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“In nine months, a group of children left alone with a computer in any language will reach the same standard as an office secretary in the West.” ~ Dr. Sugata Mitra
One fine day on 26 January 1999, the Chief scientist at NIIT and his team plan to dig a hole in their office wall adjacent to the Delhi Slum Area. They install a freely accessible computer and observe the rest. This computer created instant ripples and the inferences were revolutionary. The slum children not only learn basic computer skills but teach other children as well. This experiment known as the Hole in the Wall is the discovery of Professor Sugata Mitra. He also coined the concept of Minimally Invasive Education; a pedagogy under which children driven by curiosity and peer support teach themselves and others.
Professor Sugata Mitra had always been fascinated with the idea of unsupervised learning and computers and when finally he put it into practice, it won him another award. On Tuesday, February 26. Dr. Mitra was given the TED Award 2013 which grants him $1 million to set up his own learning laboratory based on this concept.
Dr. Mitra plans to set up learning spaces that would be totally automated and controlled from the Cloud. The supervisor will not be a teacher or a computer expert but only a safety and health supervisor. Probably set up in India, these learning spaces would take the Hole in the Wall Experiment to the implementation stage.
Dr. Mitra has been the Chief Scientist at NIIT and is currently Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University, UK. Dr. Mitra is a winner of “Man of Peace Award” from Together for Peace Foundation, USA, and “Social Innovation Award” from Institute of Social Inventions, UK. He has also been given the “Dewang Mehta Award” by the Government of India in recognition for his work related to Hole-in-the-Wall.
According to Dr.Mitra, the learners of the new age need two things. A broadband connection and a teacher to stand back. He says, “The Victorians were great engineers. They engineered a [schooling] system that was so robust that it’s still with us today, continuously producing identical people for a machine that no longer exists.”
We were fortunate enough to have Prof. Mitra with us in one of the WizIQ Conversations. You can revisit his works and words anytime. Professor Mitra was self-taught and has a firm belief that others can do the same through technology and the Internet.
Finally I leave you with a reiteration of the topic:
Are teachers really keeping students from learning in the digital age? | 3.198434 |
HPV virus is linked to 25,000 cancers over five years. The human wart virus known as HPV caused 25,000 cases of cancer in the United States between 1998 and 2003, including not only cervical cancer but also anal and mouth cancers, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Monday. The study suggests the need for screening of both men and women to be expanded for human papillomavirus, or HPV, said another team of researchers, who did a similar study. HPV includes about 100 different viruses, and they are the leading cause of cervical cancer. The viruses, transmitted sexually and by skin-to-skin contact, can also cause anal and penile cancers, as well as cancers of the mouth and throat. HPV also causes common warts. Both Merck and Co. and GlaxoSmithKline make vaccines against some of the strains of HPV most strongly linked with cervical cancer, but not all. The vaccines are recommended for girls and young women who have not yet become sexual activity. ”Currently available HPV vaccines have the potential to reduce the rates of HPV-associated cancers, like oral and anal cancers, that are currently on the rise and for which there is no effective or widely applied screening programs,” the CDC’s Dr. Mona Saraiya, who led the study, said in a statement. “This gives us baseline data to measure the impact of HPV vaccine and cervical cancer screening programs in reducing the incidence of cervical cancer and other HPV-associated cancers… .”
Sleep is seen as the newest obesity fighter. Consistently getting a good night’s sleep may help protect children from becoming overweight adults, a study published Monday suggests. Researchers found that among more than 1,000 people followed from birth to age 32, those who got too little sleep as children were more likely than their well-rested counterparts to become obese adults, Reuters News reports. The link between sleep deprivation during childhood and obesity risk later in life held up even when the researchers figured in things like the impact of a child’s weight or TV habits, and adulthood exercise level. All of this supports the idea that early sleep habits have a direct effect on weight in the long term, according to Dr. Robert John Hancox, the study’s senior author. “Although we cannot prove that this is a cause-and-effect relationship,” he told Reuters Health, “this study provides strong evidence that it probably is.”
Eating more fish can help you control diabetes. Centering your dinner around a fish dish at least twice a week might help people with diabetes lower their risk of kidney disease, a study suggests. In the November issue of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases, British researchers analyzed the records of more than 22,300 middle-aged and older English men and women who were part of a large European cancer study to determine the effect of fish on kidney disease. What they found is that of the 517 study subjects who had diabetes (most of whom had type 2), those who on average ate less than one serving of fish each week were four times as likely to have albumin in their urine than people with diabetes who ate fish twice a week. Adler speculates that the nutrient content of fish may affect kidney function and improve blood glucose control. But the researchers could not say what type of fish had the biggest impact, reports USA Today.To get more help with diabetes, go to BET.com/Body &Soul. | 3.019536 |
Mississippians know the strength of longleaf pines. These native trees braved Hurricane Katrina 48 percent better than their loblolly cousins. Even so, the ancient longleaf pine forests of the South are a threatened ecosystem.
These forests once dominated the region, spanning 90 million acres. Now, they cover just 3 million acres. As longleaf habitat disappears, so do many important and endangered species, like the gopher tortoise, which rely on it. The gopher tortoise is considered a keystone species in longleaf pine habitat, with more than 300 different vertebrate and invertebrate species relying on burrows dug by the reptiles for their homes.
Longleaf pine forests are home to at least 122 endangered or threatened plant and animal species. In addition, they can contain as many as 300 different species of groundcover plants per acre, and about 60 percent of the amphibian and reptile species found in the Southeast.
USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) wants to restore longleaf forests to their former glory with the help of landowners like Orby Wright of Purvis, Miss. The Healthy Forests Reserve Program (HFRP) offered by NRCS allows Wright to manage his tall stands of longleaf pines and the blanket of legumes and forbs across the understory of his Quail Hollow Ranch. HFRP is one of several programs in the tool chest of the Longleaf Pine Initiative, a nine-state effort to bolster longleaf pine forests.
Forbs are clovers, sunflowers, milkweed and other common wildflowers typical of the Mississippi forest floor. Both forbs and legumes provide sustenance and cover for a wide range of wildlife.
Wright purchased about 2,000 acres four years ago from a pecan company. The land boasts longleaf pines of different ages—some are decades old, while others are just saplings. With the help of NRCS, Wright has planted new longleaf pines while taking care of his older, taller trees.
A healthy longleaf pine ecosystem requires occasional fires. Many years ago, wildfires frequented the longleaf landscape, creating food for wildlife and providing other benefits. To help maintain this rugged habitat, Wright has installed fire lanes and carries out prescribed burns, all with NRCS’ assistance.
So far, NRCS programs have helped restore 1,641 acres of longleaf pines in Mississippi and assisted in prescribed burns on 1,812 acres. In Lamar County, where Wright lives, 669 acres of longleaf pines were restored in 2010.
Approved participants receive financial assistance for implementing conservation practices including planting longleaf pine, installing firebreaks, conducting prescribed burning and controlling invasive plants.
Check out more conservation stories on the USDA blog.
Follow NRCS on Twitter. | 3.502793 |
Marlin, Blue – Hawaii
Blue Marlin is a large pelagic species, found globally in both tropical and temperate waters. Blue Marlin mature early, produce many eggs , and grow fast, reaching sizes up to 450 cm and 900 kg.
They are caught commercially throughout the Pacific Ocean and are considered to comprise a single, ocean-wide population. The last population assessment for Blue Marlin in the Pacific indicated that abundance levels were moderate, but the assessment has not been updated for over a decade. There is some indication that Blue Marlin abundance around Hawaii may be declining.
This species is primarily captured with pelagic longlines, which result in minimal habitat damage and moderate bycatch rates. Around Hawaii, trolling is another common method used to catch Blue Marlin. Regulations for pelagic fisheries that capture Blue Marlin are set at both the international and national level, and include measures to effectively reduce fishery interactions with protected seabirds and sea turtles.
This fish may have high levels of mercury that could pose a health risk to adults and children. More mercury info here. | 3.570238 |
Swordfish – Indian Ocean
Swordfish is a large, pelagic species found throughout tropical and temperate waters around the globe. They grow at moderate rates and produce many eggs.
In the Indian Ocean, Swordfish are captured by fishing fleets from many nations including Taiwan, Spain, Pakistan and Japan. Their abundance decreased through the 1990s and early 2000s as catches increased, but current Swordfish abundance in the Indian Ocean is at a medium level.
The majority of Swordfish in the Indian Ocean are taken with pelagic longlines, and some with gillnets. These fishing gears result in minimal habitat damage, but may accidentally catch endangered and protected species like sea turtles. Regulations for Swordfish fisheries are set by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, but compliance with these regulations at the national level is poor.
This fish may have high levels of mercury that could pose a health risk to adults and children. More mercury info here. | 3.661982 |
Combined Gas Law
The Combined Gas Law combines Charles Law, Boyle s Law and Gay Lussac s Law. The Combined Gas Law states that a gas pressure x volume x temperature = constant.
Alright. In class you should have learned about the three different gas laws. the first one being Boyle's law and it talks about the relationship between pressure and volume of a particular gas. The next one should be Charles law which talks about the volume and temperature of a particular gas. And the last one should be Gay Lussac's law which talks about the relationship between pressure and temperature of a particular gas. Okay. But what happens when you have pressure, volume and temperature all changing? Well, we're actually going to combine these gas laws to form one giant gas law called the combined gas law. Okay.
If you notice then these three gas laws the pressure and volume are always in the numerator. So we're going to keep them on the numerator. p1v1. And notice the temperature is in the denominator over t1. So all these things are just squished into one and then p2v2 over t2. Okay. So this is what we're going to call the combined gas law. So let's actually get an example and do one together.
Alright, so I have a problem up here that says a gas at 110 kilo pascals and 33 celsius fills a flexible container with an initial volume of two litres, okay? If the temperature is raised to 80 degrees celsius and the pressure is raised to 440 kilo pascals, what is the new volume? Okay. So notice we have three variables. We're talking about pressure, temperature and volume. Okay, so now we're going to employ this combined gas law dealing with all three of these variables. So we're going to look at our first, our first number 110 kilo pascals and that's going to, that is the unit of pressure. So we know that's p1. Our p1 is 110 kilo pascals, at 30 degree celsius. I don't like things with celsius so I'm going to change this to kelvin. So I'm going to add 273 to that which makes it 303 kelvin. That's our temperature. And my initial volume is two litres so I'm going to say v1=2 litres. Okay then I continue reading. If the temperature is raised at 80 degree celsius, again we want it in kelvin, so we're going to add 273 making it to 353. So our t2 is 353 kelvin and the pressure increased to 440 kilo pascals, the pressure p2 is equal to 440 kilo pascals which I'm very happy that I kept it in kilo pascals that I kept it in kilo pascals. I've got to make sure these units are the same because pressure can be measured in several different units. I'm going to make sure all units are the same. And what is the new volume? So our v2 is our variable, what we're trying to find. Okay.
So let's basically plug all these variable in into our combined gas law to figure out what the new volume would be. Okay. So I'm going to erase this and say our pressure one is 110 kilo pascals. Our volume one is two litres. Our temperature one is 303 kelvin. Our pressure two is 440 kilo pascals. We don't know our volume so we're just going to say v2 over 353 kelvin. Okay. When I'm looking for a variable I'm going to cross multiply these guys. So I'm going to say 353 times 110 times 2 and that should give me seven, 77660, if you put that in a calculator. So I just cross multiply these guys. And I cross multiply these guys 303 times 440 times v2 gives me 133320v2. Okay, so then I want to get my, I want to isolate my variable, so I'm going to divide 133320. 133320. And I find that my new volume is 0.58. 0.58 metres. And that is how you do the combined gas law. | 4.073039 |
Disease outbreaks, such as cholera, are commonly thought to happen after earthquakes and other natural disasters, but studies have found no evidence to support this. And the persistence of this belief may be hurting relief efforts.
The devastating earthquake in Haiti in January 2010 was followed by a deadly cholera outbreak. Many saw this as an inevitable outcome of the disaster, as poor sanitary conditions combined with numerous dead bodies and survivors housed in cramped quarters to produce an incubator for deadly diseases.
“It’s what all of us worried about when we arrived in Haiti just hours after the quake,” said NBC's Brian Williams, according to Popular Science. “Beyond the death toll, the inevitable spread of disease.”
However, a forensic analysis of the outbreak has shown that it had very little to do with either the earthquake or the conditions in Haiti afterwards.
The spread of the disease was traced back to a small military base, that was built years before, and its faulty sanitation system that allowed human fecal matter to pollute the nearby river. Analysis of the strain of Vibrio cholerae that swept through the Haitian population showed that it was identical to the one that was infecting people in Nepal, where some of the soldiers at the base were stationed before they joined the Haiti relief efforts.
[ More Geekquinox: Man maps out stunning Earth-like Mars ]
The problem with the belief in the 'inevitability' of the outbreak, according to what journalist and author Jonathan M. Katz wrote in his PopSci article, is "most journalists and responders shrugged off cholera as a natural product of the disaster. The attitude made epidemiologists and aid workers less likely to seek out the source of what was in fact a particular infection not only new to Haiti, but the entire hemisphere."
"And it has since continued to provide cover for the United Nations as advocates press for reparations, and public health experts try to reform the peacekeeping system to prevent such a catastrophic error from happening again." he added.
"Conditioned to look for a problem that wasn’t there, responders ignored the greatest public health threat of all: themselves." | 3.799286 |
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Although the process of forming national constitutions in European states began more than two centuries ago, the actual texts of EU member state constitutions all date from the present century, with the single, obvious exception of the British constitution. The venerable British texts merit an obligatory nod of tribute to that paradoxical cradle of the constitutional state. A few European constitutional texts are the cumulative result of successive reforms of texts originally drafted in the nineteenth century or earlier, and are found in those societies that managed to avoid the dramatic upheavals which punctuate the histories of other European states. The majority of the constitutions were promulgated after the Second World War, following governmental ruptures of varying intensity and duration. A final group of texts have their origin in the inter-war period and were drafted concurrent to the creation, or re-creation, of their corresponding states.
The "reformed" texts often contain some structural traces of their origins in the preservation of the monarchy, or in the use of traditional formulae. However, the depth of the changes that were carried out makes it virtually impossible to establish clear distinctions, based upon constitutional content, between these and the newer texts. Even those differences arising from the opposition of monarchy and republic are difficult to delineate clearly, in part due to the anomaly presented by Spain. The Spanish constitution is a new constitution, but it is also monarchical. In addition, the opposition in Spain to the constitutional order is no longer of political importance. The King of Spain is reputed to have stated long before his coronation that "my aspiration is to be king of a Spanish Republic" - a sentiment that acknowledged the reality that European monarchies are nothing more than republics with crowns.
This set of cases includes Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Sweden.
The Swedish Instrument of Government, the oldest written constitution in Europe, dates from 1720.
Prolonged and serious ruptures occurred in Germany, Spain, Greece, Italy, and Portugal. In France the rupture brought about by the Vichy regime was shorter and concluded with the Constitution of 1946. A new and clear break occurred in 1958 when political circumstances surrounding the army revolt in Algeria led to the replacement of the 1946 Constitution.
Included here are the cases of Austria, Finland, and Ireland. These constitutions have a number of distinctive characteristics which are not considered here.
In the case of Belgium, the extent of the constitutional reform affected the very contour of the state.
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Top of the page | 3.578915 |
Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)
Passed in 1996, The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) denies federal recognition of gay marriages and gives each state the right to refuse recognition of same-sex marriage licenses issued by other states. The act does not prohibit states from allowing gay marriages, but neither does it obligate states to recognize the gay marriages from other states. For the first time in history, the federal government defines marriage in the Act as a "legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife," and spouse is defined as "a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife." Marriages that do not fit this description are not eligible for any benefits offered by the federal government.
For More Information on DOMA, see Senate Subcommittee Hearing on the Proposed Federal Defense of Marriage Act. | 3.007879 |
A compiler is a computer program that takes code and generates either object code or translates code in one language into another language. When it generates code into another language usually the other language is either compiled (into object code) , interpreted , or even compiled again into another language. Object code can be run on your computer as a regular program. In the days when compute time cost thousands of dollars compilation was done by hand. Now compilation is usually done by a program.
edit-hint Expand to compilation techniques? | 3.391912 |
Martial arts is the collective name given to a variety of hand-to-hand fighting styles, or fighting styles that involve weapons that are used as an extension of the body. Most fighting styles are unique to a particular culture, such as Karate to Japan, and TaeKwonDo to Korea. While many have roots in the period BC, there are variations of the styles that evolved in the last 200 years.
Interestingly enough, Karate is more of an anti-martial art, designed to help common folk prepare to fight against martial rule, during a time of weapons bans. Kara te do means "empty hand way" referencing this style without weapons. TaeKwonDo means "the way of the hands and feet".
Most martial arts were originally intended to be used for serious fighting, but in the modern age they are mainly practised as sports, with strictly codified rules; indeed some, such as Judo, were developed from other martial arts purely for sporting purposes. Many people, especially women, also learn martial arts for self-defense. | 3.138963 |
What Your—Grader Needs to Know
In one volume per grade, this eight-volume series provides parents, teachers, and children with an introduction to the important knowledge outlined in the Core Knowledge Sequence. More…
Learn how Core Knowledge schools in nearly every state are succeeding with a sequenced, solid, specific, and shared curriculum. More…
Benefits of Core KnowledgeAll Stakeholders Benefit from a Coherent, Cumulative, and Content-Specific Curriculum
- provides a broad base of knowledge, and
- provides the rich vocabulary needed for reading achievement and academic success.
- provides a plan for coherent, sequenced learning from grade to grade,
- promotes teamwork and an institution-wide focus, and
- enables schools to work more effectively while meeting and exceeding state standards.
For School Districts
- decreases the learning gaps caused by student mobility,
- provides a strong foundation of knowledge for success in high school and beyond,
- creates a common focus to share information and expertise, and
- encourages cooperation among schools to provide a quality learning experiences for all students.
For Parents and Communities
- enhances accountability and parental engagement by providing a clear outline of what children are expected to learn in school, and
- provides a common ground for communication—in school and in life. | 3.687867 |
Last Updated: Feb 17, 2012
Fair trade is a sales model that honors each participant in the production and purchase process. It focuses on sustainability and protection of the environment, and is rooted in fair economic practices and interpersonal connections. When you purchase an item labeled as fair trade, you are helping support fair prices, environmental protections, direct trade, fair labor conditions, and local communities.
Why Buy Fair Trade
Our modern world economy puts a heavy focus on the bottom line: in the decision between two similar products, price is usually the deciding factor. However, this practice often discriminates against small farmers, craftsmen, and labor cooperatives, since their per-unit production and materials costs are higher than those of mass producers. Additionally, major manufacturers may employ unjust business practices, such as low wages or poor worker rights, to maintain low prices for their finished products.
Fair trade, on the other hand, honors the developing world's small businesses and promotes equal rights for workers and producers around the world. Additionally, this business model supports social development, helping fund schools and community growth, and directly benefits some of the world's poorest communities.
Fair Price & Fair Labor
The international Fair Trade Labeling Organization sets the price for all Fair Trade Certified™ products, ensuring that each item is priced justly. By these standards, a fair price adequately covers the cost the production and living wages for workers. A living wage is defined as sufficient to cover medical care, education, food, shelter and cost of living.
Fair trade companies, farmers and artisans respect their environment and engage in sustainable production. For example, fair trade farmers avoid the use of most agrochemicals by employing natural methods like crop rotation and biological pest control. Almost 85% of Fair Trade Certified™ coffee is produced organically.
The conventional supply chain employs many intermediaries – buyers, exporters, and importers, among others. Fair trade supports a more direct route, connecting a producer or cooperative to a fair trade distributor, then to the store. This process allows for less profit dilution, and fosters long-term relationships between producers and importers.
Support Local Communities
Without fair trade, artisans, farmers and cooperatives from small, developing communities would not have access to the global market. By purchasing fair trade items produced by these workers, you contribute directly to their local economy. In fact, many fair trade producers invest profits back into their businesses and communities. Additionally, all fair trade sales include a "social premium," which is a set fee paid to the cooperative that must be invested in community development. Each cooperative makes a collective decision as to how to invest their social premium. | 3.256435 |
Influenza, or “the flu,” is a contagious viral infection of the nose, throat, and lungs which occurs most often in the late fall, winter, and early spring. Flu is a serious infection which is associated, on average, with more than 200,000 hospitalizations due to flu related complications and can lead to thousands of deaths every year in the United States.
“No one wants to spread the flu to family, friends, or colleagues. Yet many of us admit to tossing our manners aside when we have the flu,” said Anna Post, great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post and co-author of the 18th edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette. “Knowing how to politely cancel an event you’re hosting or how to avoid shaking your client’s hand because you’re sick can help avoid a potentially difficult and awkward situation. By following appropriate flu etiquette, we can all play a role in preventing the spread of the flu virus.”
The Emily Post Institute offers the following etiquette tips to manage common situations where the flu virus might be spread from one person to another:
1. Share space, not the flu – Covering sneezes and coughs is a good habit all year round, especially during flu season. The flu virus can spread up to six feet away from coughing, sneezing, or even just talking.
2. Know when to take a sick day – The flu is highly contagious and the people you work with don’t want to get sick. Knowing the symptoms of flu versus a cold is important so you know when to take a sick day and see a doctor. Remember the acronym F.A.C.T.S. to recognize if you might have the flu (Fever, Aches, Chills, Tiredness with Sudden Onset).
3. In tight quarters – It’s tough to point out someone’s behavior mid-flight with hours left to go. However, flu is highly contagious. If there’s no other seat available, consider saying, “I can see you’re not feeling well—would you mind covering your mouth when you cough? Thanks.” Most people when prompted are eager to show good manners and do the right thing.
“Every year, millions of Americans get influenza. We are all personally responsible for helping to control its spread,” says Susan J. Rehm, MD, medical director at the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID). “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends flu vaccine as the first and most important step in preventing influenza, as well as good hygiene. If symptoms arise, see a doctor quickly. The flu can be treated with prescription antiviral medicines.”
To help children recognize flu symptoms, learn good habits, and pass the time with a fun activity this winter, download a free coloring book at FluFACTS.com. On FluFACTS.com, you’ll find information to help you distinguish between flu and cold symptoms, sign up for flu alerts in your area, and download a free “Fight the Flu” iPhone app.
This influenza education campaign and survey are supported by Genentech, a member of the Roche Group. | 3.672181 |
In 1996, the Phoenix Zoo's first pair of wolves, Chico and Rosa, gave birth to 3 pups. The female pup was chosen by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association's
Species Survival Plan and the Mexican Wolf Recovery Team to be paired up with a male wolf and released into the wild.
On May 7, 1999 Chico and his new mate, Eureka, produced one healthy pup that was later sent to another breeding facility. In 2003 Eureka was retired to
Southwest Wildlife Rehabilitation Center where she lives with a retired male.
Currently the Zoo has Sonora and Morela, both females born in 2001. The related females are held on exhibit in the Arizona trail. There are no current
plans to breed them. They are part of the SSP and are being housed in a large, naturalistic exhibit meant to properly interpret their current habitat type.
Other species in the same area representing northeastern Arizona are thick billed parrots, bobcats, and a mountain lion. The wolves at the Phoenix Zoo are
managed in a way so that the least amount of interaction as possible is made between them and the animal keepers. This is done to keep the wolves as
"wild" as possible, by fostering behaviors and characteristics that will enhance their ability to survive in the wild.
Wolf Awareness Week is an interpretive program that is held annually. During this week, lectures, presentations, and stands are set up to increase visitor
awareness of wolf issues in general, and of the Mexican wolf reintroduction process in particular.
- Non-invasive research in coordination with the AZA's Reproductive Advisory Group and the Mexican Wolf SSP.
- Coordinated interpretive and research programs in collaboration with Southwest Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Foundation, as well as other local and
regional NGO's and zoos holding wolves in captivity.
- Review and input into the Wolf Adaptive Management Oversight Committee of the Arizona Game and Fish Department and cooperators during updates and public | 3.005841 |
American Journal of Physical Anthropology doi:10.1002/ajpa.21350
A mitochondrial revelation of early human migrations to the Tibetan Plateau before and after the last glacial maximum
Zhendong Qin et al.
As the highest plateau surrounded by towering mountain ranges, the Tibetan Plateau was once considered to be one of the last populated areas of modern humans. However, this view has been tremendously changed by archeological, linguistic, and genetic findings in the past 60 years. Nevertheless, the timing and routes of entry of modern humans into the Tibetan Plateau is still unclear. To make these problems clear, we carried out high-resolution mitochondrial-DNA (mtDNA) analyses on 562 Tibeto-Burman inhabitants from nine different regions across the plateau. By examining the mtDNA haplogroup distributions and their principal components, we demonstrated that maternal diversity on the plateau reflects mostly a northern East Asian ancestry. Furthermore, phylogeographic analysis of plateau-specific sublineages based on 31 complete mtDNA sequences revealed two primary components: pre-last glacial maximum (LGM) inhabitants and post-LGM immigrants. Also, the analysis of one major pre-LGM sublineage A10 showed a strong signal of post-LGM population expansion (about 15,000 years ago) and greater diversity in the southern part of the Tibetan Plateau, indicating the southern plateau as a refuge place when climate dramatically changed during LGM. | 3.109928 |
Date: December 2004
Creator: Habel, Agnieszka
Description: This problem in lieu of thesis is a discussion of two topics: Brownian movement and quantum computers. Brownian movement is a physical phenomenon in which the particle velocity is constantly undergoing random fluctuations. Chapters 2, 3 and 4, describe Brownian motion from three different perspectives. The next four chapters are devoted to the subject of quantum computers, which are the signal of a new era of technology and science combined together. In the first chapter I present to a reader the two topics of my problem in lieu of thesis. In the second chapter I explain the idea of Brownian motion, its interpretation as a stochastic process and I find its distribution function. The next chapter illustrates the probabilistic picture of Brownian motion, where the statistical averages over trajectories are related to the probability distribution function. Chapter 4 shows how to derive the Langevin equation, introduced in chapter 1, using a Hamiltonian picture of a bath with infinite number of harmonic oscillators. The chapter 5 explains how the idea of quantum computers was developed and how step-by-step all the puzzles for the field of quantum computers were created. The next chapter, chapter 6, discus the basic quantum unit of information ...
Contributing Partner: UNT Libraries | 3.132011 |
Preterm labor occurs between the 20th and 37th week of pregnancy. This labor includes both uterine contractions and cervical changes.
A full-term pregnancy lasts 38-42 weeks but preterm labor can lead to early delivery. Infants born before 37 weeks are considered premature.
In most cases, the cause is of preterm labor is unknown.
Some preterm labor is associated with preterm premature rupture of membranes (PPROM). PPROM is the rupture of both the amniotic sac and chorion membranes. It generally occurs at least one hour before labor begins.
The chance of preterm-labor is greatest in women under the 18 years or over 35 years. Other maternal factors that may increase the chance of preterm labor include:
- Low socioeconomic status
- Lack of prenatal care and social support
- Being underweight or obese before becoming pregnant
- Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse
- Severe depression or anxiety
- High blood pressure
- Clotting disorders
- Hormonal imbalance
- Certain medications to treat health problems or exposure to diethylstilbestrol (DES)
- Illicit drug use
- Alcohol use
Pregnancy complications that may increase your risk of preterm labor include:
- Placental abruption
- Premature rupture of the membranes
- Carrying more than one baby
- Vaginal bleeding after 16 weeks, or during more than one trimester
- Infection in the cervix, uterus, vagina, or urinary tract including STDs
- Being pregnant with a single fetus after in vitro fertilization (IVF)
- Presence of a retained intrauterine device
- Incompetent cervix
- Too much or too little fluid surrounding the baby
- Surgery on your abdomen during pregnancy
- Amniotic fluid infection
- Intrauterine fetal death
- Intrauterine growth delay
- Birth defects in the baby
Other factors associated with an increased chance of preterm labor include:
- History of one or more spontaneous second-trimester abortions
- Less than six months between giving birth and the beginning of the next pregnancy
- A previous preterm birth
- Uterine fibroids
- Abnormally shaped uterus
Symptoms may include:
- Abdominal pain that feels something like menstrual cramps
- Dull pain in the lower back
- Pressure in the pelvis and tightening in the thighs
- Vaginal bleeding or spotting, or watery discharge
Your doctor will ask about your symptoms and medical history. A physical exam will be done. Your doctor may recommend tests to check your cervix and membranes have ruptured. An ultrasound will help your doctor see internal structures and the baby.
Fluids in the cervix will also be tested for sign of labor progression. A tocometer may be placed to help monitor contractions.
Treatment will depend on your baby's development, especially the growth of the lungs. If your doctor believes the baby is ready, the labor may be allowed to continue. If the baby is not ready to be delivered, your doctor may try to stop the labor. Stopping labor is a complicated process and may not always work. Some treatment options may include:
- Tocolytics—may delay labor for a few days
- Corticosteroids—to help the baby's lungs develop
- Antibiotics—if an infection is suspected or present
To help reduce your chance of preterm labor, take the following steps:
- Get the proper prenatal care throughout your entire pregnancy.
- Eat a healthy, balanced diet with plenty of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.
- Avoid smoking, alcohol, and drugs.
- Keep chronic diseases under control.
- Stay active during your pregnancy. Your doctor can give you exercise guidelines that are right for you.
- If you are at high-risk for premature birth, talk to your doctor about progesterone therapy.
- Reviewer: Andrea Chisholm, MD; Brian Randall, MD
- Review Date: 04/2013 -
- Update Date: 04/23/2013 - | 3.140706 |
SEV331: Focus Vocational Skills -1hr (2012-2013)
CURRICULUM PROGRAM: Special Education
COURSE TITLE: Focus Vocational Skills -1hr
CALENDAR YEAR: 2012-2013
GRADE LEVEL: 9-12
COURSE LENGTH: 36 weeks
Major Concepts/Content: The Focus Vocational Skills course provides students with the knowledge and skills necessary to identify career options, access community resources, and practice work-related behaviors. The course provides guided "on-the-job" practice in school and community settings for a range of post-secondary careers. The skills necessary for success in the working environment are emphasized to include decision making, problem solving, critical thinking, interpersonal relationships, technology, workplace readiness, and communication.
Major Instructional Activities: Practical application and generalization of course concepts occurs in natural settings such as home, school, and community. Instructional activities include personal and career planning, resume writing, interview skills, investigating personality traits associated with various types of jobs, and completion of interest inventories / forms / applications. Students have multiple opportunities to research various types of jobs, identify necessary income for post-secondary living expenses, research potential income for diverse jobs, and review employment sections of newspaper and Internet. Employer expectations will be emphasized to include decision making and problem solving skills, communication and social skills with supervisors and co-workers, following directions (oral & written), workplace readiness skills, and rights and responsibilities of employees. Work-based strategies appropriate for this course include study trips to community businesses, job shadowing, and service learning. Activities may require the student to be knowledgeable of the use of related technology, tools, and equipment.
Major Evaluative Techniques: Students will be evaluated through informal and formal assessments. Multiple authentic assessments will be used as students perform, produce and demonstrate skills both in the classroom and real life settings. This course may not be mastered in one year and students may earn multiple credits in this course.
Course Objectives: The essential objectives of Focus Vocational Skills are designed to facilitate learning outcomes appropriate to the instructional needs of each student. Instructional activities are based upon real world needs with the goal of increased independence and autonomy in his or her home and community. | 3.406915 |
Labrador Retriever originated in Newfoundland, Canada. Small water dogs were used to retrieve birds and fish; they even pulled small boats through the water. Their strong desire to work, versatility, and waterproof coats impressed fishermen, one of whom brought a dog back to England with him. Lord Malmsbury saw this dog, then called a St. John’s Dog, and imported several from Newfoundland. Lord Malmsbury is credited with having started to call the dogs Labradors, although the reason is lost to history. Eventually, the English quarantine stopped additional imports from coming into the country, and the Labradors already in England were cross-bred to other retrievers. However, breed fanciers soon put a stop to that, and the breed as we know it today was born.
Labrador Retriever is probably the most popular dog breed in the world.
Labrador Retriever is a medium-sized, strongly built dog breed that retains its hunting and working instincts. Standing between 21.5 and 24.5 inches tall and weighing between 55 and 80 pounds, with females smaller than males, the breed is compact and well-balanced. Labrador Retrievers have short, weather-resistant coats that can be yellow, black, or chocolate. The head is broad, the eyes are friendly, and the tail is otterlike. Grooming a Labrador Retriever is not difficult, although it is amazing how much the coat can shed at times. Shedding is worst in spring and fall when the short, dense undercoat and coarser outer coat lose all the dead hair. Brushing daily during these times will lessen the amount of hair in the house.
Photo: Labrador Retriever puppies – Brown, Black and Yellow.
Labrador Retrievers do everything with vigor. When it’s time to play, they play hard. When it’s time to take a nap, they do that with enthusiasm, too. But this desire to play and instinct to work means that Labs need vigorous exercise every day and a job to do. They need to bring in the newspaper every morning, learn to pick up their toys, and train in obedience. Labrador Retrievers do very well in many canine activities, including agility, flyball, field tests and trials, tracking, search-and-rescue work, and therapy dog work. Labrador Retrievers still enjoy swimming, and if water is available, a swim is a great way to burn off excess energy.
Early socialization and training can teach a Labrador Retriever puppy household rules and social manners. Training should continue throughout puppyhood and into adulthood so that the Labrador Retriever’s mind is kept busy. The Labrador Retriever can learn advanced obedience, tricks, or anything else her owner wishes to teach her.
Labrador Retrievers are great family dogs. They will bark when people approach the house but are not watchdogs or protective. Labrador Retriever puppies are boisterous and rambunctious and need to be taught to be gentle with young children. Older kids will enjoy the Lab’s willingness to play. Most Labrador Retrievers are also good with other dogs and can learn to live with small pets, although interactions should be supervised. Health concerns include hip and elbow dysplasia, knee problems, eye problems, and allergies.
The Labrador Retriever loves to swim. However, as unlikely as it may seem, Labs do not come “out of the box” knowing how to swim. Furthermore, some Labs become truly nervous around water. That having been said, most Labs can be taught to swim quickly and easily, and a few simple lessons can lead to hours of enjoyment for both you and your dog. There are a number of reasons to teach your Lab to swim while he’s still a pup. For one thing, it’s easier on the dog. A large dog has a lot of body weight to manage in the water, and for a dog new to swimming, this can increase the slope of the learning curve. Puppies, because of their small size, have an easier time.
See 7.5 week old Labrador pups go to the water for the first time
Even before you teach your Lab to swim, you can start off on the right foot by building his confidence around water. Take your dog for a walk around the local pond or lake. Encourage any interest that your dog shows in the water with verbal praise. If he is willing to get his feet wet, encourage him to do so and praise him when he does. Simple preliminaries like this lay a strong foundation for you because you teach the dog that there is no reason to fear water. Remember that the primary goal here is to provide positive experiences for your Lab around and in the water. Making sure that the aquatic site you’ve chosen is safe goes a long way towards ensuring such experiences.
Labrador Retriever Videos
Training Labrador Retrievers: Training Labrador puppies is best started around 2 months of age; the same time as the Labrador puppy is weaned from his mother. This life-long commitment is the beginning of a wonderful relationship between owner and dog. Here are some videos from dog training expert Melanie McLeroy to help you get started.
Teach your Labrador to learn and respond to their name.
Teach your Labrador to sit on command.
Teach your Labrador to stay on command.
Teach your Labrador to lie down on command.
Teach your Labrador to heel.
Teach your Labrador to come on command.
Before your Labrador training starts, you have to consider the training method you intend to use. This method needs to be consistent, so making the decision is one that requires some research. Many professional animal trainers use what’s called positive reinforcement (believes that animals are much better behaved and easier to train when they’re earning rewards and praise than if they’re being punished). | 3.083 |
A continuation of our predictions of big issues for 2011...
Don’t expect the debates on teaching quality to end anytime soon. We suspect that data from test scores (a la the Los Angeles Times series of 2010) will continue to be used to determine a teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom. Beyond the problems of relying on one strand of data, this approach also reinforces the unfortunate lack of attention given to the early grades, since statewide tests are typically, and appropriately, not administered to children younger than 8 or 9.
This disregard of teacher quality in the early years has led to a sorry state in many schools. A 2007 study published in Science, for example, showed that only 10 percent of poor children experience high-quality instruction throughout their elementary school years. So we applaud the focus on effective teaching in principle. What we wish is that it would go much deeper. Teachers and principals should be assessing the quality of their instruction using research-based tools that feed on most teachers’ desires to improve.
Early childhood programs know this already. Tools like the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) are in use throughout the Head Start program and in several state-wide pre-k programs as well. (In fact, they may become a tool for determining which Head Start programs have to re-compete for funds.) These research-based tools use data from minute-by-minute observations of classroom interactions to determine where teachers excel and where they need to change their approach. According to anecdotal reports from teachers in these programs, the observational records are incredibly helpful in honing their craft. Could this be the year for elementary and secondary schools to wake up to the potential of these kinds of tools?
Next Up: Hot Spot #5, Striving Readers and Other Competitions | 3.109283 |
You wouldn’t guess that a bit of green slime could do so much. But from from food to fuel, PetroAlgae, Inc. seems to have thought of everything. This Florida-based renewable energy company has developed a technology in which algae and other microorganisms produce fuel to feed cars, animals, and even humans...and say they can do it cheaper than anyone else.
With the addition of a few basic nutrients, algae gather most of their energy from the sun. The result is a protein and carbohydrate-rich slime that can be converted to a variety of products. First, the protein is extracted and processed into animal feed or blended into human food products. PetroAlgae actually lists one of its products as “meal replacer”, conjuring images of our new utopian future in which chewing is obsolete.
After the protein extraction, what remains is a “lipid-carbohydrate mash”. PetroAlgae claims that this material can be sent directly to a petroleum refinery and processed into diesel, gas, or jet fuel without the need to retro-fit any of the refinery’s conventional equipment. Algae cultivation requires very little square-footage relative to conventional crops, can be grown on non-arable land, and consumes up to twice its weight in carbon dioxide as it grows.
In addition to algae, PetroAlgae draws from a large pool of microorganisms including diatoms, cyanobacteria, and micro-angiosperms (tiny flowering plants). While exact species remain unnamed, the company conscientiously notes that they use only species indigenous to the region in which a production facility will be installed. They have already begun licensing their technology to commercial facilities in Asia, and are poised to complete contracts with the U.S. and several European countries this year. Each licensee is promised the potential to produce 1.5 million barrels of transportation fuel per year, or the equivalent of 1.4 billion miles for a single truck. If PetroAlgae’s assertions hold true, the cost of fuel production is essentially paid for by the revenue from food and feed products, meaning that their microbe-derived fuels will remain competitive with fossil fuels, at any price.
PetroAlgae is in the business of licensing its technology rather than building the algae plants itself. It already has deals with algae farms in India and China and is currently working on deals in the U.S., Canada and Europe.
