on the nervous system and immune system. Keep your pets away from feces and wild animals to prevent them from contracting these parasites.
- Toxins: Overexposure to certain chemicals, such as pesticides, fertilizer, insecticides, and rat poison, can also cause peripheral neuropathy.
- Physical Injury: Animals who suffer physical trauma are also at risk of peripheral neuropathy. Placing too much pressure on a nerve or performing repetitive motions can also trigger neuropathy.
- Age: Over time, peripheral neuropathy may occur as myelin naturally wears away.
- Vitamin Deficiency: If your pet’s diet lacks vital nutrients, its body will have a difficult time functioning regularly and this could affect the nerves.
Mononeuropathy vs. Polyneuropathy
There are many types of peripheral neuropathy, but they fall into two major categories:
- Mononeuropathy: When only one peripheral nerve is damaged, it is called mononeuropathy. Damage to the nerve can result in a tingling sensation, numbness, or pain in the affected area. If the motor nerves are damaged, your dog or cat may struggle to move their body. If sensory nerves are damaged, they may have difficulty feeling sensations such as temperature or pain. In rare cases, the nerves in the internal organs can also be affected, resulting in organ problems.
- Polyneuropathy: Most patients with neuropathy are diagnosed with polyneuropathy. This is what happens when multiple nerves are deteriorate simultaneously throughout the body. Like mononeuropathy, it manifests in a tingling sensation and numbness. Your pet may gnaw or chew on its extremities if it suffering from peripheral neuropathy. Because polyneuropathy affects many nerves, your dog or cat may be more prone to serious injuries because they have a more difficult time feeling pain.
Symptoms of Peripheral Neuropathy
It can be difficult to detect peripheral neuropathy at first because the symptoms can be quite subtle when the disorder starts. Since dogs and cats cannot tell their owners how they feel, they might display other behaviors to express their discomfort. Please, be on the lookout for any of these behavioral tells if you suspect your pet may be at risk of peripheral neuropathy:
- Weak reflexes.
- Muscle tremors.
- Spatial disorientation.
- Dry eyes, nose, or mouth.
- Muscle atrophy.
- Weight gain.
- Trouble walking.
Diagnosis of Peripheral Neuropathy
Your best bet in the proper and timely detection of peripheral neuropathy is to receive help from a trained vet neurologist. Untrained eyes may miss important details that tell us when a pet suffers from the onset of peripheral neuropathy.
Many owners won’t bring in their pets until it’s too late, which is why we emphasize the importance of regular checkups for your lovely pets. This way, the doctor will detect any existing problems before they progress any further.
Checking for peripheral neuropathy means that the veterinarian has to start with a physical exam. Then, be ready to answer several questions about your pet’s past behavior and medical history to best determine what can be going on. Afterward, the vet neurologist may perform a chemical blood profile, electrolyte panel, and urinalysis if there is a suspicion that your pet has peripheral neuropathy.
Treatment for Peripheral Neuropathy
Treatment depends on the cause of the issue. For example, animals who have suffered trauma and now have to deal with this disorder will need to have their injuries tended to. If the neuropathy is a symptom of a disease, that disease will require proper treatment. Every animal is different, so treatment also depends on each patient’s unique needs.
Regrettably, peripheral neuropathy is often incurable; still, a qualified vet neurologist can delay and manage the symptoms and disease itself. Anti-inflammatory and steroid drugs can greatly help in reducing any existing discomfort. Similarly, any physical therapy, acupuncture, or professional massages can help strengthen muscles that have yet to suffer from the worse effects of the neurological disease. Please keep in mind that maintaining a healthy and balanced diet is likewise crucial to the prevention of the worse effects of the disease or rapid onset of the disorder. Ask your veterinarian in Mission Viejo what type of vitamins and minerals you need to incorporate into your dog’s or cat’s diet and how you can ensure proper nutrition. | <urn:uuid:9113e615-66c3-453b-bd55-899cf4ccac2c> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://brightcarevet.com/animal-neurology/peripheral-neuropathy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506528.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20230923194908-20230923224908-00803.warc.gz | en | 0.922164 | 1,319 | 3.609375 | 4 |
By Mackay L. Smith
Women’s education at McGill began in 1884, when Donald Smith made a donation to start the Donalda program for the purpose of providing higher education for Canadian women. He proposed building a college for women in 1886.
Smith moved to London, England in 1896, to become Canadian High Commissioner and was awarded the Barony of Strathcona and Mount Royal. Coming back to Montreal, the new Lord Strathcona funded the construction of Royal Victoria College on Sherbrooke St., a self-contained complex that served as both school and dormitory for female students. At the opening of the college, a bronze statue of Queen Victoria that had been sculpted by her daughter Princess Louise was unveiled on the entrance steps.
In 1899, Lord Strathcona became the Chancellor of McGill and held the position until his death in 1914.
By 1950 the College had 284 student rooms, the assembly hall had been converted into a concert hall known as Pollack Hall and another residence, the Benny home at Aylmer and Sherbrooke, had been purchased. In 1964, the 12-storey Roscoe Wing was constructed on University St. This gave the College 434 residential rooms.
In 1971, the Faculty of Music took over the original Royal Victoria College building and renamed it the Strathcona Music Building. The residences kept their University/Sherbrooke building along with the Roscoe Wing.
McGill Memories is a regular feature based upon MacKay L. Smith’s 2009 book, Memories and Profiles of McGill University. The book is available at the McGill bookstore. | <urn:uuid:f042bd16-fe58-4cc9-8b12-d6d3436178f5> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://reporter.mcgill.ca/lord-strathcona-champion-of-womens-education/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506528.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20230923194908-20230923224908-00803.warc.gz | en | 0.976597 | 332 | 2.53125 | 3 |
It is near impossible to discuss the drug landscape today without the mention of one word: fentanyl.
The drug is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and experts warn that it is increasingly being found in - or en route to - Australia.
Is Australia facing a fentanyl crisis in our future? And are we prepared for if or when it arrives on our shores?
What is fentanyl?
Fentanyl was created in 1959 as a form of powerful new pain relief, and is 100 times stronger than morphine. For decades it was used by medical professionals for pain management, with high rates of success. However, by the early 2000s, illegally manufactured versions began to widely circulate in the illicit drug market, and between 2005 and 2007, the drug was linked to over 1000 overdose-related deaths in America.
Almost 20 years later, fentanyl has saturated the illicit drug markets in America and Canada. It is killing hundreds of people per day, and is the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 49.
The potency of the drug not only makes it incredibly dangerous, but also very appealing to drug smugglers.
The Iron Law of Prohibition
The Iron Law of Prohibition theorises that the criminalisation of drugs fuels the production, distribution, and consumption of increasingly potent and dangerous forms of drugs. As police crack down on drug production and shipments, drug smugglers move toward more potent drugs that are easier to hide and transport - maximising profits whilst minimising risk.
We have seen this occur in America during alcohol prohibition and the market dominance of 75% alcohol moonshine; the rise of crack cocaine in the 1980s; and, closer to home, the explosion of methamphetamine use. Fentanyl is yet another example of this phenomenon taking place in North America, where it has replaced heroin as the opiate of choice for dealers and users alike. And there are many warning signs that Australia is not far behind.
Warning signs for Australia
Fentanyl is already becoming increasingly prominent in Australia. Last year, the Australian Federal Police seized the largest shipment of fentanyl in the country: enough for 5 million doses. Usage rates are also increasing, and recent wastewater analysis reports show high levels of fentanyl use (illicit and licit) in Queensland, South Australia, and the ACT.
Patterns of drug production are also shifting worldwide, and will continue to impact Australia’s illicit drug market.
Fentanyl is cheaper and easier to produce and can be made in makeshift laboratories because it does not rely on organic production.
The Taliban have recently banned opium production in Afghanistan – the producer of 80% of the world’s heroin supply. Experts warn that once heroin supplies begin to dry up, fentanyl will take its place.
Of greater concern is the shift in drug production in Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar, where most of Australia’s heroin is made. The countries’ close proximity to China – the world’s largest producers of fentanyl and its precursors – has made fentanyl an attractive alternative for drug syndicates.
Huge fentanyl hauls have been seized in recent years, and it likely won’t be long until the drugs begin to reach Australian shores.
Is Australia prepared?
Harm reduction experts and law enforcement usually disagree, but they can agree on one thing: Australia must brace itself for the inevitable arrival of the drug.
So how prepared are we?
Although we like to boast about our healthcare system, the reality is that many Australians with problematic drug use already struggle to access harm reduction services.
People with opioid use disorder face barriers when trying to access opioid replacement therapy such as methadone treatment or a bed in a rehab facility.
A sudden surge in fentanyl-related cases could easily overwhelm Australia's existing support programs.
Despite the success of the first safe injection facility in Melbourne, the promise of a second facility has yet to be fulfilled and new location suggestions continue to face public resistance.
When fentanyl does arrive, drug users are unequipped to keep themselves safe. Drug testing programs remain a controversial topic, and governments continue to refuse widespread implementation.
Fentanyl test strips: A necessary tool
Being able to detect the presence of fentanyl in other drugs will become a vital tool in the fight against the drug. Fentanyl test strips are a quick and easy way to detect fentanyl at home, but they are still not easily available to purchase within Australia.
Without access to these harm reduction resources, it will be impossible to detect fentanyl in other substances such as MDMA, heroin, and cocaine.
And it won’t be uncommon to hear horror stories like those happening in the U.S., where three young New Yorkers lost their lives to a fentanyl overdose on the same day after ordering what they thought was cocaine from the same drug dealer.
At Drug Policy Australia, we understand the need for these resources, and have fentanyl test strips available to purchase on our website with free shipping Australia wide.
It's time to act
As the threat of a fentanyl crisis looms large over Australia, it is time to confront the harsh reality – we are not adequately prepared.
Although we are moving in the right direction, we are not moving fast enough.
The time to act is now, for the consequences of inaction could be catastrophic.
Sign in to comment
Get Involved and Join the Movement | <urn:uuid:731093a9-8640-47f3-b6b1-f7b86bbeb6cb> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.drugpolicy.org.au/is_australia_prepared_for_a_fentanyl_crisis | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506528.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20230923194908-20230923224908-00803.warc.gz | en | 0.942047 | 1,083 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Communication is an essential component of connection and trust between people – family, friends, coworkers, or even total strangers. Offering a compliment, being vulnerable about your feelings, and discovering surprising similarities mid-conversation are all great ways to strengthen bonds and feel closer with those in your life. But we often shy away from giving and receiving honest feedback out of fear that it might hurt the other person — or our own pride.
The reality is that the act of offering feedback indicates you care enough about another person to be honest. It shows you’re willing to spend your time supporting their growth and personal development. What’s more, trying to ignore behavior that bothers you can breed resentment when left unresolved. Taking the emotional risk to provide constructive feedback shows the other person that you are invested in the relationship and willing to take time to help fix the issue.
Of course, no one wants to be on the receiving end of harsh, nitpicking criticism. Bad feedback can make you feel attacked, invalidated, and unwilling to share in the future. If it’s not phrased thoughtfully, negative feedback can actually hurt relationships down the road. Similarly, if you are afraid of any and all feedback because of a few bad experiences, you might start to associate such comments as a personal insult and have difficulty separating yourself from your work or even your subconscious habits. It’s important to work on giving and receiving feedback so we can be our best selves and show up fully in relationships – but where to start?
Giving Compassionate & Honest Feedback
1. Know your purpose and be specific.
No one likes to be confused as to why they’re on the receiving end of feedback. Make sure you state your reason clearly. Are you addressing a specific issue that has come up? Can you see an opportunity for the other person to grow and leverage their strengths?
2. Focus on the behavior, not the person.
We’re all human and we are all capable of making mistakes. Effective feedback addresses behaviors rather than someone’s character, so it helps to use “I” statements such as “I feel…” rather than “you” statements. This is between you and the other person, so it’s important to present your feedback as your opinion of how their behavior is affecting you.
3. Be direct, descriptive, and open.
Feedback can be vulnerable for both parties and that’s okay! Rather than beating around the bush, it’s essential to be direct and describe your viewpoints rather than pass judgment. Be open to listening and asking questions – in order to normalize feedback in your daily life, it helps to remember this is just like any other conversation.
4. Timing is essential.
It’s not helpful to address something that happened six months ago if you want that person to change their behavior. If you have feedback to give, it should be timely and relevant (while still being fully thought out). It’s also essential to pick your moment. Work on your emotional awareness to understand when the other person might be more receptive to feedback rather than delivering it during the heat of the moment. Note your own emotional state too – anxiety is normal, but it won’t help your case.
Receiving Feedback Graciously
1. Be receptive rather than defensive.
Take time to listen to what the other person is saying and notice your own reactions before you jump on the defense. Remember, feedback is just another data point. Having data is better than not because it expands perspectives, resulting in healthier relationships and communication.
2. Become curious.
To avoid misunderstandings, asking a range of questions helps ensure that you fully understand what the other person is saying. You can also reflect on the feelings this conversation is bringing up – what can you learn from this experience?
3. Take your time to process.
You might need some time to reflect on received feedback so you can make the necessary changes. It’s also okay to take a break and revisit the conversation at a later time.
4. Focus on gratitude.
Thank the person who offered you feedback to show them that you’ve not only listened and understood, but you’ve also accepted what they’ve said. Own up to your mistakes and move forward by making changes — receiving feedback can be difficult, but appreciate this as an opportunity to grow as a person rather than focusing on the criticism alone.
With practice, giving and receiving feedback can help you flex often vulnerable muscles of communication. If you make a conscious effort to ask for feedback often from those you trust, it eliminates the surprise when you receive it and can help you become more open to advice. Similarly, developing the skill of giving good feedback can help build up your confidence while demonstrating your investment in another person’s success. Ultimately, giving honest, compassionate feedback becomes a cornerstone of solid relationships if we all work to develop the skills to support each other’s growth. | <urn:uuid:fcaa8674-0195-4f68-a95b-f35ec81a55ae> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.slownorth.com/blogs/journal/your-complete-guide-to-giving-receiving-feedback | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506528.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20230923194908-20230923224908-00803.warc.gz | en | 0.949233 | 1,033 | 2.5625 | 3 |
A Pathway to Equity and Access for All
The STEM Leadership Alliance (SLA) is a subsidiary of the STEM Happens Network (SHN). Think of it in two components, the STEM Leadership Alliance brings together education leaders from around the world to share learnings and practice, while the STEM Happens Network is the actual working component. SHN supports schools and districts to develop integrated STEM units across the content areas. The work is across the STEM disciplines and beyond, including literacy, art, social studies, etc. to build the capacity of educators so, integrated STEM units can be developed that support equitable instruction.
The vision of the work aims to re-engineer and revolutionize STEM education to shape tomorrow’s workforce and change the world. The mission is to develop a broad-based coalition composed of industry leaders, educators, non-profits organizations, and foundations committed to helping to increase understanding and implementation of effective integrated STEM education for ALL STUDENTS in order to develop individuals who are prepared not just for college and career but also for lifelong learning and societal contributions.
The work follows the guiding Principles of Integrated STEM, a joint document authored by Advance CTE, Association of State Supervisors of Mathematics (ASSM), Council of State Science Supervisors (COSSS), and International Technology and Engineering Educators Association (ITEEA), in collaboration with the STEM Leadership Alliance in defining the principles of Integrated STEM:
Principle 1: Integrated STEM education should advance the learning of each individual STEM discipline
Principle 2: Integrated STEM education should provide logical and authentic connections between and across the individual STEM disciplines
Principle 3: Integrated STEM education should serve as a bridge to STEM careers
“We don’t want to just increase the number of American students in STEM. We want to make sure everybody is involved,” – President Barack Obama
To grow our nation’s science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) capacity and ensure that American’s can participate in the future workforce, STEM is the core of our economy. Adding to the near-term urgency, a National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine report predicts a shortfall of nearly 3.4 million skilled technical workers by 2022. According to the Southern Regional Education Board, Covid-19 has accelerated automation by 5 years, meaning 30% of work activities could be automated by 2025. Expanding the diversity and inclusivity of science and engineering is vital to the future of the America’s prosperity. It is in the nation’s interest that all Americans, including the two in three U.S. adults who do not have a bachelor’s degree, have the opportunity to participate in and benefit from our scientific and technological progress (IEEE 2020).
Former President Barack Obama stated, “We don’t want to just increase the number of American students in STEM. We want to make sure everybody is involved,” said during remarks at the fifth annual White House Science Fair. “That means reaching out to boys and girls, men and women of all races and all backgrounds. Science is for all of us. And we want our classrooms and labs and workplaces and media to reflect that” (2015).
Equity for All
Let’s begin with understanding why integrated STEM is so important. Throughout the United States, educators have witnessed inequalities in American schools for decades and the alarming achievement gap arising from the widening socioeconomic disparity (Howard, 2015; Howard, Rodriguez-Scheel, 2017; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Milner, 2013, 2015; Ravitch, 2016). Students of color have disproportionately have received a devalued education. This stems from available resources, teacher efficacy, and educator professional development. The “equity” component demands that teachers foster all students’ academic success/competency by bridging the achievement gap between White students and students of color (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014). Under the umbrella of asset-, equity-oriented pedagogy, there are five interrelated theoretical strands: community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005), funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 2005), funds of identity (Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014a), authentic caring (Valenzuela, 1999, 2016), and culturally relevant pedagogy (Gay, 2010). These elements combine to cultivate the praxis for critical transformative pedagogy (Lopez & Olan, 2019; Souto-Manning, 2019) and assist in the development of asset-, equity-, and justice-oriented pedagogy in teacher education (see Figure 1).
STEM is an acronym that has been thrown into almost every conversation when discussing education or jobs and careers. Schools and districts jumped on the band wagon because funding was connected to STEM but not much was changing in terms of the approach to teaching STEM. STEM became about Project Based Learning, Maker Spaces, Coding, Robots, and the list can go on and on. This term STEM, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is commonly believed to have been first coined by Dr. Judith Ramaley during her tenure as Director of the Education and Human Resources directorate of the National Science Foundation from 2001-2004. STEM has been further amplified by the both the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) because they have called for more and deeper connections among the STEM subjects. STEM needs to be explored beyond just this acronym. Too often, school systems teach STEM subjects in silos. Many teachers have holes in their own subject content knowledge (Stinson et al., 2009) and asking math and science teachers to teach another subject may create new knowledge gaps and challenges (Stinson et al., 2009). As a result, science is not coordinated with engineering and not connected to the real-world. Educators typically, look at their own view of what it important based on their discipline, educators do not embrace what their colleagues are doing in other disciplines. Therefore, SLA and SHN will leverage proven practices and develop a broad model that will support educators through professional development, assessing existing structures, and building leadership capacity to connect disciplines including STEM, but also literacy, art, social studies, and other disciplines as well as, to create a true integrated STEM learning environment.
Proven Practices: Leveraging Partners to Support Educators Through Professional Development
Especially, in this new world, teachers need to work with each other. Businesses are demanding a workforce with STEM skills. The United States (US) struggles with a shortage of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workers, and that shortage is projected to grow in the near future. Several business majors, such as information security, operations analysts, and business intelligence, are among the fastest-growing STEM occupations (USDOL, n.d.). As the president of the Advisors on Science and Technology Council stated, “Economic projections point to a need for approximately 1 million more STEM professionals than the US will produce at the current rate over the next decade if the country is to retain its historical preeminence in science and technology” (President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, 2012, para.
This leads to why this work is so important. SHN has worked in Milwaukee, Boston and now is currently working with the NAACP in District 7, 28, and 29 in New York City that is changing STEM from an acronym to an understanding that subjects need to connect the classroom to the real world.
How does the partnership work?
The STEM Leadership Alliance is a collaborative that formed in 2018. The goal was to bring expertise from the respective STEM fields to build a collaborative focused on an interdisciplinary approach that made not just each organization stronger together, but also supported African American and Latino students in understanding the connections of STEM and that STEM does not exist within one discipline. The objectives of the partnership will promote integrated STEM through a collective impact model based on the three principles of integrated STEM. The work supports a strong integrated STEM ecosystem at the local, state, and national level that enables all preK-12 educators, higher education, parents, non-profits, museums, and business/industry to better understand, navigate, and collaboratively plan and deliver integrated STEM education. This will also cultivate leaders’ integrated STEM skills through effective models and strategies in order to close the STEM skills gap so African American and Latino students can be successful in school and college and/or careers while making sense of their world. It bridges the divide between education and industry and enhance industry-education collaboration at regional, state, and national levels. The work will build the capacity of educators as a district, state, and national integrated STEM leaders. Finally, this will provide real-world, application-based, interactive STEM integration experiences for leaders in STEM.
The second component of the partnership is with the STEM Happens Network. SHN supports states, districts, and schools to improve equity and access through an integrated STEM approach. SHN is committed to providing support to schools, districts, and states in order to transform, the implementation of integrated STEM curriculum across the content areas preparing students with the skills necessary to be successful at every level of their academic journey and in life. SHN will support the development of an interdisciplinary STEM professional learning community that enhances a cohesive teaching and learning environment, providing African American and Latino students with opportunities to gain experience with real-world applications that leads to a trans-disciplinary culture. SHN believes this creates a lever to implement a culture of change within schools and districts providing true college and career readiness for African American and Latino students. SHN has developed a bench of experts and organizations (including the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), the International Technology and Engineering Education Association (ITEEA), past presidents of the National Science Teaching Association (NSTA), and American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE)), that all share the common vision and work collaboratively to ensure that educators receive high-quality training, tools, and resources that will support an interdisciplinary approach that benefits ALL students.
The third partner is with, the NAACP. President Hazel Dukes of the NAACP New York State Conference of Branches has founded the Connect the Kids Education Equity Education Initiative. The unique education is a uniquely designed education plan designed to address the following fundamental goals:
▪ Close the Digital Divide with the latest communications technologies
▪ Apply New Technology – Based Learning via Educational Software
▪ Provide professional development to connect the learning across all subject areas.
Among its high-priority goals, the NAACP New York State Conference of Branches continually works to ensure that all disadvantaged students and students of color remain on the path to college and/or a successful career by ensuring access to innovative teaching, full and proper learning resources, and a challenging curriculum. In order to do this, it is about building the capacity of the educator and changing the culture of the school and district. So, in order to support students, there is a need to support educators.
Creating a STEM Culture: Goals and Metrics
The goals of the partnerships aims to leverage collaboration in order for schools and districts to develop integrated STEM units of instruction in order to improve student outcomes in numeracy, literacy, and science. SHN will assess the professional development, survey the students and teachers to offer authentic feedback, provide an annual progress report, conduct assessments, and analyze student performance data in ELA, Mathematics, and Science for each grade level involved in the work.
The metrics focus on access to quality instructional materials and resources as the foundation for an integrated STEM-centered school, but human capital creates the learning environment, based on trans-disciplinary instruction that fosters critical thinking, innovation and 21st century skills. The result will be higher performance in student outcomes, improved attendance rates, and graduation rates. SHN uses the following process to build an evaluation that leads to integrated STEM across the content areas. The first step is for the schools and districts to complete the SHN STEMness Rubric that assesses where the school/district is in relation to STEM. The Curriculum and Instructional Planning and Reflection Tool will be used to review the current curriculum, what professional development is provided and what additional tools and resources the school have. (Note: SHN supports existing curriculum. Far too often, curriculum is viewed as the answer, when it is a tool, it is understanding how to use additional tools and resources to build the best curricula that is culturally relevant and meets the needs of students). The schools will identify partner teachers (suggested a literacy, numeracy, and science teacher, additional disciplines encouraged). Also, the principal will engage to deepen his knowledge in STEM, assessing integrated STEM across the content areas, and creating instructional leaders, as well as, participate alongside their teachers for key learnings. As the work progresses, non-evaluative school visits (virtual and eventually in person) using the Danielson Framework focusing on 1e, 3b, 3c, 3d will be conducted to assess the needs of the teachers and the school.
The project outputs and milestones for educators include deepening understanding of NGSS and current numeracy and literacy standards, leveraging the Framework for Teaching, understanding how and why feedback is essential, using NGSS integration of the Three-Dimensions, building an integrated unit of study, using the 5E Instructional model, creating Integrated Lesson Plans, and using data, both formative and summative. Rather than compartmentalizing the skills and mindsets of curiosity, self-reflection, and sense of purpose this must be incorporated into the existing curricula. This will lead to the collection of metrics that will be collected through surveys, standardized test scores in science, mathematics, and literacy, structured observations, teacher participation in professional development, and teacher implementation of units and lessons. The data collected will be used to drive sustainability and scale the work across the country by showcasing the work through the STEM Leadership Alliance.
The Power of Partnerships
Kelli List Wells is the Founder and CEO of the STEM Leadership Alliance. A collaboration she built that includes the major STEM organizations, NASA, and the White House Office and Science Technology Policy, along with schools, districts, state department of educations, businesses, colleges and universities, and nonprofits. Individually, these leading STEM organizations advance the work of educators and students across the country, together we are changing STEM from an acronym to connecting the classroom to the real-world. Prior to her current role, she was the Executive Director for Global Education and Skills at the GE Foundation. She designed and executed a portfolio that focused on building education, skills and training initiatives to prepare the next generation for the demands of the workforce and the changing labor economy both nationally and globally. She has done extensive work in the PreK-12 education systems which has reached more than 10,000 teachers and 1.3 million students across more than 2,000 PreK-12 public schools, and has also saved school districts more than $20 million. She expanded the work to include higher education institutions and workforce development programs because she saw the growing skills gap. This led to her development of the Brilliant Career Labs, first-of-its-kind, physical and virtual learning experiences that help students explore careers and understand the skills required for the jobs of the future using digital fabrication and she secured the Boston Celtics to be a partner. Prior to COVID-19, she led national convenings with over 325 leaders in STEM education that have included 28 states represented and 4 countries, as well as, global education Summits including the first-ever Asia Integrated STEM Leadership Alliance that occurred in the Philippines. When COVID-19 occurred, she continued to move integrated STEM work globally. This past summer she organized a virtual integrated STEM Summit with over 600 participants, 45 states, and 20 countries. She continues to work with schools, districts, states, and countries to not only promote, but also develop action plans to revolutionize how STEM is being taught.
Through her background in Six Sigma, social emotional trainings, and extensive leadership development courses, List Wells is known for leading strategic planning processes, developing leaders, and building collaborative cultures. Prior to her experience in corporate philanthropy, List Wells was a licensed financial advisor, holding her Series 7 and Series 63 Investment licenses with Charles Schwab where she designed and created seminars on financial planning. She is also a member of various non-profit organizations. She currently serves on the Center for Supportive Schools and the Philippines based organization Ci-STEM (Center for Integrated STEM). She was on the Massachusetts STEM Advisory Council, an appointment by the Governor. and the board of directors for the Bridgeport Public Education Foundation and the Women in Manufacturing. She served on the Stamford, Connecticut Mayor’s Council for Early Childhood Readiness that provided high quality PreK for all 3 and 4-year-old children. List Wells studied International Relations and Japanese at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and continued her education at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan.
Dr. Salvador Fernandez is a proven leader in STEM education, having designed and led the school achievement effort (also known as the turnaround plan) at the New York City Department of Education, which has achieved positive results. He previously held the positions of Principal of I.S. 52 in District 6 Manhattan, Director of School Quality in the Office of Accountability for the New York City Department of Education and Director of School Assessment and Improvement for District 5. Dr. Fernandez earned national recognition for his vision and commitment to education reform. Dr. Fernandez is a New York City public school graduate, and has spent over 40 years in the field of education. In his time as principal of I.S. 52, Dr. Fernandez established partnerships with the General Electric Foundation, the National Science Teachers Association and NASA to promote teacher leadership in STEM education. Dr. Fernandez is a strong advocate for life-long learning; he currently serves as a member of the New Rochelle Board of Education in New Rochelle, NY. He is also a member of the board directors of It Takes a Village to Educate a Child.
Dr. Fernandez received his Master of Science degree from Hunter College. Soon after he acquired his educational administration certificate from City College of New York. Dr. Fernandez was also selected to participate in the Chancellor’s Incentive Doctoral Program where he graduated from St. John’s University in 2002 with highest honors.
The Road to a Transdisciplinary Approach to Learning
The process starts with shifting the culture and mindset of the school. Teachers’ engaging in teaching integrated STEM are likely to benefit greatly from a growth mindset, a mindset that is aligned with perceptions of lifelong learning (Dweck, 2010). Transforming the process from a myopic point of view, where only their content matters, to a culture that embraces the learning from and with colleagues across all disciplines. Nationwide, African American and Latino students are least likely to have access to quality STEM instruction and are more likely to experience negative cultural stereotypes and assumptions such as a lack of intellectual ability in math and science (Hutchinson, 2014). This has led to a fixed mindset regarding STEM skills and a diminished sense of confidence in African American and Latino’s STEM ability (Bright, 2017).
Using STEM education as an integrated approach with the various disciplines into a cohesive teaching and learning model, provides students, especially African American and Latino students, the opportunities to make sense of the world around them. It focuses on rigorous academic concepts connected with real-world experiences in which students apply science, technology, engineering and mathematics in numerous contexts to make connections between school, community and the world. An interdisciplinary approach to education in a school becomes the “Culture of Change” as we begin the shift to “transdisciplinary”.
Transdisciplinary Approach: What does this mean?
• Disciplinary: Students learn concepts and skills separately in each discipline.
• Multi-Disciplinary: Students learn concepts and skills separately in each discipline, but in a reference to a common theme.
• Interdisciplinary: Students learn concepts and skills from two or more disciplines that are tightly linked to deepen knowledge and skills.
• Transdisciplinary: Students learn concepts and skills by undertaking real world problems or projects and students apply knowledge and skills from two or more disciplines and help shape the learning experience
When African American and Latino students begin to understand the connection between the classroom and the real-world, a growth mindset is developed. They then begin to truly own their learning because the learning environment has expanded beyond the school walls. They have a sense of purpose and direction that is developed by curiosity and creativity. Students learn more when learning is organized around real projects, problems or explaining phenomena.
There are two components to a transdisciplinary approach to learning. Access to quality instructional materials and resources are the foundation for a STEM centered school, but human capital creates a learning environment, based on transdisciplinary instruction that fosters problem solvers, critical thinking, innovation and 21st century skills. Building the capacity of the educator to understand not just the content but the application provides an equitable learning environment.
SHN uses the following steps that leads to integrated STEM across the content areas. The first step is to conduct a listening tour that involves the district, schools, parents, students and the community to develop an understanding of how STEM is being taught and how STEM is viewed. Often times, the word STEM is viewed as a project and not a way to connect the classroom to the real-world. Next, each school completes the SHN STEMness Rubric that assesses where the school is in relation to STEM. Is it providing an equitable learning environment for ALL students? Is it differentiated? Then, SHN conducts non-evaluative school visits (virtual and in person) to assess the needs of the teachers and the school. Each school will be provided with the SHN Curriculum and Instructional Planning and Reflection Tool to inform what is the current curriculum used, what professional development is provided and what additional tools and resources does the school have. (Note: SHN supports teachers using their existing curriculum). Once these steps are completed, then the schools identify partner teachers (suggested a literacy, numeracy, and science teacher, additional disciplines encouraged per grade level) at each school to engage in the integrated STEM learning journey. Also, principals for each participating school will engage in the integrated STEM workshops and will have specialized learning on how to observe an integrated STEM classroom and provide support to the teachers to enhance their pedagogy. Parents are also involved in the process. SHN provides workshops to explain the learning journey and why integrated STEM is important.
Integrated STEM Roadmap
The learning journey starts with schools and districts understanding Leadership Development for the 21st Century. In order to change the school/district culture, it begins with looking at the vision and mission. Does the entire school community understand the direction of the school/district? Starting with these steps then allows for the development of a strategic plan that provides a roadmap for shifting from a siloed approach to teaching to a collaborative model integrating all the subject areas. Reflecting on the needs of the African American and Latino (and girls and boys) students in each community must inform the strategic plan.
Educators then go into understanding the importance of notebooking. Notebooking (physical or digital) is a strategy for students to express their learning, make observations, and hypothesis, and support their evidence-based writing. This is extremely important for African American and Latino students in supporting their understanding and making real-word connections. Through notebooking, teachers will learn how to engage students to develop a variety of skills – listening skills, narration skills, organization skills, artistic skills, and more. The combining effect of these skills will support students to select the most important and interesting information from a study and learn how to organize the information. This is a simple way for educators to understand how content connects across disciplines.
As educators continue to build their knowledge, the next component is to explore the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Focusing on NGSS and the Three-Dimensions of Science and Engineering Practices, Cross-Cutting Concepts, and Disciplinary Core Ideas. The integration of rigorous content and application reflects how science and engineering is practiced in the real world. This feeds into understanding the difference between disciplinary literacy and literacy across the content areas. In content area reading, we use reading and writing to study/learn information, while in disciplinary reading we must ask how does literacy help us make meaning within a discipline. Content area literacy is concerned with addressing the unique content of each discipline. Texts are introduced into each subject area so students are familiar with subject-unique content. While this engages students in the topic it does not always draw connections. Disciplinary literacy, on the other hand, is concerned with connecting reading and writing about content across subject areas and texts should be introduced to teach students how to think in different ways. The value of disciplinary literacy is it provides the ability for African American and Latino students to think and connect the content. It allows for them to make culturally relevant connections. Strengthening student disciplinary literacy is the glue that allows for the sciences to mingle with the literacy, mathematics, arts, social studies, music, etc. in a way that provides access to all types of learners and not just students who favor math and science.
Once the foundation is developed, educators will begin to create an integrated STEM unit of instruction by putting all of the components together. Teachers will leverage the existing curriculum, the current standards, and the alignment of literacy and math standards, as well as other resources. To ensure that teachers are allowing access to all learners, time must be spent looking at how to scaffold assessment and text so that the curriculum invites African American and Latino students. Tools like the Depth of Knowledge, DOK, rubric to assess the complexity of our tasks and to “line them up” on the scale to develop rigor are used. Also, using text complexity gradient to assess the texts teachers are introducing to African American and Latino students such as vocabulary, sentence structure, and knowledge demands that are also culturally relevant. These tools, along with a mathematical task analysis guide and create equity for all learners as they bring learners in at their place of comfort, creating access for all. Planning like this requires training and working within a professional learning community to learn and practice strategies.
Once the unit is designed, using the 5E template (Bibbey) educators can begin to design lesson plans that will include storylines that will incrementally connect the learning. The 5E model of planning (Bibbey) focuses on breaking down the myth that a lesson plan is something that lasts 45 minutes (silo approach); using the 5E model and thinking beyond one class period, students will have a strong framework within which to connect core ideas. Teachers need to be exposed to model lesson plans, decoand nstruct them together (teachers and administrators), and during classroom walkthroughs, helping teachers create strong libraries to use resources effectively and essential skills that need to be incorporated in units and lessons. Teachers and supervisors need to work vertically, and be given the opportunities (along with the tools!) to visit with each other while the work is happening to provide real time feedback (this occurs in a virtual or in-person environment).
The partnership with the STEM Leadership Alliance, the STEM Happens Network and the NAACP is transforming education beyond the four walls and making meaning for students how to connect the content that they are learning. Subjects taught in silo, disconnect the learning for students, which is detrimental to ALL students. A curriculum that is not culturally relevant and does not hook the students, causes more harm than good. The approach of the work will revolutionize the way educators’ practice, from an isolated manner, to a collaborative manner that allows students to connect subjects and the classroom to the real-world.
Written by Kelli List Wells
Berlin, D., & White, A. (1995). Connecting school science and mathematics in House, P. & Coxford, A. (Eds.), Connecting Mathematics across the Curriculum: 1995 Yearbook. Reston, VA: NCTM.
Bright, M. (2017). Math crucial to diversity in the STEM pipeline. Retrieved from http://diverseeducation.com/article/99287/.
Dweck, C. S. (2010). Even geniuses work hard. Educational Leadership, 68, 16–20. [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
Esteban-Guitart, M., Moll, L. C. (2014a). Funds of identity: A new concept based on the funds of knowledge approach. Culture & Psychology, 20(1), 31–48.
Furner, J., & Kumar, D. (2007). The mathematics and science integration argument: a stand for teacher education. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science & Technology, 3(3), 185–189.
Gay, G. (2010). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. Teachers College Press.
Howard, G. R. (2016). We can’t teach what we don’t know: White teachers, multiracial schools (3rd ed.). Teachers College Press.
Howard, T. C., Rodriguez-Scheel, A. (2017). Culturally relevant pedagogy 20 years later: Progress or pontificating? What have we learned, and where do we go? Teachers College Record, 119(1), 1–32.
Hutchinson, S. (2014). Who wants to be a rocket scientist? Race, gender and the STEM divide. Retrieved from http:// thehumanist.com/magazine/may-june-2014/up-front/whowants-to-be-a-rocket-scientist-race-gender-and-the-stemdivide
Katehi, L., Pearson, G., & Feder, M. (Eds). (2009). National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council Engineering in K-12 education. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). From the achievement gap to the education debt: Understanding achievement in US schools. Educational Researcher, 35(7), 3–12.Lopez, A. E., Olan, E. L. (Eds.). (2019). Transformative Pedagogies for Teacher Education. Information Age Publishing.
Milner, H. R. (2013). Rethinking achievement gap talk in urban education. Urban Education, 48(1)3–8.
Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., Gonzalez, N. (2005). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. In Gonzalez, N., Moll, L., Amanti, C. (Eds.), Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms (pp. 71–88). Lawrence Erlbaum.
Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93–97.
Paris, D., Alim, H. S. (2014). What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique forward. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 85–100.
President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (2012, February). Report to the President, engage to excel: Producing one million additional college graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED541511.pdf
Ravitch, D. (2016). The death and life of the great American school system: How testing and choice are undermining education. Basic Books.
Ruth, Corey. (2020). “STEM Supports Two Thirds of U.S. Jobs – IEEE-USA.” IEEE. ieeeusa.org/stem-supports-two-thirds-of-us-jobs/.
Souto-Manning, M. (2019). Transforming university-based teacher education: Preparing asset-, equity-, and justice-oriented teachers within the contemporary political context. Teachers College Record, 121(6), 1–26.
Stinson, K., Harkness, S., Meyer, H., & Stallworth, J. (2009). Mathematics and science integration: models and characterizations. School Science and Mathematics, 109(3), 153–161, doi: 10.1111/j.1949-8594.2009. tb17951.x
Stohlmann, M., Moore, T. J., & Roehrig, G. H. (2012). Considerations for Teaching Integrated STEM Education. Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER), 2(1), Article 4.
United States Department of Labor (USDOL), O*NET OnLine. (n.d.). Browse bright outlook occupations. https://www.onetonline.org/find/bright?b=1&g=Go
Valenzuela, A. (1999). Subtractive schooling: U.S.-Mexican youth and the politics of caring. University of New York Press.
Valenzuela, A. (Ed.). (2016). Crowing critically conscious teachers: A social-justice curriculum for educators of Latino/a youth. Teacher College Press.
Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69–91.
Zhu, Gang. (2020). “Educate Your Heart Before Your Mind”: The Counter-Narratives of One African American Female Teacher’s Asset-, Equity- and Justice-Oriented Pedagogy in One Urban School. Sage Publishing. | <urn:uuid:6754a94c-f2a4-4b2b-baf4-c0fae0c1aec0> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.stemhappensnetwork.com/post/a-pathway-to-equity-and-access-for-all | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506528.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20230923194908-20230923224908-00803.warc.gz | en | 0.934426 | 6,987 | 2.828125 | 3 |
From 1904 to 1941, the DeBary family recorded the kind and amount of game killed in hunts on or near their namesake winter retreat. Along with the game bagged on registered hunts, the family documented various notes from these excursions, including weather conditions, hunting locations, wildlife observations, the amount of guns or people involved in each hunt, and remarks on the training and health of their hunting dogs. For this project, I focused only on the recordings documenting the wild game killed on the property. The following charts were generated to help visualize and understand the data within the ledger. After transcribing and organizing the game record’s scrawled cursive into spreadsheets, I was able to use Shiva VisualEyes tools to chart this raw data into coherent and interpretive graphs. The following charts not only exhibit a very diverse makeup in the kinds of game killed at DeBary Hall, but they also show a gradual decline in the amount of game hunted at DeBary Hall over the span of the 37 years recorded in the ledger. This rundown will examine each chart created and make deductions from their findings. Afterwards, I will explain the significance of the ledger and its data to revealing new details on Florida and US Southern history in general.
Before diving into the numbers killed, the first question that should be asked is this: What game did the DeBarys and their guests hunt the most of? These pie charts break down the kills by kinds of animals.