Via BioFuels Digest
written by Fred, July 14, 2009
written by OakleighVermont solargroupies, July 14, 2009
written by Andrew, July 15, 2009
written by Sri Sadika, July 16, 2009
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|Ban Chao's names:|
|Given name||Style name|
|Pinyin||Bān Chāo||Zhòng Shēng|
|Wade-Giles||Pan Ch'ao||Chung Sheng|
Ban Chao (Chinese: 班超; Wade-Giles: Pan Ch'ao, 32–102 CE), courtesy name Zhongsheng (仲 升), was born in Xianyang, Shaanxi, and the younger brother of the famous historian, Ban Gu (Chinese: 班固; Wade–Giles: Pan Ku, (32–92 CE) who, with his father Ban Biao, and sister, Ban Zhao, wrote the famous Hanshu, or 'History of the Former Han Dynasty'.
Ban Chao was a general and cavalry commander in charge of the administration of the "Western Regions" (Central Asia) during the Eastern Han dynasty. He repelled the Xiongnu and secured Chinese control over the Tarim Basin region, and was awarded the title of 'Protector General of the Western Regions'. He fought for 31 years.
Control of the Tarim Basin
Ban Chao, like his predecessors Huo Qubing and Wei Qing from the Former Han Dynasty before him, was effective at expelling the Xiongnu from the Tarim Basin, and brought the various people of the Western Regions under Chinese rule during the second half of the 1st century CE, helping to open and secure the trade routes to the west. He was generally outnumbered, but skillfully played on the divisions among his opponents. The kingdoms of Loulan, Khotan and Kashgar came under Chinese rule.
Ban Chao was recalled to Luoyang, but then sent again to the Western Region area four years later, during the reign of the new emperor Han Zhangdi. He obtained the military help of the Kushan Empire in 84 in repelling the Kangju who were trying to support the rebellion of the king of Kashgar, and the next year in his attack on Turpan, in the eastern Tarim Basin. Ban Chao ultimately brought the whole of the Tarim Basin under Chinese control.
In recognition for their support to the Chinese, the Kushans (referred to as Da Yuezhi in Chinese sources) requested, but were denied, a Han princess, even though they had sent presents to the Chinese court. In retaliation, they marched on Ban Chao in 90 CE with a force of 70,000, but, exhausted by the expedition, were finally turned back by the smaller Chinese force. The Yuezhi retreated and paid tribute to the Chinese Empire. (Later, during the Yuanchu period, 114-120 CE, the Kushans sent a military force to install Chenpan, who had been a hostage among them, as king of Kashgar).
In 91 CE, Ban Chao finally succeeded in pacifying the Western Regions and was awarded the title of Protector General and stationed at Qiuci (Kucha). A Wuji Colonel was re-established and, commanding five hundred soldiers, stationed in the Kingdom of Nearer Jushi, within the walls of Gaochang, 29 kilometres southeast of Turfan. In 94 CE, Chao proceeded to again attack and defeat Yanqi [Karashahr]. Subsequently, more than fifty kingdoms presented hostages, and submitted to the Interior.
In 97 CE Ban Chao sent an envoy, Gan Ying, who reached the Persian Gulf and left the first recorded Chinese account of Europe. Some modern authors have even claimed that Ban Chao advanced to the Caspian Sea, however, this interpretation has been criticized as a misreading.
In 102 CE Ban Chao was retired as Protector General of the Western Regions due to age and ill health, and returned to the capital Luoyang at the age of 70, but the following month died there in the 9th month of the 14th Yongyuan year (30th Sept. to 28th Oct., 102). See: Hou Hanshu, chap 77 (sometimes given as chap. 107). Following his death, the power of the Xiongnu in the Western Territories increased again, and subsequent Chinese emperors were never to reach so far to the west.
A family of historians
Ban Chao also belonged to a family of historians. His father was Ban Biao (3-54 CE) who started the History of the Western Han Dynasty (Hanshu; The Book of Han) in 36, which was completed by his son Ban Gu (32-92) and his daughter Ban Zhao (Ban Chao's brother and sister). Ban Chao was probably the key source for the cultural and socio-economic data on the Western Regions contained in the Hanshu.
Ban Chao's youngest son Ban Yong (班勇 Bān Yŏng) participated in military campaigns with his father and continued to have a central military role in the Tarim Basin into the 120s.
Ban Chao's family
- Ban Biao (班彪; 3-54; father)
Famous quotes
- "If you don't enter the tiger's den, how can you catch the tiger's cub?" (不入虎穴，不得虎子)
- "Clear water can not harbor big fish, clean politics (or strict enforcement of regulations) can not foster harmony among the general public" (水清無大魚，察政不得下和)
Ban Chao in idioms
- See four-character idiom:
- "Throw away your writing brush and join the military!" (投筆從戎) based on his words "A brave man has no other plan but to follow Fu and Zhang Qian's footsteps and do something and become somebody in a foreign land. How can I waste my life on writing? (大丈夫無他志略，猶當效傅介子、張騫立功異域，以取封侯，安能久事筆硯間乎？) in Hou Hanshu.
- "Clear water harbors no fish." (水清無魚)
Ban Chao of today
See also
- Hill (2009), p. 43.
- Hill (2009), p. 5.
- Hill (2009), p. 5.
- Hill (2009), p. 5.
- Hill. (2009), p. 55.
- J. Oliver Thomson, A History of Ancient Geography, Cambridge 1948, p.311. Thomson cites Richthofen, China, 1877, I, 469 and some other authors in support of the claim that Ban Chao marched to the Caspian, and Yule/Cordier, Cathay and the way thither, 1916 p.40 (p.40f in vol.I of the 2005 edition by Asian Educational Services), Chavannes, Seidenstrassen, p.8, and Teggart, Rome and China as references for such claims being erroneous.
- Chavannes (1906), p. 243.
- Hill (2009), p. xv.
- Chavannes, Édouard (1906). "Trois Généraux Chinois de la dynastie des Han Orientaux. Pan Tch’ao (32-102 p.C.); – son fils Pan Yong; – Leang K’in (112 p.C.). Chapitre LXXVII du Heou Han chou." T’oung pao 7, pp. 210-269.
- Hill, John E. (2009). Through the Jade Gate to Rome: A Study of the Silk Routes during the Later Han Dynasty, First to Second Centuries CE. BookSurge. ISBN 978-1-4392-2134-1.
- The Tarim Mummies. J.P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair (2000). Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-05101-1 | 3.122126 |
In statistics, a confidence region is a multi-dimensional generalization of a confidence interval. It is a set of points in an n-dimensional space, often represented as an ellipsoid around a point which is an estimated solution to a problem, although other shapes can occur.
The confidence region is calculated in such a way that if a set of measurements were repeated many times and a confidence region calculated in the same way on each set of measurements, then a certain percentage of the time, on average, (e.g. 95%) the confidence region would include the point representing the "true" values of the set of variables being estimated. However, unless certain assumptions about prior probabilities are made, it does not mean, when one confidence region has been calculated, that there is a 95% probability that the "true" values lie inside the region, since we do not assume any particular probability distribution of the "true" values and we may or may not have other information about where they are likely to lie.
The case of independent, identically normally-distributed errors
Suppose we have found a solution to the following overdetermined problem:
where Y is an n-dimensional column vector containing observed values, X is an n-by-p matrix which can represent a physical model and which is assumed to be known exactly, is a column vector containing the p parameters which are to be estimated, and is an n-dimensional column vector of errors which are assumed to be independently distributed with normal distributions with zero mean and each having the same unknown variance .
A joint 100(1 - ) % confidence region for the elements of is represented by the set of values of the vector b which satisfy the following inequality:
where the variable b represents any point in the confidence region, p is the number of parameters, i.e. number of elements of the vector and s2 is an unbiased estimate of equal to
The above inequality defines an ellipsoidal region in the p-dimensional Cartesian parameter space Rp. The centre of the ellipsoid is at the solution . According to Press et al., it's easier to plot the ellipsoid after doing singular value decomposition. The lengths of the axes of the ellipsoid are proportional to the reciprocals of the values on the diagonals of the diagonal matrix, and the directions of these axes are given by the rows of the 3rd matrix of the decomposition.
Weighted and generalised least squares
Now let us consider the more general case where some distinct elements of have known nonzero covariance (in other words, the errors in the observations are not independently distributed), and/or the standard deviations of the errors are not all equal. Suppose the covariance matrix of is , where V is an n-by-n nonsingular matrix which was equal to in the more specific case handled in the previous section, (where I is the identity matrix,) but here is allowed to have nonzero off-diagonal elements representing the covariance of pairs of individual observations, as well as not necessarily having all the diagonal elements equal.
It is possible to find a nonsingular symmetric matrix P such that
In effect, P is a square root of the covariance matrix V.
The least-squares problem
can then be transformed by left-multiplying each term by the inverse of P, forming the new problem formulation
A joint confidence region for the parameters, i.e. for the elements of , is then bounded by the ellipsoid given by:
Nonlinear problems
Confidence regions can be defined for any probability distribution. The experimenter can choose the significance level and the shape of the region, and then the size of the region is determined by the probability distribution. A natural choice is to use as a boundary a set of points with constant (chi-squared) values.
One approach is to use a linear approximation to the nonlinear model, which may be a close approximation in the vicinity of the solution, and then apply the analysis for a linear problem to find an approximate confidence region. This may be a reasonable approach if the confidence region is not very large and the second derivatives of the model are also not very large.
See Uncertainty Quantification#Methodologies for forward uncertainty propagation for related concepts.
See also
- Draper and Smith (1981, p. 94)
- Draper and Smith (1981, p. 108)
- Draper and Smith (1981, p. 109)
||This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. (September 2011)|
- Draper, N.R.; H. Smith (1981) . Applied Regression Analysis (2nd ed.). USA: John Wiley and Sons Ltd. ISBN 0-471-02995-5.
- Press, W.H.; S.A. Teukolsky, W.T. Vetterling, B.P. Flannery (1992) . Numerical Recipes in C: The Art of Scientific Computing (2nd ed.). Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. | 3.583377 |
Father Christmas is the name used in many English-speaking countries outside the United States and Canada for a figure associated with Christmas. A similar figure with the same name (in other languages) exists in several other countries, including France (Père Noël), Spain (Papá Noel, Padre Noel), Russia (Ded Moroz, Grandfather Frost), almost all Hispanic South America (Papá Noel), Brazil (Papai Noel), Portugal (Pai Natal), Italy (Babbo Natale), Armenia (Dzmer Papik), India (Christmas Father), Andorra (Pare Noel), Romania (Moş Crăciun) and Turkey (Noel Baba).
In England the earliest known personification of Christmas does not describe him as old, or refer to him as 'father'. A carol attributed to Richard Smart, Rector of Plymtree from 1435 to 1477, takes the form of a sung dialogue between a choir and a figure representing Christmas, variously addressed as “Nowell”, “Sir Christemas” and “my lord Christemas”. He does not distribute presents to children but is associated with adult celebrations. Giving news of Christ’s birth, Christmas encourages everyone to eat and drink: "Buvez bien par toute la campagnie,/Make good cheer and be right merry." However, the specific depiction of Christmas as a merry old man emerged in the early 17th century. The rise of puritanism had led to increasing condemnation of the traditions handed down from pre-Reformation times, especially communal feasting and drinking. As debate intensified, those writing in support of the traditional celebrations often personified Christmas as a venerable, kindly old gentleman, given to good cheer but not excess. They referred to this personification as "Christmas", "Old Christmas" or "Father Christmas".
Ben Jonson in Christmas his Masque, dating from December 1616, notes the rising tendency to disparage the traditional forms of celebration. His character 'Christmas' therefore appears in outdated fashions, "attir'd in round Hose, long Stockings, a close Doublet, a high crownd Hat with a Broach, a long thin beard, a Truncheon, little Ruffes, white shoes, his Scarffes, and Garters tyed crosse", and announces "Why Gentlemen, doe you know what you doe? ha! would you ha'kept me out? Christmas, old Christmas?" Later, in a masque by Thomas Nabbes, The Springs Glorie produced in 1638, "Christmas" appears as "an old reverend gentleman in furred gown and cap".
During the mid-17th century, the debate about the celebration of Christmas became politically charged, with Royalists adopting a pro-Christmas stance and radical puritans striving to ban the festival entirely. Early in 1646 an anonymous satirical author wrote The Arraignment, Conviction and Imprisoning of Christmas, in which a Royalist lady is frantically searching for Father Christmas: this was followed months later by the Royalist poet John Taylor's The Complaint of Christmas, in which Father Christmas mournfully visits puritan towns but sees "...no sign or token of any Holy Day". A book dating from the time of the Commonwealth, The Vindication of CHRISTMAS or, His Twelve Yeares' Observations upon the Times (London, 1652), involved "Old Christmas" advocating a merry, alcoholic Christmas and casting aspersions on the charitable motives of the ruling Puritans. In a similar vein, a humorous pamphlet of 1686 by Josiah King presents Father Christmas as the personification of festive traditions pre-dating the puritan commonwealth. He is described as an elderly gentleman of cheerful appearance, "who when he came look't so smug and pleasant, his cherry cheeks appeared through his thin milk white locks, like (b)lushing Roses vail'd with snow white Tiffany". His character is associated with feasting, hospitality and generosity to the poor rather than the giving of gifts.
This tradition continued into the following centuries, with "Old Father Christmas" being evoked in 1734 in the pamphlet Round About Our Coal Fire, as "Shewing what Hospitality was in former Times, and how little of it there remains at present", a rebuke to "stingy" gentry. A writer in "Time's Telescope" (1822) states that in Yorkshire at eight o'clock on Christmas Eve the bells greet "Old Father Christmas" with a merry peal, the children parade the streets with drums, trumpets, bells, (or in their absence, with the poker and shovel, taken from their humble cottage fire), the yule candle is lighted, and; "High on the cheerful fire. Is blazing seen th' enormous Christmas brand." A letter to The Times in 1825, warning against poultry-dealers dishonestly selling off sub-standard geese at Christmas time, is jokingly signed "Father Christmas".
In these early references, Father Christmas, although invariably an old and cheerful man, is mainly associated with adult feasting and drinking rather than the giving of presents. Since the mid-Victorian era however, Father Christmas has gradually merged with the pre-modern gift-giver St Nicholas (Dutch Sinterklaas, hence Santa Claus) and associated folklore. Nowadays in Britain the figure is often called Santa Claus but also often referred to as Father Christmas: the two names are synonyms. In Europe, the figure is usually translated as Father Christmas (Père Noël, Papá Noel, Padre Noel, etc.) rather than "Santa Claus" and is often said to reside in the mountains of Korvatunturi in Lapland Province, Finland.
Current folklore
Father Christmas often appears as a large man, often around seventy years old. He is dressed in a red suit trimmed with white fur, often girdled with a wide black belt, a matching hat, often long and floppy in nature, and dark boots. Often he carries a large brown sack filled with toys on his back (rarely, images of him have a beard but with no moustache). Urban myth has it that the red suit only appeared after the Coca Cola company started an advertising campaign depicting a red suited Father Christmas in the 1930s. However, the red suit was used long before, including by American illustrator Thomas Nast.
Father Christmas comes down the chimney to put presents under the Christmas tree or in children's rooms, in their stockings. Some families leave a glass of sherry or mulled wine, mince pies, biscuits, or chocolate and a carrot for his reindeer near the stocking(s) as a present for him. In modern homes without chimneys he uses alternative means to enter the home. In some homes children write Christmas lists (of wished-for presents) and send them up the chimney or post them. He is often said to live at the North Pole.
In fiction
Father Christmas appears in many English-language works of fiction, including J. R. R. Tolkien's Father Christmas Letters (written between 1920 and 1942, first published in 1976), the translation from the French of Jean de Brunhoff's Babar and Father Christmas (originally Babar et le père Noël, 1941), C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), Raymond Briggs's Father Christmas (1973), Debbie Macomber's There's Something About Christmas (2005), Robin Jones Gunn's Father Christmas Series (2007), Catherine Spencer's A Christmas to Remember (2007), and Richard Paul Evans's The Gift (2007).
In music
- In 1977, The Kinks recorded the song "Father Christmas".
- In addition, in 1974, Greg Lake (of Emerson, Lake & Palmer) wrote and recorded the song, "I Believe In Father Christmas", which was released as a single in 1975.
- In their 1997 album Pop, U2 cites Father Christmas in the song "If God Will Send His Angels".
See also
- J. Simpson and S. Roud, The Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, Oxford, 2001, pp. 119-20
- Although an earlier Elizabethan play by satirist Thomas Nashe, Summer's Last Will and Testament (1592), includes a character personifying Christmas, he is atypically presented as a stingy nobleman who shuns festivity. Nashe is satirising wealthy Elizabethan gentry who avoid their traditional duty of feasting the poor at Christmastime.The play text online at Gutenberg.org
- At the time "Father" was a title sometimes given to older men worthy of respect: "...A respectful title given to an old and venerable man..." "father, n.". OED Online. December 2012. Oxford University Press. 30 December 2012 <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/68498?rskey=kF677t&result=1>
- "Christmas, His Masque - Ben Jonson". Hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com. Retrieved 2012-10-23.
- Jean Macintyre (1992). Costumes and Scripts in Elizabethan Theatres. University of Alberta Press. p. 230.
- Nabbes, Thomas, The Works of Thomas Nabbes, Benjamin Blom, Inc, New York, 1968 available online at Google Books
- J.A.R.Pimlott (1960). History Today 10 (12). http://www.historytoday.com/jar-pimlott/christmas-under-puritans
- "A Christmassy post | Mercurius Politicus". Mercuriuspoliticus.wordpress.com. 2008-12-21. Retrieved 2011-04-01.
- The Examination and Tryal of Father Christmas"
- Round About Our Coal Fire, or Christmas Entertainments. J.Roberts. 1734.
- Dawson, William Francis (2007). The Project Gutenberg eBook, Christmas: Its Origin and Associations Project Gutenburg
- FATHER CHRISTMAS, "Christmas Geese", The Times (London, England) dated 24 December 1825, page 4. from The Times Digital Archive, accessed 22 December 2012.
- Diarist Barclay Fox refers to a children's party given on 26 December 1842 featuring 'venerable effigies' of Father Christmas and the Old Year; '...Father Christmas with scarlet coat and cocked hat, stuck all over with presents for the guests...' R. L. Brett, ed., Barclay Fox's Journal, Bell and Hyman, London, 1979
- "BBC - Father Christmas, green or red?". BBC News. 4 December 2009. Retrieved 2011-04-01.
- Coke denies claims it bottled familiar Santa image, Jim Auchmutey, Rocky Mountain News, December 10, 2007.
- "Santa's arrival lights up the Green".
- Christmas in America - A History By Penne L. Restad. | 3.150631 |
|Time period||c. 400–?|
[a] The Semitic origin of the Brahmic scripts is not universally agreed upon.Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.
The Gupta script (sometimes referred to as Gupta Brahmi Script or Late Brahmi Script ) was used for writing Sanskrit and is associated with the Gupta Empire of India which was a period of material prosperity and great religious and scientific developments. The Gupta script was descended from Brahmi and gave rise to the Nagari, Sharada and Siddham scripts. These scripts in turn gave rise to many of the most important scripts of India, including Devanagari (the most common script used for writing Sanskrit since the 19th century), the Gurmukhi script for Punjabi Language and the Tibetan script.
Origins and Classification
The Gupta Script was descended from the Ashokan Brahmi script, and is a crucial link between Brahmi and most other scripts in the Brahmic family of Scripts, a family of alphasyllabaries or abugidas. This means that while only consonantal phonemes have distinct symbols, vowels are marked by diacritics, with /a/ being the implied pronunciation when the diacritic is not present. In fact, the Gupta script works in exactly the same manner as its predecessor and successors, and only the shapes and forms of the graphemes and diacritics are different.
Through the 4th century, letters began to take more cursive and symmetric forms, as a result of the desire to write more quickly and aesthetically. This also meant that the script became more differentiated throughout the Empire, with regional variations which have been broadly classified into three, four or five categories; however, a definitive classification is not clear, because even on a single inscription, there may be variation in how a particular symbol is written. In this sense, the term Gupta script should be taken to mean any form of writing derived from the Gupta period, even though there may be a lack of uniformity in the scripts.
The surviving inscriptions of the Gupta script are mostly found on iron or stone pillars, and on gold coins from the Gupta Dynasty. One of the most important was the Allahabad Prasasti. Composed by Harishena, the court poet and minister of Samudragupta, it describes Samudragupta’s reign, beginning from his ascension to the throne as the second king of the Gupta Dynasty and including his conquest of other kings.
Gupta Numismatics
The study of Gupta coins began with the discovery of a hoard of gold coins in 1783. Many other such hoards have since been discovered, the most important being the Bayana hoard, discovered in 1946, which contained more than 2000 gold coins issued by the Gupta Kings. Many of the Gupta Empire’s coins bear inscriptions of legends or mark historic events. In fact, it was one of the first Indian Empires to do so, probably as a result of its unprecedented prosperity. Almost every Gupta king issued coins, beginning with its first king, Chandragupta I.
The scripts on the coin are also of a different nature compared to scripts on pillars, due to conservatism regarding the coins that were to be accepted as currency, which would have prevented regional variations in the script from manifesting on the coinage. Moreover, space was more limited especially on their silver coins, and thus many of the symbols are truncated or stunted. An example is the symbol for /ta/ and /na/, which were often simplified to vertical strokes.
- (Spanish) The Gupta Alphabet
- AncientScripts.com entry on the Gupta Script
- The Shivlee Collection of Coins from the Gupta Dynasty In particular, note the limited space on the silver coins
- An eastern variety of the post-Gupta script: Akṣara List of theManuscripts of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and Buddhapālita's Commentary, c. the 550-650, Collection of Sanskrit Mss. Formerly Preserved in the China Ethnic Library
- Sharma, Ram. 'Brahmi Script' . Delhi: BR Publishing Corp, 2002
- Srivastava, Anupama. 'The Development of Imperial Gupta Brahmi Script' . New Delhi: Ramanand, 1998
- Fischer, Steven Roger. 'A History of Writing' . UK: Reaktion, 2004
- Bajpai, KD. 'Indian Numismatic Studies. ' New Delhi: Abhinav Publications 2004
- Carl Faulmann (1835–1894), Das Buch der Schrift, Druck und Verlag der Kaiserlichen Hof-und Staatsdruckerei, 1880 | 3.73258 |
Hundred Years' War (1369–89)
||This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. (May 2012)|
|Hundred Years' War (1369-1389)|
|Part of Hundred Years' War|
The Battle of Najera
| Kingdom of France
Crown of Castile
|Kingdom of England|
|Commanders and leaders|
| Charles V of France
Charles VI of France
| Edward III of England
Richard II of England
|Casualties and losses|
The Caroline War was the second phase of the Hundred Years' War between France and England, following the Edwardian War. It was so-named after Charles V of France, who resumed the war after the Treaty of Brétigny (signed 1360). In May 1369, the Black Prince, son of Edward III of England, refused an illegal summons from the French king demanding he come to Paris and Charles responded by declaring war. He immediately set out to reverse the territorial losses imposed at Brétigny and he was largely successful in his lifetime. His successor, Charles VI, made peace with the son of the Black Prince, Richard II, in 1389. This truce was extended many times until the war was resumed in 1415.
The reign of Charles V saw the English steadily pushed back. Although the English-backed claimant to the Duchy of Brittany, John of Montfort, defeated and killed the French claimant, Charles of Blois, at the Battle of Auray in 1364, John and his heirs eventually reconciled with the French kings. The War of the Breton Succession ended in favour of the English, but gave them no great advantage. In fact, the French received the benefit of improved generalship in the person of the Breton commander Bertrand du Guesclin, who, leaving Brittany, entered the service of Charles and became one of his most successful generals.
At about the same time, a war in Spain occupied the Black Prince's efforts from 1366. The Castilian Civil War pitted Pedro the Cruel, whose daughters Constance and Isabella were married to the Black Prince's brothers John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley, against Henry of Trastámara. In 1369, with the support of Du Guesclin, Henry deposed Pedro to become Henry II of Castile. He then went to war with England, which was allied with Portugal.
Twenty years of war
Just before New Year's Day 1370, the English seneschal of Poitou, John Chandos, was killed at the bridge at Lussac-les-Châteaux. The loss of this commander was a significant blow to the English. Jean III de Grailly, the captal de Buch, was also captured and locked up by Charles, who did not feel bound by "outdated" chivalry. Du Guesclin continued a series of careful campaigns, avoiding major English field forces, but capturing town after town, including Poitiers in 1372 and Bergerac in 1377. Du Guesclin, who according to chronicler Jean Froissart, had advised the French king not to engage the English in the field, was successful in these Fabian tactics, though in the only two major battles in which he fought, Auray (1364) and Nájera (1367), he was on the losing side and was captured but released for ransom. The English response to Du Guesclin was to launch a series of destructive military expeditions, called chevauchées, in an effort at total war to destroy the countryside and the productivity of the land. But Du Guesclin refused to be drawn into open battle. He continued his successful command of the French armies until his death in 1380.
In 1372, English dominance at sea, which had been upheld since the Battle of Sluys, was reversed, at least in the Bay of Biscay, by the disastrous defeat by a joint Franco-Castilian fleet at the Battle of La Rochelle. This defeat undermined English seaborne trade and supplies and threatened their Gascon possessions.
In 1376, the Black Prince died, and in April 1377, Edward III of England sent his Chancellor, Adam Houghton, to negotiate for peace with Charles, but when in June Edward himself died, Houghton was called home. The underaged Richard of Bordeaux succeeded to the throne of England. It was not until Richard had been deposed by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke that the English, under the House of Lancaster, could forcefully revive their claim to the French throne. The war nonetheless continued until the first of a series of truces was signed in 1389.
Charles V died in September 1380 and was succeeded by his underage son, Charles VI, who was placed under the joint regency of his three uncles. On his deathbed Charles V repealed the royal taxation necessary to fund the war effort. As the regents attempted to reimpose the taxation a popular revolt known as the Harelle broke out in Rouen. As tax collectors arrived at other French cities the revolt spread and violence broke out in Paris and most of France's other northern cities. The regency was forced to repeal the taxes to calm the situation.
See also
- Ormrod, W., (2002). Edward III. History Today. Vol. 52(6), 20 pgs.
- Ayton, A., (1992). War and the English Gentry under Edward III. History Today. Vol. 42(3), 17 pgs.
- Harari, Y., (2000). Stategy and Supply in Fourteenth Century Western European Invasion *Campaigns. Journal of Military History. Vol. 64(2), 37 pgs.
- Saul, N., (1999). Richard II. History Today. Vol. 49(9), 5 pgs.
- Jones, W.R., (1979). The English Church and Royal Propaganda during the Hundred Years' War. The Journal of British Studies, Vol. 19(1), 12 pages.
- Perroy, E., (1951). The Hundred Years' War. New York, New York: Oxford University Press. | 3.565167 |
||This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page.
Preventive medicine or preventive care consists of measures taken to prevent diseases, (or injuries) rather than curing them or treating their symptoms. This contrasts in method with curative and palliative medicine, and in scope with public health methods (which work at the level of population health rather than individual health). Occupational medicine operates very often within the preventive medicine.
Preventive medicine strategies are typically described as taking place at the primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary prevention levels. In addition, the term primal prevention has been used to describe all measures taken to ensure fetal well-being and prevent any long-term health consequences from gestational history and/or disease. The rationale for such efforts is the evidence demonstrating the link between fetal well-being, or "primal health," and adult health. Primal prevention strategies typically focus on providing future parents with: education regarding the consequences of epigenetic influences on their child, sufficient leave time for both parents or, for lack of it, at least some kin caregiving.
Simple examples of preventive medicine include hand washing, breastfeeding, and immunizations. Preventive care may include examinations and screening tests tailored to an individual's age, health, and family history. For example, a person with a family history of certain cancers or other diseases would begin screening at an earlier age and/or more frequently than those with no such family history. On the other side of preventive medicine, some nonprofit organizations, such as the Northern California Cancer Center, apply epidemiologic research towards finding ways to prevent diseases.
|Prevention levels||Doctor’s side|
|Primary prevention||Methods to avoid occurrence of disease. Most population-based health promotion efforts are of this type.|
|Secondary prevention||Methods to diagnose and treat existent disease in early stages before it causes significant morbidity.|
|Tertiary prevention||Methods to reduce negative impact of existent disease by restoring function and reducing disease-related complications.|
|Quaternary prevention||Methods to mitigate or avoid results of unnecessary or excessive interventions in the health system.|
Universal, selective, and indicated
Gordon (1987) in the area of disease prevention, and later Kumpfer and Baxley in the area of substance use proposed a three-tiered preventive intervention classification system: universal, selective, and indicated prevention. Amongst others, this typology has gained favour and is used by the U.S. Institute of Medicine, the NIDA and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.
|Universal prevention||Involves whole population (nation, local community, school, district) and aims to prevent or delay the abuse of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. All individuals, without screening, are provided with information and skills needed to prevent the problem.|
|Selective prevention||Involves groups whose risk of developing problems of alcohol abuse or dependence is above average. Subgroups may be distinguished by traits such as age, gender, family history, or economic status. For example, drug campaigns in recreational settings.|
|Indicated prevention||Involves a screening process, and aims to identify individuals who exhibit early signs of substance abuse and other problem behaviours. Identifiers may include falling grades among students, known problem consumption or conduct disorders, alienation from parents, school, and positive peer groups etc.|
Outside the scope of this three-tier model is environmental prevention. Environmental prevention approaches are typically managed at the regulatory or community level and focus on ways to deter drug consumption. Prohibition and bans (e.g. on smoking, alcohol advertising) may be viewed as the ultimate environmental restriction. However, in practice, environmental preventions programs embrace various initiatives at the macro and micro level, from government monopolies for alcohol sales through roadside sobriety or drug tests, worker/pupil/student drug testing, increased policing in sensitive settings (near schools, at rock festivals), and legislative guidelines aimed at precipitating punishments (warnings, penalties, fines).
Professionals involved in the public health aspect of this practice may be involved in entomology, pest control, and public health inspections. Public health inspections can include recreational waters, swimming pools, beaches, food preparation and serving, and industrial hygiene inspections and surveys.
In the United States, preventive medicine is a medical specialty, and has one of the 24 certifying boards recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) dedicated to it as well as one of the 18 certifying boards recognized by the American Osteopathic Association Bureau of Osteopathic Specialists (AOABOS). It encompasses three areas of specialization:
- General preventive medicine and public health
- Aerospace medicine
- Occupational medicine
To become board-certified in one of the preventive medicine areas of specialization, a licensed U.S. physician (M.D. or D.O.) must successfully complete a preventive medicine medical residency program following a one-year internship. Following that, the physician must pass the preventive medicine board examination. The residency program is at least two years in length and includes completion of a master's degree in public health (MPH) or equivalent. The board exam takes a full day: the morning session concentrates on general preventive medicine questions, while the afternoon session concentrates on the one of the three areas of specialization that the applicant has studied.
In addition, there are two subspecialty areas of certification:
These certifications require sitting for an examination following successful completion of an MT or UHB fellowship and prior board certification in one of the 24 ABMS-recognized specialties or 18 AOABOS-recognized specialties.
Prophylaxis (Greek: προφυλάσσω to guard or prevent beforehand) is any medical or public health procedure whose purpose is to prevent, rather than treat or cure, a disease or other medical issue. In general terms, prophylactic measures are divided between primary prophylaxis (to prevent the development of a disease) and secondary prophylaxis (whereby the disease has already developed and the patient is protected against worsening of this process).
Some specific examples of prophylaxis include:
- Many vaccines are prophylactic, vaccines such as polio vaccine, smallpox vaccine, measles vaccine, mumps vaccine and others have greatly reduced many childhood diseases; HPV vaccines prevent certain cancers; influenza vaccine.
- Birth control methods are used to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Condoms, for instance, are sometimes euphemistically referred to as "prophylactics" because of their use to prevent pregnancy, as well as the transmission of sexually transmitted infections.
- Daily and moderate physical exercise in various forms can be called prophylactic because it can maintain or improve one's health. Cycling for transport appears to very significantly improve health by reducing risk of heart diseases, various cancers, muscular- and skeletal diseases, and overall mortality.
- Eating plenty of fruits and vegetables each day may be prophylactic. It may reduce the risk of heart disease.
- Fluoride therapy and tooth cleaning, either at home or by a professional, are parts of dental prophylaxis or oral prophylaxis.
- Antibiotics are sometimes used prophylactically: For example, during the 2001 anthrax attacks scare in the United States, patients believed to be exposed were given ciprofloxacin. In similar manner, the use of antibiotic ointments on burns and other wounds is prophylactic. Antibiotics are also given prophylactically just before some medical procedures such as pacemaker insertion.
- Tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) may, with caution, be an example of a chronic migraine preventive (see amitriptyline and migraines' prevention by medicine).
- Antimalarials such as chloroquine and mefloquine are used both in treatment and as prophylaxis by visitors to countries where malaria is endemic to prevent the development of the parasitic Plasmodium, which cause malaria.
- Mechanical measures (such as graduated compression stockings or intermittent pneumatic compression) and drugs (such as low-molecular-weight heparin, unfractionated heparin, and fondaparinux) may be used in immobilized hospital patients at risk of venous thromboembolism.
- Risk reducing or prophylactic mastectomies may be carried out for carriers of the BRCA mutation gene to minimise the risk of developing breast cancer.
- Early and exclusive breastfeeding provides immunological protection against infectious diseases and well as reduced risk of chronic diseases for both mother and child.
- Polypill for prevention of e.g. cardiovascular disease.
- Potassium iodide is used prophylactically to protect the thyroid gland from absorbing inhaled or ingested radioactive iodine, which may lead to the development of thyroid cancer; radioactive iodine may be released into the environment in the event of an accident at a nuclear power plant, or the detonation of a nuclear explosive (see thyroid protection due to nuclear accidents and emergencies).
- Prophylaxis may be administered as oral medication. Oral prophylaxis includes: PEP, nPEP, or PrEP. PEP stands for post-exposure prophylaxis used in an occupational setting e.g., to prevent the spread of HIV or Hepatitis C from patient to staff following an accidental needlestick. nPEP is non-occupational post-exposure prophylaxis. nPEP may be used in a sexual or injection exposure to HIV, hepatitis, or other infectious agents; for example, during intercourse, if the condom breaks and one partner is HIV-positive, nPEP will help to decrease the probability that the HIV-negative partner becomes infected with HIV. (An nPEP is sometimes known as a PEPse - i.e. post-exposure prophylaxis sexual encounter.) PrEP is a measure taken daily (before, during, and after) possible exposure; for example, by a person who inconsistently uses condoms during sex with a partner who may have an HIV infection.
Since preventive medicine deals with healthy individuals or populations the costs and potential harms from interventions need even more careful examination than in treatment. For an intervention to be applied widely it generally needs to be affordable and highly cost effective.
For instance, intrauterine devices (IUD) are highly effective and highly cost effective contraceptives, however where universal health care is not available the initial cost may be a barrier. IUDs work for several years (3 to 7 or more) and cost less over a year or two's time than most other reversible contraceptive methods. They are also highly cost effective, saving health insurers and the public significant costs in unwanted pregnancies. Making contraceptives available with no up front cost is one way to increase usage, improving health and saving money.
Preventive solutions may be less profitable and therefore less attractive to makers and marketers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Birth control pills which are taken every day and may take in a thousand dollars over ten years may generate more profits than an IUD, which despite a huge initial markup only generates a few hundred dollars over the same period.
Leading cause of preventable death
|Cause||Deaths caused (millions per year)|
|Sexually transmitted infections||3.0|
|Overweight and obesity||2.5|
|Indoor air pollution from solid fuels||1.8|
|Unsafe water and poor sanitation||1.6|
|Intervention||Percent of all child deaths preventable|
|Water, sanitation, hygiene||3|
|Newborn temperature management||2|
|Nevirapine and replacement feeding||2|
|Antibiotics for premature rupture of membranes||1|
|Antimalarial intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy||<1%|
|Cause||Deaths caused||% of all deaths|
|Poor diet and physical inactivity||365,000||15.2|
|Sexually transmitted infections||20,000||0.8|
See also
- American Board of Preventive Medicine
- European College of Preventive and Lifestyle Medicine
- American Osteopathic Board of Preventive Medicine
- Mental illness prevention
- Monitoring (medicine)
- Post-exposure prophylaxis
- Pre-exposure prophylaxis
- Preventive Medicine (journal)
- Prophylactic rule
- Preventive Medicine at the US National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
- Primal Research Centre, London
- Primal Health Research Databank
- Effect of In Utero and Early-Life Conditions on Adult Health and Disease, by P.D.Gluckman et al., N ENGL J MED 359;1
- Origins: How the nine months before birth shape the rest of your life, by Annie Murphy Paul, Time magazine, 176.14, 2010
- Kuehlein T, Sghedoni D, Visentin G, Gérvas J, Jamoule M. Quaternary prevention: a task of the general practitioner. PrimaryCare. 2010; 10(18):350-4.
- Primary Prevention at the US National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
- Secondary Prevention at the US National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
- Tertiary Prevention at the US National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
- Gofrit ON, Shemer J, Leibovici D, Modan B, Shapira SC. Quaternary prevention: a new look at an old challenge. Isr Med Assoc J. 2000;2(7):498-500.
- Gordon, R. (1987), ‘An operational classification of disease prevention’, in Steinberg, J. A. and Silverman, M. M. (eds.), Preventing Mental Disorders, Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1987.
- Kumpfer, K. L., and Baxley, G. B. (1997), 'Drug abuse prevention: What works?', National Institute on Drug Abuse, Rockville.
- "What Is Prophylaxis?". wiseGEEK.
- Jamie Michelle Womack (2010) "Safety and adherence: Issues that hinder childhood vaccinations" Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants
- Lars Bo Andersen et al. (June 2000). "All-cause mortality associated with physical activity during leisure time, work, sports, and cycling to work". Archives of Internal Medicine 160 (11): 1621–8. doi:10.1001/archinte.160.11.1621. PMID 10847255.
- United States Department of Agriculture. "Why is it important to eat fruit?". United States Department of Agriculture. Retrieved 8 February 2012.
- "Recommendations for using fluoride to prevent and control dental caries in the United States. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention". MMWR. Recommendations and reports : Morbidity and mortality weekly report. Recommendations and reports / Centers for Disease Control 50 (RR-14): 1–42. 2001. PMID 11521913.
- Creeth, J. E.; Gallagher, A.; Sowinski, J.; Bowman, J.; Barrett, K.; Lowe, S.; Patel, K.; Bosma, M. L. (2009). "The effect of brushing time and dentifrice on dental plaque removal in vivo". Journal of dental hygiene : JDH / American Dental Hygienists' Association 83 (3): 111–116. PMID 19723429.
- de Oliveira JC, Martinelli M, D'Orio Nishioka SA, et al. (2009). "Efficacy of antibiotic prophylaxis prior to the implantation of pacemakers and cardioverter-defibrillators: Results of a large, prospective, randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial". Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology 2 (1): 29–34. doi:10.1161/CIRCEP.108.795906. PMID 19808441.
- Qaseem A, Chou R, Humphrey LL, et al. (2011). "Venous Thromboembolism Prophylaxis in Hospitalized Patients: A Clinical Practice Guideline From the American College of Physicians". Annals of Internal Medicine 155 (9): 625–632. doi:10.1059/0003-4819-155-9-201111010-00011. PMID 22041951.
- Lederle FA, Zylla D, MacDonald R, et al. (2011). "Venous Thromboembolism Prophylaxis in Hospitalized Medical Patients and Those With Stroke: A Background Review for an American College of Physicians Clinical Practice Guideline". Annals of Internal Medicine 155 (9): 602–615. doi:10.1059/0003-4819-155-9-201111010-00008. PMID 22041949.
- Kahn SR, Lim W, Dunn AS, et al. (February 2012). "Prevention of VTE in Nonsurgical Patients: Antithrombotic Therapy and Prevention of Thrombosis, 9th ed: American College of Chest Physicians Evidence-Based Clinical Practice Guidelines". Chest 141 (2 suppl): e195S–e226S. doi:10.1378/chest.11-2296. PMID 22315261.
- Ip S, Chung M, Raman G, ChewP, Magula N, DeVine D, Litt M, Trikalinos T, Lau J. Breastfeeding and maternal and infant health outcomes in developed countries. Evidence Report/Technology Assessment Number 153. 2007 April; AHRQ Publication No. 07-E007.
- J. Joseph Speidel, Cynthia C. Harper, and Wayne C. Shields (September 2008). "The Potential of Long-acting Reversible Contraception to Decrease Unintended Pregnancy". Contraception.
- James Trussell, Anjana Lalla, Quan Doan, Eileen Reyes, Lionel Pinto, Joseph Gricar (2009). "Cost effectiveness of contraceptives in the United States". Contraception 79 (1): 5–14. doi:10.1016/j.contraception.2008.08.003. PMID 19041435.
- Monea J, Thomas A (June 2011). "Unintended pregnancy and taxpayer spending". Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 43 (2): 88–93. doi:10.1363/4308811. PMID 21651707.
- Lopez AD, Mathers CD, Ezzati M, Jamison DT, Murray CJ (May 2006). "Global and regional burden of disease and risk factors, 2001: systematic analysis of population health data". Lancet 367 (9524): 1747–57. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(06)68770-9. PMID 16731270.
- Jones G, Steketee R, Black R, Bhutta Z, Morris S, and the Bellagio Child Survival Study Group* (July 5, 2003 2003). "How many child deaths can we prevent this year?". Lancet 362 (9524): 1747–57.
- Mokdad AH, Marks JS, Stroup DF, Gerberding JL (March 2004). "Actual causes of death in the United States, 2000". JAMA 291 (10): 1238–45. doi:10.1001/jama.291.10.1238. PMID 15010446.
- US Preventive Medicine Task Force
- US Preventive Medicine
- The Prevention Plan
- Health-EU Portal Prevention and Promotion | 3.163225 |
Snow leopard population discovered in Afghanistan
The Wildlife Conservation Society has discovered a surprisingly healthy population of rare snow leopards living in the mountainous reaches of northeastern Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor, according to a new study. The discovery gives hope to the world's most elusive big cat, which calls home to some of the world's tallest mountains. Between 4,500 and 7,500 snow leopards remain in the wild scattered across a dozen countries in Central Asia.
The study, which appears in the June 29th issue of the Journal of Environmental Studies, is by WCS conservationists Anthony Simms, Zalmai Moheb, Salahudin, Hussain Ali, Inayat Ali and Timothy Wood.
WCS-trained community rangers used camera traps to document the presence of snow leopards at 16 different locations across a wide landscape. The images represent the first camera trap records of snow leopards in Afghanistan. WCS has been conserving wildlife and improving local livelihoods in the region since 2006 with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
"This is a wonderful discovery – it shows that there is real hope for snow leopards in Afghanistan," said Peter Zahler, WCS Deputy Director for Asia Programs. "Now our goal is to ensure that these magnificent animals have a secure future as a key part of Afghanistan's natural heritage."
According to the study, snow leopards remain threatened in the region. Poaching for their pelts, persecution by shepherds, and the capture of live animals for the illegal pet trade have all been documented in the Wakhan Corridor. In response, WCS has developed a set of conservation initiatives to protect snow leopards. These include partnering with local communities, training of rangers, and education and outreach efforts.
Anthony Simms, lead author and the project's Technical Advisor, said, "By developing a community-led management approach, we believe snow leopards will be conserved in Afghanistan over the long term."
WCS-led initiatives are already paying off. Conservation education is now occurring in every school in the Wakhan region. Fifty-nine rangers have been trained to date. They monitor not only snow leopards but other species including Marco Polo sheep and ibex while also enforcing laws against poaching. WCS has also initiated the construction of predator-proof livestock corrals and a livestock insurance program that compensates shepherds, though initial WCS research shows that surprisingly few livestock fall to predators in the region.
In Afghanistan, USAID has provided support to WCS to work in more than 55 communities across the country and is training local people to monitor and sustainably manage their wildlife and other resources. One of the many outputs of this project was the creation of Afghanistan's first national park – Band-e-Amir – which is now co-managed by the government and a committee consisting of all 14 communities living around the park.
Snow leopards have declined by as much as 20 percent over the past 16 years and are considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
WCS is a world leader in the care and conservation of snow leopards. WCS's Bronx Zoo became the first zoo in the Western Hemisphere to exhibit these rare spotted cats in 1903. In the past three decades, nearly 80 cubs have been born in the Bronx and have been sent to live at 30 zoos in the U.S. and eight countries in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America.
Source: Wildlife Conservation Society
- Wildlife Conservation Society finds 'world's least known bird' breeding in AfghanistanWed, 13 Jan 2010, 14:10:53 EST
- WCS confirms the return of the Persian leopard In Afghanistan's central highlandsMon, 5 Dec 2011, 22:39:32 EST
- First ever videos of snow leopard mother and cubs in dens recorded in MongoliaThu, 12 Jul 2012, 18:05:03 EDT
- Wildlife Conservation Society documents pneumonia outbreak in endangered markhor Sun, 8 Jan 2012, 21:31:30 EST
- Rare Andean cat no longer exclusive to the AndesWed, 16 Mar 2011, 14:36:29 EDT
- Threatened snow leopards found in Afghanistanfrom AP ScienceFri, 15 Jul 2011, 0:00:36 EDT
- Elusive snow leopards thrive in Afghan regionfrom MSNBC: ScienceThu, 14 Jul 2011, 16:00:21 EDT
- Photos: Elusive Snow Leopards Thrive in Surprising Spotfrom Live ScienceThu, 14 Jul 2011, 11:30:44 EDT
- Cameras catch snow leopards in Afghanistanfrom UPIThu, 14 Jul 2011, 5:30:29 EDT
- Cameras catch snow leopards in Afghanistanfrom UPIWed, 13 Jul 2011, 18:00:26 EDT
- Snow leopard population discovered in Afghanistanfrom Science BlogWed, 13 Jul 2011, 14:00:23 EDT
- Snow leopard population discovered in Afghanistanfrom Science DailyWed, 13 Jul 2011, 13:30:31 EDT
- Snow leopard population discovered in Afghanistanfrom PhysorgWed, 13 Jul 2011, 12:32:13 EDT
- Healthy Snow Leopard Population Discovered in Afghanistanfrom Newswise - ScinewsWed, 13 Jul 2011, 12:32:02 EDT
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Estonia Has Least Polluted Urban Air in the World27 September 2011
Levels of fine airborne particles in Estonia's urban areas are the lowest in the world, a comparative table published by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 26 September reveals. The Indian Ocean island nation Mauritius ranked second while Canada landed in third place, according to the WHO data.
The report looked at two different particle sizes: those with a diameter less than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5) and those smaller than 10 micrometers (PM10).
In Estonia, PM2.5 was registered at 5.4 micrograms per cubic meter of air, while PM10 was at 11 micrograms per cubic meter of air.
The highest concentration of particles was registered in Mongolia, where PM2.5 peaked at 63 and PM10 at 279 micrograms per cubic meter of air.
According to WHO, each year over two million people around the world die due to the inhalation of fine particulate matter. The WHO ranking list contained results of urban outdoor air pollution monitoring from almost 1 100 cities with a population of at least 100 000. Air pollution in Estonia was measured only in Tallinn and the data dates back to 2008.
Estonian Public Broadcasting | 3.10257 |
Old name for the Middle East
ern area which is now Israel
, supposedly derived from "Philistine
," a biblical-era name for a part of the region.
In 1948 a United Nations mandate divided the area between Arabs and Jews -- the Palestinian leaders and leaders of surrounding countries (who were all Arabs) did not accept this and have several times since then invaded or attacked Israeli territory. In the process of fighting back, Israel actually gained about 80% of the territory originally divided about equally between the two groups. The Gaza Strip and the West Bank are some of these areas; they are now partially ruled by the Palestinians native to the areas but are still overall under Israeli control. Many Palestinians, both those who've left the area and those who've stayed, are part of resistance movements with the goal of regaining some or all of the territory once called Palestine back from Israel. | 3.18145 |
Woodrow Wilson, as described in the introductory section of the text, was the leader of the immediate post-war period and was the architect of an internationalist vision for a new world order. Yet, as discussed in the paragraphs below, he was not able to persuade the other Allied leaders at the peace settlement negotiations in Paris to embrace his vision. But it was not just the opposition of Clemenceau and Lloyd George to some of his ideas that moved the conference away from Wilson's vision. Wilson became so blindingly caught up in his vision, thinking that everything he advocated was what democracy and justice wanted, that he completely alienated the other negotiators in Paris, and they stopped listening to him. Another historian points to a different problem, that Wilson himself stopped listening to his earlier vision, having become convinced that a harsh peace was justified and desirable. Even if that historical view is accurate, Wilson was probably still more moderate in his conception of a harsh peace than were Clemenceau and Lloyd George. But as the conference dragged on and the departure from Wilsonianism became more and more pronounced, Wilson clung to his proposal for the League of Nations. In fact, he seemed to place all his faith in his pet project, believing it would solve all the evils the negotiators were unable to solve during the conference. Unfortunately, Wilson made it clear that the League was his primary objective, and it came to be his only bargaining chip. He then compromised on numerous issues that had no corollary in his vision in order to maintain the support for the creation of the League. Thus, though full of good intentions and a vision for a just and peaceful future, Wilson's arrogance and ineffective negotiating skills largely contibuted to the downfall of his vision. Finally, it must be mentioned that Wilson's inability to negotiate with the Senate in its discussion of the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles caused the Senate to reject the Treaty, leaving the United States noticeably absent from the newly created League of Nations, which greatly undermined the effectiveness and importance of Wilson's principal goal. Nonetheless, Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to secure a lasting peace and the success in the creation of the League of Nations.
David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister,
entered the negotiations in Paris with the clear support of the British
people, as evidenced by his convincing win in the so-called khaki election
of December 1918.
During the weeks leading up to the election, though, he had publicly committed
himself to work for a harsh peace against Germany, including obtaining
payments for war damages committed against the British. These campaign
promises went against Lloyd George's personal convictions. Knowing
that Germany had been Britain's best pre-war trading partner, he thought
that Britain's best chance to return to its former prosperity was to restore
Germany to a financially stable situation, which would have required a
fairly generous peace with respect to the vanquished enemy.
Nonetheless, his campaign statements showed Lloyd George's understanding
that the public did not hold the same convictions as he did, and that,
on the contrary, the public wanted to extract as much as possible out of
the Germans to compensate them for their losses during the war. So
Lloyd George and Clemenceau were in agreement on many points, each one
seeming to support the other in their nationalist objectives, and thereby
scratching each other's back as the "game of grab" of Germany's power played
itself out. But most historians do not attribute to Lloyd George
a significant role in the Treaty negotiations.
In their defense, Clemenceau and Lloyd George were only following popular sentiment back home when they fought for harsh terms against Germany. It is clear from historical accounts of the time that after seeing so many young men not return from the trenches on the Western front, the French and British wanted to exact revenge against the Germans through the peace settlement, to ensure that their families would never again be destroyed by German aggression. In that respect, democracy was clearly functioning as it is intended in a representative democracy. In fact, Lloyd George is the quintessential example of an elected leader serving the interests of his people, putting his personal convictions second to British public opinion. Yet it was that same public opinion (in France and Britain) that Wilson had believed would support his internationalist agenda, placing Germany in the context of a new and more peaceful world order which would prevent future aggression. Wilson's miscalculation was one of the single greatest factors leading to the compromise of his principles and the resulting harsh and, in the eyes of many, unjust treatment of Germany within the Treaty of Versailles.
[See also the biographies of the Big Three listed
on the Links
1. James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of World War I, 1981, p. 309.
2. Manfred F. Boemeke, "Woodrow Wilson's Image of Germany, the War-Guilt Question, and the Treaty of Versailles,"inThe Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years, Ch. 25, Boemeke, Feldman & Glaser, eds., 1998, pp. 603-614.
3. Robert H. Ferrell, Woodrow Wilson and World War I: 1917-1921, 1985, p. 146.
4. Lawrence E. Gelfand, "The American Mission to Negotiate Peace: An Historian Looks Back," in The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years, Ch. 8, Boemeke, Feldman & Glaser, eds., 1998, p. 191.
5. See Ferrell, supra note 3, Ch. 10, "The Senate and the Treaty."
6. Information from this paragraph is taken from Ferrell, supra note 3, at 142, 144, 151.
7. Id. at 151.
8. Stokesbury, supra note 1, at 311-312. | 4.199711 |
Walking under the metal gate that reads “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work Brings Freedom”) is a seminal moment for visitors to Auschwitz — a chill-inducing passage into a place of death. It comes as some surprise, then, to learn that it was actually upon passing the ticket-takers’ booth in the parking lot that visitors entered what was the main complex of the concentration camp.
The communist government that took control of Auschwitz after the war altered the physical complex in innumerable unmarked ways, changes that were largely made to serve the story of the Holocaust told behind the Iron Curtain. In communist eastern Europe, the central narrative of the Holocaust was not the death of Jews; it was the story of communist resistance and fascist atrocity. As a result, the focus of the Auschwitz museum is the complex known as Auschwitz 1, where the bulk of Polish political prisoners were killed early in the war. In the communist incarnation of the museum, only two of the barracks in Auschwitz 1 were given over to a discussion of the Jews. That has broadened in the post-communist years, but there continues to be a very European focus on nationalism. The Dutch government was given a barrack where they tell a story of brave Dutch resistance; they do not mention that, aside from Poland, no country allowed a higher proportion of its Jews to be killed than the Netherlands.
The museological focus on Auschwitz 1, however, has the unintended effect of leaving the much more massive Birkenau complex — the center of mass extermination — in a relatively unadulterated state. Few spaces convey the physical enormity of Jewish death during the Holocaust like the fields of Birkenau, with the outlines of destroyed barracks stretching out over a vast desolate field. At the back of the Birkenau complex, the Soviets erected an abstract granite memorial that towers over the surroundings. It represents the Soviet story, which was always one of triumph, skipping as quickly as possible over the mourning stage. This effort to create a narrative, though, is overwhelmed by the remains of the two brick buildings nearby that held the gas chambers, now collapsing in on themselves. | 3.167131 |
The parathyroid glands are four pea-sized glands. They are located next to the thyroid gland in the neck. The glands secrete the parathyroid hormone (PTH). PTH helps to regulate the level of calcium in the blood.
In hypoparathyroidism there is not enough PTH secreted. This causes very low levels of calcium in the blood. Low blood calcium is known as hypocalcemia.
Several factors are known to cause hypoparathyroidism, including:
The following factors increase your chance of developing hypoparathyroidism:
Many patients with hypoparathyroidism will have not symptoms. If symptoms do develop, they may include:
Your doctor will ask about your symptoms and medical history. A physical exam will be done. You may be referred to specialist. Endocrinologists focus on hormone disorders.
Your doctor may need to test your bodily fluids. This can be done with:
Your doctor may need pictures of your body structures. This can be done with:
Talk with your doctor about the best plan for you. Treatment options include the following:
Calcium and vitamin D will usually be taken indefinitely. They are often taken by mouth.
Calcium may be given by injection. This is done when immediate symptom relief is needed.
National Organization for Rare Disorders, Inc.
Thyroid Foundation of Canada
Definition of hypoparathyroidism and related disorders. The Hypoparathyroidism Association website. Available at: https://www.hypopara.org/about-hpth/definition.html . Accessed January 2, 2013.
Hypoparathyroidism. EBSCO DynaMed website. Available at: http://www.ebscohost.com/dynamed . Updated March 7, 2012. Accessed January 2, 2013.
Hypoparathyroidism. National Organization for Rare Disorders website. Available at: http://www.raredis... . Accessed January 2, 2013.
Marx SJ. Hyperparathyroid and hypoparathyroid disorders. N Engl J Med . 2000;343:1863.
Moffett JM, Suliburk J. Parathyroid autotransplantation. Endocr Pract . 2011 Mar-Apr;17 Suppl 1:83-89.
Testini M, Gurrado A, Lissidini G, Nacchiero M. Hypoparathyroidism after total thyroidectomy. Minerva Chir . 2007 Oct;62(5):409-415.
Thakker RV. Genetic developments in hypoparathyroidism. Lancet . 2001;357:974.
Winer KK, Ko CW, et al. Long-term treatment of hypoparathyroidism: a randomized controlled study comparing parathyroid hormone (1-34) versus calcitriol and calcium. J Clin Endocrinol Metab . 2003;88:4214-4220.
Last reviewed March 2013 by Brian Randall, MD
Last Updated: 03/15/2013 | 3.148724 |
An osteochondroma is the most common type of benign bone tumor. It arises from cartilage tissue in children and adolescents between the ages of 10 and 20, usually appearing on the long bones (arms and legs) and less often on the pelvic bones and wing bones (scapulae). An osteochondroma ordinarily stops growing when a person reaches full height.
Most tissue in the body can grow beyond normal limits and form a mass, also known as a tumor. Tumors come in two forms: benign and malignant. The malignancies which are referred to as cancer, rarely stop growing. The benign tumors reach a certain size and then stop.
Bones can host at least ten different benign tumors, some of which turn into cancers. Less than 1% of osteochondromas turn into a bone cancer called chondrosarcoma, usually in later years.
The cause of osteochondroma remains unknown. A hereditary form of the disease is presumably related to one or more gene mutations (see below).
The following factors increase your chance of developing osteochondroma. If you have any of these risk factors, tell your doctor:
If you experience any of these symptoms do not assume it is due to osteochondroma. These symptoms may be caused by other, more serious health conditions. If you experience any one of them, see your physician.
Your doctor will ask about your symptoms and medical history, and perform a physical exam. You will very likely be referred to an orthopedic surgeon for further diagnosis and treatment.
Tests may include the following:
Treatment options include the following:
If the lump is not uncomfortable or likely to cause a fracture or other problem, and there is no evidence that it is malignant, it can be left alone. Your doctor may want to retest periodically.
If the lump is large, uncomfortable, in a dangerous location, or suspected of being cancerous, surgical removal is the treatment of choice. This involves a general or regional anesthetic and a few days in the hospital. If the bone is weakened by the surgery, the surgeon may need to rebuild it, and the recovery time may be extended to weeks or months.
Since remnants of the tumor may remain after surgery, your doctor may want to retest you every few years to make sure it doesn’t start to grow again.
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Johns Hopkins University
Canadian Orthopaedic Association
Childhood Cancer Foundation
Patel SR, Benjamin RS. Soft tissue and bone sarcomas and bone metastases. In: Kasper DL, et al, eds. Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine . 16th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2005.
Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library, University of Utah Health Sciences Center, University of Utah website. Available at: http://www-medlib.med.utah.edu/WebPath/BONEHTML/BONE050.html . Accessed July 2005.
Last reviewed September 2012 by Igor Puzanov, MD
Last Updated: 09/26/2012 | 3.273219 |
THE USE OF BRAINSTORMING IN INCREASING STUDENT’S MOTIVATION IN SPEAKING ABILITY IN AL-MUHIBBIN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL GRADE VIII
by: Iin Nurkhasanah
- I. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study
English is one of the most important subjects learned in almost all school in every country including Indonesia. The reason why it is important is that because English become an international language. People use English around the world. It is studied seriously because the language is becoming second language in almost all countries. People consciously take many courses and education of English because of an important of the language.
Many sectors in our daily life need English as the prerequisites. All job application will not be fulfilled without capability of English. People certainly realize and concern about the importance of English since mostly the widespread of the issue had English to become important object to be searched and mastered.
English is widely used in mass media and oral communication as means of exchanging information, including science and technology reasons. Harmer (2000:1) stated that English has become a lingua franca. It means that English is a means for people who have different language to communicate orally or written form. They use English to enable them to communicate and transfer information.
This paper highlights (1) The Use of brainstorming, (2) students’ motivation and (3) Speaking ability
1.2 Problem of the study
- What technique use in improving student’s speaking skill?
- How the use of brainstorming in correct procedure so that students are interesting to engaged with.
1.3 Objective of the study
- To know what technique use to improve students’ speaking skill.
- To know how to apply brainstorming in the class correctly.
1.4 Significance of the Study
This research is intended to offer an alternative technique in enhancing students’ speaking comprehension achievement since a good teacher of English is required to train the students by applying good strategies. The use of brainstorming can make the student feel convenient and confident to speak because the topic is already discussed or they have known before.
Based on the background of the study above, the hypotheses will be formulated the null hypothesis (Ho) and alternative hypothesis (Ha) as follows.
H0: There is no significant difference in average score in speaking between students who are taught using brainstorming technique and conventional technique.
H1: There is no significant difference in average score in speaking between students who are taught using brainstorming technique and conventional technique.
H0: There is no significant improvement in average score in speaking between students who are taught speaking using brainstorming technique.
H2 : There is a significant improvement in average score in speaking between students who are taught speaking using brainstorming technique.
H0 : There is no significant improvement in average score in speaking between students’ who are already taught speaking using brainstorming technique.
H3 : There is a significant improvement in average score in speaking between students’ who are already taught speaking using brainstorming technique.
H0 : There is no significant difference in average score in speaking between students’ after taught speaking using brainstorming technique.
H4 : There is no significant difference in average score in speaking between students’ after being taught speaking using brainstorming technique.
H0 : There is no significant difference in average score in speaking between students’ after being taught speaking using brainstorming technique.
H5 : There is a significant difference in average score in speaking between students’ after being taught speaking using brainstorming technique and conventional technique.
H0 : There is no significant difference in average score in speaking between students who are being taught speaking using brainstorming and conventional technique.
H6 : There is a significant difference in average score in speaking between students who are being taught speaking using brainstorming and conventional technique.
H0 : There is no interaction effect of using brainstorming technique and conventional technique towards students’ speaking achievements.
H7 : There is no interaction effect of using brainstorming technique and conventional technique towards students’ speaking achievements.
1.6 The Criteria for Testing Hypothesis
In this study, the hypothesis that has been formulated before, the writer used the critical value of t-table at the significance 0.05 is with n=30. If the value of t-obtained is higher than value of t-table, the alternative hypothesis 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 will be accepted and the null hypothesis will be rejected. And if the value of t-table is higher than value of t-obtained, they null hypothesis will be accepted and the alternative hypothesis 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 will be rejected. In variance analysis, at the significance 0.05 is with n=30.
- II. LITERATURE REVIEW
The Use of Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a group creativity technique designed to generate a large number of ideas for the solution of a problem. In 1953 the method was popularized by Alex Faickney Osborn in a book called Applied Imagination. Osborn proposed that groups could double their creative output with brainstorming.
Oxford defined that brainstorming is a way of making a group of people all think about something at the same time, often in order to solve a problem or to create good ideas.
Brainstorming is the name given to a situation when a group of people meet to generate new ideas around a specific area of interest. Using rules which remove inhibitions, people are able to think more freely and move into new areas of thought and so create numerous new ideas and solutions. The participants shout out ideas as they occur to them and then build on the ideas raised by others. All the ideas are noted down and are not criticized. Only when the brainstorming session is over are the ideas evaluated.
The other meaning of brainstorming is To brainstorm is to use a set of specific rules and techniques which encourage and spark off new ideas which would never have happened under normal circumstances. So there you have it: brainstorming will help you come up with new ideas. And not only will you come up with new ideas but you will do so with surprisingly little effort. Brainstorming makes the generation of new ideas easy and is a tried-and-tested process. Exactly what you apply brainstorming techniques to depends on what you want to achieve. You can apply them to develop new products, services and processes in your job, or you can apply them to develop your personal life.
There are two models of brainstorming
- Traditional Brainstorming
The normal view of brainstorming is where a group of people sit in a room and shout out ideas as they occur to them. They are told to lose their inhibitions and that no ideas will be judged so that people are free to shout out any ideas at all without feeling uncomfortable. People should build on the ideas called out by other participants. The purpose of this is to gain as many ideas as possible for later analysis. Out of the many ideas suggested there will be some of great value. Because of the free-thinking environment, the session will help promote radical new ideas which break free from normal ways of thinking.
- Advanced Brainstorming
The model we propose is an extension of the traditional brainstorming scenario and makes the whole process easier and more effective. Advanced brainstorming builds on the current methods of brainstorming to produce more original ideas in a more efficient way. Specialized techniques, better processes and better awareness, combined with new technologies make traditional brainstorming a less frustrating process. Most of the problems associated with traditional brainstorming disappear as a more effective process is used. Keep on reading for more details of how you can do advanced brainstorming for great profit to you and your organization.
Advanced brainstorming uses:
- new processes and new training to reduce inhibitions
- creative and lateral thinking techniques
- new materials for stimulation and recording ideas
Motivation in learning English
Motivation is the driving force which help causes us to achieve goals. Motivation is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic. According to various theories, motivation may be rooted in a basic need to minimize physical pain and maximize pleasure, or it may include specific needs such as eating and resting, or a desired object, goal, state of being, ideal, or it may be attributed to less-apparent reasons such as altruism, selfishness, morality, or avoiding mortality.
There are many things instructors can do to prevent glazed-over eyes or nodding heads in a classroom. Faculty can help maintain and increase student motivation by
- Establishing challenging, but not impossible goals for students. Offering intellectual tasks that are a “reach” can spur learners to higher levels of success.
- Helping students set their own goals for learning that are ambitious, but realistic and achievable. Research shows that, if given a choice, people will choose a challenging, though not daunting task over one that is too hard – or too easy. While it’s often helpful to offer an easy question first in a discussion or on an exam, it’s counterproductive to make everything too easy.
- Being clear, specific, and concrete in explaining course material and in giving examples.
- Organizing student learning; for example, consciously building new material on facts or concepts that students already know.
- Offering positive, consistent, and timely feedback – which doesn’t have to mean grades. A brief comment – if sincere – may suffice.
Engaging students in a variety of teaching activities, such as role-playing, problem-solving, or any kind of student interaction, especially if these activities can relate the course to students’ interests and skills. The key here is activity, as passivity can be an impediment to feeling motivated.
Speaking means to be able to use language (Oxford, 1986:6). According to Finnociaro and Brumfit (1983:1440) in Nurkhasanah speaking is one of the important language skills that have to be mastered by language learners. They consider that speaking skill is a complex skill, which involves the knowledge of sound, vocabulary and cultural sub-system of English language.
It means that the knowledge from pronunciation, structure, vocabulary and cultural system of English system are important and much needed for communicating to society.
According to Yorkey, speaking skill is a skill and like other skill, it must be practiced continuously. The teacher role is becoming important for students later. There are many keys to support speaking skill by listening cassette, watching tv, watching film, practicing with foreigners, practicing with partners.
Dobson is quoted by Fita Krisnawati in her thesis. Speaking is an ability when students can judge how accurate their selling and how they use the sentences they have learned and it merely different when it is conveyed to writing skill, they usually produce rather mistakes but in free speaking, they have tendency to make mistakes that they wouldn’t make in writing 2.
Speaking is easy, but conveys the speaking in to meaning is not easy. By having some experts’ statement and some guidance, the writer believes that speaking will easier when someone else opens a certain topic or do the brainstorming. Brainstorming can motivate student to speak because the way of brainstorming work is interesting. It can be compared to students who have no any topic to be talked, they will keep silent because they don’t know what should be talked, the feel afraid to speak, the afraid of making mistakes etc. The use of brainstorming is a good idea to convey students in speaking English everyday.
Nurkhasanah, iin.the effectiveness of teaching speaking through debate activity of eFAC course in Intermediate level.2007
Richard C Yorkey,”Study skill for students of English as a second language: New York :MC.Grow Hill, Inc,1990),
M Dobson, Teaching for skill,Teaching English Forum,XXIV January 1, 1989 p.30.quoted by Krisnawati in unpublished thesis
Jeffrey Baumgartner, the step by step guided by brainstorming.1997, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006 bwiti BVBA Erps-Kwerps, Belgium
www.brainstorming.co.uk ©1997-2008 Infinite Innovations Ltd. All rights reserved. | 3.454237 |
Biological species emerge and disappear in the natural course of evolution. There have been times in the Earth’s past when mass extinctions have occurred, causing a large number of species to disappear in a short time. This is generally believed to have happened due to external pressures on ecosystems, or sudden shocks and catastrophic events. We are currently going through such a period due primarily to the impact humans have had on the environment, and on plant and animal habitats. Some scientists believe that 50% of existing species may become extinct in the next 100 years.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons | 3.922922 |
November 9, 2012
A couple of cups of coffee may help our brains process some words faster, a small experiment suggests. But we only get the message faster if the words are emotionally positive. The study included 66 healthy young men. They were told to consume no caffeine, nicotine or alcohol in the 12 hours before the experiment. The men were randomly divided into 2 groups. One group took a tablet containing 200 milligrams of coffee, about the amount in 2 to 3 cups of coffee. Each person in the other group received a placebo (fake) pill. Half an hour later, the men were given tests that involved being shown a series of real and invented words. They had to press buttons to indicate whether a word was real or not. Men who took the caffeine pills did this faster and more accurately for words with a positive emotional connotation. They did not perform better than men who got the placebo pills for recognizing neutral or negative words. The journal PLoS One published the study online. HealthDay News wrote about it November 8.
By Howard LeWine, M.D.
Harvard Medical School
What Is the Doctor's Reaction?
You often hear people say things like "Don't talk to me. I haven't had my coffee yet." Researchers from Germany offer us new insight into why we might feel that way. The study comes from the Department of Psychology at Ruhr University.
In general, people recognize and process the meaning of words faster if the words have a positive emotional slant. What these researchers found is that caffeine speeds up that link even more. But caffeine did not speed up how quickly people recognize and process emotionally neutral or negative words.
Low doses of caffeine tend to put you in a more positive mood. Caffeine also generally helps you do mental tasks faster and with fewer errors. Now we can add the faster processing of positively charged emotional content. These are good explanations for why you want that first cup of coffee before talking to anyone.
How caffeine affects the brain is not completely understood. But here is how most experts explain it.
Caffeine gets absorbed in the stomach and small intestine. It enters the blood stream and is distributed throughout the body, including the brain.
Once it reaches the brain, caffeine probably has multiple targets. But the main one seems to be adenosine receptors. Adenosine is a chemical that dampens brain activity. This counters the action of another brain chemical, dopamine.
Dopamine acts as a brain stimulant and mood enhancer. By hogging the adenosine receptor sites, caffeine doesn't allow adenosine to dampen brain activity. This puts the balance in favor of dopamine. It leads to feeling more awake and alert, with a more positive mood.
What Changes Can I Make Now?
Overall, coffee is generally safe when used in moderation. But the key word is moderation.
In some people, too much caffeinated coffee can raise blood pressure. Teenagers seem to be more susceptible to an increase in blood pressure from caffeine.
Coffee also can interfere with how well your body absorbs iron and calcium. But you need to drink a lot of coffee for it to greatly lower the amount of iron and calcium in your bloodstream. And it's not the caffeine that interferes with the absorption. It's related to another ingredient in coffee called phenolic acid. So decaf coffee also will decrease absorption of these minerals.
Depending on how you make your coffee, it can raise cholesterol levels a little. Again, it's not the caffeine that influences cholesterol levels. It's the coffee oil from the bean. If you boil or press your coffee, then the coffee oil gets into the brew. However, today most coffee in the United States is filtered through paper. And filtered coffee does not increase cholesterol levels.
So what's the bottom line? If you are already a coffee drinker, enjoy it. If you don't drink coffee, processing of words that convey positive emotions is not a good enough reason to start.
There's probably some amount of coffee (and other drinks containing caffeine) that carries a risk of real health hazards. I am still unclear as to what that level is for an otherwise healthy adult.
My advice: If even one cup of coffee makes you jittery or anxious, or interferes with sleep, that is one cup too many. I am honest with patients. I don't know if 10 cups of coffee per day is too much. I would not drink that much; 3 cups per day is my own limit.
What Can I Expect Looking to the Future?
The great majority of medical studies looking at coffee drinkers have shown better health outcomes for people who drink coffee. Almost none have suggested that coffee is bad for you. In fact, my personal limit of three cups per day may be too cautious. Maybe I'd be better off drinking more! | 3.071592 |
The well-being of people all over the world depends on the various goods and services provided by ecosystems, including food, fuel, construction materials, clean water and air, and protection from natural hazards. Ecosystems, however, are under increasing pressure from unsustainable use and other threats including outright conversion. To address this concern, IUCN promotes the sound management of ecosystems through the wider application of the Ecosystem Approach – a strategy for the integrated management of land, water and living resources that places human needs at its centre, through the Ecosystem Management Programme.
The Ecosystem Management Programme works on four key programmatic areas for IUCN:
- Drylands, where the programme aims to demonstrate the importance of dryland ecosystem services for livelihood improvement and for adapting to climate change.
- Climate Change, where the Climate Change Initiative aims to include biodiversity concerns in adaptation and mitigation polices and practice, as well as furthering natural resource management strategies that help biodiversity and people to adapt to the impacts of climate change. The Initiative coordinates Climate Change work across IUCN's programmes, regions, Commissions and member organizations.
- Islands, where the Islands Initiative focuses on addressing integrated management challenges for marine, coastal and terrestrial ecosystems, for the conservation of island biodiversity and the sustainable development of island communities, and facilitates IUCN’s work on islands across the Union.
- Disaster Risk Reduction, where the programme aims to promote integration of ecosystem management, livelihoods, community vulnerability and climate change adaptation to disaster management.
In addition, the Programme provides technical input on integrating wider ecosystem-scale biodiversity issues into IUCN’s programmes globally, regionally and nationally.
The Programme also serves as a focal point in the Secretariat for IUCN’s Commission on Ecosystem Management (CEM), a network of more than 800 volunteer ecosystem management experts from around the world. The Ecosystem Management Programme works in close collaboration with CEM to realize the Commission’s objectives in enhancing the implementation of the Ecosystem Approach. CEM members also contribute technical information to the Ecosystem Management Series: a compilation of best practices and lessons learnt in implementing the Ecosystem Approach. | 3.121488 |
The Enola Gay in History and Memory
by Christine Girardin
With the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings fast approaching, commemorative events and symposia are being planned across the globe in places as diverse, yet symbolically significant, as Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tinian, London, Tokyo, Washington, and Los Alamos. While forthcoming books by historians Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Gerard DeGroot, and Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird will advance the scholarly criticism of the bombings and show that viable alternatives for quickly ending the war without a U.S. invasion of the Japanese homeland existed, the bombs' defenders, including Gen. Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, will also be out in force. Tibbets, echoing a refrain made popular by President Harry Truman, insists that he never lost sleep over that decision. Interestingly, the 1952 Hollywood film, Above and Beyond, on which Tibbets consulted, shows him unable to sleep on the night before the bombing of Hiroshima as he grappled with the profound consequences of what he was about to do. As historian Peter Kuznick explains, those consequences included not only the wanton slaughter of over 200,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the condemning of additional scores of thousands to a life of torment, but the inauguration of the nuclear era in a fashion that Truman and others understood could ultimately end life on the planet. The major mobilization this May around strengthening the Non- Proliferation Treaty during the review meetings at the United Nations is designed to reverse the spread of nuclear weapons and the further increase in nuclear weapons states to make sure that that dire prospect is never realized. Japan Focus introduction.
TITUSVILLE -- There were 12 men onboard the B-29 that dropped the world's first atomic bomb in war, annihilating 70,000 people that day in Hiroshima, Japan, and killing about 130,000 more in the aftermath. Historians still disagree about whether the bombing was necessary to prevent the loss of more lives in battle, but the man who flew the aircraft on Aug. 6, 1945, remains proud of his role in the closing days of World War II.
Col. Paul Tibbets with the Enola Gay on Tinian prior to takeoff for Hiroshima
"I regretted it was necessary, but to me it was necessary to do it. I tell everybody I never lost a night's sleep over it," said retired Gen. Paul W. Tibbets, who is telling tales of those heady days and meeting fans this weekend at the 28th annual Tico Airshow in Titusville.
Col. Paul W. Tibbets stands next to the B-29 Superfortress "Enola Gay" which he piloted over Hiroshima, Japan, Aug. 6 1945, to drop the world's first atomic bomb in combat.
Tibbets, 90, makes about a dozen appearances a year, promoting his book and talking about his place in military history. But the Enola Gay, and it's payload, Little Boy, weren't always something he talked about.
For the first 10 or 12 years after the war, nobody wanted to revisit the Manhattan Project and the two atomic bombs it produced -- at least not publicly. Everyone was just so tired of killing that talking about it was shunned, Tibbets said.
It was when the tide of public and scholarly opinion began to turn against the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that Tibbets went on the offensive. Ever since, he's talked about the special B-29 developed under his supervision to carry Little Boy, and details about the bombing run into Japanese skies.
That bombing has been ranked as the most important news event of the 20th century, and one that changed humankind forever, said Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, D.C.
As a scholar who believes it probably wasn't necessary to drop the atomic bomb to end WWII, Kuznick said the ultimate lesson about the event is that once such terribly effective weapons are developed, they are extremely likely to be used.
Moral debates and a scientific awareness of potential long-term problems won't be enough to prevent their use, just as they weren't enough to stop President Harry S. Truman from giving the order to drop the bomb.
"He knew it wasn't just another bomb. He knew it wasn't just a bigger, more terrible bomb. He knew that he was beginning a process that could ultimately mean the annihilation of the human species," Kuznick said.
Proof of the bomb's destructive power is displayed in old photographs on the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum's Web site. Survivors closest to the blast, a little more than half a mile from the explosion's center, suffered severe burns. One woman is shown with the pattern of her kimono burned into her back. A Japanese child later wrote that the bomb turned people instantly into ghosts.
Despite the atomic bomb's aftermath, Tibbets said humankind may again witness nuclear destruction. But this time, it's difficult to know who's the enemy.