94% of the animals killed by the DeBarys were quail and snipe. Quail took up 66% of the ledger’s recorded kills, equaling 6,172 killed over the ledger’s 37 year span. Snipe took up 28% of the ledger’s total kills, equaling to 2,564. Considering that each of these birds have their own space for recordings in the ledger, this find was expected. The “quail” hunted here was the Northern Bobwhite, which thrives in pine forests like those that once dominated the landscape around DeBary Hall and Central Florida as a whole. Choice habitat plays a part in quail’s strong presence in this ledger, but the DeBary family might have also raised quail on their property to hunt them in the field. Because there is photographic evidence of the family raising pheasants, another popular game bird, and that there are notes within the ledger observing quail as “very wild,” it is safe to assume that the DeBary household at least dabbled in raising and managing quail populations on their acreage.
The “snipe” recorded in the ledger refers to Wilson’s Snipe, a shorebird that is hunted more for sport than meat. Known for flying in a fast, zigzagging path, Wilson’s Snipe are challenging game to take down for a marksmen. Their migration into Florida for the winter made them key targets for the DeBarys as they finished out their seasonal stay at the hall.
5.96% of the remaining game were either ducks, bass, or doves, which were recorded in the ledger under a space titled “Various.” 356 ducks were recorded within the ledger. Though ducks make up a mere 3% of the game killed, this group was the most diverse when it came to specific species represented. The DeBarys recorded six kinds of duck being shot within their game record, which were the Hooded Merganser, the American Black Duck (Blackhead), the Mallard, the Blue-Winged Teal, the Lesser Scaup (Broadbill), and the Ruddy Duck. 156 bass, most likely Largemouth Bass or Striped Bass , were fished at the hall, making up 2% of the game recorded. Mourning Doves, totaling at 54 recorded kills, make up 0.6% of the ledger’s game.
The remaining 0.4% of the game recorded in the ledger, labeled “Other Game” in the preceding pie chart, is divided between nine animals that were killed irregularly among the more popular targets The next pie chart will break down the 0.4% of “Other Game.”
Within the variety of creatures that make up the remaining 0.4% of kills, rattlesnakes and rails make up 0.1%, a quarter of the “Other Game” represented in the previous pie chart. 14 rattlesnakes, presumably Eastern Diamondbacks, were all killed in one day. The 11 rails (shorebirds) were killed randomly, and they were made up of 3 distinct species; the King Rail, the Greater Yellowlegs, and the American Coot. The 6 Killdeer recorded in the ledger met their deaths in one day like the rattlesnakes, making up 0.06%. Raccoon and Foxes, numbering 4 kills each, make up 0.04%. Alligators and rabbits make up 0.02%, or 2 killed each. A single deer and a lone Bald Eagle make up the remaining game percentage with 0.01% each.
All in all, 13 kinds of animals were killed at DeBary Hall. Of these creatures, only two of them were considered endangered or threatened during the ledger’s time span, the Bald Eagle and the American Black Duck. Both species though have recovered their numbers since then and are of least concern for now. Fortunately, the Debarys did not aid substantially in creating a threatened, endangered, or extinct species. However, a gradual decline in kills is observed in the ledger when one tallies the amount of game killed per season.
This line chart demonstrates a decline in all game numbers over the time period recorded in the DeBary Hall hunting ledger. A “season” represents the time the family was in Florida. The DeBarys usually came into Florida by early November/mid-December, and they would stay until the coming of Spring in early March. This chart generates the sums of the quail, snipe, and the rest of the game killed each season. On average, snipe and all the other game declined one kill per season. Quail, despite being game that was more or less raised by the family, declined 6 kills per season on average. Three notable declines are explainable: the 1908 season was not recorded in the ledger, and the 1924 and 1925 season were banned by state legislation to actually help bird numbers recover. But even considering this background information, the lines representing game kills show far more decrease than increase or stability in kills over time. This bar chart below also exemplifies this conclusion in the data:
With a gradual decline so evident within this data, it begs a bigger question; what is responsible for this obvious declivity? There are two possible answers to this question, and each can be supported by more data held within the pages of the ledger.
The first viable answer is a growing disinterest toward hunting by the DeBary family as time progressed. An analysis of the average days hunted in each season questions this supposition, determining if mere lack of interest over time explains a decline in kills. Here is a graph exhibiting the days hunted per season:
As one can see, the amount of days hunted per season is a little but not too similar with the gradual decline in kills charted previously. The average season had 18.5 hunting days. The 1912 and 1917 seasons had the most days hunted at 37 and 42 while the 1914 and 1937 were very short at 4 days each. The days hunted in these seasons are reflected and seemingly explain the high and low game kills of those years, but other seasons do not coordinate in such ways. For example, the 1936 and 1939 seasons had above average days hunted, but the kill numbers were much more dismal than previous seasons with around the same amount of days hunted. For the most part, the days hunted do affect the amount of kills per season, but, as shown in the kill numbers and the days hunted of the 1930s, there was no obvious disinterest over time that explains the gradual decline of game kills recorded in the ledger.
The second and probably the most viable answer is a reply already stressed by environmentalist and conservationists abroad. Continued human population growth and development of Central Florida’s natural environment throughout the early 20th century led to habitat loss and thus a decline in game and wild animals within the peninsula. More research and data is needed to solidify this claim, but it is a safe assumption to make. Though the population did not boom in Florida before WWII like it did afterwards, tourists and farmers were already permeating and establishing their presence in the peninsula. With this influx of people, the environment suffered. Increasing human population in the early 20th century transformed Florida’s hinterlands through the expansion of agriculture, the dredging of wetlands, and the introduction of invasive plants and animals (even in the ledger, one can see complaints of nonnative water hyacinth choking the waterways and grounds for birds). Because of a late Victorian fashion trend in feathered hats, widespread unrestricted hunting also came into the state, decimating thousands of birds. Florida already suffered multiple blows to its natural resources and ecosystems even before the 1904 season was recorded in the ledger, prompting early regional conservation groups like to retaliate through supporting the passage bird protection laws and hiring wardens to enforce those laws. There is quite a bit of historical evidence on the existence of habitat change throughout the state already, so it more than likely is a factor at least on the reduction of game numbers over time in the ledger. Though the ledger does not concisely describe the effects of habitat loss and development on the environment around DeBary hall, it does contain some details that can be used to help prove this point further. Bevy observations run through portions of the ledger (these are notes chronicling the amount of quail groups, or bevies, seen during a hunt), but, because of inconsistent and sometimes piecemeal recordings, they are not as trustworthy as the daily listings of kills. Nevertheless, such data could strengthen the notion that wildlife species were dwindling because of human activity.
Despite begging bigger questions to be answered, this project did succeed in doing one thing; it shows how incredibly valuable this ledger, and other hunting ledgers like it, are at revealing the environmental conditions of the past and enriching the ecological history of Florida and the US South. By recording the game killed, these documents offer an intimate glimpse into historic wildlife numbers that were not as documented as they are in more recent decades. The addition and comparison of other hunting ledgers inside and outside of Florida can reveal just how much the environment changed in this state and other North American regions as human development prospered, and such data can show the true impact of human activity over the lands and waters of the continent over time. Though this project only uncovers one small regions’ wildlife numbers, it can be used as a template for similar studies in the future and slowly began a reevaluation by environmental historians into how wildlife numbers in the US and have responded to, respond to, and will respond to human activity in prior, present, and prospected times.
James A. “Drew” Padgett | <urn:uuid:9730b34b-977a-4f84-9fb8-11fce81bb413> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://cah.ucf.edu/history/counting-kills-in-the-debary-hall-game-ledger-by-james-a-drew-padgett/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506676.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20230925015430-20230925045430-00703.warc.gz | en | 0.969264 | 2,310 | 3.21875 | 3 |
History of Gidgegannup
Little is known of the Aboriginal groups inhabiting the Hills region now known as Gidgegannup. However it seems that, according to newspaper reports of the early 1830s, a “Hills Tribe” was often in conflict with the “Weeips Tribe” of the upper Swan area. It is certain to have been a good area for hunting kangaroo and other native animals.
In 1836 a direct route for travellers to Toodyay was surveyed. This road went through the southern part of the present Gidgegannup area. At that time it took at least two days travel on horseback to reach Toodyay from Guildford, and consequently a wayside inn was built at Bailup, the approximate halfway mark between the two towns.
In the 1850s when transported convicts were brought to Western Australia, ticket-of-leave men were deployed from the Guildford Depot to road maintenance on the Toodyay Road. A road station was developed at Greenmount, now known as Red Hill.
There was little settlement in the area apart from small timber cutters until 1886 when a large parcel of Crown land was exchanged for the building of a railway line between Guildford and Walkaway. The bankers family named Copley purchased this land and later sold part of it to the Bunning Brothers Sawmilling Company. The jarrah timber from this area supported the Lion Mill in Mount Helena and later Smiths Mill on Toodyay Road, which remained in operation until the 1960s. During this time the district gradually developed into an area for mixed farming.
In the years between the two World Wars the district was named Hampstead Hills. Later, in 1946, it was changed to Gidgegannup, after the Gidgegannup Brook which runs through the area.
From then on Gidgegannup has made steady progress. The creation of sub-divisions on land re-zoned to “special rural” has boosted population numbers. With population growth opportunities arose for new businesses, and community services like a primary school, a sports oval and other recreational facilities became feasible. Now for many Gidgegannup is the ideal place to live; a semi-rural community in a beautiful natural setting, yet close enough to Perth CBD and other metropolitan facilities. | <urn:uuid:72fd5c51-9af6-4b7a-861d-f01520960005> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://gidgegannup.info/history-of-gidgegannup/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506676.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20230925015430-20230925045430-00703.warc.gz | en | 0.983419 | 488 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Russian oil spills come in drips and trickles, instead of dramatic explosions. But the Associated Press reports that oil companies there spill at least 1 percent of all oil produced every year — "equivalent to one Deepwater Horizon-scale leak about every two months," the AP says.
Why have you never heard about this? Well, for one, the Russian government has no data on oil spills and doesn't impose penalties unless an individual spill is over eight tons. But, as the AP explains, these slow-roll spills are rarely dramatic enough to cross that threshold, so the companies get off scot-free.
Oil spills in Russia are less dramatic than disasters in the Gulf of Mexico or the North Sea, more the result of a drip-drip of leaked crude than a sudden explosion. But they're more numerous than in any other oil-producing nation including insurgency-hit Nigeria, and combined they spill far more than anywhere else in the world, scientists say. | <urn:uuid:bc0f0900-b1cf-4f36-b556-5bb84ab796ca> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://grist.org/article/2011-12-19-russia-spills-as-much-oil-as-deepwater-horizon-every-two-months/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506676.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20230925015430-20230925045430-00703.warc.gz | en | 0.962153 | 197 | 2.859375 | 3 |
One of the key features of Django’s ORM is its migration system, which automates the process of database schema changes over time. In this tutorial, we will dive deep into understanding how Django ORM migrations work and how you can effectively use them in your projects.
As mentioned in previous articles, our machine learning APIs are built on top of Django, the most used framework to build REST applications in Python. And we use Django ORM to interact and maintain the SQL database.
This series of articles represents the knowledge we are building internally working with Django.
Overview of Django ORM Migrations
Django migrations allow developers to create, manage, and apply database schema changes over time, making it easier to evolve your database schema alongside your application. Migrations are written in Python and are stored as files in your Django project. They provide a version control-like system for database schemas.
Setting Up Migrations
To use ORM migrations in Django, you need to make sure that the django.contrib.migrations app is included in your project’s settings file (settings.py). This app is responsible for handling database migrations.
Creating Database Models
In Django, database models are defined as Python classes using Django’s django.db.models module. Each model class represents a database table, and the attributes of the class define the fields of the table. When creating or modifying models, Django’s migration system keeps track of the changes and generates corresponding migration files.
Here’s an example of a simple Django model representing a blog post:
from django.db import models class Post(models.Model): title = models.CharField(max_length=100) content = models.TextField() created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
Once you have defined your database models, you need to create migrations for them. Django provides a command-line utility called makemigrations that automatically creates migration files based on the changes you made to your models.
To generate migrations, run the following command in your terminal:
python manage.py makemigrations
Django will scan your models and generate a migration file (a Python file) for each database schema change.
After generating the migrations, you need to apply them to your database to make the corresponding schema changes. Django provides the migrate command to apply migrations.
To apply migrations, run the following command:
python manage.py migrate
Django will execute the migrations in the order they were created, updating your database schema accordingly.
Handling Database Schema Changes
As your project evolves, you might need to make changes to your existing models or add new models. Django’s migration system provides various operations to handle schema changes, such as adding fields, modifying fields, deleting fields, creating tables, and more.
Here are a few examples of common migration operations.
Adding a new field to an existing model
from django.db import migrations, models class Migration(migrations.Migration): dependencies = [ ('myapp', '0001_initial'), ] operations = [ migrations.AddField( model_name='mymodel', name='new_field', field=models.CharField(max_length=50), ), ]
Modifying an existing field
from django.db import migrations, models class Migration(migrations.Migration): dependencies = [ ('myapp', '0002_previous_migration'), ] operations = [ migrations.AlterField( model_name='mymodel', name='existing_field', field=models.IntegerField(), ), ]
Deleting a field
from django.db import migrations class Migration(migrations.Migration): dependencies = [ ('myapp', '0003_previous_migration'), ] operations = [ migrations.RemoveField( model_name='mymodel', name='obsolete_field', ), ]
Advanced Migration Operations
Django ORM migrations also support more advanced operations, such as data migrations, running custom SQL, creating indexes, and more. These operations can be used to perform complex database schema changes.
For example, here’s a data migration that populates a newly added field with some initial values:
from django.db import migrations def populate_new_field(apps, schema_editor): MyModel = apps.get_model('myapp', 'MyModel') for instance in MyModel.objects.all(): instance.new_field = 'default value' instance.save() class Migration(migrations.Migration): dependencies = [ ('myapp', '0004_auto_20230101_1234'), ] operations = [ migrations.RunPython(populate_new_field), ]
Rolling Back Migrations
Django provides a way to reverse previously applied migrations using the migrate command with the –fake or –fake-initial option. This allows you to roll back migrations in case of errors or when you need to revert to a previous state.
For example, to rollback the last applied migration, use the following command:
python manage.py migrate myapp 0003_previous_migration --fake
Migrations in Production
When deploying your Django application to production, it is crucial to have a solid migration strategy. It’s recommended to apply migrations as part of your deployment process to ensure your database schema is always up to date.
You can automate the migration process by running the migrate command during deployment or using tools like Django’s migrate management command in combination with deployment tools like Ansible, Fabric, or Docker.
New to Inspector? Try it for free now
Are you responsible for application development in your company? Consider trying my product Inspector to find out bugs and bottlenecks in your Django applucations automatically. Before your customers stumble onto the problem.
Inspector is usable by any IT leader who doesn’t need anything complicated. If you want effective automation, deep insights, and the ability to forward alerts and notifications into your preferred messaging environment try Inspector for free. Register your account.
Or learn more on the website: https://inspector.dev | <urn:uuid:d251d2e6-407c-41d4-b21d-2656eae5b8aa> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://inspector.dev/working-with-django-orm-migrations/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506676.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20230925015430-20230925045430-00703.warc.gz | en | 0.822118 | 1,336 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Sloth Kin and Lesson Book
As children grow, new experiences and challenges can sometimes feel overwhelming. Whether it’s addressing jitters on the first day of school, helping little ones wind down before bed, or even showing the importance of self-care, Sloth’s lessons help children understand the importance of practicing routines to add structure and fun into their daily lives.
When children are empowered to embrace routines, they can build a strong foundation for emerging independence. With Sloth’s support, they learn to identify and practice healthy routines that fit their needs. | <urn:uuid:9a40b4f8-c39a-430e-ab46-a8330fd0c6aa> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://plantersexchange.com/products/sloth-kin-and-lesson-book | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506676.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20230925015430-20230925045430-00703.warc.gz | en | 0.91658 | 124 | 3.078125 | 3 |
More than 6 million children in the U.S. are affected by seasonal allergies or hay fever, and allergy symptoms can spike when pollen counts are high. But during the pandemic, how can parents tell if their child's sniffle or sore throat is simply pollen-related or if it could be a sign of COVID‑19?
"Symptoms of allergies and mild COVID‑19 infections can be similar, and it can be hard to distinguish between the two without testing," says Jeffrey Chambliss, M.D., Pediatric Allergist at Children's Health℠ and Assistant Professor at UT Southwestern. "If you have any concerns about your child's symptoms or if you suspect your child could have been exposed to COVID‑19, it's best to contact your pediatrician and get tested."
Learn more about how to tell the difference between seasonal allergies and COVID‑19 and the best ways to keep your child healthy.
What are the differences between seasonal allergies and COVID‑19?
While COVID‑19 and seasonal allergies can cause similar symptoms, there are differences between the two conditions. COVID‑19 is a respiratory illness caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Seasonal allergies are caused by the immune system's overactive response to airborne pollens released by trees, grasses and weeds.
Shared symptoms of allergies and COVID‑19
Many symptoms of seasonal allergies overlap with COVID‑19 symptoms. Both conditions can cause:
- Runny Nose
- Sore Throat
COVID‑19 can also cause shortness of breath or difficulty breathing. This is not a common symptom of allergies but can occur in children who have a respiratory condition like asthma that is triggered by pollen.
Allergy symptoms vs. COVID‑19 symptoms
While COVID‑19 and allergies share certain symptoms, there are some differences.
Seasonal allergies often cause sneezing and can lead to itchy or watery eyes, which are not typical symptoms of COVID‑19. "If your child has experienced allergies during a specific time of year in the past and their current symptoms are similar to what they've experienced before – then it may be from allergies again," says Dr. Chambliss. "Proactively treating your child's allergy symptoms may help clear up some confusion, but if your child hasn't had allergies before or if their symptoms seem different, it's best to get your pediatrician's advice."
In general, the following symptoms are more likely to be associated with COVID‑19 – and not allergy-related:
- Muscle or body aches
- Loss of taste or smell
- Nausea or vomiting
If your child is experiencing one or more of these symptoms seen in COVID‑19, contact your pediatrician. They can review symptoms and let you know if your child should get a COVID‑19 test.
If your child hasn't had allergies before or if their symptoms seem different, it's best to get your pediatrician's advice.
How can I prevent seasonal allergy symptoms?
You can reduce your child's seasonal allergy symptoms by limiting their exposure to pollens. Take steps to minimize allergy symptoms, including:
- Staying indoors and keeping windows and doors closed during the peak pollen season
- Using a HEPA filter
- Vacuuming frequently
- Washing clothes and bathing after spending time outdoors
- Using an over-the-counter saline nasal rinse or spray (to flush out pollens)
See additional ways to help reduce allergy symptoms in children.
How can I prevent COVID‑19?
The best way to prevent COVID‑19 is to get a COVID‑19 vaccine and booster shot if you are eligible. You and your family can also take steps to protect against the spread of the virus, such as washing hands and wearing masks in public indoor areas when COVID‑19 community levels are high.
In addition to helping prevent COVID‑19, wearing a mask may also decrease a child's exposure to airborne pollens. If you wear a cloth mask, it's recommended that you regularly wash the face mask.
Getting tested for COVID‑19
If your child is showing symptoms of COVID‑19 or you think they may have been exposed, it's best to act cautiously to prevent the spread of COVID‑19. A test can help you determine if your child has COVID‑19, or if they have a different cause for their symptoms such as allergies. Learn more about types of COVID‑19 tests for children, and see tips to help a child prepare for a COVID‑19 test.
If your child's symptoms are not due to COVID‑19 and are allergy-related, your pediatrician can recommend more tips to help you manage their symptoms. There are also treatments your pediatrician or a specialist can recommend.
If your child faces seasonal allergies, you may be wondering if their sniffle and sore throat is allergy-related or if it could be a sign of COVID-19. Learn how to tell the difference from @Childrens.
See more COVID‑19 resources
Children's Health is committed to remaining a trusted source of health information and care for you and your family during this time. See more resources to keep your family healthy at the Children's Health COVID‑19 hub. | <urn:uuid:56d41900-b070-4e36-a6b3-83e897f3c7fe> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.childrens.com/health-wellness/allergies-or-covid-19 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506676.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20230925015430-20230925045430-00703.warc.gz | en | 0.960487 | 1,129 | 3.546875 | 4 |
Prior to beginning work on this assignment, review Chapter 3 in your textbook and the HumanMetrics Jung Typology Test website, and read the Choca (1999), Bracken-Minor & McDevitt-Murphy (2014), and Westen (1998) articles.
For this assignment, choose a historically important figure or a character from a movie, novel, or TV show, then address the following in your paper:
- Examine your figure or character from the perspective of Jung’s theoretical approach to personality and describe your chosen figure or character based on the dichotomous facets of personality as defined by Jung.
- Evaluate the current Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality instrument, which is based on Jung’s theories, and provide your impression of your chosen figure or character through the major facets of the MBTI.
- Analyze how ethical issues might affect the implementation of MBTI personality assessment in the setting native to your chosen figure or character.
- Assess the MBTI and its use to provide results on your chosen figure or character and describe the efficacy and reliability of this assessment as it relates to your chosen person.
- Summarize and present your opinion about how well this theory describes the person in question. Provide research to support your claims.
The Personality Analysis
- Must be three to five double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center (Links to an external site.).
- Must include a separate title page with the following:
- Title of paper
- Student’s name
- Course name and number
- Instructor’s name
- Date submitted
- Must address the topic of the paper with critical thought.
- Must use at least three peer-reviewed sources, including a minimum of three from the Ashford University Library. These may include the required articles for the assignment.
- Must document all sources in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
- Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. | <urn:uuid:6cb47928-fd21-49fd-a93f-393d5fff053e> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://qualityessaysshop.com/personality-analysis/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510179.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20230926075508-20230926105508-00603.warc.gz | en | 0.917685 | 448 | 3.015625 | 3 |
This report from The Brookings Institution’s Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology (AIET) Initiative is part of “AI and Bias,” a series that explores ways to mitigate possible biases and create a pathway toward greater fairness in AI and emerging technologies.
While Facebook profiles may not explicitly state users’ race or ethnicity, my research demonstrates that Facebook’s current advertising algorithms can discriminate by these factors. Based on research conducted in 2020 and 2021, I used Facebook’s advertising tools to test how advertisers can use their targeting options like “multicultural affinity” groups, Lookalike Audiences, and Special Ad Audiences to ensure their ads are reaching white, African American, Asian, or Hispanic users. What I found is that discrimination by race and ethnicity on Facebook’s platforms is a significant threat to the public interest for two reasons. First, it is a violation of the existing civil rights laws that protect marginalized consumers against advertising harms and discrimination by race and ethnicity, especially in the areas of housing, employment, and credit. Second, these same Facebook advertising tools can be used to disseminate targeted misinformation and controversial political messages to vulnerable demographic groups. To solve these concerns, regulators, advocacy groups, and industry must directly address these issues with Facebook and other advertising platforms to ensure that online advertising is transparent and fair to all Americans.
Racial Bias and Discrimination in Facebook Ad Targeting
Facebook’s long-standing complaints in advertising
Over the last 5 years, Facebook has faced repeated criticism, lawsuits, and controversies over the potential for discrimination on its ad platform. Journalists have demonstrated how easy it is to exclude users whom Facebook has algorithmically classified into certain racial or ethnic affinity groups from being targeted by housing or employment ads. Researchers have also demonstrated racial and ethnic biases in Facebook’s Lookalike Audience and Special Ad Audience algorithms, which identify new Facebook users similar to an advertiser’s existing customers. In response to these allegations, Facebook has been sued by the National Fair Housing Alliance, the ACLU, the Communications Workers of America, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and others over issues of discrimination on its advertising platform and violations of civil rights laws such as the Fair Housing Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which expresses intolerance of any types of racial discrimination.
There are also ongoing controversies over how Facebook’s platform can be used by political actors, both foreign and domestic, to spread misinformation and target racial and ethnic minorities in the 2016 and 2020 election cycles. In July 2020, a high-profile boycott of Facebook’s advertising platform to “Stop Hate for Profit” was organized by civil rights and advocacy groups including the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League, Color of Change, and other organizations over misinformation and civil rights violations. These groups called on major corporations to stop advertising on Facebook for the entire month of July. More than 1,000 large companies including Microsoft, Starbucks, Target, and others participated in the boycott.
On July 8, 2020, Facebook released its own civil rights audit conducted by Laura Murphy, former Director of the ACLU Legislative Office, and attorneys at the law firm Relman Colfax. The audit criticized Facebook for having “placed greater emphasis on free expression” over the “value of non-discrimination.” Seeking to make concrete steps towards reducing discrimination, on August 11, 2020, Facebook announced that it would retire its controversial “multicultural affinity” groups that allowed advertisers to target users whom Facebook has categorized as “African American (US),” “Asian American (US),” or “Hispanic (US – All).”
has Facebook sufficiently addressed discriminatory ad harms?
Not every case of advertising discrimination may be illegal. Keeping this in mind, I devised a research study and tested the degree to which the different tools on Facebook’s ad platform can—intentionally or not—carry out racial and ethnic discrimination, following the Fair Housing Act’s criteria which makes it illegal to publish an ad that indicates “any preference, limitation, or discrimination” based on race or ethnicity.
To date, Facebook provides advertisers with four major ways to target advertisements:
- “Detailed Targeting” options are prepackaged groups of Facebook users who share common attributes based on Facebook’s data analysis of their behaviors online,
- “Custom Audiences” allow an advertiser to upload their own list of customers or individuals for Facebook to target,
- “Lookalike Audiences” allow an advertiser to reach people who Facebook determines to be similar to a designated Custom Audience, and
- “Special Ad Audiences” allow an advertiser to create a Lookalike Audience that finds people similar to their designated Custom Audience in online behavior without considering sensitive attributes like age, gender, or ZIP code, specifically for housing, employment, and credit ads which are regulated by anti-discrimination laws.
I conducted my study in January 2020 and again in January 2021, before and after the Stop Hate for Profit boycott in July 2020. As Facebook no longer offers multicultural affinity groups – “African American (US),” “Asian American (US),” and “Hispanic (US – All)” – as targeting options for advertisers in 2021, I instead examined the similar-sounding cultural interest groups that Facebook still offered as targeting options, such as “African-American Culture,” “Asian American Culture,” and “Hispanic American Culture.” In both years, I tested how many minority users could be targeted by these race- and ethnicity-related advertising options by Facebook.
Figure 1: Example of the difference in Facebook’s ad-targeting options, 2020 to 2021
|Year Available||Targeting Option||Targeting Category Hierarchy||Description||Size|
|2020||African American (US)||Behaviors > Multicultural Affinity||People who live in the United States whose activity on Facebook aligns with African American multicultural affinity||87,203,689|
|2021||African-American culture||Interests > Additional Interests||People who have expressed an interest in or like pages related to African-American culture||79,388,010|
|Note: Facebook offered the “African American (US)” targeting option until August 2020, but it has continued to offer the “African-American Culture” targeting option in 2021.|
I also tested if Facebook’s other advertising tools, such as Lookalike Audiences and Special Ad Audiences, can discriminate by race and ethnicity. For these tests, I used the most recent North Carolina voter registration dataset, which has voter-provided race and ethnicity information. In the North Carolina voter data, there were approximately 4.0 million white, 1.2 million African American, 90,000 Asian, and 180,000 Hispanic active voters. I created different racially and ethnically homogenous sub-samples of voters with Facebook Custom Audiences and then asked Facebook to find additional similar users to target for ads using their Lookalike and Special Ad Audience tools.
While Facebook doesn’t permit direct demographic queries for a Lookalike or Special Ad audience, I was able to leverage the daily reach estimates of Facebook’s ad planning tool to indirectly observe the racial and ethnic breakdown of a given Lookalike or Special Ad audience amongst North Carolina voters. For example, a Lookalike audience based on 10,000 African American voters in 2021 had an overlap in estimated daily reach of 139,000 users with a sample of 1 million African American voters but only an overlap of 17,000 users with a sample of 1 million white voters. This indicates that African Americans were likely over-represented in the Lookalike audience, since when intersecting the Lookalike audience with a combined 2 million voter sample that was 50% African American and 50% white at baseline, I found that 89% of the Lookalike audience’s overlap was with African American voters and only 11% with white voters. I replicated a similar process for testing the demographics of Lookalike and Special Ad Audiences based on white, Asian, and Hispanic voters. More details on the methodology can be found here.
Figure 2: Overlap of a Facebook Lookalike Audience based on African-Americans with race-based North Carolina voter samples
A major concern about algorithmic discrimination is whether computers are reinforcing the existing patterns of discrimination that humans have made in the United States. Social science researchers have found in employment, housing, lending, and other aspects of life, racial proxies such as one’s name and neighborhood can increase the degree to which human decision-makers discriminate. Thus, I used a frequently-cited computer algorithm trained on the names of 13 million voters in Florida to identify commonly used names for each demographic group and U.S. Census data to identify ethnic enclave ZIP codes. Then, I tested if using voter samples based on commonly-used racial proxies such as names and ZIP codes can affect the degree of bias in the resulting Lookalike and Special Ad Audiences. For example, would a Lookalike audience based on African American voters with common African American names and who live in majority African American ZIP codes be even more likely to over-represent African Americans above the 50% baseline?
Facebook still has a discrimination problem by race and ethnicity on its advertising platform
My research study of Facebook’s ad platform in 2020 and 2021 had three major findings. Facebook’s ad platform still offers multiple ways for discrimination by race and ethnicity despite the historic boycott it faced in 2020, and bad actors can exploit these vulnerabilities in the new digital economy.
Finding 1: The racial and ethnic targeting options by Facebook were even more accurate in 2021 than in 2020.
In 2021, certain racial and ethnic cultural interest groups that Facebook still offered to advertisers were even more accurate in targeting minority users than the old “multicultural affinity” groups Facebook retired in August 2020. For example, in 2020, 150,000 African American voters in North Carolina could be reached by Facebook’s “African American (US)” targeting option each day, which is slightly more than the 142,000 who can be reached by Facebook’s “African-American Culture” targeting option in 2021. However, there was a dramatic decrease in the number of white voters who can be reached by the same targeting options, from 428,000 in 2020 to just 109,000 in 2021. This means that in 2020, Facebook’s “African American (US)” targeting option was likely to reach nearly three times as many white users as African American users, while in 2021, Facebook’s “African-American Culture” targeting option became significantly more accurate in reaching nearly a same number of African American users while targeting 75% fewer white users.
Figure 3: Number of North Carolina voters by race reached by Facebook’s African American related targeting options, 2020 and 2021
Finding 2: Facebook’s algorithms to find new audiences for an advertiser permit strong racial and ethnic biases, which includes the algorithm that Facebook explicitly designed to avoid discrimination.
Facebook’s Lookalike and Special Ad Audiences can be biased by race and ethnicity in both 2020 and 2021 depending on the demographics of a customer list that an advertiser provides to Facebook. For example, in 2020, a Lookalike audience based on African American voters in North Carolina had a sample share of 83% African Americans, which increased to 89% in 2021. Thus, these Lookalike Audiences significantly over-represented African Americans above the expected 50% baseline sample share (Figure 4). Similarly, Lookalike Audiences based on white voters had a sample share of 73% whites in 2020 and 71% in 2021, significantly over-representing whites above the 50% baseline. Other tests found that Lookalike Audiences based on Asian or Hispanic voters would also significantly over-represent Asians or Hispanics above the expected baseline share.
I also found a high degree of racial and ethnic bias in testing the Special Ad Audience tool that Facebook designed to explicitly avoid using sensitive demographic attributes when finding similar users to an advertiser’s customer list. For example, in 2020, a Special Ad audience based on African American voters had a sample share of 83% African Americans, which decreased slightly to 76% in 2021 (Figure 4). Special Ad Audiences based on white voters had a similarly high sample share of 83% whites in 2020 and 81% in 2021. Finally, I also found that Special Ad Audiences based on Hispanic voters significantly over-represented Hispanics in both 2020 and 2021. This finding is especially problematic since it means that advertisers for housing, credit, and employment can use the Special Ad audience tool that Facebook has created for these legally protected sectors to pursue discrimination by race and ethnicity. This also undermines the goals of the 2019 legal settlement between Facebook and the ACLU, which required Facebook to create an alternative ad targeting solution for these sectors where an advertiser “cannot target ads based on Facebook users’ age, gender, race, or categories that are associated with membership in protected groups, or based on ZIP code or a geographic area”.
Finding 3: Racial proxies such as names and ZIP codes can increase the bias of Facebook’s ad targeting algorithms.
In both 2020 and 2021, the degree of racial and ethnic bias in Facebook’s Lookalike and Special Ad Audiences is higher when the ad targeting algorithm is trying to find users similar to individuals with racially stereotypical traits such as their name or neighborhood. For example, a Lookalike audience based on African American voters with commonly-given African American names and who live in majority African American ZIP codes had a very high sample share of 93% African Americans in 2020, which increased to 94% in 2021 (Figure 4). In the most extreme case, in 2021, I found that a Lookalike audience based on Asian voters with commonly-given Asian names and who live in popular Asian ZIP codes had a sample share of 100% Asians.
I also found that using racially stereotypical names and ZIP codes can embolden the opportunities for more precise discrimination in the use of Special Ad Audiences. For example, in 2020, a Special Ad audience based on African American voters with commonly-given African American names and who live in majority African American ZIP codes had a sample share of 97% African Americans, which was even higher than the 83% sample share observed when testing the Special Ad audience based on a generic sample of African American voters (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Sample share of African-American voters in Lookalike Audiences (top) and Special Ad audiences (bottom) based on lists of North Carolina voters with different traits
What’s causing these research findings?
Based on algorithmic discrimination research, it’s likely that a combination of multiple causes contributed to the biased outcomes observed in this study. One of the primary factors is that computer algorithms tend to replicate existing patterns and behaviors that already exist in society. Facebook’s Lookalike and Special Ad Audience algorithms are using the enormous amounts of data that Facebook has about its users in order to identify which users are most similar to one another and thus most likely to respond well to the same type of ads. When it comes to demographic groups, researchers have found that racial and ethnic groups tend to behave differently from each other online and that Americans tend to have very racially homogenous friend networks. Thus, users within a racial or ethnic group may appear more alike to one another in the eyes of Facebook’s algorithms than users in different groups to each other. However, this doesn’t mean that Facebook should facilitate the discriminatory targeting of racial and ethnic minorities with ads, nor that commonly-used racial proxies such as name or ZIP code should also influence the digital world created by Facebook’s advertising algorithms. After all, hard-fought civil rights laws in the U.S. have intentionally elevated society’s interest in reducing discrimination above the private interest of landlords, employers, and lenders to maximize profits through possible discrimination. It would be taking a step backwards to make new allowances for discrimination on Facebook simply because the decision-maker is now a computer instead of a human.
Given these findings, policy makers have a role in mitigating the biases being activated by companies like Facebook and other advertisers reliant on online tools.
Policymakers, regulators, and civil society groups should demand and require greater transparency by Facebook and its advertisers
Clearly, at the heart of the problems, is the lack of transparency by Facebook to the public and to its advertisers about how its ad platform can potentially discriminate by race and ethnicity. This may be exploited by discriminatory advertisers while undermining the goals of non-discriminatory ones.
For example, discriminatory advertisers may already know that the “African-American Culture” targeting option contains fewer white users than the “African American (US)” option Facebook removed in 2020. Discriminatory advertisers may also be using similar proxy variable techniques to the ones tested in this study based on racially stereotypical names and ZIP codes to create biased Lookalike and Special Ad Audiences. On the other hand, non-discriminatory advertisers may be unintentionally choosing similar targeting settings as discriminatory ones but are unaware of how Facebook’s ad platform is carrying out racially and ethnically biased targeting on their behalf.
Facebook can reverse this lack of transparency by more corporate accountability, transparency statement, disclosure to advertisers, and robust anti-discrimination engineering. However, it’s vitally important that regulators, advocacy groups, and industry groups can respond to improve upon such outcomes.
Recommendation 1: Require Facebook and advertisers to release their ad targeting data.
Advertising platforms like Facebook should provide greater transparency about the way that advertisers are using their tools to target ads. Regulators can require Facebook’s Ad Library for political, housing, employment, and credit-related ads to show the relevant metadata for establishing a “robust causal link” for racial or ethnic discrimination lawsuits. This is especially important since the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) “Implementation of the Fair Housing Act’s Disparate Impact Standard” published on September 24, 2020 now requires a plaintiff to present evidence of a “robust causal link” in order to bring a disparate impact discrimination lawsuit in the first place. Facebook has begun to share relevant metadata for political ads with approved researchers in 2021, but doesn’t currently release any ad targeting metadata for housing, employment, and credit-related ads.
Recommendation 2: Conduct regular algorithmic bias auditing of Facebook’s ad platform.
Future civil rights audits of Facebook’s platform should test its technologies for algorithmic bias based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and other protected classes. In July 2020, Facebook released its first civil rights audit primarily focused on political speech, misinformation, and legal issues during the Stop Hate for Profit boycott. The civil rights groups organizing the boycott called for regular audits of Facebook’s platform. These future civil rights audits can build on the technical efforts by myself and other researchers. Ideally, if provided even deeper access to Facebook’s data and systems, these audits can go even further in examining why these racial and ethnic biases exist and how to address them. Since 2014, many large U.S. tech companies such as Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, and others have participated in the related norm of releasing annual workforce diversity reports. Federal regulators such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) can also audit Facebook’s ad platform for discrimination and use their enforcement powers to address violations of Section 5 of the FTC Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.
Recommendation 3: Design anti-discrimination solutions using the more effective “fairness through awareness” approach.
Technology and technology policy need to move beyond “fairness through unawareness”—the idea that discrimination is prevented by eliminating the use of protected class variables or close proxies—in order to actually address algorithmic discrimination. For example, Facebook created the Special Ad Audiences tool as an alternative to Lookalike Audiences in order to explicitly not use sensitive attributes such as “age, gender or ZIP code” when considering which users are similar enough to the source audience to get included. However, my research demonstrates that Special Ad Audiences based on African Americans or whites can be biased towards the race that is more dominant in the customer list used to create the audience, just like the corresponding Lookalike Audiences.
Statistics research has labeled this phenomenon as the Rashomon or the multiplicity effect. Given a large dataset with many variables, there exists a large number of potential models that can perform approximately to equally as well as a prohibited model that uses protected class variables. Thus, even though the Special Ad Audiences algorithm for finding similar users to a customer list does not use demographic attributes in the same way as the Lookalike Audiences algorithm, the two algorithms may end up making functionally comparable decisions on which users are considered to be similar enough to get included.
There are public policy risks from continuing to implement a “fairness through unawareness” standard, which has been shown to be statistically ineffective. For example, the initially proposed language on August 19, 2019 by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for its updated Disparate Impact Standard, would likely have wrongfully protected companies like Facebook from being sued for discrimination simply because its Special Ad Audience algorithm follows “fairness through unawareness” and does not rely on “factors that are substitutes or close proxies for protected classes under the Fair Housing Act.”
Instead, the more effective approach is to use “fairness through awareness” to design anti-discrimination tools, which could then accurately consider the experiences of different racial and ethnic groups on the platform. Thus, tech companies such as Facebook would need to learn the demographic information of their users. One way is to directly ask their users to provide their race and ethnicity on a voluntary basis, like with LinkedIn Self-ID. Another way is to use algorithmic or human evaluators to generate that information for their anti-discrimination testing tools. This was the approach taken by Airbnb’s Project Lighthouse, launched in 2020 to study the racial experience gap for guests and hosts on Airbnb. Project Lighthouse used a third-party contractor to assess the perceived race of an individual based on their name and profile picture. In December 2009, Facebook researchers used a related methodology by comparing the last names of Facebook users to the U.S. Census’ Frequently Occurring Surnames dataset in order to demonstrate how Facebook was becoming increasingly diverse over time by having more African American and Hispanic users.
The harms from discriminatory advertising on Facebook that target specific demographic groups are real. Facebook ads have reduced employment opportunities, sowed political division and misinformation, and even undermined public health efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. My research shows how Facebook continues to offer advertisers myriad tools to facilitate discriminatory ad targeting by race and ethnicity, despite the high-profile Stop Hate for Profit boycott of July 2020. To address this issue, regulators and advocacy groups can enforce and demand greater ad targeting transparency, more algorithmic bias auditing, and a “fairness through awareness” approach by Facebook and its advertisers.