"There's gonna be some people who play with it. They're doing it now," he said.
Christine Girardin wrote this story for the News Journal, Daytona Beach, Florida, March 10, 2005. | 3.087011 |
Introduction / History
Jews represent the oldest monotheistic religion of modern times. Because of the uniqueness of their history and culture, all Jews have a strong sense of identity. Persecution of and discrimination against the Jews have been the historical reasons for their migrations and settlements around the world.
The Jews of Europe arrived on the continent at least 2,000 years ago during the early days of the Roman empire. Since then, they have been a significant influence in the history and culture of Europe. Much of what is considered "Jewish" today finds its roots among the European Jews.
One of the unique features among European Jews is the distinction between the Ashkenazic Jews and the Sephardic Jews. The word Ashkenaz is derived from a Biblical word for the larger Germanic region of Europe. Therefore, Ashkenazim Jews are those whose ancestry is linked to that area. This group traditionally speaks the Yiddish language, which is a German dialect that has Hebrew and Slavic elements. The word Sephard was the name used by Jews in medieval times for the Iberian peninsula. Sephardim Jews, then, are the descendants of the Jews who lived in Spain or Portugal prior to expulsion in 1492 by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Sephardim also have a distinctive language called Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish. This is a dialect of Castilian Spanish with Hebrew and Turkish elements.
What are their lives like?
During the last few centuries, Eastern Europe had the largest Jewish population in the world. National attitudes toward the Jews were ambivalent, depending on the usefulness of the Jewish inhabitants to the nations' rulers. Anti-Semitism was prevalent and frequently led to either persecution or expulsion. The Holocaust of World War II was the climax of Jewish persecution in Europe, leading to the extermination of six million Jews. Many Eastern European countries lost the majority of their Jewish population in this tragedy.
As a result of the Holocaust, thousands of Jewish survivors and their descendants have emigrated from Eastern Europe to Israel, the United States, or Western Europe. The recent memories of the Holocaust as well as the centuries of discrimination and persecution play a strong part in modern Jewish identity. European Jews are strong supporters of "Zionism," a revival of Jewish culture and support of Israel as a national, secure, Jewish homeland.
Since the dissolution of the Soviet empire, former Soviet Jews no longer live under oppressive government rule. Anti-Semitism is still a concern, but Jewish life has been revitalized in recreated countries like the Ukraine. Synagogues are functioning and kosher (traditional, acceptable) food is once again available.
The Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe is cause for concern among the remaining aged Jewish population. As the older Jews die, the Jewish community dwindles. Many of the younger Jews are unlearned in their Jewish identity. They are either non-observant or have assimilated into the prevailing culture. However, strong efforts are being made to maintain a Jewish presence and clarify their identity. Jewish schools are being opened and Judaic studies are being promoted in universities. Jewish hospitals and retirement homes are being built. Community centers also promote cultural events such as the Israeli dance, theater, Yiddish and Hebrew lessons, and sports.
Western Europe now has the largest concentration of European Jewish residents. The Netherlands received a large influx of Sephardic Jews from Portugal in the late 1500's, and another contingent of Ashkenazic Jews after World War II. They have been very influential in the development of Dutch commerce. England's Jews are concentrated in the Greater London area and have been politically active for over 100 years. They have been avid supporters of Zionism and solidly committed to the settlement of Diaspora Jews in Israel. A large percentage of England's Jews are affiliated with the traditional Orthodox synagogues. Italy's Jewish population is primarily Sephardic due to its absorption of Spanish Jews in the 1500's. France's Ashkenazic community received 300,000 Sephardic Jews from North Africa in recent decades.
What are their beliefs?
For religious Jews, God is the Supreme Being, the Creator of the universe, and the ultimate Judge of human affairs. Beyond this, the religious beliefs of the Jewish communities vary greatly. European Jews are extremely diverse in religious practice. The Ashkenazic Jews are the most prevalent, representing the Orthodox, ultra-Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform movements. The unusual and adamantly traditional Hasidic movement was born in Poland and has gained a strong following in the United States and Israel. The Sephardic denomination is similar to the Orthodox Ashkenazic, but is more permissive on dietary rules and some religious practices. Each Jewish denomination maintains synagogues and celebrates the traditional Jewish holiday calendar. While most European Jews are religiously affiliated, there is a significant minority which is not religious.
What are their needs?
The Jews have a wonderful understanding of their connection with the Abrahamic covenant. However, they also have a history of rejecting Jesus Christ as Messiah, the one who has fulfilled that covenant. Pray that as the Gospel is shared, it will not be viewed as anti-Semitic, but rather as the fulfillment of what God promised through Abraham centuries ago.
Prayer PointsView Jew, Eastern Yiddish-Speaking in all countries.
* Ask the Lord of the harvest to send forth loving Christians to work among the Jewish communities.
* Ask the Holy Spirit to grant wisdom and favor to the missions agencies that are focusing on the European Jews.
* Pray that the Jewish people will understand that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah.
* Ask the Lord to soften the hearts of the Jews towards Christians so that they might hear and receive the message of salvation.
* Pray that the Lord Jesus will reveal Himself to the Jews through dreams and visions.
* Pray that God will grant Jewish believers favor as they share their faith in Christ with their own people.
* Pray that strong local churches will be raised up in each Jewish community.
* Pray for the availability of the Jesus Film in the primary language of this people. | 4.136605 |
INDO-CHINA: The New Frontier
TIME. Monday, May. 29, 1950
The U.S. now has a new frontier and a new ally in the cold war. The place is Indo-China, a Southeast Asian jungle, mountain and delta land that includes the Republic of Viet Nam and the smaller neighboring Kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia, all parts of the French Union.
For more than three years this land, in prewar times the rich French colony of Indo-China, has been suffering, on a lesser scale, the ruinous kind of civil war which won China for Communism. The Mao Tse-tung of the Indo-Chinese is a frail, but enduring comrade, who looks like a shriveled wizard; his nom de guerre is Ho Chi Minh (or One Who Shines). Chiang Kai-shek has no counterpart in Indo-China. The initial brunt of the Red attack has been borne by French soldiers. Meanwhile, the job of rallying native anti-Communist forces falls mainly on the meaty shoulders of the Emperor Bao Dai (or Guardian of Greatness), who now bears the official title of Chief of State of Viet Nam.
While the dust of the Chinese civil war was settling before the bemused eyes of the State Department, the U.S. paid scant attention to the Indo-Chinese struggle. It seemed largely a local affair between the French and their subjects. Since the dust has settled in China, Asia’s Communism is thrusting southward. Indo-China stands first on the path to Singapore, Manila and the Indies (see map).
Last January, led by Peking and Moscow, the world’s Communist bloc recognized Ho Chi Minh’s “Democratic Republic.” It was more than the Kremlin had ever done for the Communist rebels of Greece. Over the past several weeks, arms and other supplies were reported passing from Russia and China to the comrades in Indo-China. The stakes in Southeast Asia were big—as big as the global struggle between Communism and freedom.
A fortnight ago in Paris, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson drew a line in the dust that has so long beclouded U.S. diplomacy. He implicitly recognized that the war in Indo-China is no local shooting match. He pledged U.S. military and economic aid to the French and Vietnamese. The U.S. thus picked up the Russian gauntlet.
What kind of frontier and what kind of ally had history chosen for the U.S.?
A Golden Asset. Unlike China, where U.S. traders and missionaries began a fruitful acquaintance more than a century ago, Indo-China has had little contact with Americans, either commercial, cultural or diplomatic.* The last comprehensive U.S. book on the country was published in 1937. Among other things, its author observed: “IndoChina lies too far off the main scene of action to play any but a secondary role in the Pacific drama.”
In the pre-French past, most of Indo-China had been conquered by the Chinese, who had left their culture indelibly behind.† Through the last half of the 19th. Century, the French converted Indo-China into a tight, profitable colonial monopoly. They explored its fever-laden jungles, lofty ranges, great river valleys. They discovered its antiquities, including the majestic loth Century towers of Angkor Wat in northern Cambodia. They wrote about its mandarins, its Buddhist temples and Confucian family life.
The French invested $2 billion, built up Indo-China’s rice and rubber production; before World War II, the colony, along with Siam and Burma, was one of the world’s three leading rice exporters. Its surplus went to rice-short China, a fact of great significance these days in Communist China’s support of Communist Ho Chi Minh. All the raw rubber France needed came from Indo-China. There were other lucrative items: coal, wolfram, pepper, opium (which, to French shame, was sold to the natives through a state monopoly) and many jobs for a white bureaucracy. French politicians called the colony “our marvelous balcony on the Pacific.”
A Dangerous Liability. Indo-China is no longer a golden asset for France. As everywhere in the East, the old colonialism has died beneath the impact of Western nationalist, egalitarian ideas, a process greatly hastened by the Japanese march in World War II under the slogan “Asia for the Asiatics.” The French have bowed grudgingly to the times.
In an agreement signed March 8, 1949 with Bao Dai, they promised limited freedom for Viet Nam within the French Union. Under its terms, a Viet Nam cabinet has charge of internal affairs, the right to a national army. Paris keeps direct control of foreign policy, maintains military bases and special courts for Frenchmen, retains a special place for French advisers and the French language.
By that time the French were up to their necks in a costly campaign to crush Ho Chi Minh and his Communist bid for power. The civil war has cut rice production in half and disrupted the rest of Indo-China’s economy. It has tied down 130,000 French troops, about half of the Fourth Republic’s army, and thereby weakened the contribution France might make to Western Europe’s defense. In lives, the Indo-China war has cost the French 50,000 casualties. In money, it has cost $2 billion—just about the sum of ECAid to France.
Indo-China, in brief, has become a dangerous liability for France— nor does any realistic Frenchman think it can ever again be an asset. Why, therefore, spend more blood and treasure in thankless jungle strife? Why not pull out?
The answer is: more than French war weariness and prestige are at stake. If Indo-China falls to Communism, so, in all probability”, will all of Southeast Asia.
For U.S. citizens, the first fact about their new frontier is that it will cost money to hold—much more than the French can pay alone, much more than the $15 million in arms and $23 million in economic aid thus far promised by Washington. The second fact is more compelling : the new frontier, if it is not to crumble, may need U.S. troops as well as French.
Otherwise, the U.S. might surfer another catastrophic defeat in the Far East.
A Question of Sympathy. The French have made more than the usual colonial mistakes. All too often, especially since they put the Foreign Legion and its German mercenaries to the work of restoring order after World War II, they have been arrogant and brutal toward the Indo-Chinese. They are paying for it now, for the bulk of Communist Ho Chi Minh’s support comes from anti- French, or anti-colonial Indo-Chinese. A sign over an Indo-Chinese village street tells the story; it reads “Communism, No. Colonialism, Never.”
But the issue of native sympathy is complex. The vast majority of the people are simple rice farmers, who want peace and order so they may tend their paddy-fields. Ho Chi Minh himself does not now preach Communism openly: his explanation is that his people have no understanding of the word. Besides a crude, hate-the-French appeal (including atrocity propaganda—see cut), he has another effective persuasion: terror. His guerrillas and underground operators stalk the countryside; his assassins and bomb-throwers terrorize the cities. Indefatigably he spreads the word that he is winning, as his comrades have won in China.
The result is that many are cowed into helping him, or at least staying out of the anti-Communist effort. Others, especially among the intelligentsia, sit on the fence, waiting to jump on the winning side. This is where Bao Dai comes in.
A Display of Strength. It is Bao Dai’s mission, and the U.S.-French hope, to rally his countrymen to the anti-Communist camp of the West. In this undertaking he needs time. “Nothing can be done overnight,” he says. He needs time to organize an effective native government, train an army and militia that can restore order in the villages, win over the doubting fence-sitters among the intelligentsia. Besides a military shield, he also needs a display of winning strength and patient understanding by his Western allies.
As a national leader, Bao Dai has his weaknesses, and largely because of them he does not enjoy the kind of popularity achieved by India’s Jawaharlal Nehru. But, as the lineal heir of the old monarchs of Annam, he is his nation’s traditional “father & mother,” its first priest (Buddhist) and judge. The French say that Bao Dai should act more decisively; whenever he does, there is impressive popular response.
Nehru’s government of India, trailed by Burma’s Thakin Nu, Indonesia’s Soekarno and even by the Philippines’ Elpidio Quirino, has so far refused to follow the major Western democracies in recognizing Bao Dai’s Viet Nam Republic. They look on him as a French puppet. But Bao Dai has shown a judgment on the crucial ideological conflict of his time that compares strikingly and favorably with the petulant, third-force position of Pandit Nehru.
Recently, for example, Bao Dai told a TIME correspondent about his impressions of Ho Chi Minh in 1946, when both leaders were cooperating with the French to establish a new Viet Nam regime.
“At first,” recalled Bao Dai, “we all believed the Ho government was really a nationalistic regime . . . I called Ho ‘Elder Brother’ and he called me ‘Younger Brother.’ . . .
“Then, I saw he was fighting a battle within himself. He realized that Communism was not best for our country. But it was too late. He could not overcome his own allegiance to Communism.”
A Royal Notion. Bao Dai is essentially a product of the old French colonialism—the best of it thwarted by some of the worst.
Born in 1913, the only son of the ailing Emperor Khai Dinh, he studied under Chinese tutors until nine. Then his father’s French advisers decided he should go to France for a Western education.
The emperor put on a parasol-shaped red velvet hat and a golden-dragon robe, accompanied his son on the first trip abroad for any of their dynasty. In Paris he put the prince under the tutelage of former Annam Governor Eugene Charles. “I bring you a schoolboy,” said Khai Dinh. “Make of him what you will.” Three years later, Khai Dinh died. He was buried in a splendid mausoleum, at Hué; at the foot of his tomb lay his prized French decorations, toothbrush, Thermos bottles and “Big Ben” alarm clock. Bao Dai, who had come ‘home for the funeral, was crowned the 13th sovereign of the Nguyen (pronounced New Inn) dynasty. He turned the throne over to a regent, and hurried back to Paris.
The young Emperor continued his Chinese lessons, studied Annamite chronicles, browsed through French history, literature and economics. He was especially fond of books on Henry IV, the dynast from Navarre who began the Bourbon rule in France with the cynical remark, “Paris is worth a Mass,” and the demagogic slogan, “Every family should have a fowl in the pot on Sunday.” Bao Dai put his money in Swiss banks (and thereby saved it from World War II’s reverses), collected stamps, practiced tennis with Champion Henri Cochet, learned ping-pong, dressed in tweeds and flannels, vacationed in the Pyrenees, scented himself heavily with Coty and Chanel perfumes.
Up to this point the Emperor had absorbed a good deal of the education of an intelligent, progressive French adolescent. He had high notions of applying what he had learned back home.
In 1932, at 19, Bao Dai formally took over the Dragon Throne at Hué; two years later he married beautiful Mariette-Jeanne Nguyen Huu Thi Lan, the daughter of a wealthy Cochin-Chinese merchant. The Empress Nam Phuong was a Roman Catholic, educated at Paris’ Convent “Aux Oiseaux.”
Bao Dai reigned but he did not rule. The French (Third Republic and Vichy) shrugged off his earnest pleas for social and economic reforms and more native political autonomy. Cleverly, as they thought, they encouraged the Emperor to devote himself to sport and pleasure.
Bao Dai was hunting tigers near his summer villa at Dalat when the Japanese, early in 1945, made their 1940 control of the colony official and complete. They surprised his party, took him prisoner, installed him as a puppet emperor—until their own capitulation to the Allies a few months later.
Agitator Ho. At this point, the lines of Bao Dai’s destiny first crossed those of his fellow Annamite Ho Chi Minh.
The two men made a dramatic contrast. The Emperor was young (then 32), plump, clean-shaven, bland-faced, fond of snappy Western sport clothes. Ho was aging (55), slight (hardly 5 ft. tall), goat-bearded, steelyeyed, usually seen in a frayed khaki tunic and cloth slippers. Ho Chi Minh, too, had gone to France for education. As a young man, he had been sent into exile by the French police of Indo-China because of his family’s nationalist agitation. His father and a brother went to political prison for life. A sister received nine years of hard labor.
In Paris, Ho (then known as Nguyen Ai Quoc) became a photographer’s assistant, wrote anti-imperialist articles. He also joined the French Communist Party. He was sent to Moscow for training, became a Comintern functionary, re-emerged in 1925 at Canton, where he helped Russian Agent Borodin in Communism’s first attempt to seize China.
From Hong Kong in 1931 Ho Chi Minh organized the first Indo-Chinese Communist Party. The British clapped him into jail for a year. When he came out, he continued organizing Red cells in his country. Japan and World War II gave him his big chance.
Using popular front-tactics, Ho established the Viet Minh—League for the Independence of Viet Nam. It directed guerrilla war against both Vichy French and Japanese, enlisted the support of many Indo-Chinese nationalists. American OSS agents and arms were parachuted to Ho’s side.
“Uncle Ho.” By the time the French were ready to pick up the postwar strings again in Indo-China, Communist Ho was very much a popular hero, better known as “Uncle Ho.” He spoke a “soft” Communist line, talked more about freedom, democracy and reform. Bao Dai was in a different position. He had suffered in reputation because he had “gotten along” with Vichy French and Japanese.
The returning French began negotiations with the Viet Minh leader. There were polite hints that Bao Dai must go—he was too “unpopular.” Bao abdicated, and Ho was in the saddle.
Bao Dai stayed on in Indo-China for a while, as plain citizen Nguyen Vinh Thuy and Honorary Councilor to the Republic. Nobody had much use for him. He went abroad and flung himself into a reckless round of pleasure and sport.
Playboy. Most of his time he spent at Cannes, on the French Riviera, where he had bought the palatial Château de Thorenc (reported purchase price: $250,000). In his garage were a pale blue Lincoln convertible, a black Citroen limousine, a blue Simca “Gordoni” one-seat racer, a sleek Italian two-seater, a Simca-8 sports model. He also kept several motorcycles. He insisted that every engine run “as accurately as a watch.”
He dallied in the bars and casinos, chain-smoked cheap Gauloise cigarettes, treated hangers-on to champagne and caviar, played roulette for 10,000-franc chips (“His Majesty’s losses,” remarked a croupier, “befitted his rank”), sometimes conducted jazz bands, sent his secretary to open negotiations with the many women who caught his eye. (“My grandfather had 125 wives and 300 children,” Bao Dai once remarked to a journalist. “I have a few mistresses. What then?”) He played golf capably and bridge like a master. A crack shot with rifle or revolver, he often arranged target competitions with the château’s servants.
Meanwhile the French, back in Indo-China, had broken with Ho Chi Minh, were floundering in a Communist-led nationalist uprising. They appealed to Bao Dai to come home again and help rally his people against the Red menace. They promised to grant Viet Nam gradual independence within the new French Union. Bao was persuaded. On March 8, 1949, he signed the document creating the new Indo-Chinese Republic which he would head as chief of state. As he left the gaudy safety of the Riviera for the hazards of a country torn by civil war, he grinned and said: “I risk my skin.” French Communists snarled: “Cet empereur des boites de nuit [this nightclub emperor].”
Behind him, at the Château de Thorenc, he left Empress Nam Phuong and their family of two boys and three girls.
Statesman. Bao Dai has been back in Indo-China about a year. He has made some progress, but it is slow and the difficulties are enormous. The French have promised his government more authority, but they are vague in making good and sometimes stupidly petty. One point of friction between Bao Dai and French High Commissioner Léon Pignon concerns the high commissioner’s residence in Saigon. It is the old imperial palace, and the symbol, in native eyes, of paramount place. Bao Dai wants it for his own use, and he stays away from the city lest he lose face by residing elsewhere. The French, with bureaucratic pigheadedness, have refused to part with it, though there are reports that they will soon do so.
Another disappointment has been Bao Dai’s effort to enlist capable ministers and lower-echelon administrators. Partly this is because so many Vietnamese are fence-sitters or fear the terror of Viet Minh agents. Partly it is a consequence of French failure, in the past and at present, to train enough natives to take over the government. Bao Dai seems to be counting on U.S. pressure to loosen up the French in this respect.
Most serious failure is the sluggish pace in recruiting a Viet Nam army. Bao Dai’s government has thus far assembled only four battalions, about 4,000 men.
Field of Decision. Though Ho Chi Minh’s forces (70,000 regulars with equipment as good as the French, plus 70,000 well-trained guerrillas and an unknown number of poorly equipped village militia) have been pushed back from such centers as Hanoi in northern Viet Nam, French officers report that “the situation steadily grows no better.”
French Commander in Chief Marcel Carpentier aims to sweep Ho Chi Minh’s men from the lower, heavily populated Mekong and Red River valleys. These are the best rice-producing areas and consequently the best source of rebel supply. By airlift and truck convoy, the French maintain a line of forts at the Chinese border, where aid could flow in for Ho.
It is rugged hit & run fighting in forest and swamp terrain well suited for guerrilla tactics. By day the French control about half the countryside; and if they want to, they can penetrate where they will, though ambush takes its toll. At night, however, the French draw into their forts and garrisoned centers. Then Ho Chi Minh’s men steal forth, terrorize peasants, collect taxes (two-fifths of a farmer’s rice harvest), and run the countryside almost everywhere
The French insist that the military problem is the No.. i problem, and that Western men and arms must lick it. Given sufficient U.S. equipment, up to $150 million a year or more, they think they can crush Ho Chi Minh within three years. Lacking such support, they may be facing a debacle within one year; and, of course, down in the wreckage would go Bao Dai.
The Piecemeal Approach. All in all, the new U.S. ally in Southeast Asia is a weak reed. And the alliance is as ironic as anything in history. For the same U.S. Government which abandoned the Chinese Nationalists because they were not good enough was committed by last fortnight’s decision to defend a playboy emperor and the worst and almost the last example of white man’s armed imperialism in Asia.
Nevertheless, Indo-China had to be defended—if it could be defended. So had Formosa, last stand of China’s Nationalists, which has advantages not to be found in Indo-China—a strong government, a well-trained defending fighting force, and easily defensible tactical position. The U.S. decision to go into such a doubtful project as the defense of Indo-China was the result of an idea that it ought to do something, somehow, to stop the Communists in Southeast Asia. But the U.S. policy in Indo-China was a piecemeal operation. Not until it saw the Southeast Asia problem whole, until it went to the help of all threatened governments, would the U.S. be making soldier’s or statesman’s sense.
* There was one abortive attempt to get acquainted in the 18305, when President Andrew Jackson sent Envoy Edmund Roberts of New Hampshire to draw up a treaty with Emperor Ming Mang. Reported Roberts: “The insulting formalities required as preliminaries to the treaty . . . left me no alternative save that of terminating a protracted correspondence marked . . . by duplicity and prevarication in the official servant of the Emperor.” Roberts was told to 1) make five kowtows, 2) beg for “deep condescension,” 3) change a sentence in President Jackson’s letter to the Emperor from “I pray to God” to “I pray to the gods of heaven.” He refused.
† The Chinese invasions took place between 213 B.C. and 186 A.D. From the latter date until the loth Century the Chinese governed the country. Then the Annamites threw off the Chinese yoke; it was clapped on again for a brief span in the 15th Century. French missionaries and traders (preceded by the Portuguese and Dutch) came to Indo-China in the 17th Century. In 1802, a French East India Company expedition helped establish Nguye
INDO-CHINA: The New Frontier | 3.190851 |
A testosterone test measures the blood level of the male sex hormone testosterone. Testosterone, which plays an important role in sexual development, is produced mainly by the testes in boys and in much smaller amounts by the ovaries in girls. Testosterone is also produced by the adrenal glands in both girls and boys.
In young boys, testosterone levels are normally low. As puberty approaches — usually between the ages of 10 and 14 — the pituitary gland (a pea-sized gland near the base of the brain) secretes two hormones (luteinizing hormone, or LH; and follicle-stimulating hormone, or FSH) that work together to stimulate the testes to make testosterone.
Increased testosterone production is what causes boys to develop deeper voices, bigger muscles, and body and facial hair. It also helps the testes produce sperm, and it plays a role in speeding a boy's growth in height during puberty.
Two separate assessments may be performed as part of a testosterone test:
total testosterone, which measures the entire amount of testosterone in the body, including both the amount bound to proteins that help transport the hormone through the bloodstream and free testosterone
free testosterone, which measures only the testosterone that's not attached to proteins
The doctor may order one or both tests. However, because sexual development involves many other hormones, a more complete picture can often be obtained by performing other tests at the same time, including an LH or FSH test. For example, low levels of testosterone can be due to a problem with the testes' production of testosterone or to the pituitary gland not making enough of the hormones that stimulate the testes to produce testosterone.
Why It's Done
Doctors may order a testosterone blood test if a boy appears to be entering puberty earlier or later than expected. High levels are associated with precocious (early) puberty, while low levels may indicate a delay in sexual development. In girls, high levels can be associated with the appearance of masculine characteristics, such as facial hair.
The test may also be used in either boys or girls to check for damage or disease of the testes, ovaries, adrenal glands, or pituitary gland, or to check for steroid use.
In teens and adults, testosterone levels can help doctors evaluate fertility or menstrual problems and sexual function.
No special preparations are needed for this test. The doctor may want to perform the test in the morning, when testosterone levels usually are highest.
On the day of the test, it may help to have your child wear a short-sleeve shirt to allow easier access for the technician who will be drawing the blood.
A health professional will clean the skin surface with antiseptic, and place an elastic band (tourniquet) around the upper arm to apply pressure and cause the veins to swell with blood. Then a needle is inserted into a vein (usually in the arm inside of the elbow or on the back of the hand) and blood is withdrawn and collected in a vial or syringe.
After the procedure, the elastic band is removed. Once the blood has been collected, the needle is removed and the area is covered with cotton or a bandage to stop the bleeding. Collecting blood for this test will only take a few minutes.
What to Expect
Collecting a sample of blood is only temporarily uncomfortable and can feel like a quick pinprick. Afterward, there may be some mild bruising, which should go away in a few days.
The blood sample will be processed by a machine and the results are commonly available after a few days.
The testosterone test is considered a safe procedure. However, as with many medical tests, some problems can occur with having blood drawn:
fainting or feeling lightheaded
hematoma (blood accumulating under the skin causing a lump or bruise)
pain associated with multiple punctures to locate a vein
Helping Your Child
Having a blood test is relatively painless. Still, many children are afraid of needles. Explaining the test in terms your child can understand might help ease some of the fear.
Allow your child to ask the technician any questions he or she might have. Tell your child to try to relax and stay still during the procedure, as tensing muscles and moving can make it harder and more painful to draw blood. It also may help if your child looks away when the needle is being inserted into the skin.
If You Have Questions
If you have questions about the testosterone test, speak with your doctor. | 3.690699 |
12. June 2012 10:55
Retinal hemorrhage occurs when the blood vessels in the retina get damaged or ruptured, leading to abnormal bleeding. The retina, which is composed of rods and cones is the region of the eye responsible for sensitivity to light, and vision. The retinal vein and artery, along with a dense network of capillaries, are responsible for transmitting the blood supply to the retina. When these blood vessels are damaged, due to any reason, this affects the blood supply to the retina, which in turn leads to a decrease in visual acuity. Diabetic retinopathy is the leading cause of blindness in people aged between 20 and 65.
The dense network of cells in the retina is extremely sensitive, and can be damaged with even a slight trauma.
The causes due to which this damage might occur include:
- High blood pressure
- Forceful blows in the head region
- Child abuse in infants
- Improper development of blood vessels in infants born prematurely
- Blurred vision
- Spotted vision
- Lines in the field of vision
- Blind spots
- Distorted vision
- Progressive vision loss
- The disease is diagnosed by an ophthalmologist, who uses an opthalmoscope to examine the internal structure of the eye.
- Another method that is commonly used to detect the abnormalities in the blood vessels is a fluorescein angiography test, in which a fluorescent dye is injected into the patient’s bloodstream, after which photographs are clicked to view the blood vessels.
- In some cases, the physician might also order for a blood test to be performed.
- The disorder is self-limiting in most patients, with more than 85% cases healing on their own.
- The most common treatment for retinal hemorrhages is laser treatment, in which a laser beam is used to remove the affected blood vessels.
- If the disease is caused by some underlying medical condition like diabetes or hypertension, the treatment focuses on eliminating that disorder.
- Injection of anti-VEGF drugs like Avestin has been found to be effective in the treatment of hemorrhages associated with the growth of new vessels.
- The administration of various nutritional and herbal supplements like antioxidants, omega-3-rich foods, antioxidant vitamins, zinc, lutein, pine bark extract, grape seed extract, etc. has also been found to be effective in improving the symptoms of the disease.
We at Killeen Eyecare center are renowned throughout Killeen for providing the highest quality eye care to all our patients. We help them maintain healthy eyes and treat various eye diseases using most sophisticated instruments. For more details, you can visit us at 416 North Gray Street, Killeen, TX 76541, Downtown Killeen or call at 254-634-7805.
Eye Doctor Killeen - Eye Doctor Fort Hood | 3.586742 |
Fertilizer Facts: April 1997, Number 15
Response of Oat to Water and Nitrogen
Land Resources and Environmental Sciences Dept.
Montana State University
Nitrogen (N) is the most common nutrient that limits oat production in Montana. Deficiency symptoms are frequently characterized by general chlorosis (yellowing) of leaves and a reduction in overall plant vigor and growth. Oat N deficiency symptoms, as with other cereal grains, will most often appear in the early to late spring depending on severity. Once present, symptoms become more severe through vegetative growth stages. At flowering, N deficient plants are stunted and have fewer tillers and smaller heads than healthy plants. Grain yield is reduced primarily through a reduction in kernels per head and head density.
Nitrogen typically represents a grower's largest fertilizer input cost. Current fertilizer N recommendations in Montana are based on an average relationship between N requirement (NR) and estimated yield potential [Yield potential (bu/a) x 1.1 = NR (lbs/a)] (Table 1). The recommendation assumes 1.1 lbs N/a are needed to produce each bushel of grain. However, this relation may vary with growing season and the yield potential at an individual site. Since yield potential is most closely associated with available water (stored soil water + growing season precipitation), we were interested in determining the effects of available water supply on the N requirement and oat yield potential.
Field experiments were conducted on a Lohmiller silty clay loam (Ustic Torrifluvents) at the Southern Agricultural Research Center near Huntley during 1993 and 1994. Initial soil N levels (0-36 in. depth) were 15 and 22 lbs/a in 1993 and 1994. Field experiments were previously seeded to barley. A line-source sprinkler irrigation system was used to establish a water gradient in the field. Monida oats were planted in early April at 18 seeds per square foot. Stripped at right angles to the water gradient were six fertilizer N levels (0, 20, 40, 80, 120, 160 lbs N/a). The combined treatments produced a field site with a wide range of available water and N conditions.
Table 1. Predicted N requirements for oats with growing season water.
|Growing season water||Yield potential||Available N requirement||N:yield ratio|
As expected, available water increased oat yield potential and the response to N. Under high water stress, the response to N was small and yield potential was low, producing a comparatively flat curve. As water conditions improved, the response to N increased, producing a steeper curve that reached a higher plateau (Figure 1). Yield potential at the plateau levels, or where N was no longer limiting yields, were similar for the two growing seasons. However, oat yields without N fertilizer were higher in 1994 than 1993. This difference may have been a result of greater N mineralization from organic matter in 1994, resulting in less N deficiency where no fertilizer N was applied.
Maximum economic yield (MEY) was defined as the point along the yield-N curves (Figure 1) where increases in N no longer paid for themselves through higher yield (< 1 bushel increase in yield resulted from 4 lbs additional N), or where dollars returned from N was maximized. Maximum economic yields were generally within 2% of the theoretical maximum, hence they provide a good estimate of yield potential. The MEY-available water relationships (Figure 2) indicate that yield potential increased linearly with water in both 1993 and 1994. The relationships indicate that it takes approximately 4 to 5 in. of water to produce the first bushel of oat, and thereafter yield increases 12 to 14 bu/a with each inch of additional water.
Available N requirements (soil N + fertilizer N) for MEY increased linearly with water for both growing seasons. The slopes of the lines for the two seasons were similar and indicate that N requirements increased approximately 8 lbs N with each inch of additional water. However, the intercepts for the lines differ for the two seasons. As a result, it took approximately 35 to 40 lbs/a less N in 1994 to achieve MEY than in 1993 at similar water levels. Background soil N analysis levels for the two seasons were similar. However, barley residue from the preceding crop was burned prior to seeding the 1994 oat crop. This likely enhanced organic N mineralization and resulted in the lower calculated N requirement. Typically, most cereal growers do not burn their residue, hence under most situations the upper line in Figure 3 is probably the better predictor of fertilizer N needs. Using this approach, sufficient fertilizer N should be applied to achieve 60 lbs available N/a where 8 inches of available water (soil water + rainfall) is expected during the growing season. If water conditions improve, N application is increased approximately 8 lbs/a per inch increase in available water.
Edited by Jeff Jacobsen, Extension Soil Scientist | 3.247268 |
Types of literature
PRIMARY SOURCES are publications that report the results of original research. They may be in the form of conference papers, monographic series, technical reports, theses and dissertations, or journal articles. Because they present information in its original form (that is, it has not been interpreted or condensed or otherwise “repackaged” by other writers), these are considered primary sources. The works present new thinking/discoveries/results and unite them with the existing knowledge base. Journal articles that report original research are one of the more common and important steps in the information sharing cycle. They often go through a process in which they are “peer reviewed” by other experts who evaluate the work and findings before publication.
SECONDARY SOURCES are those which are published about the primary literature, that generalize, analyze, interpret, evaluate or otherwise “add value” to the original information, OR which simplify the process of finding and evaluating the primary literature. Some examples of secondary sources are “review” articles and indexes or bibliographies, such as PubMed or the ScienceDirect.
TERTIARY SOURCES compile or digest information from primary or secondary sources that has become widely accepted. They aim to provide a broad overview of a topic, or data, already proven facts, and definitions, often presented in a convenient form. They provide no new information. These include “reference” types of works such as textbooks, encyclopedias, fact books, guides and handbooks, and computer databases such as The Handbook of the Microbiological Media and SciFinder.
GRAY LITERATURE are source materials not available through the usual systems of publication (e.g., books or periodicals) and distribution. Gray literature includes conference proceedings, dissertations, technical reports, and working papers. Locating this type of literature is a little more difficult, but there are finding tools such as Dissertations Abstracts and PapersFirst.
What is a literature review?
A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period.
A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.
But how is a literature review different from an academic research paper?
While the main focus of an academic research paper is to support your own argument, the focus of a literature review is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others. The academic research paper also covers a range of sources, but it is usually a select number of sources, because the emphasis is on the argument. Likewise, a literature review can also have an "argument," but it is not as important as covering a number of sources. In short, an academic research paper and a literature review contain some of the same elements. In fact, many academic research papers will contain a literature review section. But it is the aspect of the study (the argument or the sources) that is emphasized that determines what type of document it is.
Why do we write literature reviews?
Literature reviews provide you with a handy guide to a particular topic. If you have limited time to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or act as a stepping stone. For professionals, they are useful reports that keep them up to date with what is current in the field. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field. Literature reviews also provide a solid background for a research paper's investigation. Comprehensive knowledge of the literature of the field is essential to most research papers.
Who writes these things, anyway?
Literature reviews are written occasionally in the humanities, but mostly in the sciences and social sciences; in experiment and lab reports, they constitute a section of the paper. Sometimes a literature review is written as a paper in itself.
Excerpt from “Literature Reviews” from The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (http://writingcenter.unc.edu/resources/handouts-demos/specific-writing-assignments/literature-reviews), 2007.
Collection Development Librarian
1014 Boswell Ave.
Crete NE 68333 | 3.368413 |
Your Toddler 18 - 36 Months
- Your 18-24 month old: Your toddler learns new things every day! He or she may carry books around and pretend to read, recognize favorite books, and develop a routine with a caregiver that involves reading.
- By the age of 2, children have a constantly growing vocabulary of between 1,000 and 2,000 words. He or she may use words in simple combinations such as "all done" or "pick up."
- Your 24-36 month old: Your toddler will be speaking in sentences, and will ask and answer simple questions. He or she will imitate sounds, actions, and words in books, as well as label parts of illustrations. Your toddler will enjoy hearing his or her favorite stories read aloud repeatedly and will enjoy reading being a part of daily routines.
- By age 3, children often demonstrate obvious enjoyment of reading, and will label items in illustrations. Toddlers at this age may also begin creating scribbles that resemble printing.
Tips for reading with your toddler:
- Discuss the books that you read with your child. Ask who, what, where, when, why, and how questions.
- Your child will enjoy the chance to answer questions like "what is this animal?" or "what do you think will happen next?" Be sure to give your child enough time to answer questions before telling them the answer or moving on. Counting to ten silently in your head will help you to wait long enough for a response. This will show your child that you have respect for their developing thinking and speaking skills.
- Choose books that show characters doing things that your toddler does too (eating, playing, going to bed).
- Keep books on low shelves so that your toddler has easy access to them.
- Choose non-fiction books about colors, shapes, animals, families, etc.
- Teach your toddler how to handle books correctly and carefully.
- Share stories with repetitive text and encourage your child to repeat familiar parts along with you.
- Recite rhymes and sing songs during daily routines.
Books for Toddlers:
- Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin
- Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault
- Freight Train by Donald Crews
- From Head to Toe by Eric Carle
- Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett
- My Car by Byron Barton
- Planes by Byron Barton
- The Little Red Hen by Bryon Barton
- The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
- We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury | 3.425426 |
Math is all about problem solving. One of the best ways to help children learn math is to present them with a problem in which they have to devise their own strategies to find the solution(s). There is usually more than 1 way to solve math problems and children need the opportunity to discover shortcuts and their own algorithms to determine the appropriate solution, they should also justify their solution(s).
The following math word problems are specific for children in the sixth grade and are divided into the main math cagegories: Number Concepts, Patterns and Algebra, Geometry and Measurement, Data Management and Probability. Children should be involved in problem solving activities every day. Problems for second grade students should be read to them. Students should also be able to describe why their solutions work or how they know it's the right solution. My favorite question to children is 'how do you know'. When they have to explain how they arrived at their answer, you immediately know the learning that has taken place.
Patterns and Algebra
Kelly's classroom organized an e-Pal club. 11 people joined the club. Each of of them sent an email to each of the members of the club. How many emails were actually sent? How do you know? Ticket sales for the bake sale were underway. Four people bought tickets on the first day of sales, twice as many people bought tickets on the second day and each day afterwards twice as many people bought tickets. How many tickets were sold after 16 days?
Data Management and Probability
Pet Parade: Mr. James has 14 cats, dogs and guinea pigs. What are all the combinations he could have?
How many different types of pizza can you make with the following toppings: pepperoni, tomatoes, bacon, onions and green peppers? Show your answer.
Sam bought 8 ball caps, one for each of her eight friends, for $8.95 each. The cashier charged her an additional $12.07 in sales tax. She left the store with a measely $6.28. How much money did Sam start with?
Geometry and Measurement.
Watch your favorite television show from beginning to end. Time each of the commercials and determine the percentage of commercial time for the entire show. Now determine the percentage of time the actual show is. What is the fraction of commercials?
Two squares are beside each other. One square has 6 times the lenght of the other square, how many times greater is the area of the larger square? How do you know? | 3.615911 |
The Physics Help Forum not working today, at least not from my ISP, so this goes here. It's basically a math deal anyway:
The formula to calculate the force of a point of mass, let's call them planets, that results from its being gravitationally attracted by another point of mass is Newton's:
Where is the force of the planet that results from the gravitational attraction exerted upon it by the other planet, is Newton's gravity constant, and are the respecive masses of the planets, and d is the distance between them.
For simplicity's sake let's say all the planets considered are of the same mass, so we can write instead of .
Now, if I'm not mistaken, the formula for calculating the force of a planet resulting from the gravitational attraction of more than two planets is:
Where is the force on the jth planet resulting from the gravitational attraction of the other planets, and is the distance between the jth planet and the kth planet.
My question is "where is the vector addition?" That is, when considering the force on one planet that results from the gravitational attraction of many other planets, we have to take into account not only the distance of the other planets from planet j but also their position with respect to it (right?).
Take for example the simple case of three planets in the same plane. Planet j is at the origin. Planet k is one unit to the right of j on the x axis, while planet l is one unit up the y axis. If the masses all equal 1, then, by the formula above, the force on planet j would be:
But is a function of both the distance and the position, right? So we must consider not only the Gravitational Forces individually exerted upon j by k and l, but also the angle at which these forces are exerted. That is, we must add the vectors. To add vectors you just plug in the x value and y value sums of the added vectors into pythagoras' formula. The force on planet j should therefore be:
(Where is the angle subtended by a line drawn from planet j to planet x. I.e. and )
So, what am I missing here? I am fully aware that I, and not Newton, am missing something here. Someone please help point this out for me. | 3.52181 |
Cancer debate: Are tumors fueled by stem cells?
How can a cancer come back after it's apparently been eradicated? Three new studies from American, Belgian, British and Dutch researchers are bolstering a long-debated idea: that tumors contain their own pool of stem cells that can multiply and keep fueling the cancer, seeding regrowth.
If that's true, scientists will need to find a way to kill those cells, apart from how they attack the rest of the tumor.
Stem cells in healthy tissues are known for their ability to produce any kind of cell. The new research deals with a different kind, cancer stem cells. Some researchers, but not all, believe they lurk as a persisting feature in tumors.
Over the past decade, studies have found evidence for them in tumors like breast and colon cancers. But this research has largely depended on transplanting human cancer cells into mice that don't have immune systems, an artificial environment that raises questions about the relevance of the results.
Now, three studies reported online Wednesday in the journals Nature and Science present evidence for cancer stem cells within the original tumors. Again, the research relies on mice. That and other factors mean the new findings still won't convince everyone that cancer stem cells are key to finding more powerful treatments.
But researcher Luis Parada, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, believes his team is onto something. He says that for the type of brain tumor his team studied, "we've identified the true enemy."
If his finding applies to other cancers, he said, then even if chemotherapy drastically shrinks a tumor but doesn't affect its supply of cancer stem cells, "very little progress has actually been made."
The three studies used labeling techniques to trace the ancestry of cells within mouse tumors.
Collectively, they give "very strong support" to the cancer stem cell theory, said Jeffrey M. Rosen, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He did not participate in the work but supports the theory, which he said is widely accepted.
Parada's team worked with mice genetically primed to develop a certain type of brain tumor. The scientists genetically labeled particular cells in the tumor and then attacked the cancer with the same drug given to human patients. It kills growing tumor cells and temporarily stops the cancer's growth.
After treatment, when the tumor started growing again in the mice, the researchers showed that the vast majority, if not all, of its new cells had descended from the labeled cells. Apparently these were the tumor's cancer stem cells, they concluded.
Parada said his team is now trying to isolate cancer stem cells from mouse brain cancers to study them and perhaps get some leads for developing therapies to eradicate them.
He also said that preliminary study of human brain tumors is producing results consistent with what his team found in the mice.
Parada's study appears in Nature. In a second Nature report, British and Belgian researchers found evidence for cancer stem cells in early stage skin tumors in mice. And in the journal Science, a Dutch group found such evidence in mouse intestinal polyps, which are precursors to colon cancer.
Scott Kern of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore is skeptical about whether tumors contain cancer stem cells. He said that since the new studies didn't involve human tumors, it's not clear how relevant they are to people.
The two European studies focused largely on lesions that can lead to tumors, he said. And as for Parada's brain cancer study, he said he believed the results could be explained without relying on the cancer stem cell theory.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Breast cancer represents one of the most common cancers among women in the United States. Data indicates that more than 180,000 American women received a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2009. The various risk factors include: the female gender, heredity, genetic factors, aging and idiopathic causes.
What You Should Know About Breast Cancer
The short answer to what you should know about breast cancer is that it’s a malignant tumor in the breast tissue. With non-invasive breast cancer, the tumor stays localized and does not spread (metastasize) from its origin of growth. Experts refer to this as “Carcinoma in Situ”. The tumor occurs in and remains confined to the ducts (ductal carcinoma in situ) or confined to the lobules (lobular carcinoma in situ).
“Duct” and “Lobules” refer to the milk duct and the milk producing glands, respectively, in the mammary glands. Most breast cancers start in the ducts and spread to other tissues. Lobular carcinoma doesn’t meet the criteria of a true cancer by itself, but is a marker for many other types of cancer – both invasive and non-invasive.
An invasive tumor spreads beyond its area of origin and can have three different stages of invasiveness – localized, regional and distant stages. As the names suggest localized types include those which remain localized to the breast tissues, the regional stage refers to the spread of the tumor to the tissues surrounding the breast (e.g. – lymph nodes) and the distant tumors are those that spread away from the breast to other tissues and organs. Needless to mention, patients with distant tumors are not easily managed.
About Breast Cancer Stages
Doctors base breast cancer stages on the tumor size, nodal status (involvement of lymph nodes) and degree of spread (metastasis) tumors are grouped into 5 stages – 0 to IV. Stage zero means the carcinoma cells confined to the duct or lobule and has not spread elsewhere. This is the foremost stage of breast cancer.
In stage I the tumor is very small – less than or equal to 2 cm in diameter and is confined to an area in the breast, not spread to the lymph nodes or surrounding tissues. In stage II, the tumor grows to 1-2 inches in diameter and cancer cells appear at the lymph nodes. Sometimes the tumor is even bigger than 5cms, but the lymph nodes remain unaffected. In stage III, the tumor grows more than 5 cm and spreads to the lymph nodes and sometimes even to multiple lymph nodes, skin and chest wall. Stage IV is the last one and in this case the cancer spreads to somewhere else in the body.
Diagnostic Tests for Breast Cancer
A biopsy of the tumor determines the type of cancer. This enables the doctors to freeze on the treatment methods and also to figure out how quickly the cancer might grow. The hormone receptor status and HER2 status of the patient is also of prime importance to the doctors, because female hormones estrogen and progesterone play a vital role in the development of some cancer types. “ER+” and “PR+” are, respectively, estrogen receptor positive and progesterone receptor positive tumors. Hormonal therapy has been found to be beneficial in patients with such tumors. HER2 status also influences the mode of treatment.
Therapy and Treatment of Breast Cancer
The most widely used breast cancer treatment methods include mastectomy and lumpectomy procedures. The former refers to the removal of the entire affected breast through surgery and the latter refers to the removal of only the tumor and some surrounding tissues believed to contain the roots of the tumor.
As is the case with most cancer types, the cancer cells in breast cancer are too tiny for detection and doctors cannot rule out the chances that some cells will remain in the body, even after a successful surgery. The leftover cells can cause recurrence. To rule out recurrence adjuvant therapies are advised.
Such therapies include:
- Hormonal therapy
- Targeted biological therapy
In chemotherapy, the oncology health care team will administer a chemical to the patient (usually intravenously, but sometimes orally) to disrupt communication and growth of the cancerous cells. Hormonal therapy involves dosing the patient with a drug that works to bring down the estrogen levels or reduce its action.
Experts believe estrogen promotes growth in some tumors. In targeted biological therapy, doctors inject the body with monoclonal antibodies trained to recognize and destroy certain proteins and cells (the cancerous cells) through phagocytosis (mechanism of destruction through immune system).
How to Cope with Breast Cancer
It’s important that breast cancer patients get rid of the fear and traumas associated with the diagnosis and actually try to understand the disease. This will help them manage it more effectively:
- Share your feelings with the near and dear ones.
- Joining a support group helps get rid of the so called “blues”.
- Indulge in activities of interest like books, music, movies etc.
- Eat healthy, think healthy.
- Take rest.
Talk to your doctor about changes in symptoms etc. and discuss ways to manage them in the best possible manner.
About the Author: Jessica Palin works as a health writer and blogger for Robertgrantmd, (New York plastic surgery). She researches and writes about a variety of women’s health topics from breast cancer and weight loss to pregnancy tips. Her special interest involves exploring the new trends in beauty and plastic surgery treatments for both men and women.
Images: embracinghealthblog dot com | 3.510698 |
The Oregon Trail opened the way west for intrepid settlers and enterprising miners. Once it was well established and the roads were cleared and expanded, once towns had grown up along the route and locations in the Rockies and further west were settled, it was only natural that a new method of transportation would take over: stagecoaches.
The technology behind stagecoaches wasn’t new. Carriages were the primary form of mass transportation in the pre-locomotive age. What made stagecoaches different from regular carriages were their size and the way they were supported on the wheel frame. Rather than relying on springs, which jostled a rider up and down, stagecoaches made use of thoroughbraces, leather straps that supported the body of the stagecoach and gave it more of a rocking motion.Stagecoaches could generally fit nine passengers inside and six outside. Inside, as you can probably guess, meant that passengers traveled inside the body of the coach. They would ride on three benches, two facing forward and the foremost one facing backwards, three riders to a bench. As you can imagine, it was a tight squeeze. Passengers in the first two benches would often have to wedge their knees between one another to make room. They would carry their baggage and often have mail under their feet. But if that wasn’t bad enough, the six passengers riding outside of the carriage would be just as cramped and exposed to the elements.
But what passengers lost in comfort, they made up for in speed. The most common type of stagecoach was the Concord stagecoach, manufactured in Concord, New Hampshire. These stagecoaches rarely broke down. They were drawn by a team of six horses and could cut through the new roadways of the west much faster than any wagon train ever could.
This is part of the reason that almost all stagecoaches carried mail as well as passengers. More than just mail, in fact. It was common for stagecoaches to carry gold and cash being transported on behalf of one bank or another. This, of course, meant that there was a real danger of robberies along the road.
The first major stagecoach robbery in California took place in 1852 when Reelfoot Williams and his gang robbed a Nevada City coach. The gang had set up a network of informants to monitor when stages were coming and what money and passengers they were carrying. They carried off the heist, setting a precedent that many would follow. For that reason, and because of the very real threat of attacks by Native Americans, passengers were advised to carry guns and knives with them and drivers were well armed.
So, you might ask yourself. Who was in charge of all these stagecoaches? You probably already know the answer without knowing it. There were several stagecoach companies in the east that had been in operation even before the 19th century. But one of the biggest and most successful companies developed in the 1830s as a service to deliver packages between Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Adams & Company gradually moved west as steamships replaced overland routes for fast transportation between the major eastern cities.
Adams & Company did well in California after the gold rush, until mismanagement and the emergence of a serious competitor changed everything. That competitor was a little company started by two men, Henry Wells and William G. Fargo. The company that Wells and Fargo started offered more than just stagecoach service. It offered banking and mail services as well. In fact, by the time the 1850s rolled around, Wells Fargo was widely known to be faster and more reliable about delivering the mail than the U.S. Postal service.
Then came the Panic of 1855. The California banking system, puffed up on speculation of continued profits from the Gold Rush, collapsed. Many businesses, including Adams & Company, folded. But Wells Fargo managed to hold on. Not only did it hold on, it emerged as one of the only viable options in stagecoach transportation.
Since Wells Fargo pretty much had a monopoly on stagecoach transportation in the west after 1855, they could make the rules. And some of those rules were:
Abstinence from liquor is requested, but if you must drink share the bottle. To do otherwise makes you appear selfish and unneighborly.
If ladies are present, gentlemen are urged to forego smoking cigars and pipes as the odor of same is repugnant to the gentler sex. Chewing tobacco is permitted, but spit with the wind, not against it.
Gentlemen must refrain from the use of rough language in the presence of ladies and children.
Buffalo robes are provided for your comfort in cold weather. Hogging robes will not be tolerated and the offender will be made to ride with the driver.
Don’t snore loudly while sleeping or use your fellow passenger’s shoulder for a pillow; he or she may not understand and friction may result.
Firearms may be kept on your person for use in emergencies. Do not fire them for pleasure or shoot at wild animals as the sound riles the horses.
In the event of runaway horses remain calm. Leaping from the coach in panic will leave you injured, at the mercy of the elements, hostile Indians and hungry coyotes.
Forbidden topics of conversation are: stagecoach robberies and Indian uprisings.
Gents guilty of unchivalrous behavior toward lady passengers will be put off the stage. It’s a long walk back. A word to the wise is sufficient.*
So there you have it. Stagecoach transportation in the Old West. Traveling by stagecoach was the only way to go in those days … until the railroad came along and changed everything…. | 3.853764 |
A machine for turning, that is, for shaping articles of wood, metal, or other material, by causing them to revolve while acted upon by a cutting tool.
Basically, a machine that fashions work by making the work turn on an axis. The cutting is done by a tool that is not rotating. On wood lathes the wood usually turns between the headstock and the tailstock. The turner holds the tool by hand and moves it to cut various shapes on the wood. On metal lathes the work (whatever material is being fashioned) turns and the tool is held rigid whilst the operator moves the tool using hand wheels. Lathes are very versatile, come in a myriad of styles, and many contradict the above definitions. Wood can be cut in any metal lathe and soft metals can usually be cut on wood lathes.
A machine that is used for working metals and plastics by rotating about the horizontal axis against a tool that shapes it.
A machine that spins timber, This makes it unique as all other power tools move whilst the timber remains static.
A lathes is a machine which holds a piece of wood or metal between two centers and turns it so the work can be shaped by hand-held "turning chisels." Foot operated or hand cranked.
A machine designed to center a piece of wood on an axis: as it turns, the woodturner can cut into the wood to create symmetrical objects.
a machine that hold a piece of metal or wood and turns it rapidly against a cutting tool for shaping Finally, he used a lathe to shape the wooden bowl.
A machine on which logs are peeled to yield veneer for plywood.
machine tool for shaping metal or wood; the workpiece turns about a horizontal axis against a fixed tool
a common tool used in machining
a machine for changing the shape of a piece of wood, metal, etc
a machine for use in working metal or wood which holds the material and rotates it against a tool that shapes it
a machine in which a piece of wood is rotated around a fixed axis while being shaped by a fixed tool
a machine that cuts away small amounts of the comm to restore it to a trued state
a machine that holds the wood on a rapidly spinning axis
a machine that rotates a piece of wood to create a uniform circular design when the wood is cut with a chisel
a machine that turns metal , wood, etc
a machine tool for shaping metal or other material
a machine tool, specifically designed to help in the
a machine tool that generates circular sections by rotating the job around an axis and cutting it with a tool
a machine tool that removes unwanted material from a cylindrical work piece by rotating it against a cutting tool
a machine tool used to produce mechanical parts with cylindrical features
a machine used for shaping parts
a machine used for turning wood, metal and other materials by rotating the article against tools which cut it to shape
a machine used to turn rounded objects
a marvelous tool
an ancient tool that was used by the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and other ancient and medieval peoples
an object created by revolving a spline curve, which determines the contour of the shape, around an axis
a power tool that spins the wheel around and slowly shapes it until all the sides are the same
a tool for making round things
a tool used to create objects with cylindrical symmetry such as table legs
a VERY easy to make primitive tool
a machine for shaping a piece of wood, metal, etc. by holding and turning it rapidly against the edge of the cutting tool.
A tool, usually free standing, for turning a piece while tools are held against it. Typically several feet long and about a foot wide. Different lathes are used for wood or metal (or glass) pieces. A lathe commonly has a headstock that grips the piece and has gears and a motor drive for turning the piece and a tailstock that guides the other end of long pieces. Most lathes allow working a piece held only at the headstock, as for making bowl shaped pieces. The tailstock is normally mounted on rails (the bed) so it can be moved accurately to different distances while remaining centered on the headstock. A wood lathe will have a tool rest to help guide the handheld tools along the piece while a metal lathe will have a solid tool holder with screw adjustments to withstand the increased force. Glass lathes are used to join medium and large diameter tubing for scientific glass work, keeping two tubes aligned as heat is applied all around the joint. rev.2003-02-27
A lathe is used for turning materials like wood and bone when they are being worked.
A machine tool by which work is rotated on a horizontal axis and shaped or cut by a fixed tool.
A machine which derives its usefulness by rotating stock against which tooling may be brought to bear. Springs are often wound on a lathe.
Power tool, which is used to turn wood or metal objects so that cutting tools may shape it while it, rotates.
Machine for shaping turned parts by the application of cutting edges against the revolving wood.
A lathe is a machine tool which spins a block of material to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, or deformation with tools that are applied to the workpiece to create an object which has symmetry about an axis of rotation.
In 3 D computer graphics, a lathed object is a 3D model whose vertex geometry is produced by rotating the points of a spline or other point set around a fixed axis. The lathing may be partial; the amount of rotation is not necessarily a full 360 degrees. The point set providing the initial source data can be thought of as a cross section through the object.
A metal lathe is generic description for a rigid machine tool designed to remove material from a workpiece, through the action of a cutting tool. They were originally designed to machine metals however with the advent of plastics and other materials, and with their inherent versatility, they are used in a wide range of applications, and a broad range of materials. | 3.159474 |
DUE: MONDAY MAY 13, 2013
As we have discussed in class, Elijah is surrounded by an aura of mystery: we know nothing of his parentage; his tribe of origin and birthplace are unknown (though he is identified as a “resident of Gilead”); we are ignorant about his early life and call to prophecy; he travels widely, performs miracles, and of greatest importance, defies a conventional death, ascending to heaven in a fiery chariot instead.
Approximately four centuries after Elijah’s strange prophetic career came to a close, the prophet Malachi believed he would return to earth to fulfill another divine mission: “Behold, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of the Lord. He shall reconcile parents with children, and children with their parents, so that, when I come, I do not strike the whole land with utter destruction” (Malachi 3:23-24).
Later on in rabbinic literature and folk legends, Elijah would take on a mythical role as the prophet who wanders the world generation after generation, protecting the weak and disadvantaged, humbling the arrogant who persecute the powerless. Capable of any disguise, he travels unrecognized through crowds of people, mysteriously appearing when needed and then just as mysteriously disappearing, revealing his identity on rare occasions only. It is fair to say that Elijah has captured the religious imagination of Jews as few other figures have.
The final project for 8th grade TaNaKh will focus on Elijah’s larger-than-life role in Jewish literature and liturgy. Choose ONE of the following. Please note the final project is in lieu of a final exam, and will count significantly toward your grade — along with other factors like participation, conduct, effort and attendance. Here are your choices:
1. Draw 3-4 pictures about Elijah, each telling a different story. You may wish to draw upon the biblical texts or folk stories we have studied (listed below) in creating your images. At least one of your pictures should place the prophet in a modern context. If Elijah came back today where would he go and whom would he visit? What would he look like? Each of your pictures should be accompanied by a paragraph or two explaining the setting and the reasons for depicting the prophet as you have.
2. Create a folktale about Elijah. While drawing upon the biblical texts and folk stories we studied in class for inspiration, your literary effort should be creative, and not a simple retelling of a traditional story. I would encourage you to read Elie Wiesel’s powerful short story, An Evening Guest (copies will be available from Cassie Vichozsky as of 4/22, and will also be distributed at our next class), which places Elijah in a small Hungarian town in 1944 as a messenger sent to warn Jews about the Nazi death camps — it’s a great example of taking the traditional picture of Elijah . . . and then turning it inside out in a very compelling way. Your folktale should be no shorter than 3 pages (typed, double-spaced, 12-font type).
3. Research references to Elijah in the siddur and on religious occasions. At what ceremonies and celebrations do we invoke his name? Where in our liturgy does he appear? When and how did Elijah become connected with these particular rituals/prayers? Why do we mention his name at these specific times/places? Your research paper should be 4 pages at a minimum (typed, double-spaced, 12-font type).
4. Elijah has also captured the religious imagination of Christians and Muslims. Research how Elijah is depicted in Christian and Muslim Scripture and compare/contrast this with the ways in which Judaism describes his role. What are the similarities and differences in the Jewish understanding of the prophet Elijah and the way the other Abrahamic faiths view him? Your research paper should be 4 pages at a minimum (typed, double-spaced, 12-font type).
We have studied the following sources about Elijah:
First Kings, chapters 17, 18 & 19; Second Kings, chapter 2; Folk stories about Elijah (handout distributed in class from Peninah Schram’s Jewish Stories One Generation Tells Another).
First Kings, chapter 21; Malachi, chapter 3; Elie Wiesel’s short story, An Evening Guest (available from Cassie as of 4/22). | 3.787403 |
After the British Pyrrhic (costly) victory at Bunker Hill in 1775, British General William Howe decided a lethal blow needed to be delivered to the Patriot cause. Howe proposed to launch an attack on New York City using tens thousands of troops. He began mobilizing the massive fleet in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Meanwhile, American Commander-in-Chief George Washington had ordered General Charles Lee to prepare for the defense of the city. That June, Howe and 9,000 troops set sail for New York. Howe’s army was to be met in the city by additional regiments of German and British troops. Reinforcements from Halifax led by Howe’s brother would follow them.
Howe’s initial fleet arrived in New York Harbor and began landing troops on Staten Island. On April 27, 1776, British forces engaged the Americans at the Battle of Brooklyn Heights (also called the Battle of Long Island). Howe’s army successfully outflanked Washington’s, eventually causing the Patriots, after some resistance, to withdraw to Manhattan under the cover of darkness, thereby avoiding a potentially costly siege at the hands of the British.
After failed peace negotiations, the British Army next struck at Lower Manhattan, where 12,000 British troops quickly overtook the city. Most of the Continental Army had retreated to defensible positions at Harlem Heights and then to White Plains, well north of the city, but some soldiers remained at Fort Washington in Manhattan. Howe’s army chased Washington and the Continental Army into positions north of White Plains before returning to Manhattan. In Manhattan, Howe set his sights on Fort Washington, the last Patriot stronghold in Manhattan. In the furious, three-pronged attacked, British forces easily took the fort, capturing nearly 3,000 American prisoners and at least 34 cannons in the process. Most of the prisoners were taken to squalid British prison ships where all but 800 or so died of disease or starvation. General Washington, now at Fort Lee, directly across the Hudson River from Fort Washington, witnessed the events that happened. Following the fall of Fort Washington, British forces ferried up the Hudson River in barges toward Fort Lee. Washington ordered the evacuation of the fort’s 2,000 soldiers across the Hackensack River at New Bridge Landing. Washington would lead his army clear across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania.
Following the events in and around New York City, the outlook was bleak for the Continental Army. Morale in the army was extremely low, enlistments were ending, and desertions were commonplace. Even General Washington admitted his army’s chances of success were slim. Meanwhile, General Howe ordered his army into their winter quarters that December and established several outposts from New York City south to New Brunswick, New Jersey. | 3.998103 |
New study challenges previous findings that humans are an altruistic anomaly, and positions chimpanzees as cooperative, especially when their partners are patient.
Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, have shown chimpanzees have a significant bias for prosocial behavior. This, the study authors report, is in contrast to previous studies that positioned chimpanzees as reluctant altruists and led to the widely held belief that human altruism evolved in the last six million years only after humans split from apes. The current study findings are available in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
According to Yerkes researchers Victoria Horner, PhD, Frans de Waal, PhD, and their colleagues, chimpanzees may not have shown prosocial behaviors in other studies because of design issues, such as the complexity of the apparatus used to deliver rewards and the distance between the animals.
“I have always been skeptical of the previous negative findings and their over-interpretation, says Dr. de Waal. “This study confirms the prosocial nature of chimpanzees with a different test, better adapted to the species,” he continues. | 3.077382 |
About 1 in 2,500 babies born in the UK has cystic fibrosis (CF). This inherited condition can affect the digestion and lungs. Babies with CF may not gain weight well, and have frequent chest infections. Screening means that babies with CF can be treated early with a high energy diet, medicines and physiotherapy. Although a child with CF may still become very ill, early treatment is thought to help them live longer, healthier lives. If babies are not screened for CF and they do have the condition, they can be tested later but parents may have an anxious time before CF is recognised. | 3.240103 |
By Vaudine England
BBC News, Hong Kong
A study by doctors in Hong Kong has concluded that epilepsy can be induced by the Chinese tile game of mahjong.
The study said the syndrome affects more men than women
The findings, published in the Hong Kong Medical Journal, were based on 23 cases of people who suffered mahjong-induced seizures.
The report's four authors, from Hong Kong's Queen Mary Hospital, said the best prevention - and cure - was to avoid playing mahjong.
The study led the doctors to define mahjong epilepsy as a unique syndrome.
Epileptic seizures can be provoked by a wide variety of triggers, but one cause increasingly evident to researchers is the playing - or even watching - of mahjong.
This Chinese tile game, played by four people round a table, can involve gambling and quickly becomes compulsive.
The game, which is intensely social and sometimes played in crowded mahjong parlours, involves the rapid movement of tiles in marathon sessions.
The doctors conclude that the syndrome affects far more men than women; that their average age is 54; and that it can hit sufferers anywhere between one to 11 hours into a mahjong game.
They say the attacks were not just caused by sleep deprivation or gambling stress.
Mahjong is cognitively demanding, drawing on memory, fast calculations, concentration, reasoning and sequencing.
The distinctive design of mahjong tiles, and the sound of the tiles crashing onto the table, may contribute to the syndrome.
The propensity of Chinese people to play mahjong also deserves further study, the doctors say.
What is certain though, is that the only sure way to avoid mahjong epilepsy, is to avoid mahjong, which for many people is easier said than done. | 3.039664 |
Like the Sound of Music‘s Von Trapp family hiding in the Alps, plants may find refuge from a warming climate in the mountains.
Research in the Swiss Alps suggests diverse mountain habitats could act as stepping stones to allow plants to escape into more hospitable hideaways as their usual homes heat up.
A large, flat savannah offers little variation in temperature. If the temperature warms up, the whole area warms up.
But Daniel Scherrer and Christian Körner from the University of Basel, Switzerland found a broad spectrum of habitats in the central Swiss Alps after studying an alpine meadow for two seasons. In the rugged mountain landscape, different conditions existed close together.
The plants growing in those varied conditions were adapted to the particular set of temperatures of the micro-climates, the scientists found. The research suggests that these plants could start growing in neighboring habitats as the temperature increases.
To test this, Scherrer and Körner used a computer model to simulate what would happen if the temperature went up 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. They found that only 3 percent of all temperature conditions disappeared. Some of the cooler habitats shrank or shifted, but pockets remained. This suggests that plants have the opportunity to shift habitats, instead of just dying off.
Preserving mountain habitats is even more new important now in light of this research. A diverse Alpine meadow could save many different habitats, compared to a single habitat in a grassland of equal size.
“It is known from earlier geological periods that mountains were always important for survival of species during periods of climatic change such as in glacial cycles, because of their ‘habitat diversity,’” concluded Körner.
“Mountains are therefore particularly important areas for the conservation of biodiversity in a given region under climatic change and thus deserve particular protection,” Körner said.
Photo: Different habitats exist close together in the Alps. Wikimedia Commons | 4.220994 |
- It is not possible to clone Lonesome George now, but other endangered animals have been successfully cloned.
- In the future, cloning and further studying Lonesome George might be possible, so scientists are focusing on preserving his tissues now.
- Biobanks known as "frozen zoos" hold tissues and other remains of certain endangered animals.
The recent death of Lonesome George, the famed Galapagos tortoise believed to be the last representative of his subspecies, has many experts wondering how we should try to save other endangered and at-risk animals.
Cloning is one option. While cloning methods for reptiles are not as advanced as those for mammals, scientists also say they face other incredible obstacles.
"At the most, I could envision one male turtle of this subspecies cloned in future or maybe two males, but where are you going to get a female?" asked Martha Gomez, a senior scientist with the Audubon Nature Institute, which has one of the world's few "frozen zoos."
Frozen Zoos stockpile biological materials from a wide variety of rare and critically endangered species. The biological material is usually composed of gametes (sperm and egg cells), embryos, tissue samples, serum and other items. Together, they represent a bank vault of irreplaceable genetic information that can be preserved for possibly hundreds of years or more. In most cases, the materials are stored in holding tanks filled with liquid nitrogen.
Oliver Ryder, director of genetics at the San Diego Zoo, spoke to Discovery News as his team was racing to the Galapagos Islands to help preserve the tissues of Lonesome George. The San Diego Zoo operates one of the other few frozen zoos.
"This is an extremely urgent matter," Ryder said. "We had planned to meet in the Galapagos in two weeks to discuss preservation of the tortoises there. It is a bitter irony that Lonesome George died before we could even finish setting up the plans. It underscores the importance of preserving such animals."
"We are facing some logistical problems now, but we don't want to look back with 'what if's,'" he added. "This may be the only chance we'll have to preserve, document and study this tortoise subspecies."
Ryder believes discussions of cloning Lonesome George are premature at this point. Before that takes place, he thinks more must be learned about this particular tortoise's physiology and reproduction. Studying Lonesome George's remains may also help to reveal how tortoises often live to advanced ages, information that could one day lead to breakthroughs in extending human lifespans.
For cloning, researchers are focusing more on "species where we have detailed knowledge of their reproductive biology," Ryder said. That is one reason why cats, dogs and mice were among the first animals to be cloned. Scientists are now working to clone endangered relatives of such animals, in hopes of releasing those individuals into the wild to strengthen natural populations.
Earlier this year, Gomez and her colleagues successfully cloned endangered black-footed cats. An endangered wild ox, called a gaur, and a banteng (wild cattle) have also been successfully cloned. Work is underway to clone and otherwise increase the population of Sumatran rhinos, which presently number only about 200-300 in the wild.
While one healthy clone is an interesting novelty, clones must also be able to reproduce in order to be fully successful. Gomez said that kittens of cloned wild cat parents have died "due to problems with nuclear programing," but some normal kittens have resulted and continue to thrive.
Both she and Ryder say that there is no international policy calling for cloning and preservation of highly endangered species. Instead, isolated facilities and the work of dedicated individuals are responsible for the successes.
"The effort needs to be more widespread and organized," Gomez said.
Through published papers and talks, Ryder and his colleagues have repeatedly called for an organized global effort. It would need an "overarching international body" on par with UNESCO, he believes.
"The first step is saving tissue samples, as we're in the process of doing for Lonesome George," he said. "But we who are among the forefront would like to train others to establish frozen zoo biobanks in other countries."
"I am confident that one day such an international structure will come together, bringing in other conservation work, such as preserving habitat," Ryder concluded. "It's poignant to lose a subspecies like that of Lonesome George. People in the future will be looking back at us, wondering why we didn't act sooner." | 3.310465 |
for National Geographic News
Explosive population growth is driving human evolution to speed up around the world, according to a new study.
The pace of change accelerated about 40,000 years ago and then picked up even more with the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, the study says.
And while humans are evolving quickly around the world, local cultural and environmental factors are shaping evolution differently on different continents.
"We're evolving away from each other. We're getting more and more different," said Henry Harpending, an anthropologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City who co-authored the study.
For example, in Europe natural selection has favored genes for pigmentation like light skin, blue eyes, and blond hair. Asians also have genes selected for light skin, but they are different from the European ones.
"Europeans and Asians are both bleached Africans, but the way they got bleached is different in the two areas," Harpending said.
He and colleagues report the finding this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Snips of DNA
The researchers analyzed the DNA from 270 people in the International HapMap Project, an effort to identify variation in human genes that cause disease and serve as targets for new medicines.
The study specifically looked for genetic variations called single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs (pronounced "snips"), which are mutations at a single point on a chromosome.
(See an interactive overview of human genetics.)
"We look for parts of chromosomes that are common in the population but are new, and if they are common but recent, they must have gotten to high frequency by selection," Harpending explained.
SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES | 3.615382 |
This is outstanding, but how does the cerebrospinal fluid stop the brain receiving harmful pathogens in the same way that the blood would? Any answers welcome, I'm just interested!
Image courtesy J. Iliff and M. Nedergaard, AAAS
Green tracer molecules drift through cerebrospinal fluid crowding around a blood vessel. Image courtesy J. Iliff and M. Nedergaard, AAAS
Published August 16, 2012
Talk about brainwashing—a newfound plumbing system, identified in mice, likely helps the brain empty its waste, a new study says. Because mouse biology is similar to ours, the same findings should apply to people too, experts say.
Thanks to a blood-brain barrier—a natural wall that protects the brain tissue—the organ never touches blood, thus protecting it from microbes, viruses, and other pathogens.
To get nutrients to brain tissue and remove its waste, the brain makes a liquid called cerebrospinal fluid. But exactly how the fluid removes gunk generated by brain cells wasn't certain until now.
Watch a video explaining the newfound plumbing system.
Experiments in the 1950s and '60s hinted that diffusion—the passive method by which, say, food coloring spreads out in a glass of water—moved cerebrospinal fluid around the brain.
Yet this process is too slow to explain the brain's lightning-fast activity and immaculate cleanliness.
It turns out that, while studying brain tissue, the researchers in the 1950s and '60s unwittingly turned off the plumbing that washes the tissue.
"The idea of a cleaning system based on pressure has been around for a long time, but if you open the skull anywhere, like a hydraulic pump, it stops. They thought [the cleaning system] didn't exist," said study leader Maiken Nedergaard, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
The pump system is "on the order of a thousand times faster than diffusion," she said. "I'm surprised that no one had discovered this until now."
Brain Under Pressure
Nedergaard and her colleagues dubbed the newfound plumbing the glymphatic system, after neural tissue called glial cells, which power the flow of cerebrospinal fluid.
Glial cells do this by growing their "feet" around vessels and veins that carry blood, forming a sort of pipe around a pipe.
Tiny pores in this outer pipe then suck nutrient-rich cerebrospinal fluid from the blood vessels into channels dense with nerve cells, and pores at other locations pump the fluid out. The process simultaneously carries away the brain's waste while feeding its cells.
Nedergaard and her team used a special two-photon microscope, whose infrared light allows a deep, clear look into living brain tissue without harming it.
"These microscopes are revolutionizing neuroscience, and they've only become commercially available in the past five or six years," Nedergaard said.
Studying living mouse brains required opening their skulls. Yet unlike in previous experiments, the researchers sealed each hole with a tiny glass plate, keeping the fluid pressure while providing a window for the microscope.
Fluorescent dyes injected into the mouse brains then allowed the team to record movies of the cerebrospinal fluid moving through brain tissue.
"The fact we could look at it and make a movie was very important to showing the flow," Nedergaard said.
(See brain pictures.)
Brain Study Makes Scientist's "Heart Sing"
Clinical neuroscientist Bruce Ransom, who studies glial cells but was not involved in the study, said the work makes his "heart sing."
"It wasn't impossible to imagine that cerebrospinal fluid moves with enough force to be a garbage-disposal system, but that was always speculative," said Ransom, of the University of Washington in Seattle.
"This team, however, has done something very clever to find this system: demonstrate how it works and show it can vigorously wash away waste."
Now that the plumbing has been found, study leader Nedergaard and her colleagues are exploring its implications. A big one may be in its role in Alzheimer's disease, which is thought to arise when brain cells are killed by the accumulation of a protein waste called beta-amyloid.
"Next we need to move beyond mice," Nedergaard said. "We need to see if this same system exists in humans—which I suspect it does."
The study of the brain's plumbing system was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
These six scientists were snubbed for awards or robbed of credit for discoveries … because they were women.
Sweden needs garbage to maintain its energy habits, so it’s begun importing trash—just over 881,000 tons—from nearby Norway to do it.
A boulder-size meteor slammed into the moon in March, igniting an explosion so bright that anyone looking up at right moment might have spotted it. | 3.435124 |
Washington, Aug 9 (IANS) The formation in the air of sulphuric acid, which smells like rotten eggs, is significantly impacting our climate and health, says a study.
The study led by Roy Lee Mauldin III, research associate at the University of Colorado-Boulder's atmospheric and oceanic sciences department, charts a previously unknown chemical pathway for the formation of sulphuric acid, which can trigger both increased acid rain and cloud formation as well as harmful respiratory effects on humans.
Sulphuric acid plays an essential role in the Earth's atmosphere, from the ecological impacts of acid precipitation to the formation of new aerosol particles, which have significant climatic and health effects. Our findings demonstrate a newly observed connection between the biosphere and atmospheric chemistry, Mauldin was quoted as saying in the journal Nature.
More than 90 percent of sulphur dioxide emissions are from fossil fuel combustion at power plants and other industrial facilities, says the US Environmental Protection Agency, according to a university statement.
Other sulphur sources include volcanoes and even ocean phytoplankton. Sulphur dioxide reacts with hydroxide to produce sulphuric acid that can form acid rain, harmful to terrestrial and aquatic life on Earth.
Airborne sulphuric acid particles, which form in a wide variety of sizes, play the main role in the formation of clouds, which can have a cooling effect on the atmosphere, Mauldin said.
Most of the lab experiments for the study were conducted at the Leibniz-Institute for Tropospheric Research in Leipzig, Germany. | 3.397303 |
Warmer temperatures, variable monsoons, and other signs of climate change are a hot topic of conversation among many Himalayan villagers, according to scientific sampling of climate change perception among local peoples.
“This area is cold and it’s often raining. Even during the non-monsoon times there is mist and fog so inevitably conversations here turn to weather,” said Kamal Bawa, biologist at the University of Massachusetts, Boston (UMB), and president of Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) in Bangalore, India. “When you stop and have a cup of tea in someone’s kitchen, the conversation invariably turns to the weather. But then they soon start talking about how the weather has been changing.”
Bawa is also a member of the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration.
Bawa didn’t set out to study Himalayan perceptions of climate change. But after hearing the same themes repeated again and again during household conversations he decided to investigate. With UMB graduate student Pahupati Chaudhary, he surveyed some 500 homes spread across 18 villages in Darjeeling Hills, West Bengal, India and Nepal’s Ilam district. The pair found some surprisingly consistent observations.
Three-fourths of the people surveyed believe that their weather is getting warmer and two-thirds believe that summer and monsoon season have begun earlier over the past ten years. Seventy percent believe that water sources are drying up while forty-six percent said that they think there is less snow on the high mountains.
Many villagers also told Chaudhary they’d noticed shifts in some species ranges and earlier flowering and budding of plants. New pests have also arrived, villagers routinely reported, to plague crops and people—including mosquitoes where none had been before.