In July 2020, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg stated that its civil rights audit was “the beginning of the journey, not the end.” Faced with a long road ahead, it’s time for Facebook to continue down the path to create more equitable and less harmful advertising systems.
The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit organization devoted to independent research and policy solutions. Its mission is to conduct high-quality, independent research and, based on that research, to provide innovative, practical recommendations for policymakers and the public. The opinions expressed in this paper are solely those of the author in their personal capacity and do not reflect the views of Brookings or any of their previous or current employers.
Microsoft provides support to The Brookings Institution’s Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology (AIET) Initiative, and Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google provide general, unrestricted support to the Institution. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are not influenced by any donation. Brookings recognizes that the value it provides is in its absolute commitment to quality, independence, and impact. Activities supported by its donors reflect this commitment. | <urn:uuid:e1d683ce-7b6c-490c-bba2-aaf3e21b0b6f> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.brookings.edu/articles/solving-the-problem-of-racially-discriminatory-advertising-on-facebook/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510179.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20230926075508-20230926105508-00603.warc.gz | en | 0.946439 | 5,065 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Catnip is every cat’s favorite plant, and its drug-like, euphoric effect on our furry friends is well known to cat lovers. You can also use catnip, a member of the mint family, as a culinary herb and in herbal teas. If you grow catnip in the garden, you’ll need to know when and how to harvest the leaves.
Why Grow and Harvest Catnip?
If you have cats, you can simply buy catnip at the store, but when you grow it yourself, you know where it comes from and that it’s organic. It’s easy to grow and harvesting catnip is simple too. You can dry the leaves to use for cat toys, or let your cats try them fresh. Outdoor cats will also enjoy playing around the plants in the garden.
For human consumption, catnip leaves are used in teas and salads and may be useful for soothing stomach upset, much like mint plants.
When to Pick Catnip
For your cat’s delight, the best time for picking catnip leaves is when the plants are flowering, around mid-summer. This is when the compounds that cats love most are at peak levels in the leaves. Harvest the leaves later in the day, when the dew has dried so you minimize the risks of the harvest getting moldy. Also, consider harvesting the flowers at this time.
How to Harvest Catnip Plants
Catnip plants grow quickly and will readily replace what you remove. However, they are more likely to regrow stems than single leaves, so to harvest, cut off entire stems close to the base of the plant. Then you can remove individual leaves and allow them out to dry on a screen or drying tray.
Keep your catnip harvest in a place safe from cats. They will be drawn to the leaves and will destroy them before they are ready to store. Once dry, you can store catnip leaves whole or crushed in a sealed jar or bag in a cool, dark cupboard.
You should be able to make a good harvest of catnip leaves at least twice in the growing season. Cut stems in the summer at bloom time and again in the fall and you should have a good supply to take you and your cats through the winter. | <urn:uuid:c6497498-58b8-4eda-a179-54107649adf2> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/herbs/catnip/harvesting-catnip-plants.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510179.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20230926075508-20230926105508-00603.warc.gz | en | 0.95383 | 482 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Jewish Social Service
The Jewish Social Service draws its specificity from the history of the Jewish community decimated by the Holocaust and has helped them to rebuild themselves physically, economically and morally.
In 1944, the Association of Israelites Victims of War (AIVG) allowed survivors to reintegrate into emotional, social and professional life. In 1961, the AIVG changed its name to become the SSJ, but still in the same spirit, professionals and volunteers ready to support the most fragile and destitute. The goal is to make available to their audience a full team of social workers and mental health professionals.
The Jewish Social Service offers various complementary services.
Centre d’Action Sociale Globale (CASG) is a service that brings together social workers. In addition to front-line social work, he develops several specific projects (Ecole des Devoirs, Tutsi Identity group, help for victims of the attacks, home support program for Holocaust survivors,…..)
The Medico-Psychological Center (CMP) is a place of outpatient consultation. Its multidisciplinary team is composed of psychiatrists, psychologists, speech therapists and social workers.
The Debt Mediation Service helps the most vulnerable to restructure their finances and their lives.
The Friendship Club organizes activities and events for senior members of the Jewish Community. | <urn:uuid:93871cab-ac76-4415-8daa-050fa4bc8931> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.noa-project.eu/project/jewish-social-service/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510179.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20230926075508-20230926105508-00603.warc.gz | en | 0.931162 | 276 | 2.59375 | 3 |
An international team of scientists, including astronomers from the Universities of Leicester, Bath and Warwick, have found evidence for the existence of a ‘hot cocoon’ of material enveloping a relativistic jet escaping a dying star. This research is been published online today (Wednesday 16 January) and in print in Nature tomorrow (Thursday 17 January).
A relativistic jet is a very powerful phenomena which involves plasma jets shooting out of black holes at close to the speed of light, and can extend across millions of light years.
Observations of supernova SN2017iuk taken shortly after its onset showed it expanding rapidly, at one third of the speed of light. This is the fastest supernova expansion measured to date. Monitoring of the outflow over many weeks revealed a clear difference between the initial chemical composition and that at later times.
Taken together, these are indicators of the presence of the much theorised hot cocoon, filling a gap in our knowledge of how a jet of material escaping a star interacts with the stellar envelope around it and providing a potential link between two previously distinct classes of supernovae.
The supernova signals the final demise of a massive star, in which the stellar core collapses and the outer layers are violently blown off. SN2017iuk belongs to a class of extreme supernovae, sometimes called hypernovae or GRB-SNe, that accompany a yet more dramatic event known as a gamma-ray burst (GRB).
At stellar death, a highly relativistic, narrow beam of material can be ejected from the poles of the star which glows brightly first in gamma radiation and then across the entire electromagnetic spectrum and is known as a GRB.
Until now, astronomers have been unable to study the earliest moments in the development of a supernova of this kind (a GRB-SN), but SN2017iuk was fortuitously close-by — at roughly 500 million light years from Earth — and the GRB light was underluminous, allowing the SN itself to be detectable at early times.
Dr Rhaana Starling, Associate Professor in the University of Leicester’s Department of Physics and Astronomy said: “This immediately looked like an event worth chasing, as it happened in a grand-design spiral galaxy at very close proximity, cosmologically speaking.
“When the first sets of data came in there was an unusual component to the light that looked very blue, prompting a monitoring campaign to see if we could determine its origin by following the evolution and taking detailed spectra.
“The gamma-ray burst itself looked quite weak, so we could see other processes that were going on around the newly-formed jet which are normally drowned out. The idea of a cocoon of thermalised gas created by the relativistic jet as it drills out of the star had been proposed and implied in other cases, but here was the evidence that we needed to pin down the existence of such a structure.”
A coordinated approach using a suite of space- and ground-based observatories was required to monitor the supernova over 30 days and at many wavelengths. The event was first detected using the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. Swift is a NASA space mission in which the University of Leicester is one of three partners, and hosts its UK data centre.
Data obtained with the Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observatory (GOTO) helped to track the supernova light, while spectroscopy was obtained through dedicated observing programmes including initiatives by the STARGATE Collaboration headed up by Professor Nial Tanvir at the University of Leicester, which uses 8-m telescopes at the European Southern Observatory.
Professor Tanvir, Lecturer in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester said: “The relativistic jet punches out through the star as if it was a bullet being fired out from the inside of an apple. What we’ve seen for the first time is all the apply debris that explodes out after the bullet.”
Speeds of up to 115,000 kilometres per second were measured for the expanding supernova for approximately one hour after its onset. A different chemical composition was found for the early expanding supernova when compared with the more iron-rich later ejecta. The team concluded that just hours after the onset the ejecta is coming from the interior, from a hot cocoon created by the jet.
Existing supernova production models proved insufficient to account for the large amount of high velocity material measured. The team developed new models which incorporated the cocoon component and found these were an excellent match.
SN2017iuk also provides a long-sought link between the supernova that accompany GRBs, and those that do not: in lone supernovae, high speed outflows have also been seen, with velocities reaching 50,000 kilometres per second, which can originate in the same cocoon scenario but escape of the relativistic GRB jet is somehow thwarted.
Core-collapse supernovae without GRBs are usually found much later after their onset, giving scientists very little chance of detecting any signatures of a hot cocoon, whilst cocoon features in GRB-associated supernovae are usually hidden by the bright, relativistic jet.
The rare case of SN2017iuk has opened a window onto the earliest stages of this type of supernova phenomenon, allowing the elusive cocoon structure to be observed. | <urn:uuid:75c128e5-9586-471e-9139-ce7e3d53ce64> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.tunisiesoir.com/science/research-high-speed-supernova-reveals-earliest-moments-of-a-dying-star-12069-2019/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510179.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20230926075508-20230926105508-00603.warc.gz | en | 0.95886 | 1,126 | 3.4375 | 3 |
Historical stars born all the way through the Cosmic Daybreak had been recognized within the middle of the Milky Means.
As a part of a survey to discover probably the most oldest recognized stars within the Universe, scientists performed a complete seek for those historic, however elusive, stars, and located that the measures they spin across the galactic middle are fairly sedate, regardless of the chaos round them.
Their findings, led via astronomer Anke Arentsen of the College of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, had been offered at the United Kingdom’s annual Nationwide Astronomy Assembly.
We will be able to inform how previous a celeb is according to how a lot metallic is in it. When the primary stars within the Universe shaped, they needed to make themselves out of the fundamental subject matter to be had on the time – most commonly hydrogen and helium. However the nuclear furnaces burning of their cores began fusing the atoms of hydrogen into heavier issues, from helium the entire means as much as iron.
Then, after they exploded in messy supernovae, they seeded those heavier parts right through house, in conjunction with even heavier parts solid in lively split-second supernova processes. Next stars due to this fact began their lives with a better percentage of heavier subject matter. The more youthful a celeb is, the extra metallic it is more likely to have.
Conversely, the older a celeb is, the much less metallic it is more likely to have. We’ve got discovered a honest few of those “pristine” stars floating round the Milky Means, however most commonly within the outskirts, and the galactic halo. Astronomers assume that the oldest of the previous stars must be putting out within the galactic middle, however for the reason that area is predominantly wealthy in metallic, and there is a lot of mud blocking off our view, they have a tendency to be more difficult to search out.
Anke and her colleagues launched into a mission known as the Pristine Interior Galaxy Survey (PIGS) to take a look at and in finding them. Via examining the spectrum of sunshine emanating from a definite big name, astronomers can in finding wavelengths amplified or dampened via the presence of positive parts. They regarded for an elemental signature in line with stars which can be very low in metals, and recognized round 8,000 applicants.
Observe-up observations showed the chemical compositions of metal-poor stars, leading to a pattern of round 1,300 historic stars within the galactic middle. As a result of they discovered such a lot of, the researchers had been then ready to behavior inhabitants research.
They used information from the Gaia observatory, which is an ongoing mission to map the 3-dimensional positions and motions of the celebs within the Milky Means. With this, the researchers had been ready to decide the galactic orbits in their previous stars.
Arentsen and her colleagues discovered that orbits of the traditional stars across the galactic middle are fairly sluggish.
As well as, the older stars have extra chaotic orbits, however they nonetheless have a median orbit across the galactic middle.
After all, the orbits of the celebs are most commonly contained totally throughout the galactic middle. Even the ones stars on elliptical orbits generally tend to stick most commonly throughout the central area of the Milky Means.
“It’s thrilling to assume that we’re seeing stars that shaped within the earliest stages of the Milky Means, up to now in large part out of succeed in. Those stars most likely shaped lower than one billion years after the Giant Bang, so are relics from the early Universe,” Arentsen says.
“The to be had information for those historic items is rising unexpectedly. I am excited to look what we can know about those first stars to populate our Galaxy in the following few years!”
You’ll be able to apply the workforce’s discoveries about those historic stars on preprint server arXiv. | <urn:uuid:c5db7e76-842e-4c86-97be-317b7702696a> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://chokhleipar.com/stars-from-the-daybreak-of-the-universe-discovered-hidden-in-the-center-of-our-personal-galaxy-sciencealert/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510454.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20230928194838-20230928224838-00403.warc.gz | en | 0.952288 | 820 | 2.765625 | 3 |
After a night of uncertainty, NASA's Artemis moon rocket takes to the skies
The predawn sky over Florida's space coast lit up early Wednesday morning as NASA's new 322-foot-tall moon rocket roared off its launch pad with a few mannequins — but no astronauts — strapped into a crew capsule.
This white, bell-shaped capsule, called Orion, has now embarked on a 25-day test flight that will take it around the moon and back. The approximately 1.2-million-mile trip will bring NASA one step closer to achieving its goal of returning humans to the lunar surface.
"For once, I might be speechless," launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson told her team at Kennedy Space Center, after they had sent the rocket on its way. "You have earned your place in history. You're part of a first. It doesn't come along very often, once in a career maybe. But we are all part of something incredibly special."
The Orion capsule will orbit the moon, coming within about 80 miles of its surface, and its maximum distance from the Earth will be 268,553 miles — surpassing a record set by NASA's Apollo 13 mission in 1970.
A step toward the 1st woman on the moon
If all goes well, the capsule will return to Earth faster and hotter than any human-rated spacecraft ever. It will splash down in the Pacific Ocean on December 11, off the coast of San Diego, Calif. And in just a couple of years, this massive rocket and the capsule could be blasting off with people on board.
The dramatic, long-awaited rocket launch, swathed in darkness, marked a major milestone for NASA, which is hoping to put the first woman and first person of color on the lunar surface by 2025.
Bill Nelson, the administrator of NASA, says he watched the launch from a rooftop, in the company of a number of astronauts. "I'm telling you, we've never seen such a tail of flame. There were a bunch there that would like to be on that rocket," he told reporters in a post-launch press briefing.
The space agency has named its lunar program Artemis, after the twin sister of Apollo, and hopes to reclaim some of the glory of its Apollo-era moon landings. NASA's last Apollo mission to the moon happened nearly a half-century ago, in December of 1972, when the venerable Saturn V rocket thundered up from the Florida launch site.
It's been a rocky road
NASA has been trying to launch its Artemis rocket for months, but was stymied by technical glitches and two hurricanes.
A previous attempt to get this rocket off the ground, in September, had to be stopped because of a hydrogen leak. NASA mission managers never did figure out its root cause for sure.
This time around, when another hydrogen leak cropped up, a "red crew" of three workers had to go out to the launch pad, to the bottom of the dangerous, fully-fueled rocket. They tightened some bolts on a valve that apparently may have been "visibly loose," according to part of an exchange captured on a hot mic. Other glitches that bedeviled the team included the loss of signal at a critical radar site that was traced to a faulty Ethernet switch.
The space agency has been working towards this launch for over a decade, since it retired its space shuttle program in 2011.
Back then, Congress told NASA to build a giant new rocket, one capable of venturing to deep space, and to use technology from the old shuttles as much as possible to help support the nation's space industry.
It comes with a big price tag
But this rocket has taken years longer to build than expected, and it's also proven unexpectedly costly.
NASA's inspector general, Paul Martin, has said that each of its first three flights will cost more than $4 billion — and that doesn't include billions more in development costs.
His officeestimated that, through fiscal year 2025, NASA will spend $93 billion on the Artemis effort — a price tag that lots of people in the spaceflight community see as unsustainable.
Still, regardless of any mixed feelings surrounding this rocket, successfully launching it may offer a sign that NASA is making progress towards once again having the moon as a real destination for humanity.
That's something many space enthusiasts have longed for ever since astronaut Eugene Cernan took the last steps on its dusty surface, saying, "we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind."
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | <urn:uuid:9e7f2436-4f45-4dff-aa51-b2af6396eeb5> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.wrvo.org/2022-11-16/after-a-night-of-uncertainty-nasas-artemis-moon-rocket-takes-to-the-skies | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510575.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20230930014147-20230930044147-00303.warc.gz | en | 0.96393 | 958 | 2.890625 | 3 |
The observations recorded in this paper were made primarily with the object of ascertaining the distribution, frequency, and forms of infection of the parasites of the blood of vertebrates in Ceylon.
Since the publication of our preliminary note (‘Spolia Zeylanica,’ vol. ii, part 6, August, 1904, pp. 78-92) a few more cases have come under our notice, and as there is no immediate prospect of amplifying our investigations owing to the pressure of other duties, we deem it advisable to publish our results in full without further delay. The discoveries of Ross, Grassi, Schaudinn, and others, have rendered it clear that researches on blood parasites must be undertaken with a single aim, and with undivided attention, in order that they may be cyclically complete.
It seems that the experimental difficulties which beset the investigation of the life-cycle of the hæmogregarines and trypanosomes of cold-blooded animals are great; and the ignorance as to the means of transmission of these parasites, and with regard to the order of succession of their different phases, leaves abundant room for future discoveries of biological importance.1
Schaudinn’s memorable discovery, that the well-known hæmatozoon of birds called Halteridium is a phase in the life-history of species of Trypanosoma, has considerably modified the views as to the generic autonomy of the various protozoon parasites of the blood, besides apparently demonstrating a close affinity between the Sporozoa and the Flagellata. The name Halteridium will, however, doubtless survive to characterise the particular phase referred to, and the same use may probably be made of the term Hæmo-cystidium, which we have introduced to denote a well-marked endoglobular parasite observed by us in a gecko, an analogous phase having been previously described by Dr. Simond from a Trionyx.
I. ON SOME FREE, UNPIGMENTED GREGARINIFORM BODIES OBSERVED IN THE BLOOD OF MAN AND BIRDS
In the course of our examination of numerous samples of blood collected in different parts of the island, very many negative results, as was to be anticipated, have been obtained. So far as our observations have extended, they seem to point to the conclusion that the percentage of infected cases of all kinds is greater in the neighbourhood of centres of population than in outlying districts. This fact may indicate that the conditions of nutrition of the Hæmatozoa are more suitable under the circumstances of sanitation peculiar to towns, and that the incidence of blood-parasitism may be directly or indirectly assignable to the far-reaching influences of domestication.
There seems to be a marked contrast between the distribution of the Hæmatozoa and that of the majority of Entozoa or parasites of the digestive tract, the latter being at least equally frequent in regions remote from human habitations as in areas of cultivation.
From the point of view suggested by these remarks, it is interesting to record the occurrence of peculiar parasitic bodies in the blood of birds and man, for which, so far as we can ascertain, no provision has been made in any of the published accounts of the life-histories of the Protozoa of the blood.
In the case of birds these bodies occur in company with Halteridium, and in man associated with the symptoms of malaria. They are crescentic organisms, rather exceeding the length or diameter of the blood-corpuscles, characterised by the absence of pigment and by the presence of vacuoles, and they are very rare in such preparations as we have examined. Their form and size relatively to the blood-cells are shown on Pl. 24, figs. 1—3.
In the blood of a bird, the common babbler, Crateropus striatus (Swainson), taken on July 20th, 1904, Halteridium was present in the films, though scarce, and, in addition, there were some rare parasites of an elongated shape, with two or three vacuoles, free in the plasma. In fresh preparations they appeared to be non-motile, though a slight change of shape could be detected, the parasite becoming slightly broader after a time.
Halteridium only was found in the spleen. After staining by Leishmann’s method, the bodies were coloured deep blue, and did not show chromatin. Sometimes there is the appearance of a clear halo surrounding the body (Pl. 24, fig. 2). In a preparation which had become partly decolorised through lapse of time there appears to be a definite nucleus in the centre of the body.
In the blood of an Indian crow (Corvus splendens) similar bodies were found, but of smaller size, some of them appearing granular without vacuoles (Pl. 24, fig. 3); these would seem to be specifically distinct from the parasites of the babbler.
Finally, analogous bodies, exceedingly rare, have been observed by us in the finger-blood of native fever patients. Their general outline and size might seem to suggest some relation, whether of growth or degeneration, with the ordinary crescents of tropical malaria; but the absence of pigment, the presence of vacuoles, and the deeply staining protoplasm exclude such an assumption, especially in view of their similarity to the bodies observed in birds. In the true crescents, as is well known, there is an aggregation of pigment granules interspersed with chromatin at the centre of the body; the protoplasm stains uniform pale blue, there are no vacuoles, and there are frequently traces of the original blood-cell in which the crescent developed adhering to it.
Unfortunately, the literature at our disposal does not permit us to say whether the bodies we have described are, or are not, identical with, or related to, the pseudo-vermicules described from certain birds by Danilewsky, Kruse, L. Pfeiffer, and MacCallum.1
II. PIGMENTED ENDOGLOBULAR PARASITES OF A GECKO
In the ‘Annales de 1’Institut Pasteur,’ tome xv, 1901, p. 338, Dr. P. L. Simond described, under the name Hæmamœba metschnikovi, a parasite of the blood of the freshwater tortoise, Chitra indica (= Trionyx indiens), which appears at a certain phase of its life-history in the form of an amoeboid and eventually rounded organism containing pigment granules. He says that the chelonian host is very common in the rivers of India, especially in the Ganges and its tributaries, and that it plays the part of a scavenger in the waters of the Ganges, devouring, in addition to its natural diet of fishes and other aquatic animals, the remains of the corpses of Hindus which are thrown into the river after an incomplete cremation owing to the paucity of firewood in certain regions. On this account it is greatly venerated by the Hindus.
In all the adults of this species examined by Dr. Simond, more than twenty in number, he observed the pigmented stages of the Hæmatozoon, and, in addition, he found nonpigmented parasites of the Hæmogregarine type in constant association with the pigmented Hæmamœboids.
On this account, as well as from analogy and in view of the known fact that it is impossible to recognise sexual differences among true Hæmogregarines, whereas such differences are clear among the Hæmamœboids, Dr. Simond inclined to the opinion that the two forms of endoglobular parasites observed by him belonged to one cycle of development.
With regard to the life-history and mode of transmission of these parasites, the author points out that experiments in inoculation have hitherto proved futile, and the only method of dealing with them at present is the morphological method.
The scavenging activity of the tortoise Chitra indica1 is of some interest in view of the remarks which we have made above and of some which are to follow.
Hæmamœba metschnikovi “occurs as a minute pigmented endoglobular amcebula resembling the malarial parasites of birds and mammals. Its presence in a cold-blooded animal is, therefore, remarkable and quite exceptional…. Further investigations of this interesting form are required, and Laveran admits it only with some reserve to rank in his genus Hæmamœba.”
In the blood of a tree-dwelling gecko, Hemidactylus leschenaultii, taken at the village of Mamadu, near Vavu-niya, in the Northern Province of Ceylon in April, 1904, we observed a pigmented endoglobular parasite which did not appear to fall within the definition of any hitherto described genus of Hæmamœbidæ. We accordingly named it Hæmo-cystidium simondi.1 No Hæmogregarine forms were found accompanying it. At the earliest stage observed it consists of a small irregular body with a belt of pigment granules across the centre, occasioning a slight displacement of the nucleus of the corpuscle.
With increase of size of the parasite the nucleus of the host-cell becomes pushed to one end of the corpuscle (Pl. 24, fig. 4).
The parasite was not observed in the fresh state, but in preparations stained by Leishmann’s modification of Romanovsky’s method two distinct kinds are found, resembling one another in size and form, but differing in their reactions to the stain.
These, no doubt, represent sexual differences, as in Halte-ridium. In the male type the body is seen to be faintly granular, the protoplasm is stained a delicate pale-blue, with numerous small pigment granules scattered round the periphery and in the substance of the oval or discoidal organism. In the female type the body is stained dark-blue, and the pigment granules are numerous, though appearing on the whole rather larger than in the male trophozoite. The female trophozoite differs further from the male by the constant presence of vacuoles, varying in number and size (Pl. 24, fig. 4).
Sometimes the contour of the Hæmocystidium makes an almost perfect circle, and in accordance with the shape of the blood-corpuscle it is probable that the parasite is not spherical but rather shaped like a biconvex lens. Its diameter nearly equals the shorter diameter of the corpuscle, while the elongated forms nearly fill the latter.
In one case of a double infection the growth of the two male trophozoites had caused a deep constriction of the blood-corpuscle, nearly cutting it in two.
The species described by Dr. Simond, which should now be named Hæmocystidium metschnikovi (Simond) resembles the parasite of the gecko in general features but differs markedly from it in point of size, rarely exceeding the half of the corpuscle in diameter, in the smaller number of pigment granules, and in the fact that it does not cause a displacement of the nucleus of the corpuscle, according to Dr. Simond’s figures. Double or even treble infections of a corpuscle by H. metschnikovi do not affect the outline of the latter. It is, therefore, clearly a smaller species than H. simondi.
The natures of the hosts are also widely different, the one an aquatic chelonian, the other a terrestrial gecko living in the driest province of Ceylon.
The same species of gecko whose blood is infected with Hæmocystidium simondi harbours a nematode parasite in its intestine, which has been described by Dr. von Linstow as a new species of Oxyuris, 0. megaloon.1
III. HÆMOGREGARINE OF NICORIA TRIJUGA
The hæmogregarines as a whole appear to favour foulfeeding animals, and there are few fouler feeders than Nicoria trijuga, a tortoise with amphibious habits commonly met with in the ditches and marshy lands round Colombo and in the Colombo Lake.
The larger specimens of this tortoise are generally found to be infected with a hæmogregarine which does not show any particularly striking properties distinguishing it from other similar species. It is, however, important to establish the fact of its almost constant occurrence in a host which derives its nourishment largely from offal.
The tortoise also harbours Nematode parasites in its intestine which have been kindly named and described by Dr. von Linstow as a new species of Oxysoma, O. falcatum.2
When the blood is examined in the fresh condition, the crescent-shaped or reniform body of the endoglobular parasite presents a clear pole, one granular pole and a clear but sharply defined central tract, which in stained preparations proves to contain the nucleus.
Frequently the clear pole is directed towards the displaced nucleus of the blood-corpuscle, but there is no constant orientation.
The granular pole is the growing end of the organism, which becomes bent round upon itself in the manner characteristic of the genus Hæmogregarina.
The doubling of the parasite usually takes place by a very narrow bend, but occasionally a wider bight is produced. Young stages before the bending also came under our observation both in fresh and in stained preparations, and we have seen a double infection of a corpuscle, though this appears to be rare.
The nucleus consists of a more or less diffuse aggregation of chromatin or cyanophil granules which sometimes extend to the recurved limb of the parasite. The length of the bent organism is 0·01 mm. (10 μ). In one corpuscle the parasite had unbent itself and appeared as a long “vermicule,” the corpuscle being enlarged and somewhat distorted.
In a hanging-drop prepared from the blood of a specimen which had been killed some hours previously we have once only observed a motile parasite free in the blood-plasma. It resembled the one which was found unrolled in the corpuscle. The movements consisted of slow revolutions in the direction of the arc of the parasite and also of movements of flexion. The granular pole was directed forwards, while the other pole remained more or less fixed and appeared to be adhesive. Finally, the parasite was attracted by an irresistible chemotaxis to a neighbouring phagocyte, by which it was gradually absorbed.
It may be noted here that we have hitherto not succeeded in finding any parasite in the blood of the herbivorous land tortoise of Ceylon, Testudo elegans.
The unrolling of the parasites would seem to precede its liberation from the corpuscle. This is obviously a critical moment in its life-history, but it is not known what happens next.
Occasionally the bent forms are seen free in the plasma, but this we attribute to accidental rupture or liquefaction of the corpuscle. When the parasite normally becomes free it is probable that the corpuscle undergoes disintegration.
We have named this species Hæmogregarina nicoriæ.1 In the present stage of knowledge of the hæmo-gregarines the specific differences are largely a matter of host, or, in other words, of environment. All authorities seem to be agreed that there are different species, and that it would be wrong to call all hæmogregarines H. stepa-novi, following the example of Halteridium, all the forms of which are called H. danilewskyi. It will be seen below that there are, so far as we can tell, extraordinary differences in the life-histories of hæmogregarines infesting different hosts.
The fact seems to be that the parasites are hard to distinguish in the immature, asexual, or hæmogregarine phase.
Finally, with regard to H. nicoriæ, it may be mentioned that although the bent parasite is not more than about one half the length and one third the width of the corpuscle, yet the nucleus of the latter is displaced towards one end of the cell.
In one or two cases the nucleus of the parasite has presented the appearance of having divided into four daughter nuclei, two of which occur at one end and two at the opposite end of the body. We have observed no further indications of sporulation.
IV. THE HÆMOGREGARINE OF TROPIDONOTUS PISCATOR
The freshwater snakes of the Colombo district seem to be frequently the unconscious hosts of a blood-parasite which in its endoglobular phase offers few characters of distinction. In snakes of this and other species obtained in places remote from Colombo we have searched in vain for Hæmatozoa, although Entozoa are common in all parts of the country.
A young snake of the above-named species, upwards of two feet long, was found to be infected with an endoglobular hæmogregarine of the usual type, all the trophozoites being approximately at the same stage of growth, more or less bent into a U shape. They show slight differences from Hæmo-gregarina nicoriæ. Their size is larger, 12 microns or ·012 mm. in length, the protoplasm stains uniform blue, the reddish-blue stained nucleus is denser, and placed near the pole opposite to the bent portion. The greater density of the nucleus is evidenced, not only by the closer aggregation of its chromatin material, but also by a greater resistance to the staining reagent; in many instances it has remained unstained. If the parasite is artificially liberated from the blood-corpuscle on the slide, its nucleus becomes well stained.
The parasites were kept fresh under observation in a hanging drop for several days, but no change was observed to take place.
It is not known what stimulus provokes the endoglobular hæmogregarines to enter upon a new course of development, and it appears that they may live for several months without undergoing much appreciable change within the blood-cells of their host.
It seems clear, however, that a point is reached eventually when something must happen, and a great change take place analogous to the change which Schaudinn had described in the life-history of Halteridium.
A few days after making the observations described above we were able to examine the blood of a large snake of the same species, nearly four feet in length. This examination revealed the presence of great numbers of hæmogregarines free in the blood-plasma in which they performed active movements, displacing the corpuscles as they glided along. Several hanging drops were prepared as usual, but on the following morning the parasites had all undergone dissolution after the manner of Trypanosoma.
The movements consist of slow gliding and turning, the “vermicide” sometimes actually doubling upon itself. Sometimes it will become fixed by its attenuated hinder end, and will revolve by a slow screw-like motion after the manner of the spores of Sarcocystis. Then may ensue a rapid whirling of the body, causing a disturbance among the neighbouring corpuscles.
Many films of the snake’s blood were prepared and stained, and in most of them we found that, besides the free parasites, many of the corpuscles contained bodies of relatively large size, more or less crescentic in shape. These endoglobular organisms were not at all like the ordinary hæmogregarines, but consisted of a delicate protoplasmic membrane with red-stained granules surrounding a pale-blue stained central body with a densely staining nucleus. The discovery of various stages of development within certain narrow limits enabled us to recognise the enveloping body as the mother-cell of the contained body, and we accordingly described it as a cytocyst.
The single organism or monozoite which the cytocyst produces eventually escapes from the membrane and from the corpuscle, very much as a young Nemertine worm escapes from its pilidium, and becomes the free motile parasite described above. We find the monozoites at all stages of emergence, and it is probable that some of the rapid oscillations of the parasite which were observed in the fresh preparations represented violent efforts to free their hinder extremities from the corpuscles.
The nucleus of the monozoite lies behind the centre of the body both before and after its birth. When fully formed within the cytocyst the hinder end of the monozoite is slightly bent, indicating that some pressure or tension is being exerted within. In the next stage the anterior end is found to have perforated the wall of the cytocyst, and the monozoite begins to push its way out through the opening thus produced. Here and there a corpuscle contains an empty cytocyst from which the monozoite has escaped. In such cases the orifice of exit can still be discerned.
In some cases at the moment of fixation of the blood-film on the slide the monozoite had extended its body as far as the level of the nucleus, which appears constricted in the narrow orifice as if it were being squeezed through. Sometimes only the hinder end remains within the cytocyst and corpuscle, the rest of the body being free.
Occasionally, instead of emerging from the corpuscle the monozoite issues from its mother-cell again into the substance of the corpuscle. This is probably a miscarriage.
Sometimes the cytocyst is difficult to distinguish, and the monozoite appears to lie in the corpuscle without a sheath. In such cases the membrane can often be identified on close inspection, but not always.
The monozoites which emerge from the cytocysts are all of one kind and of one size within the limits of a slight variation.
Among the free-living forms in the plasma of the blood some are found to be about twice as bulky as others, indicating that they continue to grow after becoming free. The staining reactions of all are the same, namely, pale-blue cytoplasm and dense reddish-blue nucleus.
We have been fortunate enough to find stages in the formation of the monozoite within the cytocyst, the substance of the former being only partly differentiated and merging imperceptibly into the protoplasm of its mother-cell, the cytocyst. Such differentiation as has taken place is indicated by the pale-blue staining reaction, but chiefly by the structure of the nucleus, in which the chromatin loops or threads are clearly visible, showing unmistakable signs of formative activity.
With regard to the red-staining granules which we have mentioned above in association with the membrane of the cytocyst, we have interpreted these as belonging to a thin layer of residual protoplasm which is left round the periphery of the mother-cell after the formation of the axial monozoite. The membrane which is left empty within the corpuscle after the birth of the monozite sometimes show a slight crumpling, due to collapse; it clearly belongs to the category of plasmatic membranes.
The provisional assumption of a direct genetic connection between the endoglobular hæmogregarines of the first snake and the cytocysts of the second is not supported by observation, but is based upon analogy, upon the specific identity of the hosts, and upon the proximity of the localities. If it is true, and if Simond’s analogous assumption in the case of Hæmocystidium metschnikovi is also true, the fifehistory of the Hæmogregarines must be highly varied and complicated, and cannot be interpreted until some of the many gaps are filled up.
Another large Tropidonotus piscator was dug up, together with a clump of eggs, from a garden in Colombo, in February, 1905. Its blood was found to be in the same condition as in the previous specimen which was captured in July, 1904—that is to say, infested with cytocysts and free monozoites. No further information was obtained beyond a confirmation of results. The eggs contained young in an advanced stage of development, united to the yolk-sac by a narrow umbilical cord. The examination of the blood of these young incubants was negative in respect to Hæmatozoa.
Since the publication of our preliminary note we have become acquainted with a paper by N. Berestneff (“Über einen neuen Blutparasiten der indischen Frösche,” ‘Archiv. f. Protistenkunde,’ vol. ii, 1903, pp. 343-348), in which a closely similar parasite was described from the blood of Indian frogs. The illustrations in the plate accompanying the paper were executed by the method of micro-photography, with the result that the points are not very clearly brought out. Microphotography appears to have the advantage of absolute fidelity, counterbalanced by considerable obscurity. However, the text makes amends for the shortcomings of the plate.
Dr. Berestneff examined the blood of cold-blooded freshwater vertebrates in the neighbourhood of a plague laboratory and a leper asylum in Bombay. He found Trypanosoma rare in tortoises, no hæmatozoa in lizards, but only exceptionally did he find a frog free from blood-parasites. The Bombay frogs, of which he examined 372, belonged to two species—Rana tigrina and Rana limnocharis, both of which also occur in Ceylon, where, however, we have not yet established the presence of Hæmatozoa.
Besides Drepanidium monilis, Danilewskya krusei, and Trypanosoma, Dr. Berestneff found a parasite which he believed rightly had not been previously described. He gives numerical details, which we regret we cannot clearly understand. There is one table, from which it appears that out of the 372 frogs 47 contained the new parasite; but he mentions other frogs examined in June and July, 1900, which are not included in the table, so that we are unable to calculate the percentage of infected cases. Dr. Berestneff described the parasite as follows:—In the red blood-corpuscles there is to be seen a strongly refringent colourless capsule like a cylindrical tube, with one end enlarged in a club-shaped manner. The parasite lies within the capsule; the attenuated end of the capsule is empty, both ends are rounded and curved, the whole embracing the displaced nucleus of the corpuscle after the manner of Halteridium.
The author states that when the red corpuscle becomes disintegrated or dissolved the capsule withits contained parasite issues into the blood-plasma and straightens itself out, and under these conditions the parasite only occupies a portion of the capsule and eventually begins to move about inside the capsule, gliding from the wider portion into the narrower portion of the latter. Thereupon the motile parasite perforates the capsule at its narrower end and emerges into the plasma actively moving.
Dr. Berestneff says that the parasite closely resembles the free Danilewskya krusei. It is blunt at one end, acuminate at the other; it moves with the blunt wider end directed forwards and the nucleus lies near to the anterior end. The movements are much slower than those of the Drepanidia.
After a few minutes, while under observation, the movements cease, the parasite becomes hyaline, and finally dissolves in the plasma.
He observed simultaneous infection of a corpuscle by the new parasite and by a Drepanidium. In his modification of the Romanowsky method the nucleus of the parasite stained intensely reddish violet, the protoplasm blue, the capsule reddish-violet.
While encapsuled inside the corpuscle the acuminate posterior end of the parasite lies in the widened end of the capsule.
Dr. Berestneff says that the parasite which he discovered in the Bombay frogs belongs by its structure, form, and movements, to the Hæmogregarinidæ, and shows close affinity to Danilewskya krusei, Labbé (Drepanidium m agnum = Hæmogregari n a magna, Grassland Feletti).
Attempts to transmit the parasite from infected to noninfected frogs by injection into the dorsal lymph sinus gave no result.
From the above description, which we have thought well to quote at some length, it seems certain that Dr. Berestneff’s parasite differs at least specifically from that described by us, as shown, to mention only two points, by the relation of the monozoite to its capsule, and by the position of the nucleus. For facility of future reference we propose to name Berestneff’s parasite Hæmogregarina berestneffi. It will probably not enjoy this name long, since the genus Hæmogregarina will most likely be found to have as little stability as Halteridium.
V. TRYPANOSOMA AND HALTERIDIUM
In the light of the discoveries which Schaudinn has recorded these two parasitic forms should be considered together, although we have not yet found them associated in the same host.
Trypanosoma lewisi (Sav. Kent) is extremely common in the house rats (Mus decumanus) of Colombo. Some times the blood is literally seething with them, and it is known that they may equal or surpass the corpuscles of the blood in number. Like Hæmogregarina, the Trypanosoma is chiefly met with in domesticated or semi-domesticated animals. We have not found it in birds, but have met with it in several species of freshwater fishes occurring in the Colombo Lake, a sheet of water in the heart of the town. One of the principal hosts is the siluroid fish, Sacco-branchus fossilis; most of the individuals of this species in the Colombo Lake, from seven to about twelve inches in length, appeared to be infected with a species of Trypanosoma, which we will name, in accordance with the method adopted by MM. Laveran and Mesnil, T. sacco-branchi. Here, as in the rat, the parasites vary greatly in number in different individuals, from very rare to very numerous. In a fresh hanging drop the parasites appeared two or three in the field of the microscope; about two hours later those near the edges of the drop had begun to slow down, so that the movements of the undulating membrane could be observed. These consisted of a rapid shivering along one side of the body. The movements of the membrane determine the serpentine convolutions of the body, which are perpetual. Sometimes the body rests momentarily, only the flagellum and anterior portion keeping up their movements.
Four or five hours later bacteria had penetrated the entire drop, but in a portion of the latter where the bacteria were particularly dense the Trypanosomes had collected together, as many as twenty being visible at a time in the field of the microscope, a few only being found elsewhere in the drop.
In their recent monograph on ‘Trypanosomes et Trypanosomiases,’ Paris, 1904, MM. Laveran and Mesnil have shown how difficult, and in some cases impossible, it is to distinguish one species of Trypanosoma from another on morphological grounds. There is the greatest possible similarity of structure and proportions between the Trypanosoma of rats and those of fishes. Such points as the position of the nucleus and the length of the flagellum can hardly be regarded as sufficiently constant to be diagnostic. The length of the tail or portion of the body behind the centrosome or blepharoplast is rather characteristic, but this, again, fluctuates.
It seems hardly worth while to attempt a detailed differentiation of species from different hosts until some method of culture can be devised which will reveal the true properties of each. There is at present no basis of comparison, and. it seems that none is afforded by the mere retention of Trypanosoma under observation for several days in. citrated blood.
In T. saccobranchi the caudal prolongation is obsolescent, the centrosome being placed very far backwards, much as in T. danilewskyi, Lav. Mesn., from Cyprinus carpio.
Dr. Lingard has recorded the presence of Trypanosoma in the blood of several species of freshwater fishes in India, namely, Trichogaster fasciatus, Ophiocephalus striatus, Macrones seenghala,andMacrones tongara.1 He noted that the fishes that live in mud are more frequently infected than others, and that the parasites appeared in greatest number during the months of May and June.
We have not seen Dr. Lingard’s original Report in which the above observations were published, but it is to be presumed that he obtained his material in Northern India, since only one of the above-named fishes ranges so far south as Ceylon, namely the Ophiocephalus striatus, known locally as the “lulla.” The examination of the blood of one individual of this species from a tank at Mamadu, in the Northern Province of Ceylon, gave negative results. It would be interesting to examine the blood of a large number of specimens from different tanks, an investigation which, merely from the standpoint of distribution and environment, might yield important information.
With regard to Trypanosoma saccobranchi from the polluted Colombo Lake we have found it abundantly in the months of August and September. On the other hand, the examination of the blood of an Ophiocephalus striatus from the Colombo Lake in May, 1905, gave negative results.
We have also found Trypanosoma in the blood of Macrones cavasius (Siluridæ) and in Gobius giuris.
As a mere matter of fact we may mention that we have never observed Trypanosoma associated with endoglobular parasites in the same host, nor have we found Trypanosoma in any species of animals in which we have found endoglobular forms.
Dr. Hanna has described a Trypanosoma in the blood of the Indian Crow (Corvus splendens), and we have seen Halteridium in this species as well as in the Black Crow (Corvus macrorhynchus), both examined in the month of August, also, as mentioned above, in the common babbler, Crateropus striatus, examined in July, and in the common Scops owl, Scops bakkamœna, var. mala-baricus in July. All these hosts are more or less open to the charge of foul-feeding, and all frequent the neighbourhood, sometimes even the precincts, of human habitations.
MM. Laveran and Mesnil have described Trypanosoma soleæ, from Solea vulgaris, in association with Hæmo-gregarina simondi.1
Besides Filaria immitis in the dog and Filaria vivi-para, v. Linstow, in the Indian crow, we found a Filaria in the blood of the Brahminy lizard, Mabuia carinata, and described it in our preliminary note under the name of Filaria mansoni.2 Dr. von Linstow has since pointed out, in a paper which will shortly be published in ‘ Spolia Zeylanica,’ that this name bad already been applied by Cobbold in 1880 to a species of Filaria from the orbit of Gallus gallinaceus, and he accordingly proposes the new name Filaria tuberosa, so that the species now reads F. man-soni, Castellani and Willey (not Cobbold) = F. tuberosa, v. Linstow. Two adult females were found imbedded in the musculature of the body-wall, one in the ventro-lateral abdominal region, showing through the peritoneum, the other in the dorsal wall of the body cavity.1
The blood-filariæ of Sauropsida are the embryos of adult Nematoda, which are to be found in the peritoneum of the same host which harbours them. We have never found embryos in the blood without adults in the peritoneum; the females are always ovoviviparous and the males appear to be rare. Both in the Indian crow and in the Brahminy lizard only females were found.
Filariæ occurred also in the blood of a lizard, Calotes versicolor, examined in August, 1904. These were about six times the length of a blood-corpuscle and offered no very striking characters. Two adults, a smaller male anda female about three times larger, were found in the mesentery below the aorta at the level of the testes. Both of them were characterised by the bright lemon-yellow colour of the intestine, and we accordingly proposed the name Filaria flaves-cens, subsequently forwarding the specimens to Dr. von Linstow, who was good enough to confirm the identification, adding further details, which will be duly published.
In the blood of a Scops owl (Scops bakkamœna, var. malabarica) which diedin Colombo in September, 1904, numerous filariæ of an unusually large size occurred,measuring 0·22 mm. in length, the anterior end rounded and sometimes, in the dried film, somewhat withdrawn from the cuticle, the tail acuminate. We name this Filaria scopsiana. Three adults were found in the peritoneum, the largest of which measured 13·25 mm. in length, the smallest less than half this size. The oesophagus was rather indistinct, but appeared to measure between th and th of the total length.
EXPLANATION OF PLATE 24
FIG. 1.—Non-pigmented parasite (“pseudoverinicule “) in the blood of a fever case from the Policé Hospital, Colombo [malarial parasites absent; vidal reaction negative]. April 24th, 1905.
FIG. 2.—Another parasite of the same kind; the two dark spots are chromatoid granules. In this case a few ring-forms of tropical malaria were observed, but no crescents. Feb. 17th, 1905.
FIG. 3.—A third example of the same parasite. Stained by Jenner’s method, dark blue near the terminal vacuoles, paler blue in the centre. March 16th, 1905.
FIG. 4.—Analogous “pseudovermicules” in the blood of a common babbler, Crateropus striatus. Sometimes the free parasite appears to be surrounded by a clear halo. Two blood-corpuscles are shown with Halteridium. July 21st, 1904.
FIG. 5.—“Pseudovermicules” in the blood of the Indian crow, Corvus splendens. Colombo, Aug. 9lh, 1904.
FIG. 6.—Hæmocystidium simondi, Castellani and Willey, in the blood of Hemidactylus lescheuaulti.
FIG. 7.—Hæmogregarina nicoriæ, from Nicoria trijuga; one of the corpuscles shows a double infection.
FIG. 8. —Hæmogregarina mirabilis, Castellani and Willey, from Tropidonotus piscator. (a) Normal corpuscle; (b) the pale blue monozoite inside its red sheath; (c) monozoite commencing to issue from the sheath (cytocyst) and corpuscle; (d) monozoite still further emergent, and in this case taking a reddish tinge as though it were coated with a thin film of mucus or residual protoplasm; (e) monozoite nearly free; (f) monozoite free; (g) corpuscle containing an empty cytocyst from which the monozoite has been discharged.
Stained by Leishmann’s modification of Romanowsky’s method.
FIG. 9.—Trypanosoma saccobranchi u. sp. from Saccobranchus fossilis.
FIGS. lOaud 11.—Two embryos of Filaria tuberosa from the blood of Mabuia carinata. The dried blood-film was fixed in absolute alcohol and stained with hæmatoxylin and eosin. The body of the organism is seen to be contracted within its cuticular sheath.
FIG. 12.—Embryo of Filaria flavescens n. sp., from the blood of Calotes versicolor.
FIG. 13.—Embryo of Filaria scopsiana n. sp., from the blood of Scops bakkamosna var. malabarica (Colombo).
There is, however, a paper by Dr. Siegel on “Die gescblechtliclie Entwicklung von Htemogregarina stepanovi im Riisselegel, Placobdella eaten igera,” ‘Arch. Protist,’ vol. ii, 1903, pp. 339-342.
Cf. P. L. Simond, “Contribution à l’étude des Hématozoaires endo-globulaires des Reptiles,” ‘Ann. Inst. Pasteur,’ vol. xv, 1901, see p. 347.
This is the name by which the tortoise is designated by Mr. G. A. Boulenger in the volume on “Reptilia and Batrachia “in the ‘Fauna of Brit. India,’ 1890, p. 16.
Castellani and Willey, in * Spolia Zeylanica,’ vol. ii, 1904, p. 84,
The description of this species will shortly appear in ‘Spolia Zeylanica.’
For early publication in ‘Spolia Zeylanica.’
Castellani and Willey, op. cit., p. 85.
Laveran et Mesnil, op. cit., 1904, p. 379.
Laveran et Mesnil. ‘Trypanosomes et Trypanosomiases,’ Paris, 1904, p. 389, and ‘C. R, Ac. Sei. Paris,’ cxxxiii, Oct. 14tl>, 1901.
‘Spolia Zeylanica,’ Part 6, 1904, pp. 79, 80.
In front of the caudal tuberosity which we described and figured there was an appearance of a vent, but Dr. v. Linstow says there is no anus. Instead he describes in front of the swelling a pair of papillæ. | <urn:uuid:033d9a7f-de31-4066-8698-b6705379a945> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/s2-49/194/383/62567/Observations-on-Hamatozoa-in-Ceylon | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511220.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20231003192425-20231003222425-00003.warc.gz | en | 0.943554 | 9,236 | 2.890625 | 3 |
A Year Long Journey Through The Lives Of 12 Bible Heroes!
This year-long curriculum examines the lives of 12 heroes of the Bible. Their courage shows us how we can be bold for Jesus. Their faith shows us how to live for Jesus. And their failures show us how Jesus can love anyone and use anyone for God's kingdom.
Heroes of the Bible Children's Ministry Curriculum Lesson Overview:
UNIT 1: Noah
Sin Has a Price
Memory Verse: “Everyone has sinned. No one measures up to God’s glory.” Romans 3:23 (NIRV)
Scripture: Genesis 6:5-22, God Calls Noah & Genesis 7:6-12, The Flood
Sin entered the world through Adam and Eve. As the population grew, so did the sin on the earth. But one man, Noah, stood out as faithful to God.
Objective: Kids will learn “Every one of us has sinned.”
Scripture: Genesis 7:24-8:12, Noah Sends Out Birds
After 40 days of rain, the earth was covered in water and it was still not safe to come out of the ark. Noah would send birds out to look for signs of hope that the water was receding. Noah had hope because he knew God could be trusted.
Objective: Kids will learn “Even in tough times, God gives me hope.”
Scripture: Genesis 9:8-17, God's Covenant with Noah
When Noah and his family's time on the ark was finally complete, God made a covenant with Noah – giving us the rainbow, and the promise that He would never destroy the whole world with a flood again.
Objective: Kids will learn “We can trust in God's word.”
Scripture: Genesis 11:1-9, The Tower of Babel
The flood had come as a punishment for people's sins. Noah and his family had been saved. It wasn't too long though before people were turning away from God and choosing sin again. This time, they built a tower in order to put themselves in the place of God.
Objective: Kids will learn “There is only one God, and I'm not Him.”
UNIT 2: Abraham
God Made A Promise
Memory Verse: “I will make you into a great nation. And I will bless you. I will make your name great. You will be a blessing to others.” Genesis 12:2 (NIRV)
Answering the Call
Scripture: Genesis 12:1-9, The Call of Abram
When God told Abram (who would later become Abraham) that God would bless him with descendants who would grow into a great nation, Abram believed God and obeyed. God wants us to trust that He is in control and that His ways are best.
Objective: Kids will learn “I can always trust that God is in control.”
Try It My Way
Scripture: Genesis 16:1-16, Hagar and Ishmael
God had promised a son to Abraham and Sarah, but they were losing hope. So Abraham and Sarah decided to do things on their own rather than wait on God. They would have been better off waiting and trusting God and doing things His way.
Objective: Kids will learn “I will wait on God's timing.”
Scripture: Genesis 18:1-15, Three Visitors, Genesis 21:1-7, Isaac's Birth
When God, speaking through the three visitors, told Abraham that in one year he would finally have a son, Sarah laughed. A year later, Abraham and Sarah saw the promise of God fulfilled with the birth of Isaac and Sarah's laughter of doubt was turned into joyful laughter.
Objective: Kids will learn “God always fulfills his promises.”
A Difficult Demand
Scripture: Genesis 22:1-18, Abraham Tested
Abraham was confused. God had promised Abraham a son and now that Isaac was here, God was asking Abraham to sacrifice him. Abraham did not understand, but Abraham continued to trust God.
Objective: Kids will learn “I will trust God, even when I don't understand.”
UNIT 3: Joseph
God is Faithful
Memory Verse: “May you look on me with favor. Save me because your love is faithful.” Psalm 31:16 (NIRV)
Joseph, The Dreamer
Scripture: Genesis 37:12-36, Joseph Sold
Joseph's brothers hated him. First, their father Jacob loved Joseph more than them, and then Joseph told them of dreams where his brothers would serve him. Their hatred led them to throw Joseph into a well, and later sell him into slavery. This was just one of many hardships Joseph would face in his life, but through it all, God was working out his plan for Joseph's (and his entire family's) good.
Objective: Kids will learn “Even in hard times, God is at work for my good.”
From Bad To Worse
Scripture: Genesis 39:1-21, In Potiphar's Home
Joseph became a slave working in Potiphar's home. He worked hard and lived a godly life, and he was blessed. Then one day, Potiphar's wife took all of that away. But through it all, God was still with Joseph.
Objective: Kids will learn “Even when bad things happen, God is still with me.”
Scripture: Genesis 40:2-23, The Cupbearer and the Baker
In prison, Joseph found favor with the warden and was put in charge of other prisoners. Two of those prisoners – the cupbearer and the baker – each had strange dreams. God gave Joseph the ability to interpret the dreams. Even in a terrible place like prison, God was still using Joseph.
Objective: Kids will learn “No matter where I’m at, I can always serve God.”
A Dream Come True
Scripture: Genesis 41:1-16 & Genesis 41:25-40, Pharaoh's Dreams
When Pharaoh had a disturbing dream, the chief cupbearer remembered Joseph. God gave Joseph the words to say to Pharaoh and was not only taken out of prison but was put into a place of honor. Finally, Joseph could see how God had been working out all of the hard times for something good.
Objective: Kids will learn “God is always working things for good, even when I can’t see it.”
Eyes Wide Open
Scripture: Genesis 44:11-45:8, Joseph Reunites With His Brothers
When Joseph's brothers came to Egypt for food, they did not recognize their brother. But Joseph recognized them. He tested them before opening their eyes to who he really was. A beautiful reunion followed. Joseph's life had many ups and downs, but through it all, Joseph's eyes were open to the fact that God is good and God is faithful.
Objective: Kids will learn, “At all times, God is good and faithful.”
UNIT 4: Mary
Celebrate God's Gift (Christmas)
Memory Verse: “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. Anyone who believes in him will not die but will have eternal life. ” John 3:16 (NIRV)
The Gift is Announced
Scripture: Luke 1:26-38, An Angel Visits Mary
When the angel announced that Mary would have a baby, she was confused. This was not possible. But when the angel declared the baby would be God's gift, the Messiah Jesus. He was the one God would use to save people from sin that came into the world at the beginning. Mary offered herself willingly as the Lord's servant.
Objective: Kids will learn “I can celebrate by serving God.”
The Gift is Celebrated
Scripture: Luke 1:39-49, Mary Visits Elizabeth
When Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth, the child within Elizabeth leaped for joy. Even before John was born, he recognized that Jesus was sent from God. Then Mary celebrated God with a song.
Objective: Kids will learn “I can celebrate God’s with my words and my actions.”
The Gift Arrives
Scripture: Luke 2:1-20, The Birth of Jesus
Jesus arrived on earth to humble beginnings – born in a stable among the animals. Then the angels got the celebration going by announcing Jesus' birth to a group of shepherds. The shepherds went to see the baby and then continued the celebration by telling others about the arrival of God's gift.
Objective: Kids will learn “I can celebrate by telling others about Jesus and inviting them to come and see.”
The Gift is Priceless
Scripture: Matthew 2:1-12, The Magi
The Magi came to see Mary and the baby with expensive gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But nothing they could give the newborn king could match the priceless gift that God gave us by sending Jesus to be our King and Savior.
Objective: Kids will learn “I can celebrate that there is no love greater than God’s love for us.”
UNIT 5: Moses
God Will Save Us
Memory Verse: “Lord, you are the one who saves. May your blessing be on your people.” Psalm 3:8 (NIRV)
God Saves Moses
Scripture: Exodus 2:1-10, The Birth of Moses
Times had changed since Joseph and his family were welcomed in Egypt many years before. The Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves. And now the Pharaoh had commanded that no Israelite boy born could be allowed to live. When Moses was born, his mother devised a plan to make sure her son lived.
Objective: Kids will learn “God watches over me like a loving parent.”
God Sends Moses
Scripture: Exodus 7:10-8:21, Moses Speaks to Pharaoh & the Plague of Blood
God sent Moses and his brother Aaron to confront the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh's heart was hardened and he would not grant the Israelites their freedom. This was the beginning of much trouble in Egypt. God would send many plagues to show that his power and might were greater than the Pharaoh's.
Objective: Kids will learn “God leads me to do things I couldn’t do on my own.”
God Saves His People
Scripture: Exodus 14:10-31, Crossing the Red Sea
Moments after giving the Israelites their freedom, Pharaoh had a change of heart. He and his army pursued God's people to the Red Sea, where God showed that He is mighty to save.
Objective: Kids will learn “God can always save me, even when I don’t see a way out.”
God Shows Us the Way
Scripture: Deuteronomy 5:4-22, The Ten Commandments
The Israelites had been saved from the Egyptians, but they were still slaves to their sinfulness. God provided the Law – the Ten Commandments – to show the people how to live God’s way. The Ten Commandments also helped everyone see that no one was good enough to keep all of God’s laws. God’s laws show that no one is perfect, and we all need a savior.
Objective: Kids will learn “God is perfect, and we are not.”
UNIT 6: Joshua
God Can Be Believed
Memory Verse: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not depend on your own understanding. In all your ways obey him. Then he will make your paths smooth and straight. ” Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIRV)
Scripture: Numbers 13:26-14:10, Exploring Canaan
The Israelites were getting close to the land God had promised to give them. Moses sent out twelve men to explore the land and report back. Ten of these spies returned fearful of the people living there. Only Jacob and Caleb trusted that God would continue to be faithful and give them the land.
Objective: Kids will learn “I don’t have to be afraid if I know God is on my side.”
Scripture: Joshua 1:1-11, The Lord Commands Joshua
Moses had been the great leader of God's people for many years. After his death, Joshua became the leader. The Lord spoke to Joshua, giving him the confidence to lead the Israelites. Joshua knew that their one true leader was God himself.
Objective: Kids will learn “I can have confidence when I let God lead my life.”
Scripture: Joshua 6:2-20, The Fall of Jericho
The city of Jericho had high walls surrounding the city which could not be penetrated. How would Joshua and his men defeat the city? God gave Joshua an unusual plan so that all the people would know the victory belonged to the Lord.
Objective: Kids will learn “I can have victory because God fights for me.”
More Than Twenty-Four Hours
Scripture: Joshua 10:1-14, The Sun Stands Still
Five kings united to have their armies battle the army of the Israelites. Joshua and his men were strong, but defeating all five armies could not be done in one day. So God performed a miracle – he stopped the sun from setting. He made sure that Joshua and his men had enough time to win the victory.
Objective: Kids will learn “God will always make a way to accomplish His plan.”
UNIT 7: Samson
God Can Redeem Our Mistakes
Memory Verse: “All those who lift themselves up will be made humble. And those who make themselves humble will be lifted up.” Luke 14:11 (NIRV)
Scripture: Judges 13:6-25, The Birth of Samson
God sent an angel to Manoah's wife to tell her that she would have a son, and that son was born for a special purpose. Samson would have to live a certain way and follow certain rules to be the man and leader that God wanted him to be.
Objective: Kids will learn “God has a plan and purpose for everyone.”
Scripture: Judges 15:9-20, Samson's Power
Samson had the potential to be a great leader but had made some poor decisions. His actions led the Philistines to come and take Samson as their prisoner. They did not realize the extent of Samson's power or the love of a God who never gives up on us.
Objective: Kids will learn “God can still use me, even though I sin.”
Scripture: Judges 16:4-22, Samson and Delilah
God had given Samson great power and put him in a position to lead God's people. The problem is that Samson would often go off and do things his own way. Samson went where he shouldn't and met up with a Philistine woman named Delilah. This mistake would cost him his strength and freedom.
Objective: Kids will learn “Even though God always loves me, there are still consequences for sin.”
Scripture: Judges 16:23-30, The Death of Samson
Samson was a prisoner of the Philistines. The Philistines celebrated by worshiping their false god. Samson asked for strength one last time to show the Philistines that there is only one true God. God came through for Samson just as He had throughout Samson's life.
Objective: Kids will learn “God always comes through for us when we turn back to Him.”
UNIT 8: Peter
The Savior Is Here (Easter)
Memory Verse: “But here is how God has shown his love for us. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8 (NIRV)
Calling to Follow
Scripture: Matthew 4:18-22, Calling the First Disciples
Simon (who would later be called Peter) was a simple fisherman. One day, Jesus came and offered Simon a new life as a disciple and follower of him. Simon left everything to follow Jesus.
Objective: Kids will learn “I am willing to give it all to follow and serve God.”
Confession of Faith
Scripture: Matthew 16:13-20, Peter's Confession of Faith
Who is Jesus? Jesus was a preacher unlike any other. He performed miracles and healed the sick, but the people did not understand who Jesus really was. When Jesus asked His disciples the question, only Peter recognized who Jesus really was – the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
Objective: Kids will learn “I want to know Jesus – the Son of God and my Savior.”
Collapse of Confidence
Scripture: Mark 14:66-15:72, Peter Disowns Jesus
Peter had always been a bold and confident guy, but when Jesus was arrested, Peter became defensive and afraid. He did not understand that Jesus' arrest and later death were all part of the plan. God was still in control.
Objective: Kids will learn “I won't be afraid because God is in control.”
Conqueror of Death
Scripture: Luke 23:44-49, The Death of Jesus & Luke 24:1-12, The Resurrection
Jesus' friends and disciples were devastated when Jesus died on the cross. Three days later, though, they experienced the wonder and joy of his resurrection in power.
Objective: Kids will learn “I can be saved because Jesus conquered sin and death.”
UNIT 9: David
God Knows Me
Memory Verse: “You are all around me, behind me and in front of me. You hold me safe in your hand. I’m amazed at how well you know me. It’s more than I can understand.” Psalm 139:5-6 (NIRV)
Scripture: 1 Samuel 16:1-13, David Anointed King
God sent Samuel to the house of Jesse to anoint a new king. Samuel assumed the new king would be Jesse's oldest and strongest son. But God chose David, not because of what was on the outside, but because David had a heart for God.
Objective: Kids will learn “God cares more about our hearts than how we look.”
Scripture: 1 Samuel 17:32-49, David and Goliath
Not one man in Israel's army was willing to face the giant Goliath in battle. When a shepherd boy, David, saw what was happening, he stepped up. He gave Israel the victory with only a sling, five stones, and the Lord on his side.
Objective: Kids will learn “God knows what we need to be victorious.”
Scripture: 1 Samuel 20:16-42, David and Jonathan
David and Jonathan were the best of friends. Even though the king was his father, when King Saul tried to kill David, Jonathan stepped in to make sure his friend was not harmed. Sometimes God asks us to step up and make bold decisions.
Objective: Kids will learn “God can give me the courage to do what's right.”
Scripture: 1 Samuel 24:1-19, David Spares Saul's Life
Saul had once loved David as a son, but his jealousy now drove him to kill David. When Saul unknowingly stepped into a cave where David and his men were hiding, David had the chance to stop Saul once and for all. Instead, David spared his life.
Objective: Kids will learn “God asks me to show kindness to others, even those who aren’t kind to me.”
Scripture: 2 Samuel 9:1-13, David and Mephibosheth
When David finally became king, he remembered his promise to Jonathan to take care of his family. Jonathan's son, Mephibosheth was crippled in his feet. King David took him in and cared for him the rest of his life.
Objective: Kids will learn, “God gives us opportunities to show love and kindness.”
Scripture: 2 Samuel 12:1-14, Nathan Confronts David
David had sinned, killing Uriah and taking Bathsheba as his wife. God sent Nathan to confront David about his sin. David repented and asked God's forgiveness.
Objective: Kids will learn, “God knows our sin and offers us forgiveness.”
UNIT 10: Elijah
God Hears Me
Memory Verse: “I love the Lord, because he heard my voice. He heard my cry for his help.” Psalm 116:1 (NIRV)
God Hears Our Needs
Scripture: 1 Kings 17:7-16, Elijah and the Widow
The prophet Elijah was in need of a meal and rest. The widow and her son were in need of a miracle. When God brought them together, they all received exactly what they needed.
Objective: Kids will learn “God provides exactly what I need.”
God Hears Our Prayers
Scripture: 1 Kings 18:17-39, Elijah Versus the Prophets of Baal
The people had turned from God and were following the false god, Baal. Elijah needed to show the people that there is only one true God. Elijah called out to God to show his power and might. And God came through.
Objective: Kids will learn “God hears me when I call out to Him.”
God Hears Our Pain
Scripture: 1 Kings 19:1-18, God Speaks to Elijah
Elijah was running away for his life. He was sad, scared, and felt all alone. He cried out to God. Once again, God heard Elijah. Elijah's strength was renewed and he was filled with new courage to keep going.
Objective: Kids will learn “God can give me strength to keep going, I just have to ask.”
God Hears Our Joy
Scripture: 2 Kings 2:1-15, Chariot of Fire
Elijah had asked God for someone to carry on the work after he was gone. God heard Elijah and provided Elisha. After a life devoted to serving God, the prophet Elijah was taken up into heaven in a chariot of fire.
Objective: Kids will learn “God has great things in store for those who serve Him.”
UNIT 11: Esther
God Has A Purpose For Me
Memory Verse: “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him. He appointed them to be saved in keeping with his purpose.” Romans 8:28 (NIRV)
A New Queen
Scripture: Esther 2:1-18, Esther Becomes King
The king was looking for a queen. Esther was beautiful but she was a foreigner and not someone who “should” have been in that position. But God knew his purpose for her and made sure that Esther was placed in this powerful position – right where God could use her.
Objective: Kids will learn “God will put me in unexpected places when I am willing to serve Him.”
A Tragedy Averted
Scripture: Esther 2:21-22, Mordecai and Esther Save the King
There was a plot to overthrow the king. Because of the position in which God had placed Esther, she was able to intervene and save the king's life. This would prove to be only the beginning of Esther living out her God-given purpose.
Objective: Kids will learn “Serving God is always important whether the task is big or small.”
A Bold Step
Scripture: Esther 4, Mordecai Pleads With Esther
When Mordecai learned of Haman's plot to kill the Jewish people, he pleaded with Esther to go to the king. This was a dangerous thing to do, but as Mordecai understood, God had placed her as queen for such a time as this.
Objective: Kids will learn “When I live my God purpose, God can use me to help others.”
A Hero Honored
Scripture: Esther 6, Mordecai Honored
Mordecai's role in saving the king had all but been forgotten. But when the king was reminded of it, he threw a great parade in Mordecai's honor. Much to Haman's dismay. While we should not live for praise and recognition, when we serve God, He remembers us.
Objective: Kids will learn “I live out my God purpose for God's kingdom, not for my own fame.”
A Purpose Fulfilled
Scripture: Esther 7, Esther Risks It All
Esther took a big risk approaching the king and making a request of him. But she had to do everything she could to save her people. In the end, her bravery was rewarded.
Objective: Kids will learn, “To live out my God purpose, I must act with courage.”
UNIT 12: Paul
God's Love Should Be Shared
Memory Verse: “So you must go and make disciples of all nations. Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Matthew 28:19 (NIRV)
From Saul to Paul
Scripture: Acts 9:1-22, The Conversion of Saul
Saul had been trying to imprison and kill the people who followed Jesus, until one day when Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus. Then Saul went from trying to stop others from sharing about Jesus, to Paul who would dedicate his life to sharing Jesus with others.
Objective: Kids will learn “God can use anyone to share Jesus. Even me.”
From Bad to Worse
Scripture: Acts 14:8-20, In Lystra and Derbe
When Paul and Barnabas performed miracles in Lystra, the people thought they were gods. Despite their insistence that there was only one God and that they served Jesus, most in the crowd would not believe. Though discouraged, Paul and Barnabas continued to share the love of Jesus with others.
Objective: Kids will learn “There will be times of discouragement, but I will keep sharing Jesus' love.”
From Town to Town
Scripture: Acts 16:6-15, Lydia's Conversion
Paul went from town to town sharing the Good News of Jesus. When Paul wanted to go share Jesus in Phrygia and Galatia, God led them to Macedonia instead. There, they shared the love of Jesus with Lydia, who immediately put her faith in Jesus and became a great help to Paul and to the church.
Objective: Kids will learn “I will go wherever God sends me to share Jesus.”
From Prisoner to Free
Scripture: Acts 16:25-34, Paul and Silas in Prison
Paul and Silas were thrown in prison for sharing Jesus and healing in His name. But even being locked up, could not steal their joy and love for others. When the prison guard saw how Paul and Silas were different from the other prisoners, he wanted to know more. Paul and Silas told him about Jesus, and he and his entire family became believers.
Objective: Kids will learn “People see Jesus when they see my love for others.”
ABOUT THIS CURRICULUM:
- Perfect for kids ages 6-12
- Includes large group and small group resources
- This curriculum is an instant download
- Download a free sample here
EACH LESSON INCLUDES:
- Make It Stick! Parent Sheet - so you can let mom and dad know what kids are learning each week and look like a rockstar teacher who's thought of everything.
- Memory Verse - so that you can make sure kids are getting Scripture in their minds and hearts every single week and you can feel like each lesson was a success even when it seems like 90% of your lesson time is spent saying things like "calm down", "let's be quiet", "hands to yourself!"
- Skit or Puppet Show - so you have a way to easily connect the lesson with your hands-on and visual learners. No drama team? No problem! Just hand the script to the kids. They'll have a blast and think you're the coolest.
- Craft Activity - so you can give kids a physical reminder of the Bible lesson (and give yourself an activity to keep them busy until mom and dad come back!)
- Game - so kids don't leave and say church was BORING! Games are so important to help keep kids engaged. Our large group games always include a "What's The Point" section to help you connect the game to the lesson.
- Large Group Lesson - so you can present the Bible story in a clear and fun way, which means now you can enjoy Saturday nights instead of stressing over putting a lesson together!
- Small-Group Discussion - so you can find out who was paying attention and who was talking to their neighbor. Just kidding, this is a great way for you to build deeper relationships with your kiddos after each lesson, which means you're going to care about them so much you'll cry like a baby when they graduate and go to middle school :(
- More! - Yes, there is even more than all of that so that you can easily put together the perfect lesson for your ministry each weekend, which means no more agonizing over how to adjust complicated lesson plans.
Guaranteed to Be Awesome!
30-Day Money Back Guarantee. If you aren't doing cartwheels of joy because you love this Children's Ministry curriculum, we will give you a big hug and give you a 100% refund, no matter the reason. If you're not happy, we're not happy.
Payment & Security
Your payment information is processed securely. We do not store credit card details nor have access to your credit card information. | <urn:uuid:865139de-3503-42e9-aed9-7082c68a802c> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.childrens-ministry-deals.com/collections/year-long-childrens-ministry-curriculum-series/products/the-year-long-bible-hero-adventure-52-week-childrens-ministry-curriculum | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511220.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20231003192425-20231003222425-00003.warc.gz | en | 0.9718 | 6,544 | 3.390625 | 3 |
THE Indian and Pakistani constitutions provide equality for all, yet the rights of citizens from different religious groups in matters such as marriage, divorce, maintenance and succession, depend on religious identity. A Muslim man can practise polygamy but this is denied to men from other faiths. Muslim women in India are unable to claim substantive maintenance from their former husbands after divorce whereas women from other religions do. In Pakistan, it is more difficult for Hindu and Christian couples to divorce than Muslim couples.
Post Zia, there has been slow but steady progress on improving women’s rights in the domestic sphere through legislation, but this has left out women from religious minorities. Successive governments have either ignored the matter or attempted to appease members of the ruling male elite from religious minorities, who have wanted to hang on to patriarchal rules on religious pretexts. Hence, women from religious minorities face the patriarchal standards of their own religious leaders as well as exploitation from right-wing elements in the majority community.
In 2017, in a landmark judgement, then Lahore High Court Chief Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, observed that the Christian Divorce Act 1869 fell foul of the fundamental rights guaranteed to minorities under the Constitution. The law prescribed strict fault-based rules including proving adultery for Christian couples to obtain a divorce. The judge stated: “The limited grounds of divorce under the state divorce law when compared with the rights enjoyed by Christians in the world, amounts to discriminating against the Christian minority in Pakistan.” Perhaps one did not need to look outside the country — the law for Muslim couples in Pakistan to obtain a divorce has been amended a few times so that fault no longer remains relevant. Regrettably, the matter did not become a judicial precedent as the case was appealed and is pending adjudication.
Laws have left out women from religious minorities.
Hindus in Pakistan have fared no better. Until recently, there was no law providing for registration of Hindu marriages. Hence, the legal and social consequences of marriage were denied to Hindu families. Women were more often the victims and could not pursue claims to inheritance or maintenance for themselves or their children if they could not prove the marriage. According to the Pakistan Hindu Council, lack of official recognition of marriage also made it easy for miscreants to forcibly marry Hindu girls. Hindu marriage, divorce, remarriage and right to maintenance are now regulated by the Sindh Hindu Marriage Registration Act, 2016, and the Hindu Marriage Act, 2017. While the law was hailed as a positive step by most, for others it was too little too late. As with Christians, divorce could only be obtained on narrow fault-based grounds requiring evidence.
Not only do laws applicable to Hindu and Christian marriages make it difficult to divorce they also do not provide for interfaith marriages. If a spouse converts to another religion the marriage is considered void. Unsurprisingly, this has led to several Christian and Hindu women converting to Islam. Ironically, in 1939, the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act was the first statutory law providing the right to Muslim women in India to divorce their husbands. The intent of the law, as stated in its preamble, was to discourage married Muslim women from converting to other faiths to escape abusive marriages. Almost a century later, non-Muslim women in Pakistan face the same humiliation of having to choose between mistreatment and faith. Unlike the majority of women, they have to stand in court to satisfy a particular judge’s notion of cruelty or neglect.
India and Pakistan are often at loggerheads but have much in common in the treatment of their religious minorities. After an era of colonial domination, the founders of both countries firmly endorsed non-discrimination, but since then, the fundamental rights of an ‘under-class’ have been frequently abandoned for political expediency.
In 1986, the Congress rulers in India rushed in legislation to appease Muslim religious leaders who opposed the supreme court’s decision in the Shah Bano case to grant a paltry sum of spousal maintenance to an indigent Muslim woman. For the Congress government in 1986, the Muslim vote bank counted and Muslim religious leaders felt that a man had no obligation to provide even basic sustenance to his former wife of 30 years. In contrast, in 2017, the BJP government hailed the decision of the supreme court which outlawed an unregistered triple talaq for Muslim women. For them, the right-wing Hindu vote bank counted more. What does not count in both countries are the lives of millions of women from religious minorities who are already at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder; they will always remain the last colony.
The writer is a board member, AGHS Legal Aid Cell, an advocate of the high courts, Pakistan, and a solicitor of the senior courts of England and Wales.
Published in Dawn, December 6th, 2020 | <urn:uuid:13e5b550-780b-4b4b-826e-1739cf6693ae> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.dawn.com/news/1594265 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511220.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20231003192425-20231003222425-00003.warc.gz | en | 0.966768 | 977 | 2.984375 | 3 |
This is the news archive of Facts are Facts.
You can find our recent articles in the section Latest.
The idea that high cholesterol levels cause heart failure and disease may be one of the greatest myths of modern medicine, a new study has suggested. In fact high cholesterol levels may protect some people from a fatal heart attack.
And the widespread use of statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs, may have little or no benefit, the same study finds.
These conclusions are supported by a separate study, which criticises the new low levels of LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol being recommended by heart specialists. Researchers say that the drive to reduce LDL levels to just 70 milligrams/decilitre - the lowest-ever recommended levels for patients at highest risk - may be a wild goose chase, and that they would be better off by making lifestyle changes.
Researchers have discovered that patients with high levels of C reactive protein - which is generated during periods of acute inflammation such as with rheumatoid arthritis and lupus - are protected if they also have high cholesterol levels. Those who had low cholesterol levels were almost twice as likely to die from heart failure.
This discovery throws into question the use of statins, one of the most frequently subscribed drug groups in the world, as they may be putting at risk many people who are being protected by their high cholesterol levels.
Paradoxically, the only people who may benefit from statins are those who already have low LDL cholesterol levels.
Dr Andrew Clark, from Hull University and one of the research team members, said: "In contrast to what you might imagine, having a high level of cholesterol might be good for you."
In the same week, researchers from the University of Michigan have concluded that the new low levels for cholesterol have no scientific validity, but instead were perhaps arbitrary.
Rather than focusing on cholesterol levels, patients at risk should be advised to eat a healthier diet, and exercise more. | <urn:uuid:4cf0a61a-29fc-4d45-b38b-d8a634889c73> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.facts-are-facts.com/news/high-cholesterol-it-can-protect-against-heart-failure-not-cause-it-new-study-finds | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511220.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20231003192425-20231003222425-00003.warc.gz | en | 0.959052 | 404 | 2.703125 | 3 |
There are dog breeds that for white coat color can have blue eyes. If white coat dominate on the head, around the eyes or mouth, there is a chance that the dog will have blue eyes. Here are some dog breeds that on the white color of the coat can have blue eyes.
Unfortunately, but there are some cases where these dogs are born deaf or hearing impairments. The researchers found that white dogs who lack pigment in the head area, causing the lack of pigment cells in the ear. It must be remembered that blue eye color is a recessive gene, which has almost all dog breeds. Therefore, any breed of dog can be born with blue eyes in spite of its breed and coat color. Even if the puppy’s parents do not have blue eyes, a puppy can have it.
1. Wolf Hybrid
A Wolf Hybrid can be quite skittish and does not respond well to inanimate objects, fast motion, loud noises or new people. It requires much patience. Training is not for the weak and serious consideration should be given prior to obtaining a Wolf Hybrid, as it requires firm, consistent training and ample space to roam. If there’s something you find foul and offensive you can bet a wolfdog will roll happily in it and coat itself in the funk! It is not until a Wolf Hybrid is about 18 months of age that it will start showing signs of the wolf. Wolves younger than 18 months of age are adolescents; they are playful and adaptable. They take directions readily and can bond with other species. Young wolves act more like the common dog as they have not developed into maturity. As a wolf grows out of its adolescence, its hormonal system reaches maturity and it will begin to exhibit all of the typical behaviors of the wolf.
2. Alaskan Malamute
This great dog is similar to a timber wolf in both size and coloring. Most Alaskan malamutes weigh about 35 to 40 kilos (around 75 to 85 pounds), but some can get as large as 45 kilos (around 100 pounds).
Alaskan malamutes have a double coat, often part white and part sable or gray. Their eyes are brown and their tails are fluffy and usually carried up.
Like the other sled dogs, these dogs have some eye problems like retinal atrophy (PRA) and cataracts. Like a lot of other big dogs, they are prone to hip dysplasia.
Alaskan malamutes usually live about 11 years. They are well known for their ability to resist training, so make sure to take it to obedience classes and socialize it from a young age. Like Siberians, Alaskan malamutes have a lot of energy—too much for most people. While most people cannot run them on a sled, there are several alternative exercises available for them. They are strong, so they do well in bikejoring, skijoring, and weight-pulling.
Sledge dog breed is considered one of the oldest dog breeds. These dogs can be several colors, from black to white. Usually white are muzzle and belly. Eyes are blue, brown, amber color. The dogs may have different eyes – for example one blue and one brown. At present, very popular with dogs Sky-blue eyes. This is a very strong dogs that can survive in extreme cold. In terms of the character of these dogs can distinguish three features – a energetic, playful and friendly dog. These dogs love human company and do not like to be alone. They are not suitable for protection. Huskies rarely bark, but sometimes screaming just for fun. For these dogs require strenuous physical exercise, about 80-100 minutes. However, these dogs are prone to escape, so better to let go of their fenced area.
The Difference Between an Albino Dog and a White Dog
All-white dogs have genetic markers by virtue of which the white pigment masks, or suppresses, all other colors. Albinism, on the other hand, is caused by the absence of both melanin and the enzymes that produce it. That said, some dogs exhibit characteristics of albinism without being true albinos. Let’s explore the distinctions, as plainly and legibly as possible, and see what makes an albino dog an albino.
Albinism is rare in all animals, including dogs, and many people easily confuse white-coated dogs, or dogs that exhibit forms of albinism, for albinos. True albinism is a genetic condition in which pigmentation of eyes, coat, and skin is completely absent.
An important distinction to draw between dogs with white coats and albino dogs is that white-coated dogs produce the color white, while albinos only appear white due to lack of pigmentation. | <urn:uuid:9ace90ed-f518-49d3-9bd6-cfc4f26b82ff> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://luvmydogs.com/i-want-a-white-dog-with-blue-eyes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511424.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20231004220037-20231005010037-00803.warc.gz | en | 0.961187 | 998 | 2.890625 | 3 |
The new data, reported in JAMA, comes after Canadian researchers compared the effects of different vitamin D supplementation dosages in breastfed infants, finding that nothing but a super high (and potentially unsafe) dose of 1,6000 raised and maintained blood plasma concentrations - plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) - within the range recommended by many international experts and paediatric societies.
However, the research team - led by Professor Hope Weiler of McGill University, Canada - found that all dosages raised and maintained plasma concentrations within a lower range recommended by the United States Institute of Medicine (IOM).
"Our primary objective was to establish a vitamin D dosage that would support a plasma concentration of 25(OH)D of 75 nmol/L or greater in 97.5% of infants at 3 months of age," explained Weiler and her team.
Weiler explained that when it comes to vitamin D, there is "sometimes a feeling that more is better."