Most of these changes were reported by much higher percentages of people living at higher altitudes than by those at lower altitudes. “We’ve shown in earlier research that people at high altitudes seem to be more sensitive to climate change, and of course it’s known that climate change is more severe at higher altitudes, so that’s not a surprise,” Bawa said.
Many Himalayan peoples live in areas where predicted and observed impacts of climate change, like species migration, are more acute. Many of them also live “close to the land,” where agricultural-based livelihoods make them especially attuned to weather patterns.
Listening to Locals Can Help Climate Science
Scientific data on climate change have been hard to come by in the region, Bawa reported. Few weather stations dot remote and high-altitude locales and where they do exist their data are often incomplete.
But where data can be found they seem to corroborate local observations, Bawa said, citing his own research on temperature and rainfall records as well as the work of other scientists listed in recent Biology Letters and Current Science reports of Bawa and Chaudhary’s research.
“Governments in the region are now gearing up towards more research,” Bawa said. “But it will take time to gather this climate data.” That’s why local knowledge can be such valuable human intelligence, he added. It can be gathered quickly and widely and used to “jump start” scientific efforts.
“There seems to be quite a bit of knowledge residing with local communities, in the Himalaya and elsewhere, and we can really use that knowledge to formulate scientific questions for further research and make more rapid assessments of the impacts of climate change.”
Bawa said it’s hard to determine to what extent local peoples are familiar with the global dialogue on climate change, or how much that might have influenced their perceptions. But most of those he spoke with didn’t identify a clear cause for the changes they’d observed.
“We’re saying that people seem to be aware that the climate is changing, but they may not necessarily be aware of why it’s changing. I think when you come to that question people don’t have any ideas—or they may have some very different ideas.”
Bawa pointed to a recent study of this topic in Tibet, where many respondents believed that humans are causing climate change—but not by producing greenhouse gasses as most climate scientists believe. “They seem to think that the climate is changing because the Gods are not happy and perhaps the people in the younger generations are not praying enough.”
This research was supported in part by a Committee for Research and Exploration grant of the National Geographical Society. | 3.144538 |
Violence Against Women Act
March 24, 2008
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Renewal passes the House and Senate and signed into law
New law will safely and effectively meet the needs of more victims
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is the cornerstone of our nation's response to domestic and sexual violence. A strong bipartisan bill to reauthorize VAWA (S. 47) passed in the Senate on February 12, 2013 (78-22) and in the House of Representatives on February 28, 2013 (286-138). President Obama signed the bill into law on March 7, 2013.
YOUR calls made a difference! This is our collective victory for survivors. Want to make one more call? Visit our Legislative Action Center to find out how you can thank your Senators and Representatives for voting for VAWA.
What will this renewal of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) change?
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) has improved our nation's response to violence. However, not all victims have been protected or reached. VAWA 2013 will close critical gaps in services and justice. VAWA 2013 reauthorized and improved upon lifesaving services for all victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence and stalking - including Native women, immigrants, LGBT victims, college students and youth, and public housing residents.
VAWA 2013 also authorized appropriate funding to provide for VAWA's vitally important programs and protections, without imposing limitations that undermine effectiveness or victim safety.
Justice and safety for Native American Women: Native American victims of domestic violence often cannot seek justice because their courts are not allowed to prosecute non-Native offenders -- even for crimes committed on Tribal land. This major gap in justice, safety, and violence prevention must be addressed. VAWA 2013 includes a solution that would give Tribal courts the authority they need to hold offenders in their communities accountable.
Justice and safety for LGBT survivors: Lesbian, gay, bisexul and transgender survivors of violence experience the same rates of violence as straight individuals. However, LGBT survivors sometimes face discrimination when seeking help and protection. VAWA 2013 prohibits such discrimination to ensure that all victims of violence have access to the same services and protection to overcome trauma and find safety.
Safe housing for survivors: Landmark VAWA housing protections that were passed in 2005 have helped prevent discrimination against and unjust evictions of survivors of domestic violence in public and assisted housing. The law, however, did not cover all federally subsidized housing programs. VAWA 2013 expands these protections to individuals in all federally subsidized housing programs, explicitly protects victims of sexual assault and creates emergency housing transfer options.
Protections for immigrant survivors: VAWA 2013 maintains important protections for immigrant survivors of abuse, while also making key improvements to existing provisions including by strengthening the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act and the provisions around self-petitions and U visas.
Justice on campuses: College students are mong thos emost vulnerable to dating violence. Provisions in VAWA 2013 add additional protections for students by requiring schools to implement a recording process for incidences of dating violence, as well as report the findings. In addition, schools would be required to create plans to prevent this violence and educate victims on their rights and resources.
Maintaining VAWA grant programs: VAWA grants are effectively meeting the needs of millions of victims across the country. VAWA 2013 includes many important improvements to these grant programs, including allowing state domestic violence coalitions to be the lead applicant on the Grants to Encourage Arrest program; ensuring that specific stakeholders, including domestic violence coalitions, play a meaningful role in developing state STOP plans; and providing a formal process for the Office on Violence Against Women to receive coalition and other key domestic violence and sexual assault community input.
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is effective and important:
VAWA creates and supports comprehensive, cost-effective responses to the pervasive and insidious crimes of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence and stalking. Since its enactment in 1994, VAWA programs, administered by the Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Health and Human Services (HHS), have dramatically improved federal, tribal, state, and local responses to these crimes.
- There has been as much as a 51% increase in reporting by women and a 37% increase in reporting by men.
- The number of individuals killed by an intimate partner has decreased by 34% for women and 57% for men, and the rate of non-fatal intimate partner violence against women has decreased by 67%.
- VAWA not only saves lives, it saves money. In its first six years alone, VAWA saved taxpayers at least $12.6 billion in net averted social costs. A recent study found that civil protection orders saved one state (Kentucky) on average $85 million in a single year.
- Find more information here.
Initially passed in 1994, VAWA created the first U.S. federal legislation acknowledging domestic violence and sexual assault as crimes, and provided federal resources to encourage community-coordinated responses to combating violence. Its reauthorization in 2000 improved the foundation established by VAWA 1994 by creating a much-needed legal assistance program for victims and by expanding the definition of crime to include dating violence and stalking. Its subsequent reauthorization in 2005 took a more holistic approach to addressing these crimes and created new programs to meet the emerging needs of communities working to prevent violence. Included in the 2005 reauthorization were new focus areas such as prevention, landmark housing protections for survivors, funding for rape crisis centers, and culturally- and linguistically-specific services. VAWA 2013 will ensure the continuation and improvement of these vital, lifesaving programs and laws.
NNEDV continues to be a leading force in efforts to reauthorize VAWA. NNEDV and its member state domestic violence coalitions also played a crucial role in the passage of VAWA in 1994 and its reauthorizations in 2000 and 2005.
NNEDV is currently working with state coalitions, national organizations, and Congress to ensure VAWA’s swift reauthorization and targeted investments in VAWA grant programs through the appropriations process.
NNEDV's Role in VAWA Reauthorization
NNEDV played an integral role in efforts to reauthorize VAWA. NNEDV and its member state domestic violence coalitions also played a crucial role inthe passage of VAWA in 1994 and its reauthorization in 2000 and 2005.
- NNEDV's press statements on VAWA
- NNEDV's President Kim Gandy on MSNBC
- NNEDV's Vice President of Development & Innovation Cindy Southworth on PBS
Learn More and Take Action:
- VAWA 2013 Reauthorization Factsheet
- S. 47 - The full text of the bill to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act of 2013
- Legislative Action Center
Learn More About VAWA:
- VAWA 2005 Fact Sheet
- Section By Section Summary of VAWA 2005
- The Violence Against Women Act of 2005
The full text of the "Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005" as signed into law on Jan. 5, 2006.
VAWA 2005 Technical Corrections
These corrections amended VAWA 2005, fixing minor errors. | 3.055105 |
A group of teachers were keen to
embed rich tasks from the NRICH website http://nrich.maths.org into their
curriculum for all KS3 and KS4 students. In this article, the
teachers share the issues they needed to consider and what they are
doing to address them.
The catalysts for change were our desire to:
These changes took some of us, and our colleagues, out of our
comfort zone as we adapted the way in which we worked in our
classrooms and tried out different roles for ourselves and our
We needed to take into account the different needs of individual
teachers in our schools and their students as they began to use
In order to improve BOTH teachers' and students' abilities to
work on the rich tasks, it was necessary to take account of, and
find ways of supporting:
The challenges involved in learning mathematics through rich
The use of a range of lesson structures
The use of effective questioning to promote thinking
In what follows, we have identified some problems from the NRICH
website, closely linked to the curriculum, which are ideal for use
by schools wishing to introduce rich tasks.
The aim is to be able to predict the area of any tilted
What areas are possible?
What areas are impossible?
Is there a connection between the "tilt" and the area of a
What observations, thoughts and conclusions can you offer?
The NRICH website offers Teachers' Notes to many problems. These
include suggestions for how the problems might be used in the
Briefly, introduce the environment with an interactive
whiteboard (IWB), or drawing diagrams on the board. Ask students to
work in pairs to find one or more ways to calculate the exact area
of the square displayed on the board.
Obtain suggestions, with students coming to the board to
demonstrate their methods, until the group seem confident with both
techniques i.e. 'boxing in' and dissection. Then pose the questions
Give them five minutes to work on their own/in pairs to think
about, and make some brief notes on how they will start working on
the problem and why they think such an approach would be
Share ideas about strategies as a whole group. They will need to
find ways of breaking the problem down working systematically and
keeping track of their data. It may be useful to stop the group and
share "good ideas" as work progresses. The aim is to mediate the
problem by encouraging systematic approaches.
As conjectures emerge ask learners to write them on a poster/the
board and ensure they have convincing arguments or proofs to hand
that can justify them. Encourage students to find clear concise
vocabulary to express their rules, and to express how certain they
are about them (e.g. probable pattern/result from
Choose four consecutive whole numbers, for example, 4 , 5 , 6
Multiply the first and last numbers together.
Multiply the middle pair together.
Choose different sets of four consecutive whole numbers and do
What do you notice?
Choose five consecutive whole numbers, for example, 3 , 4 , 5 ,
6 and 7.
Multiply the second and fourth numbers together.
Choose different sets of five consecutive whole numbers and do
What do you notice now?
What happens when you take 6, 7, 8,'?¦ n consecutive
whole numbers and compare the product of the first and last numbers
with the product of the second and penultimate numbers?
Explain your findings.
Establish that the group knows the meaning of 'consecutive' -
consecutive days, consecutive letters in the alphabet...
Choose four consecutive numbers and tell your students that you
will multiply the outer ones and the inner ones. Ask students to
pick their own sets of four consecutive numbers and do the same.
Record all the results on the board. What do they notice?
Will this always happen? Even with consecutive negative
How could we explain it? Encourage algebraic and geometric
Much of what will follow will depend on the arithmetical and
algebraic confidence of the group. Use the extension and support
remarks below to indicate the best way to use this resource beyond
the questions in the problem.
This problem only operated on the end numbers and the 'end but
one' numbers. Could you make a more general statement and justify
If you have an odd number of consecutive numbers, what's the
difference between the product of the end numbers and the square of
the middle number?
This problem could also be approached purely numerically, as an
exercise in developing fluency with multiplication tables while
looking for pattern and structure.
A multiplication grid could be used for recording results, with
the pair products highlighted according to how many consecutive
numbers were being used.
Visualisation through blocks of dots or rectangle areas may help
students explain why their pattern must work in every case.
Imagine you have a large supply of 3kg and 8kg weights.
Four 3kg weights and one 8kg weight have an average weight of
How many of each weight would you need for the average (mean) of
the weights to be 6kg?
If you had other combinations of the 3kg and 8kg weights, what
other whole number averages could you make?
What's the smallest?
What's the largest?
Can you make all the whole number values in between?
What if you have a different pair of weights (for example 2kg
What averages can you now make?
Try other different pairs of weights.
Do you notice anything about your results?
Do they have anything in common?
Can you use what you notice to find, for example, the
combination of 17kg and 57kg weights that have an average of
44kg......of 52kg.......of 21kg.....?
Explain an efficient way of doing this.
Can you explain why your method works?
Given the original 3kg and 8kg weights, can you find
combinations that produce averages of 4.5kg ... of 7.5kg ... of
4.2kg ...of 6.9kg ...? Convince yourself that all averages between
3kg and 8kg are possible.
What averages are possible if you are allowed a negative number
of 3kg and 8kg weights?
You may initially wish to restrict the weights used to those
which have a difference of 2kg, then 3kg, then 4kg, etc. in order
to model working systematically, and to make the pattern of results
Some students may find multilink cubes useful to support their
Here are two examples of students work on Searching for
This is a game for two players.
You will need a 100 square which you can download or you can use
The first player chooses a positive even number that is less
than 50, and crosses it out on the grid.
The second player chooses a number to cross out. The number must
be a factor or multiple of the first number.
Players continue to take it in turns to cross out numbers, at
each stage choosing a number that is a factor or multiple of the
number just crossed out by the other player.
The first person who is unable to cross out a number loses.
Switch the challenge from winning the game to covering as many
numbers as possible. Pupils can again work in pairs trying to find
the longest sequence of numbers that can be crossed out. Can more
than half the numbers be crossed out?
This challenge could run for an extended period: the longest
sequence can be displayed on a noticeboard and pupils can be
challenged to improve on it; any improved sequences can be added to
Ask pupils to explain why their choice of numbers is good.
A semi-regular tessellation has two properties:
Can you find all the semi-regular tessellations?
Can you show that you have found them all?
To help you when you are working away from the computer,
multiple copies of the different polygons are available to print
and cut out.
Ask students to suggest shapes that could fit round a point.
Test out their suggestions.
Record what works and what doesn't.
e.g. 1 pentagon, 2 squares and 1 triangle don't fit round a
Why do some fit and some don't? Could you tell in advance,
without using the interactivity?
Elicit from students the idea that the interior angles of
regular polygons are a crucial factor in determining whether the
regular polygons will fit together or not.
Before moving on to the computers ask students to work on paper
finding combinations of regular polygons that will fit round a
point. This may encourage students to work systematically when
using the interactivity provided. Resources are provided at the end
of the problem to support students working away from the
Challenge students to find all the possible semi-regular
tessellations and to provide convincing evidence that they have got
the complete set.
Each school worked in different ways. Here are examples of what
some of the schools did:
This is what the schools said about how their practice has
This article is the result of the collaborative work of:
Susanne Mallett, Steve Wren, Mark Dawes and colleagues from
Comberton Village College
Amy Blinco, Brett Haines and colleagues from Gable Hall School
Jenny Everton, Ellen Morgan and colleagues from Longsands Community
Craig Barton, Debbie Breen, Geraldine Ellison and colleagues from
The Range School
Danny Burgess, Jim Stavrou and colleagues from Sawston Village
Catherine Carre and Fran Watson and colleagues from Sharnbrook
David Cherry, Chris Hawkins and Maria Stapenhill-Hunt and
colleagues from The Thomas Deacon Academy.
Charlie Gilderdale, Alison Kiddle and Jennifer Piggott from the
NRICH Project, Cambridge | 3.606671 |
Throat cancer is a disease in which cancer cells grow in an abnormal way in the throat.
Cancer occurs when cells in the body—in this case throat cells—divide without control or order. Normally, cells divide in a regulated manner. If cells keep dividing uncontrollably when new cells are not needed, a mass of tissue forms, called a growth or tumor. The term cancer refers to malignant tumors, which can invade nearby tissues and spread to other parts of the body. A benign tumor usually does not invade or spread.
Factors that can increase your chance of developing throat cancer include:
- Age: 40 or older
- Sex: male
- Smoking or use of any tobacco products
- Excessive alcohol consumption
- Family history
- Vitamin A deficiency
- Diet low in fruits and vegetables
- Suppressed immune system
Infections caused by certain viruses such as:
- Epstein-Barr virus
- Human papillomavirus
- Radiation exposure
- Excess consumption of cured meats or fish
- Marijuana use
Exposure to certain materials such as in:
- Nickel refining
- Working with textile fibers
If you have any of these symptoms, do not assume it is due to throat cancer. These symptoms may be caused by other conditions. Tell your doctor if you have any of these:
- Sore throat
- Feeling that something is caught in the throat
- Difficulty chewing or swallowing
- Difficulty moving the jaw or tongue
- Voice changes or hoarseness
- Change in voice quality
- Pain in the head, throat, or neck
- Lump in the neck
- Unexplained weight loss
- Coughing blood
The doctor will ask about your symptoms and medical history. A physical exam will be done. The doctor may feel for any lumps in your neck. You may be referred to an otolaryngologist, a doctor who specializes in head and neck surgery.
Your bodily fluids and tissue may be tested. This can be done with:
Your internal structures may need to be viewed and examined. This can be done with:
When throat cancer is found, staging tests are done to find out if the cancer has spread. Treatment depends on the stage of the cancer.
Surgery removes the cancerous tumor and nearby tissue, and possibly nearby lymph nodes. In very rare cases, surgery to remove large tumors of the throat may also require removal of tissue for swallowing. As a result, food may enter the windpipe and reach the lungs, which might cause pneumonia. In cases when this is a risk, your surgeon may remove the larynx or voice box. The windpipe will be attached to the skin through a hole in the neck, which is used for breathing.
This is the use of radiation to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. Radiation may be:
- External radiation therapy—radiation directed at the tumor from a source outside the body
- Internal radiation therapy—radioactive materials placed into the throat in or near the cancer cells
This is the use of drugs to kill cancer cells. Chemotherapy may be given in many forms including pill, injection, and/or via a catheter. The drugs enter the bloodstream and travel through the body killing mostly cancer cells, but also some healthy cells.
Combined Modality Therapy
Often times, chemotherapy and radiation therapy are used together to kill cancer of the throat. This combined approach may be better than surgery or radiation alone.
To reduce your chance of getting throat cancer, take the following steps:
- Don't smoke or use tobacco products. If you do smoke or use tobacco products, get help to quit.
- Drink alcohol only in moderation. Moderate alcohol intake is two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women.
- Eat a healthful diet, one that is low in saturated fat and rich in whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.
- See your doctor and dentist regularly for check-ups and cancer screening. | 3.520088 |
Italian government scientists have claimed to have discovered evidence that a supernatural event formed the image on the Turin Shroud, believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.
After years of work trying to replicate the colouring on the shroud, a similar image has been created by the scientists.
However, they only managed the effect by scorching equivalent linen material with high-intensity ultra violet lasers, undermining the arguments of other research, they say, which claims the Turin Shroud is a medieval hoax.
Such technology, say researchers from the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (Enea), was far beyond the capability of medieval forgers, whom most experts have credited with making the famous relic.
keyboard shortcuts: V vote up article J next comment K previous comment | 3.135479 |
Oct. 13, 2010 -- The idiom “a dog’s life” suggests that pooches have it made when it comes to happiness, but new research indicates that the emotional states of dogs can be as varied as the moods of their owners.
Dogs can see their food bowls as half empty rather than half full, just as human pessimists see a glass of water as half empty instead of half full.
British researchers who tested separation reactions of dogs say they found that some dogs are more likely than others to become depressed and anxious when left alone, causing them to bark, scratch at doors, chew on furniture, and generally misbehave.
On the other hand, optimistic dogs are more likely to behave better and become more relaxed when left alone.
Mike Mendl, PhD, head of animal welfare and behavioral research at the University of Bristol, and colleagues, studied 24 dogs, males and females, that had been sent to two animal centers.
Each dog was tested beforehand for separation anxiety-related behaviors. A researcher played with each dog in an isolated room for 20 minutes.
The next day the dogs were taken back to their rooms and left alone for five minutes while video cameras recorded their behavior.
Some of the dogs barked, jumped on furniture, and scratched at the door, but the “optimistic” ones did not -- or didn’t do it as much.
To study optimistic or pessimistic tendencies, the dogs were trained so that when a bowl was placed at one location in a room, it contained food, but when put somewhere else, it didn’t. Then the bowls were placed at ambiguous locations between the positive and negative positions.
“Dogs that ran fast to these ambiguous locations as if expecting the positive food reward were classed as making relatively ‘optimistic’ decisions,” Mendl says in a news release. "Interestingly, these dogs tended to be the ones who also showed least anxiety-like behavior when left alone for a short time.”
He says about half of dogs may at some point engage in behaviors related to separation anxiety, such as barking, scratching, or tearing things up when separated from owners.
“Our study suggests that dogs showing these types of behavior also appear to make more pessimistic judgments generally,” he says.
“We all have a tendency to think that our pets and other animals experience emotions similar to our own, but we have no way of knowing directly because emotions are essentially private,” he says. “However, we can use findings from human psychology research to develop new ways of measuring animal emotion.”
It’s known that the emotional states of people affect their judgments, and that happy people are more likely to judge an ambiguous situation in a positive way. And it’s apparently the same with dogs.
“What our study has shown is that this applies similarly to dogs -- that a ‘glass-half-full’ dog is less likely to be anxious when left alone than one with a more pessimistic nature,” Mendl says. | 3.026316 |
European Decorative Arts and Sculpture
Cloister with Elements from the Abbey of Saint-Genis-des-FontainesMade in Roussillon, France, Europe
1270-80s, with medieval elements from southwestern France and modern additions
Artist/maker unknown, French
1928-57-1bPurchased with funds contributed by Elizabeth Malcolm Bowman in memory of Wendell Phillips Bowman, 1928
LabelAt the heart of every medieval monastery stood a cloister, an arcaded walkway surrounding a courtyard. The Museum’s cloister is modeled after a thirteenth-century example at the Abbey of Saint-Genis-des-Fontaines in the Roussillon region of southwestern France, and includes sculpture originally from the abbey, contemporary elements from the province, and early-twentieth-century reproduction carvings. Medieval cloisters served both practical and spiritual purposes. Most were open air, often with a garden in the courtyard. A ninth-century architectural drawing known as the Plan of Saint Gall, which is considered a blueprint of the ideal monastic compound, features a large, centrally located cloister that would have been reserved for the monks. At Saint-Genis-des-Fontaines, the outer walkway held doors that opened into the dining hall, the chapter house (where the abbey was administered), and the church. In addition to functioning as a connecting space, the courtyard and its colonnade were used by the religious community for processions, services, and communal readings. The cloister also provided an area where individual monks could engage in private prayer and contemplation.
Social Tags [?]european art 1100-1500 [x] period room [x] st-genis-des-fontaines [x] st-michel-de-cuxa [x] [Add Your Own Tags]
* Works in the collection are moved off view for many different reasons. Although gallery locations on the website are updated regularly, there is no guarantee that this object will be on display on the day of your visit. | 3.218728 |
Thursday, September 1st, 1859, 11:18am:
Thirty three year-old Richard Carringto, widely acknowledged to be one of England's foremost solar astronomer, was in his well-appointed private observatory. Just as usual on every sunny day, his telescope was projecting an 11-inch-wide image of the sun on a screen, and Carrington skillfully drew the sunspots he saw.
On that morning, he was capturing the likeness of an enormous group of sunspots. Suddenly, before his eyes, two brilliant beads of blinding white light appeared over the sunspots, intensified rapidly, and became kidney-shaped. Realizing that he was witnessing something unprecedented and "being somewhat flurried by the surprise," Carrington later wrote, "I hastily ran to call someone to witness the exhibition with me. On returning within 60 seconds, I was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled." He and his witness watched the white spots contract to mere pinpoints and disappear.
Friday, September 2nd, 1859:
Just before dawn the next day, skies all over planet Earth erupted in red, green, and purple auroras so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight. Indeed, stunning auroras pulsated even at near tropical latitudes over Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Hawaii. Even more disconcerting, telegraph systems worldwide went haywire. Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire. Even when telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted.
[Click the following images for better reading.]
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Forecasting the Impact of an 1859-calibre Superstorm on Satellite Resources
THE 1859 SOLAR–TERRESTRIAL DISTURBANCE AND THE CURRENT LIMITS OF EXTREME SPACE WEATHER ACTIVITY
May be read online.
Space Radiation Hazards and the Vision for Space Exploration: Report of a Workshop | 3.512508 |
Acrophobia is defined as a fear of heights. Unlike a specific phobia like aerophobia -- fear of flying -- and other specific phobias, acrophobia can cause a person to fear a variety of things related to being far from the ground. Depending on the phobia's severity, an acrophobic person may equally fear being on a high floor of a building or simply climbing a ladder.
Acrophobia and Related Conditions
True vertigo is a medical condition that causes a sensation of spinning and dizziness. Illyngophobia is a phobia in which the fear of developing vertigo can actually lead to vertigo-like symptoms. Acrophobia can induce similar feelings, but the three conditions are not the same. See a doctor for tests if you experience vertigo symptoms. Medical tests may include bloodwork, CT scans and MRIs, which can rule out a variety of neurological conditions.
Bathmophobia, or the fear of slopes and stairs, is sometimes related to acrophobia. In bathmophobia, you may panic when viewing a steep slope, even if you have no need to climb the slope. Although many people with bathmophobia have acrophobia, most acrophobia sufferers do not also experience bathmophobia.
Climacophobia is related to bathmophobia, except that the fear generally occurs only when contemplating making a climb. If you suffer from climacophobia, you are probably not afraid to see a steep set of stairs as long as you can remain safely at the bottom. However, climacophobia may occur in tandem with acrophobia.
Aerophobia is the specific fear of flying. Depending on the severity of your fear, you may be afraid of airports and airplanes, or may only feel the fear when in the air. Aerophobia may occasionally occur alongside acrophobia.
Symptoms of Acrophobia
If you experience acrophobia, you may never experience vertigo symptoms. Instead, you may feel a sense of panic when at height. You may instinctively begin to search for something to cling to. You may find that you are unable to trust your own sense of balance. Common reactions include descending immediately, crawling on all fours and kneeling or otherwise lowering the body.
Emotionally and physically, the response to acrophobia is similar to the response to any other phobia. You may begin to shake, sweat, experience heart palpitations and even cry or yell out. You may feel terrified and paralyzed. It might become difficult to think.
If you have acrophobia, it is likely that you will begin to dread situations that may cause you to spend time at height. For example, you may worry that an upcoming vacation will put you into a hotel room on a high floor. You may put off home repairs for fear of using a ladder. You might avoid visiting friends' homes if they have balconies or upstairs picture windows.
Danger of Acrophobia
The biggest danger that most phobias present is the risk of limiting one's life and activities to avoid the feared situation. Acrophobia is unusual, however, in that having a panic attack while high in the air could actually lead to the imagined danger.
The situation may be safe as long as normal precautions are taken, but panicking could lead you to make unsafe moves. Therefore, it is extremely important that acrophobia be professionally treated as quickly as possible, particularly if heights are a regular part of your life.
Causes of Acrophobia
Research shows that a certain amount of reluctance around heights is normal, not only for humans but for all visual animals. In 1960, famed research psychologists Gibson and Walk did a "Visual Cliff" experiment which showed crawling infants, along with babies of numerous species, who refused to cross a thick glass panel that covered an apparently sharp drop-off. The presence of the infant's mother, encouragingly calling him, did not convince the babies that it was safe.
Therefore, acrophobia seems to be at least partially ingrained, possibly as an evolutionary survival mechanism. Nonetheless, most children and adults use caution but are not inordinately afraid of heights. Acrophobia, like all phobias, appears to be a hyper-reaction of the normal fear response. Many experts believe that this may be a learned response to either a previous fall or a parent's nervous reaction to heights.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT, is a main treatment of choice for specific phobias. Behavioral techniques that expose the sufferer to the feared situation either gradually (systematic desensitization) or rapidly (flooding) are frequently used. In addition, the client is taught ways of stopping the panic reaction and regaining emotional control.
Traditionally, actual exposure to heights is the most common solution. However, several research studies performed since 2001 have shown that virtual reality may be just as effective. A major advantage of virtual reality treatment is the savings in both cost and time, as there is no need for "on-location" therapist accompaniment. This method is not yet readily available, but may be worth trying to find if you can.
The drug D-Cycloserine has been in clinical trials for anxiety disorder treatment since 2008. It appears that using the medication in tandem with cognitive-behavioral therapy may improve results, but the research remains preliminary at this time.
Acrophobia appears to be rooted in an evolutionary safety mechanism. Nonetheless, it represents an extreme variation on a normal caution, and can become quite life-limiting for sufferers. It can also be dangerous for those who experience a full panic reaction while at a significant height. Acrophobia can share certain symptoms with vertigo, a medical disorder with a variety of possible causes, as well as with other specific phobias. For these reasons, if you experience the signs of acrophobia, it is extremely important to seek professional help as soon as possible.Sources:
Gibson, E. J., & Walk, R. D. "The 'visual cliff'." Scientific American. 1960. 202, 67-71. May 5, 2008. Retrieved from http://www.wadsworth.com/psychology_d/templates/student_resources/0155060678_rathus/ps/ps05.html
Emmelkamp, Paul, Bruynzeel, Mary, Drost, Leonie, van der Mast, Charles. "Virtual Reality Treatment in Acrophobia: A Comparison with Exposure in Vivo" CyberPsychology & Behavior. June 1, 2001, 4(3): 335-339. May 5, 2008. | 3.23171 |
With the worlds energy needs growing rapidly, can zero-carbon energy options be scaled up enough to make a significant difference? How much of a dent can these alternatives make in the worlds total energy usage over the next half-century? As the MIT Energy Initiative approaches its fifth anniversary next month, this five-part series takes a broad view of the likely scalable energy candidates.
Of all the zero-carbon energy sources available, wind power is the only one thats truly cost-competitive today: A 2006 report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration put the total cost for wind-produced electricity at an average of $55.80 per megawatt-hour, compared to $53.10 for coal, $52.50 for natural gas and $59.30 for nuclear power.
As a result, wind turbines are being deployed rapidly in many parts of the United States and around the world. And because of winds proven record and its immediate and widespread availability, its an energy source thats seen as having the potential to grow very rapidly.
Wind is probably one of the most significant renewable energy sources, simply because the technology is mature, says Paul Sclavounos, an MIT professor of mechanical engineering and naval architecture. There is no technological risk.
Globally, 2 percent of electricity now comes from wind, and in some places the rate is much higher: Denmark, the present world leader, gets more than 19 percent of its electricity from wind, and is aiming to boost that number to 50 percent. Some experts estimate wind power could account for 10 to 20 percent of world electricity generation over the next few decades.
Taking a longer-term view, a widely cited 2005 study by researchers at Stanford University projected that wind, if fully harnessed worldwide, could theoretically meet the worlds present energy needs five times over. And a 2010 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that the United States could get more than 12 times its current electricity consumption from wind alone.
But impressive as these figures may sound, wind power still has a long way to go before it becomes a significant factor in reducing carbon emissions. The potential is there with abundant wind available for harvesting both on land and, especially, over the oceans but harnessing that power efficiently will require enormous investments in manufacturing and installation.
So far, installed wind power has the capacity to generate only about 0.2 terawatts (trillions of watts) of energy worldwide a number that pales in comparison to an average world demand of 14 terawatts, expected to double by 2050. The World Wind Energy Association now projects global wind-power capacity of 1.9 terawatts by 2020.
But thats peak capacity, and even in the best locations the wind doesnt blow all the time. In fact, the worlds wind farms operate at an average capacity factor (the percentage of their maximum power that is actually delivered) somewhere between 20 and 40 percent, depending on their location and the technology.
Some analysts are also concerned that widespread deployment of wind power, with its inherently unpredictable swings in output, could stress power grids, forcing the repeated startup and shutdown of other generators to compensate for winds variability. Many of the best wind-harvesting sites are far from the areas that most need the power, necessitating significant investment in delivery infrastructure but building wind farms closer to population centers is controversial because many people object to their appearance and their sounds.
One potential solution to these problems lies offshore. While many wind installations in Europe have been built within a few miles of shore, in shallow water, there is much greater potential more than 20 miles offshore, where winds blow faster and more reliably. Such sites, while still relatively close to consumers, are generally far enough away to be out of sight.
MITs Sclavounos has been working on the design of wind turbines for installation far offshore, using floating platforms based on technology used in offshore oilrigs. Such installations along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States could theoretically provide most of the electricity needed for the eastern half of the country. And a study in California showed that platforms off the coast there could provide more than two-thirds of the states electricity.
Such floating platforms will be essential if wind is to become a major contributor to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, says research engineer Stephen Connors, director of the Analysis Group for Regional Energy Alternatives (AGREA) at the MIT Energy Initiative. Wind energy is never going to get big if youre limited to relatively shallow, relatively close [offshore] sites, he says. If youre going to have a large impact, you really need floating structures.
All of the technology needed to install hundreds of floating wind turbines is well established, both from existing near-shore wind farms and from offshore drilling installations. All thats needed is to put the pieces together in a way that works economically.
But deciding just how to do so is no trivial matter. Sclavounos and his students have been working to optimize designs, using computer simulations to test different combinations of platforms and mooring systems to see how they stand up to wind and waves as well as how efficiently they can be assembled, transported and installed. One thing is clear: It wont be one design for all sites, Sclavounos says.
In principle, floating structures should be much more economical than wind farms mounted on the seafloor, as in Europe, which require costly construction and assembly. By contrast, the floating platforms could be fully assembled at an onshore facility, then towed into position and anchored. Whats more, the wind is much steadier far offshore: Whereas a really good land-based site can provide a 35 percent capacity factor, an offshore site can yield 45 percent greatly improving the cost-effectiveness per unit.
There are also concerns about the effects of adding a large amount of intermittent energy production to the national supply. Ron Prinn, director of MITs Joint Center for the Science and Policy of Global Change, says, At large scale, there are issues regarding reliability of renewable but intermittent energy sources like wind that will require adding the costs of backup generation or energy storage.
Exactly how big is offshore wind powers potential? Nobody really knows for sure, since theres insufficient data on the strength and variability of offshore winds. You need to know where and when its windy hour to hour, day to day, season to season and year to year, Connors says. While such data has been collected on land, there is much less information for points offshore. Its a wholly answerable question, but you cant do it by just brainstorming.
And the answers might not be what wind powers advocates want to hear. Some analysts raise questions about how much difference wind power can make. MIT physicist Robert Jaffe says that wind is excellent in certain niche locations, but overall its too diffuse that is, too thinly spread out over the planet to be the major greenhouse gas-curbing technology. In the long term, solar is the best option to be sufficiently scaled up to make a big difference, says Jaffe, the Otto (1939) and Jane Morningstar Professor of Physics.
Connors is confident that wind also has a role to play. This planet is mostly ocean, he says, and its pretty windy out there.
This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.
Explore further: Study IDs two compressed air energy storage methods, sites for the Northwest
More information: Tomorrow: Vast amounts of solar energy radiate to the Earth constantly, but tapping that energy cost-effectively remains a challenge.
-- Read part 1: "What can make a dent?" | 3.351231 |
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft is expected to discover its 1,000TH comet this summer.
The SOHO spacecraft is a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency. It has accounted for approximately one-half of all comet discoveries with computed orbits in the history of astronomy.
"Before SOHO was launched, only 16 sun grazing comets had been discovered by space observatories. Based on that experience, who could have predicted SOHO would discover more than 60 times that number, and in only nine years," said Dr. Chris St. Cyr. He is senior project scientist for NASA's Living With a Star program at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "This is truly a remarkable achievement!"
About 85 percent of the comets SOHO discovered belongs to the Kreutz group of sun grazing comets, so named because their orbits take them very close to Earth's star. The Kreutz sun grazers pass within 500,000 miles of the star's visible surface. Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, is about 36 million miles from the solar surface.
SOHO has also been used to discover three other well-populated comet groups: the Meyer, with at least 55 members; Marsden, with at least 21 members; and the Kracht, with 24 members. These groups are named after the astronomers who suggested the comets are related, because they have similar orbits.
Many comet discoveries were made by amateurs using SOHO images on the Internet. SOHO comet hunters come from all over the world. The United States, United Kingdom, China, Japan, Taiwan, Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany, and Lithuania are among the many countries whose citizens have used SOHO to chase comets.
Almost all of SOHO's comets are discovered using images from its Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) instrument. LASCO is used to observe the faint, multimillion-degree outer atmosphere of the sun, called the corona. A disk in the instrument is used to make an artificial eclipse, blocking direct light from the sun, so the much fainter corona can be seen. Sun grazing comets are discovered when they enter LASCO's field of view as they pass close by the star.
"Building coronagraphs like LASCO is still more art than science, because the light we are trying to detect is very faint," said Dr. Joe Gurman, U.S. project scientist for SOHO at Goddard. "Any imperfections in the optics or dust in the instrument will scatter the light, making the images too noisy to be useful. Discovering almost 1,000 comets since SOHO's launch on December 2, 1995 is a testament to the skill of the LASCO team."
SOHO successfully completed its primary mission in April 1998. It has enough fuel to remain on station to keep hunting comets for decades if the LASCO continues to function.
For information about SOHO on the Internet, visit:
Explore further: Long-term warming, short-term variability: Why climate change is still an issue | 3.98436 |
Forcing yourself to look at the big picture, or pretending that you are a fly on the wall observing a scene as it unfolds, can be an effective anger management strategy.
Experts say that changing the focus from being a participant in a stressful situation, to being an observer from a distanced perspective can help an individual come to a true understanding of their feelings.
Researchers call this strategy “self-distancing.”
In a new study, college students who believed a lab partner was berating them for not following directions responded less aggressively and showed less anger when they were told to take analyze their feelings from a self-distanced perspective.
“The secret is to not get immersed in your own anger and, instead, have a more detached view,” said Dominik Mischkowski, lead author of the research performed at Ohio State University.
“You have to see yourself in this stressful situation as a fly on the wall would see it.”
While other studies have examined the value of self-distancing for calming angry feelings, this is the first to show that it can work in the heat of the moment, when people are most likely to act aggressively, Mischkowski said.
The worst thing to do in an anger-inducing situation is what people normally do: try to focus on their hurt and angry feelings to understand them, said Brad Bushman, Ph.D., a co-author of the study.
“If you focus too much on how you’re feeling, it usually backfires,” Bushman said.
“It keeps the aggressive thoughts and feelings active in your mind, which makes it more likely that you’ll act aggressively.”
Study findings are found online in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and will be published in a future print edition.
To prove the concept, researchers performed to related studies. The first involved 94 college students who were told they were participating in a study about the effects of music on problem solving, creativity and emotions.
The students listened to an intense piece of classical music while attempting to solve 14 difficult anagrams (rearranging a group of letters to form a word such as “pandemonium”). They had only seven seconds to solve each anagram, record their answer and communicate it to the experimenter over an intercom.
But the plan of the study was to provoke the students into anger, which the experimenters did using a technique which has been used many times in similar studies.
The experimenter interrupted the study participants several times to ask them to speak louder into the intercom, finally saying “Look, this is the third time I have to say this! Can’t you follow directions? Speak louder!”