"But until now, no one had compared the popularly recommended daily doses of vitamin D to see what will result in optimal health for infants," she said. "We were very glad to be able to do this."
"All dosages failed except the highest dosage, which appears to be too high," Weiler and colleagues confirmed - noting that the only the 1,600-IU/d dosage of vitamin D met their criteria of raising plasma 25(OH)D to above 75nmol/L in more than 97,5% of the infants.
"This dosage was discontinued because most infants in that group developed elevated plasma 25(OH)D concentrations that have been associated with hypercalcemia," they said.
"Vitamin D is important during periods of rapid bone mineral accrual," said the research team. "Nursing infants are susceptible to vitamin D deficiency because vitamin D in breast milk is limited."
Despite this, there is still a debate on the where the optimal target level for vitamin D should be. Indeed, an accompanying editorial by Dr Steven Abrams, of the Baylor College of Medicine, USA, suggests that the question of what the plasma 25(OH)D concentration target should be 'remains unanswered.'
"If the target is 75 nmol/L or higher, then vitamin D intake of 400 IU/d is not enough for a substantial proportion of infants," he commented.
"However, another question that needs to be answered is whether there are non-bone health reasons to target a plasma 25(OH)D concentration greater than 75 nmol/L."
The expert added that pending such information, people should be reassure that the study confirms that a daily vitamin D intake of 400 IU/d in infants, as currently recommended, "leads to adequate plasma 25(OH)D concentration for identified physiological functioning related to bone health." | <urn:uuid:5575bbc5-6417-466b-b3c2-c69e695e47c2> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.nutraingredients.com/Article/2013/05/13/Researchers-question-the-optimal-vitamin-D-dose-for-infants | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511424.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20231004220037-20231005010037-00803.warc.gz | en | 0.946185 | 588 | 2.921875 | 3 |
If we believe that all individuals are different and therefore that diversity does that every human being has something valuable, because each one feels, thinks and acts differently, but that even so, equal opportunities, not in the sense of homogeneity (in education) should be since by placing students by age are believed to have the same capacity, so it works with the same curriculum, methodology and at a same pace, this is to transmit knowledge and in no way there will be a learning, it is form similar individuals that respond to the same patterns of behavior, with the same knowledge and ways of thinking. The theory of multiple intelligences of Gardner, mentions the following: Gardner defines intelligence as the set of capabilities that enable us to solve problems or make valuable products in our culture. Gardner defines 8 major types of intelligences, or capabilities according to the context of production (linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, the intelligence body kinesthetic, musical intelligence, spatial intelligence, naturalist intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and intrapersonal intelligence). 1 This author is based on the idea that not all learn in the same way, because we develop the eight intelligences, but each of them in different grade. Speaking of equality and attention to diversity, believe in the tenets of article 3.
Constitutional and of the article 41 of the General Education Act, but will provide each student with what you need be equal?, undoubtedly you will need to define, since how Jose Contreras mentions it in your theme educate the eye and the ear: it is as well that the diversity is the collective of which do not fit for some reason, of ethnic minorities, those who have difficulties or delays in learning, the conflict in the classroom, of those who belong to social sectors disadvantaged, the disabled. 2 By which teachers we have the ability to understand, accept and resolve, this perhaps does not solve problems, but if allows us to deal with them in a more humane manner. Likewise, we must not allow that equality be confused with uniformity; because the individual is to be able to face the problems submitted to it and solve them with criteria and analysis, required a training school, a diversified, flexible and comprehensive school where work with a methodology consistent with the rhythms and styles of learning, so that the child acquires the capacity to build with the Guide and orientation of the teacher and in this way will be a school for everyone. The school must have a relationship closely with environment and East toward the school, and teachers work in a collegial manner, because individualism closes the possibility of receiving and giving support, greatly hindering the Organization of the institution and the academic performance of the student. By: B. Maribel Baez Echeverria June 2010 1 Jose Contreras. Educating the eye and ear. | <urn:uuid:4a7212ff-fcd5-48a6-8874-23162936fd4b> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.umdsg.org/general-education-act/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511424.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20231004220037-20231005010037-00803.warc.gz | en | 0.953659 | 567 | 3.59375 | 4 |
South Africa can’t crack the inequality curse. Why, and what can be done
- Imraan Valodia
Efforts have been made to change the patterns of inequality in South Africa. But not enough has been done. Race-based inequality is still a real problem.
South Africa is ranked one of the most unequal societies in the world. The Conversation Africa spoke to Imraan Valodia, a professor of economics and dean of the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management at the University of the Witwatersrand, about inequality in South Africa.
Has income inequality got worse in the last 20 years?
According to the most recent data, South Africa has the highest income inequality in the world, with a Gini coefficient of around 0.67. The Gini coefficient is a widely used statistical measure of how income is distributed in the population of a country. It takes a value between 0 and 1. A coefficient of 1 indicates perfect inequality – where one individual in a country would earn all the income in that country. Conversely, a coefficient of 0 is an indicator of perfect equality, where the income of the country is distributed perfectly equally among all its citizens.
South Africa’s Gini is exceptionally high. A number of other African countries have high Ginis too. For example, Namibia’s is 0.59, Zambia’s 0.57 and Mozambique’s 0.54.
Countries in Europe, especially Scandinavian countries, have much lower Ginis. They range between 0.24 and 0.27. Among the developed countries, the US has a high level of inequality with a Gini of 0.41.
China’s is 0.38 and India’s is 0.35. Russia’s is similarly relatively low at 0.37. Brazil, like South Africa, has a much higher level of inequality at 0.53.
In South Africa, the evidence suggests that income inequality has risen in the post-apartheid period, though it has fluctuated.
What is clear is that levels of inequality are not decreasing.
What’s driving the trend?
There are a number of drivers.
First, the fact that large numbers of South Africans are unemployed and report no or very low incomes. According to the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey, the rate of unemployment in South Africa, in June 2023, was estimated to be 32.6%. But this doesn’t include people who have given up trying to find work. (The internationally accepted definition of unemployment requires people who are classified as unemployed to be searching for work.) If we include these discouraged workers, the unemployment rate increases to 44.1%.
There are about 40.7 million people in South Africa between the ages of 15 and 64 – this is the group that could potentially work. Those who are not able to work, because they’re at school, or ill, or for some other reason, are estimated to number 13.2 million. That leaves 27.5 million people. Of these, only 16.4 million are working.
Of the 16.4 million, only 11.3 million are employed in the formal sector, where income tends to be higher.
These figures make it clear that the economy is just not able to generate sufficient numbers of employment opportunities.
The second driver is that, among those who are employed, many earn very low wages. Of those who do have work, about 3 million people subsist in the informal economy, where incomes are very low. Another 900,000 people work in agriculture and about 1 million as domestic workers, where incomes are very low.
Even in the formal sector, wages, especially for non-unionised workers, tend to be extremely low.
And third, the incomes at the top end of the income distribution are very high. It’s more difficult to provide reliable statistics on this, because incomes for rich households tend to come from a variety of sources. One way to get a sense of this is to look at household expenditure – a good proxy for incomes. Unfortunately, South Africa’s income and expenditure survey is now quite dated. But what’s available shows that the richest 10% of South African households are responsible for some 52% of all expenditure. The poorest 10% of households contribute only 0.8% of all expenditure.
Is South Africa an outlier?
Yes. However, there are probably many countries that have higher levels of inequality – we just don’t have the data for them. So, while people often say South Africa has the highest Gini in the world, it would be more accurate to say that South Africa has the highest Gini among countries that have data on income inequality.
South Africa’s data is generally very good, reliable and independent.
What steps have been taken? Why didn’t they work?
The major intervention in post-apartheid South Africa was to address inequality in terms of race. This is, of course, extremely important. Among other steps, government introduced the Employment Equity Act to address race-based discrimination in employment, and various measures to address ownership by race. There is controversy about some of the measures. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that they have been very successful in changing the patterns of inequality in South Africa.
However, not enough has been done – race-based inequality is still a real problem. In general, high income South African households, irrespective of race, have done well over the last three decades, which is why inequality has remained stubbornly high.
What steps should be taken now?
I don’t think there is any one policy that would address the issue. Some focus on the labour market and argue that employment is not growing because of labour protections. But I think this is incorrect and does not deal with the nuance of the country’s political and economic situation.
I think we should rather be thinking about how to direct the benefits of economic growth and redistribution policies to benefit those at the bottom end. This could involve, for example, raising incomes at the bottom, creating new opportunities and employment for those who don’t have them, and ensuring that the benefits of growth do not disproportionately benefit those at the top end of the income distribution.
What is the difference between income inequality and wealth inequality?
Income inequality measures only a portion of the real inequality in South Africa. Measuring inequality in wealth gives a more complete picture of how unequal a society is. Income is only one factor that determines wealth. Wealth also includes inheritance, earnings from assets and so on.
The broad picture is that in South Africa wealth inequality is much worse than income inequality. Some striking statistics are that the top 0.01% of people – just 3,500 individuals – own about 15% of all of the wealth in South Africa. The top 0.1% own 25% of the wealth. The net wealth of the top 1% is R17.8 million (about US$944,000). In contrast, the bottom 50% have a negative wealth position (they have more liabilities than they do assets) of R16,000 (around US$850).
This article is part of a media partnership between Wits University’s Southern Centre for Inequality Studies and The Conversation Africa for the Annual Inequality Lecture which will be given by Professor Branko Milanovic, titled “Recent changes in the global income distribution and their political implications”. You can register for the event here. | <urn:uuid:bd81fb3f-79f0-4acd-b5dc-7b6d760898a4> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/opinion/2023/2023-09/south-africa-cant-crack-the-inequality-curse-why-and-what-can-be-done.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511424.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20231004220037-20231005010037-00803.warc.gz | en | 0.962262 | 1,548 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Definition of active voice
English verbs have two voices: active voice and passive voice. It is important to know the difference between active and passive voice. In active voice, the person acting is clear: “The manager wrote the report yesterday.” The person acting is the manager.
In passive voice, the person acting isn’t specified: “The report was written yesterday.” It could have been written by the secretary, the manager, or Albert Einstein—we don’t know.
The sentence is still in passive voice if the actor is specified later in the sentence: “The report was written yesterday by the manager.”
Why use active voice?
Passive voice makes the writing unclear by keeping the identity of the actor secret. At times the identity is obvious, but often it isn’t. Even if the reader has an idea of who the actor is, passive voice creates weak sentences that don’t communicate immediately and emphatically.
This report is made up entirely of passive voice sentences:
The pipeline was inspected and was found to have cracks at three joints. The decision was made to replace the three joints and a contractor was engaged. After the work was completed, the leaks stopped.
Change the passive voice sentences to active voice unless you have a good reason to use passive voice:
The foreman inspected the pipeline and discovered cracks at three joints. The plant maintenance manager decided to replace the three joints and had the contracting department engage a contractor. After the contractor completed the work, the leaks stopped.
Now the reader knows who discovered the cracks, who decided to replace them, who engaged the contractor, and who did the work. When issues come up about the pipeline and what happened, the reader won’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to discover who was involved.
Two special cases for active voice
Two ways of writing sentences are active, even though they may look like the text contains no actor:
1. Sentences with “you understood.”
This sentence doesn’t look like it has an actor, but the actor is “you understood,” meaning we know that the subject is “you,” even though we don’t use “you” in the sentence. This is an example:
Call the client about meeting on Thursday.
The “you” isn’t in that sentence, but we know it means “You call the client about the meeting on Thursday.” That is called “you understood,” meaning we understand the actor is “you.” As a result, it is in active voice.
2. Sentences with one subject and two verbs joned by “and.”The second way of writing an active sentence that may look like the sentence has no actor is when the sentence has two verbs with one subject. This is an example:
Brian met with the managers and told them about the merger.
“Brian” is the actor. The first part of the sentence is obviously active: “Brian met.” However, the second part is also active: “told them about the merger.” The reason is that Brian is still the actor. It is as though the sentence were, “Brian met with the managers and Brian told them about the merger.” In our language, we just drop the second “Brian.” We know it’s the same actor.
This sentence is also in active voice because “you understood” applies to both the first action and second action:
Call the client about the meeting on Thursday and ask whether the time will work for her.
The actor is “you understood.” The sentence could be rewritten “You call the client about the meeting on Thursday and you ask whether the time will work for her.”
One special case that is passive voice
A sentence is considered in passive voice if the actor follows the verb:
The managers were told about the merger by Brian.
That sentence is in passive voice. It is weak and not as clear as an active-voice sentence. This is the same sentence in active voice:
Brian told the managers about the merger.
Use passive voice sparingly
Business writers should use the passive voice very sparingly. Use passive voice only when you do not know the actor, you want to hide the identity of the actor, or the actor is not important to the meaning of the sentence.
Changing passive voice to active voice
To change passive voice to active, identify the performer of the action. If the performer is in a “by the” phrase, simply move the performer to the subject position, just before the verb. If the writer did not name a performer, choose a subject that fits the context. “The test results will be announced next week” easily becomes “We will announce the test results next week” or “The researchers will announce the test results next week.”
Avoid mixing active and passive voice in the same sentence. The first half of this sentence is active, but the second half is passive: “We found the lost contract, and the client was notified immediately.” Instead, use active voice throughout: “We found the lost contract and notified the client immediately.”
Business writers should prefer active voice for most documents. Active voice is more direct and concise than passive voice. Passive voice is often awkward and evasive. Readers may interpret passive voice as an attempt to avoid admitting responsibility, as in the following example:
“A mistake was made that resulted in an overcharge to your account that has now been corrected and will be shown on your next statement.”
Active voice sounds more responsible: “Our data entry clerk made a mistake and overcharged your account, but she corrected the entry. Your next statement will show the correction.”
Use active voice at all times unless you have a good reason to use passive.
Practice changing passive voice to active voice
Change the passive-voice constructions in these sentence to to active voice. Look for the actor in each sentence. The sentence must contain the actor, positioned before the verb.
Write your answer in the boxes below the sentences before comparing your sentences with the samples. When you are finished, close this window to return to your assignments page.
Good business writing is a skill you or your staff can learn.
Learn by writing actual documents.
Receive detailed instructor feedback.
Courses customized to your skill level.
Basic Grammar and Writing Skills for Business
A single course that has both a review of English grammar and training in writing clear, quality business writing.
Basic Grammar for Business
This basic grammar course includes a thorough review of the important business English usage rules with pre- and post-testing to let you see how much basic grammar you are learning.
Business Writing Skills
You will learn all the best practices for writing any business document so it is clear and easy to understand. | <urn:uuid:876f7d30-8a93-41f6-bf93-85cf2bdc57e6> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://businesswriting.com/active-voice-and-passive-voice/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506028.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20230921141907-20230921171907-00203.warc.gz | en | 0.96969 | 1,494 | 4.15625 | 4 |
On March 25, 2022, the Sierra Leone National Implementation Team discovered a new seagrass location on Seh Island within the Turtle Islands. This marks the third seagrass discovery in Sierra Leone since 2019.
Healthy West African seagrass ecosystems can help sustain coastal livelihoods and slow down climate change globally
New groundbreaking work by GRID-Arendal and its partners shows why seagrass is vital for conserving West African biodiversity and protecting its coastline.
After four years of scientific research, data collection, monitoring, capacity building, raising awareness, informing, sensitizing, and advocacy work, the ResilienSEA project team is publishing the first seagrass Atlas in West Africa. This work was only made possible through the contribution and collaboration of the MAVA Foundation, Wetlands International, the Network of Marine Protected Areas in West Africa (RAMPAO), and the national implementation teams in all seven countries (Mauritania, Cape Verde, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, and Sierra Leone).
“We have managed to develop strong local capacity among managers, students, and researchers in the region, and they are now ready to scale up the work and ensure policy changes are enforced to better conserve these underwater treasures,” says Iderlindo Santos, ResilienSEA regional coordinator.
Through strong engagement with local communities, the project has sensitized them to the value of protecting this crucial ecosystem for their livelihood, both in terms of food security and protection against climate-induced sea level rise and storm surges.
“When we started this project in 2018, Mauritania, Cape Verde, and Senegal were the only countries in the region to have documented some of their seagrass meadows´ distribution. Four years on, all seven countries have discovered, identified, mapped, and monitored seagrass ecosystems in their pilot sites, adds Marco Vinaccia, Climate Change Expert at GRID-Arendal.
Marco Vinaccia during a visit to the women´s mariculture association in Joal Fadiouth, Senegal, in March 2019. Credit: Robert Barnes.
A new global framework for managing nature sustainably, the Global Biodiversity framework, is under process, but the UN calls for all countries to protect at least 30 percent of land and sea by 2030. Ecologically or Biologically Significant Areas (EBSAs) like the seagrass meadows identified in the seven pilot sites need a strong political and financial commitment for their protection.
Putting West Africa on the global seagrass map
“Now the hope is that decision-makers in the region will act on the policy briefs and recommendations the project has developed, by creating new MPAs, including seagrass conservation into existing MPAs´ management plans, and agreeing to a regional seagrass protocol to protect seagrass meadows across West Africa”, explains Marie-Suzanne Traoré, RAMPAO Secretary General.
This Atlas tells the ResilienSEA story and shows how much progress has been made since 2018 in each country; the new meadows discovered, the successes and challenges that the project had along the way, and how local capacity has been developed to a point where local experts can work autonomously.
“We are putting West Africa on the global seagrass map, showing the world´s researchers the potential for further work in the region in the coming months and years. This product is a starting point, and with more data and information, we can better protect these vulnerable ecosystems”, concludes Marco Vinaccia, who is presenting the Atlas on behalf of the project at the exclusive pre-launch during the World Seagrass Conference in Annapolis, Maryland, from 7-12 August 2022.
The Atlas´ editor-in-chief, Olivia Polkinghorne, led the process from start to finish over the past months. The Atlas will be available for download in September 2022. | <urn:uuid:cdeeb7eb-faff-4592-84bb-ea116898a859> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://resiliensea.org/2022/08/12/seagrass-meadows-allies-in-tackling-climate-crisis/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506028.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20230921141907-20230921171907-00203.warc.gz | en | 0.905538 | 827 | 3.21875 | 3 |
Portuguese belongs to the group of Romance languages. It is the official language of seven countries across the world: Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe. It is the co-official language in East Timor, Macau, and Equatorial Guinea. The language is also spoken in regions where Portuguese colonisation had taken place at some point. Notable among these are Goa, Diu, and Daman in India, Malacca in Malaysia, Flores in Indonesia, and Batticaloa in Sri Lanka. Some schools in South American and African countries are offering Portuguese as part of their curriculum. An estimated 220 million people speak Portuguese worldwide.
The language has undergone changes over time, depending on the region it is spoken in. Thus, there are grammatical differences between the Portuguese spoken in Portugal and Europe and that spoken in Brazil. Most dialects of Portuguese have different vocabulary and accents as well. The dialects spoken in Africa, Asia, and parts of America are Portuguese-based creoles that have the language as the base but are amalgamated with the local vocabulary, syntax, and grammar to form a new dialect altogether.
Portuguese has its roots in Latin. It came to the Iberian Peninsula through settlers from Rome in 218 BC. At the time, Latin was the official language for administrative and official written work but was not spoken by citizens. The language spoken by the common man was termed lingua vulgar (‘ordinary language’) till 1290 when King Dinis gave it official status and called it Portuguese.
Portuguese has 26 letters in the alphabet, much like its Latin parent. It has 14 vowel sounds denoted by accents. For a few decades from the 1940s, the letters k, y, and w were not included in the alphabet as they were considered foreign. However, in 2009 they were re-introduced in the language. Portuguese too has lent itself to other languages. Diverse languages such as Hindi, Swahili, Tamil, Konkani, Sinhalese, and Japanese, for example, also have words with roots in Portuguese because these regions were colonised by Portuguese rulers in history.
In 1916, rules regarding spellings were re-framed in Portugal and it was decreed that they would be spelt the way they were pronounced. Similar rules were framed in Brazil too in 1943 which were changed somewhat in 1970. In 2009, plans were made in Brazil to unify all Portuguese-speaking nations by creating a common code for written Portuguese; the plan is still under development. | <urn:uuid:fd20b815-1a7d-4637-8a01-a5ad43121a4b> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.freetranslations.org/portuguese-to-english-translation.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506028.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20230921141907-20230921171907-00203.warc.gz | en | 0.982346 | 541 | 3.53125 | 4 |
begin quote from above site:
Jump to: navigation, search
Bacon's cipher or the Baconian cipher is a method of steganography (a method of hiding a secret message as opposed to a true cipher) devised by Francis Bacon. A message is concealed in the presentation of text, rather than its content.
To encode a message, each letter of the plaintext is replaced by a group of five of the letters 'A' or 'B'. This replacement is done according to the alphabet of the Baconian cipher, shown below.
a AAAAA g AABBA n ABBAA t BAABA
b AAAAB h AABBB o ABBAB u-v BAABB
c AAABA i-j ABAAA p ABBBA w BABAA
d AAABB k ABAAB q ABBBB x BABAB
e AABAA l ABABA r BAAAA y BABBA
f AABAB m ABABB s BAAAB z BABBB
Note: A second version of Bacon's cipher uses a unique code for each letter. In other words, Is and Js each have their own pattern.
The writer must make use of two different typefaces for this cipher. After preparing a false message with the same number of letters as all of the As and Bs in the real, secret message, two typefaces are chosen, one to represent As and the other Bs. Then each letter of the false message must be presented in the appropriate typeface, according to whether it stands for an A or a B.
To decode the message, the reverse method is applied. Each "typeface 1" letter in the false message is replaced with an A and each "typeface 2" letter is replaced with a B. The Baconian alphabet is then used to recover the original message.
Any method of writing the message that allows two distinct representations for each character can be used for the Bacon Cipher. Bacon himself prepared a Biliteral Alphabet for handwritten capital and small letters with each having two alternative forms, one to be used as A and the other as B. This was published as an illustrated plate in his De Augmentis Scientiarum (The Advancement of Learning).
Because any message of the right length can be used to carry the encoding, the secret message is effectively hidden in plain sight. The false message can be on any topic and thus can distract a person seeking to find the real message.
If you are a little confused by what is being said here you are not alone. After reading this I like many of you feel, it is a little out of my expertise. However, it should be known that Francis Bacon, Prince Ragoczy and the Comte De Saint Germain were all experts in this field and so their knowledge was priceless in delivering coded messages between aristocrats and royalty throughout Europe during those times and possibly on into the present.
Top 10 Posts This Month
- reprint of: Drones very small to large
- most read articles from KYIV Post
- The ultra-lethal drones of the future | New York Post 2014 article
- Plant-Based Filter Removes Up to 99.9% of Microplastics from Water
- 158,008 visits to intuitivefred888
- A Longer History of the Internet
- Cancer rates 1900 to 2000 and beyond
- How He lives without money
- Autobiographical Essays on My Life
- Here's a repeat of the articles about Iguanas falling out of trees because they are frozen and cold blooded in Florida | <urn:uuid:07e18cf4-713c-42fe-9338-92f2ae54e493> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://intuitivefred888.blogspot.com/2009/10/sir-francis-bacons-cipher.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506423.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922202444-20230922232444-00103.warc.gz | en | 0.904877 | 762 | 4.09375 | 4 |
UK England Primary National Curriculum
The national curriculum provides pupils with an introduction to the essential knowledge that they need to be educated citizens. It introduces pupils to the best that has been thought and said; and helps engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement. The national curriculum provides an outline of core knowledge around which teachers can develop exciting and stimulating lessons to promote the development of pupils’ knowledge, understanding and skills as part of the wider school curriculum.
Note: National Curriculum content shared on this website is under the terms of the Open Government Licence. To view this licence, visit http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/. You can download the full document at http://www.gov.uk/dfe/nationalcurriculum | <urn:uuid:ae1edeb2-b7bd-4282-ab44-584e893cb186> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://printablekidsworksheets.com/curriculum/uk | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506423.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922202444-20230922232444-00103.warc.gz | en | 0.918813 | 163 | 4.40625 | 4 |
STOMACH AND DIGESTION
Digestive disorders can cause serious disruption to your daily life. Moreover, they can influence all aspects of your health – from sexual performance to physical appearance.
Chinese medicine views digestive disorders to be a result of imbalances. That is, imbalances within the Stomach and Spleen areas. It sees these areas as the vital elements of your digestive system. They absorb and transform the food and drink. Crucially, they transform it into blood and essential energy. Known as the Blood, the resultant substance works to nourish your body. In addition to powering your digestive system, it supports all the bodily functions. | <urn:uuid:67bed907-0da0-4d97-9cbf-699f9b5a88ad> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.shulan-acupuncture.com/about-3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506423.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922202444-20230922232444-00103.warc.gz | en | 0.925537 | 135 | 2.609375 | 3 |
days at sea
PINGING IN THE NEW YEAR:MAPPING THE TASMAN AND CORAL SEAS
12/28/2020 – 01/26/2021
Chief Scientist: Dr. Robin Beaman
Co-Chief Scientist: Dr. Helen Bostock
James Cook University, University of Queensland, The University of Sydney, University of Wollongong, Geoscience Australia, CSIRO, Parks Australia, The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, Birdlife Australia
Map, explore, and characterize new seamounts in the Coral and Tasman seas
Improve understanding of plateau and seamount geomorphology
Build and inventory of the number of seabirds, species present, and their observed behavior
R/V Falkor ended 2020 and began 2021 on a month-long investigation in the Tasman and Coral seas to conduct uninterrupted, broad-scale seafloor mapping, and to observe the concentration of seabirds in the area. Additionally, new protocols were tested for sampling marine microplastics in seawater. The mapping efforts concentrated on a large, previously unmapped survey area over the Chesterfield Plateau and along the chain of Tasmantid Seamounts within the northern Tasman Sea. A magnetometer was also towed during select, long transects to provide further insight into the geological formation of the northern Tasman Sea basin and the adjacent Chesterfield Plateau. At-sea seabird observation data were collected using standard protocols to establish baselines in the region. The goal of the seabird study was to better understand species distribution over space and time, which is often influenced by seafloor features and ocean productivity.
An improved understanding of plateau and seamount geomorphology relative to the basin’s tectonic setting resulted, which is important for understanding the evolution of the ocean basins.
Extensive mapping revealed the detailed complexity of large, individual seamounts, such as the presence of underwater landslides and steep canyon features, and also revealed smaller, finer-scale volcanic features, such as parasitic cones. The new seafloor data enabled scientists to gain a better understanding of the spatial relationship between large-scale seafloor features in the Coral and Tasman seas. The data will also improve volcanic rock analysis, helping to explain the volume of magma produced at the time these seafloor features originated, which is crucial for better understanding the geological changes that have occurred on Earth. The finer-scale volcanic cones mapped around Cato Reef provide evidence for the extent of volcanic activity during the formation of the seamount.
The detailed multibeam bathymetry and backscatter maps were collected in an ecologically important part of Australia’s marine estate. Results from the expedition will help marine managers at Parks Australia identify areas of important conservation value and establish baseline knowledge of the area’s geology, geomorphology, and biodiversity. The data will help inform decisions on managing human influences in these deep ecosystems, such as commercial fishing activities.
R/V Falkor collected the first multibeam data ping of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, which began on January 1, 2021.
R/V Falkor was the first ship to fly the Seabed 2030 initiative flag while collecting seafloor mapping data.
Mapping data revealed a complex seafloor – submarine landslides, gravity slumps, channels and broad valleys, sand waves, scour marks, volcanic pinnacles, and pock marks.
More than 15,000 seabirds were observed during the voyage from more than 20 different species. | <urn:uuid:ebc740b7-b453-4a55-85b5-09331346f9a7> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://2021annualreport.schmidtocean.org/pinging-new-year/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506559.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20230924023050-20230924053050-00003.warc.gz | en | 0.915928 | 776 | 2.875 | 3 |
The military lifestyle offers both positive and negative aspects for those who select this career path. When I think of military mentors who have been influential in my life, I mostly think of their sacrifice, braveness, and leadership abilities.
However, you don’t have to look far to discover their many sacrifices. Families are required to relocate frequently, making it difficult to feel like they are a part of the community. Obligations result in a family member being away for months at a time, missing important holidays, milestones, and celebrations. The veteran lives with the thought process that “the mission must always come first.” Sometimes, the family member’s social significance is determined by his or her rank. Additionally, the veteran’s rigidity from the military lifestyle spills over into their family life. These authoritarian leadership characteristics do not always merge well with family dynamics.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is the most common mental disorder among veterans returning from military combat. PTSD results in increased stress and anxiety following exposure to a traumatic or stressful event. A person reacts to an experience with fear and helplessness. They struggle with flashbacks, where they repeatedly replay the events – sometimes experiencing night terrors, which interfere with quality sleep, complicating the diagnosis even more.
PTSD is most prevalent in young adults. The disorder is most likely to occur in those who are single, divorced, widowed, socially withdrawn, or from a low socioeconomic background, but no one is completely immune from this diagnosis. The most important risk factors are the severity, duration, and proximity of a person’s exposure to the trauma. According to the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS), 30 percent of veterans develop full-blown PTSD after having served in war and 22.5 percent develop partial PTSD. About 13.5 percent of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were diagnosed with PTSD.
Mental health consequences of war extend beyond the veterans. PTSD impacts the mental health of their significant others and their relationships. Psychiatric studies indicate that PTSD and depression are associated with partner-reported relationship dysfunction, dissatisfaction, and communication issues. Major approaches in treatment for these veterans include support, encouragement to discuss the event, and education about a variety of coping mechanisms.
As we reflect on consequences of the battlefield, I can’t help but think of the “shield of faith.” The shield is the most important protective covering used when preventing injury from physical harm from direct contact weapons or projectiles during combat. As a spouse, what can we do if we find ourselves in this dilemma with our loved one? You must not lose your footing! You must prepare by studying and learning. You must have a vision to survive.
Spouses of service members affected by PTSD are fighting their own battles. I meet as frequently with spouses who are dealing with these indirect traumatic events as frequent as I do veterans facing their own demons. Once PTSD enters the relationship, only about 3 out of 10 marriages will survive long-term.
Early intervention for treatment for the family is crucial. After safety considerations have been addressed, there are a variety of psychological modalities that can be initiated. Cognitive-behavioral approaches are the most researched techniques demonstrating efficacy. This may be best accomplished with individual treatment, as well as family intervention.
Many veterans sustain injuries while they are in combat. Some have obvious amputations, many with scars or physical disfigurements, and others with inward injuries. It’s our obligation as Americans to intercede where needed. This includes assisting the family of a veteran struggling with PTSD.
Dr. Sheri Biggs, a graduate of Samford University, has her Doctorate in advanced nursing practice and is certified in Psychiatric Mental Health and Family Practice. She is an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel / Flight Nurse and is at Joint Force Headquarters where she serves in the position of Deputy A-3, Operations for the MS Air National Guard. She provides mental health services to veterans in the long-term care setting and works closely with a nonprofit organization, WLS. Her focus with WhenLifeSucks.org is to meet the mental health needs of veterans of all ages, with special emphasis on suicide prevention. | <urn:uuid:fc10a272-1f0e-4d77-9594-1d2d7549d0e9> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://readelysian.com/ptsd-impact-spouse-family/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506559.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20230924023050-20230924053050-00003.warc.gz | en | 0.963211 | 855 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Inexplicable Moon Anomalies Show There is Much Deception About Outer Space
Moon anomalies are nothing new –
there are many people, including mainstream Western scientists, who have pointed out numerous highly strange and irregular things about the moon. A few years ago David Icke brought the book Who Built The Moon? by Chris Knight and Alan Butler to attention, and concluded that the moon is an unnatural object that has been placed there for some reason – possibly as a broadcasting station. Icke further linked the moon to Saturn, and theorized that the “Matrix” in which we live is actually a program originally broadcast by Saturn and amplified by the moon. He called it the Saturn-Moon-Matrix. Now, with consumer technology rapidly advancing all the time, there are many people pointing their video cameras up at the night sky … with incredible results. More confirmation that all is not as it seems in outer space is the most visually fascinating of the latest moon anomalies: the lunar wave.
The Lunar Wave, as Caught on Film by Crrow777
A man going by the name of Crrow777 has filmed some astonishing footage of the moon (see embedded video above). He caught something which he dubbed the “lunar wave” going across the surface of the moon, from bottom to top as it appeared on his camera. This lunar wave has the appearance of a line that moves across a computer screen during a reset. It looks digital, electronic or holographic. Yet, how could that possibly be true if the moon were just a natural satellite of Earth, made from rock?
Of course, many skeptics and naysayers have criticized his findings and claimed the lunar wave must be a result of his recording equipment, and not local to the moon itself. However, as Crrow shows in the video, by adjusting various layers, colors and lighting, you can see that the wave actually occurred on or above the moon’s surface, and has nothing to do with his camera. The implications are staggering. I conclude from this that the lunar wave is showing us at least 2 possibilities (and maybe more):
– the moon’s true surface is being cloaked by some kind of advanced holographic technology, to hide things below, probably bases, structures and evidence of extraterrestrial life on the lunar surface; or
– the moon itself is holographic. It has no solid physical existence, but is rather a projection of light, a hologram made to look 3-dimensional.
Lunar Wave Follows Many Other Observed and Proven Moon Anomalies
The exciting discovery of the lunar wave comes on the heels of many other bizarre moon anomalies. Here is a brief list of some of the more prominent moon anomalies which have been discovered:
– Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote in his 1966 book Intelligent Life in the Universe that “a natural satellite cannot be hollow”, yet evidence indicates the moon is hollow. There are reports that it rung like a bell when hit with objects. In the Zulu tradition, shaman Credo Mutwa said that his people thought of the Moon as an egg without its yolk (i.e. hollow). The website BibliotecaPleyades has an article from Ronald Regehr which states:
“The moon’s mean density is 3.34 gm/cm3 (3.34 times an equal volume of water) whereas the Earth’s is 5.5. What does this mean?
In 1962, NASA scientist Dr. Gordon MacDonald stated, “If the astronomical data are reduced, it is found that the data require that the interior of the moon is more like a hollow than a homogeneous sphere.” Nobel chemist Dr. Harold Urey suggested the moon’s reduced density is because of large areas inside the moon where is “simply a cavity.” MIT’s Dr. Sean C. Solomon wrote, “the Lunar Orbiter experiments vastly improved our knowledge of the moon’s gravitational field… indicating the frightening possibility that the moon might be hollow.””
– Considering the Earth’s size and magnetic field, it is quite unlikely to have a satellite at all, but if it were to have one, we could expect it to be something in the vicinity of 30 miles round. For instance, Mars’ 2 moons, Phobos and Deimos, have diameters of 13 and 4 miles respectively. Yet, the Moon’s diameter is around 2160 miles – bigger than Pluto – and more than 1/4 of the Earth’s diameter!;
– The Moon’s diameter is 400 times smaller than that of the Sun, and is 400 times closer to the Earth than the Sun – meaning the Moon neatly and exactly blocks out the Sun during a solar eclipse! What are the chances of this? The Moon blocks the Sun’s disk so precisely during a solar eclipse that the Sun’s corona can be studied, without which much of Einstein’s work would not have been confirmed. Isaac Asimov described this as being “the most unlikely of coincidences”;
– A one second arc of the Moon’s rotation is exactly equal to 100 megalithic yards. Coincidence?;
– In his book Alien Agenda, Jim Marrs quotes this interesting idea from science writer William Roy Sheldon:
“It is important to remember that something had to put the moon at or near its present circular pattern around the earth. Just as an Apollo spacecraft circling the Earth every ninety minutes, while one hundred and sixty kilometers high, has to have a velocity of roughly twenty-nine thousand kilometers per hour to stay in orbit, so something has to give the moon the precisely required velocity for its weight and altitude.
The point – and it is one seldom noted in considering the origin of the moon – is that it is extremely unlikely that any object would just stumble into the right combination of factors required to stay in orbit. ‘Something’ had to put the moon at its altitude, on its course and at its speed. The question is: what was that something?”
In short, the moon violates so many known laws of physics and so many expectations of what is normal, that it is easier to explain the non-existence of the moon than its existence. In this light, Irwin Shapiro of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics stated, “The best explanation for the moon is observational error – the Moon doesn’t exist.” The moon is perfectly positioned to give us the type of world we live in. Is this just a cosmic coincidence?
Is the Moon An Illusion?
Crrow spent a long time simply presenting his video evidence without an explanation, but eventually the weight of evidence led him to come to the following conclusion:
“After many thousands of hours of lunar observation and research I have come to know that the moon is an illusion and that people cannot go above low Earth orbit. The moon is not a rock in orbit around the Earth.”
It may seem like a “far-out” conclusion, but consider for a moment how on so many many levels, things are not real. If you want to know the truth, you’re going to have to discard everything you were taught and everything you thought you knew. The famous philosopher Rene Descartes decided to throw everything out until he found something he could be really sure of, upon which to base his theories. In the end, he settled upon the idea that he knew without doubt he was thinking, and so came up the phrase cogito ergo sum, or “I think, therefore I am”. It was a great attempt to arrive at Truth (we now know roughly 400 years later that thinking itself is not the only proof of existence, that consciousness is a more powerful force that reason, and that the uncontrolled thinking mind is the source of humanity’s suffering, but nonetheless Descartes’ method is to be admired).
If you accept the idea of a holographic Moon or that the Moon is an illusion, it leads, as always, to further questions. Is the Moon merely being covered to hide other aspects of it? We know that as the Moon gets closer, it affects spin of Earth and gives us seasons. Is it the reason for the great cataclysms and catastrophes many different cultures and traditions recorded in our past? Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said that there are 2 ways to be fooled – both by believing something that isn’t, and not believing something that is. Is the Moon transmitting false information to manipulate our perception, as well as blocking information we would normally decode? What about the Sun? What about the other planets in the Solar System?
The Sun is Not What It Seems, Either
The Sun is not what it seems, either. Have you seen this video with Nassim Haramein where some kind of gargantuan UFOs or unknown space crafts fly straight into the Sun? Listen to what Eric Dollard says about how the Sun is a very different entity to what we imagine. It is transmitting energy and information, rather than heat and light – we just decode that information as heat and light:
“(The Sun has) no inside structure. Only a surface. There is no inside structure … there is no fusion in the Sun … you only get fusion in the X-rays … They don’t know how the sun works. The Sun is a transformer; it transforms from some other dimension. It’s not burning anything. It’s a converter.”
NASA’s Solar System of Planets Look Like Fake CGI
As for the rest of the planets in the Solar System … can we really trust the images we get from the space agencies around the world? NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has been caught red-handed, again and again, distorting and doctoring its images before public release. There are many people who have claimed they knew about NASA air-brushing photos to hide inconvenient things in them (e.g. UFOs, structures on the Moon and Mars, etc.) such as:
– Sergeant Karl Wolf (USAF) who was working with Tactical Air Command at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia in 1965. He was assigned to the lunar orbital project at NASA where he met an airman who confided in him that they had discovered bases in the far side of the moon;
– Former NASA employee Dr. Ken Johnston, Manager of the Data and Photo Control Department at NASA’s Lunar Receiving Laboratory and the largest whistleblower to ever leave NASA;
– Donna Hare, who had a secret clearance while working for NASA contractor, Philco Ford. She testified that she was shown a photo of a picture with a distinct UFO. Her colleague explained that it was his job to airbrush such evidence of UFOs out of photographs before they were released to the public;
– Matthew Boylan, realistic photo painter, who is a former NASA operational graphics manager. He worked for years creating photo-realistic computer graphics for NASA.
Nazi-and-Freemason-controlled NASA has clearly shot its credibility, so why would it be a good idea to blindly swallow its images of “outer space”? Eric Dubay, who has come out with a lot of information recently on the flat Earth theory, asserts that the so-called images we have of Venus, Jupiter and just about everything else from space are actually fake CGI (Computer Generated Images).
At this stage, all this information on moon anomalies and more doesn’t lead to answers, but rather more questions. If the Moon, Sun and Solar System planets are hollow, artificial or holographic, what does that say about the Earth? Where are we? Is there even such a thing as “outer space”? What exactly are we looking at when we sees dots of light in the firmament?
If You Want the Truth, Question Every Little Thing You Were Ever Taught
The layers of deception that surround us are so thick that, unfortunately, it casts doubt on all that we believe to be true. Winston Churchill confessed that truth was the first casualty of war; Neil Armstrong admitted that truth had many protective layers. Fraud vitiates all, as the legal maxim goes, and we have already detected a massive amount of fakery and fraud by our so-called authorities – not just politicians, but also the scientists, religious leaders and others who define the nature of reality and the scope of possibility for us. The worldwide conspiracy relies on constantly suppressing our idea of what is possible – for how can we create newer, better and freer realities if we do not first think they are possible and imagine them?
Keep questioning and keep challenging the status quo. The Truth will out.
Want the latest commentary and analysis on Conspiracy, Natural Health, Sovereignty, Consciousness and more? Sign up for free blog updates!
Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative news / independent media site The Freedom Articles and senior researcher at ToolsForFreedom.com, writing on many aspects of truth and freedom, from exposing aspects of the worldwide conspiracy to suggesting solutions for how humanity can create a new system of peace and abundance. | <urn:uuid:b0fcd5d4-cec3-4051-b3ed-4518c74b765d> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://thefreedomarticles.com/inexplicable-moon-anomalies-deception/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506559.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20230924023050-20230924053050-00003.warc.gz | en | 0.949566 | 2,992 | 2.71875 | 3 |
The Scots and Irish are two nationalities that have a rich cultural history and are often compared and contrasted against each other. Though both have Celtic roots, they have developed their unique identities over the years.
Scotland and Ireland both have a rich and vibrant culture that promotes tradition, music, and dance. Irish culture is inseparable from green fields, rolling hills, and cozy pubs. Irish people, who are known for their friendly demeanor and a strong sense of community, have contributed greatly to the world of literature, music, folklore, and dance. Scotland, on the other hand, has an equally rich history dating back centuries. The land of kilts, tartans, and the highlands, Scotland has given us famous literary figures like Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott. Scottish music is famous around the world, and the bagpipes hold a special place of pride.
Geographically, Scotland shares a border with England to its southern part and Norway to the northeast, and there is a large landmass between it and Ireland. Ireland, however, is primarily surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean and shares a border with Northern Ireland to its north. These geographical differences have contributed to the development of distinct cultures and customs.
Both countries have unique dialects that are distinct from the other. While the Scottish dialects are heavily influenced by the Germanic language family, Irish dialects are more closely related to the Goidelic languages. The Scottish dialects have different words for different things compared to their Irish counterparts. For instance, Scots have words like bairn for a child and canny for cannot, while Irish people use words like garsún for boy and ní féidir for cannot.
The cuisine of both countries also differs in some ways. Ireland is known for its dairy products such as butter and cheese, while Scotland is famous for salmon, haggis, and whiskey. Irish cuisine is more traditional, with dishes like Irish stews, shepherd’s pie, and colcannon (mashed potatoes with cabbage). Scottish cuisine, on the other hand, is more varied and heavily influenced by the abundance of seafood, wild game and Scottish barley.
Religion has played a significant role in the history of both countries, and there are still significant differences in the religious practices between the Scots and Irish. Scotland is historically a Protestant country, with the majority of the country’s population being Presbyterian. Ireland, on the other hand, is historically a Catholic country, with the majority of the population adhering to this faith. These differing religious practices have contributed to a complicated history between Ireland and the United Kingdom, of which Scotland is a part.
Irish and Scottish people are known for their love of music, and both have traditionally centered around a community gathering in a pub or music venue to enjoy the warm and lively atmosphere. Scottish music is famous for its bagpipes and fiddles, while Irish music is known for its traditional instruments like the bodhran and tin whistle. Traditional Scottish dances like Ceilidh and Irish folk dances like the Riverdance continue to be popular in both countries.
1. Are the Scots and Irish one and the same?
No, the Scots and Irish are different nationalities, though they do have similar cultural roots.
2. Are there any similarities between the Scots and the Irish?
Yes, both share a Celtic background, love of music, and an appreciation of culture, tradition, and community.
3. What are the key differences between Scottish and Irish cultures?
The Scottish dialects have more in common with the Germanic language family, while Irish dialects are closer to the Goidelic languages. Scotland is historically Protestant, while Ireland is predominantly Catholic. The cuisine of both countries also differs, with Scotland being known for seafood, haggis, and whiskey, while Irish cuisine is based on dairy products and traditional dishes like Irish stews.
The Scots and Irish have a lot in common and yet are very different in their customs, traditions, and practices. Though their histories are entwined, the Scots and Irish, have developed their own unique identities, and as such, are fascinating to compare and contrast. | <urn:uuid:8b970b9c-07ac-41cd-bb46-99c6fdd5f3a8> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://diffzi.com/scots-vs-irish/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506686.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20230925051501-20230925081501-00803.warc.gz | en | 0.967749 | 854 | 3.359375 | 3 |
The term “Ribbon Window” was first introduced in the 1920s by Le Corbusier in his architectural treatise, “Five Points of New Architecture” which he developed during the early part of his career. These five architectural principles formed the foundation of his designs and are perfectly exemplified in his seminal work, the “Villa Savoye” in Poissy, France.
The underlying principle of the Corbusian approach is removing the function of load bearing from the exterior or facade walls. Since the bulk of the load gets distributed among the interior walls and columns, this technique frees up the design possibilities of a building’s exterior to a remarkable extent. Architects can now play around with the facade without having to worry about structural constraints. They could make cuts and breaks anywhere on the facade without compromising its structural integrity. Ribbon windows were the direct result of such freedom in design.
The original Corbusian ribbon window is a long, continuous strip of horizontal windows cut into the exterior walls of a building. Before the appearance of ribbon windows, buildings typically had a near-monolithic block-like appearance relieved only by independent windows here and there. Though the idea of ribbon windows originated in the 1920s, it is still relevant and remains a regularly used architectural design concept in modern buildings.
Besides contributing significantly to the aesthetic quotient, ribbon windows also facilitate the flow of natural light into the interior of a building.
Architects in Chennai for residential buildings do not content themselves with following the original definition of ribbon windows. They have reworked the basic idea into several innovative and creative designs that have contributed to what is known as the “Neo-Corbusian” body or work.
Examples Of Designs Using Ribbon Windows, From Commercial Building Architects in Chennai!
Ribbon windows are traditionally horizontal constructs. But, present days architects have been experimenting with many vertical permutations as well. They even go for a combination of both horizontal and vertical elements joined together into one contiguous unit. There are examples where the vertical ribbon windows traverse across stories, even keeping with the pitch of the roof.
Why limit yourself to just one wall, when you can even create ribbon windows that wrap around more than one exterior wall of the building without any break. Some buildings have them built into the facade as well as the sides of the building in one uninterrupted strip of glass.
Stair Wells and Landings
Many architects love to use ribbon windows on exterior walls that cover staircases and the landings at each level. Stairwells can be dark places with very little natural light filtering in from the lone windows on the wall. With ribbon windows, they practically become flooded with bright, natural light.
Sometimes, ribbon windows are used to frame a side or two of a building, leaving a patch of wall in the middle. They greatly enhance the look of a building.
As you can see, you can get highly creative with ribbon windows! Consult top residential architects in Chennai about adding these elegant architectural elements into your dream home! | <urn:uuid:da131c9b-6e2c-4319-bf86-52f941bcbd42> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.dwellion.in/category/ribbon-window-design/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510208.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20230926111439-20230926141439-00703.warc.gz | en | 0.958416 | 637 | 3.578125 | 4 |
Introduction to Business Class Projects
Interaction and teamwork provide a strong foundation for generating class projects for a business class. Analyzing existing companies, interviewing a CEO and creating fictitious companies all provide the opportunity for students to apply academic learning to a real-life scenario, enhancing the learning experience for everyone involved.
1 Form a Mock Company
Ask students to form small teams and assign each group a pretend-business to create. The mock-business creation process should walk the class through each step of formulating a business, preferably in conjunction with your class syllabus. At the end of the semester or class, each team should present its business to the class, emphasizing each stage of the business-development process, such as writing a business plan, seeking investors, marketing strategies, manufacturing and production.
2 Business Plan Creation
Create a list of businesses and copy them onto individual cards or small pieces of paper. Place all the businesses into a hat and pass it around the classroom so each student may draw a slip of paper. The student will then create a business plan for her chosen business with the intention of seeking outside investors or start-up capital. Plans written for outside funding contain more research into SWOT analysis -- focusing on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats -- and in-depth explanations of the business, its revenue models and the target markets of the entity.
3 Create a Plan for an Existing Company
Tell the students to choose a business from the NASDAQ exchange and create a business plan that reflects the existing structure of the business. Some of their plans will be hypothetical, as access to certain information in the company is restricted, but they can focus on the actual existing customers and products or services the company offers to the public.
4 Interview a CEO
Assign an interview and essay project for each student. The interview must be of a CEO of a business making $500,000 or more in annual revenue and they must present their findings in a formal essay about the CEO's role in the company, how she came to the position and the future of the company under her guidance. Students will also present their findings during the interview to the class in a slide-show presentation with background of the CEO, the company she commands and the future of this company. | <urn:uuid:df0c1169-bfe5-4e07-8c53-aa4f925e07de> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://classroom.synonym.com/introduction-business-class-projects-7916081.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510319.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20230927171156-20230927201156-00603.warc.gz | en | 0.935176 | 455 | 2.9375 | 3 |
The Treasury of Lives
The Treasury of Lives
The Treasury of Lives
Buddhists pursue meditation as part of the path toward liberation from defilements (kleshas) and clinging and craving (upādāna), also called awakening, which results in the attainment of Nirvana, and includes a variety of meditation techniques such as: - asubha bhavana ("reflections on repulsiveness") - reflection on pratityasamutpada (dependent origination) - sati (mindfulness) and anussati (recollections), including anapanasati (breath meditation) - dhyana (developing an alert and luminous mind) - the Brahma-viharas (loving-kindness and compassion) These techniques aim to develop equanimity .
Dusum Khyenpa is known as the 1st Karmapa. Dusum Khyenpa is the founder of the Karma (Kamtsang) branch of the Kagyu Tradition. Dusum Khyenpa was born in Kham He served as Abbot of Daklha Gampo monastery after Gampopa and founded the Tsurphu monastery. He is becoming the seat of the incarnate Karmapa lamas. Dusum Khyenpa was the founder of the Karma Kagyu school and of its three main monasteries: Kampo Nenang Gon in 1164, Karma Gon .
Dragpa Gyaltsen was a Tibetan spiritual leader and the third of the Five Sakya Patriarchs of Tibet. He was also known as the guru of the famous Sakya Pandita. Dragpa Gyaltsen was a Tibetan spiritual leader and the third of the Five Sakya Patriarchs of Tibet. He was also the guru of the famous Sakya Pandita. Dragpa Gyaltsen was born in 1147. Dragpa Gyaltsen is known as rje Btsun Grags pa Rgyal mtshan in Tibet. Jetsun Drakpa .
Avadhutipa is also known as Maitripa who is an important figure both in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism. It is through him that Maitreya and Asanga’s crucial work on buddha nature, the Uttara Tantra Shastra, became widely followed in Tibet. He also transmitted the esoteric aspect of buddha nature, embodied in the Mahamudra teachings, which treat the topic of mind in great detail and provide a wide range of progressive, highly-refined meditations. The life of the Indian .
Sakya PanditaKunga Gyeltsen was a Tibetan spiritual leader and Buddhist scholar and the fourth of the Five Sakya Forefathers. He is held in the tradition to have been an emanation of Manjusri, the embodiment of the wisdom of all the Buddhas. The Viability of Sakya Pandita Kunga Gyaltsen In this portion, we are going to talk about the life of Sakya PanditaKunga Gyeltsen. After a short etymological description of the word Sakya PanditaKunga Gyeltsen itself, we will .
Damarupa, Mahasiddha an Indian master of tantric methods, the 5th teacher of the Margapala lineage along with the Chandali Perfection Stage Lineage. The viability of the Damarupa In this portion, we were going to learn about the Viability of the Damarupa. After that, we will learn about the short etymological description of the word Damarupa itself. Etymology of theDamarupa Damarupa is known as drup thob da ma rupa in Tibet. In the thangka, Damarupa and Avadhutipa are known .
Depicting Mahakala, Chaturmukha who was known as the Four-faced Great Black One. Mahakala was associated with the Guhyasamaja Tantra along with the Twenty-five and Fifty Chapter Mahakala Tantras. The Life of Chaturmukha Mahakala In this section, we are going to learn about the life of Mahakala, after that, we will learn about the short etymological description of the word Mahakala itself. Etymology of Chaturmukha Mahakala Earlier, we learn about the life of Caturmukha Mahakala. Now, we are going .
Nairatmya is a yogini who is the consort of Hevajra in the Hevajra-tantra. Nairaymya is an embodiment of the Buddhist philosophical concept of anatman. Vajra Nairatmya and Shri Virupa malformed, Ugly One along with the 'Extensive Lineage' of Indian gurus of the Hevajra Tantra. The life of Nairatmya In this section, we will learn about the life of Nairatmya. And after that, we will learn about the short etymological description of the Nairatmya. Etymology of Nairatmya Nairatmya is .
Virupa is also known as Yogeshvara. Virupa is surrounded by students and lineage teachers. Siddha Virupa is especially known as the source of the Lamdre system held by the Sakya school and is thus seen as the Indian founder of their lineage. The life of Siddha Virupa In this section, we are going to learn about the life of Siddha Virupa, after te short etymological description of the word Siddha Virupa itself. Etymology of Siddha Virupa Virupa is known .
Tashi Paltseg was born in 1359-1424. Tashi Paltseg was born in 9th-century at Throne Holder of Taglung. The life of Tasi Paltseg In this portion, we are going to learn about the life of Tashi Platseg, after te short etymological description of the word Tashi Platseg itself. Etymology of Tashi Patseg Tashi Platseg appointed Taglung Shamar Jangchub Gyatso to the abbacy of Taglung Earlier, we learn about the life of Tashi Platseg. Now, we are going to learn about . | <urn:uuid:4305b8dc-dc62-4598-a02a-9f4435dc81d3> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://mandalas.life/tag/lamdre/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510319.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20230927171156-20230927201156-00603.warc.gz | en | 0.950301 | 1,355 | 2.75 | 3 |
Battle of Wagram, (July 5–6, 1809), victory for Napoleon, which forced Austria to sign an armistice and led eventually to the Treaty of Schönbrunn in October, ending Austria’s 1809 war against the French control of Germany. The battle was fought on the Marchfeld (a plain northeast of Vienna) between 154,000 French and other troops under Napoleon and 158,000 Austrians under Archduke Charles. After a defeat at Aspern-Essling in May, Napoleon needed a victory to prevent a new anti-French coalition from forming. Charles deployed his army along a 14-mile (23-kilometre) front (with the village of Wagram in the centre) to await the French attack. Napoleon decided to attack before Charles could be reinforced by the 30,000 troops of his brother, Archduke John. On the evening of July 5, after having crossed the Danube River, he hastily attacked the thinly stretched Austrian positions but was beaten back.
On the morning of July 6 Charles attacked in the south to cut the French off from the Danube and envelop their southern flank. Napoleon’s main attack was in the north, at the Austrian line along Russbach Brook. By reinforcing his southern flank, Napoleon repelled the Austrian attack there; at the same time, the French attack in the north succeeded. Napoleon then launched the final assault against the Austrian centre and split it. By the time Archduke John appeared in the late afternoon, Charles’s army was already in retreat. John was easily driven off. The battle took a terrible toll, mostly from the heaviest concentration of artillery fire yet employed in any war; Austria suffered more than 40,000 casualties and France about 34,000. Four days later Charles asked for an armistice. | <urn:uuid:e0b7015e-9f52-4397-829e-d294b9d07b72> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Wagram | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510319.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20230927171156-20230927201156-00603.warc.gz | en | 0.977289 | 371 | 4.03125 | 4 |
When tragedy strikes, or when we have to live with broken lives or broken dreams, it can be hard to move forward, stay motivated or want to go on. We may have lost someone close to us or someone we love. We may find ourselves feeling all alone and afraid, or struggling emotionally to deal with difficult circumstances. We may face an uncertain future wondering how long things will be like this and whether life will ever get better.
All of us go through trying times. And perhaps none are more silently and deeply vulnerable than the younger ones in our midst. By God’s grace, we can, as concerned adults, be better equipped to help them process the effects of trauma, their emotional and spiritual pain, so that through it all, they come to experience God’s love for them. This journey would include, at the appropriate time, helping them process why they are feeling what they are feeling.
WHY THEY ARE FEELING WHAT THEY ARE FEELING
When we experience bad things, our hearts and minds can be wounded. It’s important to take care of heart wounds so that inner healing can take place. One way a heart wound can be healed is through telling someone about what happened and how it felt. God is the One who heals, but time and again He uses people in the process.
We learn to listen well to them by gently asking three “listening questions”:
- “Can you remember what happened?” This helps to build rapport, and to establish facts and timeline.
- “How do/did you feel?” Healing takes place at the level of emotions. Enabling them to name their feelings helps them give clarity to what may otherwise be vague emotions. A possible activity is to provide a list of words that describe feelings they may have and encourage them to circle those they have experienced because of this tragic or intensely trying event. There are no wrong feelings! Help them understand that feelings are a natural response to things that happen in our lives. It is normal to have difficult feelings when difficult things happen to us.
- “What was the hardest part for you?” Each person is different. We need to know the answer to this from them individually. This can also help to clarify which feeling is the strongest for them right now. It can also help to discover what the young person does when he/she feels this way.
Another activity is to help them to name their losses by thinking about how a tragic or intensely trying event has interrupted their life, such as in their plans and fears for the future, not knowing when this “life-on-hold” feeling is going to end or what the “new normal” will bring (as in this coronavirus pandemic). There may be, in other tragic or trying situations, the death of a loved one or friend, relational loss because of a broken relationship, seeming death of an academic dream because of disappointing examination results, or deeper things like personal welfare and safety. After they have indicated what they have lost, encourage them to write down how each loss made them feel or to draw a face showing that feeling(s).
POINTING TO A BIBLE SPOTLIGHT
Jesus understands feelings. In John 11:1–44, Jesus cried with Mary and Martha, who must have had many feelings like sadness, loneliness, anger, regret, hopelessness, fear and maybe others.
WHAT THEY CAN DO WITH THESE FEELINGS
Having experienced such losses, the feelings they have named are connected to the grief they are feeling because of those losses. Loss always leads to grief. Grief is normal and healthy as it helps us deal with the loss we feel. It is the emotional response we feel when we have lost someone or something that means a lot to us.
We can facilitate their grieving process by helping them understand the grief journey as a “street” with “bus stops” along the way.
Bus stop one: denial and anger. Our first response to losing something or someone important to us is often to not believe it is happening. Along with doubting that it’s true, we can feel angry about the loss and try to find someone or something to blame so we can aim our anger there. Sometimes, we feel it’s easier and safer to express anger than to express sorrow.
Bus stop two: no hope. Eventually, our denial and anger begin to fade and we face the reality of the loss. We feel hopeless, as if nothing will ever be good again. Some people show this stage by crying, withdrawing, or being depressed. They may not feel like taking care of themselves, doing schoolwork or their usual activities. They may resort to numbing the pain with activities that harm themselves.
Bus stop three: new beginnings. We come to a place of resolution recognising that things will never be the same, but we learn we can live with the loss. We can talk about our loss without the sharp pain that we felt when the loss was new. We accept that we can’t get those people or things back, and we can accept this “new normal’ in the face of the loss(es). We even begin to dream again, to plan, to step forward to map our goals, no matter how small the step.
Grief Street Bypass. Sometimes people want to skip the “stops” and try to take a bypass directly to “new beginnings”. They don’t allow themselves the time or space to be sad or angry about their loss. There may be people in their life that tell them that to “just get over it”. Or sometimes, they hear in church that they must “praise God for everything all the time”. The Bypass is not healthy. Going through the stages of grief is important so we can deal honestly with our loss.
Riding the bus. The grief journey is often not direct. Many times, when we think about what we have lost, we find our feelings going back to a stage we thought we had already passed. We might go back to denial and anger (bus stop one) and/or to feeling no hope (bus stop two). Over time, we are able to move forward again, and one day to stay in “new beginnings”.
POINTING TO A BIBLE SPOTLIGHT
David grieved with his men about their losses, but found his solace and strength in God. (Psalm 13)
HOW THEY CAN LIVE FORWARD
The Lord Jesus knows all the pains they are carrying. It’s important for them to be able to bring these pains to Him so He can bring healing to their wounded hearts. We enable their journey of wound bearing and pain bearing to Jesus.
Step one: Write down their worst pain(s). Pray with each person asking God to show him/her the most painful things buried deep in their heart. Encourage him/her to write these down on a piece of paper or they might prefer to draw a picture of these things instead of using words. Give him/her time to do this and assure them no one will ever see what they have written.
Step two: Bring their pains to the cross. Encourage him/her to talk to Jesus about the pains they have put on their piece of paper. Give him/her time to do this and when they are ready, encourage him/her to take their papers, to go and to put them at the foot of the cross in the small box provided.
Step three: Burn the papers (optional, but recommended). When the paper(s) have been deposited, take them outside and read Isaiah 61:1–3. Thereafter, burn the papers to show and explain the suffering each one has experienced has become like ashes. Pray with the person that they will experience Jesus healing their wounded or broken hearts.
HOW THEY CAN RELATE TO GOD IN TRAGIC AND TRYING TIMES
Sometimes, living through tragic and trying times force us to evaluate what we believe about God and to decide what is really important in our lives.
We encourage them to hold fast to the Word of God.
Teach them to remember important truths such as:
- What if I’m afraid? “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Ps 27:1)
- What if I think I’m all alone and God has left me? “Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (Josh 1:9)
- What if someone said that I have no future, that I’m hopeless? “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” (Jer 29:11 NIV):
Hill, Harriet, Margaret Hill, Richard Bagge, and Pat Miersma. Healing the Wounds of Trauma. Philadelphia: American Bible Society, 2016.
McCombs, Margi and James Covey. Unstuck: A Teen Guide for Living In Uncertain Times. Philadelphia: American Bible Society, 2020.
Rev Chan Mei Ming is a pastor at Faith Methodist Church, where she oversees the Enlarge Pillar comprising Missions, Witness & Evangelism, Outreach & Social Concerns, and Chaplaincy Ministries. | <urn:uuid:252363a5-b9d8-4f4f-861c-a681e8f1444a> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.methodist.org.sg/methodist-message/bible-based-healing-in-tragic-and-trying-times/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510319.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20230927171156-20230927201156-00603.warc.gz | en | 0.960975 | 1,999 | 2.6875 | 3 |
It was created by Professor Jigoro Kano. The name Judo
was chosen because it means the “gentle or yielding way”. It was introduced into the Olympic Games in 1964 and is practiced by millions of people throughout the world today. It is best known for it’s spectacular throwing techniques but also involves considerable grappling on the ground utilizing specialized pins, control holds, arm locks, and Judo choking techniques. It emphasizes safety, and full physical activity for top conditioning. It is learned on special mats for comfort and safety. Most martial artists also consider a sensei
to be a life-long guide who provides students with physical, mental and even sometimes spiritual training. | <urn:uuid:0bf2d5f2-b4eb-4d0a-b574-37edb4adc797> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://judoinfo.com/contacts_singapore/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510462.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20230928230810-20230929020810-00503.warc.gz | en | 0.961553 | 141 | 2.953125 | 3 |
The fundamental processes and anatomy of the brain are relevant to every human being
As a brain researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, Marian Diamond did not only study Albert Einstein’s brain, but was also one of the founders of modern neuroscience. She was the co-discoverer of neuroplasticity , the principle that brain cells, brain synapses (the connections between brain cells), and even whole areas in the brain adapt in anatomy and function according to utility. The quote above presumably refers to the fact that each of our brains is made up of approximately 86 billion neurons , which additionally maintain up to another 10,000 connections per neuron.
Knowledge about the brain and its systems can explain many facets of human behavior.
Psychological expertise can be very important to understand human behavior more accurately. However, in order to gain an even deeper understanding of our behavior in contexts such as stock trading , food choices , and even in football-specific situations , methods that measure brain structure and activation must be additionally applied. These neuroscientific methods make it possible to record brain processes in a data-based manner.
Associations that previously remained hidden, become visible. An example from the stock market: Why do we perceive losses so much more strongly than gains? Since this principle explains several irrational behaviors (so-called cognitive biases, such as the endowment effect and the sunk cost fallacy ), it is gratifying to know that researchers were already able to find out which processes in the brain give rise to this phenomenon. By knowing these processes, we are now able to cope with them accordingly.
A basic understanding of the brain can help to improve our future decisions.
It is very likely that the topics “brain” and “neuro” will accompany us more and more over the next years and decades. To better understand and accurately assess all this new information, it will help each of us to have a better understanding of the basic processes and anatomy of the brain. However, since not every sports and business expert has enough time to complete a university degree in this field, we now offer our compact “neuro11 Online Seminar”. Through this seminar you will get a comprehensive, individualized and applicable overview, which will help you in the future.
A well-presented first insight about the anatomy and systems of our brain (in 3D) can be found on the reference link below . By selecting different brain regions (via the box on the top left) you will learn where each region is located and what role it plays in our daily life.
If this article sparked your interest and you would like to know more about this or other topics, please do not hesitate to contact us via [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.
Wikipedia article about Marian Diamond: Link
Science article: Link
The Journal of Comparative Neurology article: Link
Scientific Reports article: Link
NeuroImage article: Link
Plos One article: Link
Wikipedia article about the endowment effect: Link
Wikipedia article about the sunk cost fallacy: Link
Link to an interactive 3D-visualization of the brain: Link | <urn:uuid:568bfe48-bc0a-4ab6-913c-e284b1efc233> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://neuro11.de/neuro/the-fundamental-processes-and-anatomy-of-the-brain-are-relevant/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510462.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20230928230810-20230929020810-00503.warc.gz | en | 0.944826 | 700 | 3.1875 | 3 |
Kingston GOP drops support for candidate who criticized Native American mural (Hudson Valley One October 12, 2017)
GOP county legislature candidate calls O fest mural ‘divisive’ (Hudson Valley One October 10, 2017)
Edward Moran’s (1829–1901) Henrik Hudson Entering New York Harbor, September 11, 1609; painted in 1892
A great people traveled from the north and west. For many, many years they moved across the land, leaving settlements in rich river valleys as others moved on. Reaching the eastern edge of the country, some of these people settled on the river later renamed the Delaware. Others moved north and settled in the valley of a river where the waters, like those in their original homeland, were never still. They named this river Mahicannituck and called themselves the muh-he-con-neok, the people of the waters that are never still…
This is the original story, as told by a late-1700s Mohican historian named Hendrick Aupaumut, of the people who truly discovered America, including the river valley in which we now live. The names of the river and valley were usurped by a man named Hudson, whose people came from the east and, in the comparative blink of an eye, nearly ended a story that stretches back perhaps 13,000 years.
Today, about 1,500 men, women, and children, most of whom live in Wisconsin, trace their ancestry back to these people who traveled from the north and west as the Ice Age glaciers receded and humans first populated our land. That the descendants of these original settlers are doing well, after 400 years of disease, degradation, and dislocation, is good to know. Still better is to know their story in full, to appreciate their history, and honor their pride of place as the first people of the Hudson Valley.
Lapowinsa, chief of the Lenape, the tribe that first populated the Delaware River Valley
“It Was a Rich Life”
Two distinct but closely related nations inhabited the Hudson Valley at the time of European contact. The Mohicans (or Mahicans) lived in the northern valley, the area from approximately present-day Kingston up to Lake Champlain, west to the Schoharie Valley, and east into Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Vermont. The Lenape (sometimes Lenni-Lenapi, meaning, roughly, “the real or original people”) first populated the Delaware River Valley, particularly around Minisink (“the place where stones are”) where New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania meet. They are also called Delaware Indians, and the nation eventually comprised clans that lived in an area they called the Lenapehoking, their territory in what is now Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Eastern Delaware, and the Lower Hudson Valley. The northeastern clans who moved into our region spoke a Lenape dialect known as Munsee, and are thus also known as the Munsee Indians. It was the Munsee who were waiting on shore when Verrazano “discovered” his narrows in 1524 and when Hudson “discovered” the river in 1609. The Munsee were also the tribe that famously sold Manhattan to Peter Stuyvesant in 1626.
Though the Mohicans and Munsee were distinct, their languages were similar enough to allow communication (they are both considered part of the larger Algonquian language group that covers much of northeast North America), and their relations were mostly peaceful. They knew they were relatives, and assisted each other when in danger of attack on their western borders, from the Mohawk/Iroquois, and to their east, from the Mohegans, who, despite their similar-sounding name, were a competitive nation. But these were temporary alliances; the tribes never formed a larger confederacy like the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy in central New York State.
Their daily lives were similar, too. In the 1,000 years or so before European contact, known as the Late Woodland Period, the native peoples lived in small clans or villages of perhaps 10 to 100 family members. The total number of native peoples living in the Hudson Valley is hard to estimate, but the Lenape population of all the villages from Delaware Bay to Esopus Creek was probably around 10,000 in 1600.
They were migratory, moving from area to area to follow the hunt and hunker down for winter. They typically lived in clearings they slashed and burned in the thick forest along creeks and rivers, usually on terraces above the floodplain, in places that still bear their names—the Wappingers (“the people of the east lands” or, possibly, “white-face opossum”); the Esopus (“the small river”); the Manhattans (perhaps “hilly island,” perhaps “place of timber”).
In present-day Westchester County, the native presence goes back at least 7,000 years, according to archeologists who uncovered on Croton Point the oldest oyster-shell middens found on the North Atlantic Coast. Croton, in fact, is named for the Indian sachem Kenoten (“wild wind”). The Wickquasgeck, another clan, occupied the western reaches of the county, centered around Dobbs Ferry. In the 1600s, the Kitchawanks, members of the Wappinger family, built and lived in a large, fortified village on the high flat at the neck of Croton Point, one of the most ancient and imposing fortresses south of the Hudson Highlands. They called their fortress Navish. (A marsh, which the natives called Senasqua, separates the Point from Croton Neck; you can find a plaque there at the spot where the Dutch signed a peace treaty with the Kitchawanks.)
“The Native Americans who lived in the Hudson Valley just before and at the time of European contact were agriculturalists,” says Joseph Diamond, a professor of archaeology at SUNY New Paltz. “They grew corn, beans, and various species of squash, and gathered plant foods such as hickory, nuts, butternuts, walnuts, acorns, and chestnuts, and various berries to supplement their diet.”
Chief Etow Oh Koam of the Mohican tribe—who lived in the area of present-day Kingston up to Lake Champlain—by artist John Simon, c. 1750
Corn, beans, and squash, in fact, were so central to native diets, the crops were known by the Iroquois as “the Three Sisters.” That interdependence required rather advanced horticultural skills. “There is a conception that the Algonquians were not sophisticated farmers like the Iroquois. I think that is not the case,” says Dr. John P. Hart, director of the Research & Collections Division at the New York State Museum in Albany. “To grow successfully, you have to understand how crops respond to soils, water, and rainfall, any type of unusual weather. When growing the three crops together, you have to understand how they interact with one another. If you have, say, 100 acres, that’s a lot of plants, so you have to understand what you are doing to have a successful harvest. And they had no plows, no metal tools—it was all hand labor, and they were very successful at it.”
They were also meat-eaters, hunting bear, elk, white-tailed deer, rabbits, squirrels, turkey, river otter, raccoons, and woodchucks, as well as various waterfowl. “Archaeological sites in the Hudson Valley have also produced evidence of fishing for most freshwater species, and, during the spring, they caught sturgeon, striped bass, shad, and herring, and probably dried, smoked, or roasted them,” Diamond says. Oyster beds found near the riverbanks provided abundant nourishment as well. In the spring, they tapped maple trees for syrup and sugar. After a hunt or harvest, the meat, vegetables, and berries were dried, the fish was smoked, and the bounty was stored in pits dug deep into the ground and lined with grass or bark. “They were producing enough food for large surpluses in case of crop failure for any reason,” Hart says.
They lived in several different kinds of houses, which they called wigwams, made of bent saplings covered with animal hides or tree bark, with a hole in the roof to vent smoke from fire pits. The homes could be circular, square, or oval, and some were rectangular longhouses. Several families from the same clan might live in a longhouse, each family getting their own section. “One of the longest in the Hudson Valley is 110 feet by 29 feet,” Diamond says of a longhouse inhabited by the Esopus Indians that was found by archaeologists in Marbletown (Ulster County). It contained European trade items from the Dutch, and many Native American items such as broken pots, smoking pipes, stone projectile points, knives, scrapers, and woodworking tools.
While the men traveled to hunt, fish, or fight, the women were generally in charge of the home, raising the children, and tending the gardens. But they were hardly subservient. “Contrary to American ‘squaw’ stereotypes of Native American women, the Lenape female had recognized authority roles within the family and the village community, comparing favorably in position to women in European society of the day,” Laurence M. Hauptman, professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz, writes in “The Native Americans: A History of the First Residents of New Paltz and Environs.”
Winter was domestic time. The natives carved containers and utensils; made or repaired their hunting, trapping, and fishing gear; fashioned new baskets and pottery; and made clothing, which they decorated with porcupine quills, shells, and other items from nature.
“Winter was also the time of teaching,” according to Dorothy Davids, author of A Brief History of the Mohican Nation, Stockbridge-Munsee Band. The storytellers passed on the stories of “how life came to be, how the earth was created, how the people learned to sing, the story of the drums and rattles, and what the stars could teach them.” They also learned how to live with their extended families in peace, respectfulness, and shared responsibility.
Ceremony was central to their existence. They had a ceremony whenever something needed “paying attention to,” Davids writes, such as the planting of the corn, beans, and squash, and the harvest. “They practiced several kinds of burial,” Diamond says, “including secondary burial, which is a common form of mortuary treatment around the world that involves a second ceremony several months to a year later.”
In all, the native peoples of the Hudson Valley at the time of European contact were more than just eking out a living, more than just surviving. “They were living complex lives, like we do,” Hart says. As Dorothy Davids writes, “It was a rich life.”
Tribes living in New Amsterdam, circa 1685
It was the people of this impressive and ancient civilization that one of Henry Hudson’s men, upon meeting the natives in Westchester, condescendingly called “well proportioned ….Their limbs are properly formed, and they are sprightly and active.”
European conquest, unfortunately, would change that. Disease—specifically smallpox, measles, diphtheria, and scarlet fever, for which the native people had no immunity—wiped out hundreds of thousands; sometimes, entire villages perished at once. Colonization took out the rest. By 1639, the Dutch West India Company, under the colony’s director, Willem Kieft, had begun a land grab in present-day Westchester and the Bronx. The natives, who believed the land was theirs by grace of their gods, realized too late that their deals with the Dutch were sales, not rentals.
Wars soon erupted. In 1643, what became known as Kieft’s War decimated the Wappinger. The Dutch, aligned with the Mohawk nation, wiped out about half the Wappinger population of 3,000 in two years. The notorious British Indian raider John Underhill devastated an Indian village near present-day Bedford in 1644. The Peach Tree War of 1655 left another 60 or so Wappinger dead, and their confederation broke apart. Many survivors left the area to live with neighboring tribes in western Massachusetts.
Things were little better under British rule. The Munsee and Mohicans stopped living their traditional lives and making their traditional items, as the English endeavored to “civilize” all the native people. “The vast lands, which the Mohicans had used for gardens, hunting, and fishing, began to have boundary lines and fences when shared with non-Indians,” Davids writes. Between 1680 and 1708, much of the Munsee land around present-day Bedford was sold to the British, the deeds signed by an Indian leader named Katonah.
When the Munsee joined forces with the Colonial Army during the Revolutionary War, many of them were killed—including their powerful sachem, Daniel Nimham—at the infamous Battle of Kingsbridge, in 1778 in the Bronx. By the turn of the 19th century, there were virtually no natives left in Westchester County.
The rest of the Hudson Valley native people suffered similar fates. The two Esopus Wars, in 1659 and 1663, were brutal and bloody affairs that left the Esopus devastated and dispersed to live with their Minisink brethren to the west. Many surviving Mohicans, meanwhile, also relocated to Western Massachusetts with the remaining Wappinger. They were converted to Christianity by missionary John Sergeant, who started a mission in 1738 in the area that colonists named Stockbridge, Massachusetts. “Some native people, noting that the Europeans seemed to be prospering in this new land, felt that perhaps their god was more powerful and agreed to be missionized,” Davids writes.
After the war, the Stockbridge-Mohican Indians and other tribes moved to Western New York, near Oneida Lake, and then again moved to Indiana to live with their relatives, the Miami and Delaware Indians, and then again, to inhospitable land in Wisconsin, in the 1830s.
And that was that. The Mahicannituck was the Hudson River. The Muhheconneok and Munsee were gone, replaced by the Europeans. A civilization dating back to the time of the mastodons had been nearly eradicated, and its few survivors were forced to live thousands of miles from their ancestral home, all in the span of about 200 years.
Colonization grew in present-day Westchester under Willem Kieft (above) and the Dutch West India Company, eventually leading to Kieft’s war in 1643, which decimated the Wappinger Tribe.
Many Trails, Leading Back Home
“Most people think we are all dead and gone,” says Bonney Hartley, the tribal historic preservation officer for the federally recognized Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation. Hartley, alive and well, is hard at work at her office in Troy, NY, advocating for roughly 1500 of her fellow citizens—about half of whom live on the reservation in Wisconsin—who are part of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation.
The nation set up this satellite office, on the campus of the Sage Colleges, to increase its presence in the Hudson Valley. Hartley collaborates with state and federal authorities whenever land development may encroach upon ancient tribal lands. If native artifacts may be disturbed, “we work on trying to avoid it and not disturb the site,” she says. “If that is not possible, we work on mitigation. The sites are irreplaceable. They may seem like just stones or pieces of pottery, but to us these are extremely precious.” Hartley also consults on museum exhibits, conducts public outreach, and, perhaps most important, strives to preserve burial grounds—her tribe’s most sacred sites.
The nation, though long removed from the Hudson Valley, has maintained an ongoing relationship with its ancient homeland. Bus trips pull in to the area regularly to visit important sites—the exact locations of which they prefer to keep to themselves for fear of poaching and vandalism. Without being too specific, Sherry White, tribal historic preservation manager, names towns in Westchester (White Plains); Ulster (New Paltz); Dutchess (Pine Plains, Poughkeepsie); Columbia/Green (Schodack Island); Rensselaer (Papscanee Island, Lansingburg, Schaghticoke); and Albany Counties (Schuyler Flats, Bethlehem, Peebles Island, Coeymans) as destinations, but adds that, “from Manhattan to Vermont, it is pretty hard to put a shovel in the ground without hitting a [native] site of some sort—fishing camp, hunting camp, burial ground, habitation site.” Members of the nation are always moved when they return to the Valley. “I have been on a bus trip, and it is really amazing,” Hartley says. “When you pull in to the area, a hush falls over the bus. Everyone feels the connection. It is a beautiful thing to see.”
Hartley says that, in general, the nation is healthy. On the Wisconsin reservation, a casino has brought economic opportunity, and a health center keeps the population well. Young people who once had to leave to find work are now able to stay. “We have a thriving tribe with continued leadership that has existed since time immemorial,” she says. “We have come a long ways from the devastation that occurred after [European] contact. We are so far from our homeland, first forced to Stockbridge, then multiple times west, and onto the worst land in Wisconsin. After all that, it is really a remarkable story of resiliency that we even exist at all.” | <urn:uuid:c4c9da1b-eb25-4138-abab-5417973df27d> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://turtlegang.nyc/republican-candidate-questions-mural-for-depicting-indian-people-as-too-dark/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510462.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20230928230810-20230929020810-00503.warc.gz | en | 0.973763 | 3,924 | 2.765625 | 3 |
If you wear contact lenses, you probably know the hygiene routine you should follow when removing your lenses:
- Wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water and dry them on a clean, lint free cloth.
- Remove the lens from your eye and clean the lens immediately (if you wear multi-use lenses). Gently rinse it with the solution recommended by your optometrist, and scrub it clean from edge to edge with solution. Do not wait until morning to rub the lenses, as the debris gets stuck on the lens and delayed cleaning will not be as effective.
- Place the contact lens in a contact lens storage case that’s filled with fresh, clean disinfecting or multi-purpose solution and close the lid. If you wear daily disposables, throw them away after use.
Even if you know these guidelines, if you're honest with yourself, how many times have you NOT followed this optometrist prescribed routine and taken short cuts in your contact lens hygiene such as:
- Cleaning your contacts with saliva or water
- Storing lenses in liquids other than proper multi-purpose or disinfecting solution. (Saline is NOT a disinfectant.)
- Not following the proper wearing schedule (wearing dailies for more than one day, monthlies longer than a month, sleeping in daytime lenses, etc.)