After this part of the experiment, the participants were told they would be participating in a task examining the effects of music on creativity and feelings.
The students were told to go back to the anagram task and “see the scene in your mind’s eye.” They were put into three groups, each of which were asked to view the scene in different ways.
Some students were told to adopt a self-immersed perspective (“see the situation unfold through your eyes as if it were happening to you all over again”) and then analyze their feelings surrounding the event.
Others were told to use the self-distancing perspective (“move away from the situation to a point where you can now watch the event unfold from a distance and watch the situation unfold as if it were happening to the distant you all over again”) and then analyze their feelings.
The third control group was not told how to view the scene or analyze their feelings.
Each group was told to replay the scene in their minds for 45 seconds. Then the researchers tested the participants for aggressive thoughts and angry feelings.
Results showed that students who used the self-distancing perspective had fewer aggressive thoughts and felt less angry than both those who used the self-immersed approach and those in the control group.
“The self-distancing approach helped people regulate their angry feelings and also reduced their aggressive thoughts,” Mischkowski said.
In a second study, the researchers went further and showed that self-distancing can actually make people less aggressive when they’ve been provoked.
In this study, 95 college students were told they were going to do an anagram task, similar to the one in the previous experiment. But in this case, they were told they were going to be working with an unseen student partner, rather than one of researchers (in reality, it actually was one of the researchers).
In this case, the supposed partner was the one who delivered the scathing comments about following directions.
As in the first study, the participants were then randomly assigned to analyze their feelings surrounding the task from a self-immersed or a self-distanced perspective.
Participants assigned to a third control group did not receive any instructions regarding how to view the scene or focus on their feelings.
Next, the participants were told they would be competing against the same partner who had provoked them earlier in a reaction-time task. The winner of the task would get the opportunity to blast the loser with noise through headphones – and the winner chose the intensity and length of the noise blast.
Investigators discovered participants who used the self-distancing perspective to think about their partners’ provocations showed lower levels of aggression than those in the other two groups. That is, their noise blasts against their partner tended to be shorter and less intense.
“These participants were tested very shortly after they had been provoked by their partner,” Mischkowski said.
“The fact that those who used self-distancing showed lower levels of aggression shows that this technique can work in the heat of the moment, when the anger is still fresh.”
Of interest is the discovery that those who used the self-distancing approach showed less aggression than those in the control group, who were not told how to view the anger-inducing incident with their partner.
This suggests people may naturally use a self-immersing perspective when confronted with a provocation – a perspective that is not likely to reduce anger.
Thus, the tendency to immerse oneself in a problem (anger) to work through the situation, may backfire and make an individual more aggressive.
A better technique to use when angry is distraction – thinking of something calming to take the mind off the anger. However, even this technique is only a short-term strategy.
Mischkowski believes the research clearly shows that self-distancing is the best method to mitigate anger.
“But self-distancing really works, even right after a provocation – it is a powerful intervention tool that anyone can use when they’re angry.”
Source: Ohio State University | 3.278615 |
By Tom Baxter
A few years ago, Emory’s Michael C. Carlos Museum hosted a fascinating exhibit based on the papyrus legal records of a family which lived in Egypt in the 5th Century BC. As a testament to the lasting lessons such archaeological treasures can transmit, it came to mind last week when Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to endorse same-sex marriage.
The papyri were the legal documents of a couple, Ananiah, a Jewish temple official, and his wife Tamut, an Egyptian woman who’d been sold into slavery as a child. They lived on the island of Elephantine in the Nile, in a time when Egypt was part of the Persian Empire and Jewish mercenaries guarded its southern border.
As it is today, relationships could be complicated back then. When she married Ananiah on July 3, 449 BC, Tamut was owned by another man, Meshullam, who didn’t free her or her daughter for another 22 years. Things worked out, though. Later papyri record Ananiah giving Tamut part ownership of their house, selling a house to his son-in-law and making payments on a wedding gift for their daughter.
The records are a striking contrast of the bizarre with the familiar. The conventions of legalese have changed so little over the millenia that a modern-day lawyer would feel completely at home with these contracts. But the concept of marriage around which these legal proceedings revolve appears to have been radically different from ours today.
The contract between Ananiah and Tamut is so detailed that it specifies on which side of the stairs each is to walk up and down. But as far as the state was concerned, marriage contracts like theirs – the notarized enumeration of what one party could take the other to court for, if things didn’t work out – was all the marriage was. Since Ananiah was a religious leader, there may have been a ceremony to sanctify the marriage within the Jewish community on the island, but over the whole of Egyptian society, the state’s involvement in defining, protecting and preserving marriage was quite limited and specific to each coupling.
If government has developed a better way to deal with this complex aspect of human society, it was not in evidence last week, when North Carolina voters overwhelmingly declared their support for an amendment defining marriage solely as the union between a man and a woman, and Obama declared the next day that he’d decided his “evolving” views on the subject and supports the right of people of the same sex to marry.
By comparison with other historic stands taken by presidents, Obama’s carried remarkably little weight. The states decide this issue, and one just had. Obama’s statement on a morning news show the following day was couched more as something which had been forced by Vice President Joe Biden’s unguarded comments on the subject rather than the embarrassment of a big vote in the state where the Democrats will hold their convention this summer. This sounds progressively more fishy the longer you think about it, particularly when you hear how angry the Obama staffers sounded about Biden’s goofiness, according to the reporters who repeated on-the-record what the staffers told them off-the-record.
Yet symbolically, Obama’s statement was rightly looked on as an historic event. The North Carolina vote, which put into the state constitution what was already on the books as state law, was also largely symbolic. And lemme tell you – as former Gov. Roy Barnes might have said after his bitter experience with changing the state flag – symbolism is the rat poison of good government.
Should government get more involved in marriage, as those on both sides of the current controversy would have it, or less? At present the states and the federal government find themselves in a cycle of ineffectiveness. Washington has no power over what the states define marriage to be, but because of the Defense of Marriage Act, signed by President Clinton, which prohibits same-sex couples from the rights and protections of marriage in more than a thousand federal laws, it really doesn’t matter what the states do either. Because our modern concept of marriage — unlike the Egyptians — involves a certain fusion, long since blurred, between the provinces of religion and the state, we appear bound to debate state by state an issue which in some respects can only be settled congregation by congregation.
Nor does government at the federal or the state level have the ability to stop the steady decline in heterosexual marriage, as attested by a voluminous array of statistics on divorce, unwed mothers and single-parent households. In terms of the work hours it has to invest, government’s biggest involvement with marriage today is the administration of breakups and the management of the carnage that often comes with them.
Administratively, things were much easier for Ananiah and Tamut, which makes it impossible to replicate the arrangements of their day. But their preserved family records challenge us to think about whether we’ve really figured out what aspects of marriage government should involve itself in, and what it shouldn’t. | 3.114504 |
Whenever citing a reference in the text source, it is made with its author’s
surname and the year of publication is to be inserted in the text. Choose
from the listed below to see examples:
• Citing the author in the
• Using direct quotes
• Citing works by more than
• Citing works by three
or more authors
• Citing a chapter of section
• Citing an organization
• Citing works by the same
author written in the same year
• Citing secondary sources
Citing the Author in the Text
Dogs were the first animals to be domesticated (Sheldrake, 1999).
If the author’s name occurs naturally in the sentence the year is
given in brackets.
Sheldrake (1999) asserted that dogs were the first animals to be domesticated.
Using Direct Quotes
If you quote directly from a source, you must insert the author’s
name, date of publication and the page number of the quotation. The domestication
of dogs, long predated the domestication of other animals (Sheldrake, 1999).
Citing works by more than one Author
If your source has two authors, you should include both names in the text.
Anderson and Poole (1998) note that a “narrow line often separates
plagiarism from good scholarship.”
Citing works by three or more Authors
If there are three or more authors, you should include the first named author
and then add ‘et al.’ in italics followed by a full stop. This
is an abbreviation of ‘et alia’ which means ‘and others’
In the United States, revenue from computer games now exceeds that of movies
(Kline et al., 2003).
Citing Chapter or Section
When referring to a chapter or section which is part of a larger work, you
should cite the author of the chapter not the editor of the whole work.
The sea level has risen by approximately 10cm in the last 100 years (Mason,
Citing an Organization
If an organization or company (e.g., Department of Health, Arcadia Group
Limited) is named as the author of a work rather than a person, you should
cite their names. Make sure that you use the same version of the organizations
name in both the Text and List of references (e.g., always use ‘Department
of Health’, don’t abbreviate to ‘DoH’).
Spain became a member of the United Nations in 1955 (United Nations, 2000).
Citing Secondary Sources
When citing secondary sources (i.e., an author refers to a work which you
have not read) cite the secondary source, but include the name of the author
and date of publication of the original source in the text.
Only the secondary source should be listed in your List of references. You
should only cite secondary sources if you are unable to read the original
Sheff (1993) notes that Nintendo invested heavily in advertising (cited
in Kline et al., 2003, p. 118). | 3.474643 |
Introduction to How Colorblindness Works
Roses are red, violets are blue -- well, bluish. The sky is blue, too. Grass is green. These are things that most of us know for a fact and don't question. But what if you were colorblind? What would you see? Is life one long black-and-white movie?
In "The Wizard of Oz," Dorothy Gale steps out of her black-and-white Kansas farmhouse and into the color-saturated Land of Oz. She moves from a humdrum existence of chores and troubles to an intense fantasyland peopled with curious creatures, trading in a clapboard house for yellow brick roads, red ruby slippers and a brilliant green city of emeralds. What would her transformation have been without this rainbow of colors?
Color isn't just a component of vision. We associate color with beauty, like in a gorgeous sunset. Some colors have meaning in and of themselves -- purple is for royals, red signifies passion. Colors seep into our expressions -- If we're depressed, we say we're feeling blue. We're also "green with envy," we "see red" and we might go "white with fear." Colors even have practical meaning -- red means stop, green means go.
Certain colors are said to help you sleep, while others make you hungry. And never underestimate the effect of a bright red dress. Color is important.
In this article, we're going to learn what the world looks like for someone who's colorblind. | 3.109383 |
You have to break a few (hundred) eggs to make a good crystal
Space Science News home
You have to break a few (hundred) eggs to make a
good crystal Bell curve shape to crystal quality
may point to best candidates for flight
Sept. 20, 1999: Did you ever ask the teacher to grade a tough test "on the curve"? What you were asking was that the grades be adjusted so that a "C" fell under the part of the curve where most of your classmates had scored. A few were to the left and got a D or F; and few were to the right and got a B or an A.
Right: To the crystallographer, this may not be a diamond but it's just as priceless. A lysozyme crystal grown in orbit looks great under a microscope, but the real test is X-ray crystallography. The colors are caused by polarizing filters. Links to 549x379-pixel, 69KB JPG. Credit: NASA/Marshall.
That's basically how the bell curve works. In nature, objects and events quite often can be grouped along a bell curve. In a population of adult animals, most will be around the same size. A few will be larger and a few will be smaller.
"If you talk to statisticians," noted Dr. Russell Judge of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, "variations within populations in nature can be described in terms of distributions."
December 3: Mars Polar Lander nears touchdown
December 2: What next, Leonids?
November 30: Polar Lander Mission Overview
November 30: Learning how to make a clean sweep in space
The question now is whether scientists can use the microgravity of space to shift the curve to the right to grow the large, nearly perfect crystals they need for molecular lock-picking, the first step in designing drugs that can treat a broad range of diseases and disorders.
"We want to determine how the growth of crystals effect their quality," Judge said in May when NASA selected his investigation for development, "and then take that into space to see how microgravity is enhancing the growth characteristics that lead to good crystals. From this we want to develop techniques, so that by observing crystal growth on the ground, we can predict which proteins are likely to benefit the most from microgravity crystallization."
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These functions are a result not just of a chemical formula, but of structure which can be quite large (on the atomic scale) and fragile. If the shape isn't right, the protein cannot match up with other proteins or chemicals to do its job, just as the wrong key won't unlock a door. Sickle cell anemia, for example, results from structural differences in the hemoglobin that carries oxygen in red blood cells. Designing new treatments means designing altered proteins or other chemicals that act as a skeleton key or as a sophisticated lock pick.
Proteins can form crystals, generated by rows and columns of molecules that form up like soldiers on a parade ground. Shining X-rays through a crystal will produce a pattern of dots that can be decoded to reveal the arrangement of the atoms in the molecules making up the crystal. Like the troops in formation, uniformity and order are everything in X-ray crystallography. X-rays have much sorter wavelengths than visible light, so the best looking crystals under the microscope won't necessarily pass muster under X-rays.
Left: Judge (left) and Dr. Edward Snell, a National Research Council fellow working at NASA/Marshall, inspect the sample holder in the X-ray crystallography unit. Links to 600x616-pixel, 188KB JPG, or click here for a 1207x1240-pixel, 543KB JPG. Credit: NASA/Marshall.
This has become an invaluable tool for understanding the structure and the function of dozens of proteins. But many proteins remain shrouded in mystery because on Earth crystal imperfections are introduced by fluid flows and the settling of the crystals to the bottom of the container. This leaves internal defects that distort or blur the view of the structure.
"In order to have crystals to use for X-ray diffraction studies," Judge said, "you need them to be fairly large and well ordered." Scientists also need lots of crystals since exposure to air, the process of X-raying them, and other factors destroy the crystals. Getting just one perfect specimen isn't enough. Dozens may be needed, and the quality might not be known until well into the analysis.
Research has Heavy Implications. July 1998. Crystal-clear
view of insulin should lead to improved therapies for diabetics
Growing protein crystals in the microgravity of space has yielded striking results, such as determining to a fine resolution how certain molecules of insulin join so scientists can improve injectable insulin needed by diabetics. There have also been disappointments when crystals in other experiments did not grow as expected.
Since the 1970s, scientists have used a variety of approaches in trying to determine what leads to the growth of a large, perfect crystal. Judge tried a different approach that built on results noted by researchers dating as far back as 1946.
He and his team looked at the effects of concentration, temperature, and pH (acid vs. base) on the growth of lysozyme, a common protein in chicken egg white. Lysozyme's structure is well known and it has become a standard in many crystallization studies on Earth and in space. Although lysozyme has an atomic mass of 14,300 Daltons - almost 92 times that of the ordinary sugar that many of us crystallized in elementary school science - it's a relative lightweight in the protein world.
To exclude impurities often found in commercial lysozyme preparations, Judge and his team purified lysozyme extracted from eggs obtained from a local egg farm. While one experiment run required only five dozen eggs, the full series of experiment consumed about 200 eggs.
Judge and his team grew the crystals in trays with small plastic wells filled with solutions containing a trace of salt to help stimulate crystal growth. Temperatures ranged from 4 to 18 deg C (39-64 deg F) and pH from 4.0 to 5.2 (slightly acidic; pure water theoretically has a pH of 7). Judge also varied the driving force behind the crystal growth process, called supersaturation, by varying the initial concentration of protein. Protein concentration must be set above a critical limit, the solubility, in order to form crystals (below this concentrations the protein stays dissolved and never forms crystals)
Left: A bell curve for lysozyme crystals produced in Judge's experiments, and a possible shift in the curve that microgravity experiments might produce. Links to 660x440-pixel, 39KB JPG. Credit: NASA/Marshall.
The tough part was examining each of the over 2000 wells and counting the crystals. It turned out that the solution pH had the largest effect on the growth of the crystals, possibly due to changes in charges on the surface of the molecules.
When solution conditions had been optimized to give a small number of large crystals, a sample of 50 crystals was withdrawn for X-ray diffraction analysis.
Judge hoped that when the ideal conditions were found and then applied to subsequent batches, he would be able to grow consistently large, high quality crystals of lysozyme. The expectation was that with ideal conditions, quality crystals could be cranked out as if in a factory.
Instead, nature put him on the curve.
"Some variation is occurring there," Judge said, "but we haven't quite pinpointed the cause."
Judge got a bell curve when he measured the X-ray clarity, properly called the signal-to-noise ratio (a radio with static has a low signal-to-noise ratio). A graph of the number of crystals versus the signal-to-noise ratio forms a bell curve, albeit slightly skewed to one side.
Right: Distribution of diffraction characteristics - essentially a measure of quality - for a batch of crystals approximates a bell curve. Links to 875x637-pixel, 66KB JPG. Credit: NASA/Marshall.
"The distribution is saying a very few crystals form perfectly in solution," he continued, "and a small number are really poor. The majority of crystals are in-between."
It's doubly puzzling because the crystals were grown from the same batch of lysozyme that was poured into 120 wells in the experiment tray and crystallized under the same conditions.
"We have some ideas," Judge said, "but we haven't tested them yet, so we're hesitant to say it might be this or that."
The research will continue with insulin, the crucial protein that conveys sugar from the blood stream into a body's cells, and with glucose isomerase, a larger (46,000 Daltons) protein used in industrial processes to convert glucose to a sweeter sugar called fructose.
Left: Crystals of insulin grown in space let scientists determine the vital enzyme's structure and linkages with much higher resolution that Earth-grown crystals had allowed. Links to 640x448-pixel, 104KB JPG. Larger format versions of these and related images are available from the NASA Image Exchange and using the keyword "insulin." Credit: NASA/Marshall.
"In all of the proteins we're using the structure is pretty well known," Judge added.
In addition to ground-based experiments, Judge hopes to conduct flight experiments in the next year or so. He would use the Vapor Diffusion Apparatus, a device developed by the University of Alabama in Birmingham and well-proven in a number of Space Shuttle flights.
"Most researchers say that crystals grown in microgravity will be better than those on the ground," Judge said. And a number of experiments bear out that belief. "Somehow, microgravity pushes up the end of the distribution curve."
Right: Crystals of glucose isomerase, a larger molecular weight protein, will be grown to see if they, too, are graded "on the curve." Links to 1018x749-pixel, 365KB JPG. Credit: NASA/Marshall.
With expected flight experiments on lysozyme, insulin and glucose isomerase, Judge will have crystals grown in conditions as close as possible to the ideal conditions he had determined so far. At the same time, he will grow crystals on Earth from the same mix as the flight batch and using identical hardware and conditions so that microgravity is the only variable.
Eventually, he hopes that his studies will lead to a tool for screening candidate proteins for flight.
The Effect of Temperature and Solution pH on the Nucleation of Tetragonal Lysozyme Crystals. Biophysics Journal, September 1999, p. 1585-1593, Vol. 77, No. 3
Russell A. Judge,*Randolph S. Jacobs,#Tyralynn Frazier, §Edward H. Snell, and ¶Marc L. Pusey
*Alliance for Microgravity Material Science and Applications, NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama 35812; #Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, Alabama 35899; § Biochemistry Department, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48825; and ¶Biophysics SD48, NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama 35812 USA
Part of the challenge of macromolecular crystal growth for structure determination is obtaining crystals with a volume suitable for x-ray analysis. In this respect an understanding of the effect of solution conditions on macromolecule nucleation rates is advantageous. This study investigated the effects of supersaturation, temperature, and pH on the nucleation rate of tetragonal lysozyme crystals. Batch crystallization plates were prepared at given solution concentrations and incubated at set temperatures over 1 week. The number of crystals per well with their size and axial ratios were recorded and correlated with solution conditions. Crystal numbers were found to increase with increasing supersaturation and temperature. The most significant variable, however, was pH; crystal numbers changed by two orders of magnitude over the pH range 4.0-5.2. Crystal size also varied with solution conditions, with the largest crystals obtained at pH 5.2. Having optimized the crystallization conditions, we prepared a batch of crystals under the same initial conditions, and 50 of these crystals were analyzed by x-ray diffraction techniques. The results indicate that even under the same crystallization conditions, a marked variation in crystal properties exists.
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Assessing Students' Understanding of Complex Systems
Assessing student understanding of complex thinking is quite challenging. As with assessing student learning on any topic, the first step is to identify your learning goals for your students. Once you have identified learning goals, it becomes easier to choose one or more assessment tools appropriate to the task.
Here is a list of possible learning objectives related to students' thinking about complex systems (i.e., skills expected from students who exhibit complex systems thinking). While this is in no way intended to be a comprehensive list of possible learning goals, it may help you to articulate your own list.
A student who demonstrates complex systems thinking can:
- Identify and explain the characteristics of a complex system
- Describe and/or model a process where there is a feedback mechanism at work
- Build a model that mimics the expected behavior of the target system
- Identify stocks/reservoirs and flows
- Correctly identify positive/negative feedbacks
- Test a model through trial and error and comparison to real-world data
- Explore the possible outcomes of a system under different parameters
- Bridge across scales: student explanations of processes show fidelity across scales (e.g., a student applies the concept of homeostasis at multiple levels)
- Create and interpret graphical information
- Predict attributes of system behavior based on specific inputs or components of the system
- Understand that a complex system is irreducible, unpredictable, historical, nonlinear, and has emergent properties, and be able to describe what these terms mean
A number of assessment tools can be used to assess students' understanding (or progress toward understanding) of complex systems. A few of these tools are listed below.
A concept map is a diagram with hierarchical nodes, labeled with concepts. The nodes are linked together with directional lines and are arranged from general to specific. By developing concept maps, students literally illustrate their understanding of a complex system. This method can be used for summative or formative assessment, and has the benefit of highlighting any misconceptions.
Students can develop and run physical or computer models to gain an understanding of how a system works. The choices a student makes in developing a model (what components of the system to include, how they are linked, and so on), along with how the student explains his or her choices, illustrate that student's understanding of the system in question. Their ability to explain the behavior of the model (describe the outcomes given different inputs, find patterns in the output, etc.) offers further opportunity for assessment. This method can be employed for summative or formative assessment (or both).
An understanding of graphical representations of data is an essential component of data analysis. Students can demonstrate their understanding of complex systems by interpreting graphical data illustrating the relationships between system variables. This method can be employed for summative or formative assessment (or both). For more information about using graphs in the classroom, see the Starting Point web pages on describing and analyzing graphs.
Assessing Students' Thinking Processes
Much frustration can be avoided by engaging in formative assessment: assessing student learning during the learning process. One way to do this is to incorporate several "checkpoints" in each teaching activity or assignment where you ask students to articulate what the results are and how they got there. This serves two functions: 1) it exposes misconceptions or misapplications at an early stage, and 2) it requires students to think about what they are doing and why -- and whether their progress makes sense in the context of what they know or expect. This opens up the realm of metacognition, wherein students think specifically about their own learning and engage in self-monitoring and self-regulatory behavior. Research demonstrates that metacognition improves learning (Lovett, 2008 ). | 3.648346 |
Many people think that a robot:
- Is not 'natural' / was made by man.
- Can see, hear or feel.
- Can do a job / useful work.
- Is intelligent, or can make choices.
- Can be programmed to do different things.
- Can move.
- Seems to have a life of its own, like an animate object.
- Is roughly the same shape as a human.
People have been interested in building machines to do work for us for a long time. But it takes time and money to build just one machine, so early ideas stayed ideas, or were built to make rich people laugh. Leonardo Da Vinci designed a man-shaped machine to look like a knight in 1464. It would be controlled with ropes and wheels. Other engineers and dreamers drew mechanical men. So in 1920, Karel Čapek wrote a novel about them, and he used a word from Czech that is connected with 'work': robot. But the most successful robot designs in the 1900's were not made to look like people. They were designed for their use. George Devol made the first of these, the Unimate, in 1954, and General Motors bought it in 1960. The next year, it started work in a factory in New Jersey. The engineers could program it, and reprogram it if they had to.
Modern Robots [change]
Robots now have many uses. Many factories use robots to do lots of hard work quickly and without many mistakes. These are 'industrial' robots. The military uses robots to find and get rid of bombs. If someone makes a mistake, the robot is damaged or destroyed, which is better than a person being killed. There are also robots that help at home, to vacuum or cut grass, for example. Such robots must learn about the area of work. There are two robots on Mars. Because it takes a long time to send a signal from Earth to Mars, the robots do much of their work alone, without commands from Earth. People still think of robots as having a shape like a person—two legs, two arms, and a head. ASIMO is one robot that is helping scientists learn how to design and program robots. It can walk, which is not easy to program.
Eastern and Western Views [change]
Eastern Thoughts on Robots [change]
Roughly half of all the robots in the world are in Asia, 32% in Europe, and 16% in North America, 1% in Australasia and 1% in Africa. 30% of all the robots in the world are in Japan. Japan has the most robots of any country in the world, and is the leader in the world robotics industry. Japan is actually said to be the robotic capital of the world.
In Japan and South Korea, ideas of future robots have been mainly positive. The positive reception of robots there may be partly because of the famous cartoon robot, 'Astroboy'. China expressed views on robotics that are similar to those of Japan and South Korea, but China is behind both America and Europe in robotic development. The East Asian view is that robots should be roughly equal to humans. They feel robots could care for old people, teach children, or serve as assistants. The popular opinion of East Asia is that it would be good for robots to become more popular and more advanced. This view is opposite to the popular Western view.
"This is the opening of an era in which human beings and robots can co-exist," says Japanese firm Mitsubishi about one of the many human-like robots in Japan. The South Korean Ministry of Information and Communication has predicted that every South Korean household will have a robot by between 2015 and 2020.
In this sense, people in Japan are much more likely to be affected by Technosexuality, as they are much more exposed to robots in their society. South Korea aims to put a robot in every house there by 2015-2020 in order to help catch up technologically with Japan. This will obviously have an impact on the technosexuality of South Korea. China, like South Korea, wishes to catch up with Japan, and has been developing robots very quickly. After China becomes more developed, and each person has more money to view the media, where robots could be seen, or to buy robots, as is happening in Japan and South Korea, technosexuality will probably rise there too, when considering the current opinions of the people of robots.
With a limited number of robots in the rest of the world away from Japan, and even in Japan too, movies and literature are the where most of the technosexuality will be towards. Futuristic images/descriptions or robots may encourage technosexuality. At the moment, there are not that many real human-like robots in the world. The most human-like robot in the world, 'Actroid', made by Japanese company 'Kokoro' a division of 'Sanrio', is a good example of the target for technosexuality.
Western Thoughts on Robots [change]
Western societies are more likely to be against, or even fear the development of robotics, through much media output in movies and literature that they will replace humans.
The West regards robots as a 'threat' to the future of humans, which is also muchly due to religious influence of the Abrahamic religions, in which creating machines that can think for themselves would almost be playing God. Obviously, these boundaries are not clear, but there is a significant difference between the two ideologies.
Robot Laws [change]
The writer Isaac Asimov told many stories about robots who had three robot laws to keep them safe, as well as to keep humans safe from them.
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
These were not used in real life when he invented them. However, in today's world robots are more complicated, and one day real laws may be needed, much like Isaac Asimov's original three laws.
These laws are talked about in the Megaman video games.
Other pages [change]
Other websites [change]
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Robots|
- Research societies
- IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) and its wiki.
- International Foundation of Robotics Research (IFRR)
- Robotics at the Open Directory Project
- http://robots.net – Daily news about robots, robotics, and AI
- A brief history of robotics
- A giant list of known robots
- NASA and robots
- NASA Robotics Division
- International Federation of Robotics
- Should we be worried by the rise of robots?
- Podcast 'Talking Robots' - interviews with high-profile professionals in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence
- French collection of toy robot
- Introduction to Robotics
- Robot World News
- Robot news, robot tutorials, robot videos and robot chatbox
- Robot news, theory of robotics
- List of robots
- Brandweek: Even Robot Suicide Is No Laughing Matter
- Robots Today and Tomorrow: IFR Presents the 2007 World Robotics Statistics Survey; World Robotics; 2007-10-29; retrieved on 2007-12-14
- Reporting by Watanabe, Hiroaki; Writing and additional reporting by Negishi, Mayumi; Editing by Norton, Jerry;Japan's robots slug it out to be world champ; Reuters; 2007-12-02; retrieved on 2007-01-01
- Lewis, Leo; The robots are running riot! Quick, bring out the red tape; TimesOnline; 2007-04-06; retrieved on 2007-01-02
- Biglione, Kirk; The Secret To Japan's Robot Dominance; Planet Tokyo; 2006-01-24; retrieved on 2007-01-02
- Domestic robot to debut in Japan ; BBC News; 2005-08-30; retrieved on 2007-01-02
- Robotic age poses ethical dilemma; BBC News; 2007-03-07; retrieved on 2007-01-02;
- Chamberlain, Ted; Photo in the News: Ultra-Lifelike Robot Debuts in Japan; National Geographic News; 2005-06-10; retrieved on 2008-01-02
- Yang, Jeff; ASIAN POP Robot Nation Why Japan, and not America, is likely to be the world's first cyborg society; SFGate; 2005-08-25; retrieved on 2007-01-02
- Spencer, Richard (2007-03-08). "S Korea devises 'robot ethics charter'". The Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1544936/S-Korea-devises-robot-ethics-charter.html. Retrieved 2013-03-27. | 3.294991 |
The Modern Olympics
1932 -- Los Angeles, The United States of America
1,408 athletes, 37 nations
Despite the stock market crash of 1929, Los Angeles put on a impressive show for 1932 Games and still ended up with a million-dollar surplus. Attendance was low because many other countries did not even have the money to participate in the Games. The American Team dominated the competition.
for Olympic posters
Many new innovations were showcased at the Games. The first Olympic village was built and every athlete was housed, fed and transported for less than $2 a day. The village included a hospital, library, post office, barber shop, cinema, and dining rooms. Since Los Angeles athlete villages have been the norm at the Olympic Games. Electric-photo timing, the victory stand, and the playing of the national anthems were also introduced in Los Angeles.
Duncan McNaughton won a gold medal in the high jump and Horace "Lefty" Gwynne placed first in bantamweight boxing. Canada's other medals came from track and field, wrestling, rowing and yachting events. Canadians were disappointed when their female athletes were outclassed and did not repeat the success they had in Amsterdam. Hilda Strike of Montreal won two silver medals in track after coming second to Stella Walsh from Poland. When Walsh was shot and killed years later an autopsy showed "she" was actually a man. If a sex-test had been used in 1932 Strike would have won gold. A sex-test was not introduced at the Olympics until 1968. Before the 1968 Games several world-class athletes suddenly retired indicating that Walsh was probably not the only man who ever tried to pass as a female athlete.
Gold 2, Silver 5, Bronze 8
PREVIOUS OLYMPICS - 1908-1952 PHOTOS | 3.149235 |
12 Feb 13
Biodiversity is a recent word. It was used for the first time in Washington in 1986 by an entomologist (Edward O. Wilson) and can be a misunderstood topic. In actual fact it should be a simple concept, because at its essence, it signifies nature, life itself, and the diversity of life on many levels - from the smallest and most basic (genes - the building blocks of life) to animal and plant species, up to the most complex levels (ecosystems). All these levels intersect and influence each other and each other’s evolution.
Studies from the University of Stanford have compared the species and varieties of an ecosystem to rivets that hold an airplane together. If we remove the rivets, for a while nothing will happen and the airplane will continue to operate. But little by little the structure will weaken and, at a certain point, just removing one rivet will cause the plane to crash.
In the history of the planet, everything has a beginning and an end, and in every era, many species have become extinct. But never at the horrifying rate of recent years, one that is a thousand times greater than previous eras.
This summer after a thorough study of many years, the prestigious University of Exeter in England declared that the earth is undergoing its sixth mass extinction (with the fifth, 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs disappeared).
Yet there is a substantial difference between this and the extinctions of the past: the cause. For the first time man is responsible. Man continues to destroy rainforests, cement the land, pollute waters and grounds with chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and accumulate plastic in the oceans. And he insists on excluding the earth’s last custodians: those small-scale farmers, shepherds and fishers that know and respect the fragile equilibrium of nature.
Slow Food started its work with biodiversity in 1997 and our foot in the door - that since the beginning has given us a unique perspective - was food.
If biodiversity disappears what will happen to our food?
Together with the plants and wild animals, the plants domesticated by man, breeds selected (for milk or meat) will also disappear. According to the FAO, 75% of plant varieties have been irreversibly lost. In the USA the figure is 95%. Today 60% of the world’s food is based on three cereals: wheat, rice and corn. Not on the thousands of rice varieties selected by farmers that once were cultivated in India and China, or on the thousands of varieties of corn that were grown in Mexico, but on the few hybrid varieties selected and sold to farmers by a handful of multinationals.
Slow Food’s first intuition was this: look after domestic biodiversity. Meaning not just the panda or the seal, but also the Gascon chicken and the Alpago lamb; not just the edelweiss, but also the violet asparagus from Albenga.
But not just this. We became interested in taste and the knowledge connected to it, and traditional techniques of breeding, growing, and processing. And this led us to our second intuition: on our Ark of Taste – a catalogue of products to save – we have also included transformed foods: breads, cheese, cured meats, sweets. Because this is also biodiversity.
Once we had identified our field of action, how did we work? We linked diverse worlds that normally didn’t interact: farmers, cooks, veterinarians, journalists… In order to achieve two objectives:
1 – Help small-scale farmers:
To save a breed, we didn’t start from genetic selection; to save an apple variety, we didn’t start from a collection of varieties. Instead, we began by seeking out the shepherds that bred that certain breed, the farmers that still cultivated that apple, and we went and spoke to them. With this crucial step, the Presidia project was launched, that today is supporting producers in every corner of the world.
2 – Raise awareness about biodiversity:
We need to work with producers and experts, but also with schools, journalists, restaurant and so on. We need to write and tell these stories of producers with every tool at our disposal, because these themes transcend university lecture halls and scientific institutions, and become the heritage of us all.
Biodiversity can’t be saved by scientists alone, nor by the powerful of the world, because it is of no interest to the market. And it’s probable that Noah won’t be arriving with his Ark.
This battle, therefore, is one that needs to be taken up by us, together with all the people we manage to involve, on our lands, every day - with our Ark of Taste, Presidia, Earth Markets, community and school gardens, and the thousands of other ideas still to come.
Because the battle to save biodiversity isn’t like any other battle.
It’s the battle for the life of our planet.
Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity General Secretary
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The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family (also known as the nightshades). The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species. Potatoes were first introduced outside the Andes region four centuries ago, and have become an integral part of much of the world’s cuisine. It is the world’s fourth-largest food crop, following rice, wheat, and maize. Long-term storage of potatoes requires specialised care in cold warehouses.
Wild potato species occur throughout the Americas, from the United States to Uruguay. The potato was originally believed to have been domesticated independently in multiple locations, but later genetic testing of the wide variety of cultivars and wild species proved a single origin for potatoes in the area of present-day southern Peru (from a species in the Solanum brevicaule complex), where they were domesticated 7,000–10,000 years ago. Following centuries of selective breeding, there are now over a thousand different types of potatoes. Of these subspecies, a variety that at one point grew in theChiloé Archipelago (the potato’s south-central Chilean sub-center of origin) left its germplasm on over 99% of the cultivated potatoes worldwide.
Following the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, the Spanish introduced the potato to Europe in the second half of the 16th century. The staple was subsequently conveyed by European mariners to territories and ports throughout the world. The potato was slow to be adopted by distrustful European farmers, but soon enough it became an important food staple and field crop that played a major role in the European 19th century population boom. However, lack of genetic diversity, due to the very limited number of varieties initially introduced, left the crop vulnerable to disease. In 1845, a plant disease known as late blight, caused by the fungus-like oomycete Phytophthora infestans, spread rapidly through the poorer communities of western Ireland, resulting in the crop failures that led to the Great Irish Famine. Nonetheless, thousands of varieties persist in the Andes, where over 100 cultivars might be found in a single valley, and a dozen or more might be maintained by a single agricultural household.
The annual diet of an average global citizen in the first decade of the 21st century included about 33 kg (73 lb) of potato. However, the local importance of potato is extremely variable and rapidly changing. It remains an essential crop in Europe (especially eastern and central Europe), where per capita production is still the highest in the world, but the most rapid expansion over the past few decades has occurred in southern and eastern Asia. China is now the world’s largest potato-producing country, and nearly a third of the world’s potatoes are harvested in China and India.
The English word potato comes from Spanish patata (the name used in Spain). The Spanish Royal Academy says the Spanish word is a compound of the Taino batata (sweet potato) and the Quechua papa (potato). The name potato originally referred to a type of sweet potato rather than the other way around, although there is actually no close relationship between the two plants. The English confused the two plants one for the other. In many of the chronicles detailing agriculture and plants, no distinction is made between the two. The 16th-century English herbalist John Gerard used the terms “bastard potatoes” and “Virginia potatoes” for this species, and referred to sweet potatoes as “common potatoes”. Potatoes are occasionally referred to as “Irish potatoes” or “white potatoes” in the United States, to distinguish them from sweet potatoes.
The name spud for a small potato comes from the digging of soil (or a hole) prior to the planting of potatoes. The word has an unknown origin and was originally (c. 1440) used as a term for a short knife or dagger, probably related to Dutch spyd and/or the Latin “spad-” root meaning “sword”; cf. Spanish “espada”, English “spade” and “spadroon”. The word spud traces back to the 16th century. It subsequently transferred over to a variety of digging tools. Around 1845 it transferred over to the tuber itself. The origin of “spud” has erroneously been attributed to a 19th century activist group dedicated to keeping the potato out of Britain, calling itself The Society for the Prevention of an Unwholesome Diet. It was Mario Pei’s 1949 The Story of Language that can be blamed for the false origin. Pei writes, “the potato, for its part, was in disrepute some centuries ago. Some Englishmen who did not fancy potatoes formed a Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diet. The initials of the main words in this title gave rise to spud.” Like most other pre-20th century acronymic origins, this one is false. There are about five thousand potato varieties worldwide.
Three thousand of them are found in the Andes alone, mainly in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, and Colombia. They belong to eight or nine species, depending on the taxonomic school. Apart from the five thousand cultivated varieties, there are about 200 wild species and subspecies, many of which can be cross-bred with cultivated varieties, which has been done repeatedly to transfer resistances to certain pests and diseases from the gene pool of wild species to the gene pool of cultivated potato species. Genetically modified varieties have met public resistance in the United States and in the European Union.
The major species grown worldwide is Solanum tuberosum (a tetraploid with 48 chromosomes), and modern varieties of this species are the most widely cultivated. There are also four diploid species (with 24 chromosomes): S. stenotomum, S. phureja, S. goniocalyx, and S. ajanhuiri. There are two triploid species (with 36 chromosomes): S. chaucha and S. juzepczukii. There is one pentaploid cultivated species (with 60 chromosomes): S. curtilobum. There are two major subspecies of Solanum tuberosum: andigena, or Andean; and tuberosum, or Chilean. The Andean potato is adapted to the short-day conditions prevalent in the mountainous equatorial and tropical regions where it originated. The Chilean potato, native to the Chiloé Archipelago, is adapted to the long-day conditions prevalent in the higher latitude region of southern Chile.