- Sleeping or swimming in your lenses
In fact, a vision scientist at the University of Texas surveyed 443 contact lens patients and found that less than one percent cared for their lenses properly.
Here are some of the most common mistakes made in caring for contact lenses and why it’s important to change your habits now.
The Mistake: Storing or washing contact lenses in tap water.
The Risk: Although this seems harmless, tap water can cause serious damage to your eyes. Since regular tap water is not sterile, it can cause infections, like Acanthomaeoba. Homemade saline has also been known to lead to certain fungal eye infections.
The Solution: Never wash or store lenses in tap water or any liquid other than contact lens solution. Even more so try to avoid swimming or showering with your lenses in to avoid contact with tap or chlorine filled water.
The Mistake: Using saliva to wash lenses.
The Risk: Saliva is full of bacteria that belong in your mouth and not in your eyes. If you have a cut in your eye, the bacteria could get trapped under your lens and cause an infection.
The Solution: Always carry a small container of lens solution or artificial tears. If your lenses are bothering you, either use proper solution or remove them until you are able to treat them properly.
The Mistake: Reuse cleaning solution or topping off your lens storage case.
The Risk: Reusing solution is like begging for an eye infection. This is because all the debris and bacteria that are in your eyes and are on your contact lenses come off into the solution. So if you recycle solution, you are putting all that bacteria right back into your eye. If you have any microscopic breaks in your cornea, the bacteria can then infect your cornea.
The Solution: Use fresh solution every time you store your contact lenses. Also be sure to empty out ALL the remaining solution from your storage case from the previous day before adding new solution to it. If this is too much to remember or do, try using daily disposable lenses.
The Mistake: Not adhering to the schedule for the prescribed lenses. (Note: Certain extended wear lenses are approved for 30 days wear, but proper fit is essential for success even if the lens allows high oxygen permeability.)
The Risk: After the approved time for contact lens use, today’s thin contact lenses do not retain their shape and structure. If you re-wear lenses that are meant to be used for a specified time period, mucus and bacteria can build up because cleaning solutions do not protect the lenses for longer than the approved wearing time. Between the lens changes and the tendency for contamination, you increase the risk of eye irritation and infection.
The solution: Follow the recommended schedule you are given for wearing your lenses.
The Mistake: Wearing contact lenses when your vision is blurry or your eyes hurt a little.
The Risk: When in doubt, take them out! If your lenses cause you any discomfort, or your eyes look a bit red, listen to your body rather than suffering through the discomfort that can potentially develop into an infection.
The Solution: If your eyes are bothering you, first try applying lubricating drops made for contact lens wearers. If that doesn’t help, take the lenses out and check them to make sure they are not damaged or dirty. If it does not look good to you, do not use it.
Improper contact lens hygiene can lead to, red eyes, blurry vision, irritation, and in the most severe cases serious infections and corneal abrasion, which can lead to blindness. So the bottom line is: listen to your optometrists’ instructions and keep your lenses clean!
For more information, watch this video on contact lens care: | <urn:uuid:0c933f99-0f2c-4eb8-be20-b6934e12ab4a> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.blufftonfamilyeyecare.com/2013/11/18/keeping-your-contact-lenses-clean/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510462.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20230928230810-20230929020810-00503.warc.gz | en | 0.91859 | 1,055 | 2.609375 | 3 |
During Lent, Christians of the East and West will participate in abstaining from meat. Specifically, for the West, this abstinence takes place on Fridays. On Fridays, we are permitted to eat fish but not meat. In one sense, insofar as it is the flesh of an animal, fish is meat. However, we can eat fish because it is cold-blooded, whereas we cannot eat beef, for example, because it is warm-blooded. There is a two-fold purpose to this.
The first reason, unlike the second, is straightforward—namely, to remember that on Friday there is only one warm-blooded victim, the Lamb that was slain. The second reason we are encouraged to eat fish on Friday is for us to participate, symbolically, in Christ’s victory over death. Now, to understand how eating cold-blooded creatures is participating with Christ’s victory, we must properly understand three biblical stories.
The first story we must properly understand is in Genesis. Specifically, when God is pronouncing his judgment over the serpent and Adam. God says to the snake, “On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat” (Gen. 3:14). Then, God tells Adam, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19). God casting the serpent down to his belly has been understood to mean that the Evil One has been cast down to the netherworld. Furthermore, God commanding the snake to consume dust has been understood to mean that the serpent has been made the ruler of the underworld. Think about it, God tells Adam that he will return to dust, and the serpent is told that he will be the eater of the dust. With this unnerving context, we can now properly understand the second story, which is in the book of Jonah.
The tale of Jonah is connected to the previous story because it is the playing out of the judgment that was given by God in Genesis. Most misinterpret the story of Jonah thinking that the prophet was swallowed by a whale. However, this has not always been the general understanding. Traditionally, it was understood that Jonah was eaten by Leviathan, which is a serpentine sea-monster. Furthermore, in Judeo-Christian tradition, Leviathan has been identified as the Evil One. Therefore, with the Genesis narrative in mind, it can be understood that Jonah dies, because he is eaten by the serpent. Furthermore, the dead prophet prays, “Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice” (Jonah 2:2). Sheol, which is also known as the Netherworld, is the place where the Hebrews believed all the dead go. Additionally, ancient Hebrews believed that this place was located under the chaotic waters, or tohu wabohu. Therefore, it could not be made clearer that the prophet dies, since he is underneath the chaotic waters and in the belly of the serpent.
Nonetheless, although Jonah dies, he is resurrected by God, and is spit up by the serpent: “You brought up my life from the pit” (Jonah 2:6). It is important for us to regain this ancient understanding because it gives us greater context to the third biblical story, which is the key for us to understand how eating fish on Friday is a symbolic meal that participates in Christ’s victory.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says that this generation will receive no sign except the sign of Jonah. As we know, Jesus is referring to himself as the new Jonah, and the sign he gives is his Resurrection. However, unlike Jonah, death is not just spitting Christ back up. Rather, Christ is swallowing death. St. Augustine writes, “Christ endured death like a lamb, but he devoured it like a lion.” Therefore, it is a reversal of the roles referenced above. Now, because of Christ’s victory, man is the eater of death, the serpent.
Therefore, we are encouraged to eat cold-blooded meat, like fish, because it is acting as a “relative” to the snake and helping us to recollect this victory that was won many Fridays ago. Have you ever noticed what Jesus is always eating after his Resurrection? That’s right, fish. So, let us keep this in mind the next time we go to our parish’s Lenten fish fry.
On Fridays I will eat,
no warm-blooded meat.
Save for me the cold blooded,
and that will be my treat.
Let me eat and so remember,
that serpent’s great defeat!
You may ask, why do you eat, on Fridays, only that which is cold?
For which I will say to you,
to remember the destruction of that serpent of old!
Let us be bold!
how hideous that beast
Whose relatives fall between my jaws
on a lovely Friday’s feast.
Let us commemorate this feast!
Won for us by the Great High Priest,
Whose kingdom is of the East!
Glory be to Christ the Lord,
Glory none the least!
For because of him, and He alone,
on our enemies do we feast! | <urn:uuid:0c234019-d14f-4b3b-bbf0-fa81595d3721> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/contributors/the-symbolism-behind-fish-fridays/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510462.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20230928230810-20230929020810-00503.warc.gz | en | 0.967993 | 1,092 | 3.1875 | 3 |
What is digital electric meter?
An electric meter is a device used to measure the electrical energy usage of a home, building, or other electrically powered device. They are used in order to provide accurate billing to customers. Digital meters simply state the number of kWh of electricity have been used.
Which electricity meter is best?
9 Best Electric Sub Meters
- SM Enterprices. SM Enterprices Digital LED Sub meter Single Phase 2 Wire Electrical Energy KWH. 9.8 score.
- 33% off. Generic.
- 45% off. Treman.
- 16% off. BENTEC.
- CRIC. CRIC Benlo Electronic Energy Sub Meter AC Single Phase 2-Wire Static kWh.
- 15% off. BENTEC.
- 59% off. KingNova.
- 41% off. Arrostar.
How do I know if my digital electric meter is working?
You need to switch off all your electrical lamps/appliances, etc. Now record the reading of your electrical meter and let only 1000 watt lamp run for one hour and then record the final reading. If the difference of reading is one unit i.e. 1 KWH, it means that meter is working satisfactorily.
Is a digital electric meter the same as a smart meter?
Digital meters, sometimes called “smart meters” or “advanced meters,” are devices that automatically record electric and water use, then electronically report that information to the utility company at regular intervals. These meters provide secure data that can show peak usage and isolate outages.
What is the difference between a smart meter and a digital meter?
A smart meter is a digital electricity meter that records a home’s energy usage in at least 30-minute intervals. Digital interval meters can also record electricity consumption in 30-minute intervals, but unlike smart meters they’re not able to communicate that data to the provider.
Are digital electric meters accurate?
Electric meters record how much electricity you use in your home and are used to calculate how much you need to pay for the electricity your electrical appliances have consumed. Electric meters are generally accurate and can be tested by your electricity supplier.
How does a digital meter work?
Digital meters have electronic displays that make them easier to read and understand. Using a radio frequency signal emitted by the electrical meter, the utility department has a direct, real-time reading of the electricity consumed.
How does a digital electric meter work?
Rather than dials, a digital meter has an electronic display that you or a service person can read manually on the face of the meter, or the signal can be sent to the utility company via a high-frequency signal that is transmitted back to the utility company on the electric service wires.
What is the cost of 1 kWh in India?
During fiscal year 2019, the average cost of state electricity supplied in India was 5.43 Indian rupees per kilowatt hour.
Which is the leading electric meter manufacturer in India?
Juvas Meters JUVAS is a leading manufacturer in the Electric Metering Industry in India. Some of our meters include Single Phase KWH Static Energy Meters, Three Phase KWH Static Energy Meters, Multifunctional Single Phase Energy Meters, Multifunctional Three Phase Energy Meter, etc.
How much does single phase power India meter cost?
Power India Meters Single Phase Digital Multi-function Electrical Energy Meter with electronic LCD Display M.R.P.: ₹999.00 Price: ₹740.00 You Save: ₹259.00 (26%) Inclusive of all taxes
How to pay by cash for power India meters?
For Pay-on-Delivery orders, we recommend paying using Credit card/Debit card/Netbanking via the pay-link sent via SMS at the time of delivery. To pay by cash, place cash on top of the delivery box and step back. In stock. Sold by Power India Meters and Fulfilled by Amazon .
What are the parameters of an electric meter?
Displays various electrical parameters like electric consumption (Kwh), Voltage (V), Current (I), Power-factor (PF), Load (kw/kva), Frequency (Hz) on press of button Copper connections Surge resistant and tamper proof with magnetic shielding ·Sustained accuracy over long period of time | <urn:uuid:cb98cbf0-df9c-445f-a09f-5dca2f54b7f0> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://bookriff.com/what-is-digital-electric-meter/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510603.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20230930050118-20230930080118-00403.warc.gz | en | 0.890073 | 912 | 2.5625 | 3 |
index HTML meta tag, contrary to the
noindex directive, is an instruction to search engines that a specific web page should be included in their index and is thus eligible to appear in search engine results pages (SERPs). While it's important to understand, it's also worth noting that the
index value is the default behavior for search engines. Let's explore this concept further:
index directive can be specified using a meta tag in the head section of a web page's HTML code. It tells search engine bots that the particular page should be indexed. However, since indexing is the default behavior for search engines, the
index tag is rarely used explicitly.
If you still want to include it, the
index tag can be implemented in the HTML code like this:
<meta name="robots" content="index">
While generally unnecessary due to its default status, there might be specific cases where an
index tag could be used:
noindextag and you wish to ensure that it's clear to search engines that the page should now be indexed, you might include an
indextag might help to clarify your intentions.
index tag can be combined with other directives such as
nofollow to control how search engine bots interact with links on the page. For example:
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
This tells search engine bots to index the page and follow the links found on it.
index tag informs search engines that a page should be indexed, but since this is the default behavior, the tag is typically unnecessary. However, understanding its function and how it contrasts with the
noindex tag can still be valuable in the nuanced world of technical SEO. By having full control over the indexing of your web pages, you can guide search engines to present the most relevant and valuable content to users, aligning with your site's structure and goals. Whether working on SEO copy or site management, knowing how to manage indexing can contribute to the overall success of a website. | <urn:uuid:3c91f0a9-c2f2-4096-a3be-359be1e12586> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://seosuccor.com/glossary/index-tag/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510603.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20230930050118-20230930080118-00403.warc.gz | en | 0.891943 | 430 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Wisdom teaches your child that telling the truth is more than just saying things that are true. Being truthful means speaking accurately, without exaggerating or being misleading. Your child needs wisdom to be truthful. Truth telling is a conscious effort to supply accurate information that honors God and not self. It is possible to say things that are accurate and still hide the truth. This is the distinction that you must teach to your children.
No child is born wise. Wisdom is a skill that must be acquired. If you are waiting for your child to grow up and begin to make wise choices, you will be waiting a long time. In order to be truthful, wisdom is required. This is why Proverbs is adamant that we must get wisdom.
Your child needs wisdom to be truthful. God’s wisdom is much more than information transfer. Wisdom is living a life that is oriented toward honoring God in each decision that is made.
Each one of us is born with the natural inclination to manipulate what is true for our own advantage. Here are two examples:
“Mommy, come quickly, the puppy is outside!”
These words are true, but they are selective words. They leave out the fact that the puppy was taken out to play with even though that was not allowed today. Here true words are used in an attempt avoid getting in trouble.
Everything said in this example is true. Mom was angry. She was sorry for yelling. She is really tired. But this collection of true words is not the reason Mom became angry and yelled. Tiredness is not the problem. The problem is using circumstances as a reason for disobeying God and becoming angry.
Wisdom that flows from a heart won over by the gospel will guard your heart. Your heart’s natural inclination is to deceive, to use true words to make yourselves look good. If you want your children to wise and truthful, lead them by your example as well as your instruction.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in those who tell the truth. | <urn:uuid:a0603e48-796d-4187-b3ae-256187d61609> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.shepherdpress.com/mommy-the-puppy-is-outside/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510603.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20230930050118-20230930080118-00403.warc.gz | en | 0.977999 | 451 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Definition of Travelers:
person who journeys
Synonyms of Travelers:
Opposite/Antonyms of Travelers:
Sentence/Example of Travelers:
Travelers have differed in their measurements of this stupendous growth.
In April, 1870, a party of English travelers in Greece were seized by brigands.
Until now this personage had escaped the observation of the travelers.
This was built about the year 1805, and much frequented by travelers and teamsters.
But the travelers, when they saw the tiger in the distance, were all frightened and ran away.
The seaman and travelers awaited their end with lamentations.
As the captain had said, it was fortunate for the travelers that the “brush” only had struck the carriage.
Concierges, I knew, were the ever present helps of travelers in trouble.
Letters of credit, travelers' checks, drafts, all were mere printed paper.
For the first time on Hawaii trails became safe for travelers. | <urn:uuid:2e6f7bcc-bc55-4fb2-a1dc-0f6b910363bf> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.wordscoach.com/dictionary/Travelers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511002.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20231002164819-20231002194819-00203.warc.gz | en | 0.904598 | 345 | 2.578125 | 3 |
You’ve probably heard of the great battles fought in Europe and the Pacific during WWII, but did you know that part of WWII was fought just miles off the coast of the United States? And that the men taking part in these battles were civilians?
Well, my guest today has published a book about this oft-forgotten aspect of WWII history. His name is William Geroux and his book is The Mathews Men: Seven Brothers and the War Against Hitler’s U-boats.
Today on the show, William and I discuss the U.S. Merchant Marine, their important role during WWII, and why they were targets for German U-boats off the coast of the United States. We also discuss why Mathews County Virginia produced so many merchant mariners during WWII, and how one family alone sent 15 men to serve.
- What the U.S. Merchant Marine is and their role during World War II
- Why the U.S. Merchant Marine was targeted by German U-Boats
- What life was like on a German U-boat (and how flushing a toilet incorrectly could sink it)
- How close German U-boats got to the U.S. coast
- Why it took so long for the U.S. to do anything about U-boats sinking merchant marine ships
- Why merchant mariners re-enlisted on another ship right after their boat got torpedoed
- The time a German U-boat officer had a conversation about the Brooklyn Dodgers with the merchant mariners he just torpedoed
- Why Mathews County, Virginia produced so many merchant mariners
- The family from Mathews County that produced 15 merchant mariners during WWII
- The high casualty rate of the U.S. Merchant Marine
- What happened to the merchant mariners after WWII
- The status of the U.S. Merchant Marine today
Resources/Studies/People Mentioned in Podcast
- U.S. Merchant Marine
- U-Boat causality numbers
- Admiral Karl Dönitz
- Winston Churchill
- Map of the U-Boat war near America
- Sunken U-Boat 15 miles off the coast of North Carolina
- Operation Pastorius (U-boat that landed on American soil)
- Admiral Ernest King
- Merchant ships convoys
If you’re a WWII history junkie, or have ever wondered what the Merchant Marine was/is, The Mathews Men needs to be on your to-read list. It’s a great book about a fascinating and forgotten part of military and WWII history.
Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)
Carnivore Club. Get a box of artisanal meats sent directly to your door. Use discount code AOM at checkout for 10% off your first order.
Five Four Club. Take the hassle out of shopping for clothes and building a wardrobe. Use promo code “manliness” at checkout to get 50% off your first box of exclusive clothing.
Squarespace. Build a beautiful looking website easily with Squarespace. Use code ARTOFMAN at checkout for 10% off your first purchase.
Read the Transcript
Brett McKay: Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of “The Art of Manliness” podcast. You’re probably familiar with the battles of World War II fought in the European and Pacific theaters, thanks to shows like “Band of Brothers” or “Pacific” on HBO. What a lot of people don’t know is that there was a part of World War II that was fought just off the coast of the United States and the thing was, it was between civilians and the German U-boats.
My guest today on the podcast has written a book about this often forgotten part of World War II history. His name is William Geroux. He’s the author of the book “The Mathews Men: Seven Brothers and the War Against Hitler’s U-boats”. It’s about the war fought between the US Merchant Marine and Hitler’s U-boats that often happened, like I said, right off the coast of the United States.
What a lot of people don’t know is that the merchant mariners … They were civilians. They weren’t actually soldiers, but they had some of the highest casualty rates during World War II as they were shipping supplies to soldiers across the war. They even got involved in the war before US were in the war as they were shipping supplies to Great Britain, our ally. A really fascinating podcast.
We also get into the title of the book “The Mathews Men” because as we’ll see, there was this county in Virginia that supplied a huge amount of the merchant mariners that took part in World War II. In fact, one family … There was eight members, male members of the family, that were merchant mariners.
We’ll discuss what life was like as a merchant mariner, what life was like as a U-boat – not very pleasant – and yeah, you’ll have a lot of cocktail party, campfire fodder after this show. Just to give you a heads up, my connection with my guest on Skype was a little spotty when I was doing the interview, so there is a little bumpy noise to the podcast.
We’ve done our best to edit it as possible, to clean it up, but just give you heads up about that. To let you know also, we’re about to release and about to be able to do recordings with a platform that I developed that’ll allow me to do remote recordings, remote interviews, while maintaining pristine audio quality.
I’m really excited about it and hopefully it will up the podcast up even more. Appreciate your support and your patience. When you’re done listening to the show, make sure to check out the show notes at aom.is/mathews and that’s one T, not two. William Geroux, welcome to the show.
William Geroux: Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Brett McKay: All right, so your book is called “The Mathews Men”. It’s about the US Merchant Marine during World War II and this war that they had with German U-boats that happened really close to the United States. It’s something that a lot of people don’t know about. Before we get into that, let’s talk about the Merchant Marine itself. I think … A lot of people have heard of it, the Merchant Marine, but don’t know exactly what they did or what they do. What is the US Merchant Marine and why do we not really know … Why does the public not know much about it?
William Geroux: Probably because they don’t know much about it. Part of the reason is the Merchant Marine is really now … Just a shadow of what it once was. It’s not very much in the public eye anymore. The Merchant Marine … The name, it’s confusing. It sounds like a branch of the military, but it’s not … It’s really sort of a loosely organized group of civilians, private citizens, mariners, who sailed ships normally for commercial purposes like cargo from port to port.
In World War II and really in any times of war throughout the history of the United States, the Merchant Marine really started to become sort of an adjunct to the military. It hauls war supplies. It was the supply line. In World War II, that was very important … They hauled everything that the Allied troops needed to survive and fight in foreign battlefields. I mean, everything from fuel to guns and ammunition, planes, tanks, Jeeps, trucks, food, bug repellent, medical supplies, everything. They were the supply line.
Brett McKay: This is why they were such big targets for the Germans during World War II.
William Geroux: Yes. The U-boats, their mission was to try to cut that supply line because the Germans knew that if America could project its industrial power across the ocean, the Germans were doomed … Their Reich was not going to survive it … The U-boats were their way … That was really the most effective part of the German Navy was the U-boats. That was their mission, to cut the supply line if they could.
Brett McKay: Well, yeah. That was another interesting thing … I mean, I’ve heard of German U-boats, but I didn’t really know much about them except that they were sort of submarines, but … I mean, what exactly is a U-boat? It can go underwater, but it’s technically not a submarine.
William Geroux: Correct. It’s not a submarine the way we think of submarines today, the nuclear subs, the big ones that can stay underwater for months at a time without even communicating with the outside world. U-boats … They were diving vessels. They performed much better on the surface, but they were able to submerge for brief periods of time to conduct attacks or to try to escape pursuers … There’s sort of a mystique about U-boats that they were these … The ultimate weapons.
One of the things I try to do in the book is to show that they really had a lot of weaknesses and vulnerabilities. They were slower than … Most of the warships that hunted them. If they got driven underwater, they were located by sonar or radar and driven underwater to try to escape, they were pretty helpless. They were dependent on the wiles, the trickery, of the U-boat commander to try to outwit their pursuers and figure out a way to get away from them. If they didn’t … The U-boat would be destroyed often by depth charges and sent to the bottom, often with all hands.
Brett McKay: Right … You mentioned in the book that the U-boats had some of the highest casualties during the war.
William Geroux: Yes. Once the Allies figured out or got the technology and the tactics and the experience to deal with them and really were able to go after them, the predators, the U-boats, quickly became the prey. By the end of the war, it was a suicide mission basically to go out in a U-boat. They were hunted … Their effectiveness was completely gone so much so that the head of the U-boat command, Admiral Karl Dönitz, considered at one point just pulling them out of the war zones because they were just getting slaughtered.
They ultimately decided, he ultimately decided, that if they did that … The Allies were running a great deal of people and weaponry to control them. If they were gone, the Allies could apply that weaponry elsewhere. They kept them in the field basically to occupy the enemy and at enormous losses to themselves.
Brett McKay: Yeah, you describe life on a U-boat. It sounded absolutely horrible. I don’t know why anyone would want to sign up to be a member on a U-boat.
William Geroux: It was brutal. I mean, the air was foul, the food was often rancid. The U-boat was so cramped that the men literally slept on torpedoes that were stored under their bunks. All the U-boats’ operating systems were so exacting, so demanding, that everything had to be done through a certain way. Any deviation from that … Could doom the U-boat and that even extended to U-boat’s toilets … There’s at least one example that I describe in the book where an improperly flushed toilet ended up sinking a U-boat.
Brett McKay: Yeah … I mean, it was funny in a sad, sad way … The U-boats, part of the mission … Early on in the war, even before America was officially in the war, the US Merchant Marine started engaging with these U-boats. What was the US Merchant Marine’s role in World War II even before the United States had actually officially declared war?
William Geroux: Well, the British … They were suffering terrible losses from the U-boat. Of course, Britain is a island nation and they depend on shipping to basically [go 00:09:50] supply everything. The U-boats were really hurting them. They were sinking British merchant ships and killing British mariners faster than they could be replaced. Winston Churchill asked President Franklin Roosevelt for help.
Roosevelt found different ways, short of being in a war, to help them. One of those ways was … Mobilizing the Merchant Marine, the US Merchant Marine, to deliver goods to the British. At the beginning of the war, Hitler, when he was first approaching the war, he wasn’t in that big of a hurry for us to join the war. He had invaded Russia … He really … Had all the enemies … More enemies really than he could use at that point … Even though it was clear to everybody and particularly the U-boat commanders.
I mean, they had to look through their periscopes at these American ships and see them delivering … Basically breaking their blockade and not be able to do anything about it for political reasons. Hitler said … “Do not sink American ships yet … We’ll suffer the consequences of letting them deliver supplies.” This went on for quite some time.
America got more and more into it and pretty soon, our warships were helping to escort the big convoys across the Atlantic. The U-boats started sinking some of our ships … Our destroyer and … A number of merchant ships. At first, Hitler would apologize. He’d say, “Oh, it was a mistake.” After awhile … He just quit bothering to apologize and we were just slowly getting further into the war before we were actually in it.
For some people … People that lived on the East Coast, it was a surprise that we got into the war because of something that happened in the Pacific rather what was going on in the Atlantic. It was clear that we were moving ever close to it. The merchant mariners were on the front lines of the European war for months before we had troops in the fields against the Germans. They were the front lines for a lot of 1942.
Brett McKay: Again, they weren’t actually members of the military. They were civilians, right?
William Geroux: Yes.
Brett McKay: They were facing the brunt of this unofficial war the US had entered against Germany by being an ally of Great Britain.
William Geroux: Yes. They were … Really the tip of the spear, although they really didn’t have much of a spear … Or really any. Most of these merchant ships … A lot of them in the beginning … They were old. They’d been built during World War I. They were slow, they were ploddingly slow … A lot of them were overloaded with stuff that they were never designed to carry and they were pretty much unprotected.
They were sent out on the hopes that they would get where they were going without encountering a U-boat. If they did, they were sitting ducks … This went on for quite some time. Some of the ships were armed … The Navy would install gun [tops 00:13:14] on these merchant ships.
They were Navy gun crews on there to man them, but through no fault of these gun crews, putting a gun top on a merchant ship was not a good way to protect it from U-boats. A lot of these Navy gunners died right alongside the merchant mariners when the ships were torpedoed. There’s no record of a Navy gun crew ever sinking a U-boat.
Brett McKay: At what point did the Germans start sending U-boats … Into US waters? This was the thing that was really surprising to me. We often think, “Oh, the war really didn’t come to America. It was fought in the Pacific and Europe.” The German U-boats … They got really, really close to America during World War II. At what point did the Germans start swarming U-boats near American coasts?
William Geroux: The first ones came here in early January, like the second week in January. Five of them came here … Dönitz … The head of German U-boat ran, wanted to send a lot more, but … Hitler and some of his superiors in the German Navy didn’t want to send that many … The Germans didn’t have nearly as many U-boats as they wanted. Hitler thought they should be deployed here and there.
It sort of frustrated Dönitz because … His great gift was to constantly be shifting the U-boats around into … Whatever the weakest point in the Allied supply line was. He kept close track of this. He monitored it. Right after America got into the war, the weakest point by far was the coast of the United States. He wanted to put a lot more here.
Anyway, they came here in early January and just were ran roughshod. I mean, they were sinking a ship a day. They could only stay for so long. They could only stay for a couple of weeks and they’d run out of fuel, run out of torpedoes. He would send another wave of them. He kept really just sending waves of U-boats.
They would stay here a couple of weeks and sink a bunch of ships and then they’d go back and a new group would come. They ranged five to maybe a little over a dozen over the course of the first year of the war when they were really effective before we started protecting the mariners with convoys and started defending our coastline.
Brett McKay: I mean, what was surprising was how close they got. I mean, you describe how there would be members of the U-boat … They’d come to the surface and they’d get out. They could see the skyline of New York City or see the ferris wheel at Coney Island. I mean, they were that close.
William Geroux: Yeah, they were. I mean … There’s a sunken U-boat less than twenty miles off the coast … Closer to fifteen miles off the coast of Nags Head, North Carolina, on the outer banks of North Carolina, which is a big tourist community. The U-boats … They sank, they torpedoed ships right within sight of the beach.
At Jupiter Inlet in Florida, they torpedoed ships right near the mouth of the Mississippi River. In the summer of ’42, they even got close enough to the land teams of would-be saboteurs on the United States. They got close enough to send these guys in a raft to the beach and to go ashore with the idea that they were going to find a factory to destroy or something.
They were right here … Once it became clear that these U-boats were close, there was a lot of worry in some of these coastal communities and rumors that strange lights on the beach at night. There were stories, all of them bogus, about strange men’s bodies being found with German stuff in their pocket that identified them as U-boats … Most of those stories … They were just not true … There was sort of a paranoia right along in some of these isolated beach communities.
Brett McKay: You said that the Germans … Ran roughshod over American ships, the Merchant Marine ships. It happened for a long time. Why did it take so long for the US to really do anything about the U-boats that were sinking ships off American coasts?
William Geroux: Well, part of it was … It was unavoidable. The United States … Despite this buildup, we weren’t really prepared for the war when it came upon us. We didn’t have a lot of ships and planes to use to patrol our coasts … We were fighting the Japanese in the Pacific and we were helping these big convoys that would leave on a very regular basis from Maritime Canada to Britain. Those were still going on and they needed protection.
We did have some ships and planes, but the Admiral King, Admiral Ernest King, who had really operational control of the Navy … Was hesitant to deploy what we did have to protect the ships along the coast. He was just very reluctant to do this. One of the reasons, I mean, he did think about it, but … He got an idea that once we built enough new warships and planes that we could have these really powerful, effective convoys, a convoy being … Basically a ring of warships and a air cover of planes, protecting these helpless merchant ships.
Once we had enough of those that we could run convoys, then … Yeah, we’d run a really good convoy system and eventually we did. Before that, he was reluctant to run a weak convoy system. He didn’t want to send a convoy out, just a few ships that weren’t well armed, because his thinking was if we did that, we’re just making the U-boats job easier. We’re just assembling all the targets for them in one place and then we can’t protect them, but that really wasn’t true.
The British had already learned this. The British had learned that any protection at all was better than nothing. In particular in the United States, the only reason the Germans were sending U-boats three thousand miles across the ocean … U-boats were precious. They needed all they could get. The only reason they were willing to send them this far, the only reason it made sense, is that the kills over here were so easy …
If they were in an unprotected stretch of ocean, U-boats … They were ship-sinking machines. They could … Sink one ship after another. Anything we had done in those early months to make it even a little bit more difficult for them to sink merchant ships would have compelled the Germans to recalculate the cost and benefits of sending these U-boats all the way over here. This went on for quite a long time.
Finally, Admiral King … He was criticized during this time. The British were complaining … “Why are you letting all these ships be torpedoed?” A lot of the ships were ultimately on their way to Britain. The different people in the military, the US military … They were noticing this and they’re saying … “This can’t go on … You do something.” He kept saying, “We’re doing all we can. We’ll get to it.”
Finally in about maybe August of 1942, the convoy system started to take shape. The torpedoers and merchant ships just throbbed immediately. I mean, the numbers just plummeted. It took a little while for the convoy. There was still a few bugs in it, or a lot of bugs in the system, and areas that weren’t covered. After August of 1942, things got better and better. By the spring of 1943, the Allies … They had figured out … They had what they needed to really defeat the U-boats. That was really when the tide turned in the U-boat world.
Brett McKay: I guess they developed new technology, microwave sonar or was it microwave …
William Geroux: Microwave radar that could be carried in planes. Prior to that, a U-boat … On the surface … At night, a U-boat commander could surface and they’d recharge the U-boat’s batteries. In cloudy weather, they didn’t have to worry about being spotted by a plane. Once the planes had radar, they could just appear without warning out of the clouds in the middle of the night and strike a U-boat on the surface.
The U-boats … Were not able to detect the planes quickly enough to avoid them … That was when the U-boats started to become sitting ducks. We also had different ships. We had destroyer escorts … American shipyards were just cranking these things out. They were ideal for hunting U-boats. We had little escort carriers, little miniature aircraft carriers … They had enough planes that they could be like floating airfields and just sail in the middle of convoys and provide air cover as the convoy moved through the ocean.
That was a great advantage because the U-boats … It made it very difficult for the U-boats to do anything … Any time a plane came by, they had to dive … It took them awhile to crash dive. The plane was faster. They had hunter killer groups. They had groups that were specifically designed … Their only job was to sink U-boats.
It was those groups, it was an escort carrier and a group of destroyers. When they found a U-boat, they could simply sit over it and drop depth charges until they sank it. There was no escaping. U-boat commanders had a hard time outwitting those guys because … Their killer groups … That was their only job was to sink U-boats and they sank a lot of them.
Brett McKay: You mentioned that the U-boats would torpedo these Merchant Marine ships. Of course, there were casualties, but there were typically survivors. People were able to get off the boat before it sank. What happened to the mariners … These surviving mariners, after they were torpedoed?
William Geroux: Well, they would go home and make it home. They would go right back out, many of them would go right back out, on other ships. They had thirty days basically at the end of a voyage to sign on with another merchant ship. If they didn’t do that, they became eligible for the draft. Some of these guys, they simply didn’t want to be in the infantry. They didn’t want to be in the Army or in foxholes. For other men, they were patriotic. They wanted to serve their country and they were mariners. That’s what they did. That was their life …
The nation needed these guys. It needed them badly, so they would sign on again even though they knew … I don’t think when … They were starting out that they realized how dangerous it would be. Certainly by a few months in, everybody that signed on to a ship knew that it was a very dangerous business. A lot of these guys just went out there again and again. There’s this one guy that got torpedoed ten times over the course of the two world wars because it’s even less known that the Germans sent U-boats to American shores in World War I as well.
Brett McKay: Wow … Yeah. I mean, they were able to get back because I guess they would … Get on survival rafts or lifeboats … What I thought was interesting is that the U-boats would often … They’d come to the surface and they would talk to the Merchant Marine very, “Oh, you know, it’s war … No hard feelings against you, but this is war. You understand.” They’d hand off … “Do you need any cigarettes? Do you need any whiskey? Do you need any food?” I mean, I thought … It was interesting that they’d have these conversations with the Germans after they got their ship sunk.
William Geroux: It was. To me, I think that was really one of the most surprising things that I discovered doing research on the book. There were numerous encounters like this … It depended on the character of the U-boat commander. Some of the U-boat commanders were utterly ruthless. They’d sink a ship and leave the guys out there to the mercy of the sea, which often was no mercy at all.
Other ones, if you look at the reports in the National Archives, you can track and you can see which commanders were not that way, which commanders … Their conscience bothered them. They didn’t want to leave these guys out there. Some of the U-boat commanders had been merchant mariners before the war. They were dedicated to sinking these guys’ ships. That’s what they were doing.
Once you had men … Their ship was sunk, they were helpless, they were in a raft or in a lifeboat, some of these commanders, they just couldn’t bring themselves to leave them there to die without offering them somehow. That was directly against the orders of Hitler and the U-boat command. Hitler wanted to … Basically machine gun these guys in the lifeboats; kill them somehow. To him, it was not just a matter of sinking ships, but getting rid of these mariners and figure, “Well, if we kill enough of them, then they’ll stop sailing.”
Dönitz, the head of the U-boat command, was a little less coldblooded, but he told these guys over and over again, “Do not help castaways. Do not help these guys in the lifeboat. You don’t have to go out of your way to kill them, but don’t help them. Don’t give them food, don’t give them water. Let nature take its course.” A number of these guys … They were hundreds of miles and thousands of miles from Berlin and they were in command of their own U-boats … They would do what they thought was right.
Brett McKay: Yeah. I thought the most interesting exchange was between a U-boat officer … He lived in America before the war, lived in New York City. He was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. He asked the merchant marines like, “How are the Dodgers doing?”
William Geroux: Right … It’s just an extraordinary story. I also like the one … You read this too where one of the guys, one of the U-boat commanders, hands over a big ten-gallon jug of drinking water and along with some cigarettes and some … French cookies and everything. Before he gives him the jug of drinking water, he squeezes fresh limes into the water to introduce vitamin C into the water to fortify these castaways in the lifeboat against scurvy, a vitamin deficiency disease.
In any event, their lifeboat ends up having to be at sea for a long time. Some of the stories are just … Again, there are other guys who are just utterly ruthless. There was one guy who would sink ships. He would approach the men in the lifeboats and subject them to political tirades against President Roosevelt for getting the US involved in the war. He would say, “Don’t ask me for drinking water, ask Roosevelt. He’s the one that put you in this situation.” He wasn’t entirely wrong.
Brett McKay: Let’s talk about the title of your book “The Mathews Men”. The reason why you call it “The Mathews Men” is there was a county in Virginia called Mathews County that produced a ton of merchant mariners. A lot of them were involved in this war, this U-boat war. Why did this particular county in Virginia produce so many mariners and that went on to go fight or take part in World War II?
William Geroux: Well … Mathews County had been producing mariners … Been a cradle of sea captains and merchant mariners since before the American Revolution. Mathews is a beautiful place … It’s a tiny isolated community on the … Clean sort of the shore of the Chesapeake Bay … There’s very little in that because it’s not on the way to anywhere. There’s no big employers there and job opportunities have always been very scarce there.
You were either a fisherman, a waterman as we call them in that area, or you were a farmer or you went to sea … All of these men grew up around the water. They all knew how to handle boats since they were little kids, so they were natural mariners. They naturally gravitated toward the Merchant Marine because it was a business where you didn’t need a lot of formal education … If you worked hard and you knew your stuff, you could rise to the top of your profession. That was a tradition in Mathews.
In some families, that was it … Your birthright was to become a sea captain. Your father had been one, your grandfather, maybe your great-grandfather, so it was always part of the Mathews … Just part of what the community did. When World War II came, there were a lot of these guys that had been in the Merchant Marine for a long time. The war created such a demand for mariners that even the guys who were fishermen or were farmers … Suddenly there were all these opportunities.
The Merchant Marine needed men and anybody who knew a bow from a stern just about could get a job. There were some companies even that would go out of their way to hire Mathews men because they had a reputation as great seamen … One Mathews guy put it, he said, “We’ve been doing this for a long time. When the war came, we just kept doing it. The torpedoes just got in our way for awhile.”
Brett McKay: You mentioned that in some families in Mathews, it was like a birthright. That’s what you did … You follow several families throughout the book, but there’s one family, the Hodges family, that produced a ton, a lot of Merchant Marine. How many men served in the US Merchant Marine from the Hodges family during World War II?
William Geroux: Well, there were … Let’s see … Six of the seven brothers were on ships during December. There was the father, Captain Jesse, he was the patriarch of the family. He was a captain of an ocean-going tug. All seven of his sons went to sea. One of them got hurt and had to go ashore, but … Several of the seven brothers’ sons also went to sea. I guess … Maybe a dozen Hodges. The Hodges’ daughters would marry mariners, so maybe fifteen members of the Hodges family … At least, were on merchant ships during World War II.
Brett McKay: Did any of them die at the hands of a U-boat?
William Geroux: Yes. Two of them were torpedoed within the space of eleven days. A couple of the others had very close calls and they were out there the whole time. They were on special missions and … One of them went to the most notorious run of the trip to Northern Russia. Others … They were in the Med … One of them went to … It was a very dangerous mission to supply, to send supplies, to the island of Malta … The Hodges were all over the place during the war, many of them in the Caribbean.
Brett McKay: Are there any descendants of the Hodges family that are still mariners or did that sort of dry up that family tradition?
William Geroux: There are descendants now who are in the … It’s interesting because the Merchant Marine as far as cargo ships is greatly reduced, but there is still a number of merchant mariners who are in tugboats. There are several members of the Hodges family who are tugboat captains or tugboat officers. They’re well-known in the tugboat community now, so they sort of moved on from cargo ships to tugs. I guess their situation’s changed. Yeah … The tradition is still alive. I interviewed … A couple of the tugboat guys.
Brett McKay: How many merchant mariners died during World War II? I think you mentioned … It had one of the highest casualty rates, correct?
William Geroux: Yes. There were roughly ninety three hundred of them. That was a casualty rate that the only branch of the military that was even comparable was the US Marines. Most of those deaths occurred in 1942 before the convoys were instituted here on the coast. They were very much concentrated, but it was still dangerous to sail a cargo ship even after the convoys were in place. The U-boats didn’t quit attacking. Once they got into the wrong territory the German bombers would attack them. A lot of the Mathews men were killed by bombers.
Brett McKay: What happened to the merchant mariners after the war? I mean … They’re sort of in an interesting position. They weren’t officially sailors or soldiers in the Navy or whatever, but yet they were still taking part in the war … On the front lines. Did they enjoy any of the veterans benefits or that happened after World War II or were they sort of left to their own devices?