The International Potato Center, based in Lima, Peru, holds an ISO-accredited collection of potato germplasm. The international Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium announced in 2009 that they had achieved a draft sequence of the potato genome. The potato genome contains 12 chromosomes and 860 million base pairs making it a medium-sized plant genome. Above 99 percent of all current varietiesof potatoes currently grown are direct descendants of a subspecies that once grew in the lowlands of south-central Chile. Nonetheless, genetic testing of the wide variety of cultivars and wild species affirms that all potato subspecies derive from a single origin in the area of present-day southern Peru (from a species in the Solanum brevicaule complex)
Most modern potatoes grown in North America arrived through European settlement and not independently from the South American sources. However, at least one wild potato species, Solanum fendleri, is found as far north as Texas and used in breeding for resistance to a nematode species that attacks cultivated potatoes. A secondary center of genetic variability of the potato is Mexico, where important wild species that have been used extensively in modern breeding are found, such as the hexaploid Solanum demissum, as a source of resistance to the devastating late blight disease. Another relative native to this region, Solanum bulbocastanum, has been used to genetically engineer the potato to resist potato blight.
Potatoes yield abundantly with little effort, and adapt readily to diverse climates as long as the climate is cool and moist enough for the plants to gather sufficient water from the soil to form the starchy tubers. Potatoes do not keep very well in storage and are vulnerable to molds that feed on the stored tubers, quickly turning them rotten. By contrast, grain can be stored for several years without much risk of rotting.
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Painting, artists and art
(technique, of all times)
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface. In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete. Paintings may be decorated with gold leaf, and some modern paintings incorporate other materials including sand, clay, and scraps of paper.
What Is Painting? is the fourth in a series of installations drawn from the Museum's collection of contemporary art. It presents a selection of artworks made since approximately 1965, including a number of recent acquisitions and many works displayed for the first time since the Museum's reopening. A variety of responses to the question "What is painting?" are proposed in loose chronological sequence, ranging from ironic to sincere; from figurative to abstract; and from an embrace and creative reimagining of painting's possibilities to a critical engagement with its limits. The installation's title derives from John Baldessari's eponymous painting of 1966–68 (with the addition of a question mark), acknowledging the ongoing debates over the practice of painting and its place within contemporary art.
Painting is a mode of expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, composition or abstraction and other aesthetics may serve to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Paintings can be naturalistic and representational (as in a still life or landscape painting), photographic, abstract, be loaded with narrative content, symbolism, emotion or be political in nature...wikipedia | 3.429701 |
|12/7/1941 - World War II: Attack On Pearl Harbor - The Imperial Japanese Navy attacks the US Pacific Fleet and its defending Army Air Forces and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Pearl Harbor was one of those watershed events in history that would make an impression on everyone whether they were there or not. The link is a page about Pearl Harbor presented by the Eye Witness to History site, where historical events are explored using interviews and reporting of statements from eyewitnesses. This site is always a good place to go to get a little more personal with your history.
Attack At Pearl Harbor, 1941
World War Cycle - Depression / World War II Era - Fourth Turning, Crisis (1930-1944)
b. 12/7/1873 - Willa Cather, American novelist (d. April 24, 1947)
Last year (12/7/2005):
Nobel Prize in Literature winner Harold Pinter accuses Britain and the United States of engaging in state terrorism in Iraq and demands the prosecution of George W. Bush and Tony Blair.
This Week's News / Tomorrow's History (12/6/2006):
The Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan group chartered by the United States Congress, states that the situation in Iraq is "grave and deteriorating" and calls for a change in strategy including the removal of most United States troops by early 2008.
View prior History Today posts. | 3.512755 |
Molybdenum is a trace element found in a wide variety of foods. Foods that grow above ground - such as peas, leafy vegetables (including broccoli and spinach) and cauliflower - tend to be higher in molybdenum than meat and foods that grow below the ground, such as potatoes.
Foods particularly high in molybdenum include nuts, tinned vegetables, and cereals such as oats.
How much do I need?You should be able to get all the molybdenum you need from your daily diet.
What does it do?It helps make and activate some of the enzymes involved in repairing and making genetic material.
What happens if I take too much?Some evidence suggests taking molybdenum supplements might cause joint pain.
There isn't enough evidence to know what the effects might be of taking molybdenum supplements.
What is FSA advice?You should be able to get all the molybdenum you need by eating a varied and balanced diet.
The molybdenum we get from food isn't likely to be harmful. | 3.13165 |
It's easy at first glance to envision the Caribbean islands as all being the same sunny, sandy vacation destinations, but they are different in as many ways as they are similar. Just as political and economic factors determine the personality of the islands, so do various landforms that may, or may not, be shared from island to island.
The islands of the Caribbean, like all other islands, have water that surrounds them on every side. Individual islands and groups of islands belong to various nations. Puerto Rico and the American Virgin Islands belong to the United States. Among the territories of Britain are Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands. The islands range widely in size, with Cuba being the largest, followed by Hispaniola and Jamaica. Many of the smaller islands are uninhabited. Some of the uninhabited islands, such as the Isla de Ratones just off the shore of Puerto Rico, are available for day trips and are reached by ferries, boats or kayaks.
The larger islands of the Caribbean have enough land space to support rivers. Hispaniola has four primary rivers: Yaque del Norte, Yuna River, Yaque del Sur and the Artibonite River. Cuba's important rivers are the Rio Cauto, which is the longest, Rio Almendares and Rio Yurimi. Smaller rivers contribute to these three main rivers. The Grande de Arecibo is Puerto Rico's longest river. This river, along with several others such as the Cibuco, Loiza and La Plata, run north. One river runs westward: the Grande de Añasco. The Bahamas have no rivers.
Many of the Caribbean islands have mountainous areas. Most of Puerto Rico's mountains are located on the island's interior. Jamaica has mountains that cover almost all of its surface. The Dry Harbour Mountains run east-west along the northern part of the island, with the Blue Mountains on the east. Cuba is not a very mountainous country, but it has a few mountain ranges. The Sierra Maestra in Cuba are on the easternmost diagonal coastline, and the Cordillera de Guaniguanico is on the west coast. The Grupo Guamuhaya are in the center and south-center of the island.
Because the Caribbean consists of islands, one of the prevalent landforms is the beach. Temperate weather and access to sand and surf have helped the Caribbean islands thrive as tourist destinations. The sand on the beaches of the Caribbean come in many different colors. Beaches in Bermuda and the Bahamas are known for their pink sands, formed by the shells of certain tiny sea creatures. Some Caribbean beaches are the result of volcanic matter breaking down. Black sand is not as smooth as typical white, tan or pink sand, and many black sand beaches are pebble beaches. These beaches are found on Montserrat, St. Kitts and Granada, among others.
Salt flats form when salt water evaporates, leaving the salt behind on large, flat areas of land. The salt flats of Puerto Rico, located in the Cabo Rojo region in the southwest part of the island, are protected as a part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Cabo Rojo National Wildlife Refuge. Another place in the Caribbean that has salt flats is the small island of Bonaire. The salt is harvested from the flats that lie on the southern tip of the island, but a portion of the salt flats of Bonaire is set aside as a sanctuary for flamingos. The central coastline is the tourist area of Bonaire which is a frequent port of call for Caribbean cruise ships.
- World Atlas: Caribbean Landforms
- Cabo Rojo Puerto Rico: Isla de Ratones
- Hispaniola.com: Geography of the Dominican Republic
- Havana-Guide.com: Major Rivers in Cuba
- Welcome to Puerto Rico: Geography of Puerto Rico
- The Bahamas Guide: Bahamas Geography and Geology
- Sol Boricua: Geography of Puerto Rico
- Geography and History of Jamaica: Physical Features
- Hicuba.com: Geography of Cuba
- Caribbean Magazine: Types of Caribbean Beaches--White, Pink and Black
- DC Productions/Photodisc/Getty Images | 3.575046 |
Teaching Strategies: Effective Discussion Leading
While lecturing is a fast and direct way to communicate a body of knowledge, discussion encourages students to discover solutions for themselves and to develop their critical thinking abilities. They learn how to generate ideas, consider relevant issues, evaluate solutions, and consider the implications of these solutions. Thus, although discussion is not as efficient as lecture in conveying facts, it helps students learn how to think better and more clearly about the facts that they should learn from their reading and their lectures.
Leading a discussion, however, offers its own set of challenges: participants can spend too much time exploring small, sometimes irrelevant issues, forget that they are progressing toward an identifiable goal, and become bored. The leader must guide the conversation carefully without stifling creativity and students' initiative and without surrendering to some students' desire for answers that they can write down and memorize.
Here are four strategies that can help faculty and TAs encourage students explore issues themselves:
We all know that creating a fine lecture requires research and planning; we sometimes forget that leading a good discussion requires the same research and planning and demands spontaneous responses in the classroom. The beauty of the extra demand is that developing the skills for intervening and directing discussions leads to exciting, productive exchanges that help students learn to think clearly and creatively, while simultaneously inspiring you to teach more thoroughly and carefully.
"Discussions: Leading and Guiding, but Not Controlling," The
Teaching Professor VI, 8 [October 1992].) | 4.031871 |
Dr.Gerstenfeld held this lecture on the 8th of November in Helsinki Finland. The summary of the lecture is republished here with the author’s consent.
THE ABUSE OF HOLOCAUST MEMORY 2011-2012
Summary of Lecture in Helsinki 8 November 2012
By Manfred Gerstenfeld
The Holocaust has become a symbol of absolute evil in Western society. This happened gradually over the past decades. It was not the case in say, 1960. Yet one might have expected that with the Second World War more than 65 years behind us, the mention and memory of it would fade away. Indeed, there is in many circles what is termed “Holocaust fatigue.” These people do not want to hear anything anymore about the Holocaust.
At the same time, many others increasingly mention and discuss the Holocaust. It took 60 years until in 2005 the United Nations General Assembly named 27 January as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this day, every member state of the UN has an official obligation to honor the victims of the Nazi era and develop educational material about the Holocaust. This year the remembrance of the Holocaust is devoted to children.1
Why this Interest in the Holocaust?
What are the main reasons for this increasing interest in the Holocaust? We can identify some but do not know their relative weight. Memorial celebrations take place every year in many places. There are also new monuments still going up and new memorial centers are being inaugurated. One was at Drancy the major transit camp in France. There 63,000 of the 76,000 deported Jews transited before almost all of them were sent to their deaths. Yet both memorial days pass and monuments disappear from the public eye most of the time.
New historical research is being published about the Holocaust. Additional documents are also discovered. One example among many was that in October 2012, pictures taken by Hitler’s personal photographer Hugo Jaeger, of Polish Jews in the ghetto of Kutno between 1939 and 1940 were released. This was done to mark the official establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto in October 1940.2 Such research and discoveries are mentioned in the media. Thus they also play a role in the increased interest.
The increasing central place of the Holocaust in European societies is also due to a number of other important developments. One is that European societies have become increasingly secular, which means that their common norms and values have to a large extent broken down. In such an ideological and moral vacuum, one seeks out standards many people more or less agree upon. The Holocaust partly fills that function. It plays a role as a defining moment in European history.
The Holocaust touches upon very basic questions which many Europeans do not like to ask themselves explicitly. What was it in European culture and in European societies that made the Holocaust possible? This leads to a taboo question. Have the elements which made the Holocaust possible disappeared, or are they to some extent still with us?
The first nations which should ask these questions are Germany and Austria. Yet at present they do not seem inclined to do so. The present generation is not responsible for what their ancestors did. However, the Holocaust and Nazism can not be eliminated from German history. I would like to phrase the question somewhat differently. Many of the ancestors of contemporary Germans and Austrians were Nazi enthusiasts. Many other Germans and Austrians went along with the Nazis without hesitation. Is it at all imaginable that nothing of these attitudes has remained in these countries today?
Another element of importance for the increasing interest in the Holocaust is the growing uncertainty in the world. That requires more and more points of reference for events which take place almost daily. One example which has to be analyzed is the emergence of parties in European countries with many neo-fascist and neo-Nazi characteristics. This becomes problematic in particular if these parties enter Parliament.
While the interest in the Holocaust is growing there is simultaneously also a massive increase in the distortion of the history and the memory of the Holocaust. To understand the abuse of the Holocaust in our days, we have to start looking at it by category. In my book, “The Abuse of Holocaust Memory, Distortions and Responses” I have developed eight categories of distortion. These are: Holocaust Justification and Promotion, Holocaust Denial, Holocaust Deflection and Whitewashing, De-Judaization, Holocaust Equivalence,Holocaust Inversion, i.e the Portraying of Israel and Jews as Nazis, Holocaust Trivialization and Obliterating Holocaust Memory
The massive ongoing abuse of the Holocaust brings us to the question, what can be done about it? There is no single way to fight against the abuse of the Holocaust. Education is very important. So are memorials, monuments etc. The crucial point however remains not to let abuse of the Holocaust enter further in the public debate.
It is a task for everybody to react when Israel is called a Nazi state and to call on governments to bring the Iranian leaders Grand Ayatollah Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad before an international court because of their Holocaust promotion and to do the same with Hamas. This could be the beginning of a much wider struggle against Holocaust distortion. | 3.144624 |
Elementary Matrices Generate the General Linear Group
Okay, so we can use elementary row operations to put any matrix into its (unique) reduced row echelon form. As we stated last time, this consists of building up a basis for the image of the transformation the matrix describes by walking through a basis for the domain space and either adding a new, independent basis vector or writing the image of a domain basis vector in terms of the existing image basis vectors.
So let’s say we’ve got a transformation in . Given a basis, we get an invertible matrix (which we’ll also call ). Then we can use elementary row operations to put this matrix into its reduced row echelon form. But now every basis vector gets sent to a vector that’s linearly independent of all the others, or else the transformation wouldn’t be invertible! That is, the reduced row echelon form of the matrix must be the identity matrix.
But remember that every one of our elementary row operations is the result of multiplying on the left by an elementary matrix. So we can take the matrices corresponding to the list of all the elementary row operations and write
which tells us that applying all these elementary row operations one after another leads us to the identity matrix. But this means that the product of all the elementary matrices on the right is . And since we can also apply this to the transformation , we can find a list of elementary matrices whose product is . That is, any invertible linear transformation can be written as the product of a finite list of elementary matrices, and thus the elementary matrices generate the general linear group. | 3.231194 |
From Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia
Heliocentrism is a theory which has become an established dogma in 21st century privately-funded science, despite having been abandoned in the 20th century, according to Conservapedia. Heliocentrism is the concept that a giant magnet is located in the center of the Earth, and the planets and the universe revolve around it, attracted by the magnetic energy. Heliocentrism is criticized for ignoring the everyday observations of mountain climbers and airplane travellers.
It has been characterized by Sarah Palin as "a lie perpetrated by scientists to diminish the glory of America" and pushed onto the good, God-fearing people by ignorant pagan-types suffering from Gross Moral Turpitude.
edit Proponents of Heliocentrism
The most ardent supporters of heliocentrism are found in US academia, despite or perhaps because of how the theory is being used to diminish the central role of the USA and its establishment at the center of the universe. Among those scientists that support it, the overwhelming majority also support the theories of evolution, climate change, nuclear fusion, ley line energy production, spacial time distortion, and extra-dimensional astral travel as well as using more tax dollars to fund their own research. Notable believers in heliocentrism include Charles Darwin, Lenin, Al Gore and Ellen DeGeneres.
edit Evidence of Heliocentrism
Heliocentrism is widely considered as being in accordance with the teaching of the holy book, which is commonly accepted as scientific evidence. Firm proofs of heliocentrism include:
- He has fixed the earth firm, immovable. (1 Chronicles 16:30)
- Thou didst fix the earth on its foundation so that it never can be shaken. (Psalm 104:5)
- who made the earth and fashioned it, and himself fixed it fast… (Isaiah 45:18)
- The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. (Ecclesiastes 1:5)
As a reliable scientific theory, heliocentrism has surprisingly been approved by school boards in Kansas. | 3.088546 |
Coral reefs aren't just pretty, they're also vital to marine species and island communities. But they're also facing threats from warming seas. NBC's Anne Thompson reports.
More than half of 82 species of coral being evaluated for inclusion under the Endangered Species Act "more likely than not" would go extinct by 2100 if climate policies and technologies remain the same, federal scientists concluded.
The experts cited "anthropogenic," or manmade, releases of carbon dioxide as a key driver of warming seas and oceans absorbing more CO2, in turn making waters more acidic.
"The combined direct and indirect effects of rising temperature, including increased incidence of disease and ocean acidification, both resulting primarily from anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO2, are likely to represent the greatest risks of extinction to all or most of the candidate coral species over the next century," the experts concluded in a report released Friday by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
The report was part of a process to determine which species, if any, merit protection. The Center for Biological Diversity in 2009 had petitioned for the review of 82 species it considered in jeopardy.
Of the 82 species, all of which are in U.S. waters, 46 are "more likely than not" to face extinction by 2100, while 10 are "likely," the report stated.
The authors did note that the limited science of corals meant that "the overall uncertainty was high."
The fisheries service will next seek public comment as it considers the petition for listing.
The Center for Biological Diversity, which in 2006 petitioned and got protection for staghorn and elkhorn corals, said conditions have only worsened for corals.
"Coral reefs are home to 25 percent of marine life and play a vital function in ocean ecosystems," the center said in a statement. "Since the 1990s, coral growth has grown sluggish in some areas due to ocean acidification, and mass bleaching events are increasingly frequent."
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- Reports: Secret Service personnel accused of hiring prostitutes
- American Nazi Party gets its first lobbyist
- Judge in Zimmerman case cites possible conflict of interest | 3.703642 |
As with other socially-responsible industries, the real estate industry must be a part of addressing issues relating to communities and the environment. Towns and cities, as well as recreational developments, have environmental impacts and, with growing awareness of land use issues and pollution, the public requires both the public and private-sectors to collaborate to address these problems. Home ownership is also considered by many in a democratic society to be a right but, for many of the poor and disadvantaged, this becomes an unrealizable dream. Real estate professionals are conscious of these issues, including urban sprawl, and are exploring ways to help governments and communities to address them. This section provides a brief introduction to some of these important issues facing the real estate industry. | 3.037089 |
Air MassAn extensive body of the atmosphere whose physical properties, particularly temperature and humidity, exhibit only small and continuous differences in the horizontal. It may extend over an area of several million square kilometres and over a depth of several kilometres.
Backing WindCounter-clockwise change of wind direction, in either hemisphere.
Beaufort ScaleWind force scale, original based on the state of the sea, expressed in numbers from 0 to 12.
FetchDistance along a large water surface trajectory over which a wind of almost uniform direction and speed blows.
FogSuspension of very small, usually microscopic water droplets in the air, generally reducing the horizontal visibility at the Earth's surface to less than 1 km.
FrontThe interface or transition zone between air masses of different densities (temperature and humidity).
Gale Force WindWind with a speed between 34 and 47 knots. Beaufort scale wind force 8 or 9.
GustSudden, brief increase of the wind speed over its mean value.
HazeSuspension in the atmosphere of extremely small, dry particles which are invisible to the naked eye but numerous enough to give the sky an opalescent appearance.
HighRegion of the atmosphere where the pressures are high relative to those in the surrounding region at the same level.
HurricaneName given to a warm core tropical cyclone with maximum surface winds of 118 km/h (64 knots) or greater in the North Atlantic, the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and in the Eastern North Pacific Ocean.
KnotUnit of speed equal to one nautical mile per hour. (1.852 km/h)
Land BreezeWind of coastal regions, blowing at night from the land towards a large water surface as a result of the nocturnal cooling of the land surface.
Line SquallSquall which occurs in a line.
LowRegion of the atmosphere in which the pressures are lower then those of the surrounding regions at the same level.
MistSuspension in the air of microscopic water droplets which reduce the visibility at the Earth's surface.
PressureForce per unit area exerted by the atmosphere on any surface by virtue of its weight; it is equivalent to the weight of a vertical column of air extending above a surface of unit area to the outer limit of the atmosphere.
RidgeRegion of the atmosphere in which the pressure is high relative to the surrounding region at the same level.
Sea BreezeWind in coastal regions, blowing by day from a large water surface towards the land as a result of diurnal heating of the land surface.
Sea FogFog which forms in the lower part of a moist air mass moving over a colder surface (water).
Sea StateLocal state of agitation of the sea due to the combined effects of wind and swell.
SquallAtmospheric phenomenon characterizes by an abrupt and large increase of wind speed with a duration of the order of minutes which diminishes suddenly. It is often accompanied by showers or thundershowers.
Storm Force WindWind with a wind speed between 48 and 63 knots. Beaufort scale wind force 10 or 11.
Storm SurgeThe difference between the actual water level under influence of a meteorological disturbance (storm tide) and the level which would have been attained in the absence of the meteorological disturbance (i.e. astronomical tide).
SwellAny system of water waves which has left its generating area.
ThunderstormSudden electrical discharge manifested by a flash of light and a sharp or rumbling sound. Thunderstorms are associated with convective clouds and are, more often, accompanied by precipitation in the form of rain showers, hail, occasionally snow, snow pellets, or ice pellets.
Tropical CycloneGeneric term for a non-frontal synoptic scale cyclone originating over tropical or sub-tropical waters with organized convection and definite cyclonic surface wind circulation.
Tropical DepressionWind speed up to 33 knots.
Tropical DisturbanceLight surface winds with indications of cyclonic circulation.
Tropical StormMaximum wind speed of 34 to 47 knots.
TroughAn elongated area of relatively low atmospheric pressure.
VeeringClockwise change of wind direction, in either hemisphere.
VisibilityGreatest distance at which a black object of suitable dimensions can be seen and recognized against the horizon sky during daylight or could be seen and recognized during the night if the general illumination were raised to the normal daylight level.
WaterspoutA phenomenon consisting of an often violent whirlwind revealed by the presence of a cloud column or inverted cloud cone (funnel cloud), protruding from the base of a cumulonimbus, and of a bush composed of water droplets raised from the surface of the sea. Its behaviour is characterized by a tendency to dissipate upon reaching shore.
Wave HeightVertical distance between the trough and crest of a wave.
Wave PeriodsTime between the passage of two successive wave crests past a fixed point. | 3.47013 |
Gospel of Mark
The Gospel According to Mark, also known as The Gospel of Mark, is one of the four canonical Gospels. It was most likely the earliest of the four to be written. Scholars typically estimate it was written between 70CE and 90CE, by an unknown author.
In Mark 9:1 , Jesus says to his followers:
- "Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power."
17 And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?
18 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.
Significance of Mark
Mark is quite significant in understanding the other gospels in the biblical corpus because it is said that Mark "strung the pearls" i.e. was the first to bring together sayings, teachings and stories of Jesus to create a Gospel. The significance of this is that Mark is thus extremely significant with regards to understanding Matthew, Luke and John. For example, Mark was written in 70 AD whereas Matthew was written in 80-85 AD. There are thus 2 prevalent theories for as to where the gospel story comes from in Matthew. First is the 2 source theory which states that the gospel of Matthew is derived from Mark and another source, Q. Second is the 4 source theory which states that the gospel of Matthew is derived from things unique to Matthew, things from the gospel of Luke, Mark, and this other source Q. In both of these suggestions the gospel of Mark is a predominant figure with regards to understanding Matthew. This holds true with the other two gospels, although John is a little more intricate (cf. the Perrin Suggestion).
- R.H. Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1993)
- V. Taylor, The Formation of the Gospel Tradition (London: Macmillan & Co., 1953)
- D.M. Smith, John among the Gospels (Minneapolis: Augsburg/Fortress, 1992) | 3.45028 |
short-limbed toad with rough skin - covered with warts, prominent parallel parotid glands
and (usually) a bright yellow stripe centrally down the back (B159, B160, B161).
- Male: to about 2.5 inches; Female: slightly larger (B161).
- Normally 7-8cm, occasionally to 10cm, females larger than males (B159).
Head: Parallel parotid glands (B159).
Eye: Greenish yellow (B160, B161);
Legs: Relatively short, toes no more than half webbed (B159, B160).
Skin: Warty (B159, B161).
- Dorsal:: grey/olive green,/brownish with darker markings
(brown/green/red warts) and yellowish stripe central from snout caudally to end of body.
- Abdomen: whitish, with dark green spotting.
- Bluish/mauve (B161).
- Vocal sac under chin, inflated when calling (B161).
- Three inner fingers of forelimbs have grasping pads (B161).
- Paired tubercles under longest hind toe (B159).
Tadpole: Similar to those of common toads, darker than
those of frogs and smaller than similar-age frog tadpoles or common toad tadpoles (B161).
Similar species: .Differentiated from Bufo bufo - Common toad
by smaller size, parallel parotid glands and yellow stripe down centre of back (B159).
|Range and Habitat
and central Europe eastwards to western Russia.(B159).
Britain: Scattered, local distribution, including south-west Ireland (B159, B161).
- In north of range (including Britain) found in sandy areas.
- In remainder of range, wider variety of habitats.
- Up to 200m in Iberia.
- Remain near pond. Much of time is spent in crannies, or in burrows in soft sand.
- Active swimmers.
- Walk on land, and run, are also able to hop.
- Poor swimmer.
- Burrow in soft soil/sand.
- Mainly nocturnal.
- In summer spend daytime in burrows, emerge at night to feed.
- Head-down, hindquarters-up posture when alarmed.
(B159, B160, B161).
- Crows, magpies, herons
- Rats, hedgehogs, stoats and weasels
- Some Natrix natrix - Grass snake.
Skin shedding: --
Longevity: More than 15 years (B160).
Place: in shallow water, sometimes in puddles near a
pond rather than in the pond itself (B160, B161 ).
Timing: Late March to beginning of August but usually
late April to June in Britain (B160);
Mid-April to as late as July (B161)
Courtship: Male clasps female, gripping axillae (B160).
Eggs: 3,000 - 4,000 laid in strings; initially in two
rows, later in a single row (B160, B161 ).
Tadpole development: Rapid. Tadpole free of egg by
about a week after spawning. Develop into toadlets by six to eight weeks. May leave water
by early June (B160, B161)
- Late October to late February or early March.
- In burrows or under large stones B161
Adults: Beetles, other insects, worms, spiders, woodlice, small
Tadpoles: initially algae on leaves and stems of plants, later animal
food: dead fish, fledglings, tadpoles (B161).
Feeding: Catch prey on the move (B160).
Organisations (UK Contacts): | 3.21857 |
| ||A Place Apart|
MPBN: Home Series, Moving Image, 00:27:01
Maine is a place apart from the mainstream of American society. Beginning early in Maine’s history, settlers, merchants, visitors, artists, and writers brought images of Maine to the rest of the world that shaped the State's economy, identity, and heritage. The history behind the image of Maine remains a vital part of how we and those from away view Maine today.
(Relevance: 1032) Find Similar Resources
History - Colonial Period | 3.040302 |
so write it offline in an editor (e.g., Notepad) and paste it in your little post box, viz.:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the general notion of determinism in philosophy. For other uses, see Determinism (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Fatalism, Predeterminism, or Predictability.
Determinism is a metaphysical philosophical position stating that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given those conditions, nothing else could happen. "There are many determinisms, depending upon what pre-conditions are considered to be determinative of an event." Determinism throughout the history of philosophy has sprung from diverse considerations, some of which overlap. Some forms of determinism can be tested empirically with ideas stemming from physics and the philosophy of physics. The opposite of determinism is some kind of indeterminism (otherwise called nondeterminism). Determinism is often contrasted with free will.
Determinism often is taken to mean simply causal determinism, that is, basing determinism upon the idea of cause-and-effect. It is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality in such a way that any state (of an object or event) is completely determined by prior states. This meaning can be distinguished from other varieties of determinism mentioned below.
The introduction of "cause-and-effect" introduces unnecessary complications related to what is meant by a 'cause' and how the presence of a 'cause' might be established, the interpretation of which varies from one physical theory to another. These complications are avoided by a more general formulation based upon connections between 'events' supplied by a theory:
"a theory is deterministic if, and only if, given its state variables for some initial period, the theory logically determines a unique set of values for those variables for any other period."
—Ernest Nagel, Alternative descriptions of physical state p. 292
This quote replaces the idea of 'cause-and-effect' with that of 'logical implication' according to one or another theory that connects events. In addition, an 'event' is related by the theory itself to formalized states described using the parameters defined by that theory. Thus, the details of interpretation are placed where they belong, fitted to the context in which the chosen theory applies.
Other debates often concern the scope of determined systems, with some maintaining that the entire universe (or multiverse) is a single determinate system and others identifying other more limited determinate systems. For example, using the definition of physical determinism above, the limitations of a theory to some particular domain of experience also limits the associated definition of 'determinism' to that same domain.
There are numerous historical debates involving many philosophical positions and varieties of determinism. They include debates concerning determinism and free will, technically denoted as compatibilistic (allowing the two to coexist) and incompatibilistic (denying their coexistence is a possibility).
Determinism should not be confused with self-determination of human actions by reasons, motives, and desires. Determinism rarely requires that perfect prediction be practically possible – merely predictable in theory.
Many philosophical theories of determinism frame themselves with the idea that reality follows a sort of predetermined path
Causal determinism is "the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature". However, causal determinism is a broad enough term to consider that "one's deliberations, choices, and actions will often be necessary links in the causal chain that brings something about. In other words, even though our deliberations, choices, and actions are themselves determined like everything else, it is still the case, according to causal determinism, that the occurrence or existence of yet other things depends upon our deliberating, choosing and acting in a certain way". Causal determinism proposes that there is an unbroken chain of prior occurrences stretching back to the origin of the universe. The relation between events may not be specified, nor the origin of that universe. Causal determinists believe that there is nothing uncaused or self-caused. Historical determinism (a sort of path dependence) can also be synonymous with causal determinism.
Nomological determinism (sometimes called 'scientific' determinism, although that is a misnomer) is the most common form of causal determinism. It is the notion that the past and the present dictate the future entirely and necessarily by rigid natural laws, that every occurrence results inevitably from prior events. Quantum mechanics and various interpretations thereof pose a serious challenge to this view. Nomological determinism is sometimes illustrated by the thought experiment of Laplace's demon.
Physical determinism holds holds that all physical events occur as described by physical laws. Depending upon definitions, there is some room here for the view that not everything in the universe must be tied to some physical state, but that view is not usually emphasized by adherents of physical determinism because of the widely accepted scientific view that the operation of all physical systems (often unnecessarily taken to mean everything) can be explained entirely in physical terms, the assumed causal closure of physics.
Necessitarianism is very related to the causal determinism described above. It is a metaphysical principle that denies all mere possibility; there is exactly one way for the world to be. Leucippus claimed there were no uncaused events, and that everything occurs for a reason and by necessity.
Predeterminism is the idea that all events are determined in advance. The concept of predeterminism is often argued by invoking causal determinism, implying that there is an unbroken chain of prior occurrences stretching back to the origin of the universe. In the case of predeterminism, this chain of events has been pre-established, and human actions cannot interfere with the outcomes of this pre-established chain. Predeterminism can be used to mean such pre-established causal determinism, in which case it is categorised as a specific type of determinism. It can also be used interchangeably with causal determinism - in the context of its capacity to determine future events. Despite this, predeterminism is often considered as independent of causal determinism. The term predeterminism is also frequently used in the context of biology and hereditary, in which case it represents a form of biological determinism.
Fatalism is normally distinguished from "determinism". Fatalism is the idea that everything is fated to happen, so that humans have no control over their future. Fate has arbitrary power, and need not follow any causal or otherwise deterministic laws. Types of Fatalism include hard theological determinism and the idea of predestination, where there is a God who determines all that humans will do. This may be accomplished either by knowing their actions in advance, via some form of omniscience or by decreeing their actions in advance.
Theological determinism is a form of determinism which states that all events that happen are pre-ordained, or predestined to happen, by a monotheistic deity, or that they are destined to occur given its omniscience. Two forms of theological determinism exist, here referenced as strong and weak theological determinism. The first one, strong theological determinism, is based on the concept of a creator deity dictating all events in history: "everything that happens has been predestined to happen by an omniscient, omnipotent divinity". The second form, weak theological determinism, is based on the concept of divine foreknowledge - "because God's omniscience is perfect, what God knows about the future will inevitably happen, which means, consequently, that the future is already fixed". There exist slight variations on the above categorisation. Some claim that theological determinism requires predestination of all events and outcomes by the divinity (i.e. they do not classify the weaker version as 'theological determinism' unless libertarian free will is assumed to be denied as a consequence), or that the weaker version does not constitute 'theological determinism' at all. With respect to free will, "theological determinism is the thesis that God exists and has infallible knowledge of all true propositions including propositions about our future actions", more minimal criteria designed to encapsulate all forms of theological determinism. Theological determinism can also be seen as a form of causal determinism, in which the antecedent conditions are the nature and will of God.
Logical determinism or Determinateness is the notion that all propositions, whether about the past, present, or future, are either true or false. Note that one can support Causal Determinism without necessarily supporting Logical Determinism and vice versa (depending on one's views on the nature of time, but also randomness). The problem of free will is especially salient now with Logical Determinism: how can choices be free, given that propositions about the future already have a truth value in the present (i.e. it is already determined as either true or false)? This is referred to as the problem of future contingents.
Adequate determinism focuses on the fact that, even without a full understanding of microscopic physics, we can predict the distribution of 1000 coin tosses
Often synonymous with Logical Determinism are the ideas behind Spatio-temporal Determinism or Eternalism: the view of special relativity. J. J. C. Smart, a proponent of this view, uses the term "tenselessness" to describe the simultaneous existence of past, present, and future. In physics, the "block universe" of Hermann Minkowski and Albert Einstein assumes that time is a fourth dimension (like the three spatial dimensions). In other words, all the other parts of time are real, like the city blocks up and down a street, although the order in which they appear depends on the driver (see Rietdijk–Putnam argument).
Adequate determinism is the idea that quantum indeterminacy can be ignored for most macroscopic events. This is because of quantum decoherence. Random quantum events "average out" in the limit of large numbers of particles (where the laws of quantum mechanics asymptotically approach the laws of classical mechanics). Stephen Hawking explains a similar idea: he says that the microscopic world of quantum mechanics is one of determined probabilities. That is, quantum effects rarely alter the predictions of classical mechanics, which are quite accurate (albeit still not perfectly certain) at larger scales. Something as large as an animal cell, then, would be "adequately determined" (even in light of quantum indeterminacy).
Nature and nurture interact in humans. A scientist looking at a sculpture after some time does not ask whether we are seeing the effects of the starting materials OR environmental influences.
Although some of the above forms of determinism concern human behaviors and cognition, others frame themselves as an answer to the Nature or Nurture debate. They will suggest that one factor will entirely determine behavior. As scientific understanding has grown, however, the strongest versions of these theories have been widely rejected as a single cause fallacy.
In other words, the modern deterministic theories attempt to explain how the interaction of both nature and nurture is entirely predictable. The concept of heritability has been helpful to make this distinction.
Biological determinism, sometimes called Genetic determinism, is the idea that each of our behaviors, beliefs, and desires are fixed by our genetic nature.
Behaviorism is the idea that all behavior can be traced to specific causes—either environmental or reflexive. This Nurture-focused determinism was developed by John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner.
Cultural determinism or social determinism is the nurture-focused theory that it is the culture in which we are raised that determines who we are.
Environmental determinism is also known as climatic or geographical determinism. It holds the view that the physical environment, rather than social conditions, determines culture. Supporters often also support Behavioral determinism. Key proponents of this notion have included Ellen Churchill Semple, Ellsworth Huntington, Thomas Griffith Taylor and possibly Jared Diamond, although his status as an environmental determinist is debated.
A technological determinist might suggest that technology like the mobile phone is the greatest factor shaping human civilization.
Other 'deterministic' theories actually seek only to highlight the importance of a particular factor in predicting the future. These theories often use the factor as a sort of guide or constraint on the future. They need not suppose that complete knowledge of that one factor would allow us to make perfect predictions.
Psychological determinism can mean that humans must act according to reason, but it can also be synonymous with some sort of Psychological egoism. The latter is the view that humans will always act according to their perceived best interest.
Linguistic determinism claims that our language determines (at least limits) the things we can think and say and thus know. The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis argues that individuals experience the world based on the grammatical structures they habitually use.
Economic determinism is the theory which attributes primacy to the economic structure over politics in the development of human history. It is associated with the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx.
Technological determinism is a reductionist theory that presumes that a society's technology drives the development of its social structure and cultural values. Media determinism, a subset of technological determinism, is a philosophical and sociological position which posits the power of the media to impact society. Two leading media determinists are the Canadian scholars Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan. | 3.26048 |
- Date: January 25, 2011
- In This Story:
Asian tiger reserves can support more than 10,000 wild tigers—three times the current estimate—if they are managed as large-scale landscapes that protect core breeding sites and benefit local communities, according to the world’s leading conservation scientists in a new study published on January 25. This positive news reveals that doubling the number of tigers in the wild is feasible.
“In the midst of a crisis, it’s tempting to circle the wagons and only protect a limited number of core protected areas, but we can and should do better,” said Dr. Eric Dinerstein, Chief Scientist at WWF and co-author of the study. “We absolutely need to stop the bleeding, the poaching of tigers and their prey in core breeding areas, but we need to go much further and secure larger tiger landscapes before it is too late.”
Wild tiger numbers have declined to as few as 3,200 today compared to 100,000 a century ago, due to poaching of tigers and their prey, habitat destruction and human-tiger conflict. “A Landscape-Based Conservation Strategy to Double the Wild Tiger Population” in the current issue of Conservation Letters provides the first assessment of the political commitment made by all 13 tiger range countries at November’s historic tiger summit to double the tiger population across Asia by 2022. The study found that the 20 priority tiger conservation landscapes with the highest probability of long-term tiger survival could support more than 10,500 tigers, including about 3,400 breeding females.
“Tiger conservation is the face of biodiversity conservation and competent sustainable land-use management at the landscape level,” said study co-author Dr. John Seidensticker of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. “By saving the tiger we save all the plants and animals that live under the tiger’s umbrella.”
The study also revealed that major infrastructure projects such dams, roads and mines will threaten tiger landscapes in the next decade. However, channeling revenues to communities from wildlife tourism, forest management in corridors and buffer zones, and earning carbon credits will provide new opportunities.
Read the full study
View a map of the 12 best places to double the number of tigers in the wild
Learn more about wild tigers
“Without strong countervailing pressures, short-term economic gains will inevitably trump protection of the critical ecosystems necessary for sustainable development,” said Keshav Varma, Program Director of the Global Tiger Initiative at the World Bank.
The study calls for mainstreaming wildlife conservation to shift to well-funded efforts to protect core areas and larger landscapes, a challenging task that will require innovation through arrangements that benefit the rural communities living in these landscapes. Countries like Nepal are already looking closely at building alliances and partnerships for better landscape management that benefits both people and tigers.
"Following the St. Petersburg Declaration, Nepal has committed to the goal of doubling wild tiger numbers across our country by 2022,” said Deepak Bohara, Nepal’s Minister for Forests and Soil Conservation. “This analysis shows that it can be done, not just in Nepal, but, if done right with careful study and planning, across the entire tiger range. It is also worth noting that the tiger conservation provides carbon credits, protects water resources, and complements community development efforts. Thus, it is important to promote regional cooperation to maintain a healthy tiger corridor between different reserves.” | 3.283564 |
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