William Geroux: They were kind of left out … Yeah, the mariners … They didn’t enjoy it. They weren’t welcomed home as heroes. They weren’t really welcomed home at all. They didn’t come home … When the war ended, they were still on their ships. They were bringing troops home … After that, they were hauling materials over to Europe, and people over to Europe, to rebuild the cities that had been shattered by the war.
Ultimately, they even brought home the American dead … Whose families wanted them reinterred in the US soil. They were basically still out there. They weren’t there for the ticker tape parades down the main boulevards of the United States … They didn’t have a lot of powerful friends in Congress. Franklin Roosevelt had been a big proponent of theirs, but he died before the war ended. He had asked Congress to provide for these guys, do something for them, but Congress did not.
They were left out of the GI Bill, left out of really all … Most of the benefits … That veterans had. They got some decades later, but by then, a lot of them … Had died or were pretty far along in age. There’s efforts, been efforts from time to time. There are some now in Congress to recognize what they did and either give them some honorary recognition or give them some money … That legislation never really seems to go anywhere, which I think is a shame.
Brett McKay: Yeah, it is … I think you mentioned that they finally were able to go to the veterans hospitals. This was by the time … These guys were in their eighties or nineties.
William Geroux: Yeah. I mean … A little earlier, they got to do that … That was help to some of them, but it was a big difference to that versus when you’re a young man to come home and have opportunities … It was pretty late in the game. Now they are. Now most of these guys are in their late eighties and early nineties … If somebody did give them some money, it’s not like they’re going to buy sports cars or get scammed on the internet.
They might fix the roof or start a college fund for their grandchildren or something … Most of these guys, at least the Mathews men, gave up long ago expecting the government to come back and say, “Hey … We should have done better by you. We’re sorry. Here’s something.” I don’t even know if they even think that … Some of the guys I’ve talked to said that … One thing they would like is for just people in general to know what they did.
One of the guys told me, he said, “Maybe after your book comes out, maybe my grandkids will believe … My stories, will believe that I did something useful during the war.” The time for even that is growing very short … When I started working on this book in earnest in 2011, there were maybe twelve or fifteen old Mathews men who’d sailed against the U-boats living in and around Mathews. Today, there’s maybe five, five or six.
One of my favorite Mathews men, Bill Callas who’s in the book, he was just a real character … The last time I interviewed him, he told me … He said, “You want me to read this book you’re writing, you better hurry up and get it written.” A couple weeks later, I went to his funeral.
Brett McKay: Yeah … That’s one of the sad things is that we’re losing these World War II veterans and individuals who took part in the war every day. I mean … They’re shrinking.
William Geroux: We are really pretty much approaching the time where any stories about World War II will have to be told through documents rather than talking to the people.
Brett McKay: Yeah … That’s why I think it’s so important with what you’re doing and what other World War II historians are doing is getting these stories and talking to these men directly, so we can get them before they’re gone. I commend you for that. What’s the status of the Merchant Marine today? Does it still exist?
William Geroux: It does … It’s sort of a complicated issue. The Merchant Marine, the US Merchant Marine … I know this because I worked at Maersk … A US subsidiary of Maersk, which is one of the biggest shipping companies in the world … Today, the US Merchant Marine, it’s much more expensive to operate a ship flying a US flag and employing American mariners than it is to pay many ships from many foreign countries that the pay is higher, some of these mariners from third-world countries that work for just a fraction of what the Americans will.
The foreign flag ships, they don’t have the regulatory and the legal requirements that American ships do … In international trade today, the big freighters … Because it’s a business, it’s the shipping business, in order to compete, they have to be subsidized by the government … They have to be subsidized to keep these ships operating. They have to be guaranteed cargo by the government. There’s always a lot of debate in Congress about whether this is a good idea. “How much do we really need to do this?”
The best argument is that during war, the military relies on these guys … If it’s an American ship, these American ships … And the country needs them, they’ll drop whatever they’re doing and drop off whatever commercial cargo they’ve got at the nearest port and report wherever they’re told and start hauling war supplies if we needed to take wherever we needed to take it. They’ve been doing this really in all the conflicts we’ve had, even the most recent ones … The nation has an interest in maintaining a Merchant Marine that it can count on to do this. There’s a debate going on right now in Congress as to how much of this we should do.
Brett McKay: Yeah. It’s in a national security interest we should keep this going probably.
William Geroux: Yeah. If we didn’t have one, then … Right now, the question is … Even now, do we have enough American, US flag ships and American merchant mariners to do what we need to do to haul war cargo or military cargo for longer than a few months if we get into a conflict somewhere where we had to put large numbers of troops overseas?
Brett McKay: Yeah, I think you mentioned there’s like eleven thousand registered mariners in the country, but there’s only five thousand jobs available or something like that. It’s a competitive job field.
William Geroux: It is … They’re good jobs, but they’re getting more and more scarce … Again, the government, most of the cargo ships engaged in international trade now that are US flag because they’re subsidized by the US government for the reason that, as you say it, international security.
Brett McKay: Well, William, this has been a fascinating conversation. We really just scratched the surface of the book … There’s so much more our listeners could … If they want to dive deeper into this topic. Where can people learn more about your book?
William Geroux: On my website, which is williamgeroux.com is a good place to start.
Brett McKay: Excellent. Well, William Geroux, thank you so much for your time. It’s been a pleasure.
William Geroux: Well, I’ve enjoyed it. Thanks a lot.
Brett McKay: My guest today was William Geroux. He’s the author of the book “The Mathews Men: Seven Brothers and the War Against Hitler’s U-boats”. You can find that on amazon.com and in book stores everywhere. Be sure to check out the show notes at aom.is/mathews and that’s mathews with one T.
Well, that wraps up another edition of “The Art of Manliness” podcast. For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. If you enjoy the show, I’d appreciate it if you give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. As always, I appreciate your continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly. | <urn:uuid:23173f1f-f78b-44d1-ae28-64ee1b381ead> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/military/podcast-205-seven-brothers-the-merchant-marine-the-war-against-hitlers-u-boats/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511284.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20231003224357-20231004014357-00103.warc.gz | en | 0.985719 | 9,576 | 2.546875 | 3 |
The sun is a searing 9,941 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface. And yet one scientist says what lies beneath may not be so hot at all, as dark matter works to cool it at the center. Royal Holloway’s Dr. Stephen West has a theory that the mysterious substance, which comprises an astonishing 80 percent of the universe, and whose very existence has been a subject of hot debate recently, actually has a lasting effect on the sun to chill it out.
Everyone is told that staring at the sun too long will cause you to go blind. And yet Dr. West, though studying the sun for years has only been endowed with brilliant insight. The unexpected find has Dr. West and his colleagues excited as they propose a study on the Sun to discover the mysterious energy. Dark matter is a substance that has never been created in a lab or even directly observed, though its effects can be seen every night with a high powered telescope as stars exhibit unexplained gravitational perturbations with which scientists can speculate more gravity (and therefore mass) must somehow invisibly exist.
And yet if this matter is affected by gravity, then Dr. West says, it can get caught up in other passing celestial bodies. One prime candidate would be the sun, which has been traveling through the galaxy for several million years with matter collecting within it. The sun must therefore have not only a small amount, but a great deal of dark matter built up within it. This collection would then be absorbed and travel to the center of the sun where it would collect in a massive pool at the center, cooling the sun as it takes in massive amounts of the mysterious energy. And if this were the case, then this Dark Matter would still exist in our very own dark matter collector, locked away behind two billion billion billion tons of helium and fire.
By creating and then studying several simulations on the effect this buildup could have, Dr. West has theorized that the heat from the core could be absorbed by dark matter and then repelled outward while the center cools. As a result, those comparing heat to the center of the sun may actually be wrong. According to this theory, the center of the sun could actually be freezing.
Dr. West goes on, as Science Daily reports, to speculate on the possibility that not only could dark matter be there as a chance occurrence of its travel through the stars, but could actually play an important role in solar physics. Although, before this possibility is confirmed, further study is warranted, including further study of Dark Matter such as the experiments scheduled at CERN the Large Hadron Collider and Fermilab.
Though we may not ritually revere the sun as much as the Aztecs did, there is certainly a great deal of attention being given to our Solar friend even today. And with this incredible attention a sense of awe and wonder soon follows making it certain that we will be asking questions and studying for many years to come. | <urn:uuid:4844533d-a98c-46b9-8f83-2ac1dd9f8943> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.unexplainable.net/info-theories/center-of-the-sun-ice-cold.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511284.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20231003224357-20231004014357-00103.warc.gz | en | 0.971594 | 599 | 3.796875 | 4 |
Garlic with its Extraordinary Properties
Garlic, with its extraordinary properties, is one of the few ingredients that are present in the cuisine of all cultures throughout the world. And it’s no coincidence, as it gives our dishes a distinctive and delicious flavor and contributes with its healthy nutritional benefits.
Garlic is native to Western Asia and has been cultivated for over 7000 years. It consists of a bulb or head of 6 to 12 cloves. It belongs to Liliaceae’s botanical family, which includes other fragrant plants such as onions, leeks, and chives.
To make the most of the garlic properties, it should be eaten crushed or chewed, not fried or cooked. However, there are opinions that say that it keeps its properties after the cooking process. Nevertheless, it is preferable to take garlic raw and on an empty stomach from a medicinal point of view.
The Health Benefits of Garlic
The benefits are mainly attributed to some of its sulfur compounds. It has a substance derived from sulfur, called alliin.
When garlic is minced, chopped, or crushed, the alliin is converted into allicin and released, producing its characteristic aroma. Allicin, in its natural state, that is, in raw garlic, is how it preserves its main properties.
This substance can also increase expectoration, so it can be used as an excellent expectorant in catarrhal, flu or allergic processes such as bronchial asthma, in addition to increasing the body’s defenses.
Allicin is an ally of proper circulation since it reduces the coagulation of the blood. It is useful for people with a tendency to form blood clots. For this reason, its use should be suspended before any surgical intervention or dental extraction.
Nutritional Benefits of Garlic
The active components of garlic are glutamic acid, arginine, aspartic acid, leucine, lysine, and valine. Its principal minerals are manganese, potassium, calcium, and phosphorus, and in smaller quantities, magnesium, selenium, sodium, iron, zinc, and copper.
It contains vitamin B6, C, and in smaller quantities, folic acid, pantothenic and niacin, vitamin A and vitamin E.
Other garlic properties are that it is low in calories, rich in nutrients, and very aromatic. For these reasons, garlic is an excellent choice for flavoring foods. This can reduce the use of other ingredients that are not as healthy as salt, thus reducing sodium intake.
Garlic has been beneficially associated with cardiovascular disease due to its ability to dilate or widen capillaries and help the blood flow in high blood pressure conditions.
Its content in sulfur compounds helps improve blood circulation because it reduces the blockage of the arteries and platelet aggregation due to a compound it has: adenosine.
Garlic helps reduce the so-called ‘bad’ cholesterol and blood triglycerides and raise the ‘good’ one. So it can be useful in processes of hypercholesterolemia or hypertriglyceridemia. It also has a particular hypoglycemic effect, helping to prevent and control type II diabetes mellitus.
According to recent studies, garlic is beneficial in preventing cancer, including gastric and colon cancer. Protection is due to its ability to inhibit the formation and activation of cancer-causing inducers such as nitrosamines, helping to repair cellular genetic material and improving the individual’s defenses.
Garlic is an effective natural remedy to combat fungi such as Candida albicans and has a diuretic effect, as it prevents fluid retention due to its contribution to potassium.
Another great benefit is its analgesic action and can be useful in preventing or improving hemorrhoids and varicose veins.
Externally, it can be used to cure animal bites or stings, especially insects, as a disinfectant for most skin conditions such as fungus, wounds, sores, and burns. For all these reasons, garlic can be considered a medicinal plant.
As for the garlic breath produced by eating it, it is possible to avoid it by drinking pure lemon juice, rinsing your mouth with a teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in water, chewing a sprig of parsley or eating something sweet.
Garlic is a key ally of food safety, as it is a powerful disinfectant against some of the microorganisms that cause the most common food poisoning, such as Campylobacter.
It is better to buy the whole bulb, as its presentation in powder or paste lacks the valuable nutrients of this great seasoning.
Garlic can be used as a dressing for salads, soups, cheeses, meats, pasta, and vegetables. Slices of bread or pans can be rubbed with a peeled garlic clove to add flavor.
In dishes such as fish, chicken, meat, or potatoes that require more time to cook, it is advised to add the garlic at the end of cooking because if it is overcooked, it acquires a bitter taste.
For better preservation, it is recommended to keep the bulb in a cool, dark place to prevent it from drying out, so it can last for several weeks without suffering any degradation.
At the time of purchase, the bulbs should feel firm and with dry skin. Once the cloves are separated from the bulb, they last approximately ten days.
Delicious and Healthy Recipes Cooked with Garlic
Salmon Fillet with Garlic Mustard Sauce
4 salmon fillets without skin
3 teaspoons of olive oil
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon cornstarch
1/2 cup whipping cream
1 1/2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon of honey
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 tablespoon fresh dill, chopped
Salt and white pepper to taste
- In a frying pan, seal the seasoned salmon fillets with salt and pepper in olive oil until you get a golden crust on both sides.
- Remove from the heat and set aside.
- In a bowl, mix the cornstarch with the whipping cream. Gradually add the Dijon mustard and honey. Set aside.
- In the same pan where you sealed the salmon, fry the garlic over medium heat. When it starts to color, add the chicken broth.
- Bring to a boil and reduce for 5 minutes.
- Add the mustard, honey, and cornstarch mixture to the reduced broth.
- When it begins to boil, remove from the heat.
- Add the salmon to the pan with the sauce, add the fresh dill over it, and it is ready to serve.
Garlic Mojo Shrimp
1/3 cup of butter
1/4 cup of virgin olive oil
2 pounds of medium-sized shrimp
2 heads of garlic
2 tablespoons white vinegar
2 tablespoons of chopped parsley
Salt and pepper to taste
- Peel the garlic set aside 4 cloves and blend the rest with half the butter and olive oil, together with the vinegar, salt, and pepper until you get a smooth paste.
- In a saucepan, cook the garlic paste and add the shrimp with the rest of the butter.
- Cover the pan and let it cook for a few minutes until the shrimp changes color.
- Meanwhile, fry the 4 reserved garlic cloves in a pan with 2 tablespoons of olive oil until golden brown without burning.
- Add the garlic and parsley to the shrimp and let it cook for two more minutes.
Potatoes with Aioli Sauce
2 pounds of chopped potatoes
1 quart of cooking oil
1 tablespoon of paprika
1 medium head of garlic
3/4 cup of olive oil
Salt to taste
- Cut the potatoes into one-inch chunks and confit over low heat in cooking oil until they are soft and have a golden crust.
- Remove from the heat, drain and season the potatoes with salt and paprika.
- In a food processor, add the chopped garlic and salt.
- Add the olive oil steadily but slowly as you mix everything.
- When you get a mixture of a consistency similar to mayonnaise, it is ready.
- Serve the potatoes on a platter and cover them with the aioli. | <urn:uuid:652c834c-7675-4614-8e79-db310c920d7c> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://lucidlyliving.com/garlic-with-its-extraordinary-properties/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506029.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20230921174008-20230921204008-00303.warc.gz | en | 0.928269 | 1,739 | 2.765625 | 3 |
The description of the word you requested from the astronomical dictionary is given below.
astron = [Greek] star, nomos = [Greek] knowledge
Astronomy is the science that studies everything outside of the Earth. This includes, among other things, the Moon, planets, Sun, stars, black holes, Milky Way, and Universe. People who do astronomy are called astronomers. | <urn:uuid:e15e8d0d-6e5a-4202-8ff9-431e6f18e43e> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.aa.quae.nl/cgi-bin/glossary.cgi?l=en&o=astronomers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506029.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20230921174008-20230921204008-00303.warc.gz | en | 0.907272 | 89 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Degenerative disc disease is an age-related disease of the spine (sometimes caused by osteoarthritis) which can cause the vertebrae in your back to break down. This condition can lead to back pain, disc herniation, vertebrae fractures, and weakness.
Unfortunately, degenerative disc disease can't be cured, so you'll need to find the right treatments to slow its progression. While some people may be able to find relief with anti-inflammatories, others may need steroid injections or even spinal surgery.
If you are still looking for more conservative methods to treat this condition, you may want to consider PRP injections. Read on to learn more.
What are PRP Injections?
Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is a part of your blood; the plasma is the colorless fluid, and platelets contain proteins and growth factors that play a big role in healing. When PRP is injected into an area of the body that is damaged, it helps to repair and generate tissue. A doctor can inject PRP into areas of your spine that are inflamed and damaged to encourage healing and pain relief.
What is a PRP Injection Session Like?
The PRP actually comes from your own blood. You'll donate some blood which the doctor will then place in a centrifuge. The centrifuge spins and separates the plasma and platelets out. Your doctor will then use a guided x-ray (fluoroscopy) to determine the exact location for the injection. The doctor will inject the PRP into the disc or joint that is the source of your pain. PRP injections aren't painful since you will have a local anesthetic in place, but you may be sore afterward and need over-the-counter pain relievers. While some people may be fine after one session, other people may need multiple sessions to get the relief they desire.
Are There Any Studies Showing That PRP Therapy Works?
More research needs to be conducted, but NCBI says that so far PRP therapy has shown to be a safe and effective way to treat discogenic pain, a common side effect of degenerative disc disease. Another study found that PRP therapy has been beneficial for people with osteoarthritis so if your degenerative disc disease is caused by that condition, then PRP could be a good fit for your needs. PRP therapy could help you reduce stiffness and restore function in your spinal flexibility.
Reach out to a doctor in your area to learn more about PRP therapy, or if you have questions about PRP injections, | <urn:uuid:34e860e3-adc0-408b-9ea9-38d3b9ed3bf1> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | http://kuronori.com/2020/10/13/do-you-have-degenerative-disc-disease-how-prp-injections-could-help/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506429.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922234442-20230923024442-00203.warc.gz | en | 0.943186 | 533 | 2.625 | 3 |
The Role of Social Media in Crisis Communication
Social media plays a crucial role in crisis communication, facilitating rapid information dissemination, real-time updates, and two-way communication between authorities, organizations, and the public. Here are some key aspects of the role of social media in crisis communication:
Rapid Information Dissemination: During a crisis, social media platforms enable instant sharing of critical information, such as emergency alerts, evacuation orders, and safety instructions. This helps reach a broader audience quickly, improving public awareness and response.
Real-Time Updates: Social media allows authorities and organizations to provide real-time updates on the evolving situation, helping to keep the public informed about developments, response efforts, and safety measures.
Crisis Monitoring: Social media platforms serve as valuable tools for monitoring crisis-related conversations, tracking trends, and identifying emerging issues. This information can aid in understanding public sentiment and responding to concerns promptly.
Public Engagement and Interaction: Social media fosters two-way communication between crisis responders and the public. Authorities can engage with affected individuals, address queries, and offer support, enhancing transparency and trust.
Crowdsourcing Information: Social media users can contribute information and insights during a crisis, providing valuable data and situational awareness to authorities and response teams.
*Other Model Available
RICOH MPC3503/ MPC5503 | RICOH MPC3504/ MPC5504
CONTACT US: 03-3341 6296 | 018-788 6296 | 018-228 6296 | <urn:uuid:e2f3bae2-59f0-469f-af20-208efe1bfcd1> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://copier.com.my/the-role-of-social-media-in-crisis-communication/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506429.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922234442-20230923024442-00203.warc.gz | en | 0.855815 | 315 | 3.15625 | 3 |
You’re probably familiar with, or have at least heard of, LASIK refractive surgery. The popular refractive surgery corrects nearsightedness (myopia), farsightedness (hyperopia), and astigmatism by reshaping the cornea, the outer lens of the eye. Physicians and patients enjoy the procedure for its brief recovery time and almost instant results.
While LASIK is a popular option, its predecessor, photorefractive keratectomy, or PRK, is still a widely used form of refractive surgery. For some patients, PRK is recommended as a safer or better alternative to LASIK.
So, why is LASIK a good option for some patients while PRK is better for others? How are they different? Let’s take a closer look.
What is PRK (Photorefractive Keratectomy) Surgery?
PRK is a refractive eye surgery that like LASIK corrects nearsightedness (myopia), farsightedness (hyperopia), and astigmatism. Both procedures reshape the eye’s cornea using the same laser technology. The reshaped cornea is able to properly focus light onto the retina and provide clear vision.
PRK vs. LASIK
The primary difference between PRK and LASIK has to do with how the surgeon gains access to the corneal lens prior to reshaping it with an excimer laser. In LASIK, a thin flap is made in the outer layer of the cornea and the flap is lifted to expose the inner cornea, the stroma, and replaced once the inner cornea is reshaped. During PRK, the outer surface of the cornea, the epithelium, is carefully removed by the surgeon before reshaping the inner cornea and then the epithelium regrows after surgery. The entire PRK procedure takes 10 to 15 minutes per eye while LASIK takes a little longer.
Due to the difference in how the corneal stroma is accessed, PRK recovery takes longer than recovery from LASIK. Regrowing the surface of the cornea causes discomfort that can take several days to a few weeks to subside while many LASIK patients have little to no discomfort the day after surgery. Vision is noticeably improved almost immediately after both procedures, although it takes PRK patients a little longer to reach their best vision.
Who Is a Better Candidate for PRK?
Many factors are considered in determining a patient’s eligibility for refractive surgery including age, overall health, existing eye conditions, corneal thickness, prescription level, and physical activity. Those patients who meet the established norms are considered good LASIK candidates. For those who fall outside the norms, such as those with a thin cornea or extreme dry eye, PRK is preferred.
One factor that is often overlooked when choosing between PRK and LASIK, is the patient’s level of physical activity or possibility of future eye trauma. Since the flap created on the corneal surface during LASIK can potentially be dislodged by trauma to the eye even years after the surgery, PRK is better for patients who run the risk of having objects impact or roughly rub their eye. This is the primary reason PRK is DMEI’s recommended option for professional basketball players and other athletes who come to the Institute for refractive surgery. However, amateur athletes, first responders, and even parents of small children may be better candidates for PRK for the same reason.
Is PRK Safer than LASIK?
Both PRK and LASIK are safe, low-risk refractive surgery options. A surgeon will determine which procedure is right for each individual patient. | <urn:uuid:81f5739a-9f74-4e49-bf46-8f2eff5cde1b> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://dmei.org/blog/what-is-the-difference-between-prk-and-lasik-surgery/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506429.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922234442-20230923024442-00203.warc.gz | en | 0.933743 | 788 | 2.875 | 3 |
‘Manufacturer Representative’ & ‘Manufacturer Distributor’ are terms that we come across in economics. These are the entities involved in the buying & selling processes of goods of companies. Though the two appear to have a lot in common, they differ in more ways than one. Each has a different role to play in the life cycle of a business. We will first try to understand their respective functions through definitions & examples, & then see how they differ from each other by going through a well-analyzed comparison chart.
A Manufacturer’s Representative also called an ‘Independent Sales Representative’ or a ‘Sales Agent’ or a ‘Sales Broker’ is a company or sales agency or even independent contractors that act as the representative for a company & sell its goods & services to wholesale & retail customers. Representatives are like business partners on whom the businesses are directly dependent.
Example- Pharmaceutical companies employ sales representatives to show & sell samples of their medicines to physicians.
A distributor is a wholesale customer who buys goods from a company in bulk, & sells them to sub-distributors or retail customers.
Example- Film distributors such as Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures & Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. A film distribution company buys movies & sells them for theatrical viewing, online downloading/viewing or as DVDs & CDs according to the contract made with the production company.
Representative Vs Distributor
Both, representatives & distributors are third parties to a company that seem to perform the same function of selling goods of a company to customers. So how exactly do they differ from each other? The major difference between the two lies in their accountability to the company they represent or buy from.
A company’s sales representative is highly accountable to the company. The entire responsibility of the marketing process, starting from finding customers, explaining the products, negotiating costs, scheduling & discussing the delivery methods to rendering the company’s goods & services lies in the hands of the representative. On the other hand, a distributor doesn’t hold any accountability to the company he buys from; rather, the company is accountable to the distributor for the quality of the products they sell.
In other words, a representative is like a business partner & a distributor is like a customer.
Other & minor differences between a manufacturer’s representative & manufacturer’s distributor are tabulated below:
|Manufacturer Representative||Manufacturer Distributor|
|1) A manufacturer’s representative is paid by companies in the form of commissions, which depends upon the number of successful sales.||1) A manufacturer’s distributor makes money by selling goods to customers.|
|2) A representative keeps with him a small sample collection of goods his company sells, to show or demonstrate to the customers.||2) A distributor buys goods from companies in large amounts to sell.|
|3) A representative takes care of marketing products of the company he acts as a mediator to.||3) A distributor, along with marketing products bought for his own business, also takes care of their transportation & storage.|
|4) A representative is a major part of a company & the two are directly dependent on each other.||4) A distributor is not a part of a company, & the two are indirectly dependent on each other.|
|5) A representative doesn’t buy goods from a company; rather, he offers & sells goods & services on the company’s behalf to customers.||5) A distributor buys products from companies & sells them to customers.|
|6) Sales representatives don’t employ distributors.||6) Distributors employ in-house sales representatives.|
|7) Representatives are posted to specific geographical locations based on the number of potential customers.||7) Goods are sold to interested distributors from any geographical location.|
|8) Representatives have in-depth knowledge of products & are trained to demonstrate the working products.||8) Distributors also know each and everything of the products they sell.|
|9) Representatives mostly look for potential customers.||9) In most cases, customers approach distributors.|
|10) Educational qualifications along with soft skills are necessary to get hired as a sales representative.||10) A distributor is not expected to fulfill any educational requirements to buy & sell goods.|
For a company to brave the tough competition from other companies, & sell its products successfully, thereby making its mark in the industry, it’s important to have a smart & strong sales force. Your sales department is the main driving force for your company’s success. Hexis is one such company that offers industries with the best professional sales representatives & advisors in the areas of Machine Trade Tooling, Production & Milling. With an experience of over 7 years & a highly knowledgeable & technically advanced team, & having catered to many successful businesses, Hexis is the one-stop for promoting your business. | <urn:uuid:39e9f931-96f6-44ec-9f72-5e8c758d0e26> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://hexisreps.com/what-is-the-difference-between-a-manufacturers-representative-a-distributor/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506429.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922234442-20230923024442-00203.warc.gz | en | 0.946872 | 1,047 | 3.046875 | 3 |
History and Significance: Constructed as part of the Albion Hotel in 1900 by William F. Denny, who also designed Old First Baptist Church, the building is first listed in the city directories at The JB White Company in 1904 with the street address of 732-736 Broad Street. Saturday November 26, 1921, a massive fire erupted at 1:50am at the corner of Eighth and Broad Streets. The Harrison Building, Johnson Building, The Albion Hotel, and The Chronicle Building were considered a total loss and the estimated damage to the area was $1,500,000. The newspaper article reported that when the Albion Hotel caught fire at 3:30am, the J. B. White and Company’s building was threatened and at the time it was Augusta’s largest department store. The Art Deco façade that is currently on the Broad Street façade was added in 1922. The Augusta Chronicle reported on June 4, 1922, that the J. B. White & Company’s building would be having a grand opening one year after the devastating fire. Approximately 7,000 square feet of floor space was added and 230 feet of window displays was unveiled by President Frank. P. Gracey. The J. C. Penney department store began leasing the 83,000 square foot building in 1958 and in 1959 company founder, James Cash Penney, at the grand opening. The J. C. Penney Department store left the location in 1987 and moved to the newly constructed Augusta Mall.
Threat: Vacancy, development pressure from surrounding properties, condition continues to deteriorate
Potential Uses: Mixed use, commercial office or retail space, income-producing apartments
Preservation Tools: (1); A contributing resource in the Augusta Downtown Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is therefore eligible for all programs of the National Register which include available grant funds and tax incentives for certified rehabilitations; (2) located in the Downtown Augusta Historic District which means that any alteration to the exterior, including demolition, should be approved by the Augusta Richmond County Historic Preservation Commission. | <urn:uuid:183e1f9c-a9e5-42c9-809e-e50f197b67f7> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://historicaugusta.org/properties/2014-former-j-c-penneys-department-store/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506429.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922234442-20230923024442-00203.warc.gz | en | 0.965756 | 432 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Intimacy is a necessary prerequisite to a loving and deep relationship, yet it’s often misunderstood. The word intimacy comes from a Latin word meaning “inmost.” Intimacy suggests a strong personal relationship, a special emotional closeness that includes understanding and being understood by someone special. Intimacy has been defined as an affectionate bond, the strands of which are composed of mutual caring, responsibility, trust, open communication of feelings and sensations, as well as the non-defended interchange of information about significant emotional events. Intimacy means taking the risk to be close to someone and allowing that someone to step inside your personal boundaries. Subscribe here for more.
More Editorial Content
August 16, 2023 | <urn:uuid:e95a1733-4535-4b14-be74-58e4439470da> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://parentsafrica.com/men-dont-get-it-intimacy-is-not-just-sex/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506429.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922234442-20230923024442-00203.warc.gz | en | 0.956983 | 149 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Tips for Controlling Dandelions in Your Field
The trouble is in the taproot
The name “dandelion” is thought to be based on a thirteenth century Welsh phrase “Dant y Lew,” meaning “tooth of the lion.” It could have been inspired by the shape of the immature seeds, the jagged shape of the leaves, the appearance of its yellow petals or maybe even the strong, white taproot, which can grow up to 2 meters in length and 3 cm in diameter1.
The latter explanation may be the most likely, as their tap roots are notoriously deep and difficult to remove — maybe even as difficult as pulling out a lion’s tooth!1
Regardless, experts don’t recommend trying to manually remove dandelions through physical force. One small, leftover piece of root is all it takes for the dandelion to grow into an entirely new plant. What’s worse is that this regrowth can skew the root-to-shoot ratio, meaning the new dandelion will be even harder to remove than the first.1
While the tap root is how dandelions survive and thrive, it’s also how growers can regain control. Like all other perennials, dandelions survive harsh winters by moving their nutrients down to their tap roots in the fall. This makes post-harvest herbicide applications particularly effective2.
When it comes to dandelions, timing is everything
Unlike other weeds, dandelions begin germinating in late June and early July. That means any spraying done before seedlings germinate will only affect the already-established dandelions2. This is why pre-seed and in-crop herbicide applications can be inefficient. While it’s effective against already-established dandelions that have overwintered, the timing is simply too early to affect seedlings2.
Even pre-harvest applications aren’t your best bet. Although it makes sense from a timing perspective, dandelions are low-lying weeds, making it nearly impossible for enough herbicide to permeate the cover canopy of your crop2.
Dandelion’s kryptonite: post-harvest burn-off
Clearly, while most perennial weeds are best controlled in the early fall, dandelions are best treated much later. Post-harvest spraying ensures that herbicide will reach both perennials and new seedlings. And as temperatures cool, dandelions will push nutrients — along with any herbicides you’ve sprayed recently —down to their roots2.
Glyphosate is commonly used for post-harvest burn-offs, but we recommend multiple modes of action to increase efficacy. A tank-mix partner with 2,4-D or a florasulam product like PRIORITY will give you more effective weed control while reducing your risk of developing resistance. Before spraying, you’ll want to until you can see about six inches (~15 cm) of regrowth before spraying. The new leaf tissue accumulated will help increase herbicide uptake, which gives you better control in return5.
This amount of regrowth can take about four to six weeks, but you have to be careful not to wait too long. While dandelions can survive light frosts, any hard frost or drought will kill all except the root, decreasing chances of herbicide uptake6. If frost comes before your post-harvest burn-off, wait until you can evaluate the leaf tissue or new growth. Only spray if the plant is vibrant green, shiny and pliable. Otherwise, you run the risk of roots staying healthy enough to survive another winter5.
For more information on managing dandelions and other perennial weeds on your farm, read our whitepaper, Fighting Weeds in the Fall.
Stewart-Wade, S.M. et al. “The Biology of Canadian Weeds.” University of Guelph. Online. Accessed 14 September 2017. http://www.uoguelph.ca/~plpathol/PDFs/Stewart-Wade%20et%20al%20(2002).pdf
“Agriculture: Controlling Dandelion in the Fall.” Manitoba.gov. Online. Accessed 14 September 2017. https://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/crops/weeds/print,controlling-dandelion-in-the-fall.html
Raine, Michael. “Weed of the Week: Dandelion.” Western Producer. Online. Accessed 14 September 2017. http://www.producer.com/2013/05/weed-of-the-week-dandelion-2/
“Dandelion.” University of Wisconsin Weed Science Cooperative Extension. Online. Accessed 9 August 2016. http://fyi.uwex.edu/weedsci/2002/11/12/dandelion/
“Weed Management.” Canola Council of Canada. Online. Accessed 14 September 2017. http://www.canolacouncil.org/canola-encyclopedia/weeds/weed-management/#fall
] “Winter Annual and Weed Control: FAQs.” Alberta Agriculture & Forestry. Online. Accessed 14 September 2017. http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/faq7331 | <urn:uuid:375fac9d-0b1b-4c58-a9ae-563c893a9df5> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.adama.com/east-canada/en/news/tips-for-controlling-dandelion | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506429.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922234442-20230923024442-00203.warc.gz | en | 0.90656 | 1,161 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Do you think that you have a rat problem in your home or business? Have you seen one running across your kitchen or in your garage? If you have seen one rat, trust that there are many more you aren’t seeing. Rats do not travel alone. Don’t wait to take action because rats breed at an alarmingly high rate and you could have a huge infestation quickly.
Rats begin breeding quickly as early as five weeks of age and will continue until two years old. Females are fertile approximately every three weeks, and mate often. The resulting pregnancy usually lasts about three weeks, and the litter size typically ranges from 6 to 20 babies. This is how you can end up with a full-blown infestation of rats in a very short period of time.
Covenant Wildlife Removal is a top-rated local family-owned, full-service wildlife trapping, removal, repair, and insulation services. We can remove a rat infestation for you before it becomes a massive problem for you and your family. We provide humane and safe rat removal services in Birmingham, AL and the Jefferson and Shelby counties. Contact us or call 205-855-8377 to set up an inspection.
What Damage Can Rats Cause?
Besides being absolutely filthy, rats can cause considerable damage to your home, which can put you and your family in danger. Here is some of the damage that they can do:
- Chewing electrical wires which can cause shortages in power and electrical fires
- Structural damage to your home
- Cutting through steel, concrete, aluminum, wood, plastics, etc. with their razor-sharp teeth
Why Are Rats Dangerous?
Rats contaminate foods and drinks
When rats get into your food supply, rats might contaminate your foods with their hair, feces, and urine. Eating contaminated food with rat feces or urine will lead to a bacterial infection such as salmonella poisoning.
Rats carry dangerous disease to humans
It’s no secret that rats carry dangerous diseases that can affect humans through their urine and feces. The most famous disease transmitted by rats, including leptospirosis, rat-bite fever, and Weil’s disease:
- Leptospirosis is caused by Leptospira bacteria that spread through contact with water or food contamination by urine from rats.
- Rat-bite fever or also known as Streptobacillosis, is usually caused by a bite or scratch from an infected rat and/or caught by handling infected wildlife and ingesting food or drink contaminated with rat’s feces or urine.
- Weil’s disease is transmitted to humans through contact with rat urine. In most cases, Weil’s disease commonly occurs through contaminated fresh water.
- Rats can transfer many bacterial diseases that include Streptococcus pneumoniae, Corynebacterium kutsheri, Bacillus piliformis, and Pasteurella pneumotropica. All of these bacteria are disease-causing agents in humans. In some cases, these diseases are incurable.
- Some rat species can also serve as a reservoir for Toxoplasma gondii, the parasite that causes toxoplasmosis. However, the disease usually spreads from rats to humans when domestic cats feed on infected brown rats.
Rats carry fleas and ticks
Fleas are attracted to host on the most common pets like dogs and cats. This is one of the reasons why your pet can also get fleas when a rat infestation occurs.
Reasons to Hire Us
- 24 / 7 Fast
- Itemized Repair List
- Experienced in Wildlife Removal
- Licensed and Insured
- Our Work is Guaranteed
- Remove Wildlife Carcasses
- Satisfied Customers
- Competitive Pricing
It is our goal to remove all rats from your home, attic, walls, and crawlspaces and to also make sure that your home or business is expertly repaired to prevent rats and other wildlife from finding openings and re-infesting your home again. Covenant Wildlife Removal is trustworthy, reliable, and we stand behind our work by guaranteeing everything we do. | <urn:uuid:f9935019-2ed3-4281-abf5-59a0f9a1456d> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://covenantwildlife.com/wildlife-removal/rat-removal/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506623.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20230924055210-20230924085210-00103.warc.gz | en | 0.949899 | 856 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Sickle Cell Disease and Pregnancy
Sickle cell disease is a blood disorder passed down from parent to child. People with sickle cell disease have abnormal hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen to the body.
Normal red blood cells are smooth, round, and flexible. They look like the letter "O." This helps them carry oxygen and move through the vessels easily. The abnormal hemoglobin in sickle cell disease makes the red blood cells stiff and sticky. They form into the shape of a sickle, or the letter "C." These sickle cells tend to clump together and can’t easily move through the blood vessels. The clumps block the flow of healthy, oxygen-carrying blood. This causes pain and damages tissues.
How does sickle cell disease affect pregnancy?
How sickle cell disease affects pregnancy depends on whether you have sickle cell disease or sickle cell trait. Some women with sickle cell disease have no change in their disease during pregnancy. In others, the disease may get worse. Painful events called sickle cell crises may still occur in pregnancy. These events may be treated with medicines that are safe to use during pregnancy. If you have kidney disease or heart failure before you get pregnant, it may get worse during pregnancy.
Generally, women with sickle cell trait don' have problems from the disorder. But they may have a lot of urinary tract infections during pregnancy. Pregnant women with sickle cell trait can also have a kind of anemia caused by not having enough iron in their blood. If you have this type of anemia, you may need to take iron supplements.
In pregnancy, it's important for blood cells to be able to carry oxygen. With sickle cell anemia, the abnormal red blood cells and anemia may result in lower amounts of oxygen going to your developing baby. This can slow down the baby’s growth.
How is sickle cell disease in pregnancy treated?
Pregnant women with sickle cell trait may not have any complications. But the baby may be affected if the father also carries the trait. If you have sickle cell trait, experts advise that your partner should be tested before you become pregnant. Or he should be tested at the first prenatal visit. If the baby's father has sickle cell trait, you may need amniocentesis or other tests to see if your developing baby has the trait or the disease.
Early and regular prenatal care is important if you are pregnant and have sickle cell disease. Having prenatal visits more often allows your healthcare provider to keep a close watch on the disease and on the health of your developing baby.
Some women may need blood transfusions to replace the sickle cells with fresh blood. These may be done several times during the pregnancy. Blood transfusions can help the blood carry oxygen and lower the number of sickle cells. If you get blood transfusions, you'll be screened for antibodies that may have been transferred in the blood and that may affect your baby. The most common antibodies are to the blood factor Rh.
Healthcare providers don't advise using the medicine hydroxyurea during pregnancy. This medicine is often used in sickle cell disease. You may be able to take lower doses of this medicine.
Sickle cell disease may affect your developing baby. So your provider may start testing in the second trimester to check on the health and well-being of your baby.
During labor, your healthcare provider will give you IV (intravenous) fluids to help prevent fluid loss (dehydration). You may also get extra oxygen through a mask during labor. A fetal heart rate monitor is often used to watch for changes in your baby’s heart rate. It also watches for signs of fetal distress. Most women can deliver vaginally, unless there are other complications.
What are possible complications of sickle cell disease in pregnancy?
Because sickling affects so many organs and body systems, you are more likely to have complications in pregnancy if you have sickle cell disease. Complications and increased risks may include:
Infections, including infection in the urinary tract, kidneys, and lungs
Gallbladder problems, including gallstones
Heart enlargement and heart failure from anemia
Complications and increased risks for your developing baby may include:
Poor fetal growth
Preterm birth (before 37 weeks of pregnancy)
Low birth weight (less than 5.5 pounds)
Stillbirth and newborn death | <urn:uuid:23a86def-ed3a-4295-916f-a38a7a0f8050> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://healthlibrary.osfhealthcare.org/YourFamily/Men/90,P02499 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506623.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20230924055210-20230924085210-00103.warc.gz | en | 0.943264 | 955 | 3.578125 | 4 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.